Keeping Faith

by Picoult, Jodi

  Hell, she’s a good actress, is all.

  Beauty can be a terrific disguise, because of its power of distraction. The purity of her features,

  even stamped with sleep–those gorgeous legs eating up the yard as she crossed to her daughter–

  why, that’s just a decoy. More smoke and mirrors,

  like her little girl’s miracles. Faith White is no more seeing God and raising the dead than Ian is himself.

  October 8, 1999 “This,” Rabbi Weissman says to Mariah,

  “is Rabbi Daniel Solomon.”

  The man in the tie-dyed shirt holds out his hand and grins. “I like to think I have the name of the wise king for a reason.” Mariah does not crack a smile. She reaches behind her, where Faith is burrowing against her hip and peeking at the strangers.

  “I’m the spiritual leader of Boulder’s Beit Am Hadash Congregation,” Solomon says.

  Mariah glances at his shirt, at his long,

  ponytailed hair. Right, she thinks. If you’re a rabbi, I’m the queen of England.

  “Beit Am Hadash,” the rabbi explains,

  “means “house of a new people.” My congregation is part of the Jewish renewal movement. We draw upon Kabbalah, as well as Buddhist,

  Sufi, and Native American traditions.”

  He glances at Rabbi Weissman. “We’d like to know more about Faith.”

  “Look,” Mariah says, “I don’t really think I have anything to say to you.” She would not have even let the rabbis inside, except for the fact that to leave them on the porch seemed inhumane. Mariah sends Faith into the playroom so that she can’t overhear the conversation.

  “The last time I saw you, Rabbi Weissman,

  I got the distinct impression that you weren’t very impressed with Faith. You thought this was an act I was making her perform.”

  “Yes, I know,” Rabbi Weissman says.

  “And I’m still not convinced. But I took it upon myself to call Rabbi Solomon. You see,

  Mrs. White, after you left the synagogue, the strangest thing happened: A couple that was having marital problems reconciled.”

  “What’s strange about that?” Mariah says, a familiar twinge in her chest as she lets her mind brush over Colin.

  “Believe me,” Weissman says. “They were irreconcilable, until the day you visited with your daughter.” He spreads his palms. “I’m not explaining this very well. It was just that after I read the newspaper article about your mother, I was struck by the possibility that, in some people’s minds, there might be a connection between this couple’s reconciliation and Faith. It reminded me of something Rabbi Solomon had said at a rabbinic council a couple of years ago. We had posed the question of what God would say to a prophet nowadays. I said that there would have to be a message –you know, that peace is coming to Israel, or that this is the way to defeat the Palestinians–something that your daughter isn’t hearing during her conversations with God. However, Rabbi Solomon felt that a divine message wouldn’t be about ferreting out evil, but instead about how man is treating man.

  Divorce, child abuse, alcoholism. Social ills. That’s what He’d want fixed.”

  Mariah stares at him blankly. Rabbi Solomon clears his throat. “Mrs. White,

  may I talk to Faith?”

  She sizes up the man. “For a few minutes,” Mariah reluctantly allows. “As long as you don’t upset her.”

  They all walk into the playroom. Rabbi Solomon kneels, so that he is at eye level with Faith. “My name is Daniel. Can I tell you a story?”

  Faith creeps around Mariah’s hip, nodding shyly. “The people who come to my temple believe that before there was anything else, there was God. And God was so … well … full that creating the world meant shrinking a little bit to make space for it.”

  “God didn’t make the world,” Faith says.

  “It was a big explosion. I learned in school.”

  Rabbi Solomon smiles. “Ah, I’ve learned that, too. And I still like to think that maybe God was the one who made that explosion, that God was watching it happen from somewhere far away. Do you think it could have happened like that?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, like I was saying. There was God,

  sucking in to make some room for the world, filling vessels with energy and light and setting them into the new space. But during Creation, the vessels couldn’t hold all the energy, and they broke. And all the sparks of light from God in these vessels got scattered around the universe. Pieces of the broken vessels fell, too, and became the bad things in the world–we call that clipot. My friends and I believe that our job is to clean up all the clipot and get rid of them, and to gather up all the bits of light that are scattered and get it back to God. So maybe when you say a blessing and eat a kosher chicken at Shabbat, the holy sparks in the chicken are released. If you perform a mitzvah for someone else–help them out a little –more sparks get released.”

