The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [388]
“Now, Bill, think it over, you and Catherine, and if you do, I know you’ll see where your old man is just telling you what’s right and sensible.”
Nodding affirmatively, Studs left the parlor. In his room, he quickly donned his swimming suit, and pulled an old shirt and pair of trousers on over it. He left the house, dashing so rapidly down the stairway that he emerged on the street breathless and tired, and he trudged slowly to Seventy-first and Jeffrey. He saw Catherine standing in front of the drug store, wearing an old blue skirt and brown pullover sweater, with a blue band around her head.
“How are you?” she asked, swinging a rubber swimming cap on her wrist and smiling wistfully, sadly, he felt.
“O. K. How about you, Kid?” he responded in an attempt at gruff cheerfulness.
“All right, darling,” she said, taking his arm.
Catherine was silent as she walked beside him, her arm inserted in the crook of Studs’ elbow. She seemed to him to have changed almost over night, and he realized that of late she didn’t chatter on the way she used to. He wished she would.
“What did your folks say to you?” she asked.
“They want me to wait longer. They don’t understand things, though. Of course, I didn’t tell them the way things really stand. I only said we decided that since we were going to get married, we have figured it out that we might as well do it right away, because we want to.”
“My parents are the same. They don’t understand things, either. And what is the use of telling them or trying to make them understand? They would only get angry and fly off the handle, and it would make everything worse. But my mother is so suspicious. She didn’t say a word to me, but I could tell that suspicion was just eating her up from the way she looked at me.”
Studs checked himself before letting out the words that his mother was also suspicious. It would make Catherine nervous when she and the old lady got together.
“You know, Bill, if my father and mother were only as understanding as Father Geoghan was this morning. Wasn’t he kind and tolerant?”
“Yes. He was very decent.”
“I was so scared, too, having to go to him the way we did. And he was so nice. He didn’t bawl us out or anything. He’s the same way in confession. He’s showed such an open-minded attitude I could have kissed him.”
“Don’t let me catch you!” Studs smiled.
“Why, Bill! Oh, go on with your teasing. But he was so understanding.”
“What surprised me was that he kept saying not to marry if we didn’t really want to.”
“Yes, he’s so understanding on things like that. You know this same thing must happen to lots of others, and they get married so there’s no scandal, and they don’t really love each other. I wouldn’t want that. I would rather have our baby and face the world alone than marry if you didn’t want to and didn’t love me.”
“Yes. You know that’s where the Church is wise. It’s in men like Father Geoghan who inherit all the Church’s two thousand years of experience and wisdom.”
“But Bill, we do love each other, don’t we? And we want to marry?”
“Of course, Kid.”
“I felt so much better after seeing Father Geoghan, too. He made me just feel different about it. That’s what made him seem so much more understanding than Mother and Dad. They’d never understand, and all I could do was say we’re going to get married, the same as you did.”
“Well, my old man and old lady weren’t any more hot on the idea than yours.”
“I’ll bet they don’t like me.”
“That’s not it at all, Kid.”
“I think it is maybe.”
“Not at all. No! It was just like your folks felt, you know, surprised at the suddenness of it.”
She seemed to him to lapse into a thoughtful mood. With-out attracting her attention, he caught the reflective look on her face, blue. Her mood and his own both seemed to press down the more forcibly because of the sunny appearance of the Sunday street, the people dressed up, strolling along, the pretty girls, the couples laughing, going some place, people who didn’t have the troubles on their minds that he had.
“Bill!” she exclaimed suddenly in a questioning