Chapter 33
It seems like an age before the two of them manage to manage to snatch some proper time together again. Until today, they've been living in the stolen moments, the in-between spaces of packed schedules.
Jack picks her up after church, once again waiting outside. She's told him, of course, that he's perfectly welcome to come to the service with her. (If she's honest, Katherine would rather like him to; it's not the same when she's sitting in a pew on the opposite side of the church to her father, both of them staring stoically ahead.) But he just wrinkles his nose and tells her that the only way he's going inside a church is if it's raining.
"I reserved the church today." Katherine tells him as she takes his arm, bouncing on her heels as they set off down the pavement. "I've taken the 26th of August. It's a Sunday, which is rather unconventional, but we want David there and so a Saturday is out of the question."
Jack hums his assent, just pleased, after the work week from hell, to be with her. It's nice, he thinks, when they get to walk like this, how he gets to look down at her for as long as he likes and nobody can say that there's anything wrong with it. She's dazzling in the spring sunshine.
"Reverend Bates said it wasn't a problem that you aren't christened, but that we have to do premarital counselling."
Counselling. Counselling doesn't sound good. Are they going to grill him about his criminal record? He remembers Snyder talking about counsel once, when they got him up in front of a judge for stealing those blankets. Legal counsel, that was it. Does he have to pass some sort of test before he can marry her? Maybe he can get Race to fake a clean record for him. Are criminal records the kind of thing a person can fake?
He can remember that judge's face, the way that he had frowned. The golden eagle mounted on the wall above his head that, if you angled yourself just right, looked like a hat. They'd hit him for that, the policemen had, for moving out of the stand to get the angle right. Those had been nice hits, those ones, because they were in front of the judge. They only laid into him properly after he'd been sentenced.
"Jack, my love, are you okay?"
Katherine's stopped walking. She's frowning up at him. He's screwed up again. His tongue feels three sizes too big for his mouth. It lies there, heavy against his teeth, a leaden weight, immovable, useless.
"Wha- what's that?" Don't fucking stammer, Kelly, you ain't a kid no more. "Cousellin' thing?" Katherine narrows her eyes at him. She can tell something's wrong. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck-
"It's like marriage preparation classes. They're only one a week for six weeks, and they're only an hour."
Oh. Marriage preparation. What do they have to do to prepare for marriage, anyway? If they aren't making him spill about his criminal record, that is.
"I thought old Bates was a bachelor." He says, slowly, trying to regain some of his usual lightness.
"Reverend Bates is." Katherine responds, giving him a pointed look.
"Then what's he gonna tell us 'bout bein' married?" Jack frowns. "He don't know nothin'."
Katherine has that same look on her face as when she believes that the apprentices at work are being immeasurably thick. Still, she schools her features into something that vaguely resembles patience. "He's going to talk to us about Biblical marriage."
"Why?" It's almost a whine, a question edged with petulance.
She glares at him. "Jack."
"Fine." He grumbles. "I deserve fiancé of the year though." She rolls her eyes at that and marches them forward at a faster pace. It makes Jack wonder why they don't let women into the army. Katherine would make a fantastic drill sergeant.
Frankly, he thinks he deserves another award simply for remembering that fancy term that means 'future husband'. It's French, Jack, she'd said. These French, they hafta have a word for ruddy everythin', don't they? She'd smiled at that, the kind of smile she reserves for him and only him, the kind that makes him feel like he can fly. Wait until you come across German.
"Come on, or we'll be late to the Jacobs'."
…
Mayer is out at work on Sundays, in recompense for his time off to keep Shabbat. Jack really shouldn't be as relieved as he is about that. It's hardly as if the man is going to hit him in front of his wife and his kids and Jack's fiancée. But still.
He doesn't have much time to think about it though, because Esther sweeps both of them into a hug the moment they walk through the door. Luckily, Jack has, for once, had the foresight to open the door for Katherine, so that she could enter first. Chivalry, Jack discovers, is an excellent tool for gaining a few seconds of prior warning before somebody touches him.
And meals with the Jacobs don't feel quite so scary with Katherine by his side, his knee resting against her skirts under the kitchen table. Davey looks ecstatic to have Katherine around – all the kid wants is somebody to talk to about obscure clauses of immigration law, honestly, and it's kind of sweet how he and Katherine go back and forth on the subject. Katherine, in Jack's expert opinion, is never prettier than when she's winning an argument. This leads to two things; the first, that Jack rarely wins an argument because he's too distracted, and the second, that he manages to look at very little except her throughout the course of the meal.
