Maggie Now
Page 43
away. What else could it mean?"
EMS]
It cannot be said that l'at fell in love with the children;
he hadn't even fallen in love with his own children when
they were small. But he got on with them; especially
Mark. Pat was garrulous and, since his retirement, he had
the whole day to talk in and Maggie-Now was not one to
sit and listen. But little Mark listened. Pat told the boy all
the things he thought his daughter should know about
the beautiful room he'd had at the widow's; the exquisite
meals she'd fed him and, yessir, he'd marry her in a
minute but what would his daughter and son do without
him? Although he spoke to the little boy, he raised his
voice so's llaggieNow could hear him.
The little boy didn't know what Pat was talking about
most of the time, but he listened with flattering
concentration.
As for Denny, he was neither interested in nor
indifferent to the newcomers. He was tot, old to play with
them and too young to feel protective toward them. He
gave them each a nickname: the baby, "Pee Wee," and
Mark, "Snodg7rass." That was the total of his relationship
to the orphans.
Lottie was ecstatic abol t it. "Now you'll have one of
your own. I never known it to fail. As soon as a woman
adopts a baby, bang! She gets in the family way. You wait
and see."
"I didn't adopt . . ."
"It amounts to the same thing, Maggie-Now."
"I've given up hope," said Maggie-Nov. "Soon I'll be in
my thirties and it'll be too late."
"Don't talk foolish. Your mother had Denny when she
was in the change. Take me: I didn't have Widdy till I was
thirty-two. Of course, though, I didn t get married until I
was thirty-one. I'll never forget it. We W:IS on this picnic
up the Hudson, and when I hollered to the boat that we
was going to get married, the captain said all our troubles
should be little ones. I wish you could've seen Timmy's
fact ! Well, so we was married...."
And Lottie was off, red iving again her wonderful life
with her sweetheart.
The nurse came once a month to check the children and
the cribs and the condition o f the home. Her report was
always favorable; extremely so. On one visit, she said:
"Mrs. Bassett, you ought to have a furnlce put hi, you
know. Your heating
[,49]
would not be adequate if we happened to have a severe
winter. It would really pay you. You could get more rent
for your upstairs apartment, you know." Maggie-Now said
she'd talk to her father about it.
Fall came. Maggie-Now told her father he'd have to go
to Mrs. O'Crawley when Claude came back.
"He ain't coming back!" said Pat.
"He always comes back in the fall."
"But you threw him out when you got the kids." By now,
Pat believed the story he'd told Mick Mack.
"I did no such thing! That's all in your imagination."
"Well, I won't go."
"But all summer you re saying how wonderful it was
there and how good the cooking was and how much you
liked it."
"I still won't go."
"But why, Papa? "
"Because them orphans need me here."
"Oh, Papa!"
The inevitable time came. She let her father eat his
supper first before she told him she had made all the
arrangements and that Mrs. O'Crawley expected him in
the morning. Without a word, he got up and went up to
his room. He signaled Denny to follow him.
Upstairs he said: "Denny, get Father Flynn."
"You sick, Papa?"
"Don't tell him I'm sick." (Pat didn't want Extreme
Unction again; that was too close to dying.) "Say I am
troubled and need me priest. Here's a quarter and don't
tell your sister you're going for the priest."
Maggie-Now opened the door. "Why, Father! What a
nice surprise!" Then she sat` he was carrying the Host. She
preceded him into the house walking backward.
"Dennis said your father needed me."
"I . . . ] didn't know." she stammered. "I did not prepare
. . . forgive me, Father . . .' She took him up to Pat's room
and left after setting up the crucifix and lighting two
candles.
"You are not ill, my son?" asked Father Flynn gently. L3so]
"Only in me heart and me soul," said Pat. "Father,
tonight me only daughter says to me: 'Papa, pack up and
leave the house.' I says . . .
"Then," continued Father Flynn, "get out of bed, get on
your knees and make a good confession."
"But . . . but . . ." spluttered Pat.
"A good confession," said the priest.
They knelt on the floor. "Bless me, Father, for I have
sinned. 'Tis one year since me last c onfession."
Pat paused. That, he thought, will get me five Hail Marys
and five Our Fathers to start or with.
When it was all over and Father Flynn was packing his
bag, the priest said: "Patrick, have you ever heard the story
of the boy who cried wolf?"
"What boy? " asked Pat.
Father Flynn told him the story. When he had finished,
Pat was indignant at the fabled boy. "Was he mine," said
Pat, "I'd take a stick to him fooling good people that way."
"Someday, you'll cry wolf," said the priest, "and nobody
will come. Yes, someday you'll cry wolf once too often."
Surreptitiously, Pat pressed his knuckles three times
against the wooden headboard of his bed.
There was a little flurry of snow the third week in
November. It didn't amount to much but Maggie-Now
took up her nighttime vigil at the window waiting for
Claude. She waited two nights and he didn't come. The
third night, she sat there until midnight, decided he wasn't
coming that night and went out into the kitchen.
