Love is like a butterfly, it settles upon you when you least expect it.
ePub
A4PART FOURTEEN
H
e saved others; himself he cannot save.–Matthew 2742 December 3, 1999–Morning There had been times, when Faith was an infant and Mariah was still slightly amazed to find a baby sleeping beside her or nursing at her own breast, that she’d be overwhelmed with terror. Years stretched out in front of her like red roads on a map,
filled with hazards and errors. Faith’s life,
at that point, was unmarked and unscarred. It was up to Mariah to keep it that way.
It became clear to her quickly that this was a job she could never adequately fill, not without feeling deficient. How could she even be considered remotely qualified to be a mother, knowing that she was every bit as fallible as this baby was perfect? In the stitch of a moment, anything could go wrong–an earthquake, a viral flu, a pacifier dropped into the gutter. She would look into her daughter’s face and see accidents waiting to happen. And then her vision would clear and she would see only love, a well so deep that you could try and try and never know its bottom, but only suck in your breath at its frightening depth.
Faith stirs in her sleep, and immediately Mariah turns. Of its own volition, Faith’s bandaged hand twitches across the covers of the hospital bed and burrows beneath Mariah’s. At the contact, Faith stops moving and relaxes again.
Suddenly Mariah wonders if moments like this are what qualify you as a good parent: realizing that no matter how you try, you will not be able to protect a child from the tragedies or the missteps or the nightmares. Maybe the job of a mother is not to shelter but to bear witness as a child hits full force … and then to cushion the fall when it’s over.
Mariah’s hands are pressed tight against her mouth. She has to keep them that way, because if she doesn’t she will surely break into loud, hoarse sobs or shout at one of the well-meaning nurses to get away from her daughter.
“I don’t understand,” Millie says quietly, standing with Mariah a few feet from Faith’s bed. “She’s never been sick like this before. Maybe it’s a bug, something she caught on top of the bleeding.”
“It’s not a bug,” Mariah whispers.
“She’s dying.”
Millie looks up, startled. “What on earth makes you say that?”
“Look at her.”
Faith is pale against the hospital sheets.
Her hands, still oozing blood, are matted with bandages that have not yet been changed. Her fever has fluctuated from 104 to 106 degrees, no matter how many tepid baths and alcohol washes and grams of Tylenol and Advil she’s been given intravenously. Watching her makes Mariah nervous. She finds herself staring at the slight flare of Faith’s nostrils, counting the subtle rhythms of her chest.
Millie purses her mouth and walks from Faith’s room to the comparative quiet of the front desk. “Has Colin White called?”
she asks, knowing that the phones in Faith’s room have been diverted to allow her to sleep.
“No, Mrs. Epstein,” the nurse says.
“I’ll come in the minute he does.”
Instead of returning to Faith, Millie moves down the corridor. There, she leans against the wall and covers her face with her hands.
“Mrs. Epstein?”
She quickly wipes away tears to find Dr.
Blumberg standing before her. “Don’t mind me,”
she sniffs.
They fall into step, slowing as they approach the door to Faith’s room. “Has there been any change since last night?”
“Not that I can tell,” Millie says,
pausing at the threshold. “I’m worried about Mariah. Maybe you could say something.”
Dr. Blumberg nods and enters the room.
Mariah lifts her eyes just enough to see the nurses scatter. The physician pulls up a chair.
“How are you doing?”
“I’d rather talk about Faith,” Mariah answers.
“Well, I’m not sure what to do for her just yet. You, though … you want something to help you sleep?”
“I want Faith to wake up and come home with me,” she says firmly, staring at the shell of Faith’s ear. There were times when Faith was a baby that Mariah would watch the blood coursing through the thin membrane of skin, thinking that surely she could see the platelets and the cells,
the energy going to this tiny body.
Dr. Blumberg clasps his hands between his knees. “I don’t know what’s the matter with her, Mariah. I’ll run more lab tests this morning. And I’ll do whatever I can to keep her comfortable; you have my word on that.”
Mariah stares at the doctor. “You want to know what’s the matter with her? She’s dying. How come I can see that, even without a medical degree?”
“She’s not dying. If that were the case, I’d tell you.”
Mariah focuses on Faith’s face with a passion, gazing at the blue smudges beneath her eyes, the tiny slope of her nose. She leans close, so close that only Faith will be able to hear her words. “Don’t you give up on me,”
she whispers. “Don’t you dare. You didn’t for years and years. Don’t you do it now.”
“Mariah, honey, we’ve got to go to court.”
Millie taps her wristwatch. “Ten o’clock.”
“I’m not going.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
Mariah turns so quickly her mother takes a step back. “I’m not going. I’m not leaving her.” She touches Faith’s cheek. “I do have a choice.”
The only concession that Joan Standish has made to the fact that she’ll be facing the infamous Malcolm Metz in a courtroom is the addition of fifteen minutes of butt exercises to her daily routine. They come in between brushing her teeth and drinking coffee, a brutal procession of squats and lunges and lifts that leave her clenched and sweating. She likes to picture Metz while she does them, imagines him gaping at her fanny after she wins the case and sashays away down the hall of the superior court.
So on the morning of the custody hearing, she does her exercises, showers, and then pulls a red wool suit from her closet. It’s conservative, but it’s bright, and she’s willing to use any trick she can to draw attention away from Malcolm Metz.
Sometime during her bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats she remembers that she needs gas in her car. Joan gives herself a mental pat on the back for attention to detail; maybe even at this very moment Metz is running ten minutes late because he forgot to fill up. She washes her hands carefully so as not to splatter her suit and gathers up the briefcase she’s packed the night before.
She leaves twenty minutes ahead of schedule, thinking it’s good to be a little early, never knowing that the phone in her house rings just moments after she is gone.
Joan can feel the perfect cone of calm she’s erected around her professional self crack the moment Millie Epstein comes running toward her, clearly agitated. “Tell me Mariah’s in the bathroom,” Joan says warily.
“The hospital. I tried to call you.”
“What?”
“It’s not what you think,” she explains.
“It’s Faith. She’s incredibly sick, and Mariah refuses to leave her.”
“Goddamn it,” Joan mutters as Malcolm Metz and Colin and a young female associate approach the plaintiff’s table of the courtroom.
“Joan,” Metz says pleasantly,
“I’ve got one for you: What’s the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?”
“Not now.” Joan is vaguely aware that the gallery of the court, usually deserted for custody hearings, is now packed to the point of discomfort with media representatives.
“One’s a scum-sucking bottom feeder,”
Metz says, laughing, “and the other one’s a fish.
Get it?”
“Speak for yourself, Malcolm,” Joan says,
extracting files.
“All rise for the Honorable Judge A.
Warren Rothbottam!”
Joan stands, lifting her gaze at the last possible moment. Judge Rothbottam flips briefly through the file in front of him, then glances from the plaintiff to the defendant. “Ms.
Standish. Are you missing something?”
“My client, Your Honor. May I approach?”
Rothbottam sighs. “I just knew this one couldn’t go easy. Come on up.”
Metz falls into place beside Joan,
looking like the cat that has swallowed the canary.
“Your Honor,” Joan says, “there’s been a terrible emergency. My client’s daughter was hospitalized last night, and she won’t leave her bedside in order to be present in court. I request a continuance until the girl is released from the hospital.”
“Hospitalized?” Rothbottam looks for confirmation to Metz, who shrugs. “Is she dying?”
“I don’t believe so,” Joan answers.
“It’s my understanding that Faith is suffering from medically inexplicable bleeding.”
“So-called stigmata,” Metz interjects.
“The doctors have not come to that conclusion yet,”
Joan snaps.
“Oh, that’s right. It could be something worse.”
Rothbottam scowls at him. “If I feel that I need an interpreter, Mr. Metz, you’ll be the first one I call.” Turning to Joan, he says, “I assume the girl is in critical condition?”
“I … I think so, Your Honor.”
“I see. However, the child’s father managed to make it to the courtroom; I expect the mother to do the same. And don’t think I can’t see through some “angel of mercy” device. My docket is a nightmare until Christmas. I’m denying the request for a continuance. You’ve got twenty minutes to figure out how to get your client to come to court, or I’m sending a sheriff out there to bring her in locked up. We’ll resume at ten-thirty.”
“Before she goes to find the defendant, Your Honor,” Metz interjects, “I need a court order.”
“Do you,” the judge says dryly.
“Your Honor, time is of the essence here, and I need a ruling this morning on an issue that might make the difference between life and death for the girl.”
“What the hell is this?” Joan says. “An emergency hearing? Now?”
Metz bares his teeth at her. “That’s why they call it an emergency, Joan.”
“That’s it,” Rothbottam announces. “I want you two in chambers. Now.”
Joan walks to the defense table to collect her notepad. Seeing the judge leave, she runs down the aisle to the door and beckons Millie. As a sequestered witness,
she’s not in the courtroom–but isn’t allowed to stray too far. “Do whatever it takes to get her here,” Joan hisses. “She’d better be in court by the time I get out of chambers, or she’ll be dragged in by the police.”
