Anastasia returns at 12:20, just as Lucy has settled down for an all-day rip-off. Stiffly Lucy reminds Anastasia that she had an appointment at eleven. Anastasia, already upset at something else, begins to cry. They put the meager supply of groceries into the filthy refrigerator: tortillas, soy hamburger, beans, Coke. Pampers into the bathroom. Anastasia has no money left, the utilities bill is overdue, Ralph has outgrown his shoes … Lucy gives her fifty dollars, they end up both in tears as she leaves.

Tracking away she can barely see. She just isn’t a social worker, she hasn’t got the mentality, the ability to distance herself. The people she helps become like family, and it’s painful and frightening to see what sordid lives some people lead in this day and age. And so few of them Christian. No help for them from anywhere, not even faith in God. Reverend Strong has clipped a newspaper article that says that only 2 percent of Orange County residents are churchgoing Christians anymore, and he’s stuck it to the office bulletin board as a sort of challenge; but Lucy has to sit at her desk and look at it all day as she works, and given everything else she has to face, she finds it depressing indeed.

Reverend Strong is finishing lunch at the vicarage when she arrives, and he understands about her missing the meeting. “I figured it was Anastasia,” he says with a cynical laugh. Lucy isn’t yet to the point where she finds it funny. They go into the office and discuss the various works at hand.

Reverend Strong is a nice enough man, but sadly—tragically—his wife was killed in a bomb explosion while they were on a mission to Panama, and Lucy feels that the experience gave him a secret dislike for the poor. He tries to control it, but he can’t, not really. And so he is surprisingly, almost shockingly, cynical about most of their good works programs, and he is prone to oblique and confused outbursts in his sermons, against sloth, ambition, political struggle. It leaves most of the congregation confused, but Lucy is sure she understands what is going on. It’s the explanation for his frequent return to the parable of the talents. Some people are given only one talent, and instead of working with it they try to steal from the man given the ten talents.… Really, the more he harps on it, the more Lucy begins to wonder if the parable of the talents wasn’t a bit of a mistake on God’s part. In any case, she has the constant problem of getting the reverend’s approval for the works that the church obviously has to undertake, in the poorer parts of the community.…