Studs Lonigan (7 page)

He puffed his stogy and sat there. The sun was imperceptibly burning low. Old man Lonigan looked about. He puffed on his stogy, and his innards made their customary noises as they diligently furthered the digestive process.

Frances rushed up on him, and with excited little-girl madness she asked him to make William get out of the bathroom.

The old man rapped on the bathroom door and told Bill to hurry up.

“Father, he's just a mean old brute. He's been in there an hour. He's reading or smoking cigarettes.”

“Why, Frances!” the mother said.

“No, I ain't.”

“Bill, tell me . . . are you smoking?”

“Aw, she's all vacant upstairs.”

“Why, that is no language for an educated Catholic boy to use,” the mother said.

“Father, he's mean and selfish. He's a brute, a beast. He isn't fair, and he doesn't give anyone else the least bit of consideration. I'll be late. I can't go. You'll have to get my diplomas, and they'll have to let someone else act. I can't go. I can't go. He's made me all nervous and unstrung. I'm unstrung, and I can't act now. I can't. And I'm worried because I'm not sure if my dress is even or not and I have to go in there. Father, please make the brute come out,” Frances said melodramatically.

“All right. I'll be right out. I can't help it,” Studs said.

“Make him, father!”

“Goddamn it, Bill, hurry!”

“I will.”

“He's always like this,” Frances said.

“I ain't.”

“Every time I'm in a hurry, he's getting in the way. He's selfish, and don't think of anyone but his dirty old self, and he always monopolizes the bathroom . . . he's an ole . . . goat,” said Frances.

“Aw, shut up and go to hell,” said Studs as he fanned the air.

“Why, William Lonigan! Father, did you hear him insult me, swear at me, like I was one of those roughnecks from Fifty-eighth Street I sometimes see him with?”

“Bill, come right out. I'll not have you cursing in this house. I'm boss here, and as long as I am, you will use gentlemanly language when you address your sister. Where do you learn to speak like that, you, with the education I've given you? You don't hear anyone around here speaking like that,” said the old man.

“Aw, heck, she's always blowing off her bazoo,” said Studs.

“William, I wish that you wouldn't use such language. After receiving such a fine education . . . I'm shocked,” said the mother.

“He doesn't know any better. He couldn't be a gentleman if he tried to,” Frances said.

“Now, Frances, don't add fuel to the fire,” the mother said.

“All right. I'm coming right out. I couldn't help it. Only it gets me sore to hear her yelling her ears off like that, over nothin'.”

“Well, it's a good thing I do. Someone ought to expose him, and tell him how mean and selfish and inconsiderate he is, and how he only thinks of himself.”

“Now, children, this is your graduation night, and you know your graduation night ought to be one of the happiest of your lives,” the mother said.

The smoke had cleared now, so Studs could take a chance. He marched out, leaving the bathroom in perfect order. Frances indignantly brushed by him, her head held proud.

Frances was a very pretty girl of thirteen. Her body had commenced to lose its awkwardness, and she had a trim little girlish figure. Her plain white graduation dress set her off well, with her dark hair and her blackish eyes. She looked older than Studs.

“William, you should be more considerate,” the mother said, unheard.

“Bill, you're gettin' at the age where you should be more ... more chivalrous toward the ladies,” the old man said as he chewed away at the remains of his stogy.

“Yeah, but heck, the way she yells over nothing, and starts raisin' all kinds of Cain when there ain't no reason,” he said.

Father and mother cautioned him on the use of the word ain't. It was not polite, or good diction.

“Bill, you have to put up with the ladies, and make allowances for their . . . defugalties,” the old man said pompously.

He nudged Studs, intimately, and slipped him a buck as a graduation present. Studs felt good over getting the buck, and went to his bedroom to put on the white tie he hated to wear, but had to. He looked at the tie, feeling uncomfortable. He looked out the window, and Goddamned the tie.

He heard his old man and his old lady speaking.

“Well, Mary, we got our children started now. We got Bill and Frances pretty near raised.”

“Yes, Patrick, and I'm so happy, because it's been such a hard job, you know.”