When Joan enters the judge’s chambers,
Metz has already taken the comfortable chair.
Rothbottam waits for Joan to sit, too.
“Malcolm, what are you doing? This isn’t Manchester. This isn’t New York City. This isn’t the three-ring circus you like to run your dog-and-pony show in. This is New Canaan,
boy. Grandstanding isn’t going to get you jackshit.”
“Your Honor, this isn’t just a ploy for positioning. I need a restraining order against Mariah White, preventing her from visiting her daughter.”
Joan laughs. “Get over yourself,
Malcolm.”
“Your Honor, I won’t dignify that outburst. I was concerned enough when the physical damage to the child just involved Faith’s hands, but the situation’s gotten worse–the child is in critical condition at Connecticut Valley Medical Center. We’ve taken the liberty of contacting an expert, who’s on his way here from the West Coast as we speak, and who will explain why Mariah White exhibits the classic characteristics of a person suffering from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy–a mental illness that would cause her to harm her own daughter.”
Joan narrows her eyes, smelling a rat.
She’s savvy enough to know that Metz wouldn’t pull this strategy out of a hat overnight. It’s something he’s had lined up for a while, certainly long enough for her to depose his expert. This surprise witness is no surprise at all–at least not to Metz.
But he is the picture of innocence and righteous fervor. “It’s a complicated disorder. The mother actually makes a child physically or psychologically ill to attract attention to herself.
If the child is left in the mother’s care, well,
God only knows what might eventually happen.
Paralysis, coma, even death. Clearly, this issue will weigh upon who gets custody of the child in the long run, but for now, Your Honor, I beg you to protect Faith by issuing a restraining order against Mrs. White for the length of the trial.”
Joan waits for him to stop speaking, and then bursts out laughing. “Are you going to let him get away with this, Your Honor?”
Metz doesn’t even spare her a glance.
“Just listen to the evidence, Your Honor.
Isolating the child from the mother is the way Munchausen by Proxy is usually detected by mental-health professionals. If the mother can’t get to the child, the child suddenly isn’t sick all the time.” He leans forward. “What have you got to lose,
Judge? This is a win-win situation. If Mariah White isn’t suffering from Munchausen by Proxy … well, Faith’s in the hospital anyway, and in good hands. If Mrs. White is suffering from it, then you’ve saved the kid’s life. How can it possibly hurt to have a temporary order enforced until you’ve listened to the testimony of my expert and drawn a conclusion of your own?”
Judge Rothbottam turns to Joan. “You have anything to say, Standish?”
She looks at Metz, then at the judge.
“This is bullshit, Your Honor. In the first place, unlike Mr. Metz’s client, who clearly is putting his own interests first, the reason my client isn’t here is because she needs to be at her daughter’s bedside. That merits a commendation, not a restraining order. In the second place, Mr. Metz is trying to divert attention from my client’s devotion to her child with this new disease-of-the-week ploy. I don’t know what this syndrome is; I don’t even know how to spell the damn thing. This trial is starting in less than a half hour, and I’m ready to go, but out of nowhere Metz waltzes in with this obscure clinical diagnosis–not that I remember him getting a degree in psychology, come to think of it–and I’m going to need time to research it and make a rebuttal.”
“More-Us-Not–” Metz says slowly.
“Go jump in a lake.”
He raises his hands in mock affront. “Just trying to help you “spell the damn thing.”"
“I’m not done yet, Metz.” She turns toward the judge. “He can’t pull in a witness from thin air the day–no, correction–the minute the trial starts. That’s totally unfair.”
Judge Rothbottam turns to Metz. “If you cut out all the soliloquies I’m sure you’ve budgeted into your directs, how long will it take to run through your other witnesses?”
“I don’t know. Possibly into tomorrow.”
Rothbottam considers for a moment. “All right.
I’ll grant the restraining order for now.
Let’s play it by ear. We’ll start the trial,
and, Mr. Metz, you’ll put your Munchausen expert on last. When it comes to that, we’ll adjourn to chambers and see if Ms. Standish needs more time to prepare her cross.”
“I think it would be beneficial if everyone could hear testimony on the disorder first–“
“You’re lucky I’m letting you put the guy on the stand, period. This is what we’re doing.
I like it–the child is safe, Joan gets at least a day to prepare, and frankly, Metz, I don’t care what you think at all.” The judge cracks his knuckles and gestures toward the door. “Shall we?”
Early that morning Father MacReady walks into Faith’s room. He stops for a moment at the threshold, taken by the sight of Faith, intubated and deathly still, of Mariah holding her daughter’s forearm and dozing. Perhaps this wasn’t the time to bother them; he’d just heard from one of the parishioners that the girl had been taken off in an ambulance the night before, and he wanted to pay a call. He backs up toward the door quietly, but the sound of his boots on the linoleum makes Mariah startle awake.
“Oh,” she says huskily, then clears her throat. When she realizes who the visitor is,
she becomes visibly upset. “Why are you here?”
Father MacReady puts two and two together,
realizes that for some reason Mariah thinks he’s been summoned for last rites. It would never happen, since Faith is not a Catholic child, and yet that hasn’t stopped his interference in her life before. He sits down beside Mariah on a chair.
“I’m here as a friend, not as a priest,” he says.
He gazes at Faith’s small, pinched face–so tiny to have caused so much controversy.
“It was her hands again?”
Mariah nods. “Now it’s her fever, too.
And her dehydration. And the screaming and the fits.”
She rubs her hands over her face. “It was worse than the first time, much worse.”
“Fits?”
She shudders. “Colin and I–we could barely hold her down. The first time this happened, she was unconscious. But this time … this time she hurt.”
Father MacReady gently strokes his palm along Faith’s cheek. “”Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani,”" he murmurs.
The words make Mariah go still. “What did you say?”
Surprised, he turns. “It’s Hebrew,
actually.”
Mariah thinks back to the previous night, when Faith called out for Eli. She cannot be sure of the other unfamiliar syllables, but they could have been what Faith was moaning, as well. She tells this to the priest.
“It’s a biblical verse,” he says.
“Matthew twenty-seven: forty-six.”
“Faith doesn’t speak Hebrew.”
“But Jesus did. That was his language. The words translate to “My God, My God,
why hast thou forsaken me?”‘ Saint Matthew tells us that Christ didn’t go gently into that good night. At the last moment, he wanted to know why God was making him go through this.” He hesitates,
then looks at Mariah. “The bleeding, the pain,
that phrase–it sounds like Faith was in ecstasy.”
“Agony is more like it.”
“It’s not the word as you know it. Most accredited stigmatics experience periods of religious ecstasy. Without it, it’s just bleeding from the hands.”
At that moment Faith shifts in her sleep, and the blanket falls away to reveal the wound on her side. Father MacReady draws in a breath.
“This, too?” When Mariah nods, he knows that he is fairly glowing, that his response is inappropriate for the severity of the occasion. But the wound on Faith’s right side falls almost exactly where Jesus was supposedly nailed to the cross. It makes him dizzy, just to think of it.
Sobering, he calls upon his resources as a pastoral counselor. “Mariah, Faith isn’t feeling pain of her own. From everything you’ve told me, she was simply reliving Jesus’ pain,
acting out his sufferings on the cross.”
“Why her?”
“Why Him?” Father MacReady says quietly. “We don’t know why God gave us His only son, to die for our own sins. And we don’t know why God lets some people experience the Passion of Christ when others can’t even understand it.”
“Passion,” Mariah spits out. “Ecstasy.
Whoever came up with these names didn’t go through it.”
“Passion comes from the Latin passio.
“To suffer.”"
Mariah turns away from Father MacReady’s earnest convictions. Passion. She repeats the word softly to herself, and thinks of Ian, of Colin, of Faith, wondering if all love–earthly or divine–is certain to hurt.
When the nurses come to take Faith for X rays again, Mariah says good-bye to the priest.
She does not particularly care what happens to Father MacReady. She does not care if Faith is experiencing Christ’s suffering or her own. She only wants it to go away.
Faith is sitting in a wheelchair, nodding in and out of sleep. Mariah’s hand rests on her shoulder as the nurse wheels her into the elevator.
They get out on the third floor and wait in the hallway while the nurse finds out which room they are headed to.
While they stay there, a man is rushed by on a stretcher, surrounded by a knot of doctors all working frantically en route to the ER. Mariah hears them yelling out things about defibrillation and operating room number three and she shudders,
thinking of her mother’s heart. The man’s hand dangles off the stretcher, brushes Faith’s knee as he is wheeled by.
But Faith, moaning softly, doesn’t even seem to notice.
“Mariah.”
When she doesn’t answer, Millie grabs her shoulders and gives her a shake. “Have you heard anything I’ve been saying?”
“You go, Ma. I’ll try to come later.”
