Damn those blue jays and purple martins. Martin blamed them all. He hadn't wanted Agnes to fall in love with him, indeed if he thought about it, he liked her a lot and sure, he could convince himself that he loved her. But really? Deep down, buried in a place no one could ever find, Norman knew sure as gun's iron, he wasn't in love with Agnes Limerick. But those blue jays and purple martins, that day back in October when they first connected, they were the reason she fell in love with him. Those birds and the stream they walked by on their walk through Fairmount Park. He saw it in her eyes, her hand clutching his bicep as they walked passed St. Mark's on Locust Street. Damn that beautiful October Saturday? Why couldn't it have been raining that day or why couldn't he have been home sick, suffering from some intestinal disease or something that wouldn't have gotten him so excited by her milky-white skin, red hair, freckles, and her Eleanor Roosevelt laugh?
He was in a fix, God only knew. Not as bad a fix as Agnes herself, but in a fix. He had to marry her, no question about it. But what would they do? He'd lost his job and no one, not even God himself, was hiring architects this year. Norman remembered '30 and '31 and thought they were bad -- hell, his folks had lost their home just after Christmas. But '32 was even worse. Mother, Dad, and he were crammed into two rooms above the pharmacy. How in the dickens would Agnes fit there, and then the baby? They certainly couldn't live at Agnes's mother's house, even if it was plenty big. Siobhan Limerick would never have him, an English Protestant, in her sainted husband's Catholic monument.
Nothing to do about it, but get married and raise the baby.
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