Studs Lonigan (91 page)

 

Umm! Guessed that, after all, he'd better hang on to his stocks and wait a bit. Imbray ought to know what he was talking about.

“As I was going to say, though, Bill, I'm sorry you missed Amos and Andy. You would have laughed yourself sick at them.” Lonigan's belly rolled as he laughed. “They're so much like darkies. Not the fresh northern niggers, but the genuine real southern darkies, the good niggers. They got them down to a T, lazy, happy-go-lucky, strutting themselves out in titles and with long names and honors, just like in real life.” Studs wished that his father would finish, so he could read the paper without distraction. “Amos and Andy got their taxicab now.” He laughed again. “But it won't run. Andy elected himself president, and calls their cab
The Fresh Air Taxicab Company of America.
And Amos, just like a nigger, he wants to be a president. Well, Andy, he's the wise one anyway, he tells Amos, so Amos will be able to tell Ruby Brown about his titles, you see, he says to Amos that he, that is, Amos, can call himself
Chief Mechanic's Mate, Fixer of Automobiles,
and
Chief Business Getter
. Golly!” Lonigan chuckled; Studs pretended to listen. “Well, Amos is satisfied because he has his titles, too, but he doesn't understand that his titles mean he must do all the work, while Andy sits on his you-know. So then, Andy tells Amos to fix the car, and Amos asks why, and Andy tells him that fixing the automobile is in his department, and it would be shameful if the president of
The Fresh Air Taxicab Company of America
had to fix the car like a mechanic.” Lonigan laughed. “Golly, Bill, they sure are a card.”

“I'm sorry I missed them,” Studs muttered, flipping the pages of his newspaper to the stock-market quotations and reading that his stock was unchanged, 24.

“Martin still out?”

Studs nodded, and turned to the back page, his eye catching the picture in the upper left-hand corner, a scene from the day's Red riots, with a fallen man in the foreground, against an indistinct background of struggling figures. Over the fallen man on the left was a policeman with a raised club, and on his right a hefty detective in dark overcoat and gray suit who had, when the picture was snapped, just completed making a swinging punch at the fallen man. He glanced at the next photograph showing a young girl, seated, blonde, with crossed legs and one knee in sight, who had just married a sixty-eight-year-old millionaire. Good legs. Nice. Poor old bastard of a husband, too old for such nice stuff.

“Bill, there's something I want to speak to you about,” the father said in a heavy voice, and Studs looked up from the newspaper, noticing that his father was embarrassed by what he had to say. . . . “Bill . . . how much money have you got in the bank?”

“Why?” Studs asked, taken aback, immediately wishing that he had said something different, because his father flinched at his question.

“Bill, I never thought that I would have to ask any of my children for a cent, but lots of things happen that we never counted upon.” Lonigan disconsolately wagged his head. “I'm afraid I'm going to need money goddamn bad. I haven't told your mother how bad things look to me, but they are bad. They're fierce. I've got to figure out how much I can rely on in a pinch. Well, I might as well tell you the whole story. I've got some stocks. I bought them on margin about two years ago, and I've had to keep feeding money into my broker so I wouldn't get sold out. I've pulled through this far, but I don't know what's ahead of me. And then about four months ago I got a hot tip on a stock, so I bought a little of it on margin, and that leaves me pretty worried now, because my stock hasn't gone up like I supposed it would. So you see, with it, and with the mortgage, and running expenses, and every damn thing that comes along, I'm in a pickle, and I want to figure out how much I can rely on in case I need it, and in case you're willing to loan money to your father.”

“Why, of course, dad. I got two thousand. When will you need it?” Studs said heedlessly, and instantly he regretted the lie and couldn't understand why he hadn't mentioned the stock.

“That's fine of you, Bill . . . and well, you know, it gives me a great feeling of pride to have a son like you.”

“Things are bound to get better, dad,” Studs said with suppressed emotion.

“It's those goddamn Jew international bankers. And Bill, it ain't fair. It ain't right that a man should have so much worry and trouble in his old age, after working as hard as I have all my life and providing so well for my family. Your mother and I have earned the right to peace and comfort in our old age,” Lonigan protested.

