Keeping Faith: A Novel (4 page)

Don’t you wish, she said silently, that you were like me?

That year, like all the other years, my mother made me get up ten minutes before the intermission, so that we could beat the bathroom lines. She towed me to the ladies’ room, both of us crowding into the tiny stall, and she loomed like a djinn with her arms crossed over me as I squatted to pee. When I was done, she said, “Now wait till I’m finished.”

My mother tells me that I had never crossed the street without reaching for her hand, never reached toward a hot stove; even as an infant, I’d never put small objects in my mouth. But that day, while she was in the toilet, I ducked beneath the door of the stall and disappeared.

I do not remember this. I also do not remember how I made my way past the green-coated security guards, out the door, and into the huge lot where the circus had set up its trailers.

Of course, I do not remember how the ringmaster himself announced my name in hopes of finding me,

how the murmurs of a lost little girl ran like fire, how my parents spent the show searching the halls. I can’t recall the chalky face of the circus hand who found me, who pronounced it a wonder that I hadn’t been trampled or gored.

And I can’t imagine what my parents thought,

to discover me nestled between the lethal tusks of a sleeping elephant, my hair matted with straw and spit, his trunk curled over my shoulders like the arm of an old love.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this,

except to make you see that maybe, like eye color and bone structure, miracles are passed down through the bloodlines.

The Elephant Girl has grown up. Of course, I cannot be sure they are one and the same,

but here is a woman in a spangly costume with the same red-gold hair and wise eyes as the girl I remember. She leads a baby elephant around the center ring and tosses it a purple ball; she bows grandly to the audience and lets the elephant wave over her shoulder. Then from the side curtains comes a child, a little girl so like the one in my past that I wonder if time stands completely still beneath a big top. But then I watch the Elephant Woman help the girl ride the baby elephant around the ring, and I see that they are mother and daughter.

A look passes between them, one that makes me glance at Faith. Her eyes are so bright I can see the Elephant Girl’s sequins reflected in them. Suddenly the clown who was here before is leaning over the divider, motioning wildly to Faith, who nods and falls over the railing into his arms. She waves back at us, her face mobile as she marches off to be part of the pre-intermission extravaganza. My mother scoots into Faith’s seat. “Did you see that?

Oh, I knew we should have brought the camera.”

And then in a buffet of light and booming voice, the circus performers and animals parade around the trio of rings. I look around, trying to find Faith. “Over there!” my mother calls.

“Yoo-hoo! Faith!” She points past the ringmaster and the caged tigers to my daughter, who is riding in front of the Elephant Lady on a tremendous tusked beast.

I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be. The searchlights wing over the crowd, and in spite of the cheers and the fanfare I can still hear my mother surreptitiously unwrapping a Brach’s butterscotch candy in the belly of her purse.

A trained dog, spooked by something, leaps out of the arms of a clown in a hoopskirt. The dog streaks between the ringmaster’s legs, over the satin train of a trapeze artist, and just in front of Faith’s elephant, causing it to trumpet and rear up on its legs.

If I live to be a hundred, I will never forget how long it took to watch Faith tumble to the sawdust, how panic swelled into my eardrums and blocked out all other sound, how the clown who’d befriended her rushed over, only to bump against the juggler and knock the spinning knives out of his hands, so that the three bright blades fell and sliced across my daughter’s back.

Faith lies unconscious on her belly in a hospital bed at Mass General, so small she barely takes up half the length of the mattress. An IV drips into her arm to ward off infection, the doctor says, although he is confident because the lacerations were not deep. Still, they were deep enough to require twenty stitches. My jaw is so tight from being clenched that a shudder runs down my spine, and my mother must know how close I am to falling apart, because she has a quiet word with a nurse, touches Faith’s hair, and pulls me out of the room.

We don’t speak until we reach a small supply closet, which my mother appropriates for our use. Pushing me against the wall of sheets and towels, she forces me to look her in the eye.

“Mariah, Faith is all right. Faith is going to be just fine.”

Just like that, I dissolve. “It’s my fault,” I sob. “I couldn’t stop it.” I do not say what I’m sure my mother is thinking, too –that I am not crying just for the knives that scored Faith, but for retreating into depression after Colin left, maybe even for choosing Colin as a husband in the first place.

