by Betty Smith
"I lost the best enemy a man ever had," he told the
bartender.
"That's the way it goes," said the bartender. He never
flicked an eyelash. Lee was well used to hearing strange
things from his customers.
After the third beer, Pat found that he was lonesome for
his other enemy, Mick Mack. He actually missed the little
fellow. He had a feeling that perhaps Mick Mack was
looking all over Brooklyn for him. Maybe he'd been in
that very saloon....
"Listen," Pat said to the bartender, "did a feller ever
come in here with false teeth top and bottom?"
"Listen, Deef Pat," said the bartender. "I don't look
down my customers' mout's to see what Linda china they
got. I just serve them drinks."
Pat refused to go to the funeral, but he asked Mary to
sew a black armband on his coat sleeve.
"But that7s only for relatives, Patrick.'7
"And was he not a relative to me in a way, like the boy
said? I'll wear it for a year."
Mary and Maggie-Nov went to the funeral and went
home afterward to Lottie's house. Mary fixed supper for
them; Lottie, her aged mother, who was now living with
her and Widdy, and Gracie, the pretty girl who was
Widdy's fiancee. Maggie-Now helped briskly. Lottie, who
hadn't seen her godchild since the christening, was much
taken with her. She begged Mary to come again and bring
the child.
The friendship grew. Mary looked forward to her visits
with Lottie. Mary had not realized how still her life was.
She was well liked in her neighborhood, but made no
close friends because she was not gregarious. Her life was
sort of somber: partly because she had a serious
temperament and partly because her husband wasn't
outgoing he was not one to spread cheer and good will.
If it wasn't for Maggie-Now . . .
Mary liked Lottie because Lottie made her laugh. She
laughed at the things Lottie said and did. She relaxed in
the great warmheartedness of Lottie. She listened sweetly
and raptly to Lottie's
[ i'S]
reminiscences of Tim ny, which always ended up: 'And so
we stayed sweethearts rip kit up to the end."
To Maggie-Now, a visit to Lottie's was like a Christmas
present. The flat was a treasure house to the child. She
loved her godmother the way she loved everyone. She
fetched and carried for Lottie's old mother. She beamed
on Lottie and ran her errands. She romped with Widdy
and admired Gracie extravagantly Once Widdy took her
to an ice-cream parlor and treated her to a soda. He told
her he had done so in order to have the first date with
her. Maggic-NoTv began to think about growing up.
After Widdy married and went to live with his Gracie h1
Bav Ridge, Lottie didn't haste too long a time to be
lonesome. MaggieNow slipped into her on's place. She
started spending weekends with Lottie. Lottie fed her
eclairs and cream puffs and neapolitans. She and Lottie
did things together. They made Ma`;,gie-Now ~
peach-basket hat. They shopped in the dime store for the
wire frame and cards of strips of braided straw and
buckram. Thev trimmed it with buncht s of tiny pink roses.
Maggie-Nov.T thought it was beautiful. Mary thought it
was too mature for a child but she let her wear it to
church just the same.
Lottie told her bit by bit about her father: his dancing
days in County Kilkenny, his mother, his romance with
llaggie Rose and how Timmy had gone to Ireland and
licked him.
"Papa licked me once," said Maggrie-Now. "Right on the
street in front of everybody."
Lottie gave her a qt ick look but she was too good and
too kind to question the gill. Then she told how the
immigrant bov had been robbed. (All these things were
new to Maggie-No`~. Her father and mother had never
told her these things.)
"There he stood," said Lottie dramatically, "a young boy
in a strange country, full of dreams of the grand new life
where al] men is free and any poor man has the chancet
of being a millionaire or president whichever he likes
best. And he thought this man was his friend, see? And he
trusted him and the man robbed him and all the time he
thought he vitas his friend."
"That was awful," sari Magt,ie-Now. "Poor Papa!"
She told Maggie-Nov what a wonderful heritage she had.
She was not above exaggerating. To Lottie, the story was
the thing not the facts.
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"'our grandmother was a great lady and she raised your
mother to play the piano. And she played in concert halls
and oh, my! How the people clapped!,J
"Mama never told me . . ."
"She's not one to brag- your mother. And she painted
things. Not like you paint a house, but pictures and on
dishes. Yo?` know. And your grandfather: My, he was a
man high up! He was the mayor of Bushwick Avenue or
something like that. I forget. But he lost all his money and
died."
"How did Mama meet Papa?" asked the girl, all agog.
"Now that's a story! NVell, it was this way." She settled
herself more comfortably in her chair, preparing for a
long story. "Bring your chair closer, Mama," she shouted
across the room. "You can't hear good over there.
"In the first place, your father was a very handsome
man. He lived in the stable in your grandfather's yard. He
didn't have to be a stable boy, mind you, but in America,
everyone must start at the bottom. So, Mr. Moriarity, your
grandfather, put him in with the horses to test him out. So
. . ."
So Maggie-Now got to know a lot about her father. As
she grew up, she came into a realization of how things
that had happened to him in his young days had made
him the man he was now. It cannot be said that her
growing knowledge made her love her father more, but it
made her understand him better.