Not knowing what to reply, Studs nodded agreement.

“I might just have to call on you, so I wanted to mention this matter in advance,” Lonigan said, sinking down in his chair, his chin lowering against his chest. Studs wished there was something he could say to help make his old man buck up.

But suppose the old man asked for the money. Well, he could sell, pocket his loss, and let him have the rest. He asked himself why a guy's life had to be one damn thing to worry about after another, and why wasn't a guy never done with deciding things. Always, time after time, as soon as one thing was settled, and the worry erased, another thing popped up. A guy no sooner skirted out of one pickle than he had fallen into another one. It seemed as if almost every minute of a fellow's life a knife was swinging over his neck, ready to slash into him at any unsuspected moment. When he'd been a kid, it had been the same, trouble at home, worry about school, something, and he had wished for the time when he grew up, because then he'd be free and not always having worries and dangers on his mind like so many wet blankets. Now he was a man. And he was damn tired, too.

“Bill, I only hope that when you're my age you have a boy who's as great a comfort to you as you are to me.”

“Yes, dad,” Studs said, embarrassed, touched by the gentle note which had crept into his father's voice; and he liked his old man a lot. It made him almost wince and feel like a traitor to think that he'd lied to him about the stock, and that he hadn't even bothered to ask his advice before buying it. And if he mentioned it now, the old man would take it pretty badly.

“Yes, Bill, I used to worry about you a lot. For a while you were a pretty wild lad, but then, I guess all young lads who are worth their salt have to sow their wild oats. I was the same myself once. But now I have the feeling I can depend on you, and I just wanted to say so,” Lonigan said, mumbling his words.

A lump gathered in Studs' throat. He was afraid because of the strong feelings that seemed to break and well up within him. And he felt like a louse, not worthy of his father's trust. To regain his control, he lit a cigarette, inhaled, let the smoke escape through his nose.

“And, Bill, you got to watch your health. You've got to fight an uphill battle to win it back, just as I got to fight an uphill battle to get back where I was before these hard times set in.” Lonigan sat up erectly. “A Lonigan can be down, but he's never out!”

Studs nodded thoughtfully, his eyes wandering about the parlor, at the baby grand piano, the legs scratched, the cabinet radio, the mirror, the subdued gray wallpaper, the ornate floor-lamp, the family pictures hung about the wall, and then at his father, brooding and corpulent.

Lonigan arose stiffly and muttered as he walked out of the parlor, “Good night, son.”

“Good night, dad.”

Studs moved to the window and stood gazing down, hands in pocket. Across on the other side of the street, a couple emerged from shadows, arm in arm, walking slowly, passed through an area brightened by the glow of a street lamp, passed again into the shadows that fell from the large apartment hotel. The sight made him want a girl, to kiss, to love, to talk to and hold at this minute, Catherine, Lucy, a girl. An automobile passed. He glanced at the apartment hotel, its lighted windows yellow squares against an indistinct, bulky background. What were the people behind those windows doing? What troubles, worries, problems did they have bothering them? He recalled how on the night he had graduated from grammar school, he had stood by the parlor window of their Wabash Avenue building, looking out after everyone had gone to bed. Then, he'd looked forward to a lot of things. Now, Phil Rolfe's brother-in-law, out of it, his old man almost on the spot. No, he still had things to look forward to, still was in the show. He turned from the window and picked up his newspaper to read in bed. Turning out the parlor lights, he thought, Jesus, Jesus Christ, if only his stocks would go way up!

“SHALL we go into the other room?” Loretta asked, arising.

“Nice supper, Marie,” Phil said with false joviality to the plump colored maid, who, with a surly frown on her face, had commenced removing the supper dishes.

“Phil, I'll have to get rid of her. She's entirely too surly for a nigger maid,” Loretta said in a low but exasperated voice as they led Studs through the French door into the parlor.

“All right, dear, as you wish, but can we get another as cheap?”

