Maggie Now

by Betty Smith

  "You're Daddy's little girl, aren't you?" he said with a

  sneer.

  She flushed. "I don't mean to trick you into finding out

  where you work. I just wanted to walk with you. I never

  asked you to tell me. I never ask you questions any more.

  I don't want to know what you don't want to tell me. Just

  so I have you to love; just so you are with me."

  He put his hand on hers across the table. "Margaret,

  from the time I was born, everyone kept things from

  me things I had a right to know; that everyone has a

  right to know."

  Intuitively, she knew he meant that no one would tell

  him anything about his parents or where he had come

  from.

  "They put me oflf when I asked questions.... I grew up

  learning the trick of putting others off when they asked eve

  questions. Now it's a habit I can't put aside."

  "I know," she said.

  One Saturday night hi the middle of January, Claude

  came home from work as usual. "Where's your flower?"

  she asked.

  "No more carnations for the wineglass. I'm fired," said

  Claude cheerfully.

  "But why . . ."

  "They needed me only for the Christmas rush and for

  the after rush customers exchanging presents. And now

  they've all been changed." He gave her his final salary. "I'll

  get another job," he said.

  "Sure you will," she said.

  The first week, he redid the ads and went out looking

  for a job. The second week, he didn't bother. He still read

  the ads but told her there was nothing for him. He got

  into a routine.

  He'd get up after Pat had left for work, eat a leisurely

  breakfast, with Maggie-Nov joining him for coffee, talk to

  her awhile and then go into the front room and sit at the

  window. At ten o'clock, he'd ask her for a quarter for

  cigarettes and a paper. She'd give it to him and tell him

  to come right back, and he'd say he would, and kiss her

  and be back in half an hour or so. Then he'd put in the

  day reading the paper and smoking.

  On Saturdays, howeve, he always took Denny somewhere

  if

  ~ 3~6 ]

 

  the weather wasn't too bad. Maggie-Now gave them a

  dollar and they were off for the day. He took the boy to

  the Aquarium, to Prospect Park another Saturday, for a

  ride on the Staten Island ferry, to the Brooklyn Na, y

  Yard, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and other places of

  interest.

  It was getting late into lilarch. Maggie-Now woke up at

  dawn one morning, feeling strangely uneasy. She put on

  her robe and went out on the stoop. Yes, the south wind

  . . . the morning full of scented, tender promise of

  springtime.

  She fixed him a special breakfast: broiled ham and eggs

  and poppy-seed rolls and sweet butter and coffee with real

  cream. After breakfast, he opened the window and leaned

  far out, feeling the soft wind on his face. He did not sit at

  the window that morning. He walked up and down

  restlessly.

  Maggie-Now went into Denny's room and emptied his

  marbles out of their cloth Bull Durham sack. She went

  into her room and got the gold piece that her father had

  given her as a wedding present. She wrapped it in tissue,

  put it in the little sack and pinned it inside the breast

  pocket of Claude's coat. She pinned it top and bottom so

  that it wouldn't move about.

  At ten o'clock, Claude said: "If you'll let me have a

  quarter, love, I'll go out and get my cigarettes and the

  paper."

  She fumbled in her pocketbook and gave him a

  five-dollar bill. "All I want is a quarter," he said.

  "I have no change," she lied.

  She held his coat for him and, when he had it on, she

  turned him around and buttoned it for him. "Come right

  back, hear?" she said as she said every morning.

  "I will," he promised, as he promised every morning.

  She took his hands in hers and pressed her cheek to his

  hands. "Oh, Claude, I love you so much!" she said.

  He kissed her and went out for cigarettes and the paper

  as he did every morning.

  But on this morning, hi did not come back.

  [ 3/7 ]

 

  ~ CHAPTI,R FORTY-FOUR ~

  'Now that he's out of the house, I'm going to move me

  bedstead downstairs," said E'at.

  "Leave it where it is, Papa. You'll only have to drag it

  back up when Claude comes home."

