Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

Her eyes were filled with tears all during his story.

"And now," he concluded, "me old life is gone and the new life I'm making. . I mean the new life everyone is making for me is no good. I don't like nobody no more and I don't want nobody to like me."

"You don't mean that, Patrick. You say that because you've been so hurt; and so alone in a strange land."

"I mean it. I'm never going to give nothing to nobody and I'm going to take everything I can get from everybody."

She smiled at his boyish ultimatum. "Ah, no, Patrick,"

she said. "You could never live like that. Why, you're so young so full of life. Everyone would like you so much if only you'd let people…."

Suddenly, he broke down and wept piteously. She held out her arms in compassion.

"Come to me, Patrick dear," she said. "Come to me."

She stood before him, her arms outstretched toward him. Her loose robe concealed the way she was straight up and down without curves. Her hair hung loose to her waist and the golden lamplight made her pass for pretty.

Because he was so lonesome and so starved for love, he went to her. She held him tightly and kept saying: "There now. There now." She was like a mother soothing a child.

"There now," she said. Ele put his arms about her waist and she stroked his shoulder and said: "There now. Don't cry any more."

They held each other. But no matter how tightly they held each other, there was no blending. Her body stayed straight and

~ 6' 1

stiff. It did not know how to relax against his.

He thought of the last time he had held Maggie Rose how her little waist curved in and her thighs curved out. He remembered the evening. He had stood with one foot up on a stone wall and she had leaned against him.

He remembered how his upraised thigh had fitted the curve of her waist and how the curve of his arm fitted all around her.

When a girl and a man fit together so grand, he thought, sure God made them for each other. And why did I ever leave me own Maggie Rose? He sighed.

And this good girl l'nz holding in me awns now, he thought sadly, we will never fit together.

He was quiet and she thought he was comforted. "I NN7i~ leave you now," she said. She waited. He kissed her cheek. He held the lamp so that she could find her way down from his loft.

After she had slipped back into the house, he came down from his loft and stood in the yard. He leaned against the stable and smoked his pipe and thought of Mary how good she was; how kind and understanding.

He felt warm toward her. It was almost like love. Then his mood was broken. Biddy came out from behind a snowball bush.

"Ah, so," she said. "So me pretty man changed his mind about waiting for the marrying before he did you know what."

"Go away, Biddy," he said wearily.

"That I won't till I've had me say."

He looked at her with aversion. Her hair was in a thick braid down her back and the end of it twitched and writhed around her backside like a black snake. She wore a crepe kimono and her flesh was unconfined beneath it.

There was a continuous movement under the kimono as though something were boiling inside. Patsy winced.

I avoider do then things hurt her, he thought, and them not being hoisted up and resting on top of the corset.

"I seen youse," she said. "There I was sleeping and I

heard this noise and what do I do but I wake up. First, I

thought it was only the horses pooling around in the straw.

Then I looked up at your window and saw youse spooning against the lamplight."

"Go back to bed," he said. He emptied his pipe by tapping it against the heel of his shoe. He stamped out the few live coals

~ 63 1

and turned to go back t-O his room. "Good night," he said.

"Listen!" she raised her voice. "I'm going to tell The Boss on you. On the both of youse."

"Do so," he whispered savagely, "and I'll tell The Boss on you! How you put in your Thursday night off by working in Madame Della's aitch house in Greenpoint."

She sucked in her breath and her face looked purple in the moonlight. "'Tis a black lie," she choked out.

"I know it," he agreed. "But The Boss will take it for true. For is he not the one who likes to think the worst of everyone?"

"You'll see!" she threatened.

At breakfast next morning, Mary told her parents of the death of Patsy's mother.

"Is he an orphan then?" asked The Missus.

"Why not?" said Mike. "And we all got to go someday."

He raved condensed milk over cooked ground horse's oats in a soup plate.

"Papa," said Mary, 'Patrick's too good for the stable. He wasn't meant to be a serf ant. Couldn't you use your influence. . pull. . to get him better work?"

"Nothing doing," said her father. "I'll not give meself the trouble of breaking in a new stable boy."

"At least, then, let him have that empty room on the top floor of the house. That stable room isn't fit for a man to live in."

"The next thing you know," he said jokingly, "you'll be wanting to marry him."

"I do," she said quietly. "And I will if he asks me."

"Yah-ha-ha! Yah-ha-ha!" laughed Mike. "You and the stable boy! That's rich. Ya-ha. ."

Then something unprecedented happened. The Missus spoke up to The Boss! "I don't see nothing to laugh at,"

she said.

He put down his spoon with meticulous care. "What did you say, Missus? " he asked ominously.

"She's going on twenty-eight," said The Missus. "So far no one asked her to get married." (Mary winced.) "So I

say if the boy wants to marry her, let him. She might not get no other chance."

1 64] "What did you say?" roared Mike, picking up his napkin ring as though to throw it at her.

The Missus jumped up so suddenly that her chair fell over backward. "Nothing," she whispered. "I didn't say nothing. Excuse me." She scuttled out of the room.

"See what you done?" Mike asked his daughter. "You and your loony talk at the table. Made your mother so nervous she couldn't eat."

"Excuse me, Papa," said Mary quietly. "I'm almost late for my class." She left him alone with his now cold horse's oats.

Patsy was sweeping the sidewalk. The Boss peeped through the lace curtains and watched Mary as she stopped to talk to the stable boy. She seemed to be talking eagerly. He saw Patsy nod his head from time to time and he saw them smile at each other. She patted the boy's shoulder in farewell. He waved to her when she turned for a backward look.

Mike waited until Mary- had turned the corner before he went down to deal with Patsy. He came up silently behind him and shouted: "You!" It pleased him when Patsy almost dropped his broom.

"Listen, y ou! You keel' your place. Hear? Let me see you getting friendly with Miss Mary and you'll hear from me. Get me? "

"She wants to be me friend. 'Tis kind of her."

"I told you before: She's kind to everyone. Even the mongrel dogs on the street. And I tell you again: Don't get idears."

"What idears?"

"Like you think you're good enough to marry her."

"I do not have such an idear. But if I wanted to marry her and she wanted to marry me, whose business would it be? Only ours, being's we're both of age. But rest your mind. I'm not thinking of marrying."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Mike sarcastically. "Because me daughter ain't thinking of marrying either especially marrying a stable boy."