Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [36]
Studs admired Weary, his enemy. Weary’s parents had told him to come home with them, and Weary had wanted to walk home with Helen Borax; there had been a row and he had walked off. Studs was almost impelled to defend Weary, but didn’t, because then his old man might have talked all night.
“Well, it’s a good thing he isn’t my son, or he’d get the stuffings lambasted out of him. I’d knock some good sense in his head,” Lonigan said with finality.
“Mrs. Reilley uses awfully bad grammar, too,” Mrs. Lonigan said.
“Well, I’d rather have people use bad grammar than have ’em be smart alecks like Dinny Gorman. Why, I knew him when he didn’t have a sole on his shoe; and then him stickin’ up his nose and actin’ like he was highbrow, lace-curtain Irish, born to the purple. And all just because he’s got a little booklearnin’ and he bootlicked around until he became a ward committeeman. Why, he was nothin’ but a starvin’ lawyer hangin’ around police courts until Joe O’Reilley started sendin’ some business his way. What is he now . . . nothin’ but a shyster. Maybe he might have a little more booklearnin’ than I, but what does that mean? Look here, now: Is he a better and more conscientious father? Does he pay his bills more regularly? Has he got a bigger bank account than I got?” said Lonigan in heated indignation while no one listened to him.
When the old man had finished orating, Studs said:
“All the kids call him High Collars!” The old man laughed.
“And the crust of May! Won’t you come to tea, but do call first, as we have so many, oh, so many, social engagements these days!” Mrs. Lonigan said.
“She can’t hold a spoon up to you with all her damn society airs,” Lonigan said.
“I know her kind. She’s just like a cat, all soft and furry, and with claws that would scratch your eyes out,” the old lady said.
There was a pause in the conversation; Martin looked mischievously at Studs and said:
“Studs got long pants; Studs got long pants.”
“Shut up!”
The old lady reprimanded Martin for using the nickname, and the old man admonished Studs that he shouldn’t talk like that to his brother.
“But I do think William looks darling,” teased Fran.
“You look pretty slick, Bill. Don’t let ’em get your goat,” the old man said.
“Yes . . . so cute. Even Lucy Scanlan thought that he looked so . . . cute,” said Frances.
Studs gave his sister a dirty look; the old man tried to kid Studs about having a girl; Studs shut up tight as a clam.
“Now, children,” the mother conciliated.
“They’re not just children any more,” the old man said.
“Yes, they are. They are, too. They’re my children, my baby blue-eyed boy and my girl. They can’t be taken from me, either,” the mother said, tenaciously.
The old man looked at Studs as much as to say: What can you do with a woman?
“Now, Mary, you know that people have to grow up,” the old man said.
“Dad!” Studs said hesitantly.
“Yes,” responded the old man.
“How about my workin’ with you now, instead of goin’ to school? You’ll want me to sooner or later, and I might as well start now,” said Studs.
“Well . . . I’ll have to think it over.”
“Why, William!” protested the mother.
They had a discussion. Mrs. Lonigan kept wondering out loud what the neighbors would think, because it would look like they were too cheap, or else couldn’t afford to send their boy to high school. She repeated, several times, that she would be ashamed to put her head in St. Patrick’s Church again or to look Father Gilhooley or any of the sisters in the face if their boy were sent out into the cold world to work, with only a grammar school education, when all his classmates went on to high school. Lonigan kept nodding his head in thought, and soliloquizing that he didn’t know what to say, because she was right, and yet a lot of this education was nothing