Maggie Now

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Maggie Now Page 42

by Betty Smith

from which she extracted a little book and a pencil.

  Maggie-Now, who had continually scrubbed, polished and

  painted the "nursery" while

  [ 54 1

 

  waiting for the nurse to call, greeted the woman

  cordially.

  "Will you have a cup of coffee?" asked.

  "O-o-oh, no!" said the nurse with a rising and falling

  inflection. Her tone implied that she ~ ouldn't be bribed.

  "Excuse me," said Maggie-Now, embarrassed.

  The nurse made a thorough inspection of everything.

  She asked how the nursery room was heated. Maggie-Now

  explained that, since it opened off the front room, it was

  heated by the parlor stove. The nurse made a notation.

  Maggie-Now started to worry. Finally the nurse put her

  book and pencil away, straightened her coat and said:

  "Now, I'll have that cup of coffee."

  Maggie-Now knew it was all right, then.

  Maggie-Now waited: one week, two weeks, three

  weeks.... Then Father Flynn came to see her. "Margaret,"

  he said, "I've had a conference with Mother Vincent de

  Paul." He saw worry lines deepen in her forehead. "The

  home nurse turned in her report on your premises." She

  held her breath. "The word 'Immaculate' appeared four

  times in her report." Maggie-Now relaxed. "However,"

  again the worried lines appeared on her forehead,

  "Mother and I agreed to put off giving you the children

  until spring."

  "Why, Father, oh, why? ' she pleaded.

  "Your husband will be returning soon. He knows

  nothing of the foster children. It may be hard for him to

  adjust . . . then, the children will not have had time to be

  adjusted to the home and you. There may be emotional

  strain. In the spring, when he has gone, you will have the

  children. You'll have the spring, summer and fall, and

  when your husband visits you . . . returns in the following

  fall, you will have become accustomed to the children,

  there will be a settled routine...."

  She was badly disappoints d but she saw the logic of the

  matter.

  "You can w air, Margaret " he asked.

  "I can wait," she said.

  It was just as well. One morning after breakfast, instead

  of leaving for work, Pat settle d himself in the chair by the

  front windoNv.

  "Aren't you working today, Papa?" she asked.

  "Me working days is over. I put in me full time and today

  I

  ~ 341 ]

 

  start me retirement. Today I start drawing me pension."

  Her first foolish thought was. Now I don't have to wash

  those heavy, dirty uniforms any more. She said: "But, Papa,

  you didn't tell me."

  "Must I tell you everything?" he said.

  "But, Papa, you're still young, just a little over fifty.

  What are you going to do with yourself all day?"

  "Rest!" he said.

  And he did. He slept late and Maggie-Now had to make

  a separate and lavish breakfast for him at ten in the

  morning. Then he sat by the window in his stocl.ing feet,

  getting up only to go to the bathroom and tr, eat lunch,

  which now had to be dinner with meat, vegetables and

  potatoes instead of a simple lunch. After dinner he

  napped on the couch in the front room, and if she so

  much as turned on the tap to get a glass of water he

  shouted for quiet. After his nap, he took up his useless

  vigil at the window. When she came into the room, he

  asked her what she wanted now.

  Maggie-Now was almost a prisoner. She had been used

  to having the house to herself most of the day. While

  dressing, she had often walked out to the kitchen in her

  slip to check on something that was cooking. Now she

  could never leave her bedroom unless she Was fully

  dressed. When she went out, he asked her where she was

  going. When she came back, he examined her purchases

  and criticized the price she had paid and claimed she was

  cheated. When Denny went out, he gave him hell when he

  came back. When he stayed home, he asked what the hell

  he was hanging around the house for. In short, he was a

  pest.

  When November came, Maggie-Now started to worry.

  Claude would be home soon, and with her father in the

  house all day, feuding with Claude, life would be

  intolerable. Claude would leave after a few days, she

  knew. She remembered the Christmas pipe incident.

  One night she said: "Papa, when Claude comes you

  must go and board at Mrs. O'Crawl~ y's while he's here."