  She frowned over Denny's poor report card. "Oh,

  Denny, if you get left back again, what will Claude say

  when he gets home? He'll be so disappointed."

  ". . . every day, like clockwork, he'd show up for a pack

  of cigarettes and a paper."

  "He's gone on one of his trips, Mr. Brockman. He'll be

  back again in the fall."

  "Don't ask me how I know, Aunt Lottie. I just know

  he'll come back. In the war, women had to wait for their

  men to come back. I can wait, too."

  ". . . anything I can dot Father, to fill in the time until

  my husband comes back."

  "Perhaps Miss Doubleday over at the settlement house

  could use some help," suggested Father Flynn.

  "You mean hand sewing? Oh, yes, I could, Miss

  Doubleday. I could teach them hemstitching and darning

  and fagoting and how to make buttonholes. I'd love it!

  Two hours, one night a week? That would be just fine!

  Only I must tell you that I'd have to give up the class in

  November when my husband comes home from his trip."

  "You see, Annie, I kno x. Because if he wasn't coming

  back, he would have taken me witl' him."

  ~ 3~8 1

 

  "But, Jan, she knows he comes back again."

  "Do I fight with you about it, Annie? Sure, he comes

  back. Like a bad penny, he always comes back."

  "He'll never come back," said Pat to Mick Mack. "Never!

  When he knew I was onto him, he got out before I had a

  chance to throw him out.

  "You know, it got so I couldn't sit and talk with him no

  more. He gave me the willies. He asked them

  questions about me mother and did I remember me

  father what died before I was born and did I know where

  all me brothers was. He eats off-a people was the way I

  fingered it out. He keeps chewing away at me life till he's

  got it all for hisself, but he don't give me nothing of his

  life; like where he ~ as born and where his relations is

  now."

  "Like that pitcher I seen," said Mick Mack. "Where them

  zombies climb out-a their coffins nights and go upstairs

  and eat the blood off-a people what's sleeping in their

  bed."

  "You danm fool!" said lent, contemptuously.

  Maggie-Now was so sure Claude was coming back that

  she prepared for his return the day after he left. She

  sponged and pressed his new suit and hung it in the closet

  with a sheet over i
t to keep it dust free. She shined his

  new shoes and wrapped them in newspapers. She washed

  and ironed his few shirts and wrapped them in tissue

  paper and put them away in his drawer. She knitted a

  dark maroon tie for him and two pair of socks. She

  washed and ironed his palamas and put them under his

  pillow and kept them there.

  She made a sort of shrine of the little dressing table

  he'd given her. On it, she placed the little red suitcase

  he'd given her, The Book of Everything with his autograph,

  and the postcard with its message, Wait for me.

  While she waited, she filled in her days as best she

  could. She visited Lottie each first and third Sunday of the

  month, and Annie each second and fourth She had her

  sewing class, and nearly every Saturday afternoon she had

  the little girl sewers over to her house for hot chocolate

  and crackers.

  Again she took care of Tessie and Albie during Holy

  Week and, when Annie came each afternoon to pick up

  the children, she and

  ~ , 1 9 1

 

  ~`Iaggie-Now had coffee and cake together or some little

  snack, and their friendship grew stronger.

  She sat in church one Sunday afternoon and saw Gina

  Pheid married to her Cholly. Outside the church, she

  shook Cholly's hand and kissed Gina and wished them

  both luck. Gina invited her to the reception but

  Maggie-Now didn't go.

  A month later, at Mass, she heard the banns read for

  Thomas Pheid and Evelyn Delmar. She wondered whether

  that was the girl who had once given Sonny the go-by

  because he didn't have money to spend on her. I ler name

  sounded like the name of a girl who liked spenders,

  thought Maggie-Now.

  Maggie-Now did not go to see Sonny married. Not that

  she was jealous or anything. she assured herself, and not

  that she didn't know he'd marry sometime or other. She

  just didn't want to see him be married.

