Studs Lonigan (120 page)

“I got to be going,” he said, arising, wanting to get out of the house quickly.

“Now, Bill, think it over, you and Catherine, and if you do, I know you'll see where your old man is just telling you what's right and sensible.”

Nodding affirmatively, Studs left the parlor. In his room, he quickly donned his swimming suit, and pulled an old shirt and pair of trousers on over it. He left the house, dashing so rapidly down the stairway that he emerged on the street breathless and tired, and he trudged slowly to Seventy-first and Jeffery. He saw Catherine standing in front of the drug store, wearing an old blue skirt and brown pullover sweater, with a blue band around her head.

“How are you?” she asked, swinging a rubber swimming cap on her wrist and smiling wistfully, sadly, he felt.

“O. K. How about you, Kid?” he responded in an attempt at gruff cheerfulness.

“All right, darling,” she said, taking his arm.

Catherine was silent as she walked beside him, her arm inserted in the crook of Studs' elbow. She seemed to him to have changed almost over night, and he realized that of late she didn't chatter on the way she had used to. He wished she would.

“What did your folks say to you?” she asked.

“They want me to wait longer. They don't understand things, though. Of course, I didn't tell them the way things really stand. I only said we decided that since we were going to get married, we have figured it out that we might as well do it right away, because we want to.”

“My parents are the same. They don't understand things, either. And what is the use of telling them or trying to make them understand? They would only get angry and fly off the handle, and it would make everything worse. But my mother is so suspicious. She didn't say a word to me, but I could tell that suspicion was just eating her up from the way she looked at me.”

Studs checked himself before letting out the words that his mother was also suspicious. It would make Catherine nervous when she and the old lady got together.

“You know, Bill, if my father and mother were only as understanding as Father Geoghan was this morning. Wasn't he kind and tolerant?”

“Yes. He was very decent.”

“I was so scared, too, having to go to him the way we did. And he was so nice. He didn't bawl us out or anything. He's the same way in confession. He's showed such an open-minded attitude I could have kissed him.”

“Don't let me catch you!” Studs smiled.

“Why, Bill! Oh, go on with your teasing. But he was so understanding.”

“What surprised me was that he kept saying not to marry if we didn't really want to.”

“Yes, he's so understanding on things like that. You know this same thing must happen to lots of others, and they get married so there's no scandal, and they don't really love each other. I wouldn't want that. I would rather have our baby and face the world alone than marry if you didn't want to and didn't love me.”

“Yes. You know that's where the church is wise. It's in men like Father Geoghan who inherit all the Church's two thousand years of experience and wisdom.”

“But Bill, we do love each other, don't we? And we want to marry?”

“Of course, Kid.”

“I felt so much better after seeing Father Geoghan, too. He made me just feel different about it. That's what made him seem so much more understanding than mother and dad. They'd never understand, and all I could do was say we're going to get married, the same as you did.”

“Well, my old man and old lady weren't any more hot on the idea than yours.”

“I'll bet they don't like me.”

“That's not it at all, Kid.”

“I think it is maybe.”

“Not at all. No! It was just like your folks felt, you know, surprised at the suddenness of it.”

She seemed to him to lapse into a thoughtful mood. Without attracting her attention, he caught the reflective look on her face, blue. Her mood and his own both seemed to press down the more forcibly because of the sunny appearance of the Sunday street, the people dressed up, strolling along, the pretty girls, the couples laughing, going some place, people who didn't have the troubles on their minds that he had.

“Bill!” she exclaimed suddenly in a questioning tone of voice.

“What?” he asked in apparent apprehension.

“We don't care what anybody else thinks, do we?”

“Of course not, Kid,” he said, trying to be casual.

“And today is a lovely day, and it's going to be ours, too, isn't it? No matter what we got ahead of us, we're not going to worry today, are we?”