  "Oh, no, me girl."

  "Yes, Papa. I mean it. You and Claude just don't get

  along. And for the little time that he's here . . ."

  "I won't leave this house," he shouted, "till I'm carried

  out feet first! So help me God!"

  [ ,4-' ]

 

  It was the last week in November. The newspaper

  forecast snow for the next day. As Pat got up from the

  supper table, Maggie-Now said: "Papa, Claude will be

  coming back most any night now and . . ."

  "And I'll throw him out the minute he steps foot in me

  door," he said.

  She ignored that. "So I went over to Mrs. O'Crawley's

  today and rented a room for you "

  "What!" he roared.

  "A nice room and she likes you so much she's only

  asking seven dollars a week for room and board. And little

  Mick Mack can hardly wait. You can come back again

  when Claude leaves."

  Pat made a terrible, hoarse cry. He tore open his shirt

  and gasped and his face turned purple. He spun around

  and would have fallen if Maggie-Now hadn't caught him.

  "Run, Denny. Run for the doctor! No, wait! Let's get

  him to bed first." They got him into the hall but couldn't

  get him up the stairs. "My room! My room!" gasped

  Maggie-Now. They put him in Maggie-Now's dainty bed.

  "Now, get the doctor and hurry."

  "No doctor," gasped Pat "Too late. The priest! The

  priest! I want the priest! The priest!" he gasped faintly.

  When Father Flynn arrived, a pale Maggie-Now with

  smudges under her eyes greeted the priest with a lighted

  candle. She genuflected and preceded him into the house.

  She took him into the room. He looked around with a

  glance of approval. Everything was in order. Pat lay pale

  and still in a clean nightshirt. She had washed his face and

  hands and feet. There was a clean linen towel on the bed

  table. On it stood a crucifix with a lighted candle on either

  side. There was a vial of holy water, a dish of salt, a

  saucer with clean bits of cotton for the holy oil, a tumbler

  of water and all the necessary things. There was a cushion

  on the floor at the head of the bed for the priest to kneel

  on. Father Flynn placed his small black leather bag and

  the Host on the cleared dressing table.

  "Leave us, my daughter," he said. Maggie-Now left,

  walking backward out of the room, still holding the lighted
/>   candle.

  Father Flynn performed the solemn last rites of the

  church. When it was all over, Pat said weakly, "I would not

  be calling

  ~ 343 1

 

  you out in the cold of the night but the way me

  daughter . . ."

  "You have been shriven of all your worldly sins, my son.

  Speak no more." When Pat would speak again, Father

  Flynn said: "Be at peace, my son."

  He started packing his bag. "I will send the doctor," he

  said.

  "No doctor," whispered Pat. "I am at peace."

  "To sign the death certificate," said Father Flynn. "It is

  the law."

  Father Flynn went cut to ~laggie-Now and Denny and

  prayed with them and left, after speaking words of

  comfort.

  Maggie-Now, trembling and with tears falling unchecked

  from her eyes, went in to her father.

  She found him frantically getting into his pants.

  "Papa!" she cried out, shocked. "What are you doing?"

  "I'm getting out of here!" he yelled. "Between you and

  the priest and the doctor, youse'll have me buried before

  I'm dead! I'm going to the widder's house where I'm

  safe!"

  Maggie-Now had a beautiful, beautiful winter with her

  Claude.

  ~ CHIC P T ER FOR TY-NI NE ~

  CLAUDE had come home. While they sat in the kitchen

  waiting for the two chickens he had brought to roast, he

  asked her, as was his custom, to tell him everything she

  had done during his absence. She told him everything

  except that she had made an application to take in

  children from the home. When she actually had the

  children, it would be time enough to tell him, she thought.

  Then there was always the hope that she'd become

  pregnant. She never gave up hope. Her mother hadn't

  given up hope and had had a child in her forties.

  However, she had sounded Claude out, hoping to get his

  reaction to having the children from the home.

  "Claude, wouldn't you like children in the house?"