  “We don’t keep kosher,” Mariah says to Rabbi Solomon. “We’re not traditional Jews.”

  He plucks at his T-shirt and grins wryly. “Neither am I, Mrs. White. But Kabbalah–Jewish mysticism–can even explain why a little girl who has never gone to temple or said a prayer might be closer to God than someone else. No one can lift up all those sparks by himself. In fact, the ability to find sparks at all may be buried so deep in you that you stop believing there’s a God. Until someone else comes along, with so much light in her that you can’t help but see your own, and when you’re together that light grows even brighter.” He touches the top of Faith’s head. “God may be talking to Faith because of all the people she’s going to reach.”

  “You believe?” Mariah breathes, almost afraid to say it aloud. “You haven’t even spoken to her, and you think she’s telling the truth?”

  “I’m a little more open-minded than Rabbi Weissman. The couple he was counseling …

  well, that all could be a coincidence with your daughter’s visit. But then again, it may not be, and Faith may have the answers. If God was going to show up in 1999, I don’t think He’d grandstand or preach. I think He’d be just as low-key as your daughter’s suggested.”

  Faith tugs on the rabbi’s sleeve.

  “He’s a She. God is a girl.”

  “A girl,” Solomon repeats carefully.

  Mariah crosses her arms. “Yes, according to Faith, God is a woman. Can Jewish mysticism explain that?”

  “Actually, Kabbalah is founded on the premise that God is both male and female.

  The female part, the Shekhinah, is the presence of God. It’s what was broken when all those vessels shattered. If Faith is seeing a woman, it makes perfect sense. The presence of God is exactly what would make her able to heal and to have people congregate around her. What she may be seeing is a reflection of herself.”

  Mariah watches Faith scratch her knee,

  uninterested, and then asks the question she’s been holding tight inside. “Boulder’s a long way away, Rabbi Solomon. Why are you here?”

  “I’d like to take Faith to Colorado with me,

  to learn more about her visions.”

  “Absolutely not. My daughter’s not a spectacle.”

  The rabbi glances toward the windows that look out the front of the house. “No?”

  “I didn’t invite them here.” She fists her hands at her sides and looks at Faith. “I didn’t ask for this to happen.”

  “For what to happen, Mrs. White? God?”

  He shakes his head. “The Shekhinah doesn’t go where she’s not wanted. You have to be open to the presence of God before it comes to dwell.

  Which is maybe why you’re having such a hard time with this in the first place.” His eyes are like amber,

  holding the past preserved. “What happened to you,

  Mariah,” he asks softly, “that makes you fight so hard to not be a Jew?”

  She remembers the one time she went to church as a little girl, with a friend, how she was surprised by the fact that J
esus supposedly loved everyone,

  even people who made mistakes. The Jewish God, you had to make yourself worthy of. Mariah wonders, not for the first time, why a religion that prides itself on being open-minded makes you jump through so many hoops.

  She is suddenly overwhelmed by the thought of two rabbis in her house. “I’m not Jewish. I’m not anything.” She looks at Faith. “We’re not anything. I think you should go.”

  Rabbi Solomon holds out his hand. “Will you think about some of the things I said?”

  Mariah shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t look at my daughter and see the presence of God, Rabbi Solomon. I don’t look at her and think she’s full of divine light. I just see someone who’s getting more and more upset with what’s going on around her.”

  Rabbi Solomon straightens. “Funny.

  That’s what many Jews said two thousand years ago about Jesus.”

  October 10, 1999 The last thing Father Joseph MacReady does before donning his vestments is exchange his battered cowboy boots for the soft-soled black shoes of a priest. He’s anticipating a full house.

