The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [4]
He puffed, and told himself:
Well, it’s so long to the old dump tonight!
He wanted to stand there, and think about Lucy, wondering if he would ever have days with her like that one, wondering how much he’d see of her after she went to high school. And he goddamned himself, because he was getting soft. He was Studs Lonigan, a guy who didn’t have mushy feelings! He was a hard-boiled egg that they had left in the pot a couple of hours too long.
He took another drag of his cigarette.
He wanted that day back again.
He faced the mirror, and stuck- the fag in the right-hand corner of his mouth. He looked tough and sneered. Then he let the cigarette hang from the left side. He studied himself with satisfaction. He placed the cigarette in the center of his puss, and put on a weak-kneed expression. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, daintily, barely holding it between his thumb and first finger, and he pretended that be was a grownup mama’s boy, smoking for the first time. He said to himself:
Jesus Christ!
He didn’t know that he bowed his head when he muttered the Lord’s name, just as Sister Cyrilla had always taught them to do. He took a vicious poke at the air, as if he were letting one fly at a mama’s boy.
He stuck the fag back in his mouth and looked like Studs Lonigan was supposed to look. He lowered the lid on the toilet seat, and sat down to think. He puffed at his cigarette, and flicked the ashes in the sink.
He heard Frances talking: -
“Get out of my way, Fritz: . Get out of my way. Please ... And Mother ... Mother! MOTHER! ... Will you come here, please... I told you the hem was not right on this dress . Now, Mother, come here and look at the way my skirt hangs... If I ever appear on the stage with my skirt like this, I’ll be disgraced... disgraced ... Mother!”
He heard the old lady hurrying to Francis’s room, saying:
“Yes, Frances darling; only you know I asked you not to call Loretta Fritzie... I’m coming, but I tell you, your dress is perfectly even all around. I told you so this afternoon when you tried it on with Mrs. Sankey here.”
He could hear their voices as they jabbered away about her dress, but he didn’t know what they were saying, and anyway, he didn’t give two hoots in hell. Girls had loose screws in their beans. Well, girls like his sister anyway. Girls like Lucy, or Helen Shires, who was just like a guy, were exceptions. But there he was getting soft again. He said to himself:
I’m so tough that you know what happens? Well, bo, when I spit…. rivers overflow... I’m so hard I chew nails . See, bo!
He took a last drag at his cigarette, tossed the butt down the toilet,-and let the water run in the sink to wash the ashes down. He went to the door, and had his hand on the knob to open it when he noticed that the bathroom was filled with smoke. He opened the small window, and commenced waving his arms around, to drive the smoke out. But why in hell shouldn’t they know? What did his graduating and his long jeans mean, then? He was older now, and he could do what he wanted. Now he was growing up. He didn’t have to take orders any more, as he used to. He wasn’t going to hide it any more, and he was going to tell the old man that he wasn’t going to high school.
The bathroom was slow in clearing. He beat the air with his hands.
Frances rapped sharply on the door and asked him to get a move on.
He waved his arms around.
Frances was back in a moment.
“William, will you please... will you please ... will you please hurry!”
She rapped impatiently.
“All right. I’ll be right out.”
“Well, why don’t you, then? I have to hurry, I tell you. And I’m in the play tonight, and you’re not. When you had your play last May, I didn