  He gave a typical Claudian answer. "Every man lilies

  children of his OWn about the house."

  Unduly sensitive to his every reaction, she thought he

  stressed

  [344]

 

  the "of his own" too much, and she didn't say anything

  more.

  When he came home, he had brought her a dozen

  Dutch tulip bulbs. They were in a box marked Tulips fro7n

  Holland, Michigan, so she knew he had been there. For his

  last three returns he'd brought her gifts with labels. It was

  as though he wanted her to know where he'd been but

  didn't want to tell her in so many words.

  He said he'd wait a week before going to look for a job

  because he wanted to plant the bulbs in the yard. First, he

  said, he had to whitewash the old board fence. The tulips

  were red and needed a white background, he said

  He was whitewashing the boards one Sunday morning

  (he had one side of the fence done), when the tenant

  upstairs opened her window and called down to hin`..

  "Mr. Bassett?"

  He gave that quick turn of his l cad' which gave the

  woman a thrill, and looked up.

  "That's going to look real nice. '

  "Thank you," he said and gave her his charming smile.

  She closed the window. "I had to be halfway nice to

  him,'' she told her husband, "so's they don't raise the rent

  on us saying they made improveme7`tsd'

  "Aw, you just wanted an exctisc to, talk to the bum," he

  said.

  "He's not a bum. He's a pentlcman."

  "A bum!" he said. As an afterthought, he added: "Shut

  up!"

  The ground was not frozen under the snow but it was as

  hard and barren as cement. Claude had to chop it up with

  an ax. He planted the bulbs. All during the winter, he

  garnered MaggieNow's coffee grounds and tea leaves and

  potato peelings and the dottle from Pat's pipe and the

  ashes from the stove and other things and made a

  compost pile in the yard.

  "In the spring," he said, 'we'll plant zinnia and marigold

  seeds . . . things that come up the first year . . . later,

  perennials . . ."

  He spoke as though he wasn't going away in the spring.

  Her heart lifted; then fell. If he stayed, would he let her

  have the foster children?

  For Christmas, he gave her a big, beautiful garden

  encyclopedia. It had hundreds of colored plates. (It must

  have cost ten dollars.) He and Maggie-Now pored over it

  and he made a garden on

  t347 1

 

  paper and the list of seeds they'd need. He seemed

  obsessed by the garden. "This summer," he said, "we'll sit

  together in our garden in the evening--flowers smell better

  after dark, you know. . . ." Yes, it seemed that he wasn't

  going to wander any more.

  But by January he had completely lost interest in the

  garden. Now when she got the book out, he frowned and

  said he guessed he'd go for a little walk. Once he asked

  her why she bothered. "Nothing will ever grow in that

  soil," he said. "It's hard as cement and just as barren." She

  didn't get the book out any more after that.

  But it was a beautiful vinter. He was a tender and

  loving husband, and, as always, it was as though they were

  newly married.

  That llarch day can e and that softly demanding faraway

  wind blew over Brooklyn again. And Claude listened and

  gave his silent promise to something that was not tangible,

  and went away again.

  This time her grief tat his going was gentle and mixed

  with a tremulous inner excitement. She cried a little, but

  smiled as she cried and was stirred bv a great anticipation.

  I'll wait until twelve, she thought, to see if hi comes back.

  But she waited only until eleven o'clock. She ran around

  to the furniture store and told the man he could deliver

  right away the two cribs and high chair she had been

  making weekly payments on since the fall. She went to

  another store and bought two thick white china bowls and

  two little spoons.

  The store sent the cribs over. There was a two-drawer

  chest in the room that Maggie-Now had bought in the fall

  and enameled white. From a drawer, she took crib sheets

  she'd made from the best parts of worn household sheets

  and clean, worn blankets that had, so far, warmed two

  generations of babies: Widdy and Widdy's twins. (Lottie

  had said: "I forgot I still had those blankets until Timmy

  reminded me.") Maggie-Now was in a kind of ecstasy as

  she made up the little beds.

