Maggie Now

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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