“You don’t understand. If you don’t get up and walk out this door, the police will physically carry you out.” Millie leans over her. “If you don’t come to the hearing, Colin will get Faith.”
That one sentence spikes through Mariah’s confusion. “He can’t,” she says, slowly getting to her feet. “He just can’t.”
Millie tugs her upright, sensing that she’s started to make some progress. She folds Mariah into her coat with the easy motions of a mother. “Then stop him,” she says.
“Call it.” Dr. Urquhart sighs. In OR Three the cardiac surgeon strips off his gloves and balls them inside out, trapping the blood from his patient’s chest within. He hears a nurse say “nine fifty-eight,” and the faint scratch of her pen on the patient’s chart.
Urquhart’s fingers are throbbing. Ten minutes of manual stimulation had not been enough to save the man,
but then again, having cracked open the fellow’s chest, Urquhart knows that another few rashers of bacon would have finished him off, too. At 80 and 75 percent blockage, respectively, it’s a wonder that Mr. Eversly made it this long.
He hears one of the surgical residents readying to prepare the patient so that he’ll be fit for a final viewing by family. With a groan,
Urquhart realizes the worst is yet to come.
There’s nothing worse than telling a relative a patient’s died under the knife, right before Christmas.
He takes the patient’s chart to sign off on the death, goes so far as to click his ballpoint pen, and then he’s stopped by the voice of the resident. “Dr. Urquhart. Look at this.”
He follows her eyes to the monitor–no longer a flat-line–and then to the open chest cavity of the patient, inside which a heart–healthy,
unclogged–is furiously beating.
“All rise! The Honorable A. Warren Rothbottam presiding!”
The courtroom swells with the sound of feet hitting the ground and pocket change jingling as everyone stands. The judge stalks to his seat, one eye on the group of onlookers packing the gallery. Rothbottam has heard that so many people were trying to get in, the bailiffs had to hold a lottery for the open seats.
He glances at the defendant’s table and sees Mariah White, thank the good Lord, just where she ought to be. Her hands are folded, her eyes trained on them as if they might at any moment fly up and betray her.
Rothbottam levels his gaze on the gallery. “Let’s get this straight right now.
I’m neither foolish nor na@ive enough to assume that the congestion of bodies in this courtroom has anything to do with my prowess as a judge or a sudden media interest in routine custody hearings. I know exactly who you all are and what you think you’re doing here. Well, this is not your news station. This is my courtroom. And in it,
I’m God.” He braces his hands on the bench. “If I see a camera come in with one of you, if I hear you cough too loud, if anyone applauds or boos a witness–at the first sign of any crap, you’re all out of here. And you can quote me on that.”
The reporters roll their eyes at each other.
“Counselors,” Rothbottam says to the attorneys. “I’m going to assume no other emergency motions have cropped up in the past half hour?”
“No, Your Honor,” Metz says. Joan shakes her head.
“Terrific.” He nods at Metz. “You may begin.”
Malcolm gets to his feet, squeezes Colin’s shoulder, and adjusts the button on the jacket of his suit. Then he walks over to the podium beside the stenographer and angles it slightly, pointing it in the direction of the gallery.
“Mr. Metz,” the judge says. “What are you doing?”
“I know it goes against the norm of a custody hearing, but I’ve prepared a short opening statement, Your Honor.”
“Do you see a jury, Counselor? Because I don’t. And I already know everything about this case that you do.”
Metz stares at him evenly. “I have a right to give an opening statement, and I’m going to object on the record, Your Honor, if you don’t let me.”
The judge thinks, briefly, of what he could be doing if he’d retired five years early, as his wife wanted: watching the waves roll in on a Florida beach, driving a motor home into a national park, listening to Betty Buckley sing again on Broadway. Instead, he’s stuck watching Malcolm Metz play to an audience,
because the last thing he wants is for Metz to have grounds for appeal. “Ms. Standish,” the judge says, resigned, “do you have a problem with this?”
“No, Your Honor. I’d actually like to see it.”
Rothbottam inclines his head.
“Make it brief, Counselor.”
Malcolm Metz stands silently behind the podium for a moment, pretending to gather words that have been memorized cold for the past week. “You know,” he says, “when I was seven years old,
I used to go fishing with my dad. He taught me how to pick the best worm from the overturned earth … how to thread it on the hook just so … how to reel in a striper that was the most beautiful thing on earth. And after we went fishing, just the two of us, we’d go to the diner down the road from the pond and he’d buy me a root beer and we’d sit and count the cars that passed by on the highway.
“Then my dad and I would go home, and Mom would have a big lunch waiting. Sometimes it was soup,
sometimes a ham sandwich … and while she set the table, I’d go outside and look under the porch for spiders, or lie on my back and stare at the clouds. Do you know what Faith White is doing at the age of seven? She’s lying on a hospital bed, hooked up to intravenous tubes,
getting blood drawn from a dozen different places on her body. She’s in excruciating pain, both mental and physical. She has a battalion of nurses and doctors watching her around the clock, and people gathered outside the hospital doors waiting to hear about her welfare. I ask you: Is this any way to spend a childhood?” He shakes his head sadly.
“I think not. In fact, this child has not been able to be a child for some time. Which is why her father–my client–has made a place for his daughter,
ready to take her with open arms and protect her from the unsavory influences that brought her to the point where she is now … that continue to endanger her very life.”
“All right,” Rothbottam bellows.
“Approach!”
Metz and Joan walk to the bench. The judge covers his microphone. “Mr. Metz, let me give you a tip: I’m not going to make a ruling based on what you say to the media reps here today.
I highly recommend you wrap this up now, because you’ve started to piss me off.”
Metz returns to his podium and clears his throat. “In conclusion, we’re going to prove that –without a doubt–custody should go to Colin White. Thank you.” He nods, and goes to sit behind Colin.
“Ms. Standish,” the judge says,
“do you want to make an opening argument, too?”
Joan gets to her feet and fans herself with her hand. “Can you give me a minute, Your Honor?
I’m still feeling a little emotional from that speech–the fishing and all.” She takes a cleansing breath and then smiles prettily at the judge. “Ah.
I’m better now. Actually, I don’t think I have anything to say at this moment that could possibly top that. Tell you what, though: If I feel the need to pontificate, maybe I could do it at the beginning of my case?”
“Fine. Mr. Metz, you can call your first witness.”
With an encouraging look at his client, Metz calls Colin White to the stand. Colin rises,
managing to look sheepish and polished all at once. He steps into the witness box and turns toward the clerk of the court, who is holding out a Bible. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”
“I do.”
Malcolm approaches the stand and has Colin state his name and address. “Mr. White,” he begins, “what’s your relationship to Faith?”
“I’m her father.”
“Just for background, can you tell us about the circumstances of this past summer?”
“I was having trouble with my marriage,” Colin admits. “I didn’t know who to talk to about it.”
Metz frowns. “Why not your wife?”
“Well, she has a history of being emotionally fragile, and I was a little scared of what she might do if I told her I felt that the marriage was in trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was institutionalized seven years ago for depression, after she tried to kill herself.”
“If you didn’t confront her, then what happened to initiate the divorce proceedings?”
“Well,” Colin says, reddening, “I sought the solace of another woman.”
Beside her, Mariah hears Joan murmur,
“Oh, for God’s sake …” She feels herself root more firmly in the seat, afraid to breathe or move a muscle, because in spite of Colin’s embarrassed admission, she wants only to sink through the floor.
“Then what happened?” Metz prods gently.
“One day this woman was at my house, and my wife found out about us.”
“That must have been very uncomfortable for you,
Colin.”
“It was,” he admits. “God, I felt terrible about it.”
“What action did you take at that time?”
“I was selfish. I just knew that I needed to get my life together. I guess I thought that Faith would be all right with Mariah while I did … but in the back of my mind I understood that at some point I was going to want my daughter to come live with me.”
“Did you ask her to live with you?”
“Not then,” Colin says, grimacing. “I didn’t think it was right to uproot her when her family had just broken apart.”
“So what did you do?”
“I filed for divorce. I tried to visit Faith whenever I could. And I made it implicitly clear to my ex-wife–at least I thought I did–that I still wanted Faith to be a part of my life. After I … left, I tried to go back and see her. One time I practically got shoved out the door. But Faith wanted to see me then; I know she did.”
“Colin, maybe you can share with us some special moments you had with Faith.”
“Oh, we used to be very close. There are little things that stay with me … like brushing out her hair after her bath, or pulling up the covers when she was asleep. Having her bury my feet in the sand.”
“What is your current marital status?”
Colin smiles toward the gallery, where Jessica gives him a tiny wave. “I’ve been happily married for the past two months, and in fact we’re going to have a baby. Faith’s going to love having a baby brother or sister.”
“Don’t you think people might wonder why, in two scant months, you’ve changed your mind about who should have custody of your daughter?”
