Keeping Faith

by Picoult, Jodi

Ian laughs. “I know. I’m just trying to show you that if you want to get clinical about perfection,

  none of us would pass muster. Me least of all.”

  He strokes her hair. “Colin is an idiot. And I do mean it this time when I say:

  Thank God.”

  Mariah smiles and snuggles closer on the nest of blankets they’ve made on the rug.

  “Do you know what the most beautiful word in the English language is?”

  “Let me think on it a minute.” Ian wrinkles his brow in concentration.

  “”Mellifluous.”"

  Mariah shakes her head. “”Uxorious,”"

  she breathes. “Excessively fond of one’s wife.”

  In his whole life, Ian cannot remember ever feeling this sense of peace, right here in this hellhole of a Kansas cabin. This is his temporary reprieve, he knows. His truce.

  Tomorrow he will have to tell Mariah that he has been lying all along, that he cultivated her sympathy from the moment they stepped off the plane just so that he’d be able to set Faith up for a fall. Tomorrow he’ll have to tell her that he intentionally recorded Faith’s disastrous meeting with Michael, even if he no longer has the tape.

  Tomorrow he’ll have to decide how much to reveal to his producer.

  Tomorrow will be soon enough to have her hate him.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” she says, yawning.

  A penny? They’re worth a far piece more.

  “I don’t think we get a choice in who we fall for,” Ian whispers. “I think we just do.”

  But Mariah’s breathing is even and regular, and Ian realizes she’s already drifted off. He savors the weight of her numbing his arm and warming his skin, and moments later–for the first time in years–

  Ian falls into a deep, easy sleep.

  It is just after five in the morning when Ian slips away from Mariah. He covers her with the blanket, unsure of whether or not she sleeps naked as a matter of course and not wanting Faith to come bounding in to find her sprawled that way. He dresses quickly and writes Mariah a quick note that says when he’ll be back, where he is going,

  and nothing important at all.

  He drives to Lockwood. Why he is returning, he cannot say. Clearly, if his brother was set off by the presence of Mariah and Faith interrupting the regular schedule, then a 6:00 A.m. visit isn’t going to go smoothly. It’s just that things had been left so rough. Michael shouting, and Ian storming off …

  He doesn’t want a week to pass before he sees him again. If Michael is asleep,

  Ian can just peek in, make sure he’s all right, and get on his way.

  The staff gives Ian a wide berth as he walks to his brother’s room and pushes open the door. Michael is snoring softly, his face relaxed, his big body sprawled over the covers. “Hey, buddy,” Ian whispers, and then hesitates before he touches his brother’s hair.

  Michael’s eyes open with a start. “Ian?”

  “That’s right.” He quickly withdraws his hand and glances at the clock over the door, certain that Michael is about to start screaming, but instead his brother yawns and stretches.

  “How come you’re here so early?” Michael says. Ian blinks at him, stunned. “What,

  you’ve got no place better to go?”

  His brother, who has not spoken about anything but cards for the past three years, is teasing him.

  Ian narrows his eyes, taking in the spark of understanding, of connection, in his brother’s eyes.

  “God, Ian. And they say you’re the smart one.” Michael holds out his arms, an invitation.

  “Michael,” Ian breathes, folding his twin into an embrace. When Michael’s hand pats him clumsily on the back, he loses the power of speech.

  Gaining control, he draws back to talk–

  really talk!–to his brother, but finds Michael’s expression remote. Ian watches him take the deck of cards from the nightstand.

  “Four of diamonds. Three of spades.

  Seven of diamonds. Ian comes at three-thirty on Tuesday. Not Monday Wednesday Thursday–“

  Dumbfounded, Ian steps back from the bed.

  He walks out of Michael’s room before a full-blown tantrum begins, certain that he’s imagined the whole surreal encounter, that his brother was actually asleep the entire time. With a sigh Ian digs for his car keys and pulls something unexpected from his breast pocket–the jack of hearts, slipped there minutes before by someone close enough to truly touch him.