Les, however, is enough to divert a good portion of his attention. Jack's pretty sure it isn't normal for a kid like Les to be holed up in school all the livelong week; it's like taking a bottle of seltzer water and shaking it and shaking it for seven hours a day, every day. Sooner or later, it's going to explode. Which all Les' pent up energy does. Usually, all over Jack. Les' mouth works a mile a minute, but that's okay by Jack; despite his affinity for snappy retorts, he likes silence better and Les gives him ample opportunity to just be quiet and listen.
Similarly inclined is Sarah. She's at the table for lunch, but she speaks exactly one word through the whole visit. She says congratulations and then spends the rest of the time absently working at some lace.
When they leave, Esther hugs Katherine again, and then Jack. He's more prepared for this kind of touch from her now, it's slightly more expected, though he's still in the dark as to why she wants to put her hands on him.
It's warm enough, now, in this dry spell, for them to sit outside, so they go to the park that lies midway between the Jacobs' tenement and Miss Morton's boarding house to sit under an oak tree that's full of new growth. Jack gets out his sketchbook and a pencil, resting it on his knees as he leans back against the tree trunk.
"Excuse me, Mr. Kelly, I believe you're supposed to be paying attention to me." Katherine remarks, sitting down next to him and tucking herself into his side, muddy skirts be damned.
She's not mad, not by a mile. It's one of her favourite things about Jack, the way that she doesn't have to being making conversation with him in order for them to spend time together. It's nice to just sit with another person. Just to be.
"Don' worry." Jack rummages around inside of his coat before producing a pocket edition of a book, offering it to her. "I's got somethin' to capture your attention."
The title is embossed in already peeling gold on a forest green cover and Katherine lets her fingers trace over the miniature letters, spelling them out with the tips of her fingers. These pocket editions are sold for cheap at corner shops, the shelf above the dime novel romances and cowboy adventures. That's not the point though. She's had a lot of books in her time, the run of one of the finest home libraries in the city of New York for most of her childhood. Since the fire (and the whole being disowned thing, that too), she hasn't got any of that. But her father started the library for her and her siblings, didn't he? Maybe this is the first book in her new library. Hers and Jack's.
"Wha- I-"
Jack just shrugs, looking at his drawing, not at her, the beginnings of grass and trees being conjured on his paper. "'S the right one, ain't it?"
"Yeah, but-"
"You mentioned you was wantin' to read it last week."
"That wasn't a hint, Jack."
"I know," he rolls his eyes, still not tearing them away from the drawing, now blocking out the pond in front of them, "can't I get my best girl somethin' nice?" When she doesn't answer, he finally turns to look at her, somewhere between embarrassment and amusement. "'S your birthday on Saturday, Kath, an' you's already told me you's gonna kill me if I buys you somethin' 'stead o' puttin' it towards the house fund. Lemme treat you now, yeah?"
And, yes, she supposes she did tell him that. But he's been working so hard to save up enough money for a house deposit, running himself ragged, and she's pretty sure she doesn't even know about half the hours he's taking on. It wouldn't be fair for her to expect a birthday present as well. He's promised her the deposit will be ready by June and shut down her every attempt to suggest that maybe she could contribute. The part of her that writes anonymous columns for a local women's suffrage pamphlet had bristled at that, at first, until she realised how important it was to him. He already expresses enough guilt about not being able to give her the finer things in life, so she's willing to let this one go. So far.
With a sigh, she plants a kiss on his cheek and settles herself against him, cracking the volume open. The park is almost empty, the only noises wind rustling between leaves, distant hoofbeats on the cobbled streets, the scratch of Jack's pencil on the paper. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see a scene spreading across the page, an exact likeness of the nearby pond scattered with swans. Katherine thinks that this might be what contentment feels like.
The artist, the first sentence of the preface says, is the creator of beautiful things. Maybe, Katherine thinks, Oscar Wilde really is onto something.
Eventually, her artist is finished with his drawing. He lays it aside and shifts himself so that he can lie down, his head in her lap. Katherine ought to tell him off, he's probably covering his clothes in grass stains, but everything is just too perfect. And then, because she can't keep her big mouth shut, she ruins it.
