Keeping Faith: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

lacerations were not deep. Still, they were deep enough to require twenty stitches. My jaw is so tight from being clenched that a shudder runs down my spine, and my mother must know how close I am to falling apart, because she has a quiet word with a nurse, touches Faith’s hair, and pulls me out of the room.
We don’t speak until we reach a small supply closet, which my mother appropriates for our use. Pushing me against the wall of sheets and towels, she forces me to look her in the eye.
“Mariah, Faith is all right. Faith is going to be just fine.”
Just like that, I dissolve. “It’s my fault,” I sob. “I couldn’t stop it.” I do not say what I’m sure my mother is thinking, too –that I am not crying just for the knives that scored Faith, but for retreating into depression after Colin left, maybe even for choosing Colin as a husband in the first place.
“If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine–I bought the tickets.” She hugs me hard. “This isn’t some kind of punishment. It’s not like an eye for an eye, Mariah. You’re going to get through this. Both of you.” Then she holds me at arm’s length. “Did I ever tell you about the time I almost killed you? We went skiing, and you were all of about seven, and you slipped off the chairlift when I was adjusting my poles. You were dangling there, twenty feet above the ground, while I grabbed onto the sleeve of your little coat.
All because I wasn’t paying attention.”
“It’s not the same. That was an accident.”
“So was this,” my mother insists.
We walk out of the supply closet and into Faith’s room again. Words the psychiatrists had used at Greenhaven to describe me circle in my head: compulsive and idealistic, rejection-sensitive, poor self-confidence, a tendency to overcompensate and to catastrophize. “She should have gotten someone else as a mother. Someone who was good at this sort of thing.”
My mother laughs. “She got you for a reason,
honey. You wait and see.” Announcing that she’s off to get us coffee, she heads for the door. “Just because other parents roll with the punches doesn’t mean it’s right. The ones who are most nervous about screwing up, Mariah, are the same ones who care enough to want things to be perfect.”
The door shuts behind her with a sigh. I sit down on Faith’s bed and trace the edge of her blanket. If I can’t have Colin, I think, please let me have her.
I don’t realize I’ve spoken aloud until my mother comes in with the coffee. “Who are you talking to?” I flush, embarrassed to be caught bargaining with a higher power. It is not as if I believe in God. When I was a child, my family wasn’t very religious; as an adult,
all I have is a healthy dose of skepticism –and, apparently, the urge to beg in spite of this when I really, really need help. “No one. Just Faith.”
My mother presses the coffee into my hand. The cup is so hot it burns my palm, and even after I set it on the nightstand my skin still smarts.
At that moment, Faith blinks up at me.
“Mommy,” she croaks, and my heart turns over: Her first word in weeks is all mine.

Keeping Faith
TWO
“Sure, lots of people believe in God.
Lots of people used to believe the world was flat,
too.”
Ian Fletcher in The New York Times, June 14, 1998 August 17, 1999 Ian Fletcher is standing in the middle of hell. He paces around the new backdrop of the set, running his hand over the gas pipes that will produce flame, and the jagged peaks of rock.
He scrapes off a bit with his thumb, thinking that brimstone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
“It’s too damn yellow. Looks like some New Age druid circle.”
His set decorator glances at the associate producer. “I think, Mr.
Fletcher, that the fire-and-brimstone thing was smell-related.”
“Smell?” Ian scowls. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s sulfur, sir. You know, you burn it,
and it stinks.”
Ian glares at the set decorator.
“Tell me,” he says softly,