Keeping Faith: A Novel by Jodi Picoult Page B

sitcom.
“No, go back.” Millie grabs the remote. “I like listening to his accent.”
Mariah frowns at an installment of Ian Fletcher’s anti-evangelical show, watching him strut around like a jaded cock of the walk.
Accent, hah. He probably picked it up from a voice coach. She has never understood the mass philosophical appeal of this man, but then again she has never been interested enough in religion to want to entertain its alternative. “I think the reason people watch him is because they believe that if he keeps mouthing off, God’s going to hurl a lightning bolt down during a live broadcast and let the world watch him fry.”
“That’s very Old Testament of you.” Millie pushes the mute button. “Maybe you remember more of Hebrew school than I thought.”
Mariah blinks. “I went to Hebrew school?”
“For a day. Your father and I thought we’d try to do the conventional thing by you. Some of your friends went to Sunday school, so …” She laughs. “You came home and said you’d rather take ballet.”
It does not surprise Mariah. When she was a child her religious affiliation was purely social, the kind of Jew whose family attended temple only on High Holy Days, and then just to see what everyone else was wearing. Mariah can remember seeing Santa in the mall and wishing she could crawl into his lap. She can remember how on Christmas Day, when the rest of the world was celebrating, her family would go to the Chinese restaurant for dinner and then out to a movie, where they were the only people in the theater.
It surprised no one when Mariah married an Episcopalian.
Mariah cannot recall ballet class, but she realizes that although she can still configure her feet in the basic five positions, she would be hard-pressed to recite all Ten Commandments.
“I didn’t know–“
“Oh!” Millie exclaims. “This is his big tour! The one he’s taking across America!
Tuesday he was in New Paltz.”
Mariah laughs. “New Paltz has a big atheist population?”
“Just the opposite. He was there because some church claimed to have a statue oozing blood. Turned out to be a limestone deposit or something.”
A line of type flashes at the bottom of the screen: HOULTON, MAINE, LIVE! The camera pans, catching T-shirts emblazoned with THE LIMB OF LIFE: THE JESUS TREE. Then it narrows on a close-up of Ian Fletcher, framed in the doorway of an RV. “Gorgeous man.” Millie sighs.
“Look at that smile.”
Mariah doesn’t glance up from the TV Guide she’s skimming. “Well, of course,”
she says. “He’s probably having the time of his life.”
Ian has never been so miserable in his life.
He is hot and sweaty, has a killer headache, and is quickly coming to hate Maine, if not the entirety of New England. Worse still, he can’t look forward to a respite when the broadcast is finished. His producer refused to book him a decent hotel, saying that a guy who wants to go on a grassroots tour ought to be willing to let his Italian loafers touch the ground. So–for appearance’s sake–Ian’s production crew gets to stay at the Houlton Holiday Inn, while Ian camps out in a glorified tin can.
He’s not about to reveal that accommodations are vitally important to a man who cannot sleep at night, but only prowls about, exhausted. His insomnia is no one’s business but his own. Still,
Ian can’t even begin to describe the anticipation he feels at the prospect of bringing down this whole little Christ show. Whatever hoax he picks next to unravel will damn well be situated near a Ritz-Carlton.
At a signal from James he steps out of the godforsaken Winnebago, several reporters closing around him. He pushes through them and steps onto an empty milk crate that someone has left behind. “As y’all may know,” Ian says,
gesturing to the small and devoted knot of people gathered in front of the McKinneys’ sprawling apple tree, “there’s been some question in recent days whether Houlton, Maine, is indeed the site of a