Colin nods. “I’m not saying I’ve been perfect. I haven’t. I’ve made mistakes that I wish I could take back. But I never changed my mind about Faith. I just wasn’t willing to take her out of a familiar environment when the rest of her world had been turned upside down.” He looks at Jessica. “I love my new wife, and I love the life we’re making for ourselves. I can’t be a father to this new child without being one to Faith. I need her. And from what I’ve seen, she needs me just as badly.”
Metz crosses in front of the judge.
“Colin, why are you here now?”
He swallows hard. “Well, not too long ago I turned on the news one night and my daughter was the feature story. She was hospitalized, and there was this insane story about her being a religious visionary and her hands bleeding, for God’s sake. All I could think was that Mariah cut open her wrists once, and here she was alone with my daughter, and all of a sudden Faith was bleeding. I always knew my wife was crazy,
but–“
“Objection!”
The judge frowns. “I’m not going to listen to what you just said, Mr. White. Please answer the questions as they are asked.”
Metz turns back to his client. “What made you file for a change of custody?”
“I realized several weeks ago that Faith wasn’t nearly as safe as I’d thought.”
“Did you ever have any previous reason to believe that Mariah wasn’t a fit caretaker?”
“Not since years ago, when she’d just been released from Greenhaven. She was pretty fragile back then, and taking care of herself was hard enough, not to mention a newborn. But then things got better, much better–or so I believed,”
Colin says.
“Do you feel you can provide a safer home for Faith?”
“God, yes. We live in a wonderful neighborhood, with a terrific backyard for her to play in–and I wouldn’t let the reporters get to her. I’d nip the whole issue in the bud, just so that she could have her childhood back.”
“As a father, how do you feel about Faith’s situation?”
Colin’s eyes meet Mariah’s. His are wide and honest and bright. “I’m worried about her,” he says. “I think her life is in danger. And I think her mother is to blame.”
Mariah tugs on Joan’s sleeve before she stands to do the cross-examination. “They think I hurt Faith,” she whispers, stunned. “They think I’m doing this to her?”
Joan squeezes her client’s hand. She’s coached Mariah to expect the worst, but –like Mariah–she figured that would mean some calculated barbs about her hospitalization, not posing her as an abusive parent. Mariah’s late arrival at court prevented Joan from warning her about Metz’s strategy, and she is not about to break the news to her client now, in the middle of testimony, that the judge has instructed Mariah to have no contact with Faith for the duration of the trial. “Relax. Just let me do my job.” Joan stands, staring at Colin long and hard, so that he knows just how reprehensible she truly thinks he is. “Mr. White,” she says coolly, “you say your marriage was in trouble.”
“Yes.”
“Yet you didn’t talk about this with your wife,
because she was emotionally fragile.”
“That’s correct.”
“Can you define “emotionally fragile” for me?”
“Objection,” Metz says. “My client isn’t a professional in the field of psychology.”
“Then he shouldn’t have used the term in the first place,” Joan counters.
“I’ll allow the question,” the judge says.
Colin shifts in his chair, uncomfortable.
“She was in a mental institution seven years ago, because she had suicidal tendencies.”
“Ah, that’s right. You said she tried to kill herself.”
Colin glances at Mariah. “Yes.”
“She just tried to kill herself out of the blue?”
“No, she was very depressed at the time.”
“I see. Was there any reason that she was depressed?”
Colin nods shortly.
“I’m sorry, Mr. White. You’re going to have to speak up for the court stenographer.”
“Yes.”
Joan moves beside Mariah, so that the judge’s eye–not to mention the voracious gaze of the press in the gallery–must fall on her as well.
“Maybe you could help us out by telling us the reason she was depressed.” Seeing the mutinous set of Colin’s jaw, she crosses her arms. “I can ask you, Mr. White, or you can tell me.”
“I was having an affair, and she found out.”
“You were having an affair seven years ago, and it made your wife depressed. And four months ago, when you were having yet another affair, you were worried that the discovery might make her depressed again?”
“Correct.”
“Was the only mistake you made in your marriage these liaisons with other women?”
“I think so.”
“Would it be correct to say that these two incidents–four months ago and seven years ago –were the only times in your marriage that you–how did you put it?–that you felt a need to seek solace.”
“Yes.”
“I guess, then, that the names Cynthia Snow-Harding and Helen Xavier don’t ring a bell.”
As Colin turns white as his shirt, Mariah digs her nails into her thighs. Joan had warned her this was coming, and yet she still feels like running out of the room, or maybe up to the witness stand to scratch his eyes out. How could Joan have so quickly discovered something Mariah had not known for years?
Because, Mariah thinks, she wanted to know. I didn’t.
“Isn’t it true, Mr. White, that Cynthia Snow-Harding and Helen Xavier are two additional women with whom you had affairs?”
Colin glances toward Metz, fuming behind the plaintiff’s table. “I wouldn’t say they were affairs,” he quickly responds. “They were very brief … connections.”
Joan snorts. “Why don’t we move along?” she suggests. “When your wife,
Mariah, became severely depressed seven years ago after finding out that you were having an affair with another woman, you say she was institutionalized.”
“Yes. At the Greenhaven Institute.”
“Did the people from Greenhaven just show up at your door to get her?”
“No,” Colin says. “I arranged to have her sent there.”
“Really?” Joan feigns shock. “Did you try psychiatric counseling for Mariah first?”
“Well, briefly. It didn’t seem to be working.”
“Did you ask the psychiatrist to have Mariah put on medication?”
“I was more worried about what she–“
“Just answer the question, Mr. White,” Joan interrupts.
“No, I did not ask the psychiatrist that.”
“Did you try to support her through this crisis?”
“I did support her through it,” Colin says tightly. “I know it’s easy to make me look like the bad guy, the one who locked up his wife so he could conveniently keep having an affair. But I did what I felt was best for Mariah. I loved my wife, but she was … like a different person, and I couldn’t make the old Mariah come back. You don’t know until you’ve lived with someone who’s suicidal–how you keep obsessing over the fact that you didn’t see this coming, how you blame yourself for the really bad days, how you panic about keeping them safe. I could barely forgive myself every time I looked at her, because–somehow–
I’d turned her into that. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it if she’d tried to kill herself again.”
He looks into his lap. “It was already my fault. I only wanted to do something right for a change.”
Mariah feels something turn over in her chest.
It is the first time she’s truly considered that being sent to Greenhaven might have hurt Colin as well as herself.
“Did you take time off work to be home with Mariah, so that you could keep watch over her for safety’s sake?” Joan asks.
“Briefly–but it scared the hell out of me.
I was afraid that if I turned my back for a second, I’d lose her.”
“Did you ask her mother, living in Arizona at the time, to come stay with Mariah?”
“No,” Colin admits. “I knew Millie would think the worst. I didn’t want her to believe that Mariah wasn’t improving.”
“So instead you got a court order, and you had Mariah institutionalized against her will?”
“She didn’t know what she wanted at the time.
She couldn’t drag herself out of bed to go to the bathroom, much less tell me how to help her.
I did what I did for her own safety. I listened to the doctors when they said that round-the-clock supervision was best.” His troubled gaze meets Mariah’s. “I am guilty of many things, including stupidity and na@ivet`e. But not of malicious behavior.” He shakes his head. “I just didn’t know what else to do.”
“Hmm,” Joan says. “Let’s come back to the present now. Seven years have passed, and your wife catches you in the act again.”
“Objection!”
“Sustained.”
“After Mariah discovered you were having another affair,” Joan says smoothly, “you were worried that she might become depressed again. So rather than taking the time to talk it over, you just ran off?”
“It wasn’t like that. I’m not proud of what I did, but I really needed to get myself together before I took on anyone else’s responsibilties.”
“You weren’t worried that Mariah might be a little upset finding you in bed with another woman, just like seven years ago?”
“Of course I was.”
“Did you make an effort to get Mariah psychiatric help?”
“No.”
“Even though the last time this happened, she became severely depressed?”
“I told you, I just wasn’t thinking past myself at that point.”
“Yet you left your daughter with her,” Joan says.
“I honestly didn’t think Mariah was going to hurt her. I mean, for God’s sake–she’s her mother. I assumed she’d be okay.”
“You assumed Mariah would be emotionally stable in spite of your behavior.”
“Yes.”
“And you assumed Faith would be fine in your wife’s custody.”
“Yes.”
“You asked no one to come to the house to double-check; you called no doctor, no social services, not even a neighbor.”
“No. It was a mistake that I deeply regret, and I’m ready to atone for my wrongs.”
Joan briskly moves past the witness stand.
“We’re all glad, I’m sure, that you’re ready. Now, let me see if I get this straight. By your own admission, you assumed incorrectly that Faith would be better off with your ex-wife. Just like you assumed incorrectly that you needed to get yourself settled before you could even think about your daughter’s welfare. Just like you assumed incorrectly that your wife would be better off in a mental institution than with a different form of treatment for depression. Just like you assume incorrectly today that you’re the better parent here.”
Before Colin can answer, Joan turns her back on him. “Nothing further,” she says.
