Studs Lonigan (130 page)

“Now, Mary, don't forget. No worrying from you,” he said. Puffing, he walked downstairs.

“Is Bill any better?” Catherine anxiously asked as Mrs. Lonigan admitted her.

“I called the priest. He's in a bad way. A bad way, I fear,” Mrs. Lonigan said mournfully, looking at the girl as if to drive and wedge into her a sense of guilt because of Studs' illness.

“Can I see him?” Catherine asked with deference, removing her hat.

“I don't know. The doctor said there must be complete quiet in the sick room, and he must have absolute rest, and only his mother should see him besides the nurse.”

Catherine was so hurt that she could have cried. She had a flashing impulse of anger. But seeing, as if on second sight, this haggard and tired mother with eyes raw from tears, a natural womanly sympathy stirred her.

They moved to the parlor, and sat down, silent. The girl was suddenly struck with envy, because she thought that now she would never be able to bear the same name as this woman, Mrs. Lonigan. She felt, too, that even though she had hardly begun to swell, Mrs. Lonigan would sense her condition, because women who have been mothers seemed always to notice so much more readily than others.

“You say William is no better, Mrs. Lonigan?”

“He's a very sick boy, and I don't think he'll be able to pull through,” Mrs. Lonigan said challengingly.

“Won't I be able to see him?” Catherine asked, a beseeching expression on her face.

“Well, the doctor's orders is for absolute rest and no visitors,” Mrs. Lonigan said, acting like a martyr.

“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 be forgotten. But she would not, she was determined, cry and expose herself in Mrs. Lonigan's presence.

Mrs. Lonigan suddenly assumed a possessive attitude, as if to indicate that she was nearer to Studs than Catherine was, an attitude which wordlessly, but like the slash of a sword, told the girl that she was Studs' mother, and Studs was hers now. Catherine held herself drawn tight, when she could have just screamed to the housetops that Studs was hers, that his child was in her womb, growing and living this very minute. She could have jumped to her feet and let the world know this, and she sat there, her control like a sealed lock over her tongue, lest she do that. And there was Mrs. Lonigan facing her, suddenly turned into a spectacle of heartbreak and sorrow. And again, her hard crafty look. The woman was hurting Catherine so deeply that she knew, until her dying day, she would never forgive Mrs. Lonigan. She knew why. The woman sensed it, sensed that she was pregnant.

What could she say? What could she do? Tell her? She wanted to. She had to tell someone, and she feared that her own mother would not understand any more than Mrs. Lonigan would. And she did need someone to talk to now. Someone on whose shoulder she could lay her head and sob, cry her heart out, exhaust herself utterly in tears, until her eyes were so raw that she would enjoy their very chafing. But Mrs. Lonigan was not the one to whom she could talk. Oh, God, she told herself, what could she do?

And still only silence and suspicion between them, blame on the side of the older woman, a wound that was raw and festering into hate on the side of the girl, and between them a continuing silence that was oppressive. Every little sound, the irregular and strident breathing of Mrs. Lonigan, slight movements of the nurse in the sick room, the sounds of life and movement, of men walking and talking outside and of automobiles and playing children were all magnified, and each sound and echo was like a bullet driving terror into this room and this home. Both of them sat, contained, lest they scream and shout. And still that persisting relentless look of Mrs. Lonigan. God, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, please help, Catherine prayed. She was afraid now even to stand up for fear that Mrs. Lonigan should catch the very slight swellings of her stomach and breasts.

Could she talk with the father? She was afraid to, and he was a man. The idea of telling them made her shudder, and the very thought of it made her feel muddy. Tell them of such a beautiful, intimate thing, so that they could scorn her, call her names, blame her, make it all dirty when it was so clean. She couldn't do it. But could she sit here forever? If only the telephone would ring, if only someone would come, if only Mrs. Lonigan would be called away. The woman looked to Catherine more and more like a witch.

“The priest is coming. I had better prepare things for him,” Mrs. Lonigan said, suddenly arising.

“May I help?” Catherine asked.

“I can do it myself, thank you,” Mrs. Lonigan said, curtly shaking her head.

Weakness and lassitude flowed through Studs. He fixed his half-opened eyes on a burning candle which seemed to be high above him on a dresser. A tall, dark priest entered the room, and Studs saw him with wavering sight, heard him speak in a strange muttering which he could not understand.

“
Pax huic domui
.”

