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Walter Reuther
ePub
A4PART EIGHT
I
an Fletcher is a man destined for hell,if ever there was one–unless he manages to prove it doesn’t exist before he gets there.
–Op-ed page,
The New York Times, August 10,
October 19, 1999 “For the record,” Millie says, “I’m against this.”
“I’m not,” Faith announces as Mariah zips her jacket. “I think it’s cool to be a spy.”
“You’re not a spy. You’re a sneak.”
Mariah pats down the placket of the zipper.
“You ready?”
She knows Faith is; she’s been ready since 6:00 A.m., when Mariah told her what was going to happen. Of course, she’d couched it in the vocabulary of suspense and adventure, so that Faith would feel more like a young Indiana Jones than a child being taken into hiding. And so far the escapade has lived up to Faith’s anticipation–stealing into the car with little more than a knapsack apiece, driving forty-five minutes to the mall, blending into the crowds to lose the two dogged reporters who’d tailed them there.
The reporters will no doubt stake out her Honda, waiting for the three of them to appear. But by the time Millie walks to the parking lot to drive the car back home, Mariah and Faith will already have changed clothes and met a taxi at an exit on the far side of the mall, headed toward the airport.
Now all she has to do is say good-bye.
Mariah glances at the mirror in the bathroom at Filene’s and catches her mother’s gaze.
Millie walks forward and puts her arm around Mariah’s waist. “You don’t have to let them chase you away,” she says softly.
“I’m not, Ma.” Mariah swallows the lump in her throat. “I’m getting a head start.”
She cannot stand the thought of leaving her mother behind–not only because of the recent heart trouble, but also for the simple fact that Millie is Mariah’s closest friend, as well as her mother. Then again, even Millie would agree–you do what you have to do to keep Faith. With it put that plainly, Mariah cannot let herself be steamrolled–again–by people and circumstances beyond her control.
She has not told Millie about Colin’s custody threat, nor has she mentioned where she plans to go. This way, when the lawyers get in touch with her … or the reporters, or Ian Fletcher–her mother will not be forced to lie. Mariah turns and throws her arms around her mother’s neck.
“I will call you. When I can, when I know it’s all right.”
Faith burrows between them. “Get dressed,
Grandma! We’re going to miss the taxi.”
Mariah touches Faith’s hair. “Honey,
Grandma has to stay here.”
“Here?”
“Well, not here. But at our house, to watch over … things.”
The words do not register. “Grandma has to come with us,” Faith insists.
Mariah has not told Faith this part of the plan, for exactly this reason; it is the one thing that will make her balk. “Faithele,” Millie says, crouching down, “there’s nothing I’d like more than to go with you in the taxi on your trip. But I can’t.”
“Because someone has to drive our car home,” she says after a moment. “But you’ll come later?”
Millie glances at Mariah. “You bet.”
She zips Faith’s spare clothes into the knapsack, then pulls the straps over her granddaughter’s arms. “Be good,” she adds, then kisses Faith on the forehead. She watches Mariah take Faith’s hand and lead her out of the bathroom, Faith turning at the last minute to blow a kiss. Then Millie sits down in an empty toilet stall, imagining a thousand things that could go wrong now that Mariah and Faith have run away, imagining a thousand things that could have gone wrong even if they hadn’t.
Malcolm Metz spreads his capable hands on the surface of his highly polished desk. “Let me get this straight, Mr. White. You voluntarily relinquished custody of your daughter ten weeks ago. And now you want her to move in with you and your new wife.”
Colin nods. He tries not to feel daunted by the offices of Walloughby, Krieger and Metz, but they were far less intimidating six months earlier when he retrofitted the entire place with electroluminescent exit signs.
Of course, back then he was only taking care of business. This visit is far more personal, and there’s much more at stake.
“That’s correct.” He assesses Metz slowly, from the man’s close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair to his Italian loafers. Known for his bulldozing drive to win,
Metz is something of a New Hampshire litigating legend.
The attorney taps the tips of his fingers together. “Why the change of heart?”
Colin feels the beginnings of a slow burn.
“Because my ex-wife is crazy? Because my daughter’s been turned against me? Because I’m worried about her welfare? Take your pick.”
Metz has heard it all before. As a matter of fact, he has a court appearance in less than two hours as the divorce attorney for a reputed Mafia wife, and he would much rather be in the executive washroom perfecting his demeanor for the cameras that are sure to be there. A custody case like this–well, he should be able to win it in his sleep.
“What has your ex-wife done to endanger your daughter?”
“What have you heard about the little girl who’s seeing God?”
Malcolm stops drumming his fingers on his desk. “That’s your kid?”
“Yeah. No.” Colin sighs. “Ah, shit.
I don’t even know anymore. There are a couple hundred people at the end of the driveway, and they all believe that Faith’s turned into some prophet, and her hands are bleeding and …
Christ.” He looks at the attorney. “This is not the little girl I left.”
Malcolm silently extracts a yellow pad from a drawer of his desk. The potential for media coverage of this case is extraordinary–
far beyond the narrow range of New Hampshire.
He uncaps a pen and decides to sink his teeth in. “You believe that you would be better able to serve the interests of this child. You believe that living with her mother, as it stands, is adversely affecting your daughter.” Colin nods. “Can you tell me why you didn’t believe these same things just four months ago?”
“Look, if I’m going to pay you a twenty-thousand-dollar retainer and five hundred dollars an hour over that, then I don’t have to explain anything. I want my daughter. I want her now. I heard that you could help me.
Period.”
Malcolm holds his client’s gaze for a moment. “You want full custody?”
“Yes.”
“At all costs?”
Colin does not have to ask what Metz means.
He knows that the surest way to prove himself the better parent is to make Mariah look worse.
By the time this is over, Mariah won’t lose only Faith. She’ll also have lost her self-respect.
He shifts uncomfortably. It is not what he wants to do, but he doesn’t really have a choice. Just as when he made the decision to have Mariah committed, the ends here justify the means.
Just as then, he is only concerned for the safety of someone he loves.
He has a painful flashback of the night Mariah tried to kill herself–the blood everywhere,
his name still bubbling on her lips. He forces himself to imagine Faith hiding when he appeared yesterday at the door. “I want my daughter back,” Colin repeats firmly, convincing himself.
“You do whatever it takes.”
Last Tuesday Ian Fletcher flew out of Manchester, a little airport trying to pretend it was several shades more cosmopolitan than it actually was. It was, in a word, a nightmare.
Not only was his flight to Kansas City delayed, but there was no Admiral’s Club to lounge in before the flight, meaning that he’d spent the better part of an hour hiding in a bathroom stall to avoid recognition. This week he was flying out of Boston. It meant a longer limo ride to the airport, but a considerably less stressful journey.
“Sir? What airline are you traveling?”
At the sound of the chauffeur’s voice, Ian leans forward. “American.” He gathers his briefcase as the limousine snakes into a spot at the curb, signs the credit-card receipt,
and hands the clipboard back to the driver without saying another word. Keeping his head low, he ducks to the right, toward the bank of elevators that he knows will take him to the private first-class passenger club, where he can wait in a secluded room until his flight is called.
Mariah stands in front of the departures board,
skimming the list of destinations. So many places;
how is she to pick? It is not as if one destination holds any edge over another–no matter where they wind up, they will be starting from scratch.
“Mom?” Faith asks, tugging at her arm.
“Can we go to Vegas?”
A smile tugs at Mariah’s mouth. “What do you know about Vegas?”
“Daddy went there once. You can push buttons, and money just comes flying out at you. I saw it on TV.”
“Well, it’s not quite like that. You have to be very, very lucky. And anyway, I don’t even see a flight to Las Vegas listed here.”
“So where are we going?”
Good question. Mariah smooths her hand over her purse, considering how much money she has inside.
Two thousand dollars in cash–God, she feels like a walking target. But she knows better than to leave a paper trail, and this was as much money as she could get out of a local bank on short notice. If they are frugal, she and Faith should be able to remain undetected for a little while at least. And if they manage to elude the media, maybe the interest in Faith will just die down.
Without a passport, she’s limited to the United States. Hawaii–she’s always wanted to go to Hawaii, but the tickets are sure to be phenomenally expensive and eat into their budget.
Mariah’s eyes run down the columns again.
There is a flight to Los Angeles at noon.
One to Kansas City, Missouri at eleven-fifteen.
She leads Faith to the line where they can purchase standby tickets, deciding that their destination, quite simply, is whatever plane leaves this airport first.
As they board, Mariah finds herself thanking God that the story about Faith has only just gone national, meaning that most people with whom they come in contact–the flight attendant, the nice man who offers to stuff their knapsacks into the overhead compartment–look at them and see a mother and her child,
instead of a pair of media fugitives.
Faith has only been on a plane twice before, once as a baby when her grandfather died and once when they all went to Washington D.c.,
for a family vacation. She bounces in her seat,
craning her neck to get a better peek at the first-class cabin, which they are seated directly behind. “What’s in there? How come the seats are a different color?”
“It’s where businessmen and people who have a lot of money sit. They pay more for those seats.”
“Why didn’t we pay for them?”
“Because …” Mariah throws an exasperated look in her daughter’s direction. “Just because,”
she says as the flight attendant unsnaps a blue curtain to shield the cabin from view.
“Final boarding call for Flight 5456 to Kansas City …”
Ian strides toward the gate and presents his boarding pass. “Mr. Fletcher,” the airline representative says, “I enjoy your show.”
He nods brusquely and hurries toward the plane, handing the flight attendant his coat and settling into his seat. “Good morning, Mr.
Fletcher. Can I get you something to drink before takeoff?”
“Bourbon, straight.”
There are three other passengers in first class,
a pain in the ass, but not a tragedy. It would have been worse if one of them had been seated beside him. The flight attendant returns with his liquor. This weekly flight, like everything else about his visits to Michael, is a routine. He sets down the glass and closes his eyes,
drifting into a dream in which cards fall red and then black, red and then black, in endless succession.
“I have to pee,” Faith announces.
Mariah sighs. The drink cart is directly behind them, blocking the route to the lavatories in the rear; there’s no way Faith will be able to hold it in until the flight attendants finish the beverage service. She eyes the blue curtain that leads to the first-class cabin. “Come here.”
She leads Faith through the short aisle strip quickly, hoping that she can get her into the little bathroom before a flight attendant busts them for trespassing. “Here,” she says, nearly hauling Faith into the cubicle. “Don’t forget to lock the door so the lights come on.” Then she leans against the humming wall of the plane, glances around first class.
And finds herself staring at Ian Fletcher.
Oh, God. There is nowhere to go on a plane. Mariah takes the coward’s way out,
hustling Faith back to their seats after she comes out of the lavatory and thoroughly avoiding Ian Fletcher’s gaze the entire way. She closes her eyes in disgust. There must have been–what,
fifty flights?–leaving Logan Airport this hour, and she managed to blindly choose the one with Fletcher on it. The person who had the most to gain from giving up her and Faith’s whereabouts.
Then it strikes her: This was no chance meeting.
Somehow Ian Fletcher managed to follow them to the airport. She doesn’t know why he doesn’t get it over with, just stomp back here to steerage and tell her he’s got her number. Maybe he’s using one of those little AirPhones even now to arrange for a producer and a camera crew to meet them in Kansas City.
She feels tears constricting her throat. Her grand plan is over before it’s even started.
For a full minute after Mariah White flees like a frightened rabbit into the back of the plane, Ian entertains the thought of calling James Wilton and directing the hounds to the fox; he even goes so far as to take a credit card out and read the AirPhone instructions, but then remembers why he cannot. The very last thing he wants to do is bring the media crashing down within a hundred miles of Michael.
Mariah White doesn’t know it, but she has just as much of an edge on Ian as he has on her.
Ian finishes his bourbon and signals the flight attendant for another. The easiest way out of this is to go along with what Mariah is no doubt thinking: that he tailed them from New Canaan to the Boston airport. Otherwise she’ll wonder why he’s on a plane bound for Kansas City. It is one thing for him to learn all her secrets, another thing entirely for her to learn his. His entire trip will have to be changed now.