Dr. Newton Orlitz loves the feel of a witness stand. Something about the smooth wood beneath his hands and the smell of furniture polish that always lingers in a courtroom makes him blissfully happy with his longtime job as a forensic psychiatrist. He knows that most of the time his opinion as a doctor appointed by the court is repudiated by a private psychiatrist being paid a hell of a lot of money to say something contradictory, but it doesn’t take away from his pleasure. He not only believes in the justice system, he is humbled to know he has a place in it.
He likes to play games with himself on the stand,
too. Sometimes he watches the attorneys and diagnoses them in his mind. As he sees Malcolm Metz approach him for his testimony, he thinks: megalomania,
clearly. Maybe even a God complex. He imagines Metz dressed in a white robe,
sporting a long, ethereal beard, and he chuckles to himself.
“Glad you’re happy to be here, Dr.
Orlitz,” Metz says. “Did you interview Colin White?”
“Yes,” Orlitz says, consulting his small salt-and-pepper notebook, in which he’s recorded his observations for this particular case.
“I found him emotionally stable and perfectly capable of providing a good, solid home for a young child.”
Metz smiles broadly, as well he should.
Orlitz knows not all attorneys get to hear what they want when the court psychiatrist gives his evaluation. “Did you also have the opportunity to interview Mariah White?”
“I did.”
“Could you tell us a little bit about her psychiatric history?”
Orlitz thumbs through his notes. “She was institutionalized at Greenhaven for four months,
for suicidal depression. While there, she received psychotherapy and antidepressant medication. As I’m sure you know, though, Mr.
Metz,” he says, smiling blandly, “her behaviors were a response to an extremely stressful situation. This is how her mind happened to cope with it. She thought she’d lost her husband,
and her marriage.”
“In your expert opinion, Doctor, do you think Mariah White might go through that sort of psychological crisis again?”
Orlitz shrugs. “It’s possible. She’s vulnerable to that type of reaction.”
“I see. Is Mariah taking medication now,
Doctor?”
Orlitz runs his finger down the side of a page. “Yes,” he says, when he finds the notation. “She’s been taking twenty milligrams of Prozac daily, for the past four months.”
Metz raises his brows. “When was this prescribed?”
“August eleventh, initially. By a Dr.
Johansen.”
“August eleventh. Do you happen to know what day Colin White left?”
“I understand that it was August tenth.”
“In your opinion, Dr. Orlitz, did Mariah White obtain this medication because she could not handle the stress of the current situation without it?”
“Most likely, but you should ask her private psychiatrist.”
Metz gives him a dirty look.
“Doctor, did you have an opportunity to interview Faith?”
“I did.”
“Did she appear to be a normal little girl?”
“Normal,” the doctor says, laughing, “is a very relative term. Especially when you’re defining a child who’s suffered through a traumatic divorce.”
“Does Faith seem to seek the approval of her mother?”
“Yes, but that’s a very common response after a divorce. A child is so afraid the remaining parent might leave, too, that she will do anything necessary to keep her interest.”
“Perhaps even imitate behavior?”
“Absolutely,” Orlitz says. “A parent might be consciously or unconsciously enforcing the behavior, playing the child off the other parent by pushing her to act a certain way –so that the child, in effect, becomes a pawn. Some experts refer to this post-divorce pattern as “parental alienation syndrome.”"
“Enforcing the child’s behavior,” Metz repeats.
“Interesting. I have nothing further.”
Joan stands and buttons the front of her suit jacket. She knows Metz well enough to realize that he’s laid the foundation for a future witness. “Why don’t we start with this issue of enforced behavior?” she says. “Did Faith’s interview suggest to you that her, shall we say, more extraordinary behavior of late was directly motivated by her mother?”
“No.”
“Thank you. Now, Doctor, you had a chance to interview both of Faith’s parents. And you said that you found Colin White to be emotionally stable and capable of providing a good home for a child. Did you find Mariah White to be emotionally stable?”
“Yes, she’s functioning well right now.”
“Did you find her to currently be a good parent?”
“Yes. Faith is very attached to her.”
“Let’s shift gears again, Doctor. How many people in America, would you say, are on prescription antidepressant medication?”
“I believe,” Dr. Orlitz says,
“close to seventeen million.”
“In what percentage of the cases do the drugs work?”
“Well, if the patients stay on them for a certain period of time and are in therapy, they’re effective in approximately eighty percent of the cases.”
“Does Prozac affect normal day-to-day functioning?”
“No.”
“Would it interfere with parenting capabilities?”
“No.”
“Dr. Orlitz, did you speak to Faith about the afternoon her father left?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Did it affect her in any way?”
“She didn’t understand the dynamics of the adult relationships–which is a blessing, actually–but because of that, she felt her father’s subsequent absence might have been her fault. She’s going to need therapy regarding that issue.”
“How unfortunate,” Joan says.
“So even though, in your opinion, Colin White is a capable parent now, he did do something once that hurt Faith.”
“Yes.”
“Did you find proof of anything Mariah has ever done that in some way has hurt Faith?”
“No. She’s been a stable, continuous thread for Faith to cling to during a crisis.”
“Thank you,” Joan says, and turns to sit down beside her client.
Judge Rothbottam announces there will be a short break, and the reporters run out of the courtroom to call their affiliates with updates.
Metz shepherds Colin out, and they disappear in a crush of bodies. Mariah does not move from her seat, but instead rests her head in her hands.
Joan touches her on the shoulder. “The reason we’re called the defense,” she says, “is because we fight when they’re finished. It doesn’t matter what they say, Mariah, truly.
We’re going to give it back in spades.”
“I know,” Mariah says, rubbing her temples. “How long do we have?”
Joan smiles gently. “About long enough for a bathroom break.”
Mariah is out of her chair in a heartbeat;
anything to get away. She walks out of the courtroom and sees a sea of faces. Her gaze slides to Ian, who sits in the lobby awaiting his turn as a witness, pretending he does not know her.
It has to be like this; they have discussed it. But right now, with her mother at Faith’s bedside, Mariah could have used a strong and solid ally.
She forces her eyes to move past Ian. It takes all her self-control to walk past him without glancing back, just to see if he’s watching her go.
Dr. DeSantis is a small, compact woman with a cloud of black hair that bounces when she speaks. She recites her impressive background to the court, and then smiles at Malcolm Metz. “Dr. DeSantis,” he says, “did you have a chance to interview Colin White?”
“I certainly did. Mr. White is a wonderful, caring, perfectly stable man who very much wants his daughter to be in his life.”
“Did you interview Mariah White?”
“No,” the psychiatrist says. “She declined the opportunity.”
“I see. Did you have a chance to review Dr.
Johansen’s findings on Mariah White?”
“Yes.”
“What can you tell us about her psychological health?”
“This woman has a history of severe depression. Such a history places her at high risk for future major episodes of instability, and nobody can predict what will trigger another one.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Metz nods at Joan. “Your witness.”
Joan stands up, but doesn’t bother to move forward. “Dr. DeSantis, are you Colin White’s therapist?”
Beneath the cloud of hair, the psychiatrist pinkens with indignation. “I was called in to consult on his case.”
“Isn’t it true, Dr. DeSantis, that the first and last time you met with Colin White was October twenty-ninth, just two days after the initial hearing on his motion to change custody?”
“I suppose so.”
“Ah. Doctor, how many trials have you testified in?”
“Over fifty,” the psychiatrist says proudly.
“How many of those fifty trials has attorney Metz asked you to testify in?”
“Twenty-seven.”
Joan nods thoughtfully. “In any of those twenty-seven trials, Doctor, have you ever found his client to be mentally deficient?”
“No,” Dr. DeSantis says.
“So, just to recap, then: Mr. Metz has hired you yet again, and–correct me if I’m wrong, Dr. DeSantis–in your expert opinion, you found his client to be perfectly stable, and my client to be an emotional basket case.”
“I wouldn’t use those terms–“
“Yes or no, Doctor?”
“I found Mr. Metz’s client to be more stable than yours, yes.”
“Well,” Joan says dryly. “What a surprise.”
The hospital chapel is a sad little room that used to be a broom closet. There are six pews, three on each side of a small podium with a cross hanging overhead. The chapel is nondenominational, but somehow this symbol of Christian culture escaped notice. Father MacReady is on his knees, his lips moving silently in a paternoster while his heart sinks lower and lower in his chest.
He tries to ignore the sound of the door opening, but the creaking is phenomenally loud, and as a man of the cloth, he feels duty-bound to offer support to a grieving soul, if need be. He gets to his feet, wipes off the knees of his jeans, and turns around.
To his surprise, Rabbi Solomon is staring at the cross as if it were a rattlesnake poised to strike. “Interfaith, my foot.”
“Rabbi,” Father MacReady says.
They size each other up, never having met but aware through the grapevine that they are both here in support of Faith White.
Rabbi Solomon nods.
“Have you heard anything?”
“I went up to Pediatrics. They wouldn’t let me into the room. Something’s going on.”
