If he had another visitor, or if the room was crowded as it sometimes is in the late afternoon, Marya would be justified in slipping away. She seems to have nothing much to say to Father Shearing in the company of others, nor has he anything of substance to say to her: Marya’s manner is silent, vaguely embarrassed and resentful; his is abstract, jocose, strained. But this afternoon there are no visitors and he is sitting propped up awkwardly with pillows, the crooked-neck reading lamp burning beside him, a book opened on his lap. Perhaps he is waiting for Marya, perhaps he has forgotten. Mondays and Thursdays are her days to visit, without fail. She has become a creature of fierce fidelity. Immediately after school, before she goes to her job at Cappy’s Groceries (her hours are from six to nine-thirty, five days a week), she takes a crosstown bus, transfers to the Riverside Boulevard bus, hikes a quarter mile to St. Joseph’s . . . which is in the “good” section of Innisfail, where the Knauers have no friends. It is a neighborhood of enormous houses, spacious lawns, steep leg-wrenching hills not perhaps meant to be covered on foot, and in such rotten weather.

Marya hesitates in the doorway, fumbling with her woolen scarf. She is still short of breath; her cheeks are probably flaming, her eyes too bright. She is a ferocious sort of angel, beetle-browed, glaring, when she wants only to be an angel of glad tidings.

“Father Shearing? It’s Marya—”

As always, it is something of a shock and an embarrassment to see Clifford Shearing in bed, in a white gown. And pale, ravaged, thin, not altogether himself. . . . When he looks around at Marya his bruised eyes narrow at first as if he’s blinded by light: there is a terrible moment (so Marya thinks, steeling herself) when he won’t know who she is. Then of course he recognizes her, he smiles and welcomes her in, even lifts his good arm in an ebullient gesture—“Marya, how nice!—what a lovely surprise!—come in, come in, take a seat—are you alone?”

Are you alone! Marya thinks, subtly offended. As if she has ever not been alone in his presence.

She comes shyly forward, carrying her bookbag, shaking her long hair free of the collar of her coat. She knows herself ungainly and without charm, her feet enormous in salt-stained boots, her nose running. At least she has brought Father Shearing a few of the books he’d requested last week; at least she has some excuse for being here.