Chapter 29
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Spring 1958
It was hot in the Vieux Carré even though May was only a few days old. Blossoms had burst in such abundance that the air was heavily perfumed. Leaves were new and vibrantly green. The vitality of spring rushed through the veins of three schoolgirls, filling them with a lust for life that couldn't be appeased by English literature, geometry, French, or chemistry.
With energy pumping and looking for an outlet, they abandoned their studies to sneak off in search of the forbidden pleasures to be found in the French Quarter. They gorged on Lucky Dogs bought from a street vendor and had their palms read by a strolling gypsy lady with a parrot on her shoulder.
On a dare from Lisbet, Alice glanced inside one of the strip joints on Bourbon Street when a teasing barker swung the door open as she passed. Squealing, she raced back to where her friends were waiting. "What'd you see?"
"It was gross," Alice squealed.
"Was she naked?"
"Except for tassels. She was twirling them."
"Liar," Lisbet said.
"I swear."
"No one can really do that. It's anatomically impossible."
"It is if they're no bigger than yours," Alice taunted.
Mary Catherine Laurent diplomatically intervened. She often played the role of peacemaker, disliking strife of any kind, but particularly among her friends. "She didn't have on anything else?"
"Not a stitch. Well, she had a tiny triangle of glitter over you-know-what."
"Her *?" Dumbfounded, the two other girls gaped at Lisbet. "Well, that's what my big brother calls it." Lisbet's brother was a sophomore at Tulane and often inspired awe among his younger sister's friends.
Alice sniffed loftily. "That sounds like something he'd say. He's rude, crude, and socially unacceptable."
"And you're passionately in love with him," Mary Catherine teased.
"I am not."
"Are so."
"It doesn't matter," Lisbet said, striking off down the sidewalk, the pleats of her blue and gray plaid parochial-school skirt brushing against her calves. "He likes Betsy Bouvier. He told me he got his hand up her skirt on their last date." She glanced over her shoulder at Alice, who looked stricken. "Gotcha, Alice!"
"Oh!"
"Does cunt mean the same thing as *?" Mary Catherine asked as she skipped to catch up.
"Shh!" She was sprayed by the admonitions of her two friends. "My God, Mary Catherine. Don't you know anything?"
"Well, I don't have any brothers," she said defensively. "Does it mean the same thing?"
"Yes."
"But," Alice added, "if any man ever says that to you, you should slap his face."
"Or knee him hard right in the nuts."
"It's bad, then?"
"It's about the worst," Lisbet said, dramatically rolling her eyes.
"Yesterday you said 'fuck' was the worst."
The two girls looked at each other and shook their heads over Mary Catherine's ignorance and confusion. "She's hopeless."
They browsed in the gaudy souvenir shops lining both sides of Bourbon Street, pretending to admire the feathered, spangled Mardi Gras masks while actually studying a coffee mug with a detailed phallic handle.
"Do you think they really get that big when … you know, when you're doing it?" Alice whispered.
Lisbet answered with an air of superiority, "Oh, much bigger than that."
"How would you know?"
"I've heard."
"From who?"
"I can't remember, but she said it was huge and hurt like hell when he put it in."
Mary Catherine was aghast. "You know somebody who's actually done it?"
When pressed, Lisbet couldn't produce an actual name, so the accuracy of her statement was doubtful.
"I can't wait to do it," Alice admitted as they left the shop and continued down the sidewalk.
"Even though it hurts?" Mary Catherine thought the whole business of sex sounded unappealing and unladylike.
"It only hurts the first time, goose. After he busts your cherry, it's okay."
"What's a cherry?"
That sent the other two seventeen-year-olds careening into the exterior wall of a jazz joint, collapsing in a fit of giggles.
Invariably their conversations revolved around human sexuality. They were told by the nuns that it was a grievous sin to contemplate such matters, so that was largely what they contemplated. Mary Catherine and her two very best friends had speculated on everything from if the nuns shaved their pubic hair as well as their heads, to exactly how the male anatomy was constructed.
They sneaked copies of novels by James Joyce, James Baldwin and James Jones—Lisbet had remarked that there must be something to the name that made the men who had it highly sexual—and pored over the passages describing copulation, which had been conveniently underlined by previous readers. But sometimes even those were annoyingly euphemistic and vague.