  Denny caused her some concern that spring. He played

  hooky from school a couple of times. The first time Father

  Flynn brought him home; he had found Denny wandering

  around the streets. The next time, the truant officer

  brought him home and told Maggie-Now to see that it

  didn't happen again.

  "There's a law, you know," he said.

  For the rest of the term, she walked to school with

  Denny each morning and stood outside and waited until

  he was safely inside before she went home.

  When she told Lottie, Lottie said that it was nothing.

  All boys played hooky now and then. Even her Widdy

  had. "I remember like it was yesterday. Timmy caught him

  and the next morning Timmy saicl: 'I want you to play

  hooky today and if I ketch you sneaking in school, I'll give

  you a licking you'll never forget.' So every morning, he

  made Widdy go out and play hooky, and the first thing

  you know, Wi,ldy was sneaking back in school and he said:

  'Don't tell Pop that I'm going to school.'

  "That Timmy!" Lottie smiled a tender, faraway smile of

  affectionate memory.

  Annie said it was nothing. Even Jamesie, she said, good

  as he was, played hooky once in a while. "Boys is men,"

  said Annie. "They like to go away from the woman folks

  sometimes. Like your man: he plays hooky." Then, worried

  that she had made an

  ~ 32 1

 

  untactful remark, she put her hand on Maggie-Nov.~'s

  arm and smiled beseechingly.

  "Yes, Annie That's right." Maggie-Now smiled hack.

  She pried ten dollars out of her father and sent Denny

  to camp that summer for two weeks. Denny had been

  gone but two days when Maggie-Now got so lonesome

  that she went over to Lottie's to try to get her to stay v.

  ith her.

  "You've never been to our house, Aunt Lottie, since the

  day I was christened. You can have Denny's room. I'll

  cook the things you like. You owe me a long visit."

  "No," said Lottie. "I got to be here when Timmy gets

  home nights." Maggie-Now looked startled. "Don't look at

  me so funny. I only make believe he's c oming home. I

  put out the pan of hot water with Epsom salts for his poor

  feet right in front of his chair. Don't think I'm funny in

  the head. When I was a little girl I used to make believe

  I had a little girl friend. I even gave her a name, Sherrv.

  And I'd have a little tea party and talk to her and make

  believe she talked to me. Well, that's how I do with

  Timmy. Thanks anyway, Maggie-Now, dear. But I'd get

  homesick if I went away."

  Well, Denny didn't finish out his two weeks at camp.

  He'd been gone only four days when Maggie-Now got a

  letter from the head counselor saying Denny wanted to

  come home; that he would not participate in the activities

  of the camp, had to be coaxed to eat; and his tentmates

  said he cried nights and said he wanted his sister. The

  counselor wrote that she was sending him home.

  Maggie-Now knelt before Denny and put her arms

  around him when she noticed that his face had gotten thin

  in the time he was away and that there were black circles

  under his eyes.

  "Why didn't you want to stay at camp, Denny?" she asked.

  "Because I wanted to c ome home.''

  "Did you have fun, swimming and . . ."

  "I wanted to be home with you."

  "Denny, you're a big boy now, almost nine years old.

  You shouldn't be so dependent on me."

  "I don't want to go no place if you don't come along."

  Maggie-Now knew that she shouldn't be thrilled because

  he needed her so much. But she fleas thrilled and moved.

  What will

  ~ 3~' 1

 

  I do, she thought in panic, ~vLeiZ he gets trig and does``'"

  need me ally more? Oh, I must have children. I must! I need

  so much to be needed.

  She went to see Father Flvnn a few days later and asked

  him how she could go about adopting a baby.

  "I'm afraid that's impossible, Margaret. Babies are not

  given out for adoption except to good devout Catholics."

  "I try to be a good Catholic," she said.

  "But your husband is non-Catholic." She hung her head.

  "Couldn't I adopt a Protestant baby or a Jewish baby?"

  "No, my child. Methodist orphanages permit only

  Methodists to adopt their children. And the Baptists and

  Lutherans and Episcopalians, the same. The Hebrew

  orphanages place their children with good, orthodox I

  iebrew families. You understand, Margaret? "

  "Yes, Father," she whispered.

