Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

He was very nice to them.

The marriage disrupted the household. Biddy announced it was beneath her to wait on an ex-servant even if he had married The Boss's daughter. She turned in her notice and they had to break in a new servant girl. And The Missus and Mary decided it was not becoming for a member of the family to be a stable boy. Patsy agreed with them.

Mike had to get a new stable boy and Patsy was released from his menial and odorous chores.

Mary lost her teaching job when she married. Married women were not permitted to teach in the public schools.

Therefore, Mike had to support Patsy and Mary and pay a new stable boy in the bargain.

Patsy hung around the house all day smoking his pipe of clay and picking out "Chopsticks" with two fingers on the piano. He was very loving to Mary and courtly to his mother-in-law. Both women worshiped him.

The Missus bloomed under Patsy's attentions and she stopped scuttling for a while. }le called her "Mother,"

which thrilled her. He stopped addressing Mike as "Sir."

He called him "Hey, Boss!" which irritated Mike. Patsy got things out of Mike by using Mary's name. Mike referred to this process as "bleeding me white."

"Hey, Boss, me wife s lys. ."

"You mean, me daughter says. ."

"Me wife says I need a new suit. I\le wife says I'm a disgrace to me fine father-in-law the way me backside is showing through me pants they is that worn out. And the way me bare feet is on the ground for want of soles on me brogans. So. ."

So Mike bought him new clothes. If Mary knew her husband was using her to get things from her father, she never said a word about it.

"Me wife. ."

"Me daughter. ."

"Me wife says I'm getting to be a reglar mully-cuddle the way I sit in the house day: md night with only wimmen folks. 'Be like me father,' says me wife. 'Have the grand life like me dear father and he amongst the men all day.'

" 1~701 "Me daughter don't talk that way."

"Them was her words. '[Take a night off once a week,'

she says 'and stand up to the bar with the boy-sis and have your schooner of cool beer. Or two."' So The Boss gave him a dollar once a week for a night on the town.

One night, six months later, The Boss and his Missus were preparing for bed. She scuttled into the double brass bed and lay tight against the wall to displace as little space as possible. He sat down on the side of the bed to pull off his congress gaiter shoes. His weight made her bounce up and down once or twice. As usual he was complaining about his son-in-law.

(During the day, about the house and also in public, she seemed frightened of him and he never spoke to her without shouting or without sarcasm. But at night, in the privacy of the room and bed they had shared for thirty years, they turned into congenial companions.)

"Me patience is used up, I\IOIINT'', he said. "Out he goes as soon as she has the baby.' "What baby, Micky? "

"Mary's. And," he added grudgingly, "his'n."

"Oh, they're not going to have a baby," she said brightly.

"But you said. You told me that Biddy told you. She told you that she saw them two nights before they was married.

And they was intimate."

"Oh, Miclty, you know what a liar Biddy always was."

He sat there aghast, holding a shoe in his hand. "So I've been thricked into this marriage! And that's how the durtee cuckoo got into me clean nest!"

"Say your rosary and ~ ome to 'bed, Micky."

"I got to find some way of getting him out of me house.

But how? "

'You could get him a job and give them a house to live in. That's how."

"Hm. That's not a bad idear, Molly. I'll start thinking on it tomorrow." He got into bed. "Now where's me beads?"

"Under your pillow lil;e always."

A! 1 Moriarity pulled wires and cut red tape and bribed and blackmailed and got his son-in-law a job with the Department of Sanitation. He was asked whether he wanted his son-in-law on garbage collecting. He was tempted to say yes, but he knew he couldn't push Patsy that far. So he got him a job as street cleaner.

Then he gave his daughter and her husband a house of their very own to live in.

Among Mike's holdings was a two-family frame house in Williamsburg on what was then known as Ewen Street.

Fifteen years before, Mike had bought it for five hundred down and a first mortgage of three hundred and a loan of two hundred. This was in the years when property was still cheap.

In those old days, the plumbing was an outhouse in the yard, people drew water from a community pump down the street, the lighting was from kerosene lamps and heating came from a cooking range in the kitchen and a

"parlor" stove in the front room.

Recently gaslight and water had been installed in the house. Mike had taken a small woodshed attached to the house and made it into a bathroom of sorts: a small tin tub boarded with wood and a toilet and wash bowl.

Upstairs, a toilet had been put into a bedroom closet and a sink in the kitchen. Mike had paid off the two-hundred-dollar loan and then turned around and gotten a thousand-dollar mortgage on the "improved"

house. The upstairs flat rented for fifteen a month and the downstairs for twenty. C)ne half or the other was usually without tenants. Mike made no attempt to pay off the thousand-dollar mortgage. He simply paid the interest and kept "renewing" the mortgage. The taxes were still low.

Since he put no money into improvements, the rent was a decent little profit on his original five-hundreddollar investment.

This visas the house he turned over to his daughter and her husband. He made a little speech when he turned over the deed ending up with: "'Tis your very own, now."

The mortgage and the unrented upstairs apartment were their very own, too.

Mary got a woman in for a day to help her scrub and clean up the house. She had two hundred dollars saved from her teaching job and Patsy had nearly a hundred.

They had the rooms up [72]

stairs and downstairs cheerfully papered and the woodwork painted. Mary was allowed to take the bedroom furniture from her room at home and she and Patsy bought what additional furniture was needed. She made muslin curtains for the windows and set up her hand-painted china plates on the shelf that ran the length of the kitchen wall.

She was able to rent the upstairs apartment soon after they had taken over the house. She made it very plain to Patsy that the rent was to be used entirely for taxes and mortgage interest and payments on the mortgage itself.

Mary liked her little home but Patsy didn't like it one bit. To Mary, it was a great adventure creating a home of their own. Patsy liked the brownstone house on Bushwick Avenue much better. He liked that neighborhood and he had liked not working while living there with Mary. He hated his job. Nearly every evening, he visited his father-in-law and complained about everything. Now he referred to Mary as Moriarity's daughter rather than as his, Patsy's, wife.

" 'Tis a disgrace that your only daughter has to live in that cellar with a winder in it that you name a home. 'Tis a shame that a high-toned woman like your daughter has a husband who has to shovel horse manure all day to support her."

"Stop your bellyaching, me boy," said Moriarity. "Times is hard and men is out of work and banks is closing down.

But let me tell you: I figured it out. The country is sound."

"I read that too," said Patsy. "In last night's World."