Studs Lonigan (99 page)

Ahead of him along the sunny street he saw people moving, most of them also bound for church. To know that nearly everyone on this street was Catholic gave him a different kind of feeling than what he often had just walking along any street where the people on it were all going about to do any number of things. He felt that he had something in common here and he knew that much about them. They were all on the same side of the fence.

He glanced at Catherine, and she was pretty in her new black coat and her small black hat slanting on the left side of her head, and beneath her opened coat a black-and-white patterned dress with a wide black leather belt. Underneath these clothes there was a white, untouched woman's body, and some day it was going to be his, and the thought of that unseen, untaken body of hers, hidden in clothes, made him kind of want their marriage to be soon. His woman.

There was something quiet and lazy about this street, with its threeand four-storied apartment buildings, its vacant lots, the earth beside the sidewalk loosening and muddy, the sun spread over it, the feeling of Sunday and early spring in the air. And around him other people going to church, walking slowly, and not seeming to have troubles on their minds. Did they? If things could be so quiet and peaceful and other people could walk along as if they had no bothers and worries, why couldn't he?

Across the street he watched a well-set-up fellow in a loud, snappy gray suit, with a girl whose slim, tall but meaty figure was wrapped in a stylish blue cloth coat, and when the fellow talked, Studs could hear her ringing laughter. Happy. . . . If they could be happy, so could he. Damn it if he couldn't!

“Look, Bill, two for-rent signs in this building. We ought to stop in on our way back. All along here there are for-rent signs, and it would be fun to look at them.”

“We don't have to. We can have a big apartment in our building.”

“But it's fun,” she said.

But maybe these people weren't in danger of losing every penny they owned in the world, and they hadn't had a run of tough luck about their health.

“Bill, dear, when are you going to let me teach you bridge as you promised me you would?”

“I don't like the game,” he answered in an annoyed masculine whine.

He had settled the question by telling her he didn't care about bridge, and here she was at it, showing no respect for his wishes.

“How can you say you don't like it, when you've never played, and don't know it, or how much fun it can be? You ought to be at least tolerant enough about it to wait and see how it is before you say, like a gruff old bear, that you don't like it.”

“It's the game for tea-hounds and parlor athletes.”

“Bill, you're just being silly. Nice fellows play bridge, and you're just trying to act like a great big tough guy. It's so silly.”

“I couldn't learn it. I've never been good at cards, and bridge has too much to do with figures,” he said, shifting his defense because he was stumped for a reply even if he did know he was right. And wouldn't he feel like a sap, sitting down at a bridge table?

“You'll like it a lot, I know you will, if you'll let yourself learn it.”

“Well, maybe I will,” he said to change the subject and postpone having to make a definite promise.

They turned a corner, and saw the low, sand-stoned, wide-facaded church with its broad steps and the large space of sidewalk before it. Pat Carrigan, in a group down from the church front, waved and Studs waved in response.

“But, Bill dear, will you start learning bridge with me this week?”

“Hello, Studs.”

Studs was grateful, for the unexpected presence and solicitous greeting of Johnny O'Brien, and they shook hands. Studs noticed something familiar in the round, pleasing face of the expensively dressed blonde girl on Johnny's arm, and he saw that Johnny was rather pale and thin in the cheeks.

“You ought to know my wife, Studs, Harriet Hayes from St. Patrick's.”

“Sure, Roslyn Hayes' sister. And this is Catherine Banahan, Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien.”

“How do you do.”

“How do you do.”

“How do you do.”

“Yes, I remember you, and how is Loretta?” Harriet O'Brien asked.

“She's married now to Phil Rolfe, know him?” Studs said, and he wasn't sure whether or not the O'Briens had really frowned at the mention of Phil's name.

“He's a bookie, isn't he?” Johnny said snootily.

“Yes.”

“Gee, Studs, I'm glad to see you, and how is everything going?” Johnny asked, his tone of voice changing.

“Fair, Johnny, fair. How's tricks by you,” Studs said, noticing that Catherine and Harriet had fallen into a conversation about the weather.

“I'm with dad. We're in the coal business, and while as a whole the coal business is pretty shot, we've been more than holding up our end of the stick. In fact, considering conditions, we're doing swell.”

“I'm glad to hear it. Good.”

“Well, you see, Studs, these mine strikes they've been having these last months have helped us. In fact, they have saved our neck. You see, we had our yards full of coal and couldn't do much with it. And these strikes creating some shortage, we're setting pretty, and the price of coal has gone up a little. That's helped us a lot, and I'm hoping the Reds who've been agitating the miners, according to some newspaper accounts, keep the strikes going a little more. It's certainly a godsend to O'Brien's Coal company. And then we do a big business with convents and churches and Catholic Schools.”

“Well, I'm glad to hear it, Johnny.”

“Isn't it dreadful the way these high waist-lines in the new spring styles show off the figure? You've really got to be thin to wear them,” Catherine said.

“I was thinking the same thing, and I'm going on that Hollywood eighteen-day diet with grape fruit, lamb chops and melba toast.”

“Yes, I've noticed that nearly all the restaurants downtown are featuring it, and many of them have their windows stacked with grape fruits. What do you really think of it?”

“The movie magazine that I just read said it absolutely works and I'm starting on it tomorrow,” Harriet said.

“What do you think of the election, Studs?”

“Good, Johnny, I've always been a Democrat.”

“I voted regular, too. We're kind of hoping to get some contracts out of it, and it's certainly fine for the city to kick out the crooked Republican machine.”

“Yes, I like to see the Democrats in. But I guess it doesn't mean much to most of us. It's like baseball. You like to see your favorite team win.”

“No, I never went to Saint Paul's,” Catherine said to Harriet.

