Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [291]
He flung himself back into the chair, imagining himself and Catherine married, getting along as well as, better than, Phil Rolfe and Fritzie. Yessir, Studs Lonigan was going to be up in the bucks, way up.
He got up, nervous, and stood by the window, watching kids chase each other about the weedy vacant lot across the street, bang-banging and dueling with sticks of wood. Wouldn’t they like to have what those Italian kids had that he’d seen in the movies about two weeks ago? Wooden guns, trenches, regular imitation war. And maybe Mussolini was smart, all right. It might be good for this country to give kids the same thing, training them, because when they grew up, if they were needed for war to repel a foreign invader like the Japs or the Russian Reds, they’d not go into it green.
“William, come and have a glass of milk,” his mother called, and he turned from the window, grateful for the distraction.
He passed through the dark, narrow hallway and planked himself down at the enamel-topped kitchen table. He munched a graham cracker and slowly sipped milk.
“Your father will be coming home early,” she said, a gray-haired woman with fatigue indelibly printed into her gaunt face.
“Dad seems to be in the dumps a lot these days,” Studs said, grinding on a new cracker, glancing at her as she sat by the sink peeling potatoes.
“It’s a downright shame that he should come to all this trouble and worry in his old age, after being such a good man and a good provider for his family all these years,” she muttered.
Tough, all right. But Studs Lonigan was not going to let himself get it in the neck the same way, he thought confidently.
“The Trents downstairs only paid half of their rent this month, and Mr. Trent’s salary has been cut. They’re complaining that the rent’s too high. And how can your father reduce it, with his expenses, the upkeep on the building, his taxes, and the mortgage payments he has to make. The O‘Connells, too, on the third floor, haven’t paid a cent of rent in three months. Your father hates to ask Mr. O’Connell to leave, because Mr. O’Connell is a good steady man who always paid his rent right on the dot. But with his store failing, poor man, he’s lost everything he had. And I was talking with Mrs. Schwartz down on the first floor this morning, and she was telling me how with their new car half paid for, they couldn’t keep it up, and the car was taken away from them.”
“Yes, it’s tough all around,” Studs mumbled, but if his stock only went right, it wouldn’t be hitting him in the solar plexus. But had he, had he, after all, been a first-class chump?
“Times are harder than I can ever remember them. If they get any worse, I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. And I’d rather die than have to ask anything of my girls or their husbands. I don’t know what I’d do but for my faith in God and in the power of The Little Rose of Christ. I pray to her every day for comfort, and for your father, and our family.” Looking up, she arose, walked to the table, poured him a second glass of milk and said, “Here, William, drink another glass. It’s good for you.”
“I’ve had plenty,” he said, rocking back on his chair.
“Drink it, William. It will build you up.”
“I’m all right. I feel fine.”
“No, William, you’re so thin and pale I always worry about you. You must drink more milk and build yourself up. If anything ever happened to your father, you know, you’d be the head of the family.”
“Dad’s been hoping to get a contract to decorate an apartment hotel by the lake. If he does, I’ll be able to go to work on it, and things will be much rosier for us all around,” Studs said, taking a gulp of milk.
“I