The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [372]
“You know it, Kid,” he said, still choked up.
“Well, you take a poor way of showing it. You don’t even hold me tight and kiss me when I tell you these things.”
He kissed her, aware of warm tears trickling down her cheeks, and they gripped each other in a mood of desperation. Released, they sat side by side, surrounded by trees, alone in a quiet where they could clearly hear each other’s breathing.
“Bill, we got to do something. I’m afraid to go to a doctor or take medicine,” Catherine said after a period of silence.
“It won’t hurt you.”
“But I can’t, I can’t do such a thing.”
“Well, it’ll mean plenty of trouble for us.”
“But if you love me.”
“Yes, but, Kid, can’t you see, right off the bat you’ll be tied down with a baby?”
“I don’t care for myself. But maybe it’s you. You’re afraid and you don’t want to be tied down.”
He knew that she craved some positive word from him, and all he could do was pat her hand gently and hope that his gesture would give her confidence and substitute for all the words he could not speak.
“Both of us have money saved up,” she said.
“I never told you, you know,” he said awkwardly.
“What?” she said with fresh anxiety.
“Well, after we became engaged, I felt that we ought to be able to start out with more money than it looked like we were gonna have. So I bought some shares in a new issue of Imbray Stock. I paid twenty-five a shot for it, and it’s down to six dollars a share now, so my two thousand dollars is now worth, let’s see... oh, about two hundred and forty dollars. It’s hardly worth selling it, so the money’s all tied up until we get better times and the stock market goes up.”
Christ, now he was only beginning to fully realize what a chump he’d been. Oh, how sweet it would be to take Ike Dugan out and pound him full of lumps!
“But Bill!” she exclaimed, stunned with surprise.
“I thought it would turn out all right,” he said dejectedly.
“But Bill, how could you do that and never say a word to me?” she said, breaking freely into tears.
He halted his impulse to say that it was his money, wasn’t it, and he felt as helpless as she, sobbing beside him. “And now we have no money,” she said forlornly.
“I thought that things would get better and it would be a good investment. I took a chance,” he said, shrugging his shoulders in an ineffectual gesture.
“But Bill, how could you?” she asked, and he saw that she was more frightened than angry.
“There’s still a chance. Imbray, you know, is a smart man. And the stock is based on things that everybody needs, and they should be good investments in the long run. A man like Imbray can’t fail when he’s got stock backed by almost all the public utilities of the Middle West. I still think that I’m going to get more money out of my investments than I put into them.”
“That doesn’t matter, Bill darling. We’re going to get along, all right. I know it. I can just feel it.”
“Well, what do you want to do?” he asked nervously.
“Honey, you and me, we’ve just got to get married. And I’m not afraid of having a baby of yours, and I don’t care what people say.”
“Well, you know we’ll be tied down.”
“I don’t care,” she said, snapping her head, a note of defiance coming into her voice.
“It’s going to be tough sledding. You know, I’m not working a lot with my dad, because there’s nothing much doing.”
“I don’t care! I don’t care! I don’t care!” she said rapidly, clasping his hand tightly, digging her nails into his palm.
She slumped against him, sobbed, and in persisting con-fusion and helplessness he put his arm around her shoulders.
“Brace up, Kid!” he said, lacking conviction and looking vacantly at the bushes.
She ceased crying, and he seemed to drift into vague dreaming, forgetting everything, not wanting to move, liking the feel and pressure of her against him. Suddenly she sat up, and to him her action was like being curtly awakened from sleep.
“The dew is falling, and I don’t like you sitting in the dampness. You might catch cold, and summer colds are worse than winter ones.”
“I’m all right.”
In the dark, she tried to arrange her hair. They walked slowly, Studs hearing the crunch of their shoes on the gravel. He remembered how he had so often seen fellows and girls walking in Washington Park on nights like this, just as they two were now. He didn