It seemed to Mary Catherine that the more she learned about sex, the more there was to learn. To vent her frustration, she added each tidbit of knowledge to her diary. After her prayers each night, she faithfully confided everything to the leather-bound book with the small gold lock. Tonight, she would be able to fill pages with impressions and new vocabulary words.
She and her friends meandered through the Quarter, a trio of striking young women, whose ripe young bodies seemed out of place in the austere school uniforms. Their slender calves seemed designed to wear high heels and silk stockings rather than the despised oxfords and bobby socks.
They arrived at Jackson Square and paused to flirt with a sidewalk artist with a red goatee who was indolently soliciting business from the tourists. Of the samples displayed, his best work was a colored chalk portrait of Marilyn Monroe.
"He's probably done another one of her in the nude," Lisbet said knowingly. "He keeps it hidden away in his ratty little garret. At night he takes it out and jerks off while he's ogling it."
"Do you think any man will ever jerk off while ogling a picture of me?" Alice asked wistfully.
"You'd better go to confession twice this week," Lisbet said. "You've got sex on the brain."
"Me? You're the walking encyclopedia on the topic. Or at least you think you are."
"I've been exposed to much more than you have. I've seen my brother—"
"He's here again."
Mary Catherine's quiet observation brought the two other girls to a standstill. They followed her absorbed gaze to the statue of Andrew Jackson in the center of the square. More particularly, to the young man who was delivering a fiery sermon to a few pedestrians, one unconscious wino, and a flock of pigeons.
"The Lord is sick and tired of his children sinning," he declared, slapping the worn Bible in his hand. "He looks down here on Earth and sees the lying and the cheating and the gambling and the drinking and the fornicating—"
"That's another word for fuck," Lisbet informed Mary Catherine in a whisper.
Mary Catherine shrugged her off impatiently. She was drawn to the young preacher not so much by what he was saying, but by the passion with which he was saying it.
"His judgment is near, ladies and gentlemen. He ain't gonna stand for our sinning much longer. No, siree." He plucked a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his shiny navy blue suit and mopped his forehead, which was perspiring beneath a lock of dark blond hair.
"I weep for sinners to be saved." Gnashing his teeth and closing his eyes, he threw back his head and appealed to heaven. "Lord God, open their eyes. Sweet Jesus, have mercy on the weak. Give them strength to fight Satan and his wily, wicked ways."
The girls entered the gate and moved closer for a better look. "He's kind of cute," Lisbet said.
"You think so?" Alice asked, eyeing the preacher critically.
"I do."
Lisbet turned to Mary Catherine, who was still staring enraptured at the sidewalk preacher. "Hmm. I do believe Mary Catherine is smitten, Alice."
She blushed. "I've seen him here before. Last Saturday my daddy brought me to Café du Monde for breakfast. He was here then, too. There was a larger crowd. He laid hands on some of the people."
"On their what?" Alice asked, crowding in closer to Mary Catherine.
"On their heads, stupid," Lisbet said scornfully. "It was their heads, wasn't it?"
"Yes," Mary Catherine replied. "When you get saved, he lays his hands on you so you'll receive the Holy Spirit."
"Let's get saved," Lisbet suggested excitedly.
"We're already saved." Then with less conviction, Alice asked, "Aren't we?"
"Well, sure. We've been baptized. We go to mass. But he doesn't know that." Lisbet turned to Mary Catherine. "Go get saved."
"Yeah," Alice seconded. "We'll watch. Go on."
"No!"
"Chicken."
The preacher was extending an invitation for anyone within the sound of his voice to take his hand. It would be the same as accepting the Lord Jesus by the hand, he told his listeners.
"Dear brothers and sisters, you don't want to go to hell, do you?"
"You don't want to go to hell, Mary Catherine," Alice said seriously. "Go on. He's looking straight at you."
"No, he's not. He's looking at all of us."
"He's looking at you. Maybe he sees that you're truly a sinner. Go get saved." Lisbet gave her friend a firm push.
Mary Catherine demurred, but in ways she couldn't understand or explain, she was drawn to the young preacher's compelling voice. Years before, a young, good-looking priest had trained at their parish. She and all her friends had developed passionately sinful crushes on him. They attended nearly every mass that he conducted. Yet Mary Catherine hadn't felt moved by that young priest as she did by this shabbily dressed, marginally articulate, but positively dynamic sidewalk evangelist.
