Keeping Faith: A Novel (45 page)

“For what?” She waves a hand at me. “This was nothing.”

“I didn’t mean you staying here. I meant … well, for making me go.”

My mother’s head comes up. “Ah. I was wondering when we were going to get around to that.”

I can feel my cheeks going red. After all these years, I still cannot speak of boys to my mother without feeling as if I’m eleven again. “It was a nice gesture,” I say diplomatically.

“Good lord, Mariah, call a spade a spade, will you? It was a rendezvous. An assignation. A trysting spot. A love–“

“Let’s just leave it at that, okay?” I grin. “You are my mother.”

She cups my cheek. It tingles, as if she were holding my childhood right there in her palm.

“But somewhere along the way, I also became your friend.”

It is a silly thing, to put it in such terms,

but it is true. The women in my life, my two best friends, are my mother and my daughter. A few weeks ago, I almost lost one. A few days from now, I might lose the other.

“You need me, no question about that. But you needed him, too. And I figured I was the best one to make that happen.”

My mother methodically matches shoes and lays them into her suitcase. She is beautiful,

softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her. “The best one,” I say softly. “You are.”

December 2, 1999 Joan has dinner with us the night before the hearing.

Afterward, while my mother and Faith are clearing the table, we go down to my workshop for privacy. We rehearse my testimony once again, until Joan is sure that I am not going to falter on the stand. Then she hooks her heels over the rung of a stool and stares at me. “You know, this isn’t going to be a picnic for you.”

I laugh. “Well, I figured as much. I can think of a thousand other places I’d rather be.”

“I don’t mean that, Mariah. I mean what people are going to say. Colin will be downright nasty.

And Metz has a parade of other witnesses he’s coached to say things that make you look like a sorry excuse for a parent.”

Not Ian, I think, and I wonder if I am convincing myself.

“That’s not even counting what he’s going to do to you on the stand. He’s going to try to trip you up and get you confused, so that you look like the basket case he’s been setting you up as in his direct examinations of witnesses.” She leans forward.

“Don’t let him get to you. When you go home at the end of each day during this trial, know that Malcolm Metz doesn’t really know you from Adam. You’re not a person to him; you’re a means to an end.”

I look up at Joan and try to spread a smile across my face. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ve grown thicker skin lately.” But all the same, I’m hugging myself as if I’m suddenly chilled; as if I’m suddenly wary of falling apart.

The doorbell rings at ten-thirty. When I open it, braced for the quick flash of cameras, I find Colin standing there looking just as shocked to see me as I am to see him.

“Can we talk?” he asks after a moment.

For all that I want to turn him away, or tell him to contact my lawyer, I nod. We have a history between us, and in some ways I think that is thicker than anger, thicker than blood. “All right. But Faith’s asleep. Be quiet.”

As he follows me through the hallway, I wonder what he is thinking: What did she do with that photograph of the Andes? Has the tile always been this dark? What is it like to come back to your own house and not quite recognize it?

He pulls out a kitchen chair and straddles it. I imagine Joan, shouting at the top of her lungs that I shouldn’t be here without an attorney present. But I smile halfheartedly and duck my head. “So talk.”

The air leaves Colin in a great whoosh, like a hurricane. “This is killing me.”

What? The chair? The fact that he’s back in our house? Jessica? Me?

“Do you know why I fell in love with you,

Rye?”

The countertop is just behind me. I work very hard at digging my fingernails into it. “Did your attorney tell you to come here?”

The shock on Colin’s face is genuine.

“God, no. Is that what you think?”

I stare at him. “I don’t really know what to think anymore, Colin.”

He stands and walks toward the spice rack,

running his finger over each bottle. Anise,

basil, coriander. Celery salt, crushed red pepper, and dill. “You were sitting on the steps of the library at school,” he says. “And I came up with a bunch of the guys from the team.

Gorgeous spring day, but you were studying. You were always studying. I said we were going to get subs, and did you want to come?” He looks down at the floor and shakes his head. “And you did. You just left your books sitting there in this pile like you didn’t give a shit who took them or whatever,

and you followed me.”

I smile. I never did get that economics text back, but I got Colin, and at the time I believed it was more than a fair trade. I take the small vial of bay leaves Colin’s set on the counter and put it back in its place.

“I should have kept on studying.”

Colin touches my arm. “Do you really believe that?”

I am afraid to look at him. I stare down at his hand until he removes it. “You didn’t want someone who’d follow you, Colin. You wanted someone you had to chase.”

“I loved you,” he says fiercely.

I do not blink. “For how long?”

He takes a step away. “You’re different,” he accuses. “You’re not like you used to be.”

“You mean I’m not huddled in the corner, crying into a dish towel. Sorry to disappoint.”

At that, I know I’ve pushed too far. “How long this time, Rye?” Colin presses. “How long until you start looking in the medicine cabinet for escape routes? Or stare at a razor blade for the six hours that Faith’s in school? How long until you check out on her?”

“And you didn’t?”

“I won’t,” Colin says. “Not now.

Look, I made a mistake, Rye.

But that was between you and me. I’ve never been less than one hundred percent there for Faith. So what if you pat Faith’s head every morning now, if you tell her how much you love her? Up until that minute in August, you weren’t the sure thing–

I was. Do you think she’s forgotten how it was when she was little, how her mom spent afternoons lying down with a headache, or sleeping off Haldol,

or talking to a fucking shrink instead of taking her to preschool?” He points a shaking finger. “You are not any better than me.”

