Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

It was the growing excitement of getting to know each other well; it was the delight of kissing and embracing the drawn-out prelude to the ultimate physical togetherness that came with mar riage.

Too soon after marriage, things would get tough. The children would come along pretty soon one after another, because in their religion children wele the objective of marriage. There would never be enough money. There would be sickness and debts and work and worry and little time for acts of tenderness. The bright articulation of courtship Could dribble away into monosyllabic communication. The essential love between them would seem lost. But it would be there. It would be there in their memories of their loving and wonderful courtship.

"We'll be different," they told each other.

"I won't be like some women," said Tessie, "and get sloppy as soon as I have you for good. No matter how much housework there is how many children there are I'll have my hair curled and my nails manicured when you come home from work and I'll treat you as though you were company."

"And 1," said Denny, "will be just as polite to you as though 1 359 1

you were a girl I'd jtiSt met and was anxious to make a little time with."

"And," said Tessie, "we'll have dates, pretending we're not married but just going steady. And we'll get dressed up and go out on Saturday night to a show or a dance or a nice dinner someplace like we do now."

"And I will respect your mother," he said.

"And I will keep on loving your sister the way I do now and I will be nice to your father."

"Yes," they agreed. "We'll he different."

AT ~ lIE turn of the century, Winer had bought two acres of farm land in a sparsely settled place out on the Island, called Hempstead. He had only paid a hundred dollars for the land. But now Hempstead was growing into quite a city and Winer had a notion that a de luxe butcher shop would do well out there.

"Otto wants to sell choice meats there and stuff from all over the world like Italian pepperoni and Westphalian ham," Denny explained to his sister. "I le wants a cheese department with fancy cheese from every nation in the world. And caviar and even snails, I guess. Truffles, he said, too. A lot of people in Hempstead are well off and would go for stuff like that. At least, that's what Otto thinks."

"What do you think about it, Denny?"

"Oh, he wants Tessie and me to move out there after he sets it up. Ele wants me to manage it for him."

Maggie-Now's heart fell. Now he will go from me, she thought, like ClafJde afZd the children. Ilt first they'll come if, to see me once a week, then once a mofZth, once every three months arid then it quill be of Zce a year at Christmas or my birthday.

"Are you?" she asked.

"Oh, I'd like to fine,' said Denny. "Only Tessie doesn't want

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to be so far away from her mother. So I told Winer I

wasn't interested."

Mixed with her relief that he wasn't going (although if he had said he was, she would have encouraged him to go) was indignation that Tessie would stand in his way. He should tell her that's what he wants, she thought. She'd go with him.

"Anyhow, it's still only.m idea in Otto's mind."

The wedding was set for the coming June. In the beginning of March, Denny asked Claude would he be his best man? Claude seemed very pleased and flattered and said he'd be honored.

Denny told Maggie-Now that Claude had accepted the role of best man. "That means he won't go away this spring. And you'll have him around to take the place of me pestering you all the time," he said affectionately.

"Don't count on it, Dennv. He'll go away again in March."

"Not after he promised."

"He'll go. Ile'll always go."

"Listen, Maggie-Now. People change, you know."

"Not at our age, Denny. (2laude's and mine. Things are set with us."

Claude went away in March.

Plans for the wedding went forward. Annie and Maggie-Now sat together many an afternoon and sewed for Tessie. Annie made her daughter an oval rag rug and Maggie-Now admired it so much that Annie made one for her, too. Denny and Tessie found a modest three-room apartment that was halfway between Annie's home and Maggie-Now's house.

The girls at Tessie's store gave her a shower and Winer said that after Denny married he could take home from the store all the meat he needed at wholesale prices. That was his wedding gift. Tessie even got a present from her boss, a brand-new fivedollar bill set in slots in a flowered folder that said, Congrat?clations! This unexpected kindness gave Tessie the courage to ask if she could keep her job after marriage. He said, no, business was awfully slow.

[3g! I "Then who'll bring tile girls change after I'm gone?"

'Me."

"Will you dust the hard\i-are counter, too?"

"No. The girls will rake thorns doing that. Whenever they go to the washroom, they can stop a second on their way back to dust."

"You never needed ale in the first place, then," she said.

"First off I did," he saicl. "But I don't now. They say this depression is only temporary that business will pick up again by Christmas. But I don't know. I should have laid you off but I didn't because I thought you'd need the money getting married and all. And besides, I kept you on for Auld Lang Syne like they say New Year's live. You see, Tessie, your mother worked for my father and you worked for me, maybe a daughter of yours might work for my SO'I, sollledaN'."

Tessie told Maggie-Now: "He said he didn't need me.

It's sad to think that you weren't needed even in a dime store."

"I know," said Maggie-No\v. "Everybody likes to be needed."

»And,'70U know what else he said? He said that maybe a daughrer of nnine \7Y'ill work for his son someday. Imagine!" she said indignantly. "No daughter of mine will ever work in a dime store! "

That's what hey mother sairl, thought I\laggie-Now, Shell 7 essie was little. Ah, w ell. . She sighed just like Annie.

"Here s a last-minute present for you and Denny. It's from Lottie. You heard us speak of her?"

"Yes, and I'd love to meet her sometime," Tessie said auton~atically.

The present, of course, was the china dog with the nursing puppies. Tessie laughed hysterically. "That's the funniest thing I ever saw," she said.

"I have to tell you, 1 essie, it's not for keeps. Lottie forgets. In a little while, she'll forget she gave it to you and Denny and she'll think it's lost and she;ll go around the house looking for it and crying. I'll have to sneak it back."

'Of course," said Tessie.

"llut she did think of you."

'That was nice," said Tessie. In an offhand way, she added: 'Poor thing!"

1 3971 It was June, it NvaS a Saturday night, and it was the night before the wedding. There was an excited hush in the house, the same excited hush that fills a house at a birth, a wedding and a death. Each member of the household goes about with a private look on his face as though recognising acknowledging the great verities of birth, marriage and death.

Tessie and Denny had gone to confession, she to her German church and Denny to Father Flynn. The marriage would take place in Tessie's church. But after the marriage Tessie would always go to her husband's church.

The boy came from the cleaner's with Denny's suit.

MaggieNow brought the suit hi to her brother. He was sitting in his room on his cot. She remembered how she had found him there the day she married Claude and he had said he wanted to go with her and she had knit It down before him….