“Something good?”
The rabbi shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
The two men stand in silence. “Don’t Jews need a minimum number of people to pray?”
MacReady asks after a moment.
Solomon grins. “It’s not a minimum,
really. It’s a minyan, ten men. It’s the smallest group you can have if you want to say some particular prayers.”
“Strength in numbers, eh?”
“Exactly,” the rabbi says. And without saying another word, the rabbi and priest sit down side by side in the pew, and silently begin to pray together.
“This is the situation,” a smooth-faced young doctor says to Millie. “Her renal system’s gone into failure. If we don’t put her on dialysis, she’s likely to poison her whole bloodstream.”
Millie stares at this man for a moment,
uncomprehending. How can this boy, younger than Mariah even, be telling her what they have to do? For the past half hour Faith’s room has been buzzing with nurses and doctors and aides ferrying in equipment that gleams bright and unfamiliar, setting hooks and tubes and masks on her granddaughter until she resembles nothing more than an astronaut preparing to journey to an unknown world.
Not for the first time, Millie wishes that it were her mind, and not her heart, that had been cleared and resurrected. She stares at Faith, willing her to open her eyes, to smile, to tell them it wasn’t as serious as they all thought. Where, she wonders, is your God now?
Just an hour ago, Mariah had called from the courthouse, and Millie had been able to say that everything was just the way it had been when she left.
How could so much have gone wrong so quickly? “I’m not the one you should be asking,” Millie hedges. “Her mother …”
“Is not here. If you don’t sign the consent form, this little girl will die.”
Millie swipes her hand over her eyes, then picks up the pen that he extends like a peace pipe, and gives her permission.
Ian steps into the witness box, and there is a moment of levity when the clerk of the court approaches with the customary Bible. He laughs,
then good-naturedly looks up at the ceiling.
“Okay, y’all. Get ready for lightning to strike.”
Metz swaggers toward his witness. “Please state your name and address for the record.”
“Ian Fletcher, Brentwood,
California.”
“What do you do for a living, Mr. Fletcher?”
“As I do sincerely hope everyone knows,
I’m a professional atheist. I currently coproduce and star in a television show that features my views. In addition, I’m the author of three New York Times nonfiction bestsellers. Come to think of it, I had a cameo in a film once, too.”
“Can you explain to the court what your television show is like, for those who may not be familiar with it?”
“Well, my show’s been described as the anti-Billy Graham. I have a TV pulpit, but I use it to prove God doesn’t exist, through theory and scientific inquiry.”
“Do you believe in God, Mr.
Fletcher?”
“Kind of hard to when you’re an atheist.” There are snickers from the gallery.
“For the past two months, what alleged religious miracles have you been examining?”
Ian crosses one leg over the other. “A bleeding statue over in Massachusetts, a tree in Maine–and most lately, Faith White.”
“Why were you following that particular case?”
Ian shrugs. “She supposedly was seeing God and performing miracles and exhibiting stigmata. I intended to prove she was a hoax.”
Metz moves in for his kill. “Mr.
Fletcher, can you tell us what you found?”
For a moment Ian looks at the attorney,
replaying in his mind the testimony he’d practiced with Metz as recently as yesterday.
A long, slow smile transforms his face.
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Metz,” he says, “not a hell of a lot.”
Metz, ready to throw his next question like a dart,
falters in his steps. “Pardon me?”
Ian leans closer to the microphone. “I said, “not a hell of a lot.”" He nods at the stenographer. “Is that about right?”
The gallery begins buzzing and humming, picking up on the disconnection between the plaintiff’s attorney and the famous witness.
“What you’re saying,” Metz paraphrases,
“is that you haven’t seen a lot of these so-called miracles.”
“Objection,” Joan calls out. “Leading.”
“Sustained.”
“Actually, Mr. Metz,” Ian answers,
“what I’m saying is that I’ve found nothing to support the theory that Faith White is a charlatan.”
Metz starts shaking; he wonders if it is visible to the judge or to Joan Standish. He remembers his first meeting with Fletcher, when Fletcher had expressly said there was something big about Faith White that he was keeping under wraps.
He recalls Fletcher’s deposition–how the man had pleaded the Fifth for every question. At the time Metz had found it amusing, for all it rattled Joan Standish. But now he sees that Ian pleaded the Fifth because he knew, all along, that he wasn’t willing to perjure himself by refusing to give testimony sworn in a deposition. Whatever he promised Metz he’d say in the confines of the law office was a lie–and there is nothing at all Metz can do about it.
Fletcher could get up here and sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” if he wanted, and as long as his deposition couldn’t be called into question, it would not reflect badly on himself, but only on Metz, who had underestimated his own witness.
Although it made him uneasy, Metz had been willing to let Fletcher keep his big revelation about Faith White to himself, just so long as he was planning to offer up a few lesser ones for the court. But this flat refusal to cooperate–it just doesn’t make any sense. “Surely you’ve dug up something.”
“Counselor, you wouldn’t be asking me to lie,
now would you?”
Metz feels the vein in his temple throb.
He tries some different questions, questions they’ve rehearsed, to see if Fletcher will fall back into line. “Did you ever see Faith White perform a miracle?”
Ian hesitates for a fraction of a second.
“Not precisely,” he says.
“Where were you on the evening of October thirteenth?”
“Parked on the White property.”
“What happened that night, at about ten P.m.?”
“I ran into Faith. Literally. She was in the woods, after dark.”
“Did her mother know she was outside?”
“No,” Ian admits.
“What happened?”
“She was bleeding. She … passed out, and I carried her to the house. To her mother.”
“Let me get this straight. The child was running around in the dark, bleeding and nearly unconscious,
and her mother was unaware?”
Ian frowns. “Once I brought Faith to Mrs. White, she was extremely responsive. She took Faith to the hospital for immediate medical attention.”
“Is it possible that Faith White was running away because her own mother had hurt her?”
“Objection!”
“Overruled,” Judge Rothbottam says.
Ian shrugs. “I didn’t see her mother do that.”
“But it is possible?”
“I didn’t see you hurt Faith that night either, Mr. Metz, but I guess it’s possible that you did.”
Metz hesitates. He cannot figure out Fletcher’s game. They are on the same side –both of them needing to show that the child is a fake–
even if they desire that proof for very different reasons. “Can you give us other examples of Mrs. White being an unfit parent?”
Ian furrows his brow, as if in deep concentration. Then his expression clears, and he smiles at Metz. “Nope. Matter of fact, I’ve only seen evidence to the contrary.
In all the time I’ve been trying to discredit Faith, Miz White has looked like she’s doing a pretty good job.”
Ian’s gaze floats over the gallery, coming to rest on Mariah. You see? Then Ian turns his attention back to Metz, to the calculating gleam in the attorney’s eyes.
“You say you spent two months investigating Faith, and her mother?”
“That’s about right.”
“Can you tell us about some of these investigations?”
Ian steeples his hands together. “At the moment,
nothing specific comes to mind.”
“How interesting,” Metz says, “since you were both on the passenger list of a plane en route to Kansas City about a month ago.” He enters into evidence a piece of paper, an airline’s logo emblazoned on top.
Ian tries not to let his body betray him;
there has always been the very real possibility of Metz’s private investigators turning up a paper trail. However, knowing the fact that a trip is taken was a far cry from knowing why. The real question here is how much Metz has uncovered.
“Maybe you can tell us what you learned on that trip about Faith and Mariah White?”
Metz stares at Ian, willing him to tip his hand, to admit that he’d tracked them to Kansas City for investigation–and then to admit what he found out.
“Huh,” Ian says, feigning surprise.
“I didn’t know they were on the flight. I was in first class … never even went into the back of the plane.” He grins at Metz ingenuously.
“Talk about coincidence.”
“If you weren’t on that flight specifically to investigate Faith White, yet you were, by your own admission, in the middle of an ongoing investigation of her miraculous claims,
then what were you doing on that plane, Mr.
Fletcher?”
Ian’s face is schooled into a blank mask. “Visiting friends.”
Metz is so close now that his words rain against Ian. “What friends?”
“Objection, Your Honor,” Joan says.
“I have no idea why, but Mr. Metz is badgering his own witness.”
“Yes, Mr. Metz,” the judge agrees.
“Mr. Fletcher’s answered your question.”
Metz cannot glance at Fletcher again; he’s not sure he can trust himself to keep from strangling the son of a bitch. “Nothing further,” he grinds out, sitting down beside Colin White.
“What the fuck was that?” Colin whispers.
Metz watches Joan whisper furiously to her client. “That,” he says, “was a sting.”
“What the fuck was that?” Joan whispers.
Mariah says nothing, just pleats and unpleats the fabric of her skirt. For a moment, when Ian walked up to the witness stand, she could not breathe; she wondered if, in spite of what Ian had said to her these past few weeks, he’d been lying, if he were going to play her for a fool.
“You knew,” the attorney breathes. “Jesus Christ.”
