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
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