  Keeping Faith

  NINE

  Spirits when they please Can either sex assume, or both.

  –John Milton,

  Paradise Lost The first time Colin kissed me, I was a college junior, sitting in an empty gymnasium, conjugating the French verb vouloir. “To want,” I had said, a test, and I tried to concentrate on the hard plane of the bleachers beneath me, instead of the light reflecting off Colin’s face.

  He was, quite simply, the handsomest boy I’d ever seen. He was from the South, a member of the good-ol’-boy network; I was a Jewish girl from the suburbs. His granddaddy had endowed a chair in the history department; I was at the school on an academic scholarship. I had learned his name from the Saturday football rosters: COLIN WHITE, QB, 5ft 11inch, 185 lbs., HOMETOWN: VIENNA,

  VA. I braved the cold and my own ignorance of football to watch him flash across the deep-green field like the needle of a skilled embroiderer.

  But he was just a daydream for me; our worlds were so far apart that finding common ground seemed not only unlikely, but ludicrous. Yet when the coach of the team called the Student Tutoring Service and asked for someone to help Colin pass French,

  I snatched up the assignment. And then spent three days gathering the nerve to call and set up a tutoring schedule.

  Colin turned out to be unfailingly polite,

  always pulling out my chair and holding open doors.

  He was also the worst French student I’d ever met. He ruined the melody of the language with his Virginia drawl and stumbled over the simplest forms of grammar. I was doing him no good, although I didn’t mind. It meant that I would get to keep coming back.

  “Vouloir,” I had said that day. “It’s irregular.”

  Colin shook his head. “I can’t. I don’t get this the way you do.”

  It was one of the nicest things I’d ever been told. Although I would have been entirely out of place in Colin’s sports or social world,

  I was in my element right here. “Je veux.”

  I sighed. “I want.” I pointed at the book, to show him.

  His hand came over mine, and I went absolutely still. Afraid to look him in the eye, I found something fascinating about that page of the textbook. But I could not stop myself from feeling the heat of his body as he leaned closer, hearing the swish of his jeans as he stretched out his legs,

  imprisoning me. And then his face was all I could see.

  “Je veux,” he murmured. His mouth was softer than I’d dreamed, and then he pulled away, waiting to see what I would do.

  I glanced at him long enough to realize that the invincible Colin White, Star Quarterback, was nervous. My heart pounded like a timpani, so loud in my ears that for a moment I did not hear the distant sound of catcalls, of someone clapping.

  I stood up and ran out of the gym.

  October 27, 1999 The night after Ian and I make love, I dream that we are getting married. I’m wearing the gown from my wedding to Colin and carrying a bouquet of wildflowers. I walk down the aisle by myself and smile at Ian, and then we both face the person officiating. For some reason I am expecting Rabbi Solomon, but when I open my eyes I am standing in front of Jesus on the cross.

  Faith is cuddled beside me. “How come you’re naked?” she asks. “And how come you slept out here?”

  With a start I glance around the living room,

  searching for Ian. When I realize he’s missing, all my doubts creep in: He is used to one-night stands. He makes a living out of seducing people in one form or another. I
am one of those people, for more than one reason. I remember our discussion about a truce; was last night a way of saying that it is over?

  “Ma-a!” Faith whines, yanking my hair.

  “Hey!” I rub my scalp and try to focus on her. “I got hot, so I took off my nightgown. And you were snoring.”

  Faith seems to accept this. “I want breakfast,” she announces.

  “Get dressed and we’ll find something to eat.”

  With Faith gone, a thousand thoughts run through my mind, none of them with happy endings. I am not sophisticated enough for someone like Ian. He’s left because he cannot look me in the eye. He’s gone back to New Hampshire, and he’s going to tell the world everything he has learned about Faith, from her shoe size to her bumbling experience with Michael. He does not even remember what happened last night. I close my eyes, disgusted. I have already lived this story.

  I have already fallen in love with a man whom my mind inflated to such mythic proportions that I could stare right at him and still not see him clearly.

