Studs Lonigan (132 page)

Unnoticed by Catherine, Mrs. Lonigan entered the parlor and stood over the girl. A deep sigh caused Catherine to look up, surprised, at Studs' mother. Mrs. Lonigan stroked her hair gently, and Catherine thought that Mrs. Lonigan had just been upset before the priest had come. Now there was sympathy between them, and they would be able to understand each other's feelings. Catherine smiled gratefully, unsuspicious, and a glow of emotion from the administration of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction seemed to lull through her. She dismissed a sudden and passing thought of warning to be careful.

“Catherine, if my son lives, you are going to be my daughter-in-law, like my daughter, because I have begun to feel toward you the same as if you were my own daughter. Now, my girl, you must not hold back anything from me. You must remember that I am William's mother, and that to both of us William means a great deal. He would want you to tell everything to me.”

Gazing up hopefully at Mrs. Lonigan, and seeing the woman's face kind, sad, understanding, she again dismissed a cautioning thought. She could not keep it silent any longer. It had to be known sometime. She had to talk, or else, she felt, this secret would drive her crazy. She lowered her head, sobbed. Mrs. Lonigan gently patted her hair. She looked up, her face torn with distress. It simply had to come out now.

“I'm having a baby,” she cried, lowering her head onto her arms.

Mrs. Lonigan's face pinched, tightened, and she coldly watched the girl's unrestrained sobbing.

“You know we shan't be able to do anything to help you. Mr. Lonigan's bank has just failed, and he is, poor man, near bankrupt. And if William dies, with his Order of Christopher insurance made out to you, he will have on his shoulders the extra burden of a funeral. So I am afraid we shan't be able to do anything to help you,” Mrs. Lonigan said with a calculation made doubly vicious by her even voice.

Catherine knew she had made a mistake. She feared looking up, meeting Mrs. Lonigan's eyes. She wanted sympathy now. After kneeling and praying with his mother, she didn't want to, she couldn't, fight or quarrel. She continued sobbing, trying to pretend that she had not heard these last words of his mother. But this insult. She couldn't pretend. It was like a shame growing in her. She looked, forcing an angry expression on to her face.

“I didn't ask you to,” she said curtly, but she could not contain herself, and with another sigh she flung her head against her arm on the side of the chair, permitting an uncontrolled flood of tears.

“You shouldn't have done such a thing,” Mrs. Lonigan persisted clucking her tongue, shaking her regretful head from side to side. “You should have had more decency and self-control about you.”

What could she say to this woman? Already she felt as if she had taken off her clothes in a room full of strange men. And she didn't care if it was Studs' mother, she was an old witch, and Catherine couldn't tell any more to the old witch. Mrs. Lonigan had been young once, and she should know how people feel when they're in love, and how when a girl loves the way she loved Bill, she couldn't help herself, and had to let herself go and do whatever he wanted her to do. She remembered intimacies with Bill, her cheeks hot with shame because she feared that Mrs. Lonigan was thinking of what the two of them had done, forming pictures in her old witch's mind of herself and Bill naked in each other's arms.

“What are we going to do?” Mrs. Lonigan asked with insistence, standing over the girl, a gleam of apparent enjoyment in her eyes as Catherine cried. “You'll have to do something. It is hardly possible that you can save your name, even if my poor sick son is not called above. And if he does pass away, you will not be able to save your name by a marriage at the last minute, because he is too weak, and he might never even regain his senses.”

“Please. . . . Please, Mrs. Lonigan!” the girl beseeched.

“And you won't be able to hide it from people very long. You're already beginning to show it. If my son dies, I'll be ashamed at the funeral, and it will scandalize everybody. What are you going to do?”

“Oh, God, please! What can I do?”

“You can't just stand and be a disgrace to my family and to yourself and your poor mother. You can't do that. And your poor mother, does she know? What has she to say of your goings on?”

“I'll scream! I'll go crazy. I don't care. . . I don't care! I can't stand this! Please . . . Please!”

