The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [373]
Walkin’ my baby back home .. .
Others, too, seeing him and Catherine, they’d think the same thing. He shook his head ironically, and told himself, yes, he was walking his baby back home. And it just showed, he thought, that appearances were deceiving. Walking his baby back home with everything seeming so tranquil, when things were hemming him in, hemming both of them in more and more.
But he didn’t want to think anymore tonight of all these goddamn griefs. And he didn’t want there to be a tomorrow when he would wake up and realize what he had to do. Tell his family about it, and go to see the priest, face him when the priest might get sore and bawl him out and all that stuff. Start figuring out and preparing and arranging for the marriage. And then, Christ, her being knocked up! If he’d only waited! A few minutes each time, then feeling tired, feeling sometimes disgusted and wanting no more of it, or else wanting it the next time and hoping there would be more in it than there was the time before, and now for that they were in all this deep water. Or if he hadn’t been such a chump and had taken precautions every time. But it was always that way. Afterward, when it was too late, you saw what you should have done.
And now all that he wanted was to be home and in bed asleep, so that none of these things would be on his mind, making him feel so tight and feel that any minute something might happen. Even if he was going to sleep for only seven or eight hours, and then wake up again to all these same worries, he wanted sleep. Eight hours of sound sleep seemed like a century.
Catherine paused under a lamp-post and opened her purse. Studying her tear-streaked face in the purse mirror, she powdered, patted her hair, and turned a weary smile upon him.
“Do I look all right?”
Studs replied gutturally without even having heard her question. They emerged from Jackson Park at Sixty-third and Stony Island.
“Let’s walk home,” he said, too constrained within himself to stand waiting for a street car.
They crossed the street, and in front of the Greek restaurant with the modernistic decorations, a group of fellows stood, cluttering the sidewalk. Studs glanced to see if he knew any of them. Two drunks detached themselves and stood blocking the sidewalk. Studs’ fists clenched automatically, and he watched them cautiously, hate suddenly overpowering him,
“But, George, if we call her up and she’s not there, someone else answers the phone. So what? We lost a nickel.”
“Suppose we telephone Marie instead. So what. We spend a nickel,” the second drunken fellow seriously said, while Studs, tense and wary, led Catherine around them.
“They’re having a good time,” Catherine said with a thin smile.
“Yeah, a problem in high finance,” Studs said, pleased because she laughed at his crack.
They used to be crowding around the street in the same way in the old days. And then, no cares and responsibilities like now. He guessed, too, that what he really needed was to go out and get himself uproariously drunk. And if he’d only watched his health more in the old days he could do that now. If!
“Honey, please don’t let yourself get so worried,” Catherine said.
“I’m not worried. I was just thinking.”
“You were, too. I could see it on your face,”
“No. I was just thinking about those two drunks and their problem in high finance,” Studs answered, and Catherine’s lips tightened as she looked away.
Studs stared ahead at the lights of Sixty-seventh and Stony Island. They passed a row of drab apartment houses, a line of darkened stores, a vacant lot, and then a brightly lit Upton Oil and Refining Company Greasing Palace, and Studs purposelessly watched an automobile back away from a greasing rack.
A group of young fellows approached, talking loudly, and Studs became nervous, in case they might start some trouble!