A thought takes root in Ian’s mind. What if he can watch Faith put on her private healing show at close range? What if he handpicks the target of her so-called miracle,
so that she can’t help but fail? The grandmother and the woman with the AIDS baby, they could have been in on the action somehow. But Michael–well, no one knows better than Ian himself that Michael isn’t part of their charade … and that Michael can’t be cured.
All he has to do is whittle away at their sympathies, so that they agree to try to fix Michael as a personal favor to Ian. And while Faith White is attempting to pull off her hoax, he gets an up-close, personal look at how it’s being done. Even Michael’s anonymity is preserved; Mariah White’s not about to go blabbing if it means revealing her location.
The ludicrous image of Faith laying hands on Michael in some charlatan revue that’s been choreographed by her mother gives way in Ian’s head to the image he’s tucked so far away that it aches to bring it to the surface: Michael looking him in the eye, Michael reaching for him of his own volition, Michael clapping him on the back in an embrace.
Ha–more likely he’d see Mariah White scrambling to explain that the moon is out of alignment or some other crap like that to excuse the fact that her miraculous daughter couldn’t heal an autistic man.
If Ian were a man who believed in destiny,
he’d think it was fate that brought the Whites to this particular plane. Instead he considers it an opportunity that’s dropped into his lap, one that could potentially become the story of a lifetime.
He only has to charm Faith and her mother into thinking that a cynic like him might not be the enemy after all,
might actually pin his hopes on a child with the alleged power to heal, might stand by and act devastated when Faith ultimately fails.
But would that really be an act?
Mariah isn’t surprised when she steps off the plane to find Ian Fletcher waiting for her,
nor is she surprised to have him ignore her–
entirely–for Faith. “Hey, there,” he drawls, getting down to her level. “Did y’all come out on this plane, too?”
Faith’s eyes widen. “Mr. Fletcher!”
“The one and only.” He stands up and nods.
“Ma’am.”
Mariah squeezes Faith’s hand, a warning.
“We’re here for a wedding. My cousin’s wedding.
Tonight.” Her voice is too high, staccato, and the moment she volunteers information Fletcher didn’t even solicit, she feels as if she could kick herself.
“That so? Don’t believe I ever heard of a wedding that took place on a Tuesday night.”
Mariah’s chin lifts a notch. “It’s …
part of their religion.”
“Seems there’s a lot of that goin’ around.”
He smiles at Faith. “On account of us running into each other, what do you say we get an ice cream?”
Faith, clearly excited by the idea, turns to Mariah. “We don’t have time,” Mariah says.
“But we don’t have any–“
“Faith!” Mariah interrupts, then sighs.
“All right. We can get an ice cream.”
Ian leads them to an airport cafeteria.
He orders a cone for Faith and Cokes for himself and Mariah. “Faith, your mama and I want to have a talk. How about eating your ice cream over there at that table?”
As Faith runs off, Mariah tries to call her back, but is stopped by Ian’s hand on her arm. For a moment she cannot breathe, cannot move, until he takes it away. “Let her go. You’ve got a clear view, and you’re fifteen hundred miles away from the people who want to get to her.”
Mariah defiantly turns. “We could just walk away from you. You can’t stop us.”
“You gonna call the police? I doubt it.
First of all, that’d leave a paper trail. And something tells me you don’t want to leave one of those.” He smiles sadly. “Would you believe me if I said I was here for any reason other than you and Faith? I didn’t think so. The hell of it is, Miz White, that I admire you for this. And I’d like to offer you some advice.”
“Said the fox to the gingerbread man,” Mariah mutters.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“Huh. Well, what I was about to say was that you can’t be too careful. Have you given any thought as to where you and Faith will be staying?”
Refusing to let him in on their plans,
Mariah tightens her mouth.
“A motel, I’ll bet,” Ian continues breezily. “But sooner or later it’ll cross your mind that a lady staying with a little girl for some time in a dingy motel will stick out like a sore thumb. On the other hand, moving from motel to motel is going to be awful hard on a child. So that’ll leave you at the mercy of a local friend–of which I’m willing to bet you don’t have too many–or leasing some cheap apartment. Thing is, Miz White,
any landlord worth his salt is gonna want some references. And they’re hard to come by when you’re anonymous. Plus, that doesn’t even address the problem of how to rent yourself a car, when your driver’s license and credit card are surely items you don’t want recorded for posterity.”
Having had about enough of this, Mariah starts to move away. The hell with Ian Fletcher. The hell with Kansas City. There are at least a hundred connecting flights leaving this afternoon; all she has to do is manage to slip past him once more. She turns toward Faith, but he grabs her wrist,
holds her. “I will find you,” he whispers,
reading her mind. “You know that.”
Still, her eyes flicker toward the corridor,
the bathrooms, all the possible exits. “You said you were going to give me some advice.”
“That’s right. I think you ought to look up an acquaintance while you’re in town.”
Mariah chokes on a laugh. “Wait. Let me think of all the sorority sisters I have in Kansas City.”
“I meant me,” Ian says softly. “I think you should stay with me.”
For a long moment Mariah only stares at him.
“Are you crazy?”
His eyes are as blue as a pool, as inviting to fall into. “I just may be, Miz White,”
he admits. “Because if I wasn’t, I surely would have told my producer about your little girl’s hands last week. I would have had a bunch of cameras waiting to meet you when you got off that plane, instead of just me. I would have spent that flight thinking I was out to expose you to the world,
instead of thinking that maybe, this one time, I could do the right thing and help hide you away.” He glances at Faith. “It’s the ultimate cover. The very last place anyone would ever expect you’d go underground … is with me.”
“Unless you told them so yourself.” Mariah’s gaze is unflinching. It is impossible for her to trust this man, whom she never even would have met if not for his interest in Faith as a juicy story.
But then again, she cannot fault his claims. As blustery and vindictive as the public image of Ian Fletcher is, in private, he has often been sympathetic. And yet to run away from the eyes of the press and into Fletcher’s residence seems like a direct and suicidal jump from the frying pan into the fire.
He has not released her wrist, and his thumb grazes the skin along the ridge of her scar.
“You have my word that I won’t give away your hiding place. And you will have your privacy.” Then he smiles. “What’s worse, Mariah? The devil you don’t know … or the devil you do?”
They’re buying it. Ian is nearly giddy with relief as Mariah walks toward Faith and speaks to her daughter about the change in plans.
She’s still wary, but that’s all right. Let her think he has a hidden agenda. After all, he does.
It’s just not what Mariah White thinks. Getting Faith to the point where she willingly comes to meet Michael–and getting her mother to the point where she allows this–will take the bulk of Ian’s thespian skills.
As she walks back with her daughter in tow,
Ian is struck again by her features. It’s the contradictions that draw him: the stunning green eyes, puffy and tired; the soft mouth bracketed by lines that have been carved by pain. “So,” she says hesitantly, “you have a home here?”
At that, Ian almost laughs. He wouldn’t live in this state if it were the last place on earth. “Give me an hour and I will.”
He leads them to an Avis dealership and rents a car, signing it out on a Pagan Productions corporate credit card. Mariah remains in the background near a bank of phones, unwilling to risk being seen by someone who might later identify her or Faith. As he returns with keys in hand, Ian checks his watch and scowls.
He has less than an hour to get to Michael.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Mariah asks as they turn onto the interstate.
“West. I thought it might be better to get outside the city.” And closer to Lockwood.
“You drive like you know your way.”
“I come here a fair amount on business,”
Ian lies. “There’s a little place in Ozawkie that rents cabins on Perry Lake.
I’ve never stayed there, but I must have passed their sign a hundred times. I figured we could stop up there and give it a try first.”
“Can we go swimming?”
Ian grins at Faith in the rearview mirror. “Don’t think your mama’s gonna let you swim when it’s this cold. But I can’t imagine she’d get angry at a little fishing.”
In a while they turn off and drive across the flats from Missouri into Kansas. Mariah glances out the window, staring at stubbled fields where corn was recently harvested. Faith’s nose is pressed to the glass. “Where are the mountains?”
“Home,” Mariah murmurs.
As Mariah looks at the beaten shacks that comprise Camp Perry, she tells herself that beggars can’t be choosers. She and Faith might have found more luxurious accommodations, but, as Fletcher has said, they’d also be easily traced. She watches him circle the manager’s office and knock on the door, then step up and peer into a window. When no one answers, he shrugs and walks toward the car. “Looks like–“
“Can I help you?”
A little old lady with the look of a wren about her opens the door of the manager’s office. “Why,
yes’m, you can,” Fletcher says, his voice dripping with charm. “My wife and I were hoping to rent one of your charming establishments.”
Wife?
“We’re closed for the season,” the woman says. “Sorry.”
Fletcher stares at her for a moment. “Surely a good Christian woman like yourself would be willing to make an exception if it furthered the work of Our Lord.”
Mariah nearly chokes on her tongue.
“Mommy,” Faith whispers from the backseat,
“how come he’s talking weird?”
She cranes her neck back. “Ssh. He’s putting on a show. Like a play for us to watch.”
“Jesus told me to pack it all up October first,” the woman says.
“That is a pure shame, ma’am.” Ian shakes his head. “Because He told me to listen to His voice right here at Camp Perry.” He comes forward, extending a hand. “Forgive me for not introducing myself sooner. I’m Harry Walters, a preacher from Lou’ville. This here’s my lovely wife, Maybelle, and my daughter Frances.”
“Frances is a fine name,” the woman says.
“My maiden aunt’s name.”
“We thought so ourselves.”
The woman cocks her head. “You say you’re a preacher?”
“That I am. And a musical one at that. I’m the director of the Greater Kentucky Hymn Sing, and this year the Lord’s called me to fashion a few new tunes in His name.”
“I been to those hymn sings myself. Always did believe in offering up a joyful noise.”
“Amen, ma’am,” Fletcher says.
The woman throws up her hands. “Well, who am I to stand in the way of the Lord? I can’t promise you regular housekeeping, but I imagine I can poke around and find some sheets yet.” She walks back into the manager’s house, presumably to find a key.
Ian Fletcher turns toward Mariah and Faith and gives a nearly imperceptible bow.
Mariah bursts out with a startled laugh. The nerve of the man! He approaches the car and opens her door. “Maybelle, honey,” he says, smiling hugely, “looks like I got us a temporary home.”
“Maybelle? You couldn’t have picked Melissa, or Marion, or–“
“I like Maybelle. It seems …
bovine.”
Mariah glares at him, then turns to the backseat. “Come on, Faith–“
“Frances,” Ian interrupts.
“Whatever.” She helps Faith tug her knapsack from the car as the old lady comes out of the manager’s house.
“You got bungalow seven. I go to bed at nine o’clock, and I don’t care if it is Jesus you’re singing to–you make sure it’s quiet then.” She turns and leaves them to their cabin.
Crossing the threshold, Ian becomes another person entirely. “Christ. Did someone die here last summer?”
Mariah, standing in the doorway, cannot fault his observation. To call the cabin rustic would be a stretch of flattery. A ratty braided rug with numerous stains graces the floor. Off the central room are two doors, one leading to a bathroom the size of a closet and one leading to the only bedroom. There’s a coffee table, a frayed plaid couch, and a battered kitchen table,
on which rests an assortment of mismatched, dusty Tupperware.
“This is gross.” Faith scowls. “I don’t want to stay here.”
Mariah immediately forces herself to smile. “It’s an adventure. Like camping out, except we have a bed.” She peers into the bedroom. “Well, one of us has a bed.”
Ian snorts. “You and Faith can sleep in it. I’ll risk the communicable diseases growing on the couch.” He sits down heavily on it and bows his head, his shoulders shaking in silence. For a stunned moment Mariah thinks he might be crying,
but then a guffaw spills out of him as he tips back his head. “God, if my producer could see me now,” he says, wiping his eyes. “The Winnebago is a goddamned palace compared to this.”
It is at the mention of his producer that Mariah realizes what’s been niggling at the back of her mind. She’s terrified of being recognized, although she and Faith are still far from familiar faces.
However, Ian Fletcher is a household name, a celebrity. And yet he can walk up to the Avis counter without causing a rush of fans; he can pretend to be Preacher Harry Walters and no one recognizes him. “How come?” she asks quietly. “How come she didn’t know you?”