She always prepared the babies' oatmeal before she
went to bed at night, got it started, then left the saucepan
on the back of the stove to simmer all night so that the
cereal would be creamily well-done in the morning.
She heard the hall door open. She thought it was the
tenant upstairs coming in late, then she thought of
Claude! She stopped stirring the oatmeal, covered the
saucepan and set it on the back of the stove. He walked
into the kitchen.
"Oh, Claude! Claude!" She was in his arms.
"This is the first time you didn't run down the street to
meet
~ 35i ]
me. And I walked around the block three times...."
"I was going to watch for you again as soon as I had this
oatmeal started."
"Oatmeal? I haven't had that since . . ."
"Want some? It's good and hot."
"No!" he said sharply. "It reminds me . . ." His voice
trailed off.
He had brought her a small silver stiletto that had the
word Mexico stamped on the handle;
to be used as a letter
opener, he said. She smiled. She didn't get many letters:
one a month, the electric bill; two a month in the summer
when she used the gas plate for cooking; and one a year
from the tax collector. Just the same it was a beautiful
thing to have and to hold in her hand.
"I have to give you a coin for it," she said.
"You believe in that superstition that a coin must be
given in return for a knife?"
"Yes. It's bad luck if you don't."
"Your luck is good. You gave me a coin some years
back," he said. She knew he referred to the gold piece.
He had brought home a duck. She put it in the oven to
roast and then went to sit on his lap. He patted her hip
and then started to laugh.
"What's funny?" she asked. (As always, it was as if he'd
been away only for the day.)
"You're funny," he said, "sitting here in your Chinese
kimono and Indian moccasins, waving a Mexican dagger
and roasting a Long Island duck." He kissed her long and
hard; then said: "Tell me all you did while I was away."
"Well," she hesitated, "I went over to see Lottie . . ."
Her voice trailed off.
"What else? "
"Annie came to see me. . . that's about all, I guess."
He wondered what had happened. Usually, when he
asked her what she'd been doing, news literally poured
out of her.
"You've been up to something, Margaret. Have you
been a good girl?" he asked lightly.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you!" She was all animation. "The
tulips came out. And they were beautiful, Claude. Just
beautiful!"
"Did you plant zinnias and marigolds and . . ."
~ 352 ]
"No. I didn't plant anything."
"You're an odd girl. Here you cook and sew and love
children and enjoy keeping house and. . ."
"What's odd about that? "
"It follows that you'd enjoy working in a garden; making
things grow. But you don't, do you? "
"Why, no, I don't, Claude."
"Why? "
"Oh, I don't know. I guess I like flowers in pots. You
can put them in different places. I love to see flowers in
the florist shops. That's how I'm used to flowers, I guess.
If I had a lot of flowers in the yard, I wouldn't enjoy so
much going to the cemetery and seeing Al the flowers on
the street outside the flower stores. And in May, when
Father Flynn's lilac bush is in full bloom, he invites me to
sit on his bench a while and we have iced tea, and if I had
a lilac bush in my yard then it wouldn't be so wonderful
any more to see Father Flynn's lilacs and I would miss
that."
"You'll always be a city girl, love. And now, speaking of
bushes, stop beating around one and tell me exactly what
you did while I was gone." Suddenly, she was tense in his
arms. "What?" he asked.
"I thought I heard something."
"Your father?"
"He's at Mrs. O'Crawley's. Listen!" The sound again. It
was the wail of a baby. She jumped to her feet. "He never
cries. He must be wet and uncovered."
He jumped up too and grabbed her arms and shook her
a little. "No!" he said in a high ecstatic voice the way
people say "No" when they expect a sure "Yes" back.
"Claude?" she said. It was almost a whimper.
"And I wasn't with you when it happened! I am a
bastard; a pig." His self-reproaches w ere terrible. He got
down on his knees and put his arms about her legs and
pressed his cheek against the silk of the kimono.
She stood listening with her head turned, the way he
stood and listened for the voice in the wind on the day he
left. She relaxed and breathed deeply. "There! He's gone
back to sleep."
"I am nobody from nowhere," he said, his voice muffled
against
[ 353 ]
her kimono. "There is no one before me. But now one will
come after me. A son . . . my name, a continuation of me
. . . me! Who is a continuation of no one."
It was very hard for her to tell him that he had no son;
that the child was one of her two foster children. He got
up. His face was bone white.
"What have you done to me?" he asked in a reasoning
voice.
"I don't know," she said, genuinely bewildered.
"I'll tell you," he said pleasantly. "All you did was tell
the whole world that I could not get you pregnant." He
was pleased when he saw her wince at the word. "All you
did was tell the world that I couldn't support you and you
had to take in bastards for pay."
"What world?" she asked. "Whose world?" The baby
wailed again. She turned quickly and went out.
"You Goddamned peasant!" he hissed after her.