When he wanted to sleep, why didn't they let him? Only to sleep, to close his eyes and sleep and sleep, and forget everything until he was rested and strong again, forget the parched dryness of his mouth, the feeling that there was something coated and dirty on his tongue, the aches that seemed to worm themselves through his bones, all this. His eyes closed, and he wanted to sleep, and thought what a joke it was on them all. They thought that he was going to die, and were having the priest for him when he wasn't going to die at all. They thought that he was unconscious, and dying, and did not know all this. And here he was able to see and hear it all, the priest saying something to his mother. What a joke it was! He would tell them when he woke up. And now he was going to sleep and lose all sense of pain and these aches, and all this hotness that was like fire in his body. His eyes opened, and he could see them all, his mother, the priest, the nurse, Catherine, and Lucy Scanlan kneeling in a corner. They did not know it. Sleep. That was all. He was going to sleep this minute. What a joke on them, when he was only going to sleep and would wake up and say I fooled you that time. His lips opened in the effort to tell them he wanted to sleep.

“Yes, son,” his mother said anxiously, bending over him, hearing only a weak, grunting sound.

They wanted to torture him. They put him on a bed on the floor, with a hard mattress and heavy quilts over him and they wanted to torture him because they thought he was dying. Again he tried to tell them. It was a big joke. Thought he was dying, did they?

The priest laid a small vessel of holy oil on the table near the bed, where there were two holy candles burning in holders, a cut-glass bowl of water, a small saucer of bread crumbs, a saucer of small cotton balls and an empty saucer, and two clean linen napkins. Doffing his coat, the priest vested himself in his surplice and purple stole. Bending down, he placed a small crucifix on Studs' lips, and Studs made the gesture of kissing it. Straightening up, the priest dipped his right hand in holy water, and gesturing with it in the sign of the cross, sprayed Studs, the bystanders, the room, sing-songing simultaneously:

“Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor
.

“Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam
.

“Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculorem. Amen
.”

Studs looked up glassy-eyed when the priest asked if he could talk to confess. It was a joke, and he wasn't dying, and why was he on the floor? Sleep. A joke. The priest heard only an inaudible sound.

The bystanders knelt after the priest, Mrs. Lonigan and Catherine looking into the white-covered prayer book which Studs had carried the day he had, long ago, made his first Holy Communion.

“Adjutorium nostrum in
nomine Domini.”

“Qui fecit cælum et terram,”
Mrs. Lonigan and Catherine read from the prayer book in response, mispronouncing the Latin.

“Oremus. Introeat, Domine Jesu Christe, domum hanc sub nostrae humilitatis ingressu, aeterna felicitas, divina prosperitas, serene laetitia, caritas fructuosa, sanitas sempiterna: effugiat ex hoc loco accessus daemonum: adsint Angeli pacis, domumque hanc deserat omnis maligna discordia. Magnifica, Domine, super nos nomen sanctum tuum; et bene—”
the priest gestured in the sign of the cross with his right hand,
—‟dic nostrae conversationi: sanctifica nostrae humilitatis ingressum, qui sanctus et que pius es, et permanes cum Patre et Spiritu Sancto in sæcula sæculorum.”

“Oremus, et deprecemur Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, ut
benedicendo bene
,”—the priest again made the sign of the cross with his right hand,
“—dicat hoc tabernaculum, et omnes habitantes in eo, et det eis Angelum bonum custodem, et faciat eos sibi servire, ad considerandum mirabilia de lege sua: avertat ab eis omnes contrarias potestates: eripiat eos ab omni formidine, et ab omni perturbatione, ac sanos in hoc tabernaculo custodire dignetur: Qui cum Patre et Spiritu Sancto vivit et regnat Deus in sæcula sæculorum.”

Catherine's attention strayed from the prayer book to the priest kneeling at the bedside, her gaze concentrating on his dark curly hair, and she thought that he was a handsome young priest, and he was strong and healthy and he was bringing strength and the grace of God to her poor, sick Bill, his dying body stirring on the bed. Her glance turned to the flame of the holy candles on the table at the priest's right, then back to his purple stole. She heard the continuous half-sung words of the Latin prayer, a prayer which lifted and flew on wings to heaven, a prayer to restore his health, or to prepare him for the joys of heaven. But if he died, oh, she couldn't bear the thought! Bill, her Bill, she would come to him in Heaven. And now the priest had risen, turned toward her and Mrs. Lonigan, and she could see his face, thin and drawn, the cheeks pinched inward, a saintly-looking face. He was talking, pray for him and recite the Penitential psalms. Mrs. Lonigan beside her flipped the pages of the prayer book, and Catherine looked, her knees stiff from kneeling, silently mumbling a Hail Mary.