Бетти Смит: Maggie-Now

"And the while you're waiting for your poor old mother to die on you," said the Widow Shawn, "and she the one to make old hones and live to a hundred, me Maggie Rose is losing her chances with the other boy-sis.'

"'Tis true, 'tis true,' moaned Patsv. "I don't he having the F41

right to stand in her way." He turned to the now weeping girl. "Me poor heart breaks in two giving you up, me Maggie Rose. But is not your good mother right? So I'll not be standing between you and some other fine man. I'll be bidding you goodby."

To his astonishment, he burst into tears. Is it a good player that I am, he thought, or is it that I love the girl?

He rushed out of the cottage. Margie Rose ran down the path after him, weeping and calling out his name. He turned and waited for her. She put kisses on his face and buried her tear-wet cheek in his neck.

"Don't be leaving me, darling," she sobbed. "I'll wait ever for you for I want no one else. I'll wait till your mother dies. And may that be years to come," said the good girl, "for I know how you love her and I w ould not have you grieve. Only don't leave me. Do not leave me because I

love you so."

Things went on as before. Patsy kept on courting Maggie Rose and enjoying it more because he knew now that he didn't have to give up his freedom. Sure, he intended to marry her someday maybe. But for now. .

His mother was jubilant. She told her cronies: "Her and her mother together: They tried to thrick me boy into marrying the girl and for all I know saying there was the reason for it. And maybe so. Maybe so," she said insinuatingly. "But if so, 'twas not me Patsy Denny was the feller. A girl like that, and sure, it could be anybody a-tall."

Rory-Boy told Patsy Denny he was lucky. "Is it not so that the old cow's got no husband and the sweet girl no living father to beat the hell out of you for not going to the priest with her? I tell you nowhere in the world is there such free love. Not even in America where all is free."

There was a tug at Pats>'s heart. Should I not be sheltering her against the dirty talk, he thought, by standing up in church with her? Ah, yes. But would I not be a poor stick of a man if I married me illaggie Rose because the old lady said: do you do so, now.

Mrs. Shawn took to waylaying the boy and inquiring after l s Pi his "dear' mother's health. "And how's your mother this day'" she would ask.

"Ah, she's as well as might be," he'd answer, "and me thanks to you for asking. But," with a sigh, "she's getting older. . older."

"And so's me daughter," she'd answer bitterly.

The harassed woman decided to put a stop to the affair.

She told the girl she'd have to stop seeing Patsy or go into a convent.

"I will not do so," said the girl.

"That you will. 'Tis meself has tile sav of vou and you not eighteen yet."

"Do you try to force me, Mother, 1'11. ." she searched for a word she didn't know.". . I'll stay with him in the way bad girls stay with men and they not married to each other."

"To talk to your mother so," wailed Mrs. Shawn. "To dig me grave by breaking me heart. And you such a good girl before you were spoiled by that black'ard! You who went to church every morning to receive. ."

Mrs. Shawn went into a time of weeping and keening.

When that was out of the way' she sent for Bertie, the Broommaker, who was also the village letter writer. Bertie brought his book along: Epistles for All Occasiorzs. There was no form letter that suited the Widow's exact occasion.

The nearest one vitas: Epistle to Be Written to a Relative Across the Water An~zounci~zg the Demise of a Dear One. Bertie said he'd copy it off and make it "fit" by changing demise to my daughter's fix whenever demise came up, and to substitute nZy esteemed so',' Timothy for my esteemed great-u~zcle Thaddeus.

After the letter was carefully addressed to: Constable Timothy Shame, Police Department, Brook~ly~z, U.S.~., Bertie inked in his trademark on the back of the envelope.

A few waving lines represented ocean waves. A pigeon flew over the water with a letter in his mouth. On the pigeon's letter were tinier waves, a tinier pigeon with a letter in his mouth. That tinier letter had a microscopic pigeon with an almost invisihle letter in his mouth. That microscopic pigeon was flying over almost invisible waves and so on. When the whole thing waves, pigeon and letters got down to one dot, that dot was supposed to 1 6 1

represent a billion, trillion, so on letters of pigeons flying over the waves with a lever. Bertie was tussling with infinity and the neighbors said he wasn't all there.

Eventually, all the pigeons got the letter to Timothy Shawn, Maggie Rose's brother, who lived in East New York, Brooklyn.

~ CHA PTER T 1l7O ~ OFFICER Timothy (Big Red) Shawn sat in the parlor of his East New York flat. His beat was the Bowery in Manhattan, but he lived in Brooklyn because he liked to live in the country, he said, and because his wife wanted to live near her mother. It took him more than two hours to get home each night. He had to journey by ferry, horsecar and foot.

Now, his day's work done, he sat in his parlor in his undershirt soaking his poor feet in a dishpan of warm water in which Epsom salts were dissolved. The stiff red hairs on his chest pushed through the cloth of his undershirt like rusty grass seeking the sun.

"Why don't you soak your feet in the kitchen and save the parlor rug? " asked Lonie, his American-born wife of Irish descent. She asked the same question each night.

"Because me home is me castle." He made the same answer each night.

He surveyed the parlor of his castle. The narrow windows that looked down on the street were hung with lace curtains. They were sooty but starched. A taboret, fake Chinese, stood between the windows. Its function was to hold a rubber plant in a glazed green jardiniere. The unfolded top leaf of the plant always had a drop of rubber milk on its tip. A gaudy and fringed lambrequin draped the fake marble mantelpiece over the fake onyx fireplace.

On the mantelpiece was a china pug dog lying on its side and with four pug puppies lying in a row, frozen eternally in the act of taking nourishment from their mother. In the renter of the room there was a marble-top parlor table covered with a [71

fringed Turkey-red tablecloth. A picture album lay in the dead center of the table. When the album was opened, it played "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot." The tune came from a Swiss music box concealed in the concave cover of the green plush album.

The rootll was stuffy. ugly, tasteless, even vulgar. But Big Red loved it! He was happy in it; proud of it. He thought it \N-as perfect or would be if it wasn't for the portrait.

A bamboo easel stood cater-cornered at one end of the room. On it was a gilt-framed chrome. Next the easel was a low, gilded taborer with a palette rat sting on it. There were uneven blobs of colored enamel painted on the palette to simulate squeezed-out oil paint. A camel's-hair paint brush lay across the palette. You got the idea that the artist had stepped out momentarily`: for a beer.

The picture was a t rudely tinted photograph of Big Red's mother-in-law. The head was three times life size.

It bothered Big Red because no matter where he was in the parlor, the triple-sized eyes seemed to follow his every movement.

Tonight, he was on the point of asking his wife why she had to have a picture of her old lady in the house when the old lady herself lived only two blocks away. But he restrained himself. He'd had enough trouble that day what with a couple of the Hudson Duster gang over in Manhattan showing up on his heat. He didn't want trouble in his castle.

ah' well, he thought, 'tis better to have the old Chro77'o's picture in the house rather than the old Chromo herself in person, sitting here and coming between husband and wife.