  When Denny came home at noon, she gave him a

  makeshift lunch of bologna sandwich, milk and a wedge of

  crumb cake. She herself was too excited to eat.

  "Did Claude go away3" he asked.

  "Why, yes." Then she was dumbfounded! Claude had left

  [ ~ Is ]

 


  only two hours ago and she had all but forgotten that she

  wouldn't see him again until fall.

  "The flowers he planted in the yard are up. Did he see

  them?"

  "Are they?" She went to the window. Yes, there were a

  dozen inch-high clubby spikes showing. "No, I guess he

  didn't see them."

  As soon as Denny went back to school, she rushed over

  to Father Flynn's house. "Now, Father?" she asked. "Now?

  Please, now? "

  He matched her tone. "Now!" he said.

  "Honest, Father?"

  "Honestly, Margaret. Mother Vincent de Paul has two

  little boys all ready for you."

  "Honest, Father? Honestly?"

  "One is four, I believe, and the other a babe in arms."

  "When can I have them, Father? When?"

  "I'll phone Mother and tell her you're on your way to

  the home."

  She was out of the house and down the steps like a flash.

  "Margaret!" he called. She paused in her flight.

  "Remember! In two years, you'll have to give up the first

  one."

  "Yes, Father."

  "And when you are sixty, you will have to give them all

  back."

  "It will be forever till I'm sixty," she called back.

  I used to think so too, thought the priest.

  Maggie-Now loved the beautiful ritual of getting

  breakfast for the children. Denny had gone off to school

  and her father was still sleeping. The sunshine poured in

  through the kitchen windows and the tulips were in bud in

  the yard and Timmy in his bamboo cage sang so lustily

  that the cage jiggled.

  Mark, the four-year-old, sat in the high chair eating his

  bowl of oatmeal with soft sliced bananas on top. From

  time to time, gently and patiently, she transferred the

  spoon from his left hand to his right. Just as patiently, the

  little boy transferred the spoon back to his left hand.

  John, not quite a year old, was in her arms. She fed him

  with a spoon. He inhaled the oatmeal, gummed the soft

  banana and tried his best to drink milk from his mug with

  a sucking motion.

  ~ 347 ~

 

  lye never took his eyes off Maggie-Now's face. He stared

  at her unblinkingly, moving his eyes only when she leaned

  over to change Mark's spoon.

  The children were quiet children. Mark seldom spoke

  and the baby seldom cried. Mark obeyed any order

  instantly. The instant they were put in their cribs, they

  closed their eyes. They had been well trained at the home.

  Maggie-Now had been astonished at the way Pat took

  the news of the foster children. She'd had them three days

  when he came home from Mrs O'Crawley's. She told him

  all in one sentence and all in one breath. She ended up

  saying she would get five dollars a week to buy their food.

  "For the two of them"' he asked.

  "Five dollars each."

  "Say! That's all right," he said. "Them two kids won't eat

  up ten dollars of food a week."

  "The money is for the children and the children only,"

  she said firmly.

  Who knew the workings of Pat's mind? He got the idea

  that Maggie-Now got the babies to take the place of

  Claude and that now Claude was out of her life forever.

  He explained it to Mick Mack:

  "Me daughter says: '1 got the chilthren in place of you.

  And now when you go away don't come back no more.'

  And he says: 'So now the chilthren have taken me place

  and I am no longer wanted."'

  "And you living at the O'Crawleys' the time he says

  that!" said Mick Mack. He was not doubting his friend's

  veracity. It was merely one of the little man's automatic

  compliments.

  "I don't have to be Johnny-on-the-spot," said Pat icily,

  "to know what goes on in me own home. Anyways, warm

  weather comes and the bastid says: 'Nooky!' NO, that

  ain't the word. Yeah! 'Chinook! "'

  "And what would that be ~meaning?"

  Pat had to think quick. "Why . . . why, it would mean 'so

  long!' In the Eskimo language," he added. The little man

  looked as though he doubted that, but Pat clinched it. "It

  stands to reason: First he says: 'Chinook!' Then he goes

 

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