The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [422]
“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.’ He went out looking for work in the rain, against my wishes, because he needed money to get married on.”
“Please, please, Mrs. Lonigan, don’t say things like that. I love Bill,” the girl beseeched.
“At times like this, we have got to look at the truth, no matter how hard it might be,” Mrs. Lonigan said, each of her words like the thrust of a sword.
Catherine did not reply, and the silence between them was interrupted only by the sighs of their breathing. Catherine began to feel that they had sat, so quietly facing each other, for a long time. And the poor woman. Even though she was treating her this way, Catherine could sense the woman’s sorrow. She was sitting, stiffly erect, her face changing from that hard, cruel look to one of brooding and worry. Then that sad expression would leave her face, and she would narrow her eyes. Her face would seem to grow more thin and to come to an intense point, as she leaned a trifle forward, again directing a calculating and suspicious look at the girl.
Catherine began to feel that the mother was staring clean through her. Upset, she could not return Mrs. Lonigan’s glance. She was looking at her in such a way, so mean, so heartless. It was a double struggle for Catherine not to cry, because in crying she could give herself up to being sad, exhaust herself, and then all that she had on her mind would