Ian grins. “This is the Bible Belt,
sweetheart. We got hymn sings and little old ladies who want to please Jesus, but not a huge population of atheists. I’ve got a built-in disguise here, because I’m not real high on the must-see-Tv list of most of these religious folk.”
Mariah raises a brow. “You couldn’t have known by looking at her that that old lady’s never seen your show.”
“I’d stake my bets.”
Annoyed by his certainty, she crosses her arms. “Because she’s elderly? Because she couldn’t see through your snow job?”
“No, Miz White.” Fletcher leans forward and flicks on the battered TV set to reveal a screen of static. “Because she doesn’t have cable.”
By the time Ian gets to Lockwood he’s an hour and seventeen minutes late. He’s left Mariah and Faith at the cabin with the excuse that he’s going to find food at the market. Now he flies into the recreation room, where he usually finds Michael. Peering through the door, he sees Michael still sitting in his usual corner, tossing down cards.
Tempered with the wash of relief that Michael’s waited for him is the bitter realization that there’s nowhere for him to go.
“Hey.” Ian pushes inside and draws up a chair. Sweat runs down his temple, but he doesn’t remove his coat just yet. He knows the routine; first Michael has to acknowledge him.
A red card falls. Then a black one.
Ian rubs his temple against his collar.
“Three-thirty,” Michael says quietly.
“I know, buddy. I’m an hour and …
twenty minutes late.”
“It’s four fifty-one. Twenty seconds.
Twenty-two seconds. Twenty-four–“
“I know what time it is, Michael.”
Irritated, Ian shrugs off his coat.
“Three-thirty. Three-thirty on Tuesday. That’s the time that Ian comes.”
Michael begins to rock gently in his seat.
“Ssh, Michael. I’m sorry now. I won’t let it happen again.” Recognizing the warning signs, he moves slowly, holding his hands up as he comes closer.
“Three-thirty!” Michael yells.
“Three-thirty on Tuesday. Not on Monday.
Not Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday! Tuesday Tuesday Tuesday!”
As quickly as the outburst has come, it’s over.
He pulls his chair away from Ian, into the corner of the room, his shoulders hunched over his deck of cards.
“You were late.”
Ian turns to find one of the psychiatrists who come daily to Lockwood standing a few feet away. His smile twists. “So I’ve been told.”
“Michael has a gift for that, doesn’t he?” The doctor laughs. “Your flight was late?”
“No. I got hung up on my way here.”
“Well, in his world there’s no room for mistakes. Don’t take it personally.”
Ian calls the man as he turns to go.
“What do you think would happen if I came back tomorrow? Or a couple of days after?”
“You mean other than Tuesday at three-thirty?” The psychiatrist considers Michael, in the corner. “I think it would set him off again.”
Ian nods and looks away. He’d thought so,
too. It means that he has seven days,
exactly, to get Faith White back here.
He sighs and pulls up a chair directly behind Michael. Ian can see the crown of his head,
peppered with gray now, and it depresses him.
What kind of life has it been here, for so long?
A better one than it almost was. The voice in his head is an absolution.
Lockwood is a supervised-care facility, just one step away from a residential group home,
and considerably better than an institution. One day, maybe, Michael will be ready to live on his own. Until then, this is the best care money can buy.
Wearily, Ian glances at his watch, and sits in silence for the rest of the hour, because even if Michael is not speaking to him directly, he’s fully aware of how long Ian stays.
He watches Michael rock, a metronome,
and wonders how a man like himself, who has no use for the Bible, has become his brother’s keeper.
By the time Ian returns to the cabin, the sun has set. Still rattled by Michael’s outburst,
he absently walks up the gravel path, lets himself inside, and stops dead. The small open room of the cabin is lit by candles, the scarred kitchen table covered with a checked table runner.
Clean silverware and chipped dishes are laid out at place settings. Mariah has moved some of the furniture around to hide watermarks on the wooden floor and suspicious streaks on the walls. It’s still not the sort of room to which he’s accustomed, but it looks … almost cozy.
Mariah and Faith freeze on the couch like two deer caught in headlights. After a moment Mariah gets to her feet and wipes her palms on her thighs. “I figured if we were going to be here awhile …” she says, letting her voice trail off.
Ian’s gaze falls to Faith and to the battered game of Yahtzee sprawled across the coffee table in front of her. The girl draws her knees up, hiding her face, and rattles the dice in her cupped palm. He fights the urge to sit beside her, to kick off his shoes and set his stockinged feet beside the Yahtzee tumblers.
“… in the car?”
It is a moment before Ian realizes Mariah is speaking to him. What stuff in the car?
Groaning, he remembers his excuse for leaving–
the groceries. “I, uh, haven’t gotten around to it yet,” he says, backing toward the door.
“I’ll head out now.” He all but flees outside, before Mariah can ask him where he’s been all this time, before he breaks down and simply tells her.
It begins to rain as he drives away from the cabin. In the rearview mirror he sees Mariah standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the yellow light from the candles. Where did she find those candles? Or the board game? Or any of the other stuff, for that matter? Ian’s hands tremble on the steering wheel as he tries to remember the way to the nearest Piggly Wiggly. The frayed rugs, the battered games, the woman waiting on him–they circle in his mind. He forces himself to make a mental list of what he’ll buy: milk and juice and eggs, cereal and soda pop and macaroni, item after item crowding out the unsettling thought that the life he has been leading,
for all its luxury, is nowhere near as fine.
Her mother keeps skipping the good parts. It’s bad enough that Faith has no books for a bedtime story–in spite of what her mother said,
Reader’s Digest doesn’t count–but now her mom can’t even get through a memorized version of Little Red Riding Hood without telling it wrong.
“The basket of food,” Faith prompts. “For Grandma. Remember?”
“Right.” Her mother keeps looking at the door.
Faith guesses it’s because she’s hungry. Ian Fletcher was supposed to bring dinner, but he’d spaced out, and so all Faith had was a handful of Tic-Tacs from her mother’s purse. If she closes her eyes and tunes out her mother’s voice, she can hear her stomach gurgling, like the falls down by the New Canaan Dam.
“So Red Riding Hood gets to the door and knocks and the wolf–“
“You didn’t even talk about the wolf yet,”
Faith complains. “He has to eat Grandma.”
“For God’s sake, Faith, if you know it so well, why don’t you just tell it to yourself!”
When she was getting into her nightgown, Faith had said something like she hoped God could find her all the way out here in Kansas, and her mother had jumped at her and said she absolutely,
positively couldn’t talk about God in front of Ian Fletcher. Now her mother doesn’t even want to tuck her in. Faith rolls onto her side. If she cries right now, she doesn’t want anyone to see it. “Fine,” she mutters.
She feels her mother’s hand on her arm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
“Whatever.”
“No, it was wrong of me. I’m hungry and I’m tired, but that’s not your fault.” Her mother scrubs the heels of her hands into her eyes and sighs. “I’m not up for a bedtime story right now,
Faith, okay?”
“Okay,” she murmurs.
Her mother smiles and kisses her hair.
“Thanks.”
As she gets up, Faith reaches for her sleeve. “I don’t like it here.” Her voice catches in her throat, which embarrasses her, but she doesn’t know how to stop it. And before she even has a chance to try to stop them, the tears come. “It smells funny and they don’t have the Disney Channel and there’s nothing to eat.”
“I know, honey. But Mr. Fletcher’s going to fix that.”
“How come he’s even here? How come we have to stay with him?”
Her mother suddenly looks so upset that Faith wishes she’d never even asked the stupid question.
“We’ll go one day at a time,” her mother says.
“If living with Mr. Fletcher doesn’t work out,
we’ll just take a plane somewhere else. Las Vegas, maybe.”
That soothes Faith. She feels her mother curl up behind her. It makes Faith think of a hammock in their yard, a web of rope that she thought would unravel the first time she leaned back on it, but that managed to support her all the same.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Faith answers, yawning.
Her mother’s arms come around her, hold fast.
“Maybe we will.”
First thing, he smells the smoke. Twin towers of fire reach up as far as he can see,
making black spots before his eyes, but he knows that he has to get through them. His parents, Christ,
they’re burning– He dives headfirst into the heat,
ignoring the pain that races up his arms and legs and flays the skin off his back. His eyes swell with the heat and the soot, but he can see five fingers,
the outline of a hand, and he stretches toward it,
slips palm against palm, and closes around a wrist. A yank–they’re tumbling free now, and he lands clear, only to find that he’s holding tight to his brother. His brother, who cannot be touched, who cannot bear to be touched, who stares at Ian’s hands on his shoulders and screams loud,
loud, loud–
“Mr. Fletcher.” He jerks away,
sweating, the covers pooled onto the floor.
Mariah White kneels beside the hideous couch,
touching his arm. “You were having a nightmare.”
“It wasn’t a nightmare,” Ian insists,
although his voice is still hoarse. It wasn’t a nightmare, because that would mean he’s been asleep for a while, and the chances of that are next to nothing.
He shrugs away from her and huddles at the far end of the couch, wiping his sweaty face with the edge of his T-shirt.
He should have known better than to try to stay in Kansas City and pretend that it would be all right.
The town holds nothing for him but rotten memories. Even if his ploy to get Faith and Michael together works, it’s inevitable that he’ll experience some of the fallout.
Mariah offers him a glass of tap water.
Hand shaking, he takes it and drinks deeply.
His eyes follow hers to the counter, where he’s set the nonperishable groceries. When he’d come home last night, the door to the tiny bedroom had been closed and a stack of sheets and blankets left on the couch. He’d told himself that rather than bang around cabinets and wake the Whites, he’d just get to it all in the morning. Then he’d pulled out a pad and scribbled notes for next week’s broadcast. It is the last thing he remembers,
until finding Mariah White by his side.
“You were saying something about a fire,” she says hesitantly.
“I’m sure I was saying a whole lot of things.”
“I wouldn’t know. I only just came out.”
“I didn’t wake your daughter, did I?”
Mariah shakes her head. “Faith sleeps like a rock.”
“Then I apologize for waking you.”
“Well, you didn’t exactly wake me.”
A smile ghosts over her lips. “That mattress was a torture device in a previous life.”
Ian laughs. “They probably used it to finish off the prisoners who didn’t succumb to this couch.”
His eyes meet hers. “I should check on Faith,” Mariah says softly.
“Right. You go on ahead. And I’m sorry.”
She reaches for the sheets, tangled on the floor, and snaps them into the air so that they billow over Ian and settle like a whisper onto his lap. Then she gives a quick, smooth tug at the satin edge of the blanket, bringing it up to cover him. A simple, instinctive move, a routine any mother knows by heart, and yet Ian finds himself holding his breath until she steps away, for fear he might break the spell.
“Good night, Ian,” she says, and he nods at her, unable to find his voice. He watches the small, smooth curves of her bare heels as they strike the floor, watches as she pulls the bedroom door shut behind her. Then he picks up his pen and pad again and smiles,
realizing that, for the first time, Mariah White has used his given name.
New Canaan, New Hampshire Millie is going crazy. Would it have been so much trouble for Mariah to at least call from a pay phone and say they were all right? She’s held up her part of the bargain–driving the car home, and taking care of the house in their absence, but she’s on borrowed time and she knows it. Everyone saw her get out of the car alone. Sooner or later, when Faith and Mariah don’t turn up, they’re going to start asking questions.
Millie gets out of bed and draws back the curtain, noting the small Sterno campfires and portable lights of the TV reporters’
cameramen. Is it her imagination, or have they nearly doubled in number?
Millie knows Hollywood Tonight! is still here; unlike most of the TV reporters, who have about three or four people around when they make their daily broadcasts, Petra Saganoff seems to need eight or ten. She’s got lights and makeup people and men carrying machines that do God knows what. Personally, Millie could do without Petra Saganoff. If there’s going to be reporting, she’d rather see that nice Peter Jennings, in the bush vest he wears when he goes on location.
It’s just as well that Faith and Mariah are gone. From the looks of things at the end of the driveway, they’re going to need a second policeman before long, to keep order. Mariah was unsettled by a handful of people; how would she react to this? With a sigh, Millie gets back into bed.