Urged on by her friends, she walked toward him, sending pigeons scuttling aside, drawn as though by a power beyond herself. When she was within several feet of him, he stepped forward and extended his hand. "Hello, sister."
"Hello."
"Do you want Jesus to come into your heart?"
"I … I think so. Yes. I do."
"Hallelujah! Take my hand."
She hesitated. His hand was perfectly formed, strong-looking, the smooth palm turned up invitingly. She stretched her hand forward and laid it in his. She thought she heard Alice and Lisbet gasp in disbelief of her courage, but all her senses were shocked by the sudden fist the preacher closed around her hand.
"Kneel now, sister." She did. The pavement was hard beneath her bare knees, but when he laid his hands on her head and invoked God's forgiveness and blessings, she didn't feel anything except the heat emanating from his fingers and palms. After a long prayer, he placed a hand beneath her elbow and assisted her to her feet.
"Just like Jesus told the woman taken in adultery, go and sin no more." Then he took a wooden offering plate out of a battered suitcase that was lying open at his feet and thrust it at her.
The gesture took her by surprise. "Oh." For a moment she was too flustered to think, then she hastily opened her purse, clumsily removed a five-dollar bill, and dropped it into the plate.
"Thank you kindly, sister. God's gonna reward you for your generosity."
He quickly replaced the offering plate with her five-dollar bill, along with his Bible, inside the suitcase and snapped it shut. Picking it up, he jauntily walked away.
"Uh, wait!" Mary Catherine couldn't believe her audacity, but to let him casually walk out of her life was unthinkable. "What's your name?"
"Reverend Jack Collins. But everybody calls me Wild Jack."
* * *
He'd been reared in a poverty-stricken rural town in Mississippi. About the only thing the town had going for it was the railroad. A section crew was headquartered there. For the most part, the men were single and lived in boardinghouses.
His mama provided evening entertainment for them.
Being the only whore in town, she did a lively business. She'd conceived and given birth to little Jack without ever knowing which of her customers had sired him. Jack's first memory was of toddling around their cramped room to fetch his mama her Lucky Strikes. By the time he was eight, they were fighting over the packs her gentlemen friends sometimes left behind.
He went to school only because the truant officer gave his mama hell if she neglected to get him up and send him off. She in turn gave him hell if he didn't go. Out of sheer stubbornness, he learned as little as possible, although he was a natural leader. Because he didn't give a damn about anything or anyone, because he never even whimpered when he got licks but looked at the principal eyeball to eyeball with open contempt, he earned the fear and admiration of his classmates. He used that to his advantage and wielded more authority on campus than did the faculty.
When he was thirteen, he called his mama a fat, stinking whore one time too many. She coaxed one of her johns to ambush and beat the hell out of him. The next day, he regained consciousness near the railroad tracks with a freight train barreling down it. Holding his broken ribs with one hand, he jumped the freight. He never went back and never saw his mama again. He hoped she died and rotted in hell.
He hoboed through the South for several years, taking odd jobs until he had enough money to get drunk, get laid, and get in a fight, and then he moved on.
One night the freight he was on stopped somewhere in Arkansas. It looked like a happening town, the kind that appealed to a wild young buck like him. But to his irritation the "happening" turned out to be a tent revival. The next freight wasn't due till morning, and that evening it came a downpour. He reasoned that the tent would at least provide shelter, so he attended the revival with everyone else in town.
He scorned everything about the service and everyone who listened with misplaced hope to the preacher who admonished his congregation to seek treasures in heaven, not on earth. What a dope, Jack thought.
He changed his mind when he saw how full the offering plate was when it was passed to him. Pretending to put a bill in, he took out a ten. But he looked upon the smug preacher standing on the podium with new respect.
Jack Collins made a career decision that rainy night in Arkansas. With a portion of that ten-dollar bill, he bought a Bible and struggled through a first reading. He attended more revival meetings. He listened and learned. To pass the hours in freight cars, he imitated the inflection and gestures of the preachers. When he felt ready, he stood on a street corner in a hick town in Alabama and preached his first sermon. The coins pitched to him added up to $1.37.
It was a start.
* * *
"Hello. You probably don't remember me."
Mary Catherine shyly intercepted him at the corner of the Presbytere. He'd just finished his sermon and had cut across the square with his brisk, quick stride. Having observed him for several days, she had noticed that he always moved as though he were in a hurry to get where he was going.
