The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  “I have no idea,” I told her. “I haven’t met with him.”

  “Do Satanists have messiahs?” my father asked.

  “You’re missing the point, both of you. Legally, there’s a statute that says that even prisoners have a right to practice their religion as long as it doesn’t interfere with the running of the prison.” I shrugged. “Besides, what if he is the Messiah? Aren’t we morally obligated to save his life if he’s here to save the world?”

  My father cut a slice of his brisket. “He’s not the Messiah.”

  “And you know this because . . . ?”

  “He isn’t a warrior. He hasn’t maintained the sovereign state of Israel. He hasn’t ushered in world peace. And okay, so maybe he’s brought something dead back to life, but if he was the Messiah he would have resurrected everyone. And if that was the case, your grandparents would be here right now asking if there was more gravy.”

  “There’s a difference between a Jewish messiah, Dad, and . . . well . . . the other one.”

  “What makes you think that there might be more than one?” he asked.

  “What makes you think there might not?” I shot back.

  My mother threw her napkin down. “I’m getting a Tylenol,” she said, and left the table.

  My father grinned at me. “You would have made such a good rabbi, Mags.”

  “Yeah, if only that pesky religion thing didn’t keep getting in the way.”

  I had, of course, been raised Jewish. I would sit through Friday night services and listen to the soaring, rich voice of the cantor; I would watch my father reverently carry the Torah and it would remind me of how he looked in my baby pictures when he held me. But I’d also grow so bored that I’d find myself memorizing the names of who begat whom in Numbers. The more I learned about Jewish law the more I felt that, as a girl, I was bound to be considered unclean or limited or lacking. I had my bat mitzvah, like my parents wanted; and the day after I read from the Torah and celebrated my transition into adulthood, I told my parents I was never going to temple again.

  Why? my father had asked when I told him.

  Because I don’t think God really cares whether or not I’m sitting there every Friday night. Because I don’t buy into a religion that’s based on what thou shalt not do, instead of what thou ought to be doing for the greater good. Because I don’t know what I believe.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth: that I was much closer to an atheist than an agnostic, that I doubted there was a God at all. In my line of work, I’d seen too much injustice in the world to buy into the belief that a merciful, all-powerful deity would continue to allow such atrocities to exist; and I downright detested the party line that there was some divine grand plan for humanity’s bumbling existence. It was a little like a parent watching her children playing with fire and thinking, Well, let them burn. That’ll teach ’em.

  Once, when I was in high school, I asked my father about religions that were, with the passage of time, considered to be false. The Greeks and Romans, with all their gods, thought they were making sacrifices and praying at temples in order to receive favor from their deities; but today, pious people would scoff. How do you know, I’d asked my father, that five hundred years from now, some alien master race won’t be picking over the artifacts of your Torah and their crucifix and wondering how you could be so naive?

  My father, who was the first to take a controversial situation and say “Let’s think about that,” had been speechless. Because, he’d said finally, a religion doesn’t last two thousand years if it’s based on a lie.

  Here’s my take on it: I don’t think religions are based on lies, but I don’t think they’re based on truths, either. I think they come about because of what people need at the time that they need them. Like the World Series player who won’t take off his lucky socks, or the mother of the sick child who believes that her baby can sleep only if she’s sitting by the crib—believers need, by definition, something to believe in.

  “So what’s your plan?” my father asked, bringing my attention back.

  I glanced up. “I’m going to save him.”

  “Maybe you’re the Messiah,” he mused.

  My mother sat down again, popped two pills into her mouth, and swallowed them dry. “What if he’s creating this whole to-do so that somebody like you will come out of the woodwork and keep him from being executed?”

  Well, I’d already considered that. “It doesn’t matter if it’s all a big ruse,” I said. “As long as I can get the court to buy it, it’s still a blow against the death penalty.” I imagined myself being interviewed by Stone Phillips. Who, when the cameras cut, would ask me out to dinner.

  “Promise me you won’t be one of these lawyers who falls for the criminal and marries him in the prison . . .”

  “Mom!”

  “Well, it happens, Maggie. Felons are very persuasive people.”

  “And you know this because you’ve personally spent so much time in prison?”

  She held up her hands. “I’m just saying.”

  “Rachel, I think Maggie’s got this under control,” my father said. “Why don’t we get ready to go?”

  My mother started clearing the dishes, and I followed her into the kitchen. We fell into a familiar routine: I’d load the dishwasher and rinse off the big platters; she’d dry. “I can finish,” I said, like I did every week. “You don’t want to be late for temple.”

  She shrugged. “They can’t start without your father.” I passed her a dripping serving bowl, but she set it on the counter and examined my hand instead. “Look at your nails, Maggie.”

  I pulled away. “I’ve got more important things to do than make sure my cuticles are trimmed, Ma.”

  “It’s not about the manicure,” she said. “It’s about taking forty-five minutes where the most important thing in the world is not someone else . . . but you.”

  That was the thing about my mother: just when I thought I was ready to kill her, she’d say something that made me want to cry. I tried to curl my hands into fists, but she threaded our fingers together. “Come to the spa next week. We’ll have a nice afternoon, just the two of us.”

  A dozen comments sprang to the back of my tongue: Some of us have to work for a living. It won’t be a nice afternoon if it’s just the two of us. I may be a glutton, but not for punishment. Instead, I nodded, even though we both knew I had no intention of showing up.

  When I was tiny, my mother would have spa days in the kitchen, just for me. She’d concoct hair conditioners out of papaya and banana; she’d rub coconut oil into the skin of my shoulders and arms; she’d lay slices of cucumber on my eyes and sing Sonny & Cher songs to me. Afterward, she would hold a hand mirror up to my face. Look at my beautiful girl, she would say, and for the longest time, I believed her.

  “Come to temple,” my mother said. “Just tonight. It would make your father so happy.”

  “Maybe next time,” I answered.

  I walked them out to their car. My father turned the ignition and unrolled his window. “You know,” he said. “When I was in college, there was a homeless guy who used to hang out near the subway. He had a pet mouse that used to sit on his shoulder and nibble at the collar of his coat, and he never took that coat off, not even when it was ninety-five degrees out. He knew the entire first chapter of Moby-Dick by heart. I always gave him a quarter when I passed by.”

  A neighbor’s car zoomed past—someone from my father’s congregation, who honked a hello.

  My father smiled. “The word Messiah isn’t in the Old Testament . . . just the Hebrew word for anointed. He’s not a savior; he’s a king or a priest with a special purpose. But the Midrash—well, it mentions the moshiach a lot, and he looks different every time. Sometimes he’s a soldier, sometimes he’s a politician, sometimes he’s got supernatural powers. And sometimes he’s dressed like a vagrant. The reason I gave that bum a quarter,” he said, “is because you never know.”

  Then he put the