Studs Lonigan (119 page)

 

 

Others, too, seeing him and Catherine, they'd think the same thing. He shook his head ironically, and told himself, yes, he was walking his baby back home. And it just showed, he thought, that appearances were deceiving. Walking his baby back home with everything seeming so tranquil, when things were hemming him in, hemming both of them in more and more.

But he didn't want to think anymore tonight of all these goddamn griefs. And he didn't want there to be a tomorrow when he would wake up and realize what he had to do. Tell his family about it, and go to see the priest, face him when the priest might get sore and bawl him out and all that stuff. Start figuring out and preparing and arranging for the marriage. And then, Christ, her being knocked up! If he'd only waited! A few minutes each time, then feeling tired, feeling sometimes disgusted and wanting no more of it, or else wanting it the next time and hoping there would be more in it than there was the time before, and now for that they were in all this deep water. Or if he hadn't been such a chump and had taken precautions every time. But it was always that way. Afterward, when it was too late, you saw what you should have done.

And now all that he wanted was to be home and in bed asleep, so that none of these things would be on his mind, making him feel so tight and feel that any minute something might happen. Even if he was going to sleep for only seven or eight hours, and then wake up again to all these same worries, he wanted sleep. Eight hours of sound sleep seemed like a century.

Catherine paused under a lamp-post and opened her purse. Studying her tear-streaked face in the purse mirror, she powdered, patted her hair, and turned a weary smile upon him.

“Do I look all right?”

Studs replied gutturally without even having heard her question. They emerged from Jackson Park at Sixty-third and Stony Island.

“Let's walk home,” he said, too constrained within himself to stand waiting for a street car.

They crossed the street, and in front of the Greek restaurant with the modernistic decorations, a group of fellows stood, cluttering the sidewalk. Studs glanced to see if he knew any of them. Two drunks detached themselves and stood blocking the sidewalk. Studs' fists clenched automatically, and he watched them cautiously, hate suddenly overpowering him.

“But, George, if we call her up and she's not there, someone else answers the phone. So what? We lose a nickel.”

“Suppose we telephone Marie instead. So what. We spend a nickel,” the second drunken fellow seriously said, while Studs, tense and wary, led Catherine around them.

“They're having a good time,” Catherine said with a thin smile.

“Yeh, a problem in high finance,” Studs said, pleased because she laughed at his crack.

They used to be crowding around the street in the same way in the old days. And then, no cares and responsibilities like now. He guessed, too, that what he really needed was to go out and get himself uproariously drunk. And if he'd only watched his health more in the old days he could do that now. If!

“Honey, please don't let yourself get so worried,” Catherine said.

“I'm not worried. I was just thinking.”

“You were, too. I could see it on your face.”

“No. I was just thinking about those two drunks and their problem in high finance,” Studs answered, and Catherine's lips tightened as she looked away.

Studs stared ahead at the lights of Sixty-seventh and Stony Island. They passed a row of drab apartment houses, a line of darkened stores, a vacant lot, and then a brightly lit Upton Oil and Refining Company Greasing Palace, and Studs purposelessly watched an automobile back away from a greasing rack.

A group of young fellows approached, talking loudly, and Studs became nervous, in case they might start some trouble.

“Hell, he doesn't work! He's only the foreman and just walks around the joint. It don't take no brains to be a foreman. You just got to be able to walk,” a dusky fellow in the group shouted as the fellows passed, and Studs heard their loud voices while they moved on.

“Sometimes you hear people say funny things on the street,” Catherine said.

“Yeh.”

They entered a crowded chain drug store, and sat down at a vacant tile-topped table. Waiting for their chocolate malted milks, Studs looked around, gathering a general sense of noise and well-being, seeing the crowd lined along the soda fountain, the fountain men frantically working to fill orders, the white-aproned waitresses scurrying with trays among the tables where there were many couples and groups, and other customers around the drug counters on the opposite side of the store.

He began wishing that he was like some of the other fellows in the store who were at soda tables with girls, so carefree. Like the fellow in a palm beach suit several tables down who talked to a blonde girl and then laughed so loudly. A couple laughing like that couldn't have a problem like he and Catherine had.

“It's crowded here, isn't it?” Catherine said after the malted milks had been set before them.

“Yes. These stores must be making money, depression or no depression,” Studs said, thinking that it might have been a much sounder investment to get stock in a chain drug outfit like this one.

“Yes, they do a lot of business at a store like this one,” she said, breaking open the small paper package of wafers that came with the malted milk.

“I'd be willing to bet they make money,” Studs said, drawing the malted milk through two straws.

He finished it quickly, and while Catherine continued sipping he again stared around at random, and he began to think how all these fellows with their girls, they were guys just like himself. And maybe they had their problems, too. Fellows and girls when they went together always had that one problem. If they really felt about each other, they wanted to go the limit, and then there was the girl holding back because she was afraid, or thought that it was wrong, or if they did jazz, there was that worrying about getting knocked up, or else there was worrying over how they could get alone and not be seen and spoiling it by hurrying up so no one might catch them in the park or a hallway. Jesus Christ, life was one goddamn trial and tribulation, and love made it more of a trial and a tribulation. He wondered how many fellows there were in Chicago at this very minute who were in the same pickle as he was, with girls they'd knocked up. And yet, no matter if there were thousands of them, that didn't help him. Misery loves company, but what the hell good does company do?

“Bill, I want you to promise me now that you're not going to worry,” she said, observing the set expression on his face.

“I'm not worrying.”

“You are, too. You've furrowed up your face, and I can tell that you are.”