Catherine was light-headed, dizzy, and this woman was still standing over her, like a devil, using words so that they cracked and lashed her more than if Mrs. Lonigan were beating her with a whip. Her cruel words, her face, oh, God, she hated that thin, hard, wrinkling face, calculating, intense, insane, yes, insane, and saying these things to her now.

“I won't say that you killed my son. I won't. I won't say that, but when a girl sins, it is not the boy's fault as much as it is the girl's, because the girl is different. And she should have more pride and self-respect and a sense of decency than to act like a mongrel dog or an alley cat. I won't say that you killed my son. But I will say that by making a chippy of yourself, you have helped to ruin his chances. If you hadn't thrown yourself on him like a street-walker, he might not be on his death bed this very minute.”

Catherine crumbled forward to the floor. She had fainted.

“MORT, old man, I'm sorry to see things come to a pass like this,” Lonigan said, standing by a scratched desk piled with papers and samples of wall paper, and glancing away from Mort at a smoke-dulled scene of railroad tracks and sooty buildings.

“I know. I know, Paddy. I was saying to my oldest kid only the other night, I said to Joe, it must hurt Mr. Lonigan more than it does me, because I've been working for him all these years, and it isn't just like he was my boss, because we're friends. I know, Paddy, that times is hard, harder than I've ever known them before. Business is business, and we're all in a rough spot.”

“That bank failing, Mort, has just put the kibosh on me. I had my money for the next mortgage payment on my building that's coming due next month. And the bank won't give me any time.”

“Yes, it's a shame, Paddy. An honest man like you, the squarest man I ever met,” Mort lamented.

“I don't understand why it's got to be me, Mort. I've worked like an honest man all my life, and I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps. I earned every penny I ever made. It isn't right, Mort, and it isn't fair. It ain't fair. Why do I have to be a goat? Why?”

“Yes, Paddy, it's a dirty shame.”

“I'll tell you what it is, Mort, it's the Jew international bankers. They did it. They are squeezing every penny out of America and Americans. And it ain't fair.”

“Paddy, you took the very words out of my mouth. Here are you and me, two men who worked hard all our lives, honest men who were good providers, and the worst we have ever done is tip the bottle once in a while. And now, at the end of our lives, they take everything we got.”

“Mort, it's all, everything, has been turned into a skin game, and the Jew international bankers are running it,” Lonigan said, Mort nodding agreement.

“And, Paddy, I wanted to ask you, how is Bill?” Mort asked, worry clouding Lonigan's sagging, ruddy face.

“Bad. Bad, Mort,” Lonigan said, shaking his head, emphasizing his words by lowering his voice.

“Bill's such a fine fellow, too. Many's the times he and I have worked on jobs, and I never worked with a better man.”

“A man could not want a finer son than my Bill. But the game's up for him, Mort, I fear. He's sick, very sick.”

“Paddy, you sure have your troubles.”

“Troubles, Mort, always come in bunches.”

“Isn't it so, Paddy?”

“I'm afraid, Mort, that only a miracle can save Bill.”

“Well, Paddy, maybe the best will happen yet.”

“Goddamn it, Mort, some good luck has to come to me.”

“Paddy, you sure deserve it. You're the squarest shooter I ever met.”

The two men stood facing each other, gloomy and silent.

“Anyway, Mort, if I line up any jobs, I'll call you first. But all I've got to say is that things look pretty fierce. A long time ago I said that things would happen just like they have, because Hoover was elected. He's just a tool, if you ask me my opinion. If there hadn't been such a dirty A. P. A. anti-Catholic prejudice against Al Smith, he would have been elected, and this country would not be where it is today. Because Al Smith would have been a president just like old Abe Lincoln was, a man of the people, governing for the people,” Lonigan said, and Mort agreed with strenuous affirmative nods.

“And Paddy, another man who would not have let the country come to the pass we're now in is Cal Coolidge. Coolidge, now, he was too smart for them. He saw what was coming, and he cleared out so they couldn't pin the blame on him. And say, Paddy, do you read what he writes in the paper? He writes wonderful things. A smart man, Coolidge.”

