Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [458]
“What can we do about mother? She is terribly upset, and dead set against Catherine. I can understand how mother feels, but still, it isn’t fair. Oh, gee, Fran, why must this happen to our family?”
“Don’t cry, darling. We’ll both of us just have to see Catherine and try to talk some sense into her. It’s still time enough for her to have something done. She could stay with you while she was resting, if necessary, or we could send her to a hospital.”
“Hospital will be best. Phil has put every cent into improving his place, but we could still manage to scrape together half of what it would cost.”
“Carroll has just lost a lot of money in stocks, but we could manage something also. And I’ll see her tomorrow. We’ll just have to drum some sense into her head.”
“Yes, dear.”
“And I’m going to tell dad to talk to mother. Oh, if he only hadn’t come home drunk this way. But poor dad, he never would have done it if he wasn’t just heart-broken. Poor dad.” Loretta wiped her eyes. “And we, everything is thrown on our shoulders. Everything. Oh, why must this happen to us?”
Loretta laid her head against her sister’s shoulder, and cried.
II
Mrs. Lonigan remembered the day that her oldest son was born. She recalled him as a youngster in a sailor suit. And the day she had enrolled him in the first grade at Saint Patrick’s school. The pride she had felt. He had been such a sweet boy, too, in that blue sailor suit, and he had held her hand so tightly, and when she had started to leave after talking to the sister, his eyes had grown big with tears, and he had run after her. She had swept him up in her arms and kissed him, her son. And then the night he had graduated from Saint Patrick’s, looking so like a little man in his first suit of long trousers. The dream and the hope she had had that night of her boy going into the priesthood. If he had, he would not now be suffering on his death bed, and this awful tragedy would not be visiting her poor home. God showered grace and blessing on any home that gave a son anointed to His service.
And if he was a priest now, Father William Lonigan, what joy she would have known. She could die in peace, happy if her boy was a priest. This was a penalty from God, because William had ignored his vocation. God had called her son. She knew it. Because had she not so many times in her sleep seen God, and had not God spoken to her in dreams, told her that He had called William. And William had turned a deaf ear on Him. Whoever did that would never have luck on this earth, and that ill luck passed to his family.
If Patrick, poor man, had only taken her side, helped her make a priest out of William, he, neither, would be a broken man tonight. But he, too, had flouted God’s wishes, encouraged William to set himself against his God, and now where were they? It was a punishment from the Throne of the Almighty that was being visited upon her and hers this very evening.
Her fingers moved from bead to bead, as she silently mumbled prayers. If God would only give her the strength to go on. She, too, she wanted to go home to Him. Wasn’t she old and tired? Hadn’t she worked her fingers to the bone all these years? And she was being smitten with God’s punishment because her own had flouted Him. Oh, she wanted to go home to Him and rest forever in happiness. Oh, if God would take her and spare her son.
She thought of Jesus in Gethsemane, sweating blood for the sins of man, and of Jesus on the cross, wearing a crown of thorns, drinking vinegar and gall, his side pierced with a lance, Jesus, crucified, muttering to God, not my will, but Thy will be done. She lay her trust in Him. She would bear the burdens He sent her. If William must die, it was His will, and she would bear it.
Again she saw a vision of her William in a black cassock. She saw herself kneeling in Saint Patrick’s while William celebrated his first mass. She saw herself giving a reception to friends and relatives, after his first night. Father William Lonigan smiling, meeting everyone, bestowing his blessings, she at his side,