He smiled at her. "Course I remember you."
"I got saved the other day."
"And you've been back twice since then. Without your friends."
She'd hung back at the edges of the crowd, afraid of appearing bold. He had seemed not to notice her. Flattered that he had, she blushed. "I don't want to bother you."
"No bother, sister. What's on your mind?"
"You said the Lord needed help in getting his work done."
"Yeah. So?"
"So I brought you this." She pushed a ten-dollar bill into his hand.
He stared down at it for a moment before raising his eyes to hers and saying emotionally, "God bless you, sister."
"Will it help?"
"More than you know." He cleared his throat. "Say, I'm hungry as a bear. Want a burger?"
Her previous dates had always come in the form of a telephone call. She'd never consented without first getting parental approval. It felt deliciously wicked to be asked out and to accept without anyone knowing, even Alice and Lisbet.
"That sounds lovely."
Grinning, he took her hand. "If we're gonna be friends, I gotta know your name."
* * *
When school was dismissed for summer vacation, it became easier for Mary Catherine to sneak off and meet Wild Jack Collins where he preached daily on the street corners of the French Quarter. They ate cheap suppers that, as often as not, Mary Catherine paid for. She didn't mind. He was the most fascinating person she'd ever met. People were naturally drawn to him, from the seediest ladies of the evening to the shrewdest con men who worked the streets.
Jack regaled her with anecdotes that had happened during his seven years in the ministry. He'd had more adventures than Mary Catherine could dream of as he'd traveled from city to city, spreading the gospel, preaching God's love and salvation to sinners.
"What I need is somebody who can sing," he told her one evening. "Do you have any musical talent, Mary Catherine?"
"No, I'm afraid not," she said woefully. How glorious it would be to join Jack's ministry and travel with him! His sermons didn't resemble the formal, ritualistic masses she was accustomed to. Although the underlying message of Christ's redemption was the same, she doubted that her parents would approve of Jack's rough street manners or the fanatical doctrine he preached. That's why her meetings with him remained secret, shared only with her diary.
As the summer heated up, so did their relationship. One night Jack suggested they pick up Chinese food and take it to his place to eat. Mary Catherine's conscience gnawed at her. Going into a young man's apartment without a chaperon led to disgrace and destruction. But when she saw the wounded look on Jack's face because of her hesitation, she accepted and paid for their Chinese food.
The squalid, roach-infested building in which he lived shocked her sensibilities. Even the colored people who did yard work for her family lived in much better housing. The wretchedness of the place demonstrated to her exactly how poor Jack was, how unselfishly dedicated he was to his mission, and how materialistic her upbringing had been. Out of shame and pity, she began to cry. When she explained to him the reason for her tears, he pulled her into his arms.
"There now, honey. Don't cry for me. Jesus was poor, too."
That only made her cry harder. He held her tighter. And soon his hands were skimming her slender back and his lips were moving in her hair, whispering how much he needed her, how sweet she was, how generous it was of her to contribute offerings to his ministry.
His lips eventually reached hers. When he kissed her, she whimpered. It wasn't the first time she'd been kissed. But it was the first time she'd been kissed with her mouth open and felt the urgent thrusting of a man's tongue against her own.
Confused and afraid, she struggled out of his arms and rushed for the door. He caught up with her there, took her into his arms again, and smoothed his hands over her hair. "That's never happened to me before, Mary Catherine," he said in a hushed, rapid voice. "When I kissed you, I felt the Holy Spirit moving between us. Didn't you?"
She had definitely felt something stirring inside her, but she wouldn't have guessed it was the Holy Spirit. "I've got to go home, Jack. My parents will start to worry."
She had reached the bottom of the dim, derelict staircase before he called down to her from his doorway. "Mary Catherine, I think Jesus wants us to be together."
Over the course of the next few days, she filled her diary with agonizing questions for which she had no answers. She certainly couldn't take her problem to her parents. Intuitively she knew they would take one look at Jack in his cheap, flashy suit, see his frayed cuffs and dingy collar, and dismiss him as white trash.
Involving her friends would force them to divide loyalties, and she couldn't risk them telling their parents, who in turn would tell hers. She considered confiding in her aunt Laurel, who had an understanding and kind heart, but she decided against it. Aunt Laurel might also feel duty-bound to inform her parents of her newfound love.
