The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [391]
A girl, chased by a fellow, scooted past him, tumbled, and the fellow purposely fell on top of her, both of them laughing.
Were these people, he wondered, trying to shutter troubles out of their minds, the same as he was? He caught a dark girl in a blue one-piece swimming suit and green rubber swimming cap standing alone like a young tree, fresh, virginal, untouched. If she was his girl! He remembered how Catherine had changed in these last months, a change that had seemed to come over her since she had given in, and that was so hard for him to put his finger on. To have such a girl, she couldn’t be over seventeen, see her changing under a fellow’s hand, growing to like what he gave, and all the rest of it. Already he was wishing to have over again those first weeks after Catherine had let him, and they were gone. But he couldn’t give Catherine the idea he was looking around this way at girls. He looked at her, and saw, almost in pain, how plain she was without make-up, her chubby face framed by her white bathing cap. Suddenly, she seemed to him like a total stranger. He could not make himself believe that she was his girl, his woman who would be his wife in a few weeks, and who would, in about eight months, have a baby of his. Christ, for a lucky miracle! Have to make her exercise.
“Come on, I’ll race you around the beach.”
“I’m too tired, and I couldn’t beat you anyway.”
“Come on. I’ll give you a head start.”
“Please, no, Bill.”
He became gloomy. He didn’t want all these things to happen. He did not even seem to know her... And did she really understand him?
“Where did we leave our things?”
“Around here some place. I know that much,” he said, thinking that he was a bastard to be having thoughts so unfair to her.
He felt himself trapped like a rat in a cage. All this life around him, the sky, everything, were bars, and here he was, and here she was in this cage.
“Here we are,” Studs said, finding the rolled-up bundle of their clothing.
He dug through it and found a package of cigarettes in his trouser pockets. Lighting one, he sat beside Catherine. He looked around the beach, as if looking through the bars of a cage, and he saw all these people in swimming suits, so many girls, so many fellows, and he wondered how many of them were trapped as he was, or would be trapped in the same way? He leaned back, supporting himself on his arms with his palms flat in the hot sand, and the sun was warm on his exposed neck and shoulders. Around him was the ebbing and rising of talk, and the constant eruptions of laughter. All this was not serious, and he wanted not to be serious, and he had something facing him that he had to be serious about. And right beside him was Catherine, who had to be serious about the same thing. She sat quiet, brooding unhappily, and his feeling for her was one of being very sorry. But he had to admire the guts she was showing. There was something! How many of these cuties on the beach here had as much guts as Catherine?
“Come on, let’s take another plunge.”
He looked wistfully over the lake at the horizon, where the merging of sky and water was like some mystery. He was struck with the desire to swim out to it and reach the center of where the sky fell into the water, and he knew there was no such place, and if he swam out, he would finally just sink, and this wish was like so many others that he had had all along. He was like a swimmer going out and out, and the farther he swam the more tired he got and the harder he had to swim.
“A penny for your thoughts, Bill.”
“Oh, I was just looking at the lake. It’s kind of nice to look out over the lake on a day like this.”
They stared again at the horizon, but Catherine’s eyes were more attracted by a child hobbling on unsure bow legs to the water to fill a small tin pail.
“Cute, isn’t it?”
“What?” Studs asked.
“Darling, and our child is going to be more cute, isn’t it, and it won’t be bow-legged, either,” she said, pointing as the child bent down with its pail.
He nodded mechanically. Her words