“If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine–I bought the tickets.” She hugs me hard. “This isn’t some kind of punishment. It’s not like an eye for an eye, Mariah. You’re going to get through this. Both of you.” Then she holds me at arm’s length. “Did I ever tell you about the time I almost killed you? We went skiing, and you were all of about seven, and you slipped off the chairlift when I was adjusting my poles. You were dangling there, twenty feet above the ground, while I grabbed onto the sleeve of your little coat.

All because I wasn’t paying attention.”

“It’s not the same. That was an accident.”

“So was this,” my mother insists.

We walk out of the supply closet and into Faith’s room again. Words the psychiatrists had used at Greenhaven to describe me circle in my head: compulsive and idealistic, rejection-sensitive, poor self-confidence, a tendency to overcompensate and to catastrophize. “She should have gotten someone else as a mother. Someone who was good at this sort of thing.”

My mother laughs. “She got you for a reason,

honey. You wait and see.” Announcing that she’s off to get us coffee, she heads for the door. “Just because other parents roll with the punches doesn’t mean it’s right. The ones who are most nervous about screwing up, Mariah, are the same ones who care enough to want things to be perfect.”

The door shuts behind her with a sigh. I sit down on Faith’s bed and trace the edge of her blanket. If I can’t have Colin, I think, please let me have her.

I don’t realize I’ve spoken aloud until my mother comes in with the coffee. “Who are you talking to?” I flush, embarrassed to be caught bargaining with a higher power. It is not as if I believe in God. When I was a child, my family wasn’t very religious; as an adult,

all I have is a healthy dose of skepticism –and, apparently, the urge to beg in spite of this when I really, really need help. “No one. Just Faith.”

My mother presses the coffee into my hand. The cup is so hot it burns my palm, and even after I set it on the nightstand my skin still smarts.

At that moment, Faith blinks up at me.

“Mommy,” she croaks, and my heart turns over: Her first word in weeks is all mine.

Keeping Faith

TWO

“Sure, lots of people believe in God.

Lots of people used to believe the world was flat,

too.”

Ian Fletcher in The New York Times, June 14, 1998 August 17, 1999 Ian Fletcher is standing in the middle of hell. He paces around the new backdrop of the set, running his hand over the gas pipes that will produce flame, and the jagged peaks of rock.

He scrapes off a bit with his thumb, thinking that brimstone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“It’s too damn yellow. Looks like some New Age druid circle.”

His set decorator glances at the associate producer. “I think, Mr.

Fletcher, that the fire-and-brimstone thing was smell-related.”

“Smell?” Ian scowls. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s sulfur, sir. You know, you burn it,

and it stinks.”

Ian glares at the set decorator.

“Tell me,” he says softly, threateningly,

“what’s the point of a smell-related special effect in a visual medium like television?”

The man quails. “I don’t know, Mr.

Fletcher, but you–“

“But I what?”

“You wanted fire and brimstone, Ian.” The voice comes from the tangle of cameras and microphones just off to the left. “Don’t blame the fellow for your own mistakes.”

At the sound of the executive producer’s voice, Ian sighs and runs a hand through his thick, black hair. “You know, James, the only thing that makes me think there might be a higher power after all is the way you always manage to drop in at the absolute worst moment.”

“That’s not God, Ian, that’s Murphy’s Law.” James Wilton steps into the circle of sulfur and glances around. “Of course, if you rediscover religion, that would be one way to boost ratings.” He hands Ian a fax with the latest Nielsen numbers.

“Shoot,” Ian mutters. “I told you CBS wasn’t the way to go. We ought to reopen negotiations with HBO.”

“HBO isn’t going to come within ten feet of you if you keep ranking in the bottom third.”

James breaks off a piece of sulfur and holds it to his nose. “So this is brimstone,

eh? Guess I always kind of pictured it as a big black fireplace.”

Ian absentmindedly glances at the new set.

“Yeah, well. We’ll design a new one.”

“Oh?” James says dryly. “Should we pay for it with the huge bonus from your pending Nike endorsement? Or with the incoming grant from the Christian Coalition?”

Ian narrows his eyes. “You don’t have to be so cynical. You know that six months ago, when we did the specials, we got an incredible Nielsen share for the time slot.”

