The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [145]
Studs’ face sank. He arose from the table. His father told him that if he’d wait, he could ride to work with him in the Ford. Studs said it was no use of having to go out of the way, he could take the street car. He was glad to get out. But he was damn tired.
II
“Kid, I’ll be damned if my old lady didn’t go and get sick again,” Mort said, from the other side of the small vacant dining-room in an apartment building where they worked.
“Yeah,” said Studs, brushing over the cream-colored paint with measured strokes. He yawned.
“You know, a young chap like yourself who’s footloose as the winds don’t know how well off you are,” Mort said.
Studs yawned. He dipped his brush, tapped it against the side of the pail, drew it down the center of the wall.
“Sometimes when you get married, you don’t know what you’re being let into. You see a girl, a nice sweet kid, and she’s cherry. You think, now I’ll be happy with her, and we’re just cut out for one another. Well, one thing and another happens, and first thing you know, you’re married. You take her on a honeymoon, and there’s nothing at all in life like those first nights. Now, take my wife. She was just as pretty as a picture. I’ll show you a picture of her took when we was just married. And then our kids came along, and we thought things was going to be nice and smooth, and that we’d find comfort in the kids and someone to take care of us in our old age. And then eight years ago when our last youngster was born, ‘my wife, she gets what they call a milk leg, you see, that’s some kind of a clot that makes your leg swell up, all out of shape, and her heart goes back on her, and now the doctor says that she’s got to be careful and any kind of excitement might be the finish of her.”
“That’s tough,” Studs said, feeling that he had to say some-thing.
Mort had told him the same story before, almost every day that they’d ever worked together. He went on painting, evening off the last coating. His arm was tired. He wasn’t at all interested in the damn work. He liked to look at it when it was finished, and see that it was a good job, and he always took pains to do a good job because he couldn’t stand to slop on paint and leave it any old way. But goddamn it, he hated to think of going on, painting walls day after day after day, risking lead-poisoning too, until he got old and a big belly like his old man, and then to go around bossing other guys who painted walls day after day after day. Goddamn it, yes, there was something more to life. There had to be. He jerked out a watch: a quarter to three.
“Every night when I go home, I don’t know but maybe I’ll find my wife dead. I tell you, kid, married life ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, and don’t let anybody kid you that it is.”
“No danger,” Studs muttered with over-exaggerated confidence. He yawned.
“It’s not that I’m complainin’, because I ain’t. My wife has been the best in the world, but it’s just that life doesn’t turn out the way you want it to.”
Their brushes swished and slapped as they worked. Studs yawned. Ten to three. Would it or wouldn’t it be a good idea to get married? Everybody did, and had kids. He guessed that maybe you couldn’t help yourself about it when the right broad came along. That was what love was. Five to three. Love was B.S. Suppose now he got married to Lucy and the same thing happened to her that had happened to Mort’s wife. But it wouldn’t. Things weren’t going to happen to him that way. He had luck, a lucky star, four aces stacked for him in the cards. Well, he did. He had to have them. He did. Three o’clock. He yawned. He whistled.
“As I was sayin’, I don’t know why the Lord should of visited us with all the misfortunes he did. Sometimes, I fear maybe it’s because I sown my wild oats when I was your age, or else because I drank now and again. Oh, sometimes too it’s maybe, I feel, because of something I done in a previous life. Say, kid, do you believe in reincarnation?”
Studs didn’t hear, and Mort repeated the question. Studs thought it was all crap, but hell, he was too damn tired to argue, so he said he didn