The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [264]
“Same as usual. And oh, yes, I’ve gone on a milk diet. I’m going to lose ten pounds,” she said, causing Studs to think, pleased, that she could shed that weight without hurting her figure a lot. “I started on it yesterday, and do you know, Bill, all I’ve had was orange juice yesterday, milk for lunch, and milk and two pieces of dry toast for supper...”
Studs’ mind drifted, as it so often did when she began to talk like this. He thought, with pride and growing self-confidence, that he had a girl of his own, and he was taking her out, just as so many other fellows were out on dates with their girls. There had been many nights back in the old days when he’d wanted a girl, and didn’t have one. The punks would come into the poolroom, all togged out in their drug-store cowboy uniforms, talking and bragging about their broads and their dates. Listening to them, he’d feel superior, crack wise. And now he knew that behind his sneers he had wanted the same thing that many of them had had, a steady girl. He wouldn’t have admitted it to the bunch, or hardly, even, to himself. But still it was so. And now he had the girl, Catherine, beside him, and he was getting to feel pretty sure that she was the right one for him.
“This morning, Mother said to me, `You won’t persevere on that diet of yours. You’ll do just as you did all the other times that you went on it. I know you, my girl. I know how you have a sweet tooth, and you like to eat too much.’ And I said, `Mother, oh, won’t I! Won’t I!’ And she laughed at me. But I just smiled back at her, because I knew that this time I was going to carry it through, and I said, `Mother, you better do all your laughing now, because when I finish this diet and lose ten pounds, it’s going to be my turn to laugh back, and will I laugh!’ And when it is over, I’m going to take her out and make her watch while I stand on the scales. And then, will I laugh!”
He was beginning to feel much the same as he had sometimes felt with Lucy Scanlan. He took Catherine’s arm, and he almost imagined that times had not changed, and that those fifteen years or so since he had been Lucy’s fellow had not gone by, and Lucy Scanlan and Catherine, they were one and the same girl, and he was the same old Studs Lonigan, only knowing more what he wanted than in those days when he had only been a dumb punk. And he had as much ahead of him to hope for now as he had then, because now he knew more, and was a man, and he had done with his days of fooling around and ruining himself sowing wild oats.
He wished they could meet Lucy now. Last he had heard of her, she was married to an accountant, and they were not getting along so well. They had three kids, and Lucy was fat, getting fat as a pig. Just to think of her now so badly off, and to look at this girl, Catherine, who was younger and prettier and not washed out, that was revenge on her for the way she had hurt him and made a fool out of him. Now she was paid back, and if she could only see him this minute so that she would know it, and it would cut deeply into her, as it had into him, and she would see that she had made a mistake, and get to thinking that maybe she would be a hell of a lot better off if she hadn’t given him the run-around.
And still he would always love Lucy, who had sat with him in a tree in Washington Park, kissing him, shy, swinging her legs, talking about little things that meant more than the mere meaning of the words, swinging her legs with her blue‑wash-bloomers showing a little, a girl at the stage when she is starting to get breasts and a figure, and she is gay and laughs, and has imps in her eyes, swinging her legs, singing In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
All the street and Catherine and all the scene about him had a meaning that it had never had before, a meaning just the same as Lucy in Washington Park had had a meaning, and the meanings were the same. He felt... like a lot of songs like My Wild Irish Rose, and In The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and