He shakes her hand, formally, rather hard, as he always does; she feels her face redden even more deeply; is grateful for the distraction of taking off her coat, laying it awkwardly over a chair, murmuring replies to his barrage of bright falsely cheery questions (“And how is the weather today, is it as terrible as it looks?”—“Did you have a very hard time getting here?”—“Dear Marya, did you bring the books? you’re amazing”).

The first several minutes of a visit are always, to Marya, wonderfully giddy and confused, disorienting, as if she has blundered into a sheerly adult and codified situation. There are questions to be asked, remarks to be made, observations, small oblique witticisms. Father Shearing is in resolutely high spirits, it isn’t one of his weak groggy days, though his voice is hoarser than Marya recalls, and the pupils of his eyes are dilated, and is that sickly sweet smell his, the smell of his smile, his wide bared teeth, his breath?

She sits, self-conscious and exhilarated; hands the books over to him; pretends not to notice the trembling of his fingers, the papery-thin texture of his skin; pretends not to mind how fully absorbed he is in leafing through the books, as if he has forgotten her. Shortly he will turn back to her, she knows: she has a purpose, after all, for being there (she is “assisting” him in certain professional tasks, even the stern-browed nuns who oversee St. Joseph’s will grant her that), she isn’t an idiotic besotted high school girl, one of a number of adoring parish females, who simply wants . . . who yearns. . . .

It is a pretense too, a strategy of hospital politesse, that one does not precisely see certain alarming medical accoutrements: the clear plastic tube, for instance, that is attached to a trolley beside the bed, feeding into a vein in Father Shearing’s left forearm.

Not long ago Father Shearing was awakened in the night by a severe coughing spell, so violent and prolonged that two of his ribs were cracked. Learning of it Marya responded in a childlike way: “Is that possible?” she asked. She was baffled, vaguely scandalized. Were such things possible? . . . a coughing spell, broken ribs. . . . She hasn’t dared ask if the ribs are mending, or if anything like the coughing spell has recurred.