The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [253]
At Madison Street, he halted to permit the passage of a west-bound surface car, reading above a window in the center of the car: MADISON & WESTERN. He had hardly ever been on the west side, and he wondered about it. It was probably like a city in itself, and it had its gangs and bunches and poolrooms all over, fellows just like their own bunch from Fifty-eighth Street, fellows just like himself, like Red and like Slug and Weary and all the old boys. He slouched onward, hearing the rumble of the elevated trains, several blocks distant, and then, from a nearer street, the shrieking sirens of fire engines, and the high-powered roaring of fire-engine motors. He wished the fire were along his way to meet Catherine, so he could stop and watch the excitement. If it was a big one, he might see the flames bursting out of the windows, and even watch the walls of the building crumble, making noises like booming cannons. But that was a goofy thing to hope for.
He increased his gait to a brisk walk, because Catherine was almost never late, and since he was going to pop the question tonight he oughtn’t to annoy her by making her wait for him. The idea of proposing worried him; his body became tense and his breath seemed almost to jerk out of him. It was a serious business, and maybe he ought to .think it over more. He reduced his pace unconsciously. He felt somewhat the same as he might have if he were going to a dentist’s to have a tooth pulled, wanting to postpone what had to be done to some other time. Suppose he should make a fool of himself? After all, he was really a stranger to her. He was really a stranger to everyone else in the world also, and they really did not know what went on inside of him, and how he felt about many, many things. He wasn’t sure that he would want to live so intimately with anyone as he would have to do with Catherine if he married her. Maybe he should not have made the date with her tonight, coming all the way downtown instead of getting off at the Englewood station, and letting Stan bring home his small grip. But if he hadn’t done this, he would have nothing to do but go home and sit around watching how bored his old man and old woman seemed to be. or else going out alone. And these days he hated to be alone, and when he was alone, he worried and puzzled over too many things, and stewed over his health. And did he, now, really want to marry Catherine?
There was Lucy. And there was that girl he had knelt next to at a Christmas morning mass at St. Patrick’s. He had wanted to get next to her, and he had used to hope that he would. As he remembered her, and as he remembered Lucy, they had class, the same kind of class that girls like his own sisters or Weary’s sister, Fran Reilley, had. There was an air about them, about the way they talked, walked, the things they said and did, their clothes, everything about them that Catherine did not seem to have. Catherine would make him a damn good wife, he knew, but still, well, there was something common about her, something that would have kept her from being in the same group with girls like his sisters, from being bid to their sororities, something that was there even if he couldn’t put his finger on it. She was decent, he was sure she would say yes when he popped the question, and she was the kind who would make a goddamn swell wife in some ways. Yet when he was with her, and met his sisters, he was ashamed of her. Thinking of Lucy, or that other girl, he kind of felt sorry for Catherine.