Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [44]
They sat on Helen’s front steps.
“You know, I always used to think I’d feel a little different when I graduated from grammar school, but here it’s a couple of weeks ago, and I don’t see any difference yet. Everything seems pretty much the same, and well, I don’t know. Here I am graduated, and I’m wearin’ short pants again, and got to listen to my old man the same as I did before I was graduated, and I come around, and everything and everybody’s the same, kidding the punks, playing chase-one-chase-all, and blue-my-blackberry, and baby-in-the-hole, and all that sort of thing, just like before, and, well, in the fall I’ll have to go to high school, and, well, things are just not like I imagined they would be after I graduated.”
“I feel the same way,” Helen said.
“I feel the same; and it’s no different when you get confirmed. You are supposed to change, and something that’s a mystery called a character is stamped on your soul, that is, if you’re a Catholic; but you don’t really seem to change any. Anyway, I didn’t seem to,” Studs pondered.
“Well, I never got confirmation, but I think I know what you mean. But my father and my mother, they don’t think so much of confirmation,” said Helen.
“Of course we’re taught different than you. We’re taught that you shouldn’t feel that way about the thing. You should believe in God and in the Church, and do all the duties that God and the Church say you should, or else you won’t be doin’ right and you’ll go to Hell. Of course, if a person’s not Catholic, but if they’re sincere in bein’ whatever they are, well, they’ll stand a good chance of gettin’ into Heaven. That’s the way we’re taught,” said Studs.
“My father and mother say that it’s all right what you believe, so long as you live up to that belief and don’t do nothin’ that’s really wrong, or really hurt your neighbor, and if you do that, you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about from God,” Helen said.
“Well, you know, it seems funny. Last night I was thinkin’. I remembered how I thought all the time that I’d feel so different after graduation. But now! Well, I’m just . . . I don’t know. When I was a punk in the first grade, I used to look up to the guys ahead of me and feel that eighth-grade kids were so big, and now when I’m graduated I still wish I was bigger, and I don’t feel satisfied, like I used to think I would when I was only a punk,” Studs said.
“That’s just the way I sort of feel.”
“Yeh . . . but, oh, well,” said Studs.
He felt that there was something else to be said, but he didn’t know how to say it; he wondered if he was blowing his gab off too much. Sometimes, with Helen, he could talk more, and say more of what he really meant, than he could with any other person.
“Yeh,” said Helen, meaningfully.
He glanced at her; he told himself that she was nice-looking. He felt soft inside, as if his feelings were all fluid, all melting up and running through him like a warm stream of water. He didn’t know what he ought to say. He hurriedly glanced across the street. He saw Dennis P. Gorman tote his cane and his dignity down Indiana Avenue on his way to the police court. He laughed at High-Collars; and Helen said her father always called Gorman a mollycoddle who ought to be wearing corsets.
“You know, we’ll have to take a look at that can house sometimes,” Studs said, because he felt that he had better say something.
“Yeh!”
“I’d like to know what’s inside of a can house,” said Studs.
He was calmed down again, and he could look at her without feeling strange, and he wasn’t in danger of giving his feelings away. He noticed that she, too, had been looking away.
“Well, I suppose one of those places has got a lot of expensive furniture, and the whores all sit around in their underclothes and maybe they drink a lot, and you know,” she said.
“I’d sure like to see one some time,” he said.
“Me, too,” she said.
“Maybe we can sneak up on the porch sometimes,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Helen.
“We might see someone doin’ it, too,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Helen.