  "We have an orphanage out on the Island and it boards

  out some of its children with foster mothers. The foster

  mother is given an infant and keeps it, and gives it a

  mother's love and care until the child is six, when it is

  taken back by the orphanage and put into school."

  She leaned forward, tense and pleading and with her
r />   clasped hands extended to him in appeal. "Oh, Father,

  could you . . . would you ask. . . please if I could have

  one?"

  "You should have your own children, Margaret. You're

  young and strong and healthy...."

  "But I don't have any! ' she said piteously.

  "Be patient a while longer, my child. Pray to our Holy

  Mother. And make a Novena. I will say a prayer each day

  for your intention."

  "Thank you, Father."

  It was December and still there was no snow. Nobody

  wanted snow but everybody was worried, thinking there

  would be no white Christmas. Snow or no snow,

  Maggie-Now prepared each day for her husband's

  homecoming. He came back on a cold, crystal-clear night

  full of stars, in the middle of December.

  When she saw him, she held out her arms and smiled.

  She didn't ask him where he'd been. She didn't ask him

  never to leave her

  [ 392 ]

 

  again. She hugged him tight and smiled and said: "What

  took you so long?" as though he had just stepped out an

  hour ago to go to the store.

  She said: "I knew you were coming back. And I'm so

  happy."

  She took him into the kitchen and shot home a small

  bolt she had set up some weeks before, so that her father

  or brother wouldn't walk in on them. He had brought

  home some meat: half a loin of pork.

  "Pork?" she asked.

  "Not pork. A symbo!. It means that technically I'm your

  provider."

  "I'll cut off some for chops and broil them because it

  takes all day to roast pork and you have to have

  applesauce which I haven't got." He started to laugh. "All

  right," she said. "So I'm practical. Laugh all you want to."

  He grabbed her and hugged her tight. She felt the

  pressure of the gold coin in his pocket. He didn't need it

  there, she thought. She unbuttoned his coat and took it off

  and hung it over the back of a chair. He had a package

  under his pullover sweater. She pulled it out.

  "What's this?" she asked.

  "Open it."

  She did so. It was a beautiful kimono of jade green, dull

  silk. "Oh, how loNely . . . lovely . . ." she said. "Oh,

  Claude!"

  "I thought it vas time that my little Chinee had a

  kimono. Put it on, love."

  It looked beautiful on her. She held out her arms so he

  could see how wide the sleeves were. She looked up into

  a sleeve. She sane the label, The Chinese liazaar. She

  couldn't read the street and number but the city was San

  Francisco.

  So he was way out there, she thought.

  She admired the kimono profusely and he admired her

  profusely and they had the broiled chops and coffee and

  he asked her what she had been doing with herself and

  she told him about the sewing class and Lottie and Annie

  and Dennv. It was as if he had been away for but a day.

  Early the next morning, he put on his good suit and

  shoes and went out job hunting. She took the gold coin

  out of his old coat and wadded up his old suit and shoes

  and hid them on the top shelf

  1 ,23 1

 

  of Denny's closet. When he left in the spring, she wanted

  him to wear the good suit, because the old one was

  threadbare. Already, she was making preparations for his

  leaving in the spring.

  He got a job on the third day out. He didn't say where

  or at what, but the first day he came home from work she

  saw tufts of cotton clinging to his shoulders. She smiled

  inwardly, but said nothing. He gave her his first week's

  pay, thirty dollars. The second payday fell on (Christmas

  Eve. He didn't bring home his pay. He had bought

  Christmas gifts with it.

  "I noticed, old sir, that you do not have the pipe I gave

  you last year,' said Claude. "So I bought you another one.

  Merry Christmas."

  It was a cheap pipe in a cardboard box. Pat muttered a

  reluctant thanks anal, under his breath, he said: "The

  bastid!"

  Claude gave Denny a Waterman fountain pen with a

  fourteenkarat-gold clasp. Pat eyed it enviously. Claude