She shuts off the light, then flicks it on and lifts up the receiver of the telephone beside the bed to make sure the dial tone is working, just in case.
Lake Perry, Kansas–October 20,
To Mariah’s surprise, Ian leaves shortly after breakfast. “Gotta earn a living,” he says, grabbing the car keys and striding out the door as if spending another moment in their company were too painful to bear. He has not mentioned his nightmare, and Mariah decides that this must be the reason he’s running–
embarrassment can’t rest easily on the shoulders of a man like him.
“How come he gets to go somewhere?” Faith grumbles. “And we have to stay in this ugly place where there’s nothing to do?”
“Maybe we’ll take a walk. Find a phone and call Grandma.”
This sparks Faith’s interest. “Then she’ll come here?”
“In a little while, maybe. We need her to watch our house right now.”
Faith empties more cereal into her bowl.
“There’s a whole bunch of people watching our house.
She doesn’t have to do that, too.”
Mariah stands at the window as Ian drives away. He’s taking the car, granted, but that wouldn’t stop them from walking to town and hailing a taxi, returning to the airport and hopping on a new flight. Mariah assumed, when he’d offered his protection, that his good intentions were really much more selfish–what better way to observe Faith than to live in close quarters? Still, she’d figured that Ian would see of Faith only what she let him see–so she’d acquiesced.
However, she had expected him to stick to her and Faith like glue.
Instead, he seems almost to … trust them.
She watches Faith lift the cereal bowl to her mouth to drink the remaining milk and starts to warn her about manners, but then stops. With so many rules to follow now that they are hiding, letting this one small thing slip cannot hurt.
She’s reasoned out what dangers Faith has to face living with Ian Fletcher, but not herself.
What she’d forgotten was that it was much easier to dislike a television character than an ordinary man. To see Ian’s shoes tucked under the edge of the couch or his papers strewn over the coffee table–even to walk into the bathroom and smell the faint mixture of cedar and soap that clings to his skin–well, it makes him real. It changes him from a two-dimensional cultural icon with a hell-bent desire to expose Faith into someone with feelings, doubts, even nightmares.
If Ian Fletcher is able to trust them enough to leave them alone, can’t Mariah trust him enough to believe that renting this cabin for them was not a selfish act, but a kind one?
She turns to Faith. “Let’s get dressed. We’re leaving.”
It nearly breaks Ian’s heart to buy clothes at Kmart. A man who owns Armani suits and Bruno Magli shoes shouldn’t be reduced to shopping off the bargain rack for jeans and tennis shoes, but he knows that he’s less likely to be recognized there by a dull-eyed clerk than by a salesperson at a more exclusive boutique. He stands at the checkout, behind a mother with three children screaming for candy, and surveys the collection of items in his basket.
“Did you find everything you needed?” the clerk asks.
It’s blissfully quiet; the mother has succumbed and is wheeling out her children, their fingers digging into packets of MandMore’s. On impulse,
Ian grabs another one off the shelf and tosses it onto the checkout counter, for Faith. “I believe so.”
At the sound of his voice, the woman looks up. She squints a little, trying to connect the Southern drawl with the face. For a moment, Ian thinks the jig might be up … but then she returns to scanning the items. She must have decided he’s a look-alike. After all, what would the illustrious Ian Fletcher be doing in a Kmart?
“Oh, I love this,” the woman says,
holding up a shirt-and-legging set with Tweety Bird screen-printed on the front. “Got one for my own daughter.”
Ian’s picked it out for Faith. He realized last night that they couldn’t have much in those knapsacks, and would need clothes for this unexpected stay just as much as he did.
Unfortunately, he’s confounded by children’s sizes.
What the hell is the difference between a 7 and a 7X?
It was easier to find clothing for Mariah. All he had to do was imagine how high she came up on his chest, how wide her hips were and how small her waist, and he could easily match her body type to one of the many women he’d dated. She has a lovely figure, actually, but he found himself tossing into the shopping cart baggy jeans and flannel shirts, oversized sweatshirts–things that would keep her covered, that wouldn’t draw his attention.
“That comes to one twenty-three thirty-nine,” the clerk says.
Ian unfolds his wallet and withdraws a stack of twenties. He carries the bags to the rental car, gets inside, and then takes out his cell phone to call his producer.
“Wilton here.”
“Well, it’s a damn good thing one of us is,”
Ian jokes.
“Ian? Christ, I’ve been going crazy.
You want to tell me where the fuck you are?”
“Sorry, James. I know I said I’d be back last night, but there was … a family emergency.”
“I thought you didn’t have any family.”
“All the same, I’m going to be tied up for a while.” Ian taps his fingers on the steering wheel, knowing that there’s nothing James can do. Without Ian, there isn’t a show.
“How long is a while?” James says after a moment.
“I don’t know just yet. I’m definitely going to miss the Friday broadcast, though.
You’ll have to do a rerun.”
He can practically see James seething.
“Well, that’s just fabulous, Ian, because we’ve already run the promos for a live show. Plus, there are about ninety reporters here, including a few national affiliates, who are dying to get the story. Maybe I ought to go ask one of them to stand in for you.”
Ian laughs. “By all means, try Dan R. He did a real fine impression of me on Saturday Night Live, once.”
“I’m glad you’re so fucking congenial today.
Because you’re not gonna have more than a smile left to pitch when your show goes down the toilet.”
“Now, James, you relax before you bust a gut. Faith White isn’t even there, right?”
There’s a beat of silence. “How did you know that?”
“I have my sources. And I’m only doing what I told you I’d be doing–following a story on the road.”
James draws in his breath. “Are you saying you’re with her?”
“I’m saying that just ’cause I’m not three feet away from you doesn’t mean I’m not still on top of things.” He glances at his watch. Christ, by now Mariah and Faith could be halfway across Missouri–but it was a chance he had to take. He’d learned long ago that the best way to catch a butterfly was not to chase it at all, but to remain so still that it made the choice to light on your shoulder. “Gotta go, James.
I’ll be in touch.”
Before his producer has a chance to protest,
Ian turns off his phone and slips it into his coat pocket again. Then he drives back toward Camp Perry, slow enough to keep a watch out for a woman and a child who may have decided to leave on their own.
Mariah’s sweating. Although it’s fairly cool outside, Faith balked at walking about a mile down the road, so she had to carry her daughter piggyback all the way to the gas station. Then she called home, reversing the charges and speaking to her mother, while Faith whined about getting candy.
“You’re with who?” her mother had said.
“I know, I know. But we’re going to leave.”
At that point Mariah had spotted the number of a local taxi service, etched into the wall of the pay-phone booth. “I’ll call you when we find a place to settle.”
As she speaks to the taxi dispatcher, she feels a thread of guilt drawing tight. Ian Fletcher has been nothing less than solicitous up to this point. For whatever reason,
it is possible that his TV persona’s ruthlessness is only an act.
Still, she isn’t going to stick around to find out.
Faith is sitting on the floor, picking at dead bugs, when Mariah hangs up. The taxi will arrive in ten minutes. “What are you doing?
You’re going to be filthy.”
“I want candy. I’m hungry.”
Mariah digs into her pocket for fifty cents. “That’s it. Get whatever you can for this amount.” She wipes the sweat off her forehead and watches Faith choose peanut MandMore’s, hand them to the man working behind the counter. He smiles at Mariah; she smiles back.
“You’re not from around here,” the man says.
Mariah thinks she’s going to be sick. “What makes you say that?”
He laughs. “I pretty much know everyone in town, and you’re not one of those people. You get your taxi all right?”
He must have overheard her conversation. Mariah feels her mind spin into action. “Yes … my,
uh, husband had an errand to run, and he was supposed to pick us up here after I made a phone call. But I think my daughter’s running a fever, and I want to get her back to the motel … so we’re just going to take a cab.”
“I’d be happy to tell him where you went, when he comes looking.”
“That would be great,” Mariah says, edging toward the door, wanting nothing more than to cut short this conversation. “Honey, why don’t we wait outside?”
“Good idea,” the man says, although she hasn’t included him in the invitation. “Wouldn’t mind a little fresh air myself.”
Resigned, Mariah walks out the glass door of the gas station and stands next to the pump,
shading her eyes to see down the road for anything that remotely resembles a cab. But from the opposite direction a car speeds into the station,
stopping a few feet away from them.
Ian gets out of the passenger seat, thrilled to have spotted Mariah and Faith. “Hey there.”
He smiles at Mariah. “Looking for a ride home?”
“Hope you got some roses, brother,” the gas-station attendant says. “You’re in the doghouse.”
Ian continues to smile, puzzled, but all he can think of is something Faith once said, that her mother sneezes at roses. Before Mariah can stop her,
Faith gets into the backseat of the car and sees the pile of bags on the floor. “What’s this?”
“Presents. For you and your mama.”
Faith pulls out the Tweety legging set, and a package of barrettes, and a sweatshirt with hearts all around the neckline. Then she tugs free a shirt that is clearly the right size for Mariah.
This is where he went this morning? To buy them all clothes?
“Guess you won’t be needing the taxi,” the attendant says. “I’ll call the dispatcher.”
“That … would be wonderful,” Mariah manages.
Ian waves at the man, then gets into the car.
Mariah slides into the front seat as well.
“Guess y’all wanted to take a little walk around town,” he says evenly. “I just happened to see you as I was driving by.”
Faith pipes up from the backseat. “Good, because I was getting tired of walking.”
Mariah tries to read an accusation in his words,
tries to make him into the sort of man she had naturally assumed he was. He turns to her.
“Course, I can take Faith back, if you’d still like to walk a spell.”
“No,” she says, to him and to herself. “This’ll be just fine.”
New Canaan, New Hampshire–
October 22, 1999 Some people blamed it on the taxi driver who took the young Father Rourke to the train station.
Others said it was clearly a reporter snooping.
Months later, no one clearly remembered how word leaked from the visiting priest’s files to those gathered outside Mariah White’s house, but suddenly they all knew that the God Faith White was seeing happened to be female.
The Associated Press reporter’s three-paragraph story ran in newspapers from L.a. to New York. Jay Leno did an irreverent monologue about a female Jesus being worried about the fashion statement made by a crown of thorns. A new group of devotees arrived on the edge of the White property, letting their dismay over Faith’s absence only slightly dampen their enthusiasm. Numbering about one hundred, they came from Catholic colleges and church ladies’ guilds and taught at parochial schools. Some had fought to be ordained as female priests, but had not succeeded. Armed with Bibles and texts by Naomi Wolf, they unrolled a hastily painted MOTHERGOD SOCIETY banner and very loudly chanted the Lord’s Prayer in unison,
changing the pronouns where necessary. They held up posters with photos retouched to look like holy cards and others that read YOU GO, GIRL!
They were bonded and raucous, like a women’s hockey team, although most of the other followers camped outside did not consider them dangerous.
But then again, they did not know that the MotherGod Society had left another hundred members spread up and down cities on the East Coast,
handing out pamphlets emblazoned with their amended Lord’s Prayer and Faith White’s name and address.
Manchester, NH–OCTOBER 22, 1999 “What in the name of Saint Francis is this?” Bishop Andrews asks, recoiling from the pink pamphlet as if it were a rattlesnake.
“”Our Mother, who art in Heaven?”‘ Who wrote this garbage?”
“It’s a new Catholic group, your Excellency,” says Father DeSoto.
“They’re promoting an alleged New Hampshire visionary.”
“Why does this sound familiar?”
“Because you spoke to Monsignor O’Shaughnessy about her a week ago. Father Rourke–the pastoral psychologist from St. John’s–sent you his report by fax.”
Bishop Andrews has not read the report.
He spent the morning marching in the Pope Pius XII Parochial School’s homecoming parade, positioned in an antique Ford in front of a very large percussion band that gave him a headache that has not yet gone away. Father DeSoto hands him a piece of paper.
“”Definite lack of psychotic behavior …” He’s too open-minded for his own good,”
Andrews mutters, then picks up the phone and dials the Boston seminary.
A female God. For Pete’s sake!
Why send a pastoral psychologist, when this is clearly a case for a theologian?