“Frances only pays hers seven dollars a week.”

Studs jammed his hands into his trouser pockets, glancing about the clean, bright parlor, his eyes resting on the blue and gray walls. Easy to look at, and a nifty, neat job of paper-hanging, he thought.

“Say, I never saw a chair like this one, except in the store windows or the movies,” he said, pointing to his right at a low-lined, chromiumplated chair.

“That's one of our recent acquisitions,” Phil said with pride.

“It's modernistic,” Loretta said, seating herself on the divan whose maroon-red upholstering matched the wine-red cushioning of the chair.

“Sit in it, Studs,” Phil said.

“Say, it is comfortable,” Studs said after having sunk into it, and Phil beamed.

“Furniture like that is quite the vogue now. Frances telephoned me today, and she's getting a modernistic bridge set that must be simply darling from the way she described it,” Loretta said.

“It's nice, all right,” Studs said, feeling that he ought to say something.

Glancing to his left, he spotted the low, gray ash desk, and on it a terra cotta lamp with a silver parchment shade.

“Say, that's a nice desk,” he said.

“Isn't it, though?” Loretta said, Studs wondering had she started to get high-hat. “Come here, Studs,” she added, rising.

“Honey, Studs doesn't care about that,” Phil said, a whine creeping into his voice.

Studs got up and moved toward the desk, a supercilious smile on his face. Taking in Loretta, he wondered if she had cut the figure when she'd told him at the supper table that she'd only gained twenty pounds since their marriage. She was pretty wide. But then, she was small, and being so small maybe made her look fatter than she was.

“Everybody who comes here has to look at those drawers,” Phil said.

Loretta opened a desk drawer, withdrew some packs of playing cards and scratch pads, and pointed. Studs stared, puzzled at what he was supposed to notice.

“Isn't it nice, with the insides painted blue?” Loretta said, proud.

“Yes, yes, it is. Catherine and I will have to figure on getting things like that when we get married.”

What would Catherine think of such furniture, and a place in a high-class apartment hotel like this one? And would they be able to afford it?

“In the daytime with the lake right below us, the view, too, is simply grand,” Loretta said as she and Studs sat down.

“Here, Studs, cigarette?” Phil said, holding a box containing corktipped Melachrinos before him.

Studs glanced up at Phil, observing that Phil was taking on the poundage now, his baby face padded, the cheeks full and shiny, the neck thickening, and the stomach expanding. He took a cigarette.

“Thanks,” he said as Phil offered him the flame from a nickel, initialed cigarette lighter.

“I'll take one, Phil, dear,” Loretta said, and Phil walked toward her.

As Phil lit her cigarette, Studs caught them exchanging tender and knowing smiles.

His sister was changed, all right. She was a woman now, who got regular jazzing and knew what it was all about. Phil sank into a wicker chair with a blue cushion in the seat, and sighed in exuding comfort. Her man, Studs thought ironically. Far different from the virgin sister who used to squeak with embarrassment if he accidentally saw her in the hallway in her underthings. She'd been a stranger to him then, but now she seemed like even more of a stranger.

“It's too bad that Catherine couldn't come with you,” she said, her arm languidly extended with the cigarette smoking between her fingers.

“She had her bridge club again tonight,” Studs said.

“That reminds me, Phil. The Kavanaughs invited us to a bridge party next Saturday night.”

Studs smoked self-consciously. He wondered had marriage done to Fritzie what it was supposed to do with most women, made her an easy lay for guys. But it couldn't. She'd always been too decent a girl. And she was keen on Phil. But she was sure different from what she'd been four or five years ago.

“Studs, you play bridge?” Phil asked, and Studs shook his head negatively.

“That's too bad. We could have such pleasant foursomes if you did,” she exclaimed.

“I learned the game since our marriage and I like it. Once you get your teeth into the game, Studs, it's really keen. It's good for you, too, because it makes you think. You got to think harder when you're playing a good stiff game of bridge than you do reading a book,” Phil said.

“It wouldn't be hard to teach him, Phil.”