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FAITH a novel JENNIFER HAIGH For Jimmy, my first friend It’s a fight you’ll never win And now you bow your head in shame For a sin no one forgives —DROPKICK MURPHYS, “THIS IS YOUR LIFE” He lives for God, who lives by the Rule. —ST. BENEDICT Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Part 1 - 2002 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Part 2 - May Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Jennifer Haigh Copyright Credits Chapter 1 Here is a story my mother has never told me. It is a day she’s relived a thousand times, the twenty-first of June, 1951, the longest day of that or any year. A day that still hasn’t ended, as some part of her still paces that dark apartment in Jamaica Plain, waiting. I imagine the curtains closed against the five o’clock sun, hot and bright as midday; her baby boy peacefully asleep; her young self with nothing to do but wander from room to room, still filled with her dead mother-in-law’s things. At the time she’d thought it a grand apartment, her from Roxbury where the children slept three to a bed. Even as a boy her husband had had his own bedroom, an unimaginable luxury. His mother had been injured somehow giving birth and there had been no more children. This fact alone made the Breens wealthier than most, though Harry’s father had only worked at Filene’s stacking crates in the warehouse. The entire apartment had come from Filene’s, on the employee discount, the lamps and brocade divan and what she had learned were called Oriental rugs. Mary herself had never bought a thing at Filene’s. Her own mother shopped at Sears. In the bedroom the baby slept deeply. She parted the curtains and let the sun shine on his face. Harry, when he came home, would pull them shut, worried someone might see him dressing or undressing through their third-floor windows. Sure, it was possible—the windows faced Pond Street, also lined with three-deckers—though why he cared was a puzzle. He was a man, after all. And there was nothing wrong with the sight of him. The first morning of their marriage, lying in the too-soft bed in the tourist cabin in Wellfleet, she had looked up at him in wonderment, her first time seeing him in daylight, his bare chest and shoulders, and her already four months along. Nothing wrong with him at all, her husband tall and blue-eyed, with shiny dark hair that fell into his eyes when he ducked his head, a habit left over from a bashful adolescence, though nobody, now, would call him shy. Harry Breen could talk to anyone. Behind the counter at Old Colony Hardware he had a way with the customers, got them going about their clogged pipes and screen doors and cabinets they were installing. He complimented their plans, suggested small improvements, sent them out the door with twice what they’d come in for. A natural salesman, never mind that he couldn’t, himself, hit a nail with a hammer. When a fuse blew at the apartment it was Mary who ventured into the dark basement with a flashlight. What did you do before? she’d asked, half astonished, when she returned to the lit apartment and found Harry and his mother sitting placidly in the kitchen, stirring sugar into teacups. We didn’t burn so many lights before, the old lady said. It was a reminder among many others that Mary’s presence was unwelcome, that Mrs. Breen, at least, had not invited her into their lives, this grimy interloper with her swollen belly and her skirts and blouses from Sears. As though her condition were a mystery on the order of the Virgin Birth, as though Harry Breen had had nothing to do with it. She lifted Arthur from 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