Lake Perry, Kansas–October 22,
That afternoon, Ian and Faith are playing hearts when Mariah falls asleep on the couch. One moment she is talking to them, and then the next, just like that, she’s snoring. Ian watches her neck swan to the side, listens to the soft snore from her throat. God, he’s jealous. To just be able to drift off like that … in the middle of the day …
Faith shuffles the cards and manages to send them flying. “Hey, Mr. Fletcher,” she says, scrambling to pick them up, her voice strident.
“Sssh!” Ian nods toward the couch. “Your mama’s asleep.” He knows that having Faith in close, confined quarters with Mariah means it’s more likely than not to be a quick rest. “How’d you like to go outside?” he whispers.
Faith pulls a face. “I don’t want to play in the grass again. I did that this morning.”
“I recall promising you some fishing.” Ian remembers seeing an old rod and reel gathering dust in the shed beside the manager’s office. “We could give that a try.”
Faith glances from Ian to Mariah. “I don’t think she’d want me to go.”
Of course not, Ian thinks. Faith might unwittingly tip her hand. “A quick trip, then.
What your mama doesn’t know isn’t gonna hurt her.” He stands up and stretches.
“Well, I’m gonna do some fishing anyway.”
“Wait! I just have to get on my shoes.”
He shrugs, pretending not to care whether he has company. But this is the first time he’s been alone with Faith White, except for the night she ran away bleeding. There’s so damn much he wants to know about her, he doesn’t even know where to start.
It’s crisp and cool outside, and the sun is hanging heavy in the sky. He walks with his hands in his pockets, whistling softly, pretending not to notice how hard Faith is huffing and puffing to keep up with him. Retrieving the fishing rod and a small gardener’s spade, Ian strikes out toward the lake.
He squats at the edge near a patch of cattails and offers Faith the small shovel.
“You want to dig, or shall I?”
“You mean, like, for worms?”
“No, for buried treasure. What’d you think we were gonna use as bait?”
Faith takes the spade and makes a halfhearted attempt to overturn the thick marsh grass. Ian stares at the Band-Aids still on her hands, one on the outside and one on the inside of each palm. He, of course, has studied case histories of alleged stigmatics–in his profession, you have to know the competition. He remembers reading how painful the wounds are supposed to be, not that he really ever bought it. Still,
he wrests the shovel from Faith. “Let me,”
he says gruffly.
He unearths a chunk of grass, peeling it back like a scalp to reveal several purple worms pulsing through the dirt. Faith wrinkles her nose. “Gross.”
“Not if you’re a largemouth bass.” He gathers a few in a small plastic bag and directs Faith toward the dock. “You go on over there. Take the rod with you.”
He finds her sitting with her bare feet dangling in the water. “Your mama finds you like that,
she’s going to pitch a fit.”
Faith glances back over her shoulder. “The only way she’d find out is if you told her I’d come out here with you, and then she’d be too angry at you to yell at me.”
“Guess we’re partners in crime, then.”
Ian reaches out a hand to help her stand. “So–you know how to cast? Your daddy ever take you fishing?”
“Nope. Did yours?”
Just like that, his hand stills on Faith’s. She’s squinting up at him, her face partially hidden by shadows. “No,” he says. “I don’t reckon he did.” He puts his arms around Faith from behind and closes his hands on hers. Her skin is warm and impossibly soft; he can feel her shoulder blades bumping against his chest. “Like this.” He tips back the rod and lets the line fly.
“Now what?”
“Now we wait.”
He sits beside Faith as she digs her thumbnail into the grooves in the planking of the dock. She lifts her face toward the setting sun and closes her eyes, and Ian finds himself mesmerized by the tiny beat in the hollow of her throat. There’s a quiet between them he is almost unwilling to break, but his curiosity gets the better of him. “”Follow me,”“ he says softly, watching for her reaction, “”and I will make you fishers of men.””
She turns her head toward him. “Huh?”
“It’s a saying. An old one.”
“It’s stupid. You don’t fish for men.”
“You ought to ask God about it sometime,” Ian suggests, leaning back and covering his eyes with his forearm, just enough that he can peek out and still see her.
Faith frowns, on the verge of saying something,
but then she stops and picks at the wood of the dock again. Ian finds himself straining forward, waiting for a confession, but whatever Faith might have said is lost to the sudden jerk of the rod and her squeal of delight. He shows her how to reel in her catch,
a beauty of a fish that’s every bit of three pounds.
Then he unhooks the bass and rounds open its mouth, so that Faith can grab hold.
“Oh,” she breathes, the tail of the fish snugging against her stomach. She’s a picture, Ian thinks, smiling. With her hair caught in the late sun and dirt streaked across her cheek, he looks at her and truly sees her not as a story, but simply as a little girl.
The fish starts to thrash its tail, fighting for freedom. “Look at how– Oh!” Faith cries, and she drops the bass–the last thing Ian sees before she loses her footing and falls from the dock into the freezing water.
Mariah awakens to her worst nightmare: Ian Fletcher has disappeared with Faith. Bolting upright on the couch, she screams for her daughter,
knowing by the stillness in the small cabin that they are gone. A deck of cards lies scattered across the rug, as if he’s taken her in the middle of everything, as if he’s taken her by force.
She will have to call the police, but that seems like an easy sacrifice if it means Faith’s safe return. With her heart pounding, Mariah races outside, so distraught that she does not even notice the car still sitting in front of the cabin. She runs toward the manager’s office,
the nearest phone, cursing herself for putting Faith within reach of Ian Fletcher. When she rounds the corner, two figures are silhouetted against the lake, one tall, one tiny. With intense relief, Mariah stops short, her knees buckling. She cups her hands around her mouth to call out to them, but then before her very eyes, Faith falls into the lake.
Oh, shit! That’s all Ian has time to think before the water swallows Faith, and Mariah’s scream echoes. It’s freezing in there, and he has no idea if the kid can swim,
and the very worst part of it is that he can’t just jump in and grab her because there’s every chance that he’ll land on top of her, push her farther down. He is distantly aware of Mariah scrabbling down the slope, yelling, but with intense focus he stares at the murky water until a pale streak of silver unfurls beneath the surface. He leaps in a few feet to the left of where he’s seen Faith’s hair, opens his eyes to the gritty underworld, and tangles his fingers in a silky skein.
He can see her, her eyes wide and terrified, her mouth open, her hands pushing at the underside of the dock that she’s trapped beneath. Dragging her by her ponytail, he yanks Faith free and pulls her up. She crawls onto the wood, choking and sputtering, her cheek pressed against the planks as she spits up water.
Ian hauls himself onto the dock as well, just as Mariah reaches them and folds Faith into her arms, soothing and cuddling. Only now does he let himself breathe, let himself think of what might have happened. He notices that he’s soaked and shaking; his clothes must weigh fifty pounds wet,
and they’re freezing to boot. With a glance in Faith’s direction to make sure she is all right, he stands and slowly sets out toward the cabin to change.
“Don’t you move!”
Mariah’s voice, vibrating with anger, stops him. Ian turns and clears his throat to speak.
“She’ll be fine,” he manages. “She wasn’t under for more than a few seconds.”
But Mariah isn’t ready to give up. “How dare you take her out here without my permission?”
“Well, I–“
“Were you waiting for me to fall asleep so that you could sneak her out with a … a candy bar and ask her questions up one side and down the other? Did you get your precious tape? Or did you forget to take it out of your pocket when you jumped in?”
Ian feels his lips draw away from his teeth, an involuntary snarl. “For your information,
the only thing I asked your daughter was if her daddy ever taught her how to cast a fishing line.
I didn’t tape a frigging word of our conversation.
She fell into the lake by accident and got stuck under the dock. All I did was go in after her.”
“She would never have gotten stuck under the dock if she hadn’t been standing on it in the first place!
For all I know, you might have pushed her.”
Ian’s eyes glitter with rage. This is what he gets for saving the child’s life? He takes a step back, breathing hard. “For all I know,”
he sneers, “she might have walked on water.”
Long after Mariah has fed Faith hot soup,
bathed her, and tucked her into bed for the night, Ian still has not returned to the cabin. She finds herself pacing, staring blindly at the static on the television. She wants to apologize.
Surely now that they’ve both had time to cool down he realizes that it was the fear talking, not really her, but she’d like to tell him so herself. After all, if Faith had wandered down to the dock by herself, she could have just as easily fallen in–and drowned.
She waits until her daughter is sleeping deeply, then goes to sit on the edge of the bed.
Mariah touches the curve of Faith’s cheek,
warm as a ripe peach. How do other mothers go about keeping watch? How do they shut their eyes with the certainty that in that moment, something won’t go wrong?
Being in water that cold could have had far more serious effects, yet Faith seems absolutely fine.
For whatever it is worth, Faith’s God wasn’t the one to haul her out of the water; that was done by Ian himself. For this at least, Mariah owes him her gratitude.
She sees the swinging beam of headlights cut across the small room. Walking out of the bedroom to the front door of the cabin, she waits for Ian to come inside. But a minute passes, and then another, and finally it is five minutes later.
She peeks through the window–yes, the car is there–
and then opens the door.
Ian is sitting at her feet. He’s been leaning against the door. “I’m sorry,” Mariah says, coloring.
“Nah. It’s a stupid place to sit.”
They look at the night sky, the rotting porch, the chipped paint on the door–anywhere but at each other. “I mean that I’m really sorry.”
“Well, so am I. This isn’t the first time I’ve done something involving Faith without getting your permission first.” Ian rubs the back of his neck. “She liked fishing, though. Right up till the end there.”
They each imagine a picture of Faith with that bass, and it forms a bridge between them. Then Mariah sits down beside Ian, drawing a circle absently on the dirt of the porch floor. “I’m not used to letting her out of my sight,” she admits. “It’s hard for me.”
“You’re a fine mother.”
Mariah shakes her head. “You might be the only one who thinks so.”
“I doubt that. I bet there’s a little girl inside that thinks so.” He leans against the side of the cabin. “I figure I owe you an apology, too. You got me riled up, or else I wouldn’t have said all that about Faith walking on water.”
Mariah considers his words. “You know,” she says finally, “I don’t want her to be some … Messiah figure … any more than you do.”
“What do you want?”
She takes a deep breath. “I want her to be safe. I want her to be mine.”
Neither of them speaks the thought that crosses their minds: that these two wishes might not both be able to come true. “She sleeping now?”
“Yes.” Mariah glances at the cabin door.
“Went to bed without a problem.” She watches Ian draw up one knee and hook a wrist over it, and lets herself wonder what this moment might be like if she hadn’t met Ian over a war of religious convictions, but when she dropped her purse in the grocery store, or when he gave up his seat for her on the bus. Her mind scrambles over territory she’s deliberately left untraveled, marking the raven’s wing of his hair and the brilliant blue of his eyes,
remembering the night in the hospital when he kissed her on the cheek.
“You know,” he says quietly. “Even during the world wars they had a cease-fire on Christmas.”
“What?”
“A truce, Mariah,” Ian says, his voice running over her name like a waterfall.
“I’m saying that, just for here, just for now, maybe we could give each other the benefit of the doubt.” He grins at her. “I’m probably only half the monster you think I am.”
She smiles back. “Don’t sell yourself short.”
He laughs out loud, and in that moment Mariah realizes that if Ian Fletcher is intimidating when he’s scowling, he’s positively threatening when he lets down his guard.
In the middle of the night, when Faith and Mariah are long asleep, Ian sneaks into their room. He stands at the edge of the bed with all the gravity of a man on the edge of a precipice.
Mariah holds Faith in her arms, like an ingredient that’s been folded into a batter. Their hair is woven together on the pillow. From where he’s standing, it looks almost as if they are not two people, but different incarnations of one.
Tonight had gone better than he’d expected,
considering his outburst at the lake. The truce is going to buy him some time, make Mariah predisposed to trust him. And, of course,
he’ll have to act as if he trusts her. Which, in a way, comes almost too goddamned easy. Sometimes she looks like any other mother, and Faith looks like any other little girl. Until you add God to the mix.
Lake Perry, Kansas–October 23,
Faith sits down next to Mr. Fletcher at the breakfast table and watches her mother at the counter. “We’ve got a selection this morning of Cheerios, or Cheerios … or, if you’d rather have them, Cheerios,” her mother says brightly.