“Yeah, we done well by ‘em, and paid their way, and now it won't be so hard as it was, and when we get 'em all raised, and brought up, and educated, we'll take a trip to Ireland. It will be our second honeymoon . . . And, Mary, you and I'll have to give more time to ourselves and spark about a little. This summer sure, we'll go out to Riverview Park and have a day of our own, like we planned for so long,” he said.

“Yes, Patrick . . . And, Patrick, these little spats the children have, they're nothin' at all,” she said.

“Nope. They happen in the best regulated families,” the old man said; he laughed, as if he had cracked a good joke.

“And nobody can say we ain't done right by our children,” he said.

“They certainly can't.”

“And we paid their way,” he said.

“Yes . . . and Sister Bernadette Marie told me how fine a boy William was, and how grand a girl Frances is,” Mrs. Lonigan said.

“Yeah!” the old man said.

Then the old lady started to talk about the high school they would send Studs to. Studs knew what was coming. She was going to suggest that he be sent to study for the priesthood. He got sore, and wanted to yell at her. But the old man dismissed the whole subject. He said they could decide later, adding:

“I got the money, and we can send the lad any place we want to.”

“But here, you get your tie on and comb your hair. We have to go, Patrick . . . And, Martin, come here and let me see your fingernails and behind your ears. Did you wash your neck? That's a good boy. And your teeth? Open your mouth . . . Well, for once you are presentable . . . and Loretta, is your dress on? Come here. Yes, you look like a little lady . . .”

She entered Studs' room, retied his tie, and recombed his hair, much to his discomfort, and made him go over his fingernails again; he felt as if they were trying to make a mollycoddle out of him. She pinned on the long class ribbons of golden yellow and silvery blue. He sat on the bed, waiting for them, thinking about all kinds of things.

Looking like Sunday, or as if they had just walked out of a dusty family album, the Lonigan family promenaded down Michigan Avenue. Studs and Frances marched first. Studs felt stiff; he told himself he must look like some queer egg or other. Frances marched along, proud and lady-like. She did not deign to glance at Studs, but she teased him in a voice so loud that all heard her. He walked along, looking straight ahead, his eyes vacant; he thought up all the curse words he could and silently flung them at her. Loretta and Martin followed. Loretta was carrying the beautiful bouquet of white roses and carnations that were for Frances, and she walked along imitating her sister. She even teased Martin with the same words that Frances was using. Martin had to be cautioned by his parents, because he did not suffer in sulky silence, as Studs did. Father and mother formed the rear guard; parental pride oozed from them like healthy perspiration; the lean mother looked frugal, even in the plain but expensive blue dress she had bought for the occasion. Passers-by glanced at them a second time, and they smiled with satisfaction. The old man kept repeating that he hoped Father Gilhooley would give the kids a big send-off.

“Studs's got long pants on,” Martin said, to escape the teasing of Fritzie.

Fritzie giggled.

“Close your beak,” Studs turned and said.

“Martin, how many times have I forbade you to call him that awful name . . . and William, don't talk like that to my baby . . . The two of you cutting up like that in public . . . I'm ashamed of you,” the mother said.

“Now, cut it out,” the old man said authoritatively.

“I ain't a baby,” Martin said.

“I'm walking with the baby,” Frances said.

The Lonigans promenaded along Michigan Avenue, looking like Sunday.

FATHER GILHOOLEY floridly faced his audience. He pursed his fat lips, rubbed his fat paws together and suavely caressed his bay front. A fly buzzed momentarily above him, and almost settled on his gray-fringed dome. He stood forward on the crowded little stage, pausing to create a dramatic effect. To his left, and a trifle out of line with him, Father Doneggan and Father Roney, the two parish assistants, stood, their faces expressionless. Back of him the graduating class was phalanxed; the blue-suited boys fidgeted on the left; the white girls stood, like wax models, on the right. All clutched their diplomas, while many also held green-bowed Irish history diplomas and Palmer method certificates.