He forced a smile as they arose. They proceeded southward along Stony Island, and Studs looked at the many strolling people, asking himself how many of them were better off than he was. He took a covert glance at Catherine. She seemed pretty enough. And she was showing him that she had guts. It was something to have guts.

But he wished, Jesus Christ, he wished for something, something!

In the hallway, she was very troubled and worried, and she looked up at him with eyes of desire and anxiety.

“Darling, we're always going to be together,” she said.

He nodded, kissed her.

“And we're not going to worry over this thing, either.”

He nodded again, pleased with the sudden thought that this was a fight where he would have to overcome obstacles. But the idea of fighting and overcoming obstacles was one thing, and doing it was another, and tomorrow morning he had to start the doing. He'd realized all along that some day they would just stop being engaged, and marry, but now, with Catherine in his arms kissing him as if each kiss were their last one, he began to realize that he'd been kind of glad to have the marriage in the future. And it wasn't any longer. If it only could be put off a little, but it couldn't. He was in all the way up to his neck.

“We needn't worry, Bill, we're going to get along, aren't we?” Catherine said wistfully, relaxing in his arms and patting his cheek.

He shook his head, agreeing.

“I know that as long as I'm with you I won't have to worry because I can depend on you,” she said.

He kissed her. Their eyes met in helplessness, and Studs knew that there was nothing more for either of them to say.

“What time will you be over in the morning?”

“What time do you want me to?”

“Let's go to eleven o'clock mass.”

“I'd rather go to a low mass.”

“But it would give you more sleep.”

“I'd rather go to a low mass,” he sulked.

“All right, little boy,” she said with a smile. “You'll be over for ten o'clock mass? . . . No, I tell you, you come over and we'll have breakfast together. Come at nine o'clock.”

“All right,” he said, kissing her again.

He watched her disappear up the stairway within the inner hall doorway. He took the same path home that he always took after leaving her. Walking, he suddenly realized that they would have to start out on her money. He was going to her a pauper without a pot to. . . . Jesus Christ! Getting married on her money, after he had knocked her up, and having wasted his own like an out-and-out chump. And why, oh, Jesus, why did all these things have to come when he was losing his health and all jammed up? Now, as he had never realized it before, he could see just how important money was, and he told himself, yes, sir, your pocketbook is your best friend. Now it meant so many important things, and to think of all the dough he had pooped away since he had started working back in 1919.

He tried to see himself coming through and busting out on top, and it was like eating something that was sour and mouldy. With each step homeward he was shaken with a powerless anger, and it made him feel the imminence of some danger. He was getting afraid, almost, even to walk, because that danger might pop out at him from the next doorway and just put the clamps on Studs Lonigan with a pair of steel handcuffs.

He told himself to can it all, and trust to luck. Luck would have to be on his side. With luck, he'd win through. Trying to kid himself again. He yawned. He only wanted to sleep. To get home and fall into bed and forget it. But it wasn't like a jag, for that could be slept off. In the morning he was going to wake up, and know that it would be back again.

“SON, I don't see why you can't wait,” Mrs. Lonigan said. “Yes, Bill, isn't it kind of fast and sudden, you know, getting married on the spur of the moment? Of course, now, don't think that I don't like Catherine or don't want you to marry her. Because we aren't at all talking on that point. All we are trying to say is that maybe you better not rush into it and act on such a quick decision,” the father said, and Studs commenced to grow nervous and very unsure of himself because he could see, sitting in the parlor and facing his parents, that they were both giving him fishy-eyed looks.

“Well, there's no particular reason why we shouldn't,” he said weakly, sparring for time until he could think up better answers.

“Bill, now why don't you just think it over? Coming so sudden, it will look kind of . . . kind of . . . funny. And it gives us such little time to get ready,” Lonigan said.

“We've talked it over and made up our minds,” Studs said, bored, not wanting to argue it when all such talk anyway was just a waste of time.

“And how will Catherine's mother like this, with you taking her only daughter away from her on such short notice, and not giving her any time to make the right preparations for the wedding? It's not fair to Mrs. Banahan,” Mrs. Lonigan said, still turning suspicious eyes on him.

He couldn't understand why they kept on hemming and hawing about it. But he was glad for one consolation anyway. There wouldn't be so damn much trouble about getting things ready for the wedding. Immediately he thought with regret that poor Catherine, she would miss all that fussing. She had, he was sure, like all girls dreamed of the time she would be married as some great special occasion. And now all these dreams of hers for a very romantic wedding were dampened plenty.

“Bill, I want you to promise me something,” the father said in a man-to-man manner.

“Yes,” Studs said, hoping to get this over because he wanted to meet Catherine and go swimming, and thinking also that when it came to anything important about himself, it was just about impossible to make them understand his side of the case, and it had been the same always, so far back as he could remember.

“Bill, I want you to promise me this. To think it over, and see if it isn't possible to wait at least a few months until the fall, when things will be better, and you'll then probably have more money and prospects to start on. Maybe by fall we'll turn the corner of this depression and have a real business pickup. And then I'll be able to have you working for me every day, and if money loosens up I'll be able to give you a tidy little sum as a wedding present. In days like these, a young fellow is foolish to get married when he's not sure of being able to work the next day.”

“Two mouths always cost more to be fed than one,” Mrs. Lonigan said.

“I've thought it over,” Studs said, realizing there was nothing much to say to them about it, unless he told the truth, and he couldn't do that.

Both parents stared wistfully at him. The mother dabbed at her eyes, almost in open tears. She was his mother, and he could see why she should cry like this, and it made him feel kind of rotten. He thought, though, that she'd gotten married herself, hadn't she, and she and the old man had pitched in to try their luck without any bank to start on.