Keeping Faith: A Novel (42 page)

Kenzie does not blink. Mariah feels sweat bead under the collar of her shirt; she reads the GAL’S eyes as clearly as if her impression were written across them: This woman is lying. But to tell Kenzie more is to admit to running from Colin’s threat of a lawsuit.

To make public her relationship with Ian.

To violate his privacy. She stares at Kenzie, unwilling to back down this time.

To her surprise, Kenzie does. She doesn’t whip out a notepad or ask more questions or rebuke Mariah at all, but instead shifts the slightest bit away from Mariah on top of Faith’s bed. Then she bends back toward her task, humming softly, winding Faith’s beautiful hair through her fingers like yarn through a loom. And all Mariah can do is watch as Kenzie wraps together all the loose ends.

“Ian, oh, God. I’m so glad you called.”

He curls his hand around the receiver, smiling.

“That’s one hell of a reception, sugar.”

“I think she knows. The guardian ad litem.

She was asking questions today and Faith blurted out something about Kansas City and–“

“Mariah, calm down. Take a deep breath. … There you go. Now, what happened?”

He listens, frowning as she recounts the conversation with Kenzie van der Hoven. “Well, I don’t think that’s anything conclusive. All she knows is that someone who struck Faith’s fancy was on the plane. That could mean one of the Backstreet Boys, or Prince William.”

“But she knows what day we left, and when Colin filed the papers.”

Ian gentles his voice. “She was gonna find that out anyway. The best defense you have is that you came back with Faith.” He hesitates,

thinking of his meeting with Metz. “I told you not to worry, Mariah. I told you that I’d figure this out. Don’t you trust me?”

For one horrible moment, she does not answer.

And then Ian can feel it, a rush of warmth that reaches through the phone connection before her voice does. “I do, Ian.”

He tries to respond, and finds that there are no words.

“I’m sorry that I brought you into this,” Mariah adds.

Ian closes his eyes. “Sugar,” he says, “there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

November 16, 1999 On the day that Kenzie meets with Millie Epstein, the blue-plate special at the caf`e in the center of New Canaan is fish and chips. “Very bad,” Millie says, clucking over the menu. “You don’t even know if it’s done in canola, or what.”

It seems like the perfect introduction, so Kenzie leans forward, elbows on the scarred table of the booth. “I guess you’re pretty careful about what you eat these days.”

Millie glances up. “Why should I be? If I croak again, I’ll just call for Faith instead of a paramedic.” Watching the younger woman’s jaw drop, Millie smiles. “I’m kidding. Of course I’m careful. But I was careful before the heart attack, too. I ate well, took my medicine like clockwork. Let me ask you something:

Did you see my hospital records?”

“I did.”

“Do you believe I was resurrected?”

Kenzie flushes. “I don’t know if “resurrected” was the term for it, exactly–“

“Then what is the term for it? A miracle?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of an extremely irregular nervous-system response.”

“Aha,” Millie murmurs. “Do you believe in God, Ms. van der Hoven?”

“That’s not the issue here. And I think I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking the questions, Mrs.

Epstein.”

The older woman continues blithely. “It makes me a little antsy, too. I’m not a praise-be-to-Jesus type–probably wouldn’t be even if I was a Christian.”

“The issue in this custody hearing is where the best home is for Faith, ma’am. With all due respect, that doesn’t leave a lot of room for God.”

“See, I don’t agree with you.” Millie picks at her teeth with her thumbnail and shakes her head. “A more religious woman would say that there’s always room for God, but that’s neither here nor there. To me, you can’t do your job without asking yourself whether or not you believe. Because if you don’t, then Faith must be lying–and that’s going to affect your decision about where she belongs.”

“Mrs. Epstein, you aren’t a guardian ad litem.”

Millie looks at Kenzie squarely.

“No. But you’re not her grandma.”

Before Kenzie can respond, the waitress arrives. “How you doing, Millie?” she says,

with the familiarity of a town where one can walk down the street and actually recognize people.

“Irene, do they do up the fish and chips in canola oil?”

The waitress laughs. “You think this is The Four Seasons? Far as I know, it comes out of a Mrs. Paul’s freezer box.”

Millie reaches across the table and pats Kenzie’s hand. “Go with the soup. It won’t make you sick later.”

But Kenzie orders only a Coke. “What we need here is a deli,” Millie muses.

“You have any idea how long it’s been since I had good pastrami?”

Kenzie’s lips twitch. “A lifetime?”

Millie laughs. “Touch`e,” she says, then runs her forefinger along the edge of a packet of Equal. “I used to have tea parties with Faith when she was about three. She’d come over my house,

and we’d take out all my grandmother’s linens, and we’d dress up in old bathrobes I had from the forties–the ones with those pink feathers on the cuffs and collar, what is that called?”

“Marabou.”

“That’s right. Marabou. Isn’t that some kind of reindeer?”

“That’s caribou.” Kenzie smiles. “Mrs.

Epstein, I appreciate your concern for your granddaughter. You can rest assured that I’m only trying to make a decision in her best interests.”

“Well, if you think Faith’s lying, then it must be pathological and contagious. Because her mother believes her, and so do about five hundred people camped outside, not to mention a host of doctors who saw my heart stop beating.”

Kenzie is silent for a moment. “Remember the broadcast of War of the Worlds?”

“Of course. My husband and I were just as scared as anyone.”

“That’s all I’m saying, Mrs. Epstein.

People hear what they want to hear. They believe what they want to believe.”

Millie slowly sets down her glass of water and unconsciously rubs her hand over her heart. “What do you want to believe, Ms. van der Hoven?”