  “I didn’t mean it,” Colin told me years ago, after our first kiss. He admitted that two of the wide receivers had bet twenty dollars he couldn’t seduce me before the end of that first tutoring session. Then he shook his head. “No, I take that back. I wanted to kiss you. For the money at first, but then it happened, and it wasn’t about that at all. I would really like it,” he said, “if you’d go out with me sometime.”

  We went to a movie three nights later. And then to another movie. And out to dinner. And soon,

  as unlikely as it seemed, when Colin was walking across campus, I was wedged beneath his arm. For someone small and skinny and brainy, someone who had never moved in popular circles, it was a heady feeling. I would pretend that I did not hear cheerleaders snickering as we passed, teammates asking when he’d switched over to screwing little boys.

  Colin liked me, he said, because I was sweet and could talk about nearly anything with knowledge and conviction –unlike most of the Magnolia Queen debutantes who had always been trotted out in front of him. But Colin was accustomed to that type of girl all the same. And whether it was unconscious or by intent, he turned me into one of them little by little–bringing me headbands to pull the hair off my face, introducing me to Bloody Marys on Sunday mornings, even buying me a cheap strand of fake pearls, to wear with everything from the Izod knit shirts I borrowed from his dresser to my own corduroy jumpers. I did whatever he asked, and more, intent on being as good a student at turning into a WASP as I had been at any academic subject. It never occurred to me that Colin was interested in what he could make me into, instead of what I already was. What struck me, then, was simply that he was interested.

  The night of Winter Formals I put on a simple black dress and hooked on my pearls and even wore a special bra that made it look as if I had something to support. We were going to Colin’s fraternity, and I was bound and determined to pass muster. But fifteen minutes before Colin was supposed to pick me up, he called. “I’m sick. I’ve been throwing up for an hour.”

  “I’ll be right over,” I said.

  “Don’t. I just want to sleep for a while.”

  He hesitated, then said, “Mariah, I’m sorry.”

  I wasn’t. I could not be sure of myself at a fraternity dance, but I knew how to take care of someone ill. I got into my faded jeans again and walked into town, where I bought chicken soup at the grocery store, fresh flowers, and a crossword-puzzle book. Then I went to Colin’s dormitory room.

  Which was empty.

  I left the chicken soup still steaming on the threshold of the door and wandered aimlessly around the campus. Hadn’t I expected this, deep down?

  Hadn’t I told myself this was coming? Snow began to settle on the shoulders of my coat as I turned onto Fraternity Row. The parties were loud, with steam and laughter and fumes of grain alcohol spilling through the open windows. I edged to the back of Colin’s frat house, stood on a milk crate, and looked inside.

  A group of football players and their dates formed a Gordian knot–black tuxedos threaded with splashes of colored satin on a lap or draped over a neck. Colin was facing me,

  laughing at a joke I had not heard. His arm was looped around the waist of a beautiful redhead. I stared for so long that it took me a moment to realize that Colin was looking at me, too.

  He chased me across campus to my room.

  “Mariah! You’ve got to let me explain!”

  I yanked open the door. “You were sick,”

  I said.

  “I was! I swear!” His voice turned low and smooth. “When I woke up, I tried to call you, but you weren’t here. The guys came by and convinced me to go over to the House for a while.

  Annette … well, she’s nothing. She was someone who was hanging around.”

  Was I nothing? Was I someone who was hanging around?

  Colin’s fingers framed my face. “But I left her to be here with you,” he said, reading my thoughts. His breath fell onto my mouth, a curious mix of mint and scotch, and I remembered how Colin had described gentling the horses he’d worked with in Virginia–by blowing into their nostrils, so that they would not fear his scent.

  “Colin,” I whispered, “why me?”

  “Because you’re different from them. You’re smarter,

  and better, and–I don’t know–I just keep thinking that maybe if I’m with you, it’s going to rub off, so I’ll be different, too.”

  It was an amazing concept–that somehow Colin had a new explanation for why I’d always remained on the fringe: not because I wasn’t good enough for others, but because I was just waiting for others to flock around me. I leaned forward and kissed him.