"What do you think of Sarah?" She asks, laying her book aside and looking down into his face.
"Whaddaya mean?" Jack murmurs, his eyes closed, half-drowsing already.
"Do you like her?"
"She's a Jacobs, o' course I likes her."
Katherine nods. That's true. It's very hard not to like the Jacobs. She thinks that she could manage it with Sarah, though. "She looks at you at lot."
Jack opens his eyes to look up at her and grins. "You should know better'n anyone that I's pretty easy on the eyes."
He doesn't say anything about quite how easy on the eyes Katherine is, as he looks up at her, but he doesn't need to. It's written across his face, clear as day.
Katherine can't help it though, like picking at a scab, like staring at a scar. "She's very pretty."
"I s'pose." Jack shrugs, propping himself up on his elbows and easing himself off her to sit next to her again, draping his arm around her shoulders. How's a man supposed to keep on breathing when he opens his eyes to see a face like hers, really?
"Oh come on, Jack." Katherine huffs, but tucks herself into his embrace once again.
"Is you jealous, Ace?" He sounds rather too pleased by the notion, gleeful, mischievous, in a way that Katherine knows spells bad news for her.
"Of course not."
"You are!" Jack's grin spreads wider.
"Jack." She looks up, scowling at him. He meets her gaze head-on.
He's smiling as he throws down the gauntlet. "What's you goin' to do 'bout it?"
Katherine mumbles something that sounds like incorrigible, or insufferable, or another of those big words that begin with 'in' that Jack doesn't understand but knows are both frustrated and laced with affection. And then she kisses him, and it's hard to think. In his defence, however, it doesn't take long for him to gather his wits and deepen it, smiling into her mouth.
Katherine can feel it, that cheeky grin pressed against her lips. "Shut up."
"Nah, I don' think I will." Jack pulls away a little, resting his forehead against hers and looking positively gleeful. "See, I's got the most perfect girl in the world. An' it's pretty difficult to see anybody else when she's in the room."
And, well, when he puts it like that.
She knows that she's a fool, that Jack is the last person she needs to worry about straying. He's given up so much for her already. He keeps his promises. He never lets her down. Still, it's difficult when she knows that she's the one on the back foot now, in a way that she never was when they started out. It's difficult when every other woman in the room follows him with their eyes, watching him move with his rumpled, casual grace. She can't compete with that, not anymore. And she certainly can't compete with those women, women like Sarah, who are pretty and practical and altogether unlike her.
He seems to notice the amusement in her eyes dim because he pulls away from her, then tugs her sideways onto his lap.
"Jack, we're in public-" she hisses, looking around at the few people strolling through the park; an elderly couple, a thirty-something walking his dog.
Still, she makes no move to get off him. It's indecent, sure, but she's hardly straddling him. They're not going to get arrested for public indecency. Katherine wonders where along the line of her adventures with her band of newsboys that she came to the conclusion that it's all fair game so long as you don't get arrested.
"What's your book about?" He asks, low and warm, cradling her against him.
It's easier than it should be to relax into his arms, the way that he's holding her. Katherine sighs, tucking her head into the crook of his neck, then begins. "The most handsome man ever to exist-"
"I didn't know I'd had a book written 'bout me-" Jack interrupts.
She continues without pause, lodging an elbow in his stomach as she does so, eliciting a soft oof. "- falls in love with a painting of himself and then the painting starts to age while he stays permanently youthful."
"Well that's… disturbin'."
"That's kind of the point." She snuggles a little further into his chest. "Oh, I never told you, I got a reply from Edith yesterday."
Fishing around in the pockets of her skirts, Jack loosening his arms around her, obliging, she produces the envelope. Jack takes it from her fingers, scanning the words with a furrowed brow. His look of concentration is far more adorable than it ought to be.
Dear Katherine,
School is going well. The girls here are nice, the lessons not hard, and the food awful. That is about the long and short of it.
I cannot say I am surprised about Mother and Father's reactions. Is Ralph coming back from Harvard for the wedding? I miss him. Herbert too. Constance most of all. Letters take forever to come from France. My dress measurements have changed since you last saw me, so I have enclosed a note of my new ones, if you want to get a bridesmaid's dress made. Otherwise, I shall wear my green one. Plan your colours around that.
Yours,
Edith
"Is Ralph comin'?" He finally asks, handing her the letter back.