She was confronted with a grown-up problem, the first one of her life, and it must be resolved in a grown-up fashion. She was no longer a child. Jack spoke to her as one adult to another. He treated her as a woman.
But that was the most intimidating problem of all. Being made to feel like a woman was a scary prospect. From the nuns at school she had learned all about sex: Kissing led to petting. Petting led to sex. Sex was a sin.
But, she argued mentally, Jack had said he'd felt imbued by the Holy Spirit when they kissed. Since the nuns who condemned gratification of the flesh had never experienced it, how could they know what it was like? Maybe the lightheadedness, the feverishness, and the yearning one felt when kissing weren't carnal reactions at all, but spiritual ones. When Jack's tongue had grazed hers, she'd felt transported. How much more spiritual could you get?
A few days after their first kiss, she was waiting in his apartment when he returned home. She had a supper laid out on the scarred table with the uneven legs. She'd stuck a candle in a pool of wax she melted in a saucer. Along with a bud vase of daisies, the candlelight helped to hide the ugly squalor of the room.
Feeling awkward, she said, "Hi, Jack. I wanted to surprise you."
"You did."
"I brought crawfish étouffée and … and a loaf of French bread. And this." She slid a folded twenty-dollar bill across the tabletop.
He looked at it but didn't pick it up. Instead, he pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. He bowed his head as though in prayer. Several moments passed.
"Jack?" Her voice wavered around his name. "What's the matter?"
He raised his head. Tears glistened in his eyes. "I thought you were mad at me because of the other night."
"No." She quickly rounded the table so that it wouldn't be a barrier between them. "I was startled when you kissed me, that's all."
He pulled her into a tight embrace. "O God, thank you. Sweet Jesus, thank you." He ran his hands over her hair. "I thought I'd lost you, Mary Catherine. I don't deserve somebody as sweet as you in my miserable life, but I prayed and prayed that God would send you back to me. Let's pray."
He dropped to his knees, pulling her down with him. While they knelt on the grimy, peeling linoleum, facing each other, he offered up a prayer that praised her purity and beauty. The adjectives he used to describe her made her blush. Words of adoration poured from his lips, so that by the time he said, "Amen," she was gazing at him with wonder and love.
"I had no idea you felt that strongly about me, Jack."
He stared at her as though she were a vision. "If you don't look like an angel with that candlelight shining through your hair, I pray that God'll strike me blind before my next heartbeat."
God didn't, so he gingerly raised his hand and touched her hair. As he caressed it, he leaned forward and placed his lips on hers. Mary Catherine was disappointed that he didn't French kiss her again, but when he pressed his parted lips against her throat, she drew a catchy breath of surprise and delight.
Before she quite realized what was happening, he was nibbling her breasts through her thin cotton dress and undoing the pearl buttons.
"Jack?"
"You're right. We should move to the bed. God didn't ordain that I make love to you on the floor."
He carried her to the bed and laid her down. Leaving her no time to protest, he kissed her mouth while undoing her dress to the waist. The fabric seemed to melt as quickly as cotton candy beneath his hot, anxious hands. She was wearing a full slip and a stiff white brassiere as impregnable as armor, but he deftly got rid of them. His hands moved over her bare flesh in a manner that could only be described as carnal. The caresses felt marvelous, and awfully sinful. But Jack was a preacher, so how could it be wrong? He led people away from sin, not toward it.
While removing the rest of her clothing, he murmured about the beauty and perfection of his Eve. "God created her for Adam. To be his helpmate, his partner in love. Now he's given you to me."
The biblical references quelled Mary Catherine's moral concerns. But when Jack's pants came off and she felt the hard, urgent probing of his sex, she looked up at him with alarm and fear. "Are you going to bust my cherry?"
He laughed. "I guess I am. You're a virgin, aren't you?"
"Of course, Jack, yes." Her breathless avowal became an outcry of pain.
Lisbet had been right. It hurt like hell. But the second time wasn't so bad.
* * *
It was a rainy afternoon in September when Mary Catherine informed Wild Jack Collins that he was going to be a father. She was waiting for him under the arches of the Cabildo, one of their several meeting places. He had stopped preaching early because the drizzle had become a cloudburst.
Sharing her umbrella, they ran to his apartment house, where the smell of stale food and unwashed bodies made her queasy. Once they were in his room, stripped of their wet clothes, huddled in bed beneath the drab linens, she whispered to him, "Jack, I'm going to have a baby."
