Presently, Catherine returned. She wearily mounted the stairs to the street. Lucas thought of his mothers weariness. He wondered if she would improve, with the music box gone.
Catherine said, I could get fifty cents. Its all she would give me.
She held out the coins to him. He wanted the money, he needed the money, but he couldnt bring himself to take it. He stood dumb, with his hands at his sides.
Catherine said, It cant be what you paid for it. Its the best I could do.
He couldnt move or speak.
Dont reproach me, she said. Please. Take the money.
He stood helpless. His ears roared.
Lucas, you begin to try my patience, she said. It was difficult in there. I dont like being treated as a thief.
So he had done that to her. He had forced her to demean herself. He imagined Gay a of the emporium. He thought shed be skeletally thin, with skin the color of candle wax. He thought he knew shed have taken the bowl and examined it greedily and disdainfully. Shed have named her price with the superior finality of those accustomed to dealing in stolen goods.
He said, The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel. He could not be certain how loudly hed spoken.
Catherine faltered. She said, Youve never repeated yourself before.
How could she know that? Had she been listening to him, all this time, when he spoke as the book? If so, shed given no sign.
He couldnt control himself. He said, The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly.
Catherine blinked. Her eyes were bright. She asked, What did Simon tell you?
What had Simon told him? Nothing. Simon sang the old songs, teased Lucas for being small, went to Emilys room in secret.
Lucas said, The nine months gone is in the parturition chamber.
Catherine dropped the money at Lucass feet. One of the coins rolled and stopped against the toe of his boot.
Pick it up and take it home, she said. I have no more patience for you.
He said, The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck.
Catherine began to weep. It took her like a spasm. She stood one moment erect, with a single tear meandering down her cheek, and the next moment her face sagged, and the tears came coursing out. She put her face into her hands.
He couldnt think what to do or say. He put his fingers gently on her shoulder. She shrugged him away.
Leave me alone, Lucas, she sobbed. Please, just leave me alone.
He couldnt leave her weeping on Eighth Street, with people passing by. He said, Come with me. You must sit down.
To his surprise, she obeyed. She had lost herself to weeping. She had become someone who wept and walked with him as he led her back to Washington Square, where the childs pennant snapped against the sky and the flute player hopped nimbly from foot to foot.
He found a bench and sat on it. She sat beside him. Timidly, he put his arm over her shaking shoulders. She didnt seem to mind.
He said, Im sorry. I didnt mean to upset you. I dont know what I said.
Her weeping diminished. She raised her head. Her face was red and haggard. He had never seen her so.
Would you like to know something? she said. Would you?
Yes. Oh, yes.
Im going to have a baby.
Again he paused in confusion over something that was true but could not be true. She hadnt married.
He said, I see, because it seemed what he ought to say.
They wont keep me at work. Ill be too big to hide it in a month or so.
How could you get too big to go to work?
You dont know anything, youre a child. Why am I talking to you?
She made as if to rise but sank down again on the bench. Lucas said, I want you to talk to me. Ill try to understand.
She went away again, into her weeping. Lucas put his arm again across her shoulders, which shook violently. The people who passed looked at them and then looked politely away, to help deliver Lucas and Catherine from their own shamefulness. The people who passed were intricately made, with gold buckles and little clocks on chains. Lucas and Catherine were made of cruder stuff. If they lingered on the bench, a policeman would come and send them along.
At length Catherine was able to say, Ive spoken to no one of this. It isnt fair, saying it to you.
It is fair, he said. You could never be anything but fair.
She gathered herself. She wasnt through crying, but her aspect changed. Something new took hold of her, a rage with grief caught up in it.
She said, All right, then. Im going to teach you something.
Please.
Her voice when she spoke was like a wire, thin but strong.
She said, I told your brother he must marry me. I dont know if the child is his. It probably isnt. But Simon was willing. Would you like to know something else?
Yes, Lucas said.
I suspect. He had his accident because he was unhappy. He may have been so distracted by the thought of our wedding that he allowed it to happen. Think of it. Hed been in the works for years. He knew better than to let his sleeve get caught.
Lucas said, Simon loved you.
Did he tell you that?
Yes, Lucas said, though Simon had never said the words. How could he help loving her? Not everything needed to be said in words.