"I have the telephone number for his residence in Harvard. I'm going to call tonight and ask him." Katherine replies, preoccupied with tucking the envelope back into her pocket amidst the many folds of fabric. Then she pauses, looks up at him, hesitant. "I thought… I thought I'd ask him to give me away, if that's alright."
Jack has to work hard to keep his fury from bubbling over, but he manages to clamp down on it. Still, he wants to march right back into the New York World to demand that Pulitzer stop being such a vindictive piece of shit and walk his own daughter down the damn aisle. He can't do that though, as much as he wants to; so instead, he says: "'S up to you, Kath. 'S your day. Whatever's gonna make you happy."
"It's our day." She reminds him, a little huffily.
Katherine can tell, of course she can, how angry it's made Jack, her parents refusing to attend the wedding. Her heart aches for him, that not only are his parents absent, but hers as well. Strangely, of the two of them, she's the one who is less bothered by it. She's made her choice, and she'd make it over and over again. Jack's her family now, the newsies, Medda, the Jacobs.
"Yeah, but when you's happy, I's happy."
Katherine sits up a little at that, looking up into his face. "I think that's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me."
"I says nice things to you all the time." Jack laughs, poking her side. "You's the one who takes pleasure in insultin' me."
"I do not!" Katherine laughs in return. "What, you want me to say something sweet?"
"Be my guest." Jack spreads his hands wide, leaning back against the tree trunk.
He's watching her like he did that first night in Medda's theatre, like he's waiting for her to perform. Not in the assessing way her father looks at her, but in the way that an audience holds their breath before the overture begins, as if they know what they're about to see will be the show of their lives.
And with expectations like that, who is Katherine to disappoint? She tilts her chin up and whips out her poetry reciting voice. "I know you. And the bits and pieces that I don't know, I can't wait to learn."
"That's a quote from something';" he scoffs, "I can tell by the way you says it." Still, he can't hide the flush that's creeping up his cheeks.
"Only from myself." Katherine shrugs. "I was playing around with some dialogue for a short fiction competition the other night."
"Yeah?" Jack raises his eyebrows, looks at her all impressed and surprised in that way that he does. "I thought you was only interested in journalism."
"I am." She tilts her head to the side, considering. "I just- journalism, it's so… temporary. People throw their papes away each night, you know? I want to do something bigger. Something that will make people sit up and listen for longer than five minutes."
Jack looks at her, long and still, almost to the point that Katherine thinks she's said something stupid. But then he speaks.
"Well, Ace, 'f anybody can do that, 's gonna be you."
…
She draws on that confidence, if she's honest, as she picks up the phone in the hallway of Miss Morton's boarding house that evening and requests Ralph's halls of residence to the operator. It takes her a while to persuade the grumpy night porter to fetch her brother, but eventually he agrees to go and get him, leaving her to listen to the anticipatory buzz of a vacant telephone line. There's a chair next to the table that holds the telephone, in the hall, so she sits down in it, afraid that all the blood will drain down into her feet and send her into a faint if she stands for much longer. And then Ralph picks up.
"Katherine! Is everything alright?" He sounds different on the telephone, his words more carefully enunciated, more prim and proper.
"Yes, yes, quite alright." She breathes, gathering herself. Then, because she doesn't know how to say it: "I'm engaged. To Jack, obviously."
"Wow." A pause. The silence on the line is heavy with things unspoken. "I, uh, congratulations."
"Thank you. We're, um, planning for August the 26th."
"Right. How did Father-"
"They're not coming. He or Mother."
"At all?" He sounds surprised. Katherine wonders why. It's not like their father has ever entertained any sort of notion that he doesn't approve of, from fish being served at breakfast time to Katherine essentially eloping with a trade union leader.
"No."
"Katherine, I-"
She can't bear to hear it, what he's going to say next, so she cuts him off. "Will you give me away?"
"What?"
"Well, Father isn't going to."
"Katherine."
"If it's a no, I'll ask somebody else-" Who, she isn't quite sure, but she'll figure something out. Well, Ace, 'f anybody can do that, 's gonna be you.
"No, no, of course I will. I, just, have – have you thought this through?"
For pity's sake. "I am immovable on this."
A sigh, distant, two-hundred miles away. "Okay. I'll be there."
…
Author's note: I know that Katherine's actual birthday was in January, but shhhhh artistic license.
