The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [409]
“I called the priest. He’s in a bad way. A bad way, I fear,” Mrs. Lonigan said mournfully, looking at the girl as if to drive and wedge into her a sense of guilt because of Studs’ illness.
“Can I see him?” Catherine asked with deference, removing her hat.
“I don’t know. The doctor said there must be complete quiet in the sick room, and he must have absolute rest, and only his mother should see him besides the nurse.”
Catherine was so hurt that she could have cried. She had a flashing impulse of anger. But seeing, as if on second sight, this haggard and tired mother with eyes raw from tears, a natural womanly sympathy stirred her.
They moved to the parlor, and sat down, silent. The girl was suddenly struck with envy, because she thought that now she would never be able to bear the same name as this woman, Mrs. Lonigan. She felt, too, that even though she had hardly begun to swell, Mrs. Lonigan would sense her condition, because women who have been mothers seemed always to notice so much more readily than others.
“You say William is not better, Mrs. Lonigan?”
“He’s a very sick boy, and I don’t think he’ll be able to pull through,” Mrs. Lonigan said challengingly.
“Won’t I be able to see him?” Catherine asked, a beseeching expression on her face.
“Well, the doctor’s orders is for absolute rest and no visitors,” Mrs. Lonigan said, acting like a martyr.
“Hasn’t he asked for me?”
“No...William has not been conscious.”
Catherine’s mouth opened in shock. She sat rigid, trying to face and accept the fact that he would die, that she might never again hear his voice, his dear voice. She broke into tears and the mother watched her with curious and envious eyes, eyes that blamed the girl. She wished, also, that Catherine would stand up so that she could get a good look at her. She was suspicious.
“I must see him,” Catherine sobbed, lowering her head and struggling to check the flow of her tears.
Mrs. Lonigan wiped her eyes, and stared hard and calculatingly at the girl, as if she enjoyed seeing Catherine suffer. She believed that the girl would now, perhaps, understand her own feelings, her mother’s feelings. She turned on Catherine all the suffering, worry, apprehensiveness that had wracked her these last few days. Catherine was the cause of all this tragedy and unhappiness that was being brought upon her home, her poor home. Chippy! Whore! Street walker! She had done it to hold him and to force him into marriage. Well, now, if it was so, she could pay the penalty of guilt before all the world. Mrs. Lonigan resolved that she would fight and forbid a death-bed marriage to save the girl’s name.
Mrs. Lonigan thought, too, in envy, that this girl was young, and she had known her own flesh, her own son in a way that she herself never could have known him. She remembered when she was young, a girl like Catherine, the things that had happened in those days between herself and Patrick. She was sure that there had been the same thing between Catherine and her boy, William. Her jealousy persisted like a cancer.
Catherine, catching Mrs. Lonigan’s fixed stare, flinched. She had never expected such treatment. She was afraid of this woman. She didn’t know what to say. Should she tell? Her own mother was suspicious. Or was she just imagining these suspicions?
“Catherine, dear, why did you and William decide to get married on such short notice?” Mrs. Lonigan asked, sweetening her voice with false cordiality.
“Bill wanted to,” Catherine mumbled unconvincingly.
She could not bring herself to tell Mrs. Lonigan, bring into public such intimate feelings and the condition she was in as a result of them. It was something so beautiful to her and to Bill, but others, even his mother, might not understand it.
“My son might not have been where he is today, only for that. He took sick after he had gone in the rain, against my wishes, to look for a job.” Pride came into the mother’s eyes, and she continued, “He came home a sick, exhausted boy and he said `Mom, put me to bed.