And sometimes understanding, is nearly as good as love
because understanding makes forgiveness a more or less
routine matter. Love makes forgiveness a great, tearing
emotional thing.
Mary missed the child when she was away at Lottie's.
The girl was the sum and total of her life. She loved her
so much that she sacrificed her precious time with her
because MaggieNow was so happy with I,ottie.
Pat didn't like it at all. He thought Maggie-Now was
spending too much time at the home that Big Red had set
up. This Timothy Sharon, he thought. This Big Red:
wherever he is, he's still reaching out to manhandle me life.
He came home one Friday night from work to a quiet
house. "Where's the girl>" he asked.
"Over to l_ottie's."
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"Again? I don't like the idear. Here I use meself up
working to provide a home for her and she's never in it."
"It's hard for a man to understand, but a growing girl
needs a woman friend. Maggie-Now's lucky to have
Lottie."
"I don't see it. Why can't she be satisfied with her girl
friends?"
"Maggie-Now has to know things," she said fumblingly.
"I suppose she talks to the other girls but they don't know
what Maggie-Now wants to know needs to know. Now,
Lottie is like a girl friend; she and Maggie-Now do things
together like young girls. Yet, she c an talk to Lottie like
one woman to another. Shell, I guess I'm not explaining
it right."
"If you mean," he said bluntly, "that she's got to know
where babies come from, you tell her. You're her
mother."
She searched for words of explanation. Her thought was
something about destruction of innocence. But she knew
it would sound schoolteacherish She said: "Maybe I could.
Should. But the way 1 am . . . the way I was brought up,
the way I carried her for nine months before she was born
. . . the way when she was a baby she'd grab my thumb
and look up at me so seriously . . . well, I guess I
wouldn't know how to tell her...."
"Well, does she have to live at Lottie's to find out what
she would-a found out anyway in time?"
"That's not the only reason I like her to be friends with
Lottie. Ike all have to die someday and . . ."
"That's news to me," he said.
"I mean, I don't think of dying. But like all mothers, I
suppose, I worry, or did, about what would become of
Maggie-Now if I died before she was grown up. Then I
think that she'd have Lottie and I don't worry any more."
He had a flash of tenderness . . . or was it jealousy?
"Think of me a little," he said. "What would become of
me if you died?"
"Oh, Patrick!" she said. She clasped her hands and her
eyes filled with happy, loving tears. "Would you miss me?"
He didn't want to say yes. That would be too
embarrassing for him. It would be ridiculous to say,
no churlish to say, I've grown used to you. He was sorry
he had brought up the matter.
1 id ]
~ CHAPTER TWENTY ~
AFTER sixteen years, Mary was pregnant again. She had
a feeling of awe about it. She was in her middle forties
and had believed that the menopause had set in. She was
quietly happy about it and a little frightened. She
remembered the hard time she'd had when Maggie-Now
was born; how the doctor had warned her afterward not
to have another child. It would be dangerous, he had said.
Mary, however, reasoned that a lot of advances had been
made in obstetrics in the sixteen years since she had had
her first child. Also she'd heard countless stories of
women who'd had a hard time with the first child and very
easy times with the second and third birth. All in all, she
was pleased about it.
The neighbors watched the progress of the pregnancy
witl1 more concern than curiosity. They discussed it. It
was a changeof-life baby, they admitted, and, yes, them
kind what comes late in life is always the smartest ones.
Yeah, he might grow up to be a great man but she'd be
too old to care. Anyhow, was the consensus of thought,
please God nothing should happen to her.
Maggie-Now talked over the baby with 1 ottie. "I
thought Mama was you know. Too old?"
"Good heavens, no! Lizzie Moore, ',-our grandmother,
was forty-five when she had your father. It runs in the
family to have a baby in middle age." Maggie-Now
couldn't follow the reasoning. Lizzie Moore was not
related by blood to Mary How could Mary inherit the
tendency to conceive in middle age from her? "And you,
Maggie-Now: When you get married and if a baby don't
come along right away, don't give up until you're fifty.,'
"I want lots of children." said liaggie-Now. il.ots and lots
of them."
Lottie looked at Maggie-Now's ripe figure. I he girl
looked older than her sixteen years. She could pass for
twenty and no one v.~ou]d challenge her age.
~ /29 ~
"Yes," said Lottie. "You'll have 'em. Only make sure
you're married first."
Mary was four months pregnant. She went for her first
examination to Doctor Sicalani. When it was over, she
asked "Is everything all right?"
He waited a little too long before he said: "Yes."
"But at my age . . .'? she fumbled with the buttons at
the back of her dress.
"Turn around," he said. He buttoned up her dress.
"Tell me the truth, Doctor. Will I die?"
He unbuttoned a few buttons and buttoned them up
again to gain time before he answered. "I he first thing
you must do," he said, "is to stop worrying. Doctor's
orders. There! It's done." She turned around with a
worried look on her face. He smiled at her. After a
second, she smiled back.
"Come back in two weeks."
