Marya wonders if her mother, if she is still living, is a practicing Catholic. If she goes to confession, takes Communion, prays to be forgiven. Vera Sanjek. Vera who cuddled her in a drunken embrace, pretended to love her, told so many lies. Vera who gave Joey away. Falling-down-drunk and staggering-drunk. Stinking of vomit. “That bitch”—as her brother-in-law Everard called her—of whom no one has heard in seven years. Or, if they’ve heard, Marya hasn’t been told. Marya hasn’t been told a thing.

(She has brought the subject up to Wilma from time to time; she would never dare mention it to Everard. Once Wilma said, angry, laughing, that it wouldn’t surprise her if Vera had been up in Powhatassie all these years—by which she meant the Women’s State Correctional Facility some three hundred miles to the north. Why do you say that? Marya asked, and Wilma backed down at once. No reason: just said it. Another time when Marya brought the subject of her mother up Wilma responded even more angrily. “Who the hell do you think has been your mother all this time, you ungrateful little shit.”)

Marya believes, Marya wills herself to believe, the challenge is to force herself to believe that which her very reason rejects. That which Clifford Shearing has explained so succinctly and so beautifully. Faith is surrendering oneself to God, after all; surrendering one’s self. A matter of will and discipline. A matter of following certain time-honored techniques for overcoming the rebelliousness of the mind. (I, I, I, says the ego in its pride: but the soul remains silent, in infinite patience. Marya is reminded suddenly of poor Mr. Schwilk speaking of the faith that creates faith: so very American a proposition.)

Father Shearing has confided in her that it was difficult for him too at her age. “But gradually I realized that faith comes and goes—it can’t be a constant. So even when I doubt God I am still honoring Him; even when I fall into despair over His existence and His plan for the world I am still contained within His love. Do you understand, Marya? You of all persons should understand.”

She flushed in gratitude. She stammered yes. She did, oh yes she did, certainly she understood, there was nothing Marya Knauer couldn’t grasp.

THERE IS TALK of transferring Clifford Shearing to another hospital, in another city; there is talk—promiscuous, unfounded—that he is rapidly recovering and will soon be back at St. Anne’s. (He will never return to St. Anne’s, to his position as Monsignor’s second assistant. It turns out that even before his hospitalization he had applied for a two-year leave, to study Thomist philosophy in France. He and Monsignor had never gotten along well: they were too much alike temperamentally.)