Every atom of the June heat seemed to be compressed in little cubes that dripped wet discomfort over the heads of the packed audience. Heads constantly turned and switched to gaze at the cool patches of blue sky that were framed in the windows lining the two side walls. The audience had enjoyed the entertainment; at least, it had heartily applauded each number from the very cute little group piece the firstgrade girls had spoken to the group dancing of Fritzie's fourth-grade class, the elocution recitation of the sixth-grade girls, the special numbers by prodigies like little Roslyn Hayes and Dorothy German, and the adaptation of a play from
Little Women
that the seventh- and eighth-grade girls had presented. And now the good priest was going to conclude the entertainment with a brief talk . . . at least many hoped that it would be brief.

The good priest blandly commenced:

“This is a
joyous
evening for all of us here at St. Patrick's. We have all enjoyed the skillful and well-acted entertainment to the utmost, just as we enjoyed the similarly well-presented entertainment of the boys of this parish school last May. We could ask nothing more of our children, or of the good sisters who trained them. It has been, and I utter these words without the least iota of doubt in my own mind, an entertainment as amusing and as entertaining as many a professional show. It has also been, my dear friends, an evening which we will carry with us through the years as a golden treasure. And it will be an especially sacred and hallowed memory to you who are the fathers and mothers of the boys and girls in St. Patrick's banner class of 1916. It is you parents who have made this grand evening possible, who have suffered and worried and fretted, sacrificed, stinted yourselves luxuries, in order to send your children off daily to the good sisters where they might receive Catholic training. You have had your fears and your worries sending these sturdy, well-behaved, beloved, and, yes, handsome children to school. But now these fears and worries must be scattering like the fog dissipating before the warming rays of Gawd's golden morning sunlight. Your little ones have been safely steered beyond all the early rocks and shoals and sands in their voyage on the sea of life. The distribution of diplomas, which you have just witnessed on this small stage, symbolizes the arrival of your little ones in the first safe haven on their journey across the stormy and wave-tossed sea of life. It symbolizes the victory and achievement which is the result of eight hard years of patience and care; a triumph whose ultimate crown of success will be forged at the very throne of Gawd Almighty.”

He talked on, his language fat with superlatives. Then, becoming as skittish as a portly and dignified pastor from the old sod can be, he said that while he was opposed to gambling, he was still willing to bet that there was not a parish in the great city of Chicago that could have put on a finer display or have turned out a more stalwart graduating class than St. Patrick's had on this June evening. He was interrupted by loud clapping, and he smiled . . . magnificently.

He continued his talk, reminding his dear friends that in this, their hour of joy, they must not forget the good sisters who had trained the children, not only in reading and writing and arithmetic, not only for the splendid performance they had made that evening, but also for the more serious and important task of . . . saving their immortal souls.

“After all, we are made to love, to serve, and to obey Gawd in this world, and to be happy with Him in the next, just as the catechism teaches us,” he said profoundly.

And it was the religious training, the daily example and inspiration provided by the modest, self-sacrificing, holy virgins who had pointed out the path of salvation for the children of St. Patrick's parish. The graduates of St. Patrick's parish all walked in the ways of Gawd, grew up into sterling-silver specimens of Catholic manhood and womanhood, because of the teaching, the kind nurturing in goodness that they met with in the classrooms of St. Patrick's school. The entire parish owed a heartfelt tribute to these white-souled women.

In the rear of the hall, left-hand side, were three ex-little ones of St. Patrick's who had worn out the patience of the holy women, three naughty little boys who had been canned from school and who might even end on the gallows. They were kids of Studs' age, Paulie Haggerty and Tommy Doyle, who were famous not only because they were hard guys but also because they had such fat butts, and tough Red Kelly, whose old man was a police sergeant. Hook-nosed, bow-legged Davey Cohen and Three-Star Hennessey, fourteen, small and considered nothing but a tricky punk, were also with them. They had all snuck in and were having a good time, making trouble. Davey suddenly whisted to Red, Tommy and Paulie. They whispered, and laughed quietly, and Red told Davey to go ahead. Davey goosed Hennessey. Hennessey was goosey anyway, and he jumped; his writhings disturbed a surrounding semi-circle of dignity. But Three-Star suddenly saved himself; he pointed out Vinc Curley. Vinc was better goose meat.