James walks from the set, leaving Ian to follow. “They were specials. Maybe that was the appeal. Maybe a weekly show loses its novelty.” He turns to Ian, his face grave. “I love what you do, Ian. But network executives have notoriously short attention spans. And I’ve got to bring them a winner.” Taking the fax from Ian’s hand, James crumples it into a ball. “I know it goes against your nature … but now would be a good time to start praying.”

Although he’d been asked by countless journalists,

Ian Fletcher refused to isolate the incidents in his life that made him stop believing in God.

In fact, not only did he admit to being born a nonbeliever, he made a living out of trying to convince the world that everyone was born a nonbeliever and that faith was something one was subtly schooled to accept–like cow’s milk, or potty training–because it was socially acceptable.

Religion, he argued, made a wonderful panacea. Ian’s offhand comparison of devout Catholics to toddlers who believed that a Band-Aid itself cures the wound was hotly debated in the op-ed pages of The New York Times, in Newsweek, and on Meet the Press. He asked why Jews were the Chosen People yet continued to be targeted for persecution.

He asked why Catholics were the only ones who ever saw the Virgin Mary in fountains and morning mists. He asked how there could be a God when innocent children got raped and maimed and killed. The more outspoken he became, the more people wanted to listen.

In 1997 his book, God Who?, spent twenty weeks at number one on The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. He became a guest at Steven Spielberg’s home and was invited to sit in on White House round-table discussions and focus groups concerning a variety of cultural issues. That July a People magazine featuring Ian Fletcher on the cover sold out in twenty-four hours. A speech in Central Park drew more than a hundred thousand spectators. And in September 1998,

Ian Fletcher met with TV executives and became the world’s first teleatheist.

He formed a company–Pagan Productions–

borrowed cues from the Reverends Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, and then put on a show.

Huge TV screens behind him played images of mass destruction–bombs, land mines, civil wars–while Ian’s stirring, unmistakable Southern drawl challenged the concept of a supreme, loving being who would allow things to come this far. He developed a large following and cultivated a reputation as Spokesman of the Millennium Generation–those cynical Americans who had neither the time nor the inclination to trust in God for their future. He was opinionated, brash, and bullheaded, which won him the appeal of the eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-old sector. He was highly educated–a Ph.d.

in theology from Harvard–which made the baby boomers take note. But clearly Ian Fletcher’s greatest attribute–the one that endeared him to women of all ages and made him a natural for the small screen–was the fact that he was handsome as sin.

Two hours later Ian bursts into the office of his executive producer. “I’ve got it!”

he crows, oblivious to the way that James is motioning to him to be quiet, as he’s on the phone. “It’s perfect. It’s going to make you one very rich man.”

At that, James turns toward Ian.

“I’ll get back to you,” he says into the receiver and hangs up. “Okay, you’ve got my attention. What’s the grand plan?”

Ian’s vivid blue eyes are shining, and his hands are busy diagramming and punctuating his enthusiasm. He looks exactly like the kind of angry, spirited orator who drew James to him in the first place, as the voice of a spiritually lost country. “What do you do if you’re a Bible Belt televangelist and your ratings take a dive?”

James considers this. “You sleep with your secretary, or extort money.”

Ian rolls his eyes. “Wrong. You take your show on the road.”

“Like in a Winnebago?”

“Why not?” Ian says. “Think about it,

James. Preachers at the turn of the last century built congregations with grassroots revival meetings. They pitched a tent in the middle of nowhere and made miracles happen.”

James narrows his eyes. “I can’t quite imagine you in a tent, Ian. Your idea of “roughing it” is settling for The Four Seasons instead of The Plaza.”

Ian shrugs. “Desperate times call for desperate measures. We’re going to go slumming with the masses, my friend. We’ll hold the world’s first antirevival.”

“If viewers don’t tune in to you at home,

Ian, why should they tune into you in Fuck-all,

Kansas?”

“Don’t y’all get it? That’s the whole catch. Instead of making cripples throw down their crutches and having blind people see, I’m going to uncover hoaxes. I’m going to rip apart all these so-called miracles. You know–go to Lourdes with scientists and prove that the statue’s not crying tears, it’s condensation. Or find the medical reason why a guy who’s in a coma for nineteen years suddenly wakes up good as new.” He leans forward, grinning from ear to ear. “People believe in God because they don’t have any other explanation for things that happen. I can change that.”