“I’ll have Cheerios, then.” Mr. Fletcher smiles at her mom, and right away Faith can tell there’s something different. Like the air is easier to take into your lungs.
“How are you feeling?” Mr. Fletcher asks her.
“Okay.” But then she sneezes.
“Wouldn’t surprise me if she caught a cold,” her mother says to Mr. Fletcher, who nods. She sets a bowl of cereal in front of Faith.
“Give her vitamin C. You can ward off a cold if you take enough of it.”
“That’s an old wives’ tale. Like wearing garlic on a string around your neck.”
Faith looks from one to the other and wonders how she managed to go to sleep last night and wake up this morning and somehow, in that short time, miss the entire world’s turning upside down. The last time she’d seen Mr. Fletcher and her mom together, they were shouting so loud it made her head pound.
They’re still talking about medicines and getting sick, as if Faith isn’t even in the room.
Quietly, she stands up and crosses the small kitchen, dragging a stepstool to the counter. She reaches for the bowls on the middle shelf of the cabinet and takes down a second one. This she fills with Cheerios and places in front of an empty seat at the table.
“Well,” Mr. Fletcher says. “At least you’re still hungry.”
Faith stares at him, challenging.
“It’s not for me. It’s for God.”
Her mother’s spoon clanks against her cereal bowl. Faith watches the two grown-ups look at each other for a long time, a staring contest to see who’ll fold first. Her mother, especially, seems to be hanging on the edge of the table, waiting for Mr. Fletcher to speak.
After a moment he reaches for the jug of milk and passes it down the table. “Here,” he says,
calmly taking another spoonful of his own Cheerios. “Just in case She doesn’t like it dry.”
October 24, 1999 The next night Ian is sprawled on the couch, writing on a pad, while Mariah sits at the kitchen table. The heady scent of rubber-cement fumes wafts across the room, and although he cannot see her hands, he knows she’s busy gluing something together. Thankless job, he thinks.
Everything in this damn cabin is falling apart.
Suddenly she stretches, her breasts rounding out against one of the shapeless flannel shirts. She turns to him and smiles hesitantly. “What are you working on?”
“General notes for a broadcast.”
“Oh. I didn’t know you were still doing them.”
She blushes at her own words, the subtext loud and clear: I didn’t know that you could be kind, and cross us at the same time.
“Gotta make a living.”
At the mention of employment, Mariah groans. “I’ve probably lost all my clients.”
Surprised to discover she is more than a stay-at-home mom, Ian raises his brows.
“Clients? What do you do?”
She seems flustered for a moment, then gestures toward the table. “I do this.”
He walks over and stands behind her chair.
Spread across a paper towel is a fan of toothpicks, glued side by side. Beside it is a tiny structure, and as he watches, Mariah curls the fan into a thatched roof for the top of a tiny hut. But rather than looking silly, like a child’s camp craft, it is remarkably realistic.
Strategically breaking bits of wood here and there,
she’s created a door, a window, the feel of an aboriginal home. “That’s amazing,” Ian says, surprised by the extent of her talent. “You’re a sculptor?”
“No, I make dollhouses.” She rolls a bead of rubber cement between her fingers.
“What is the hut for?”
“Me.” Mariah laughs. “I was bored. The toothpicks were the first thing I could find.”
Ian grins. “Remind me to hide the wooden spoons from you.”
She leans back in her chair and looks up at him. “Your broadcasts–who’s doing them?”
“Me. In living color. We’re doing reruns while I’m here.”
“The ones you’re writing …?”
“For when I get back,” Ian says softly. “Whenever that is.”
“Are they about Faith?”
“Some parts.” Even as he says the words, he wonders why the hell he’s told her the truth.
Wouldn’t it be easier, smarter, to say that he’s stopped focusing on Faith entirely?
But he can’t. Because at some point during this past week Mariah White has stopped being a story and somehow turned into a person much like himself.
Sure, there have been some bizarre moments–Faith getting cereal so that her hallucination could eat breakfast; Faith sitting on the porch, holding a conversation with absolutely nobody. But most of these incidents Mariah had tried to hide from Ian, seemingly embarrassed, instead of flaunting them as proof. He tells himself that she’s acting every bit as much as he is, that she’s playing dumb in the hopes that Ian will become a convert like the rest of the poor fools who’ve been suckered in by Faith. He tells himself this because the alternative–unthinkable!–is that his hunch about Mariah is incorrect. And if he’s misjudged her, then what else might he be wrong about?
“If I asked you what you were going to say about her,” Mariah asks, “would you tell me the truth?”
Ian thinks of Michael, of the story he will have when this is all over. But he schools his face into a furrow of confusion and looks away. “I’d tell you if I could, Mariah. But the fact of the matter is, right now, I don’t know what I’m going to say.”
New Canaan, New Hampshire Joan Standish has listened to the news reports and the growing coverage of Faith White’s mysterious absence from New Canaan.
Petra Saganoff begins each Hollywood Tonight! report with a countdown: Day Three Without Faith, Day Four. The local NBC affiliate, a respectable channel, has even featured a live broadcast during which a caller said that he’d seen Faith in line for a movie in San Jose, California–and then ruined his credibility by shouting out something about how Howard Stern rocks. All in all, she hasn’t paid much attention to the story, apart from feeling sympathy for the little girl caught in the middle of it.
But then Malcolm Metz’s high-profile Manchester law firm called to say that they’d been trying to serve papers to her client since Tuesday, a motion to change custody on behalf of Colin White. Her client? Who knew if Mariah White wanted Joan’s representation?
She hadn’t talked to the woman since the divorce came through.
But for reasons she doesn’t fully understand or want to analyze, she finds herself driving to the Whites’ house during her lunch hour. None of the programming she’s seen prepares her for the drive up the long, hilly road, lined on both sides with cars that have their hatches popped, and makeshift picnics and tailgates spread across their insides. People cluster in small groups–the media representatives and the others, the ones who think Faith can help. They line the edge of the stone wall that separates the White property from the road, caretakers bent over their wheelchair-bound charges, blind men with harnessed dogs, curious Christians wearing cameras around their necks that tangle in the chains of their oversized crosses.
God, there have to be at least two hundred people.
Joan pumps the brakes on her Jeep at a small roadblock erected at the end of the driveway. Two local policemen are manning it; they recognize her as one of the town’s few attorneys. “Paul,” she greets him. “This is something.”
“Haven’t been here recently, huh?” the cop says. “You ought to show up after lunch, when the cult gets to singing.”
Joan shakes her head. “I don’t suppose Mariah White is really at home after all?”
“No such luck. Course, then there’d be a hundred more loonies.”
“Is anyone here?”
“Her mother–holding down the fort, I guess.”
He steps back so Joan can drive through. She parks at the edge of the lawn and walks up the porch stairs to knock on the front door. An older woman’s face appears in the sidelight,
clearly weighing whether or not to open up.
“I’m Joan Standish,” she yells. “Your daughter’s attorney.”
The door swings open. “Millie Epstein.
Come in.” The woman hovers around Joan as she steps inside. “Did something happen to them?”
“To whom?”
“Mariah and Faith.” Millie anxiously worries her hands. “They’re not here, you know.”
“As far as I know, they’re fine. But I do need to get in touch with your daughter.” Joan is a professional when it comes to reading the clues on a person’s face, and Millie Epstein clearly is hiding something. “Mrs. Epstein, this is incredibly important.”
“I don’t know where they are. I swear it.”
Joan considers this for a moment. “But you’ve heard from them,” she guesses.
“No.”
“Then you’d better hope Mariah calls soon, because I have a message. You tell her that her ex-husband is suing for custody of their daughter. And that no matter how noble her intentions were in taking Faith away from all this, what a judge is going to see is that she bucked the system by going underground when papers were being served.
And frankly, Mrs. Epstein, that pisses off judges. The longer she stays hidden, the greater the chance that Colin White will be given custody.” The older woman’s face is white, her lips pressed tight. “You tell her to call me,”
Joan says softly.
Millie nods. “I will.”
Lake Perry, Kansas–October 24,
Mariah finds herself unable to sleep. She turns on her side and watches the night sky through the cabin’s window, the moon rising and the stars three-dimensional, as if she could reach out and have them settle on her palm. She marks time by Faith’s steady breathing and lets questions chase their own tails in her mind: How long can we stay?
Where do we go next? How is my mother coping? Will a reporter arrive here the next day, or the next, or the next?
She sits up, tugging down the sweatshirt she’s been using as sleepwear. Ian had bought Faith a nightgown, but not one for herself. She thinks of him rifling through serviceable flannels,
slinkier silks, wondering what he might choose for her. Then, feeling her cheeks flame, she gets up and paces. No reason to dream about things that won’t ever come to pass.
She would love to go for a walk now, but that would mean trekking through the living room, where Ian is sleeping. Instead she crosses to the window and gazes out. Ian is leaning against the hood of the car. The copper glow of a cigar paints his face in profile, as wide-eyed and preoccupied as Mariah herself. She stares unabashedly, wondering what keeps him up at night, willing him to turn.
When he does, when their eyes meet,
Mariah’s heart hitches. She presses her hands against the window sash, caught. They do not move, they do not speak, they simply let the night tie them tight. Then Ian crunches the cigar beneath his heel, and Mariah gets back into bed, each mulling over the thought that he or she is not the only one counting the minutes till morning.
Atlanta–CNN Studios Larry King smooths down his scarlet tie and looks at his guest. “You ready?” he asks, not waiting for an answer, and then the tiny light at the edge of the camera flickers to life. “We’re back with Rabbi Daniel Solomon, spiritual leader of Beit Am Hadash, which is affiliated with ALEPH, or Jewish Renewal.”
“Yes,” Rabbi Solomon says, still awkward after ten minutes on the air.
“Hello.” He is wearing a moth-eaten black jacket–the only one he has with lapels,
instead of a mandarin collar–and his trademark tie-dyed T-shirt, but he might as well be naked. There are millions of people listening to him–
millions!–after his years of fighting to be heard.
He keeps reminding himself that he owes this fortuitous interview to Faith White, as well as to his own congregation. So what if King’s brought in a Catholic prig of a professor to rebut whatever Solomon says?
Even David managed to conquer Goliath, with God on his side.
“Rabbi,” King says, capturing Daniel’s attention. “Is Faith White the Messiah?”
“Well, she’s certainly not the Jewish Messiah,” Rabbi Solomon says, rolling his shoulders in the familiar feel of his own theological turf. “One criterion for a Jewish Messiah involves creating a sovereign Jewish state, according to the Torah. And nothing that Faith’s heard from God indicates this.” He crosses his legs. “The interesting thing about a Messiah is that it differs greatly from Judaism to Christianity. To Jews, the Messiah won’t show up until we’ve managed to rid the world of all its evil and make it ready for a divine being. To Christians, far as I understand, the Messiah heralds the age of redemption. Brings it with Him. Jews have to work to get to a Messianic age; Christians have to wait.”
“If I can object?”
They turn at the sound of a voice on a TV monitor overhead. “Yes, please do,” King says. “Father Cullen Mulrooney, chair of theology at Boston College. You were saying,
Father?”
“I find it irresponsible for a rabbi to tell me what Christians have to do.”
“Let’s talk about that, Father,” Larry King asks, tapping a pen on the desktop. “How come the Catholic Church is investigating the claims of a little Jewish girl?”
Mulrooney smiles. “Because she’s affecting a large group of Catholics.”
“The fact that she’s only seven isn’t an issue?”
“No. Visionaries younger than Faith White have been accredited by the Catholic Church. And actually, seven used to be called the age of reason, when a person was mature enough to be morally responsible for his own deeds. That’s why the first confession takes place then.”
Larry King purses his lips. “By the admission of her mother, this is not a girl who is schooled in formal religion–any religion.
Let’s take a caller.” He pushes a button. “Hello?”
“Hello? I have a question for the rabbi. If she’s not a Jewish Messiah, what is she?”
Rabbi Solomon laughs. “A little girl who is exceptionally spiritual, maybe more skilled at opening herself up to God than the rest of us.”