"I will. Good-by, Doctor. And thank y out"
"Good-by, Mrs. Moore."
She left. He looked around his office. It was a
one-window store Nvith living quarters in the back. There
were half curtains hung in the store window and a row of
potted plants that always seemed to need waterin,. His
sign hung on a brass chain from the middle of the curtain
rod: Domizzick Scalarzi. AI.D. A card in the window told
his olEce hours. If one broke down the hours, it should be
found that he was always in his office save when he slept
or ate.
The office was furnished with a davenport, on which he
slept nights, a couple of chairs and a mission oak table.
He couldn't afford to buy magazines for the table so he
put odd copies of the medical journal on it. Nobody read
these of course. His framed diploma hung over his rolltop
desk. Next to it hung a picture of his graduating class. He
was so obscure in the picture that he had penciled an
arrow in the margin, the tip leading to his head. His
patients liked to know exactly where he was in the group.
He hadn't scanted to be a doctor. He had had a choice
between medicine and the priesthood. He had chosen the
former because he thought he might like tr' marry
someday. But as the years passed, ~ /,o1
he found that he didn't vant to marry. He vas sorry that
he hadn't chosen the church
Doctor Scalani had bet n one of three children of an
Italian fruit peddler. The old man scrimped and saved
because he wanted his children to have a good education
and dignified, safe careers. He didn't want them to w orry
about daily bread. He died happy. feeling that his children
revere well provided for. Dominick was a doctor,
Bernardo a priest, and Anastasia a nun.
The old man's scrimping had amounted to this much:
The kids didn't have to go out to work when they were
fourteen. I Ie v, as able to support them through high
school and able to release his two sons from the obligation
of supporting him so that they could work their wry
through college.
It was tough on Dome ick working his way through
college and medical school. He hall no white fire burning
in him at the thought of being a Great Healer. He
graduated near the bottom of his class. He didn't mi Id
that. He figured somebody had to graduate at the bottom.
ill here wasn't always room at the top. He interned at a
small, obscure hospital.
When he was done with learning, he weIlt back to his
old neighborhood to practice. Ale didn t know where else
to go. He had no money to buy a go ng practice or to set
up one in a better neighborhood. And no kindly old
doctor with a prosperous practice that: was too mum h to
handle took him in. So he had rented this cmptv store and
gotten together some second-hand equipment.
He didn't make IllUCh Mooney. IIost of the people
diagnosed and treated their own ailments. They drank
home-breNved pennyroyal or camomile tea. They rubbed
goose grease or camphorated oil on their chests and
poured sweet oil in their ears. They dumped carbolic acid
on rusty nai tears and rubbed bhle ointment into sores.
Midvives delivered the babies. lA'hcn a cough lasted
more than a couple of years or a rutming sore didn't "go
away," they went to the free clinics. Wilen an epidemic
came along they wore a bag on a string around their neck.
The bag had a cut of garlic or onion in it:. Maybe it didn't
keep the germs away but the smell of it l;ept the people
who had the germs to give, aNvaN. For the ~ 1,1 1
rest, they lit candles in church and prayed.
Doctor Scalani was called in to sign death certificates,
examine people for insurance co npanies,do an emergency
delivery when the midwife couldn't handle a breech
presentation and set broken bones. (Every once in a
while, a kid fell off a roof.) Weekends, he was fairly busy
suturing gashes after Saturday-night knife fights.
Sometimes he got paid; more often he didn't. A patient
like Mary Moore who put herself in his hands prior to
confinement and paid after each visit was rare indeed.
He wasn't married but he had a girl. She was known on
her block as the doctor's lady friend. She was a
dressmaker. He called her Dodie because her name was
Dolores. He had started going with her ten years ago. At
first, the objective was marriage. But he didn't seem too
anxious to marry and she didn't want to appear too
willing. As the years encore on, he stopped talking of
marriage. She had thoughts of giving him up because his
intentions were no longer serious. But she thought she
might as well wait until some other man came along. No
other man came along so she continued going along with
Dominick. He went to see her once a week, when she'd
cook an enormous Italian dinner for him.
He'd walk into her kitchen each Sunday at five. It was
always warm and steamy, and smelled of garlic, onions,
cheese and tomatoes. He always said the same thing:
"Something smells good." She always said the same thing:
"I hope it is good."
After he'd eaten to repletion, he'd lie on the black
leather lounge in her living room and go to sleep. After
Dodie had washed the dishes, she'd come in and put a
shawl over his legs. Then she'd sit in her little rocker next
to the head of the couch and hand-whip a hem or fagot a
neckline or make buttonholes. She'd sew in rhythm to his
slow, relaxed breathing. She Noms utterly content.
At ten o'clock, he'd w eke up, wash his hands, run a wet
comb through his hair and talkie his leave. He'd always
say the same thing: "That Noms a good supper, Dodie."
She'd always say the same thing: "I'm glad you liked it."
Then he'd kiss her cheek and she'd pat his arm twice and
he'd leave.
That's all there was to it. But 'troth, in some curious
way, were completely satisfy d.
It was the doctor's stow, after a patient lead left, to sit in
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