The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [161]
“Please, Mother!” Loretta pleaded, showing presence of mind.
Lonigan looked from son to mother, pain in his face. Fran’s lip turned with contempt. Martin quietly entered the parlor; he was ordered out, and stood listening in the hallway.
“Mary, most holy Mother of God, what did I do to earn this misfortune?” the mother yelled.
Loretta looked hopelessly from one to the other, striving to calm them with her glances; she smiled weakly but with sympathy at Studs.
“Never as long as I live will I feel towards him again as a sister, or recognize that he is my brother!” Fran said with appropriate melodrama.
“After all I’ve done for my children, and suffered!” the mother exclaimed.
Fran went to her bedroom, and returned with Studs’ Christmas present of six pair of silk stockings.
“Till my dying day I’ll hate you... you... you brute!” she said, returning the present.
Studs accepted them without a word. He was tired and pooped. His head ached. He could taste vomit all the way up from his guts. He could hardly keep his eyes open.
They looked at Fran, shocked, hurt. In a wearied voice, the father asked her please not to do a thing like that. She retorted that her ears still burned from the vile, unmentionable things he had called her and Michael last night. The mother pulled a faint. Fran blamed Studs for it. Loretta ran for water. Studs stood helpless in the center of the parlor. The father excitedly told everyone not to get excited. He patted the mother’s pale cheeks.
“Close your trap!” Studs finally barked, tired of Fran’s accusation that he was murdering his mother.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” the mother cried, coming to and sitting up, her words drowning Fran’s querulous voice.
“Are you all right, Mother?” Loretta solicitously asked.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m only a mother!”
The father asserted that he would take charge of things, and asked Bill to wash up and have a talk with him. He drank a cup of coffee, and sat in the dining-room trying to read his crumpled copy of the morning newspaper, while Studs washed up and changed his clothes. He drifted into thinking of what he would tell Studs, and was quickly precipitated into nostalgic memories of how he had gone on benders in his own day; and how, once, right after he had popped the question and Mary had said yes, he had gotten blind as a bat and almost kicked over the apple cart trying to start a scrap with a whole room full of her relatives. He had made his mistakes, plenty of them. Ah, some of those Saturday nights. But that was no excuse for Bill. He had had no chance in life. His father had been poor and a heavy drinker, and he and his mother, Lord have mercy on their souls, had always quarreled and bickered. Bill had a good home, a good example set for him, a place made for him in life, all that a young man could ask for. His own mistakes should serve as a beacon light to guide the boy, Bill, along the right way. That solid old maxim: Do not as I do, but do as I say, it was sound sense. And he hadn’t drunk stuff like young fellows drank nowadays. It was rat poison, that killed people like flies. If the young fellows kept up drinking stuff like that, they’d all be dead by the time they were twenty-five or thirty. And then too, except for a few times, he’d always known how to keep his liquor under his belt. Ah, yes, he must point out to Bill the vanities and pitfalls that beset a young man, make it serve as a lesson to him. He had to guide Bill so he wouldn’t make the same sorry mistakes that all the young fellows in this jazz and Prohibition age were making.
Studs entered, smiling, sheepishly; he was cleaned up and had on a fresh suit and shirt. Lonigan’s planned talk faded from his mind, and he was only aware that there was a deep common bond between him and his son; after all, he and Bill were the men of the family, and when he dropped the reins of responsibility, Bill would have to take them up. And Bill