Slowly, James smiles. “You know,” he admits, “this actually isn’t a bad idea.”

Ian reaches for the newspaper on the corner of James’s desk. He tosses one section to his producer and then takes his own and spreads the pages wide, like the wings of a great bird. “Call your secretary and have her run on out to the newsstand. We need the Globe, the Post, the L.a. Times,” Ian orders.

“Someone saw Jesus’ face on his pizza at dinner last night. Now we’ve just got to find him.”

August 30, 1999 Colin White sits in his business suit on a bench at the playground, watching mothers and nannies chase toddlers beneath the jungle gym.

His egg-salad sandwich remains in its plastic wrapper, untouched. Without even taking a bite,

he balls it up and stuffs it back into the brown paper bag from the deli.

That little girl, the one on the monkey bars,

looks something like Faith. Same curl to her hair, even if it’s a shade too dark. She keeps making it to the third rung, then slipping free and falling to the ground. Colin remembers Faith doing the same thing: practicing and practicing until she could make it across. He wants to move closer, but he knows better. In this day and age it will only make him look like a pedophile, not a man who simply misses his child.

He runs his hands through his hair. What the hell was he thinking? The answer was, he hadn’t been thinking at all when he’d brought Jessica back to his house that afternoon. A ballet class is not a sure thing; he should have known that Faith and Mariah might come home unexpectedly. In the three weeks that have passed, he can still remember every nuance of the looks on Faith’s and Mariah’s faces when Jessica walked out of the bathroom. He can still remember how Faith stared right through him when he finally caught up to her in her bedroom, as if she was old enough to know that the excuses he was making were transparent.

He had hurt Mariah, too, but then again,

living with a woman who refused to accept that there was any problem with their marriage would take its toll on a saint. Every time he tried to force Mariah to face facts, he left shaking, afraid that he’d come home and find her trying to kill herself.

Initially he’d gone out with Jessica just to have someone to confide in.

And now he loves her.

Colin closes his eyes. It’s one hell of a mess.

The little girl on the monkey bars finishes swinging over the last rung and lands a few feet away from Colin, kicking up a cloud of dust.

“Oh,” she says, grinning up at him.

“Sorry.”

“No problem.”

“Can you tie my shoe?”

He smiles. One thing he has learned about young children: To them, adults are interchangeable.

Anyone of similar fatherlike age might be asked to take care of these things. He bends down over the laces of her sneaker, realizing at close range that this girl is younger than Faith,

heavier, unmistakably different.

The girl climbs the short ladder on one end of the monkey bars. “You watch me,” she calls out, artlessly proud. “This time I’m going to get it right.”

Colin finds himself holding his breath as the child swings out with her left arm, then her right, reaching for the metal rungs and curling her knuckles over them, even though it is an unlikely stretch,

even though it is sure to leave her aching. He continues to watch, until he sees her safely across to the other side.

For seven, she knows a lot of things. She knows that monarch caterpillars live in the folds of milkweed leaves, that tights are never as tight as leggings, that “We’ll see” always means “No.”

She has learned enough of the world to realize that it is a place of grown-ups, and that the only way to leave her mark is to speak at the ends of their sentences and act so much like them that they sit up and take notice. She knows that the minute she falls asleep, her teddy bear’s sewed-shut eyes snap open. She knows that truth can cause a sharp pain behind your eyes and that love sometimes feels like a fist around your throat.

She also knows, although everyone is careful to keep it from her, that they are all still talking. Faith has been home from the hospital for three days now,

although she isn’t comfortable wearing a shirt yet. Every time she does, she feels the cuts open up and bleed, and she worries that in the winter she will either freeze to death or else leak bone dry.

During the day Grandma comes over and plays spit and go fish, and she doesn’t care at all that Faith is wearing only her shorts. Her mother sits on the couch and stares at Faith’s back when she thinks no one is looking, as if Faith couldn’t feel the weight of her eyes anyway.

When Grandma leaves after dinner, sometimes there are conversations with big, fat, white spaces, so that it seems like whole hours pass between the sentences Faith and her mother speak.

Tonight Faith is picking at the peas on her dinner plate when the doorbell rings. Grandma raises her eyebrows, and her mother shrugs. They are like that, can speak without saying a thing, because they know each other so well. With Faith and her mom,