• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

She wore a green crepe, low-waisted dress, the semi-full blouse forming a broad, tight band around her hips; and the skirt fell about three inches below the knee. The ensemble effect was flaring and there were silver rose-buds on the shoulder straps, which were matched by high-heeled silver pumps.

“No kidding, you do look swell!” he said with embarrassment.

“Enough of that, now,” she said in a tone which was almost maternal.

“You know, it seems only like yesterday that you two were only children. Now you’re a grown up young man and young woman. Ah, ‘tis strange. life,” the mother said.

Studs came out of a feeling of paralysis sufficiently to suggest that maybe he’d better call a taxi. She said they could pick one up outside.

“You know, Lucy, I’m right. William does take after his father. All of the children, except maybe the youngster, what’s his name, do,” Mrs. Scanlan said, studying Studs.

“Oh, Mother!” Lucy said impatiently.

The mother’s face dropped. Lucy got her wrap, a large square silver and gold cloth shawl with black thread through it and bordered in white fox. She threw it over her shoulders. She looked like a knockout. The mother muttered maternal benedictions upon them as they left.

“Poor mother,” said Lucy as they walked along a street of apartment buildings, toward Sheridan Road. They heard a Victrola record from an open window, and Lucy started snap-ping her fingers, and singing:

Don’t mind the rain,

It’s bound to come again,

For when the clouds go rolling by .. .

It was like a picture that Studs wanted never to forget. The warm spring evening, the promise it offered to him, a mist in the lush air, Sheridan Road ahead, with traffic lights, people crossing the street, automobiles going by, the Victrola, Lucy singing, so pretty that he wanted to look at her, touch her, kiss her, love her, take her arm, say something to her of what it all meant, and of how all along he had really wanted nothing like he had wanted her. And he couldn’t say anything, because it all stopped him. He guessed that when you felt like he did, you just had too many feelings to tell them to anybody. And it made him feel like a louse, him still not completely cured from the dose that little bitch from Nolan’s had given him, taking Lucy out when he had a dirty disease. He wasn’t at all worthy of her. He felt as if he wanted to crawl before her on his hands and knees, and kiss the hem of her dress.

“Poor mother, she’s never been happy since we’ve moved,” Lucy said.

“My folks like the old neighborhood. I suppose they would feel the same as your mother if they left it.”

“How about you?” she said, looking at him as if she could see through his mind.

“One place to sleep is as good as another,” he said, indifferently shrugging his shoulders.

“Cynical,” she said in a dismaying tone.

He hailed a Yellow Cab on Sheridan Road, and helped her in, the mere touching of her arm affecting him like electricity. He tried to give directions in an assured and suave manner and felt like a clown. He sat beside her, liking the perfume smell, and the clean new smell of her clothes.

“You know we sold our building and moved over to Michigan. There’s niggers on Wabash now,” he said, trying to make conversation.

“Yes, isn’t it awful... those niggers.”

“I suppose there’ll have to be more race riots to put them where they belong,” he said.

“That would be just perfectly horrible... but exciting.” They became silent as the cab rolled along. The silence grew upon Studs. He guessed he better talk, not give her reason to think that he was so damn dumb that he couldn’t even open his mouth.

“The O’Briens and some. of the other old parishioners have moved out,” he said.

“Yes, I saw Johnny. He’s made a frat that rates high at the university,” she said.

He glanced out of the window at the lake in the spring night. He looked at Lucy. He wanted to put his arm around her.

“You weren’t at the Zeta Dance?” she asked.

“What?”

She repeated the question.

“No,” he muttered.

“You don’t go to many dances?