A second caller’s voice fills the studio. “If she’s Jewish, why does she have the wounds of Christ?”
“If I may I address that?” Father Mulrooney asks. “I think it’s important to remember that the bishop hasn’t offered any official statement about the alleged stigmata.
It may take years … decades … before the bleeding is authenticated by the Vatican.”
“But it’s a good point,” Larry King says.
“We’re not talking about a Carmelite nun here,
just a kid, and a non-Christian one at that.” He turns to Rabbi Solomon. “How come a Jewish girl would develop the wounds of a savior she doesn’t believe in?”
“Faith White is a blank slate,” Father Mulrooney cuts in. “If a religious innocent, a non-Christian, develops the wounds of Christ, surely that’s proof that Jesus is the one true Lord.”
Rabbi Solomon smiles. “I didn’t see it like that at all. I think God’s picked a little Jewish girl and tossed stigmata into the mix because it’s the way to gather many different people.
Christians, Jews–we’re all watching her now.”
“But why now? Why wait thousands of years, and then just show up? Does it have to do with the millennium?”
“Absolutely,” the priest says. “For years the turn of the century has been posed as the apocalypse, and people are looking for redemption.”
The rabbi laughs. “Forget the millennium.
According to the Jewish calendar, there’s forty-three years to go before we even hit the turn of the century.”
“Caller?” King says, pushing another button.
“She’s the devil’s handmaiden. She–“
“Thank you,” King says, cutting off the line.
“Hi, you’re on the air.”
“I say good for Faith White. Even if she’s making the whole damned thing up, it’s about time someone suggested God might be a woman.”
“Gentlemen? Is God male?”
“No,” say the rabbi and the priest,
simultaneously.
“God is neither, and both,” Mulrooney says. “But there’s so much more to a vision than just physical attributes. There’s the concrete,
verifiable sign of proof apart from the vision, and the visionary’s piousness and Christian virtue–“
“I’ve always resented that,” Rabbi Solomon murmurs. “The idea that it’s only Christians who have virtue.”
“That’s not what–“
“You know what your problem is?” the rabbi accuses. “You say you’re open-minded. But only as long as your visionary happens to be seeing something you all like. You sit on a college faculty.
You haven’t even met the girl, but she’s a round peg in a square hole, so you’re discrediting her with your theology.”
“Now, just a moment,” Father Mulrooney says, fuming. “At least I have a theology.
What kind of radical hippie movement calls itself Jewish but uses chanting and Buddhism and Native American imagery?”
“Hey, there’s room for a female God in Jewish theology.”
The priest shakes his head. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t Hebrew prayers addressed to “adonai eloheinu”–the Lord our God?”
“Yes,” Rabbi Solomon says. “But there are many Hebrew names for God. Hashem, for example, which means “the name”–very unisex.
There’s God’s presence, Shekhinah,
traditionally considered to be a feminine term. My personal favorite word for God is Shaddai. It’s always conjugated in the masculine, and for years rabbis have translated it to mean “the Hill God” or “the Mountain God.” Yet shaddai is amazingly similar to the word shaddaim … which means “breasts.”"
“Oh, for criminy’s sake,” Father Mulrooney snorts. “And “hello” minus the o is “hell.”"
“Why, you–” Rabbi Solomon nearly comes out of his chair, until Larry King restrains him with a touch of his hand.
“Faith White, healer or hoax?”
King says smoothly. “We’ll be back in a minute.” When the camera light blinks off, Father Mulrooney is an alarming shade of scarlet,
and Rabbi Solomon’s eyes are blazing with anger. “Look, you guys are giving me terrific stuff, but try not to kill each other,
all right? We’ve got to fill twenty more minutes of air time.”
Lake Perry, Kansas–October 25,
A full Kansas moon is a remarkable sight, luminous and filled to bursting as it grazes the plains. It is the kind of moon that coaxes animals out of hiding, that makes cats dance on fenceposts and barn owls cry. It changes you, if only for the time you stare at it, making your blood beat thick and your head spin to a song played on bare branches and marsh reeds. It is the kind of moon that thrusts its belly toward Ian and Mariah on Monday night, only hours before he will go to visit Michael.
This has become their habit, a moment to wind down before Mariah goes inside to bed and Ian goes back to work. On the porch they speak of easy things: geese they have seen flying south, the remarkable number of stars, the way winter already hangs in the air. They wrap up in plaid blankets and sit side by side until their cheeks pinken and their noses run and they surrender to the cold. Tonight Ian has been unusually quiet. He knows what he has to do–the acting job of his life, essentially–but he’s putting it off. Every time he draws in a breath to start, he looks at Mariah and realizes that he does not want to set in motion the beginning of the end.
Mariah yawns. “Well, I guess I’d better go in.” She glances around the porch for stray items that Faith might have left outside and reaches for a pair of shoes. “I swear that girl sheds,” she murmurs, then picks up a worn leather Bible. Clearly assuming that Faith found it inside the cabin, she tries to tuck it into the folds of her blanket before Ian can notice.
“Actually, that’s mine.”
“The Bible?”
He shrugs. “It’s a starting point for my speeches. It’s great reading. Course, I see it as fiction, not fact.” He closes his eyes, tilts back his head. “Ah, hell.
I’m lying to you, Mariah.”
He can sense the moment she tenses, takes a mental step back. “I beg your pardon?”
“I lied. I was reading the Bible tonight because …
well, because I wanted to. And that’s not all I lied about. I let you think I was on that plane because I followed you to Kansas City, but I was booked on the flight before you probably ever thought of running to the airport. I come here fairly often, matter of fact, to see someone.”
“Someone.” Her voice is cool, and although it’s what Ian expected, it still smarts.
She is anticipating a producer, a documentary filmmaker, some other satellite person who might expose Faith. “A relative who’s autistic. Michael lives out here in an assisted-care facility, because he can’t function by himself in the regular world. It’s real private to me, which is why no one knows about him–
not my producer, not my staff. When I saw you and Faith on that plane, I knew you figured I was tailing you. I wasn’t, but I didn’t want you to know why I was there. So I did what you expected–I followed you.”
He rakes his hands through his hair. “What I didn’t figure on was what might happen when I did that.” Ian glances away. “Faith–
I’ve seen her day in and day out, now. And the more time I spend with her, the more I wonder if maybe there isn’t something to her story, if maybe I’m wrong.” He swallows hard. “I go out during the day and I see Michael and then I’ll come back home and see Faith, and– God, the two of them get all tangled up and my head starts spinning:
What if? What if she’s telling the truth?
What if she could cure Michael? And then, just as quick, I’m ashamed of myself–me, the great disbeliever!–for even thinking such a thing.” Ian turns to Mariah, his eyes glistening, his voice broken. “Can she do it? Can she make miracles happen?”
He can read Mariah’s heart in her eyes;
she sees him as a man in pain. She reaches for his hand. “Of course we’ll go see your relative, Ian,” she murmurs. “And if Faith can do something, then she will. And if she can’t,
it’s no different from what you’ve been saying all along.”
Without a word Ian lifts her hand to his lips, the very image of gratitude, even as the tiny microphone and tape recorder hidden in his clothing capture Mariah’s promise.
October 26, 1999 Lockwood is an ugly place. The halls and floors are the color of pistachio ice cream. There are doors lined up like dominoes, and each one has a little box outside with a chart stuffed into it. Mr. Fletcher leads them to the end of a hall, where they enter a room that’s a lot nicer than anything else Faith’s seen. There are books on the walls and a bunch of tables with board games and even some classical music playing.
It reminds her a little bit of the library in New Canaan, except the library doesn’t have nurses walking around in their soft white sneakers.
Her mother hasn’t told her much of anything,
except that Mr. Fletcher has a sick relative they are going to visit today. It’s fine with her; that cabin is so boring. Plus, some of the rooms that they passed had TV. Maybe this person has the Disney Channel, and Faith can watch while the grown-ups all talk.
Mr. Fletcher walks to the corner of the room,
where a man is sitting with a deck of cards. The guy doesn’t even turn around when they get close, but just says, “Ian’s here.
Three-thirty on Tuesday. Just like always.”
“Just like,” Mr. Fletcher answers, and his voice sounds strange to Faith, stiff and high.
Then the man turns around, and Faith’s eyes go wide. Why, if she didn’t know any better, she would have said it was Mr. Fletcher himself.
Mariah’s mouth drops open. His twin?
Pieces begin to fall into place: why Ian would keep this a secret, why he visited on a regular basis, why he had such a vested interest in having Faith meet this Michael. She falls back to the periphery, where Ian has asked her to stand with Faith while he slowly approaches his brother.
“Hey, buddy,” Ian says.
“Ten of diamonds. Eight of clubs.” The cards fall in a pile, fanning out across the table.
“Eight of clubs,” Ian repeats, settling into a chair.
Ian has told her that Michael has been diagnosed as severely autistic. His survival strategy in the real world is to live by a routine. To break the routine sets him off.
It can be as simple as someone’s rearranging the order of the eating utensils on his napkin, or Ian’s staying two minutes past the hourlong visit. And he cannot stand to be touched.
Ian has told her that this is the way Michael will always be.
Faith yanks at her hand. “Let go,” she whispers.
Michael turns over an ace. “Oh, no.”
“Ace in the hole,” the brothers say in unison.
There is something of the scene that moves Mariah greatly: Ian sitting inches away from a man who could be his mirror image, trying to connect with words that do not signify anything. She brings up her hand to wipe at her eyes and realizes she’s no longer holding on to Faith.
Her daughter moves toward the card table. “Can I play, too?”
Frozen, Ian waits for Michael’s reaction. He turns from Ian to Faith and then back to Ian and begins to shout at the top of his lungs. “Ian comes alone! Three-thirty on Tuesday. Not Monday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday; alone alone alone!” With his hand, he thrashes at the cards so that they scatter across his lap and the floor.
“Faith.” Mariah tries to draw her away as a member of the staff arrives to calm Michael down. But Faith is crawling around on the floor, picking up the fallen cards. Michael is rocking, throwing off the soothing words of the nurse who knows better than to lay a hand on him.
Faith awkwardly sets the pack of cards on the table, staring curiously at the grown man with the mind of a child. “It might be best if you and your friends go,
Mr. Fletcher,” the attendant says softly.
“But–“
“Please.”
Ian flings himself out of the chair and walks from the room. Mariah reaches for Faith and follows him, glancing over her shoulder once to see Michael reach for the deck of cards, cuddle it close to his chest.
Just outside the library, Ian closes his eyes and takes great, deep breaths of air. Just as whenever Michael has an episode,
he finds himself shaking. But somehow this seems worse.
Mariah and Faith slip outside and wait beside him quietly. He can barely even stand to look at them. “That was your miracle?”
There is a phenomenal rage running through him,
like a poison working its way through his system. He doesn’t know why, or where it’s come from. After all, this is what he had expected to happen.
But not what he’d hoped.
The thought catches him unawares, pulls the world out from beneath his feet. He feels himself spinning and has to lean against the wall. All the bullshit he’d fed to Mariah last night, all the little concessions he’d made during the week to make them think he was starting to believe in Faith … they weren’t really lies. Professionally, Ian may have wanted Faith to fail today. But personally, he had wanted her to succeed.
Autism isn’t something you can fix with a blink or a touch of your hand; he’s known that all along.
Faith White, for all her claims, is a fake. But being right, this time, doesn’t bring him any sense of satisfaction. This little girl,
who’s been playing everyone for a fool, has managed to show Ian he’s only been fooling himself.
Mariah touches his arm, and he shrugs it off.
Like Michael, he thinks, and he wonders if his brother cannot stand to be touched because he cannot bear such open, honest pity. “Just go away,” he mutters,
and he finds himself walking off. By the time he reaches the doors, he’s nearly running. He circles around to the back of Lockwood, to the small pond with its brace of swans. Then he rips the microphone from beneath his lapel. He takes the microcassette recorder out of his pocket, tape still turning. He throws them both as hard as he can into the water.