“Yes, sometimes. He's a brainy man, even if he is a Republican. He got out just because he was too smart to let them give him the rap for these hard times.”

“I cut out one of his articles and saved it. I wanted to show it to you. He says in it just what's what!” Mort said, drawing out a worn leather bill-fold and extracting a frayed clipping from it.

Lonigan took the clipping. A sudden hope arose in him. It would tell him what to do. He wanted it to tell him why, why he was being broken and ruined, why, why?

Faith without work is vain.
But he had always worked, damn hard.
Although many millions of people are enjoying record wages, there are others, who are unemployed, some of whom can live on their savings, while the rest will have to be supported directly or indirectly by those who work.
If things went on as they did, it looked like he would have to be dependent on public charity.

People are out of work because the things they could produce are not being bought.
True. True. The things he could do, people didn't want. Too many buildings already, and owners couldn't afford painting and decorating them.
With all our wealth
, why didn't Coolidge tell the truth about our wealth, tell who was getting control of it? If he, Paddy Lonigan, knew, Coolidge must know,
it is difficult to suppose that our consuming power has greatly diminished. It is not being exercised. It will help somewhat to increase public and private construction.
Bully. Smart man. An increase in construction might give men like himself more business. Men like himself were the ones who needed a boost these days, the ones who deserved it. They were the real backbone of this country. And if he did get contracts, he would be spending money, buying supplies, hiring men. Smart man, Coolidge, even if he was a Republican.
But the principal consuming power is in the people who have work. Unless they buy of the other fellow he cannot buy of them.
He'd buy plenty if the bankers weren't robbing him.

If those who are working and have the means would pay all their retail merchandise bills and in addition purchase what they need and can afford,
if those owing him money, Morris at that Jew apartment hotel, Olson, that damn West-side Swede, if they would,
a healthy commerce would quickly be created. Our nation has plenty of resources to support all its people comfortably through a mutual exchange of products if everyone will do his part
. Goddamn it, he only wanted to do his part, and he had always done it. He would still be doing it only for those dirty, crooked bankers. And yes, he had always paid his bills.
Those who have employment now run the risk of losing it by refraining from buying and paying within their means. No one who has the money can afford to defer settling his account.
Golly, he'd like to show this piece to Morris and Olson.

Lonigan smiled.

“True, isn't it?” Mort eagerly asked.

“Yes, and, Mort, I'd like my own debtors to see it.”

“Can't you sue, Paddy?”

“I got to, but I'll be lucky to get a nickel on the dollar. I got a letter today from the bank holding the mortgage on my building, telling me I got to pay up on the date. How am I going to? The bank with my own money in failed. How am I going to?”

“Paddy, my only wish is that I had the money to loan you,” Mort said.

“It ain't right. It ain't fair, Mort.”

Mort wagged his head sadly from side to side.

“Mort, I'm sorry I can't help you out any more than this dollar,” Lonigan said, handing Mort a dollar bill, and then putting his panama hat on.

“I understand. Thank you, Paddy. I understand. And I always say that Paddy Lonigan's a square-shooting man with a heart of gold when he has it.”

“Thank you, Mort. I've always tried to be fair. And I suppose that all we can do is to keep a stiff upper lip, grin and bear it, and try to hang on by the skin of our teeth until business gets better.”

“Yes, Paddy, that about hits the nail square.”

“We've gone through the mill, Mort, and both of us have known hard times before. But this depression looks like the worst we've ever had. And Mort, neither of us were born with silver spoons in our mouths. We know what tough breaks mean. But I tell you, Mort, things have never been as tough as they are now.” Mort nodded in eager agreement. “Why, I've hardly got a penny left.”

“Paddy, I always think that I've got this one consolation. Maybe it was the wisdom of God taking my woman away from me before she had to go through times like these.”

“Yes, Mort, often mere mortal men like ourselves cannot see the ways of the Almighty and what looks to us like misfortune often turns out different and only proves the wisdom of God,” Lonigan orated.