The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [294]
“A fine thing to do to your mother.”
They sat Mrs. Lonigan on a chair and awkwardly revived her.
“Oh, God! Why do I deserve this? My own boys, my own flesh and blood, fighting under my sacred roof! Oh!”
Lonigan’s lips compressed: shaking his mortified head slowly from side to side, depressed more than angry.
“I’m ashamed of you boys,” he said, and neither of them dared look him in the eye.
“He was too wise,” Studs mumbled unconvincingly.
“I’m not being pushed around. He can’t even take a joke,” Martin stuttered.
“Hell of a way to take a joke, if you ask me, knocking each other all over the dining room.”
“He started it,” Martin said.
“I did like hell,” Studs flung back, his side stiff and hurt from the kidney punch, his breathing still too rapid.
“Come on, now, shake hands and call it quits!” Lonigan said as Studs turned aside and winced with the stabbing pain still remaining from that kidney punch.
The two sons looked at each other, their faces drawn.
“I haven’t anything against him, but nobody’s shoving me around,” Martin said, he and Studs looking at each other, their faces drawn.
“No hard feelings,” Studs said lifelessly, their limp hands clasping.
Lonigan glanced apologetically down at his wife, who sat with head lowered, hair dishevelled, quivering as she sobbed.
In the bathroom, Studs studied his face in the mirror, momentarily pleased that there were no marks on his face, except for the redness of his ear. But that sock in the ear had told. His ear burned yet. And he was sore from that kidney punch. His heart pounded on him and he was sick with a headache from jolting punches. He felt all in, just like a has-been.
Still observing himself in the mirror, he tried to convince himself that it was not important. His pride rose, mangled, torn, stepped on, hurting him even more than Martin’s fists had. Treated as a has-been, completely dismissed by his kid brother, the same way Jack Sharkey would dismiss some broken-down palooka who didn’t count.
He cursed Martin, and, unhappy, lit a cigarette. Again he told himself that it wasn’t important. No matter how tough you were, there was always somebody tougher. It wasn’t important. And it hadn’t been a fair fight because he wasn’t in condition to battle. He’d like to have seen Martin get wise before he’d gotten that attack of pneumonia and his heart had gone flooey on him! It was no shame to be beaten when you were in bad health. And even so, he might still have slapped Martin down if he hadn’t been taken by surprise.
But he knew he was kidding himself. He knew that he had had fear and humiliation punched into him by his kid brother, and he knew that Martin knew it.
You’re the real stuff! he told his image in the mirror with self-pitying sarcasm.
He wanted to get out of the house. He didn’t know how he was going to face his kid brother. Reluctant to leave the bathroom, he paced nervously to and fro in the narrow space between the window and the bathtub, rapidly puffing on a cigarette, feeling cramped, almost as if he were in jail. Standing with his ear to the door, he heard murmuring sounds from his parents in the dining room.
If it had only not happened. Grimacing, he violently flung his cigarette butt into the toilet and pulled the chain, listening to the flushing sound, dreamy and wistful, glad that he had something to distract him.
He tried to frown at himself in the mirror, and jerked away from it. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, he remembered his fights with Weary Reilley and Red, telling himself that Studs Lonigan in his prime would have massacred a regiment of punks like Martin. He laughed at himself. What did it prove? It wasn’t important. He should walk out of the bathroom, face Martin, treat it for what it was, a thing of no account. And he continued sitting on the edge of the bathtub, leaning forward, that sick throb in his head and the stiffness in his side persisting, hearing the beat of his heart. Rolling his tongue around the inside of his mouth, he felt a sting when his tongue touched a cut on the inside of his jaw.
Christ, but he hated Martin. He saw himself punching the holy living Jesus out of him, battering him without mercy into swollen and bloody unconsciousness. He knew he shouldn