It is nearly three-thirty in the morning before Ian returns to the cabin. Mariah knows exactly what time it is; she’s been waiting up the whole night, worried. After running from Lockwood, Ian had driven off in the car,
leaving her and Faith to find their own transportation back. And even after the taxi had dropped them off and the car was nowhere in sight, Mariah assumed Ian would return by dinnertime. By nine o’clock. Midnight.
She’s been picturing the car in a ditch,
wrapped around a tree–clearly, he is too upset to be out driving. Relieved that he’s safe, she walks from her bedroom to the living room. The fumes of alcohol reach Mariah before she even sees Ian lounging on the couch with his shirt unbuttoned, gripping a bottle of Canadian Club by the neck. “Please, just go away.”
Mariah wets her lips. “I’m so sorry,
Ian. I don’t know why Faith was able to help my mother but not Michael.”
“I’ll tell you why,” he says tightly.
“Because she is a goddamned hoax. She couldn’t heal a fucking paper cut, Mariah! Just give up the act already, will you?”
“It’s not an act.”
“It is. It’s all an act.” He waves the bottle, sloshing liquor on the couch cushions. “I’ve been acting since the minute I saw y’all on the plane, and God knows your daughter’s gunning for a goddamned Oscar, and you … you–“
He leans so close to Mariah, she can taste the Canadian Club on his breath. She hesitates, then leans forward and kisses him.
It is slow at first, a gentle rubbing of his lips against hers. She reaches around his head and brings him closer, kissing him deeply, drawing out whatever is hurting him so badly.
Ian’s throat works for a moment before he can speak. “What was that for?”
“I’m not acting, Ian.”
Setting his palms on her cheeks, Ian tips his forehead to hers. “You don’t understand.”
Mariah stares at his haunted features, but sees instead Ian sitting beside his twin, trying to play by the odd rules of engagement because it’s better to have that than nothing at all. Ian’s wrong. She knows him better than he might think.
“I’d like to understand,” she says.
Ian Fletcher had been born two and a half minutes before his brother Michael: bigger,
stronger, more active than his twin, a circumstance for which he’d been paying for the rest of his life.
Clearly, Ian had taken the lion’s share of nourishment and space in the womb, and although no doctor ever said so, he felt responsible for his brother’s ill health and slow responsiveness,
perhaps even for the autism that Michael was diagnosed with as a toddler.
Their parents had been rich, jet-setting socialites from Atlanta who married late in life and held their Learjet, their restored plantation manor, and their condo on Grand Cayman in much higher esteem than they did their twin sons. Ian and Michael had been a mistake, and clearly one they didn’t talk about, since something was obviously not quite right with one of the boys. They lived high off the hog,
traveling around the world for months at a time and leaving Ian and Michael in the hands of whatever tutor or nanny had been hired to deal with them.
Ian knew he was responsible for Michael; he understood that as soon as he was able to understand the differences between them. Privately tutored, Ian did not have friends or playmates. What he had,
what he’d always had, was his brother.
When Ian was twelve, his father’s lawyer arrived in the middle of the night with the local sheriff. His parents’ plane had crashed in the Alps, and there were no survivors.
Overnight the world changed. Ian learned that the lifestyle to which they’d been accustomed was courtesy of an immense credit-card debt, one that left the boys bankrupt before an inheritance could even be considered. Ian and Michael were placed in the reluctant custody of his mother’s sister and her Bible-thumping husband, and uprooted to Kansas.
But his aunt and uncle had no intention of trying to understand Michael’s psychological problems, and they didn’t have the resources to hire someone else to do so. The state’s public-education system would have paid to send Michael anywhere in Kansas, but no one researched the choices, and so Michael was sent to the nearest institution with an open bed, a place that reeked of feces and urine, a place where Michael was the only patient even able to talk.
Ian visited him, even when his aunt and uncle stopped coming. He went to the library and found out which residential homes had the best reputations, but no one would listen. He spent six years wondering what horrors Michael had suffered that made him regress, unwilling to dress himself in the morning and rocking more often in silence and absolutely, positively refusing to be touched.
On the day that Ian and Michael turned eighteen, Ian dressed in a secondhand suit from a thrift store and petitioned a Kansas City court for custody of his brother. He got a scholarship to Kansas State and worked around the clock to pay for his books and to save money. He learned all about group homes for autistic adults and met with doctors who told him Michael was not capable of such an independent arrangement yet. He learned about assisted-care facilities–how they took both federal and state aid, and would take some indigent cases, but very few. How you had to know someone in the right place at the right time, or you’d be told there were no beds available. How you then paid for a quality of care,
and continued to pay, lest that precious bed be given to someone else.
Ian’s drive to succeed was fueled by his brother. It dovetailed naturally with the fact that a long time ago, he’d stopped believing in God. What God would have taken away his parents, his childhood? Most important, what God would have done this to his brother? Ian was angry, and, to his surprise, people wanted to listen: first, grade-school English teachers,
then theology professors, then radio listeners,
and then TV producers and viewers. The more famous he became, the easier it was to pay Michael’s board at Lockwood. The more outspoken he became, the more quickly he clawed his way back to a lifestyle he had only barely remembered.
When Michael was twenty-two, he began to feed himself again. At twenty-six he was able to button his own shirt. At thirty-seven he still refuses to be touched.
Suddenly Mariah understands what has fashioned a man like Ian Fletcher. He spent years making himself into someone other than that lost little boy–
into someone whose cornerstone is disbelief in God–
and with good reason. How painful it must have been to find himself hoping–praying–that a miracle might come about after all.
She also realizes that Ian might have gotten his brother into Lockwood, and might have reached the financial peak he’d staked out in order to pay for his brother’s care, but her intuition tells her that Ian hasn’t gotten what he needs most of all. He’s been taking care of Michael all his life–but it has been years since anyone has taken care of Ian.
Mariah starts out slowly, running her hand over his hair, then flipping it over so that her knuckles graze his throat and his jaw. She raises her palms to his cheeks and draws them down the slope of his shoulders, watching him close his eyes like a cat in the sun. Then she wraps her arms around him tightly, fits her face into the crook of his neck, and feels him shudder.
His arms close about her with such force that she cannot breathe, cannot do anything but ride out the crest of his need. His hands map her back and her shoulders, his lips falling at her ear. “Thank you,” he whispers.
Mariah draws back and kisses him. “My pleasure.”
Ian smiles. “Let’s hope so.” He kisses her and lets his lips silver her skin.
He undresses her, reaches into his wallet for a condom, and uses his hands and his tongue to navigate her body.
Is it her imagination, or does he linger at her wrists, the places that still make her ashamed?
Mariah pictures herself shrinking, small and malleable beneath Ian’s hands, until she feels that surely she would be able to fit inside one of her dollhouses, walk on its pristine floors and look into its spotless mirrors. She opens her eyes as Ian moves over her, into her.
It has taken years to find out, she thinks, but this is what it was like to be a perfect fit.
Ian’s rhythm becomes stronger. Mariah strains toward him, her fingers clutching his shoulders, her mouth round on the salt of his skin.
She stops thinking about Ian’s past, about Faith’s future, about anything at all. And just before Mariah splinters around him, she hears Ian’s voice fanning past her temple.
“Oh,” he cries, lost in her. “Oh,
God!”
“I didn’t,” Ian says, chuckling.
“You did.”
“Why do you think that is? I mean, it happens all the time, but if it’s just you and me in bed, why would I call out God’s name?”
Mariah laughs. “Force of habit.”
“For you, maybe.” He wraps his arms around her, still amazed by the lull of peace inside him now, steady as a flat-line. “I’m thinking it has more to do with divinity.”
Mariah turns in his embrace. “Does it?”
she says, her eyes darting away. “Was it … okay?”
Ian’s brows rise. “You have to ask?”
Her shoulders rise and fall, and his body instinctively tightens. “It’s just–well, I always wondered what would have happened if I was thirty pounds lighter, or platinum blond, or sexier. I thought that might have kept Colin’s interest.”
Ian is quiet for a moment. “If you were thirty pounds lighter, you’d blow away in the wind. If you were platinum blond, I wouldn’t recognize you. And if you were any sexier, you’d probably kill me.” He kisses her on the forehead. “I’ve seen your handiwork. You told me how you make those miniature houses. You made one hell of a daughter. So what is so hard about believing that anything you make … including love … might be any less exquisite?”
Ian frames Mariah’s face in his hands,
effortlessly sliding between her legs again. “You’re not perfect. You have this freckle here.” He points to her collarbone. “You can be downright stubborn. And your hips are–“
“I had a baby!”
Ian laughs. “I know. I’m just trying to show you that if you want to get clinical about perfection,
none of us would pass muster. Me least of all.”
He strokes her hair. “Colin is an idiot. And I do mean it this time when I say:
Thank God.”
Mariah smiles and snuggles closer on the nest of blankets they’ve made on the rug.
“Do you know what the most beautiful word in the English language is?”
“Let me think on it a minute.” Ian wrinkles his brow in concentration.
“”Mellifluous.”"
Mariah shakes her head. “”Uxorious,”"
she breathes. “Excessively fond of one’s wife.”
In his whole life, Ian cannot remember ever feeling this sense of peace, right here in this hellhole of a Kansas cabin. This is his temporary reprieve, he knows. His truce.
Tomorrow he will have to tell Mariah that he has been lying all along, that he cultivated her sympathy from the moment they stepped off the plane just so that he’d be able to set Faith up for a fall. Tomorrow he’ll have to tell her that he intentionally recorded Faith’s disastrous meeting with Michael, even if he no longer has the tape.
Tomorrow he’ll have to decide how much to reveal to his producer.
Tomorrow will be soon enough to have her hate him.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she says, yawning.
A penny? They’re worth a far piece more.
“I don’t think we get a choice in who we fall for,” Ian whispers. “I think we just do.”
But Mariah’s breathing is even and regular, and Ian realizes she’s already drifted off. He savors the weight of her numbing his arm and warming his skin, and moments later–for the first time in years–
Ian falls into a deep, easy sleep.
It is just after five in the morning when Ian slips away from Mariah. He covers her with the blanket, unsure of whether or not she sleeps naked as a matter of course and not wanting Faith to come bounding in to find her sprawled that way. He dresses quickly and writes Mariah a quick note that says when he’ll be back, where he is going,
and nothing important at all.
He drives to Lockwood. Why he is returning, he cannot say. Clearly, if his brother was set off by the presence of Mariah and Faith interrupting the regular schedule, then a 6:00 A.m. visit isn’t going to go smoothly. It’s just that things had been left so rough. Michael shouting, and Ian storming off …
He doesn’t want a week to pass before he sees him again. If Michael is asleep,
Ian can just peek in, make sure he’s all right, and get on his way.
The staff gives Ian a wide berth as he walks to his brother’s room and pushes open the door. Michael is snoring softly, his face relaxed, his big body sprawled over the covers. “Hey, buddy,” Ian whispers, and then hesitates before he touches his brother’s hair.
Michael’s eyes open with a start. “Ian?”
“That’s right.” He quickly withdraws his hand and glances at the clock over the door, certain that Michael is about to start screaming, but instead his brother yawns and stretches.
“How come you’re here so early?” Michael says. Ian blinks at him, stunned. “What,
you’ve got no place better to go?”
His brother, who has not spoken about anything but cards for the past three years, is teasing him.
Ian narrows his eyes, taking in the spark of understanding, of connection, in his brother’s eyes.
“God, Ian. And they say you’re the smart one.” Michael holds out his arms, an invitation.
“Michael,” Ian breathes, folding his twin into an embrace. When Michael’s hand pats him clumsily on the back, he loses the power of speech.
Gaining control, he draws back to talk–
really talk!–to his brother, but finds Michael’s expression remote. Ian watches him take the deck of cards from the nightstand.
“Four of diamonds. Three of spades.
Seven of diamonds. Ian comes at three-thirty on Tuesday. Not Monday Wednesday Thursday–“
Dumbfounded, Ian steps back from the bed.
He walks out of Michael’s room before a full-blown tantrum begins, certain that he’s imagined the whole surreal encounter, that his brother was actually asleep the entire time. With a sigh Ian digs for his car keys and pulls something unexpected from his breast pocket–the jack of hearts, slipped there minutes before by someone close enough to truly touch him.