  Early-morning mass on Sunday in New Canaan tends to be packed, most of the Catholic inhabitants of the town preferring to lose a few hours’ sleep on the weekend if it means getting the rest of the day to relax in their gardens or on the golf courses in neighboring towns. Today, he thinks, might be the day.

  He braces his hands on the scarred table and lifts his gaze to the frieze of the crucifixion.

  He thinks back to the moment years ago when he was drifting cross-country and suddenly realized that he could have taken his Harley into the Pacific and still gotten nowhere.

  Now, even after decades of leading mass, he prays before each one for a sign that he made the right decision, a sign that God is with him. He stares at the crucifix for another second,

  hoping. But, as for the past twenty-eight years,

  nothing happens.

  Father MacReady closes his eyes for a moment,

  trying to gather the Holy Spirit before walking into the church to his congregation.

  There are eight people there.

  Clearly stunned, he steps up and begins to deliver the mass, his mind whirling. There is no single reason he can think of to cause his flock to dwindle from eighty to eight over the course of a single week. He rushes through the Holy Eucharist and the sermon, shocking his altar boy, who is usually fidgeting less than ten minutes into the service. After the final “Amen,”

  he hurries to remove the vestments and stand at the rear doors of the church to say good-bye to the faithful few. But by the time he gets there, half are already in the parking lot.

  “Marjorie,” he calls to an elderly woman whose husband died the year before. “Where are you off to this morning in such a hurry?”

  “Oh, Father,” she says, dimpling. “To the Whites’ house.”

  Well, that only confuses him more. “You’re going to Washington?”

  “No, no. The little girl. Faith White.

  The one who’s seeing God. I didn’t think it made up for missing mass, myself.”

  “What about this little girl?”

  “Haven’t you read the Chronicle this week?

  People are saying she’s got God talking to her.

  Even had some miracles come to pass. Brought a woman back from the dead, I hear.”

  “You know,” Father Joseph says, considering,

  “I just might like to tag along.”

  Mariah turns the cylinder of cherry on the lathe, watching the ribbons of wood fly like streamers as she touches the rich block with a sculpting tool. It will be the fourth leg of a Queen Anne dining-room table for the current dollhouse. Her eyes wander to her work station, where the intricately carved trio of legs sits beside the oval island of the miniature tabletop.

  Today is not the day for making furniture. In fact, she is not supposed to be working at all,

  at least according to her self-imposed calendar. But these days nothing has gone according to schedule.

  Yesterday was spent getting her mother discharged from the hospital, after over a week of testing and examination by cardiac experts. Mariah had wanted her mother to stay at the farmhouse, but Millie was having none of it. “You’re five minutes away,” she told Mariah. “What could go wrong?” Mariah had finally given in, knowing that she could cajole her mother into spending days, at least, at the farmhouse simply by saying that Faith needed company. She’d helped her mother get settled at home again, facing only one awkward moment when they both stopped suddenly at the coffin table. Without any complaint from her mother, she’d dragged it out to the garage, out of sight and out of mind.

  Mariah is devoting today to making up for lost time. She pulls a ruler from her breast pocket and examines the leg on the lathe. It is off by two millimeters; she will have to start over.

  Sighing, she discards the wood and then hears the doorbell ring.

  It is an unexpected sound–no one’s ventured past the police block at the end of the driveway lately. Maybe it’s the mailman with a package, or the oil-delivery truck.

  She opens the front door and finds herself staring at a priest. Her mouth tightens. “How come the police let you pass?”

  “A professional perk,” Father Joseph admits, unruffled. “When God locks a door, He opens a window. Or at least sets a good Catholic officer at the end of your driveway.”

  “Father,” Mariah says wearily, “I appreciate your coming here. I can even understand why you’d want to. But–“

  “Do you? Because I’m not sure I do.” He laughs. “St. Elizabeth’s was empty this morning. Apparently your daughter is fierce competition.”

  “Not intentionally.