“He wants to help me,” Mariah says quietly. “He didn’t think you should know beforehand.”
Joan stares at her for a beat. “Then tell me now: How far is he willing to go?”
When Ian looks at Joan, a current passes between them, a bond forged of common purpose. “You say you spent some time investigating Mariah?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“You’ve seen Mariah being a good mother.”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me about that?”
Ian leans forward in the witness stand. “I have never seen a woman so protective of a child,
ma’am. Miz White has done her best to shelter Faith from the media, from the religious zealots on the property, and even from me. As Mr. Metz just pointed out, she attempted to take her daughter away from the whole affair by apparently running off to Kansas City. When I accompanied her to the hospital with her daughter, the time Faith’s hands started bleeding, she didn’t leave that girl’s side for a moment. I have to confess that when I came to New Canaan I was expecting to see some kind of harridan–a woman who was trying to get attention by setting her own kid up as some kind of religious miracle worker. But the facts just didn’t add up. Miz White’s a good woman, a good mother.”
“Objection!” Metz shouts.
“Grounds?” the judge asks.
“Well … he’s my witness!”
“Overruled.” Rothbottam nods at Ian.
“Please continue, Mr. Fletcher.”
“I was just going to add that when I was growing up in Georgia, I was told never to come between a mama bear and her cub, because the mama would tear through anything–including you–to get to her baby.
Course, even back then I didn’t listen to what I was supposed to believe. Sure enough,
when I was about eight years old I got ‘tween a mama bear and her little one, and spent three hours in a tree until she lost interest in punishing me. But I’ve never forgotten the look in that animal’s eyes–there was just something in them that made me realize I was a fool to cross her.
And thirty years later, I’ve seen the same kind of conviction written all over the face of Mariah White.”
Joan tries not to smile. First and foremost,
Ian Fletcher is an actor. He knows how to sell a line. “Thank you, Mr. Fletcher.”
Then she grins. “And thank you, Mr. Metz.
Nothing further.”
At one thirty-five, Faith opens her eyes for the first time in twelve hours. The nurse’s back is to her, so it takes a moment for the monitors to make her realize the girl is conscious. “Don’t fight it, honey,” she says, as Faith begins gulping for air. “You’ve got a tube down your throat.” She pages Dr. Blumberg and the pediatric surgeon on call. “Just breathe,” she instructs.
But Faith continues to round her mouth and flatten it, in what looks like a gasp for breath, but what is actually the word “Mom.”
“Mr. Metz,” the judge continues. “Your next witness?”
Metz lifts his head. “Your Honor, may I approach?” Joan walks beside him, gearing up for the fight she knows is about to happen–the battle over the expert Metz mentioned that morning. “I need to call a witness who isn’t on the list.”
“I’ve already stated my objection to this witness,
Your Honor,” Joan says immediately. “I had no knowledge of this alleged expert of Mr. Metz’s,
and I need time to research this ridiculous psychological syndrome he’s found buried in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.”
“I’m not talking about the Munchausen expert,”
Metz answers impatiently. “This is someone else. And as a matter of fact, he’s not sequestered. He happens to be in the courtroom.”
Joan’s mouth drops open. “Why did you even bother giving me a witness list?”
“Look, Ian Fletcher was an unexpectedly hostile witness, and I didn’t cover what I was supposed to during his testimony.”
The judge turns to Joan. “How do you feel about this?”
“No way, Your Honor.”
Metz smiles at her, silently mouthing,
“Appeal issue.”
Joan sets her jaw and shrugs. “Fine,
then. Go ahead.”
Metz walks away, satisfied. This next witness will paint Fletcher as a liar–putting into question his entire testimony and his inexplicable championing of Mariah. At the very least, after this,
Metz will have negated whatever unexpected damage Fletcher’s done to his case.
“The plaintiff would like to call Allen McManus to the stand.”
There is a flurry of confusion in the gallery as the reporters shift to let one of their own move from his seat to the witness stand. McManus hesitantly walks toward the clerk of the court,
clearly surprised, as he lets himself be led through the swearing-in.
Metz silently blesses Lacey Rodriguez for once again turning up more information than he’d expected to use–information that most people weren’t even aware existed, such as long-distance service provider’s logs of incoming and outgoing phone calls at office buildings.
“Could you state your name and address for the record?”
“Allen McManus,” the witness says.
“Two-four-seven-eight Massachusetts Avenue, Boston.”
“Where do you work, Mr. McManus?”
“I’m an obituary editor for the Globe.”
Metz clasps his hands behind his back. “How did you first hear about Faith White?”
“I, uh, was assigned to cover a psychiatric symposium in Boston. And a lady psychiatrist was talking about one of her cases, a little girl who was talking to God. At that time, though, I didn’t know the little girl was Faith White.”
“How did you find out?”
“I was at the office, and I got this fax about a dead woman who’d come back to life after her granddaughter had worked a miracle. Turns out it happened in the same town where this lady psychiatrist practices. And then the phone rings, and it’s this anonymous call telling me to think about who would benefit by having the kid be considered some kind of healer.”
“What did you do after that call?”
McManus lifts his chin. “I’ve tucked a lot of years of investigative reporting under my belt, so I figured I’d dig into it. I did a little research on the kid’s mother.” He smiles widely. “I was the one who broke the story that Mariah White was institutionalized for four months.”
“Was it unusual for you to receive that anonymous phone call?”
Allen tugs at the collar of his shirt.
“Well, working obits, I don’t get Deep Throat calls very often. At the Globe we have Caller ID, so I copied it down, just in case I needed to get back in touch.”
“What was the number, Mr. McManus?”
“I can’t reveal a source, sir.”
The judge frowns, as the press corps in the gallery murmur their respect. “You can and you will,
Mr. McManus, or I’ll hold you in contempt of court.”
Allen is quiet for a moment, considering his options. Then he digs into his pocket for a small notebook and flips through several pages. “Three-one-zero, two-eight-eight,
three-three-six-six.”
“Did you ever have it traced?”
“Yes.”
Malcolm Metz walks in front of the defendant’s bench and turns toward Mariah.
“Mr. McManus, whose number was it?”
The judge clears his throat, a warning, but there is no need. By now McManus is staring at one man, his eyes narrowed as he remembers a past indignity. “It’s a personal cell phone,”
he says. “Registered to Ian Fletcher.”
The minute Allen McManus takes the stand,
Ian feels himself rooted to his seat, unable to move and equally sure that staying is the worst possible thing he can do. How could he have underestimated Metz? Now Ian sits two rows behind Mariah, watching her shoulders stiffen as she discovers that Ian was responsible for the slanderous story published about her. I should have told her, he thinks. If I had told her, she would have forgiven me.
He wishes she would turn to him. He wishes he could see her face.
Just moments ago, when he was excused from the witness stand, he walked past her and winked. Her entire face was glowing, as luminous as the moon.
Now it is pale, her eyes standing out like bruises, deliberately fixed away from him.
He finds himself staring at Mariah the way one cannot help but watch a building collapse or a fire burn out, committed to the tragedy. He does not blink when she covers her face with her hands, when the cries come.
Joan spends thirty seconds trying to console her client, something that has never been her forte. Then she stands, vibrating with anger. If this were a jury trial, it would be totally different.
She could do her cross of McManus and somehow plant doubt that Ian was holding his phone at the time the call was placed. It could have been an intern, it could have been stolen–who the hell knows what the possibilities are? A judge, though,
will have already weighed the possibility of whether or not Ian Fletcher was actually using his own phone to call Allen McManus. And–like everyone else–will have concluded that Ian is guilty of several counts of betrayal.
“You work at the Globe?” she barks out.
“Yes.”
“How long have you worked there?”
“Six years.”
“What’s your training?”
“I went to the Columbia School of Journalism and worked at The Miami Herald as a stringer before coming to the Globe.”
“Who assigned you to this particular case?”
“The special-events editor, Uwe Terenbaum. He sometimes asks me to cover symposiums and conferences if obits aren’t too busy.”
Joan moves back and forth in front of him,
like the shuttle of a loom. McManus’s eyes follow her, dizzy. She does not know what she can get out of this worm, but she has a hunch that his ego is an Achilles’ heel. And the stupider she makes him look, the better. “Do you think you’re a good reporter, Mr. McManus?”
For a moment, Allen preens. “I like to think so.”
“Do you have a good reputation among your colleagues?”
“Sure.”
“Were you assigned to this case because you’re one of the Globe’s best reporters?”
“Probably,” he says, seemingly growing taller in the chair.
“You must have felt pretty good when you traced that number back to Ian Fletcher.”
“Well, yeah,” Allen admits. “I mean,
he’s certainly a household name.”
Joan drums her fingertips on the railing of the stand. “Did you talk to Mr. Fletcher after you found out that it was his number?”
“I tried, but–“
“Yes or no?”
“No,” he says.
“You simply took his tip and ran with it.”
“Yes.”
“You went to Greenhaven?”
“Yeah,” Allen says.
