Читать книгу Every Man for Himself - Mark J. Hannon - Страница 15

CHAPTER 11

BUFFALO, 1925

Joe had noticed. Eileen had lost a good eight pounds, and he slid his hands up and down her, twice sometimes, after a hug and a kiss before he went to work. With that, she cut out even having a glass of beer when they went out and stayed with the seltzer water. She lost another five pounds when she began taking walks in the morning after he left. Where Joe said, “You look like the girls in the movies,” Bridy said, “You’re fallin’ away to nothing,” and Eileen smiled, then walked a few more blocks before she caught the streetcar back from her visits to the Ward.

After making the ninth Saturday Novena on a spring day, she checked the calendar. Could it be? she thought. I haven’t bled in . . . yes, thirty-two days. Joe’s out there with the rowers, no telephone about. I’ve got to call Bridy. So excited that it took her twice to get the number right, Eileen told her friend the news.

“You’ve got to see the doctor to be sure, Eileen.”

“It’s Saturday, do you think he’d see me today?”

“I dunno, can he tell if you’re pregnant this early?”

The sound of the word pregnant sent thrills through Eileen. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said, desperate to be sure.

When she hung up with Bridy, she called Dr. Ryan’s house, but he wasn’t home. She left a message with his wife, saying it was very important. She waited ten minutes by the phone and couldn’t stand it. She ran upstairs to her room and looked at herself in the dresser mirror. Do I look pregnant? she asked herself. Then, she spotting the rosary hanging over the statue of Mary before her; she seized it and ran to the church, where burning candles in the alcove gave most of the light at this quiet time of the day. She added a candle to the bunch, knelt down at the kneeler, blessed herself, gripping the rosary’s cross, and began reciting.