His wandering lips ceased their exploration of her neck. His head snapped up. "What?"
"Didn't you hear me?"
Nervously she pulled her lower lip through her teeth, not wanting to repeat the words. For weeks she had anguished over the possibility. After her second missed period, coupled with morning nausea and a constant shortness of breath, there could be little doubt.
She lived in fear of her parents' noticing her swelling breasts and thickening waistline. She'd told no one. Months ago she'd forsaken her friends in favor of Jack's company, and she didn't feel she could go to them now with a problem of this magnitude. Besides, girls who got into trouble were scorned and shunned by everyone, including best friends. Even if Lisbet and Alice chose to remain her friends, their parents would never have permitted it.
She had made her confession at a church outside her own parish. While whispering to the disembodied voice behind the screen, her cheeks had flamed and her words had faltered when she admitted to the lustful things she and Jack had done together. Confessing them to a real person, face to face, would be too mortifying to consider. So she'd borne the guilty burden alone.
Now, she lay in stark terror of Jack's reaction.
He got up and stood at the side of the bed, looking down at her but saying nothing. His glibness seemed to have deserted him.
"Are you angry?" she asked in a feeble voice.
"Uh, no." Then stronger, "No." He sat down and took her damp, cold hand between his. "Did you think I'd be angry?"
Her relief was so vast, she could barely speak. Hot, salty tears flowed from her eyes. "Oh, Jack. I didn't know what you'd think. I didn't know what to do."
"Have you told your folks yet?" She shook her head. "Well, that's good. This is our baby. I don't want anybody horning in on our joy until it's time."
"Oh, Jack, I love you so much." She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his face ecstatically.
He indulged her, laughing, then set her away from him. "You know what this means, don't you?"
"What?"
"We've got to get married."
She clasped her hands beneath her chin. Her eyes were radiant and glowing. "I was hoping you'd say that. Oh, Jack, Jack, no one's ever been this happy."
They made love, then spent hours entangled beneath the covers, planning their future. "I've been wanting to leave New Orleans for several months, Mary Catherine. I haven't left before now because of you." He stroked her tummy. "But with the little one coming, I've got to consider our future in doing the Lord's work."
He outlined his plans for augmenting the ministry. "Maybe I can find somebody to play an instrument and sing hymns. Some preachers have several people working for them. These helpers go into the towns first and set things up, like the disciples used to do for Jesus. By the time the preacher gets there, they've got folks hyped up about him. That's what I want. I wasn't meant to preach for pennies on street corners. Someday I might even get on the radio. And then TV. Now wouldn't that be something?"
Mary Catherine was touched by the evangelical zeal that burned in his eyes. "I'll do whatever I can to help, Jack. You know that."
"Well, the kind of help I need right now … never mind."
"What?" She sat up and shook his shoulder. "Tell me." He looked downcast. "I don't know what I'll do for money, especially now that I'll have two extra mouths to feed. I suppose my mission will have to be put on hold while I get a regular job."
"No! I won't hear of that. You must continue preaching, no matter what."
"I don't see how I can."
"Leave that to me. I've got some money."
Looking close to tears, he pulled her down onto his chest and held her tight. "I don't deserve you. You're a saint. Look at this crappy place. I've got to find better lodging in the next city." He gave the shabby room a look of rank disgust. "This place was all right for me. John the Baptist ate locusts and lived in the desert. But I can't ask my wife to make that kind of sacrifice."
The next day, she brought him twenty one-hundred-dollar bills. "I took them out of my account at the bank. It's Christmas and birthday money that I've been saving for years."
"It's too much. I can't accept this, Mary Catherine."
"Of course you can," she said, pressing the bills back into his hands when he tried to return them. "I'm going to be your wife. What's mine is yours. It's for us. For our baby. For God's ministry."
They planned their elopement to take place three nights from then. "Why so long? Why not tomorrow?"
"I've got to make arrangements," he explained. "You don't get married without a bunch of red tape, you know."
"Oh," she said with disappointment. She hadn't known that. "Well, I'll leave all the legalities to you, Jack."
They kissed good-night, lingering over it, dreading the hours of separation. Mary Catherine went home, locked herself in her room, and wrote several pages in her diary. Later, unable to sleep due to a slight case of indigestion brought on by pregnancy and excitement, she went to her closet and planned what she would wear when she went to meet her groom.
* * *