Keeping Faith Read online

  On Thursday Mariah spends the morning watching the video Agnes of God, and so gets a late start food shopping. When she pulls up to the elementary school, ready to pick Faith up for the day, the trunk is full of groceries. The bell rings, and Mariah takes up her usual position, beside a large maple tree at the edge of the first-grade classroom pod, but Faith does not appear. She waits until the last of the children have dribbled out of the school, then walks into the office.

  Faith is huddled on the overstuffed purple couch beside the secretary's desk, crying, her leggings torn at the knees and her hair straggling out of its braid and sticking against her damp cheeks. She's stretched out her sleeves and hidden her fists inside them. She wipes her nose on the fabric. "Mommy, can I not go to school anymore?"

  Mariah feels her heart contract. "You love school," she says, dropping to her knees, as much to comfort Faith as to block the curious gaze of the school secretary. "What happened?"

  "They make fun of me. They say I'm crazy."

  Crazy. Filled with a righteous fury, Mariah slips an arm around her daughter. "Why would they say that?"

  Faith hunches her shoulders. "Because they heard me talk to...her."

  Mariah closes her eyes and makes a silent appeal--to whom?--to solve this, and fast. She pulls Faith upright and holds her mittened hand, tugging her out of the main office. "You know what? Maybe you can stay home from school, just for tomorrow. We can do things, you and me, all day."

  Faith turns her face up to her mother's. "For real?"

  Mariah nods. "I used to take special holidays sometimes with Grandma." Her jaw tightens as she remembers what her mother had called it: a mental-health day.

  They drive through the winding roads of New Canaan, Faith slowly beginning, in bits and pieces, to relay the school day to Mariah. At the turn to their driveway, Mariah rolls down the window and picks up the mail, marking the number of parked cars lining the road. Hikers, or birdwatchers, taking to the field across the road. They get that up here quite often. She continues to drive, and then she sees the crowd that surrounds the house.

  There are vans and cars, and for God's sake, a big painted Winnebago.

  "Wow," Faith breathes. "What's going on?"

  "I don't know," Mariah says tightly. She turns off the ignition and steps from the car into a throng of nearly twenty people. Immediately cameras begin flashing, and questions are hurled at her like javelins. "Is your daughter in the car?" "Is God with her?" "Do you see God, too?"

  When Faith's door cracks open, the questions stop. Mariah watches her daughter get out of the car and stand nervously on the slate path that leads up to the house. Lining it are a dozen men and women in caftans, who bow their heads as Faith looks at them. Standing behind, and slightly apart, is a man smoking a thin cigar. The face seems familiar to Mariah. With a start she realizes that she's seen him on TV--Ian Fletcher himself is leaning against her crab-apple tree.

  Suddenly Mariah knows exactly what is going on. Somehow, some way, people are beginning to hear about Faith. Feeling sick, she wraps an arm around her daughter's shoulders and steers her up the porch. She pulls Faith into the house with her and locks the door.

  "How come they're here?" Faith peeks out the sidelight and is yanked away by her mother before she can be seen.

  Mariah rubs her temples. "Go to your room. Do your homework."

  "I don't have any."

  "Then find some!" Mariah snaps. She walks into the kitchen and picks up the phone, tears already thickening her throat. She needs to call the police, but she dials a different number first. When her mother answers on the second ring, Mariah lets the first sob out. "Please come," she says, and she hangs up.

  She sits at the kitchen counter, her palms spread on the cool Formica. She counts to ten. She thinks of the milk and the peaches and the broccoli sitting in the trunk of her car, already beginning to rot.

  Ian Fletcher is very good at doing his job. He is ruthless, he is driven, he is single-minded. So he fixes his eyes on the little girl, this next subject of his, and watches her get out of the car.

  But his attention wanders to the woman beside Faith White. The look of fear on her face, her unconscious grace, the instinctive slip of her arm over her daughter--all draw Ian's eye. She is small and fine-boned, with hair the color of old gold. It is pulled back from her face, which is pale and free of makeup and quite possibly the most naturally lovely thing Ian has seen since climbing the falls in South America. She's not classically beautiful, not perfect, but somehow that only makes her more interesting. Ian shakes his head to clear it. He carouses with models and movie stars--he should not be swayed by a woman with the face of an angel.

  An angel? The very thought is traitorous, ludicrous. It's the goddamned Winnebago, he decides. Spending the night on a foam cot, instead of a deluxe hotel mattress, is aggravating his insomnia to the point where he can't think straight, to the point where anyone with a pair of X chromosomes becomes attractive.

  Ian focuses on Faith White, walking beneath her mother's arm. But then he makes the mistake of glancing up--and meets the gaze of Mariah White. Cool, green, angry. Let the battle begin, Ian thinks, unwilling and unable to look away until she firmly shuts the door.

  "Name one thing--other than the existence of God--that we take on blind faith," Ian challenges, his voice rising like a call to arms over the small group of people gathered to listen. News of Ian's presence has by now attracted a number of onlookers, in addition to several members of the press. "There's nothing! Not a single thing. Not even the sun rising every day. I know it's going to be there, but that's something I can prove scientifically."

  He leans against the railing of a wooden platform hastily erected beside the Winnebago for media moments like these. "Can I prove God is there? No."

  He watches people from the corner of his eye, whispering to each other, maybe even second-guessing what made them come to see this miraculous Faith White in the first place. "You know what faith is, what religion is?" He looks pointedly at the scarlet-suited members of the Order of the Great Passion, gathered close with scowls on their faces. "It's a cult. Who gives us religion? Our parents brainwash us when we're four or five and most receptive to fantastical ideas. We're told we have to believe in God, so we do."

  Ian raises a hand in the direction of the White farmhouse. "And now the word of a little girl who--I might add--is just at the right age to believe in fairies and goblins and the Easter Bunny as well--is enough to convince you?" He levels the crowd with a calculated gaze. "I ask all y'all again: What else do we believe in with blind faith?"

  At the profound silence, Ian grins. "Well, let me help you out. The last thing you believed in with absolute, unshakable conviction was...Santa Claus." He raises his brows. "No matter how impossible it seemed, no matter how much evidence to the contrary, when you were a child you wanted to believe, and so you did. And as rude as the comparison sounds, it's not all that different from believing in the existence of God. They both grant a boon based on whether you've been naughty or nice. They both go about their work without being seen. They rely heavily on the assistance of mythical creatures--elves in one case, angels in the other."

  Ian lets his eyes touch on one of the cult members, one local reporter, one mother clutching an infant. "So how come y'all don't believe in Santa nowadays? Well, because you grew up, and you realized how impossible the whole thing was. Santa Claus went from being a fact to being a real good story, one to pass on to your children. The same way your parents told you about God when you were a kid." He hesitates for a moment, letting the silence thicken. "Can't you see that God's a myth, too?"

  Millie Epstein slams her car door violently. Mariah's beautiful old farmhouse is flocked by lunatics, from what she can see. At least twenty people are milling around on the long driveway, some even bold enough to trample the grass edging the front porch. These include a handful wearing bizarre red nightgowns, a few curious locals, and two vans with television call letters spangled across their sid