  Later, when we were undressed and Colin was rising over me like a great bird blocking out the sun, he asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  I was not only certain, I’d been waiting my whole life for this first time with a man who knew me better than I knew myself. I nodded and reached toward him, expecting magic.

  When Ian comes into the cabin, we both freeze. With great precision I lay my spoon down beside my cereal bowl; he methodically closes the door behind him.

  This time, I tell myself, I am not going to let it happen. I clasp my hands in my lap so that Ian cannot see them trembling. He’s not Colin, but I am just as powerless now as I was then.

  Suddenly I realize why I could not have turned Colin away years ago. I realize why I am getting involved, once again, with a man bound to hurt me. In my experience, falling in love has little to do with wanting someone. It is much more enticing to me to be wanted.

  Without saying a word, Ian meets me halfway across the kitchen and pulls me into his arms. Inside, I am tumbling. He doesn’t kiss, or stroke, or do anything but hold me,

  until I give in to the urge to close my eyes and let him lead.

  Ian hands Mariah his cell phone and watches her disappear into the bedroom for privacy while she calls her mother. He can’t blame her. As wonderful as it is to touch her, they are still strangers of a sort. He has not told her about his morning visit to Michael; she prefers to be alone when she speaks to Millie.

  “So,” he says amiably to Faith, “how about a game of gin?”

  She looks up from her coloring book, wary.

  Well, he can respect that, too. The last time he was with her–at Lockwood–he’d practically snarled. He widens his grin a little,

  determined to be charming, if only for Mariah’s sake.

  Suddenly Mariah is standing at the doorway of the living room, her face white.

  “We have to go home,” she says.

  Boston, Massachusetts In the Vatican there is an official whose sole responsibility is to find the holes in each proposed case of sainthood. He examines every action and writing and word spoken by the allegedly virtuous person in an effort to find one slip, one swear, one lapse from the faith that might prevent canonization. For example, he might unearth the fact that Mother Teresa missed vespers on Jul
y 9, 1947. Or that she took the Lord’s name in vain when seized with fever.

  The Catholic Church even has a certain name for this position: Promoter of the Faith, or more irreverently, the Devil’s Advocate.

  It is a job Father Paul Rampini thinks he’d fill splendidly.

  He doesn’t live in Rome, though. And he is hardly important enough to be chosen for such a critical job, since he’s only taught at seminary in Boston for sixteen years. But still,

  Father Rampini has met his fair share of the falsely venerated. As one of the foremost theologians in the Northeast, he’s been called in to consult on many occasions when visionaries began spouting claims. Of the forty-six cases he’s examined, not one received a favorable report to the bishop from Father Rampini. And most of them only chattered on about the usual: glowing images of Mary, a crucifix appearing in the mist over a valley, Jesus telling people the hour of reckoning was at hand.

  The idea of a female God does not sit well with Father Rampini.

  He turns off the ignition in his Honda and opens his briefcase. The pink pamphlet from the MotherGod society lies on top. Father Rampini can barely stand to look at it. It is one thing for someone like him–a priest who teaches at seminary, a man who has devoted his life to theology–to reconsider the procession of persons in the godhead. It is another thing entirely for a seven-year-old girl–Jewish,

  at that!–to start proclaiming God as a mother.

  It is said that she’s a healer. Well, that he might even accept, with the proper sorts of proof.

  And that she has stigmata–again, he’d like to see it with his own eyes. But to say that God is visiting her in a clearly female form …

  certainly it is heresy.

  Father Rampini checks his reflection in the rearview mirror before opening the door of his car.

  He tucks the leather portfolio beneath his arm and steps out, smoothing the placket of his black shirt and adjusting the white collar.

  The door to the rectory sweeps open, and Father MacReady stands on the threshold. For the briefest of moments they size each other up:

  parish priest to seminary priest, confessor to researcher, Irish to Italian. Father MacReady steps forward, filling the doorway,