He agreed with her by a cryptic nod of the head, and thought, if she would only forget to worry, and would go along, chattering away, it would make him feel lighter. It would be like a kind of sleep. It made him realize how, of late, she had seemed to slide away from all the things she used to do, from her girl friends, and bridge club, and everything like that. It made him feel a little lousy about it all, because look what she was getting for all this sacrifice!

“Maybe it would be a good idea for you to go to the next meeting of your bridge club.”

“You're not trying to pawn me off, are you?” she asked, surprised.

“Why, no, no, Kid. I was only wondering if it might not be a nice change for you from a guy like me, and you know, help you to keep your mind off worrying.”

“You silly boy! You men! You're not just a guy, and I'm not worrying, and I never will because I know you love me, darling.”

“I don't want you to be worrying, you know.”

“You're such a sweet boy. Why should I be worrying when you're going to be all mine, my husband in just three short weeks? What could I be getting to make me happier?”

“Well, now . . .” he halted because he didn't know what he really wanted to say.

“I hope the water isn't cold,” she said.

“It won't be,” he said, just to make the conversation go on.

“I won't be able to go swimming soon.”

Her remark brought it all back to him clearly. Christ, if he could only get her to take some medicine that would bring her around. But after what Father Geoghan had said about such things: murder, killing an innocent, unborn soul, fat chance he had of convincing her. Maybe if she ran around the beach and got plenty of exercise, it might happen naturally.

“Come on, let's walk faster,” he said.

Studs and Catherine descended over a small area of rocky, sandy beach to the shore line, and the lake, blue, with sunlight on it, stretched out and out, like some vast cloth.

“Gee, it's crowded all right today,” Studs said.

“Naturally, since it's Sunday.”

“But, no, it's crowded even for a Sunday,” Studs said weightily, looking around him at the lively, noisy crowd, their bathing suits lending a variegation of color to the scene. His eye caught a slender girl, her body bronzed from sunlight and pinched into an abbreviated one-piece red swimming suit. She stood looking toward the water like a girl in an advertising picture, her head flung back. The glimpse of her caused Studs to see Catherine as small, and plain, and dumpy, and he felt sorry for her. He wanted to look again at the slender bronzed girl, but feared that Catherine might notice him. If she guessed his thoughts and wishes now when he saw other girls, she'd be hurt, and it would be damn lousy to hurt her, considering the circumstances. And yet he had these thoughts, these wishes that girls like the bronzed one were his instead of Catherine. And Catherine, too, she looked better dressed up than in a swimming suit. He glanced sidewise but closely at her. Nothing to notice yet, because she was a little round in the stomach anyway. Her skin was white, and it looked a little rough, and her thighs and legs seemed kind of chunky. Other guys got better-looking girls.

They paused at the pebbly shore line. Studs suddenly felt himself small and puny, and he stood, with the incoming waters curling over his feet, sticking his shoulders back and throwing out his chest. He ran through the waters, dove under in shallow water, and popped up wetted, with drops trickling from his mussed hair.

“Come on in, it won't hurt you,” he called while Catherine waded in carefully.

“You let me come in my own way!” she shouted back, proceeding slowly, as if afraid to wet her swimming suit.

All about them the water was jammed with a shouting, splashing, joshing, kicking, swimming, diving, ducking, plopping crowd, and Studs' ears hummed from the noise they made. He turned his back on Catherine, who was up to her waist, dove under, bobbed his head up, swam out for about fifteen yards. He stood up in water that covered his chest, singled out Catherine by her white bathing cap, and watched her swimming breast stroke toward him. He cut back toward her, taking crawl strokes, and circled around her, blowing on the water, spouting it out of his mouth, diving under, coming up, a serious and studied performance which he wanted her to notice by thinking that he was just like a fish in the water. She swam beside him to the diving board, about two hundred yards out and extending off the breakwater rocks that cut vertically through the water. Both of them puffed as they climbed onto the jagged rocks.

“Come on and dive with me,” he said.

“I'm afraid. I can't dive.”

“I'll teach you.”

