The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [375]
“We needn’t worry, Bill, we’re going to get along, aren’t we?” Catherine said wistfully, relaxing in his arms and patting his cheek.
He shook his head, agreeing.
“I know that as long as I’m with you I won’t have to worry because I can depend on you,” she said.
He kissed her. Their eyes met in helplessness, and Studs knew that there was nothing more for either of them to say. “What time will you be over in the morning?”
“What time do you want me to?”
“Let’s go to eleven o’clock mass.”
“I’d rather go to a low mass.”
“But it would give you more sleep.”
“I’d rather go to a low mass,” he sulked.
“All right, little boy,” she said with a smile. “You’ll be over for ten o’clock mass?... No, I tell you, you come over and we’ll have breakfast together. Come at nine o’clock.”
“All right,” he said, kissing her again.
He watched her disappear up the stairway within the inner hall doorway. He took the same path home that he always took after leaving her. Walking, he suddenly realized that they would have to start out on her money. He was going to her a pauper without a pot to... Jesus Christ! Getting married on her money, after he had knocked her up, and having wasted his own like an out-and-out chump. And why, oh, Jesus, why did all these things have to come when he was losing his health and all jammed up? Now, as he had never realized it before, he could see just how important money was, and he told himself, yes, sir, your pocketbook is your best friend. Now it meant so many important things, and to think of all the dough he had pooped away since he had started working back in 1919.
He tried to see himself coming through and busting out on top, and it was like eating something that was sour and mouldy. With each step homeward he was shaken with a powerless anger, and it made him feel the imminence of some danger. He was getting afraid, almost, even to walk, because that danger might pop out at him from the next doorway and just put the clamps on Studs Lonigan with a pair of steel hand-cuffs.
He told himself to can it all, and trust to luck. Luck would have to be on his side. With luck, he’d win through. Trying to kid himself again. He yawned. He only wanted to sleep. To get home and fall into bed and forget it. But it wasn’t like a jag, for that could be slept off. In the morning he was going to wake up, and know that it would be back again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I
“Son, I don’t see why you can’t wait,” Mrs. Lonigan said.
“Yes, Bill, isn’t it kind of fast and sudden, you know, getting married on the spur of the moment? Of course, now, don’t think that I don’t like Catherine or don’t want you to marry her. Because we aren’t at all talking on that point. All we are trying to say is that maybe you better not rush into it and act on such a quick decision,” the father said, and Studs commenced to grow nervous and very unsure of himself be-cause he could see, sitting in the parlor and facing his parents, that they were both giving him fishy-eyed looks.
“Well, there’s no particular reason why we shouldn’t,” he said weakly, sparring for time until he could think up better answers.
“Bill, now why don’t you just think it over? Coming so sudden, it will look kind of... kind of... funny. And it gives us such little time to get ready,” Lonigan said.
“We’ve talked it over and made up our minds,” Stud said, bored, not wanting to argue it when all such talk anyway was just a waste of time.
“And how will Catherine’s mother like this, with you taking her only daughter away from her on such short notice, and not giving her any time to make the right preparations for the wedding? It’s not fair to Mrs. Banahan,” Mrs. Lonigan said, still turning suspicious eyes on him.
He couldn’t understand why they kept on hemming and hawing about it. But he was glad for one consolation anyway. There wouldn’t be so damn much trouble about getting things ready for the wedding. Immediately he thought with regret that poor Catherine, she would miss all that fussing. She had, he was sure, like all girls dreamed of the time she would be married as some great special occasion. And now all these dreams of hers for a very romantic wedding were dampened plenty.