“The difference between us is that I never said I was.”

Colin looks at me so angrily that I wonder if I am in danger. “You won’t take her away from me.”

I hope he cannot tell how hard I am shaking. “You won’t take her away from me.”

We have worked ourselves into such a fury that neither one of us notices Faith standing nearby until she draws a shaky breath.

“Honey. We woke you up?”

“Sweetheart.” Colin’s face dissolves into a smile. “Hi.”

Something in her eyes stops me just seconds before I touch her shoulder. Faith is stiff, her eyes wide with fear, her hands fisted at her sides, and her face drained of color.

“Mommy?” she says, her lower lip trembling.

“Daddy?”

But before either of us can explain ourselves or our behavior, we see the blood that wells between the seams of her fingers.

Within seconds Faith is writhing on the floor and crying out words I do not understand. “Eli!

Eli!” she calls out, and although I have no idea who this is, I tell her he is coming. I try not to notice that this time she is bleeding from her side,

too. I hold her shoulders down so that she will not hurt herself, and all the while her palms leave smears of blood on the tile.

I hear Colin’s voice, high and panicked,

speaking into the portable phone. “Eighty-six Westvale Hill, first driveway on the left.” Once he hangs up, he gets to the floor beside me. “The ambulance is on its way.” He presses his cheek against Faith’s,

which actually calms her for a moment. “Daddy’s here. Daddy’s going to take care of you.”

Faith shudders, then twists in pain. Her voice sounds like a river, syllables and grunts that escalate into sobs.

Colin’s mouth drops open. Then he mobilizes to action, taking off his jacket and wrapping it around Faith, swaddling her in his arms the way he used to when she was a baby. He sings a lullaby I have not heard in years, and to my surprise Faith goes limp and docile.

The paramedics burst into the house. Colin steps back and lets them work on Faith. I watch these people lay hands on my daughter and say what I already suspect: that her blood pressure is fine, that the pupils are responsive, that the bleeding will not stop. After all, I have played out this scene once before. I feel Colin’s hand slip over mine like a glove. “We can ride in the ambulance,” he says.

“Colin–“

“Look,” he announces in a tone that brooks no argument, “I don’t care what the hell is going on in court. We’re both her parents. We’re both going.”

I want to talk to Dr. Blumberg alone,

yet I want Colin to hear him say the things he has already said to me. I want to yank my hand out of Colin’s and stand completely on my own. I want, badly, to speak to Ian. But Colin has always had a pull on me, like the moon with the tide,

and I find my feet following him out of habit,

into the belly of the ambulance, where I sit with Colin’s shoulder bumping mine and my eyes adjusting to darkness, watching the shifting snakes of IV’S that feed into my child.

Colin and I sit side by side on the ugly tubular couches that make up the waiting room of the ER. By now Faith’s bleeding has been stabilized, and she’s been carted off to X ray.

The emergency physician, referring to her chart,

has summoned Dr. Blumberg.

Colin has been busy for the past half hour.

He answered the questions of the paramedics and the doctors, he paced incessantly, he smoked three cigarettes just outside the glass doors of the ER, his profile gilded with moonlight.

Finally he comes back inside and crouches down beside my seat, where I am resting my head in my hands. “Do you think,” he whispers, as if giving voice to the thought will make it take wing,

“that she’s doing it for attention?”

“Doing what?”

“Hurting herself.”

At that, I raise my eyes. “You’d believe that of Faith?”

“I don’t know, Mariah. I don’t know what to believe.”

We are saved from an argument by the arrival of Dr. Blumberg. “Mrs. White. What happened?”

Colin extends his hand. “I’m Colin White. Faith’s father.”

“Hello.”

“I understand this isn’t the first time you’ve examined Faith,” Colin says. “I’d appreciate being brought up to date on her history.”

Dr. Blumberg slants a glance at me.

“I’m sure that Mrs. White–“

“Mrs. White and I are estranged,” Colin says bluntly. “I’d like to hear it from you.”

“Okay.” He sits across from us and settles his hands on his knees. “I’ve already done a variety of tests on Faith, but have found no medical explanation why she spontaneously bleeds.”

“It’s definitely blood?”

“Oh, yes. It’s been laboratory tested.”

“Is it self-inflicted?”

“Not that I can see,” Dr. Blumberg says.

“Then it might be someone else?” Colin asks.

“Pardon me.”

“Did someone hurt Faith?”

Blumberg shakes his head. “I don’t believe so, Mr. White. Not the way you mean.”

“How do you know?” Colin shouts. There are tears in his eyes. “How the hell could you know?

Look–I watched her fall into some fit and start bleeding for no reason. I have insurance. Don’t you tell me you’ve got no medical explanation for this. Order a frigging CT scan or do bloodwork or something. You’re a doctor. You’re supposed to figure it out, and I want my daughter here until you do. Because if you release her again and she has another episode, I’m going to sue you for malpractice.”

I think of a piece of research Dr.

Blumberg told me about–of doctors at the turn of the century who hospitalized a stigmatic and welded an iron boot over his bleeding foot to make sure that the man was not producing the wound himself. I wonder how Colin can accuse me of ruining Faith’s life.

Dr. Blumberg hesitates. “I can’t run tests without her mother’s consent.”