The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [384]
“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’t envy such guys now like he used to. Walking just as he and Catherine were doing, as if they were happy with each other, and had no worries in the world, nothing to fear, happy in love with each other, as if there was nothing else that counted. A sardonic smile came on his face, and over and over again the line from a popular song hummed through his mind.
Walkin’ my baby back home .. .
Others, too, seeing him and Catherine, they’d think the same thing. He shook his head ironically, and told himself, yes, he was walking his baby back home. And it just showed, he thought, that appearances were deceiving. Walking his baby back home with everything seeming so tranquil, when things were hemming him in, hemming both of them in more and more.
But he didn’t want to think anymore tonight of all these goddamn griefs. And he didn’t want there to be a tomorrow when he would wake up and realize what he had to do. Tell his family about it, and go to see the priest, face him when the priest might get sore and bawl him out and all that stuff. Start figuring out and preparing and arranging for the marriage. And then, Christ, her being knocked up! If he’d only waited! A few minutes each time, then feeling tired, feeling sometimes disgusted and wanting no more of it, or else wanting it the next time and hoping there would be more in it than there was the time before, and now for that they were in all this deep water. Or if he hadn’t been such a chump and had taken precautions every time. But it was always that way. Afterward, when it was too late, you saw what you should have done.
And now all that he wanted was to be home and in bed asleep, so that none of these things would be on his mind, making him feel so tight and feel that any minute something might happen. Even if he was going to sleep for only seven or eight hours, and then wake up again to all these same worries, he wanted sleep. Eight hours of sound sleep seemed like a century.
Catherine paused under