Kenzie does not hesitate. “That whatever I recommend will be right for Faith. And you, Mrs.

Epstein? What do you want to believe?”

That time can be turned back. That nightmares stop. That Colin never entered my daughter’s life. “I want to believe there’s a God,”

Millie says clearly. “Because I sure as hell know there’s a devil.”

“Hunstead,” Metz calls from his throne at the end of the conference table, “you and Lee get confirmation. I want a copy of the ticket that got her to Kansas City–“

“Sir?” an associate asks. “Are we talking about Kansas City, Missouri, or Kansas City, Kansas?”

“Where the fuck have you been for the past hour,

Lee?” Metz asks. “Hunstead, fill in your anamnesis-challenged colleague as to what we’ve been discussing while he’s been dreaming of Baywatch.”

“How about rental-car agencies?” Hunstead suggests. “If Fletcher was the one who provided the transportation, it should be in his name, or his production company’s. Otherwise Mariah White would have just used a credit card.”

“Very nice,” Metz says. “Go with it. I also want copies of local hotel registers.”

Two associates sitting to Metz’s right at the chrome-and-glass conference table scrawl the directive onto their pads. “Lee, I want to know all the cases in the past ten years where custody’s been overturned and given to the father. And I want to know why. Elkland, start scouring our list of experts for psychiatrists. We need one who’s willing to say that once someone’s a nutcase, they’re always a nutcase.” He glances up, palming an apple that’s been sitting in front of him. “What do you call a lawyer encased in concrete at the bottom of the ocean?”

The young lawyers glance at each other. Finally Lee raises his hand. “A good start?”

“Excellent! You win the deposition this afternoon,

with the court psychiatrist who’s evaluated Colin White.”

“What are you going to do?”

Metz laughs. “I’m going to fucking get down on my knees and pray to fucking Allah.”

He jots several notes while the younger lawyers scatter to do his bidding, then pushes the intercom button. “Janie, I don’t want to be bothered.”

It used to be a joke between them; he used to say, “I don’t want to be bothered unless God calls.” What made it funny, of course, was that most people in the firm didn’t discount that as an impossibility. But since taking on the White case, Metz has stopped using that tag line.

He does not like Colin White, but then again he does not particularly like any of the clients he defends. He admires White, though, for the challenge the man presents. Metz has a golden opportunity here to show law at its best –something that has little to do with justice, and more to do with seduction.

In a couple of weeks he will walk into a courtroom, take the life of a fuck-up like Colin White, and totally turn it around. He will do such a good job of re-creating his client that a judge and the press and maybe even the prosecutor will believe what he says.

Metz laughs to himself. And they say surgeons have a God complex.

He is not a religious man. In fact, the last brush with organized worship he can recall was at his own bar mitzvah. Metz remembers the red dress his mother wore, the boxy suit that hung on his frame, the surprising sound of his voice as it sang out the words of the Torah. He’d been so scared he nearly pissed his pants, and then later at the reception, when his aunts leaned over him in clouds of perfume to offer kisses and receive nachas, he’d come close to passing out. But it had been worth it when his father had come with him to the bathroom, stood beside him at the urinal, and said without meeting his eye, “Now you’re a man.”

It was the first time Metz had used his words to remake a person. In that case, himself.

He shrugs his attention back to the file before him. Colin White, Mariah White, Faith White. Those are the names on the legal documents; “God” comes up nowhere. And according to Malcolm Metz’s interpretation of the law,

that’s as it should be.

November 18, 1999 In her entire lifetime, Kenzie has never been inside a temple. She knows that she is gawking at the richly decorated Ark, at the unfamiliar Hebrew prayer books, at the bema. “It looks just like a church,” she says,

and then covers her mouth in embarrassment.

Rabbi Weissman grins. “We gave up dancing naked around a fire about a year ago.”

“I’m sorry.” Kenzie meets his eye.

“I don’t have much familiarity with Judaism.”

“Apparently you can still be an expert.” He gestures toward a pew. “So you want to know if Faith White’s really having conversations with God. Ms. van der Hoven, I have conversations with God. But you don’t see Hollywood Tonight! outside my office.”

“So you’re saying–“

“I’m saying that God, in His infinite wisdom, hasn’t shown up in drag to play checkers with me.” He takes off his glasses and polishes them on his shirt. “Wouldn’t you be a bit suspicious if a little girl with absolutely no legal training suddenly announced she could and would sit as a judge?”

“Is that the same thing?”

“You tell me. So she’s talking to God. So what. I don’t see God telling her that the Israelites are going to cream the PLO. I don’t see God telling her to keep kosher. I don’t see God even inspiring her to come to Friday-night services. And I have a very hard time believing that if God did choose to manifest Himself in human form to a Jew, He would choose one who hadn’t followed a code of Jewish living.”

“As I understand it, religious apparitions don’t appear only to the pious.”

“Ah, you’ve been talking to priests! Look at the Bible. The people who’ve been lucky enough to speak to God are either extremely religious or positioned to do the most good for the religion.

Take an example: Moses wasn’t raised Jewish, but he embraced his religion after speaking with God. I don’t see that happening here.” He grins. “As comforting as it is for us to nurse the fantasy that God might buddy up to the average Joe who doesn’t go to church or temple and prays only to secure Super Bowl bets, it’s not realistic. God’s forgiving, but He’s also got a long memory, and there’s a reason Jews have been following a pattern of life for five thousand years.”

Kenzie looks up from her notebook. “But I’ve met with Faith, and I don’t think she’s intentionally trying to take people for a ride.”