Faith. Jennifer Haigh

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СКАЧАТЬ his crib and gave his bottom a pat. He wriggled, squealed, fumbled blindly for her breast. The sodden diaper would have to be changed, the baby fed. In this way minutes would pass, and finally an hour. The stubborn sun would begin its grudging descent. Across town, in Roxbury, girls would be dressing for the dances, Clare Boyle and her sister and whoever else they ran with now, setting out by twos and threes down the hill to Dudley Street.

      She finished with the diaper, then sat at the window and unbuttoned her blouse, aware of the open curtains. If Harry came upon her like this, her swollen breast exposed, what would he do then? The thought was thrilling in a way she couldn’t have explained. But it was after six, and still there was no sign of him. When his mother was alive he’d come straight home after work. You could set your watch by it, his footsteps on the stairs at five-thirty exactly, even on Fridays when the other men stopped at the pub for a taste. Lately, though, his habits had shifted. Mondays and Tuesdays he played cards at the Vets.

      Once, leaving church, he’d nodded to some men she didn’t recognize, a short one and a tall one sharing a cigarette on the sidewalk. See you tomorrow, then, Harry called in a friendly tone. The short man had muttered under his breath, and the tall one had guffawed loudly. To Mary it couldn’t have been plainer that they were not Harry’s friends.

      THEY’D MET the way everyone met, at the dances. Last summer the Intercolonial was the place to be; now it might be the Hibernian or the Winslow or the Rose Croix for all she knew. On a Saturday night, with Johnny Powell’s band playing, a thousand or more would crowd upstairs at the Intercolonial, a mirrored globe hanging from the ceiling so that the walls shivered with light.

      She was seventeen then, too young for such pleasures. But it had been easy enough to slip out on a Friday night with Ma dead asleep, exhausted by the work of getting three small ones bathed and in their beds. And it wasn’t even a lie to go dancing on a Wednesday, when Mary really did attend the novena at nine o’clock as she was supposed to, the church packed with other overdressed girls and men who’d already had a drink or two, who’d meet up later across the street at Fontaine’s Café and make their plans for the evening. All right, then. See you at the hall. The men were deep on Wednesdays; you could change partners all night long if you wanted. Thursdays were a different story, maids’ night out, the halls packed with Irish girls. There was almost no point in going on a Thursday, the numbers were so against you. On a Thursday you were lucky to get a single dance.

      Harry Breen hadn’t chosen her, not at first. That first time they’d danced purely by chance. She knew all the dances—the reels and jigs, the wild céilí. At the Intercolonial waltzes were the thing, though once each night Johnny Powell would force the dreamy couples apart. Line up, everybody, for the Siege of Ennis. A mad crush, then, as they formed two long lines, men and girls facing. You’d take your turn with every one, herself and Clare Boyle laughing the whole way through. Some of the men were clumsy, some so strong they’d nearly swing you off your feet.

      She noticed Harry a moment before he reached for her. He was taller than the rest, his movements liquid; he swung her gracefully, smooth and controlled. And that thing she first felt, that swooning joy: maybe it was simple geometry, the relative size and shape of their bodies, his chest and shoulders just where they should be, their hips meeting, her eyes level with his mouth.

      The plain fact was that she’d chased him, courted his attention. Gone to greater lengths than any girl should. There was no point, now, in being ashamed. She had a ring on her finger and it hardly mattered how. They were married fast by her uncle Fergus, who’d skipped, discreetly, the time-consuming step of publishing the banns. Fergus had guessed what everyone would soon know, that Mary had gotten exactly what she wanted, and a bit more besides.

      She looked down at the baby at her breast.

      In the kitchen she took her beads from the drawer and found the station in time. Missing the Archbishop’s greeting was like coming late to a movie; she’d be unable to enter into the spirit of the thing. When Harry’s mother was living, they had knelt in the parlor for the rosary. Now the old lady was gone and no one was looking, so Mary dragged a chair to the open window and settled herself there. I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. Through the window a breeze came, carrying the Archbishop’s voice from the two apartments below. Up and down the street, every radio was tuned to the same station. Through every open window came the same holy words.

      It being Thursday, they started with the Joyful. As a girl she had studied the illustrations in her mother’s missal. The Joyful Mysteries were the most straightforward, the pictures almost Protestant in their simplicity: the Blessed Virgin kneeling in prayer, waiting for the angel; the Virgin noticeably pregnant, embracing her cousin Elizabeth. The Sorrowful were haunting and in a way lovelier: Our Lord kneeling in the Garden of Gethsemane, glowing in His anguish, perspiring drops of blood. But it was the Glorious Mysteries she waited for, Our Lord lifted into heaven, clouds bubbling beneath His feet like a cauldron of spirits. The Resurrection, the Ascension, the Assumption of the Virgin: all these stirred her deeply, even though (or perhaps because) she understood them the least. That was the beauty of it: contemplating the miracles, sublime and unknowable, and yet the words you repeated couldn’t be simpler. Hail Mary, full of grace. A prayer you’d known since earliest childhood, familiar as your mother’s voice.

      She closed her eyes and enjoyed the breeze, the baby’s warm weight, the Archbishop’s familiar intonations. She had seen him once standing beside the carousel at Paragon Park, eating ice cream with a dozen beaming nuns. In photos, in full regalia, he was imposing, and yet you never forgot that he was from St. Eulalia’s in South Boston, that his own father had worked in the repair pits at the Boston El. He never forgot it, either. You could tell this from the photographs: the Archbishop tossing around a football with the CYO boys, or raising a glass at a priest’s golden jubilee. The Archbishop wouldn’t say no to a drink, according to her uncle Fergus, who’d met him on several occasions. Cushing was God’s own, and yet he was theirs, too, in every way a regular man.

      She heard two sharp knocks at the front door.

      “Coming,” she called, drying herself with a tea towel, noticing all at once the wet stains on her blouse.

      She threw open the door. A strange man stood there smoking a cigarette. He wore a thin mustache and was her own height, though she was barefoot and he wore heeled boots. It took her a moment to place him: the short man from outside the church.

      “Is your husband at home?” He looked over her shoulder, his eyes darting around the room.

      “I’m sorry, he’s not.”

      From the kitchen the Archbishop droned: Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.

      “Listening to the rosary, were you? My mum does that every night.” The man dropped his cigarette and crushed it with his heel. He stepped past her into the apartment. “You’re sure he isn’t here?” He glanced into the kitchen as though Harry might be hiding and Mary felt a sudden urge to laugh, a nervous tic. She was forever laughing at the wrong times.

      “He hasn’t come home yet. Try the store, maybe?”

      “I’ve been there. He left hours ago.”

      “I don’t know, then. He could have stopped off at the pub.”

      The man frowned. “Never seen him take a drink, myself. Likes to keep his wits about him, doesn’t he?” He smiled then, and she saw that on both sides his teeth were missing. It made the front ones look suspect, like the vampire dentures children wore at Halloween.

      In her arms the baby let out a loud hiccup. She raised him to her shoulder. “Excuse me. I was in the middle of feeding him.” Patting him gently, СКАЧАТЬ