She came back carrying the baby. She pulled a chair
close to the stove, spread her Icgs to make a large lap,
and changed the baby's diaper. He looked on with
distaste; even disgust. Mark called out, "Mama?"
querulously from the nursery. She got up, put the baby in
Claude's arms and went to Mark.
Claude held the baby. No miracle happened. The feel of
the helpless child in his arms did not bring on a surge of
tenderness; his heart did not turn liver. The child, thumb
in mouth, looked up at him with brown, unwavering eyes.
He looked down on the child and thought: IVhose spawn
are you? The child's eyes blinked once and he took his
thumb halfway out of his mouth and put it back again. But
who am I to throw stones? he continued in his thoughts.
Whose spawn am I for that matter? Without his volition,
his arm tightened convulsively about the child.
She came in leading rhe boy by the hand. "Claude," she
said, "this is Mark."
Claude and the boy stared at each other. Neither said a
word. If, thought Claude, she says, And Mark, this is Papa,
I'll throw the one l'In holding rigl.,t in her face!
She said nothing more. She took the baby from him and
took both children back to their cribs. When she returned,
she spoke to him as though continuing a conversation.
[3s41
"And Claude, they are not bastards. Maybe they're
orphans; maybe they're children that were not wanted by
a mother . . . Or a father. But they are not . . . what you
say. They are God's children. They are Catholic children."
"Sit down, Margaret," he said gently. She complied.
"Margaret, I want you to get a divorce and marry someone
who will give you all the children you want."
"I can't, Claude."
"Why? "
"Because I love you and could never love another man
in the way I love you. Because I slept with you and could
never sleep with another man. And then, there's no
divorce in the Catholic Church."
"The Church cannot prevent a legal divorce."
"No. But what good would it do?
I couldn't ever remarry
in the Catholic Church. I wouldn't want to marry any
other way because it would be adultery."
"Nonsense! "
"Adultery. Yes! According to my Church."
He thought on that for a while. She put some more
coals on the fire and basted the duck which was roasting
in the oven.
"We are married then for life," he said.
"For eternity."
"That is, married until one of us dies. I am your
husband. You love your husband."
"I love you, Claude. I do."
"Then send those children back to the orphanage."
"I can't! Oh, Claude, if You only knew how long I
waited; had to wait. Because it was so hard to get them.
If it hadn't been for Father Flynn . . ."
"The point is, you did get them."
"Yes. Father Flynn spoke up for me," she said proudly.
"He told them I was all right."
And so you are, he thought. And I'm as much of a
sadistic sorlof-a-bitch as that super who hires college men to
shovel snow. Belt, by God, I'm not going to let those children
take my place. I want her f or me alone. I ve got to have
that. Someone who's all mine ... who waits for me....
He grabbed her arms alla held them so tightly that his
finger
C355]
nails went: into her flesh. "You give them up. Hear me?
Will you take them back where they came from or must
I go to your priest and make him take them back?"
"If you make me, I'll take them back, Claude."
He was instantly mollified. "Yes, Margaret, that's best."
"But you know that, as soon as you go away, I'll get
children again. If it's too hard to get them from a home,
I'll manage somehow to have one of my ONvn." She
hardly knew what she was
. , .
trnplylng.
But he knew. He knew of many women, many barren
wives who got with child by another man and the husband
believed the child was his. Claude was afraid.
"Margaret, love, I'll never leave you again. I've had my
lesson. I have been too careless of you. But a man can
change. I'll get a job. I can always get a job. We'll be
together all the time as married people should--not for
just a few weeks in the winter. We'll have a child. If, after
three or four years, we don't, we'll go together and adopt
one or two. I'd want them to take my name. But I swear
it, Margaret, I'll never go away again if you will only send
those children back."
"You will always go away," she said quietly. "Because it
is in you to go away. The ~ ay it's in me to be a
Catholic. The way it is in me to want children, to need
them so bad that I'll get them any way I can."
I've lost, he thought. Bzlt their, 1 hall no right to win.
"The duck's done," she said.
"The hell with the duck," he said wearily. I hate her, he
told himself.
They went to bed, and, because essentially and in spite
of everything they loved each other, and because they
loved to make love to each other, and because they had
not been with each other for so long, everything was new
and wonderful again.
Afterward, he drifted off to sleep. She prodded him
awake. "Claude," she asked, "what's so wrong with being
a peasant?"
He laughed and he found that he didn't hate her any
more. "Nothing, my little Chinee," he said. "Nothing."
1 556 ]
~ CHAPTER FIFTY ~
CLAUDE got up next morning to say hello to Denny
before the boy left for school. He kept the boy company
with a cup of coffee. Claude didn't speak to llaggie-Now,
and when Denny went off to school Claude went back to
bed.
It was nearly ten when Claude got up and dressed. He
went into the kitchen and had a cup of coffee and a roll.
Then he went into the front room. The baby was sitting in
the high chair at the window with a rattle in his hand.