“No, you go ahead, and I'll watch.”

He crossed a few feet of jagged stones to the almost springless diving board, and waited while a tall, solidly built, dark-haired chap went off. He followed, hitting the water with a big splash, and swam around randomly, liking it, taking easy strokes. His arms began to seem leaden, and his back started to ache. He labored toward the diving board, climbed over the sodden piles and stones with lurching movements, and, puffing as his hair dripped, stood over Catherine. A brief spasmlike pain cut his heart, and passed too quickly to cause him worry.

“You're a good diver,” Catherine said as he sank beside her.

“That one wasn't so good. I hit the water too heavy. I used to be pretty good but I'm out of practice,” he said, smiling modestly, breathing with effort.

His eyes roved over the beach, colorful with bathing suits, alive with a mass of people who stood, walked, sat, their shouts and talks rising into a steady, drumming roar. He watched two fellows tossing a ball and he thought he'd like to join them, and then he saw a girl falling off a fellow's back in a game of leap frog. He felt a part of this scene, of many people all having a good time. Close to shore, a group of fellows were ducking a girl who screamed and giggled loudly. Nudging Catherine, he pointed, smiling.

“They certainly have their nerve,” she said.

“It's all in fun and she seems to like it.”

“You men, you think that a girl likes anything you do to her, just because it's you doing it. You're just babies when it comes to understanding girls. And let me tell you further, that being ducked is not my idea of fun.”

“Look out or I might be ducking you.”

“William Lonigan, don't you dare,” she said in mock-challenge.

“Is that a threat?” he asked, liking it as she tousled his hair.

He watched a girl, her skin tanned almost the color of chocolate, posing her athletic figure on the diving board.

“Mama, what a broad!” he heard a fellow nearby on the rocks exclaim just after she had dived neatly.

Them's my sentiments, he told himself, trying to single her out in the water. He feared, though, that Catherine might have caught him watching her.

“Nice here. I'm glad I came.”

“So am I, darling,” Catherine said.

He couldn't single her out in the water.

“I'll bet you can't make the grade with her, Joe,” a fellow said.

“Well, if I do, won't I laugh at you. Here goes.”

Studs watched the fellow, a curly-haired, hairy-bodied chap, dive quickly. He thought of how he couldn't do the same thing, and there was nothing that could drive home to him more forcibly the fact that Studs Lonigan was hooked.

“Let's go back and sit in the sand,” he said, getting nervous.

He watched Catherine slip off the rocks into the water, and swim awkwardly toward the beach. Walking to the edge of the diving board, he saw the girl who had just gone off swim past Catherine like a fish. He gritted his teeth. He dove, went under water for several feet, and hit for shore with steady strokes. He snorted, speedily overtaking Catherine, and stood waiting for her in shallow water, all pooped out. She clutched his hand, and as they waded onto the sand he stared with quick anxiety about him. No faces that he knew.

A girl, chased by a fellow, scooted past him, tumbled, and the fellow purposely fell on top of her, both of them laughing.

Were these people, he wondered, trying to shutter troubles out of their minds, the same as he was? He caught a dark girl in a blue one-piece swimming suit and green rubber swimming cap standing alone like a young tree, fresh, virginal, untouched. If she was his girl! He remembered how Catherine had changed in these last months, a change that had seemed to come over her since she had given in, and that was so hard for him to put his finger on. To have such a girl, she couldn't be over seventeen, see her changing under a fellow's hand, growing to like what he gave, and all the rest of it. Already he was wishing to have over again those first weeks after Catherine had let him, and they were gone. But he couldn't give Catherine the idea he was looking around this way at girls. He looked at her, and saw, almost in pain, how plain she was without makeup, her chubby face framed by her white bathing cap. Suddenly, she seemed to him like a total stranger. He could not make himself believe that she was his girl, his woman who would be his wife in a few weeks, and who would, in about eight months, have a baby of his. Christ, for a lucky miracle! Have to make her exercise.