The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [268]
“Why don’t we get married?” Studs suddenly asked before he realized what he was saying.
Their eyes met again in the effort to convey intangibilities of emotion.
“Do you really want to?” she smiled, her voice very natural.
“Why not?” he said casually.
“But you don’t sound very anxious or enthusiastic. You must be joking with me, or you wouldn’t be so matter of fact about it.”
“I mean it,” he said in a strained voice, leaning toward her across the table, his facial muscles grown rigid.
“Honest?”
“Why should I he saying it if I didn’t mean it?” he asked, leaning back again in his chair. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time now, and today on the train I decided that I was not going to wait any longer, or put it off. I made up my mind then and there.”
“You really care for me that much, Bill?” Catherine shyly said, her manner and voice thrilling him into an elation, causing her, because of his sudden uprush of feeling, to recede before his eyes, as into a veil of vagueness. An image of Lucy stirred in his mind. Lucy, pretty and seventeen, with her firm girlbreasts showing under her dress, her head tossing mischievously, waving and shaking her black curly hair. A lump came into his throat, and the image, persisting, made him feel all the mystery and all the attraction he had once felt, seeing Lucy one day on Indiana Avenue. He was aware of Catherine’s knees touching him, and he wished that she were Lucy as Lucy had been that day.
“You know, Bill, I care for you, awfully,” she said, her knees still against him.
“Me, too,” he said, embarrassed with this confession of emotion, and determined to be casual. He couldn’t, he told himself, give his hand away completely to a girl, because then it would be like it was with Lucy. He told himself he cared a hell of a lot for her, and Lucy was gone away, and she was going to be a better wife for him than Lucy could have been.
He screwed out his lips, and glanced around the restaurant, as if there were something interesting to see.
“All right,” he said, turning back toward her.
“All right what, Bill?”
“We’re engaged.”
Outside, she slid her arm in his, glanced up at him, brushed her shoulder against his, and as they managed to wander in zigzags along the sidewalk, slowly toward Michigan Avenue, her shoulder continually brushed against him.
“Bill?” she said coyly.
“What?” he answered.
“When will we be married?”
“I haven’t been working so regularly partly because business isn’t any too good these days, and my dad does not get as many contracts as he used to in the good times. But I’ll be able to work now, because I feel much better, and I think that business is going to start picking up. I’ll save, but of course I have been saving money for some time now, only we ought to have a nice little nest egg,” Studs felt goofy using such a word, “to start with, and maybe I’d say that we ought to figure on the end of this year or early next year,” he said, his tone and manner suggesting the weight he was placing on his words, and the importance he was striving to give to his statement.
“Mother will be so glad to hear the news, because you know, she and Dad, they like you. Gee, dear, I’m so happy, and, honey, I can hardly wait to tell them.”
That was the first time she had ever called him dear or honey. They approached Michigan Avenue, now deserted, the Public Library building standing dim and dark on the corner, a news vendor, standing by a fire in a wire basket, calling out the morning papers.
“Honey, tonight let’s walk down to Van Buren and get our train there.”
“All right,” he answered, as if it were an important decision.
He turned her on to Michigan Avenue. Behind them the avenue was brilliantly lit, and the street seemed like a fog of electricity and mist between the massive piles of stone. Ahead of them, way down at Twelfth, they saw the lighted advertising signs in the distance and the warm mist deflecting the electric rays.
“Isn’t it grand, dear? And you know, I don’t think I’ll ever forget tonight and this walk,” she said.
“Yes,