Keeping Faith: A Novel by Jodi Picoult Page A

marvels at how strange they both sound: Mariah’s words had once rifled over him like waves on the beach, continuous patter about dry-cleaning tickets and school conferences and sales at the grocery store that he never really listened to, never noticed, until they stopped and he saw with surprise that he was buried up to his neck in the sand of this marriage. He wonders how you can go in the blink of an eye from speaking words that are as thoughtlessly dropped as pocket change to this,
where even the most benign conversation wrings you dry.
“So … was that all?” Mariah hesitates just the slightest moment before asking, “Or did you want to talk to me?”
There are so many things to discuss: the wedding, how Mariah’s faring, how odd it seems to be miles apart and still feel as if there is a high, deep wall he is peering around. “That was all,” Colin says.
September 29, 1999 Ian pays three people just to read the newspapers from around major cities in the United States and Europe. Every morning at eight o’clock these assistants are expected to report to his office with two dubious mystical events. On a morning two weeks into his Grassroots AntiRevival Campaign, they sit in the tight quarters of the Winnebago. “All right,
now.” Ian turns to David, his youngest employee. “What did you dig up?”
“Two-headed chicken and a seventy-five-year-old who gave birth.”
“Get out,” scoffs Yvonne. “The record’s that Florida woman.”
The story doesn’t particularly move Ian either. “What have you got that’s better?”
“Crop circles in Iowa.”
“I don’t want to get mixed up with that.
Believing in God and believing in aliens are two completely different ruses. Wanda?”
“There’s a bizarre source of a light at the bottom of a Montana well.”
“Sounds like radioactive waste. Anything else?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, yes. In Boston there was some excitement at a psychiatric symposium.”
Ian grins. “There’s an oxymoron.”
“Yeah, I know. It seems some doctor tossed out the idea that if a delusion can’t be disproved, it just might be real.”
“That’s my kind of shrink. What delusion,
exactly?”
“The psychiatrist has a patient–a girl –who she thinks might be seeing God.”
Ian’s body begins to hum. “Is that so?
Who’s the kid?”
“I don’t know. Psychiatrists don’t release names at these symposiums.
They’re just “the subject.”" Wanda fishes in her jeans pocket. “I did get the psychiatrist’s name, though,” she says, handing Ian a piece of paper.
“Miz Mary Margaret Keller,” Ian reads. “She couldn’t disprove a delusion, huh?
She’s probably had the kid studied by fifty people just like her. What she needs is someone like me.”
When there is a knock on the door, Rabbi Weissman looks up from his books. Groaning,
he realizes it’s ten o’clock. Time for another counseling session with the Rothmans.
For the briefest of moments he considers pretending that he’s not there. There is nothing he dislikes more than sitting while the Rothmans sling insults at each other with such vitriolic force that he fears being caught in the crossfire. He understands the role of the rabbi when it comes to helping members of his congregation, but this? Marital therapy? The rabbi shakes his head. More like target practice.
With a sigh, Rabbi Weissman fixes a smile on his face and opens the office door,
momentarily stunned by the sight of Eve and Herb Rothman kissing in the hall.
They break away with a flurry of embarrassed apologies. Rabbi Weissman watches with disbelief as the couple pulls the two armchairs closer together before sitting down. Surely this isn’t the same man who last week called his wife a scheming cow bent on milking him of his hard-earned money. Surely this isn’t the same woman who last week said that the next time her husband came home smelling like a harem she would slice off his baytsim in the middle of the night.
“Well,” he says, raising