  “I don’t think we’re ready for another religious onslaught,” Mariah says. “There were some rabbis here Friday, talking about Jewish mysticism–“

  “You know what they say about mysticism: Starts in mist, ends in schism.”

  A grin tugs at Mariah’s mouth. “We’re not even Catholic.”

  “So I hear. Episcopalian and Jewish,

  right?”

  Mariah leans against the doorjamb. “Right. So why would you even be interested?”

  Joseph shrugs. “You know, when I was a chaplain in Vietnam, I met the Dalai Lama. There were a bunch of us, and we spent a great deal of time beforehand talking about what we should give him to eat, to drink, what we should call him. “His Holiness,” that was what someone suggested, although that was also what we called the pope, and let me tell you we fought tooth and nail over that one. But you know what, Mrs.

  White? The Dalai Lama had this … this energy around him, the likes of which I’d never felt before. Now, he isn’t Catholic, but I won’t rule out the possibility that he’s a figure of profound spiritual enlightenment.”

  A dimple appears in Mariah’s cheek.

  “Careful, Father. That’s probably grounds for excommunication.”

  He smiles. “His Holiness has a lot more on his plate than to follow my transgressions.”

  There is something so secular about him that Mariah thinks–under different circumstances–she would ask this stranger to sit down, to share a pot of coffee.

  “Father …”

  “Joseph. Joseph MacReady.” He grins. “Willing and able, too.”

  Mariah laughs out loud. “I like you.”

  “I like you, too, Mrs. White.”

  “However, now I think you ought to go.” She shakes his hand, well aware that he has not once asked to speak to Faith. “If I need you,

  I’ll call the church. But no one’s really proved that any miracles have occurred.”

  “Yes, it’s only word of mouth. Then again,

  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were just telling what they saw as well.”

  Mariah crosses her arms. “Do you really believe that God would speak through a child? A technically Jewish child, at that?”

  “Far as I’ve been told, Mrs. White,

  He has
before.”

  October 11, 1999 “Move that leaf a quarter inch to the right,” the producer says, tilting his head toward the shot lined up in the monitor. The lights that the electrician and lighting director have set up make Teresa Civernos squint and instinctively cover little Rafael’s eyes with her hand. He bats it away, and for the hundredth time that day she glories in his strength and his coordination.

  Hugging him close, she touches her lips to the smooth, unbroken skin of his brow.

  “We’re ready, Ms. Civernos.” The voice is as rich as honey, and it belongs to Petra Saganoff, the star reporter for Hollywood Tonight!.

  In the background, the producer glances up.

  “Can you bring the baby up a little closer? Oh,

  that’s perfect.” He makes an okay sign with his hand.

  Petra Saganoff waits for a makeup artist to do one last touchup on her face. “You remember what I’m going to ask you, now?”

  Teresa nods and looks nervously at the second camera, fixed on her and the baby. She forces herself to remember that this was her idea, not theirs. She was going to take out a novena to St.

  Jude in the Globe, but realized that there was a way to reach more people. Her cousin Luis worked in L.a. on the Warner Brothers lot, where the Hollywood Tonight!’s studio was located.

  He was dating the girl who did Petra Saganoff’s wardrobe. Teresa had told him to ask. And within twenty-four hours of Rafael’s being released from Mass General with a clean bill of health, Petra Saganoff was in Teresa’s tiny apartment in Southie, prerecording a segment for later broadcast.

  “Three,” the cameraman says. “Two. One … and–” He points to Petra.

  “Your baby didn’t always look this healthy,

  is that right?”

  Teresa feels herself flush. Petra had told her not to flush. She must remember.

  “Yes. Just days ago Rafael was a pediatric AIDS patient at Massachusetts General Hospital,” Teresa says. “He contracted the virus from a blood transfusion at birth.

  Last week he was pale and listless; he was fighting thrush and PCP and esophagitis. His CD-FOUR cell count was fifteen.” She clutches the baby tighter. “His doctor said he would die within the month.”

  “What happened, Mrs. Civernos?”