“Where you were able to get Mariah White’s file?”
“No. I got a doctor to confirm that she had been in the hospital.”
“I see. Was he Mariah’s doctor?”
“Well, no–“
“Did he treat Mariah at all when she was at Greenhaven?”
“No.”
“Did he know particulars about her case?”
“He knew the essentials.”
“That wasn’t my question, Mr. McManus.”
Joan’s brows draw together. “Did you find out during your thorough investigations that Mariah was placed in Greenhaven involuntarily by her husband?”
“Um, no …”
“Did you find out that she was not given the opportunity to pursue other treatment alternatives for depression before being institutionalized?”
“No.”
“Did you find out that because her husband was running around screwing other women, Mariah White had what’s colloquially called a nervous breakdown?”
“No,” the reporter murmurs.
“Did you find out that that was the reason she was suicidal?” Joan regards McManus steadily. “You didn’t find out the basic facts, Mr. McManus. You didn’t find out anything at all. So what makes you think you’re such a great investigative reporter?”
“Objection!”
“Withdrawn,” Joan says, but by then she does not care.
When it becomes clear that Mariah cannot stop crying, the judge suggests an hourlong recess.
Before the press has even managed to get out of their seats, Joan whisks Mariah out of the courtroom and down the hall that leads to the bathroom. Once they are inside, Joan holds the door shut so that no one will intrude. “Mariah, Fletcher’s testimony wasn’t that damaging. Not even the newspaper article. Really. By the time we get onto the stand, no one’s going to remember.” When Mariah does not answer, Joan suddenly understands. “It’s not what he said,” she murmurs.
“It’s that he said it at all. That’s how you knew he was going to cross Metz on the stand. Jesus,
you’re in love with him.”
“It’s not as simple as that–“
“It hardly ever is!”
Mariah waves her away. “Right now, I just think I need to be by myself.”
The attorney eyes her carefully. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“Afraid I might have a razor blade up my sleeve?” Mariah says bitterly. “Is the testimony of the morning getting to you?”
“I didn’t mean that. I–“
“It’s all right, Joan. Please.”
The attorney nods and exits the bathroom.
Mariah stands in front of the sinks and gazes into the mirror. Her eyes are puffy and red; her nose is running. Beside her, in the reflection of the towel dispenser, is a distorted view of this mirror, so that her ravaged face is repeated over and over.
She should have known better. Maybe what Metz has been suggesting is the truth: that once you have experienced pain, it knows your address. It comes to prey upon you in the middle of the night, sneaking up when you least expect it and leveling you before you have a chance to fight.
Ian must have laughed at her, at finding such an easy target. How could she have believed that his interest in her was anything more than a ploy to get closer to Faith?
Those remarkable nights with him, those words that had cast a spell and turned her into someone she has always wanted to be–to Ian, they were just words, just nights. All in the line of duty.
With tremendous resolve she forces herself to look in the mirror again. She will get a grip on herself and she will march back into that courtroom.
She will say everything that she and Joan rehearsed.
She simply must keep custody of her daughter.
She doesn’t have anything else.
When she exits the bathroom, she is expecting a crowd of reporters and photographers, waiting to glimpse some sign of her distress in an area of the courthouse where their cameras are sanctioned. But the only person standing there is Ian.
“Mariah,” he begins, coming toward her.
She pushes past him. The contact of her shoulder with his upper arm almost brings her to tears again.
“I didn’t know back then. I didn’t know what you were like.”
Mariah stops, turns, and fixes her gaze on his face. “That makes two of us,” she says.
Joan is about to enter the courtroom again when she feels a hand grab her shoulder and draw her to the side. “Don’t say anything,”
Ian warns when she immediately opens her mouth.
“Ah, if it isn’t James Bond. If you’d told me you were going to play double agent, we might have been able to avoid this McManus crap.”
“My apologies.”
Joan crosses her arms. “I’m not the one who’s crying her heart out.”
“I tried to make her understand that the Globe story came before we … well, before. She won’t listen to me.”
“Can’t say I blame her.” She glances toward the courtroom, beginning to fill. “Look,
I’ll talk to Mariah later. I can’t help you right now–“
“Actually,” Ian interrupts, “you can.”
Joan and Metz approach the bench. “Your Honor,” he says, “I’ve gone through all my witnesses except for the psychiatrist I mentioned at this morning’s emergency hearing.”
“Judge,” Joan adds, “as I mentioned earlier today, I don’t know Munchausen Syndrome from tennis elbow. I need time to prepare a rebuttal to Mr. Metz’s ridiculous theory about my client. Moreover,
this is the second witness Mr. Metz has pulled out of a hat; Allen McManus’s name,
astoundingly, didn’t manage to make it to the witness list either.” She glances at the other attorney. “If Mr. Metz wants to put his psychiatrist on the stand, I want to recall Ian Fletcher.”
“No way. The whole point of putting Allen McManus on was to illustrate how Ian Fletcher was lying during my direct, Your Honor. Having him questioned by the defense again is only going to be confusing,” Metz says.
“I think I’ll be able to keep it straight in my head,” the judge says dryly. He addresses the gallery. “Mr. Fletcher, would you mind taking the stand again?”
Ian climbs onto the witness stand in silence.
Joan watches him carefully, hoping this is going to work the way Ian thinks it is. She is not doing it, really, to further the case. She is doing it as a gift for her client. And as Ian pointed out correctly, since Mariah has not yet testified, getting her back together again is clearly in the best interests of the case.
Joan walks toward Mariah and squeezes her arm. “Sit up and listen,” she whispers, then approaches the witness stand. “Mr. Fletcher,
when did you call Mr. McManus?”
“In early October.”
“Why did you call him?” Her questions are clipped, tight. To observers, she appears angry with Ian … and rightfully so.
“I wanted to disprove Faith White’s claims. It would have meant a huge ratings coup for my show. I didn’t know Faith, or her mother,
from Adam.” He spreads his hands. “I’ve given anonymous tips before. It looks better when other people create the rift at first, and I step in to peel back the layers and expose the fraud.
McManus seemed to be a halfway decent reporter, and I thought he might be able to help.”
“It sounds very underhanded.”
“It’s part of being a journalist,” Ian says, “and my job involves that from time to time.
On occasion I get anonymous tips; on occasion I hand them out. Reporters often do this for each other.” He glances at McManus.
“Sometimes we even serve as those sources that other journalists refuse to reveal. I meant no harm to Miz White, because I wasn’t thinking of her then. I was only thinking of exposing her daughter, no matter what it took.”
“What’s different now?” Joan asks.
“Now I know her,” Ian says softly.
Joan glances from her client to Ian, holding her breath. “Nothing further.”
Metz is already on his feet to redirect.
“You couldn’t find anything? Not one measly bit of dirt on Faith White?”
“I postponed my digging,” Ian answers, his eyes steely.
“Are you implying that Faith White’s visions are real?”
He thinks carefully about his answer. “I’m implying that Faith White is one extraordinary little girl, and that I don’t think she’s deliberately lying.”
“But, Mr. Fletcher, you’ve said repeatedly that you’re an atheist. Does this mean you now believe in God?”
Ian freezes. He realizes what Metz has done to him: He cannot get into Mariah’s good graces again unless he ruins himself completely. If he admits that Faith is a miracle worker, the attorney will press for proof, and Ian doesn’t care to divulge information about the private joy of his twin brother’s few lucid moments. He glances at Mariah,
who is staring at him, waiting for his answer.
I’m sorry, he thinks.
“Mr. Fletcher? Do you believe in God?”
Ian raises his brows and adopts the charming mask of his television persona. “The jury’s still out on that one,” he says, playing into the hands of his audience, watching their grinning faces, instead of the one that matters most.
Joan asks for a short recess. Mariah is remarkably controlled, if incredibly quiet,
and for some reason this scares Joan even more than an out-and-out tantrum. “I can try for a continuance. I can tell the judge you’re sick.”
“I only want an hour. I have to see Faith,” she explains. “It’s been all day.”
Until that moment, Joan has forgotten the restraining order signed that morning. In the confusion of the testimonies, she still hasn’t had a chance to tell Mariah about it. “You can’t.”
“But if you ask the judge …”
“You can’t go now, and you can’t go later. Judge Rothbottam signed a restraining order to keep you away from Faith for the duration of the trial.”
It starts like a slow-motion avalanche, the gradual disintegration of Mariah’s calm.
“Why?”
“If she gets better when you’re kept away, Metz will use it as evidence.”
“Because I’m not there? Because I left when she needed me the most?”
“No, Mariah. He’s got an expert testifying, who’ll say that when you were separated by force, you weren’t able to make Faith hallucinate or bleed.”
She covers her mouth with her hand and turns away. “What do they think of me?”
Joan frowns, not liking the direction of her own thoughts. Mariah had kept silent about Ian Fletcher’s testimony for Metz; what else might she be hiding? “They think,” she says, “that eventually you’ll kill her.”