Catherine said, Im a whore, Lucas. I tried to force myself on your brother.
Simon loved you, he said again. He couldnt think of anything else.
Catherine said, Im going to have the baby. Its what I can do for poor Simon.
Lucas could not think of an answer. How could she do anything but have the baby?
She said at length, I told him hed taken advantage, I told him he must make it right. I told him hed come to love me, in time. So there you are. Im a whore and a liar and Im going to give birth to your brothers bastard. You mustnt come to see me anymore. You mustnt buy me things with the money you need for food.
Her face took on a new form. It grew older; its flesh sagged. She became a statue of herself, an effigy. She was not who shed been. She was going somewhere.
Lucas said, I can help you.
She stood with grave finality. She was formal now.
No one can help me, she said.
She walked resolutely eastward, toward home. Lucas went alongside her.
You are in danger, he said.
Im in the same danger as every woman who draggles her shawl, neither more nor less.
Dont go to work anymore. Please.
Soon enough I wont be going to work anymore. That will happen regardless.
No. Tomorrow. Dont go tomorrow, youre in danger.
Ill need every penny I can get, wont I?
The dead search for us through machinery. When we stand at a machine, we make ourselves known to the dead.
Your precious book.
It isnt the book. Its true.
He confused himself. The book was true. What he was trying to tell her was differently true.
She walked on. Her new face, reddened and ravaged, cut through the air. She might have been the carved woman at the prow of a ship.
She said, I cant worry about you anymore. Im sorry, but I cant. I have too much else to think about.
You dont need to worry about me. Let me worry about you. Let me help you. Let me care for you.
She laughed bitterly. What a good idea, she said. Ill come live with you and your parents. Well live, all four of us, on what you make at the works. No, there will be five. That shouldnt be a problem, should it?
For a moment, Lucas could see her as shed said she was: a whore and a liar, a woman of the street, hard and calculating, naming her price.
He said, Ill find a way.
She stopped, so abruptly that Lucas went on several paces ahead. Foolish, he was a foolish thing.
She said, Forget me. Im lost.
He said, Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded.
She emitted a small, muffled cry and continued walking. He stood watching the back of her blue dress, the pile of her copper-colored hair, as she passed out of the square.
Always, then, it everything made a more complete and sickening sense. Simon would want her and the child as well. He sought to marry her in the realm of the dead, to live there with her and his child.
She must be prevented from going to work tomorrow.
Lucas couldnt think what to do, yet he must do so much. He must keep her from her machinery. He must find money for her.
He remembered the money shed thrown at his feet. He hadnt picked it up. He ran back to Eighth Street for it, but of course it was gone.
He walked east on Eighth Street. He thought perhaps he could find the money again, if not the coins Catherine had tossed at his feet then some other money, some equivalent sum that might be out there, sent by a heavenly agency that forgave and abetted foolish hearts. He thought that if he scoured the city, if he went high and low in it, he might happen onto some money that was not being watched, that belonged to someone but was unattended, dropped on the pavement or otherwise misplaced, as his own coins had been. He didnt propose to steal, any more than whoever had found his money had stolen it from him. He hoped rather to take his place on a chain of losses and gains, an ongoing mystery of payments made and payments received, money given from hand to hand, to satisfy an ancient debt that had always existed and might be finally repaid in some unforeseeable future. He hoped the city might produce help through incomprehensible means, just as his stamping of iron plates produced housings.
He would search for whatever might be there.
He went along Eighth Street to Broadway. If there was money overlooked, if there were coins carelessly dropped, it was likeliest to happen there.
Broadway was filled with its lights and music, its departing shoppers and its glad men in hats, laughing, blowing smoke from the bellows of their chests. Lucas walked among them, looking attentively downward. He saw the tips of boots, the cuffs of trousers, the hems of skirts. He saw the little leavings that were trod upon: a cigar end, a curl of twine, a canary-colored pamphlet announcing Land in Colorado.
Hed gone along for several blocks, twice incurring the muttered indignations of citizens who had to step out of his way, when he came upon a pair of boots that seemed familiar, though he knew he had never seen them before. They were workingmans boots, dun-colored, stoutly laced. They stopped before him.
He looked up and beheld Walts face.