“It was really a tragedy to see Rock die,” Johnny said.

“Yes, he was a regular fellow.”

“He was a great man. Why even Hoover sent a telegram to his wife,” Johnny said.

“Notre Dame will miss him.”

“I think the team will go on just the same. Rockne may be gone, but not his Viking spirit.”

“There was one newspaper editorial on his death, did you see it, that was very good. It told of how he died, like he lived, in the saddle, and that he carried on the real spirit of the old Norse Vikings.”

“What was it he was going to the coast for when he died?” Studs asked.

“He was connected with the sales department of an automobile plant and he was flying out there to open a sales campaign.”

“I certainly hated to see old Rock die.”

“He was a great man and it's a great loss,” Johnny said, dolefully. “But, say, mass ought to be just about starting. And say, Studs, do drop over and see us. We're living at Sixty-ninth and Crandon. The number's in the book, and just give us a ring any time.”

“I will.”

Studs and Catherine followed the O'Briens into church.

“Today certainly has brought them out,” Catherine said, crunching along a gravel walk in Jackson Park.

“Yeah, they're out sunning themselves, all right,” Studs said, the sounds of automobiles purring steadily in his ears.

He heard the smack from a driven golf ball, and looked past Catherine at the wide expanse of the golf course. It was nice to look at, with blotches of leafless trees and bushes along its edges, with shoots of fresh green bursting amidst dead wintry grass and catching shimmers of sunlight, and with golfers spread over it and moving about in differing directions. Taking her arm, he led her over soft and soggy ground to a tee-off where a bandy-legged man in khaki trousers and shirt stood with his feet widely stanced, measuring the ball perched on a small cone of damp sand. He cracked it, and the ball veered to the right on low line, landed, disappeared. The man shook his head disappointedly.

A man in khaki pants and shirt with a prominent Adam's apple drove quickly, an arching line which bounded neatly onto a patch of green before the hole. Studs watched them sling their golf bags over their left shoulders and tramp forward, and he wished he could drive golf balls like that last fellow, because it might be fun, and safe exercise with his heart. Those two seemed to enjoy it, and he might, too.

“Bill, let's learn to play golf this summer.”

“That's just what I was thinking,” he answered as they returned to the walk.

“It'll be lots of fun, I'll bet, but it would take me ages to learn how to hit the ball right.”

“I imagine one could pick it up more easy than you suspect.”

“Even if I couldn't learn to do it well, I think it would be nice as long as we did it together.”

He studied the expression on the faces of passing strangers, wondering what went on in their heads, and were they worse or better off than he was. Three girls strolled by them.

“And Conroy, he was the biggest simpleton, and when he danced he just ruined my brand new shoes,” one of the girls said.

“I had the grandest time, Katie, and Hal just said the funniest things,” the girl in the middle, a frail blonde, said.

“The only thing funny about my date was his face. He looked like . . . like some kind of a chimpanzee or something,” the third one said.

Studs watched them wriggle on. Young, younger than girls he'd ever get, nice to look at.

“High-school kids talking about their dates,” Catherine said sagely.

He turned his eyes toward her, and she blew him a kiss.

“We're going to have our dates, too, this summer.”

“Sure.”

“It won't be long now before we can go to the beach on Sundays. And let's sometime get Phil and Loretta and Carroll and Fran and have a beach party. We can bring along a picnic lunch and a guitar and roast marshmallows by a fire and sing. It'll be loads of fun.”

“Sure, we'll plan on it some time this summer, and we'll also ask Red Kelly and his wife.”

It would be a good idea, but going to the beach that way would be a little different than it used to be when he'd go alone with some guys and be expecting to find some jane there, keen and lively, who would flirt and afterward put out and think of it as only fun and nothing serious. This was different, and those days and the expectation of that kind of a thing was gone. Still, he guessed that it was just natural for a guy to think of that kind of thing now and then.

“Bill, dear, I'm so happy thinking of all the things we'll be able to do this summer, beach parties, and picnics, lots of things we can do together, can't we? And when I get my vacation, if you can be free, too, we could go away together and find a nice summer resort where we can stay and have separate rooms, of course, and just be together in the same place, having two full weeks to do things together. Won't it be fun?”

He nodded. If they did, would she? He was getting tired of waiting for it from her, and he wondered would all this long wait make it any better?

Delayed at the drive by the procession of automobiles, she took his arm. They skirted across and walked along by the lake.

“The lake's simply grand today, Bill, look . . .”

They peered over the lake, its waters like a shiny cover being stirred from underneath, like a blue cloak being ruffled, and the sunlight on the lake seemed like a pattern sewn into the cloak.

“Darling, I'll never forget the night we became engaged and walked down by the lake.”

“Yes.”

“And will you ever forget it?” she asked.

“No.”

“I know you will. You men, you think such things are sentimental or foolish, and you don't remember them. I know you don't.”

“I do,” he said with an effort to make himself sound convincing.

“Honest?”

He nodded.

“Cross your heart?”

He quickly crossed his heart.

“I love you.”

He wanted to tell her the same thing, telling himself how he did, really did, think a hell of a lot of her. He grinned sheepishly.

“Love me?”

He nodded and she squeezed his hand. Then she clung tightly to his arm.

“We won't be able to come swimming here, though, this summer,” he said, pointing at the low gray pavilion of rough-edged stone which housed the Jackson Park beach. “It's become the hunkies' community center here now. I came here one day last summer, and I tell you I didn't think there were as many hunkies and polacks in the world as I saw here.”

“Yes, isn't it too bad? And there was trouble here last summer with niggers trying to go swimming along here. Ugh. Think of it, going with niggers,” she said, shuddering.