Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

"They say there's a panic on," said Mike. "But what's that to a man fixed like you? You got a house to live in.

Nobody can take that away from you. You got a city job.

Can't be sacked. You get your pension when you retire.

And your wife gets a pension when you die."

"God forbid!" said Patsy. He waited but Mike didn't second the motion by an "amen" or by knocking on wood.

"Say! Did me daughter take her money out of the bank like I told her?"

"We took our money out. dies."

"That's good because your bank closed this morning."

"We only had eight dollars in it. She, I mean, we, paid the interest and some of the taxes just last week and eight dollars thy]

was all was left. And you," asked Patsy shrewdly, "was you lucky enough to get all yours out before your bank closed up?"

"That I did. And in plenty of time, too."

"I bet it was more than eight dollars," suggested Patsy.

Wouldn't you like to know, thought Mike. He said: "Well. it wasn't a forchune, but enough, enough. It's safe under me mattress now. If anything happens to me, God forbid. ."

He waited. Thought Patsy: He didn't say "amen" for me when 7 said, "die, God forbid." So I'm not going to say it for him.

"Tell The Missus. ." continued Mike.

"You mean me new mother?" interrupted Patsy.

You bastard, breathed Mike under his breath. "Well, just tell her that the money is in a old sock under the mattress."

Stubbornly, Patsy went back to his complaining. "I still don't like to shovel manure panic or no panic; pension or no pension."

"It won't be forever. Someday you will be superintent'

and stand on the street in kid gloves making other men shovel manure. And sure, your house ain't no marble mansion…."

"That can be said again," agreed Patsy.

"But 'tis only temporary against the time when you and me daughter get everything I own; me big house and me carriage and fine horses and all of me money. And it might be sooner than you or me think. Me old ticker ain't acting so good." He pressed his hand to his heart.

Patsy shivered because The Boss had not knocked wood when he spoke of his failing heart. Patsy had an impulse to knock wood for Moriarity. But he squelched it. Let the bastid knock his own wood, he decided.

1–4 i

THE way things turned out, Patsy and Mary were never to come into Mike's fortune. The reform party won the next election, and, true to its platform, the new administration started the Big Cleanup. The bright, new District Attorney polished up his armor, buckled himself into it and went out after the grafters crying, "Corruption! Corruption! " all the way. Little grafters ran for their holes. Medium-sized grafters, like Moriarity, couldn't find holes tc, hide in.

The Big Cheese saved his rind, that is, his skin, by turning state's evidence. Officious men came to Mike Moriarity's house and shook rattling papers in his face and attached everything he had: his house and furniture and stable and horses and carriage and even Mary's piano.

Too late, Mike wished he had let Mary take it with her.

The men busted open the locked door of his desk and attached deeds, notes, stocks and bonds. They even attached a couple of bankbooks stamped Accost Canceled.

One reformer, a plainclothes man, found Mike's last withdrawal in an old sock under Mike's mattress. The sock held two thousand dollars in small bills. The reformer pocketed the money and neglected to give Mike a receipt.

Probably he neglected to turn in the money, too.

The only things they couldn't touch were the house that Mike had deeded over to Mary and Patsy, and a paid-up life-insurance policy in The Missus' name.

Moriarity, along with a dozen others, was indicted. It was in all the papers.

Patsy, commenting on the indictment to Mary, said: "So I was never good enough for your father. So he always looked down on me. But I'm the one what's looking down on him, now. The thief!"

"Oh, Patrick," she said, tears coming to her eyes, "don't call him that."

[7S] He felt ashamed. Wl~y do I say things like that to her, he thought. I get no satisfactioiZ alit of it. It Flakes me feel like Jack the Ripper, or somebody.

"There now, Mary," he said. "Who am I to talk? Did not one of me own relations steal a pig in Ireland? Yes."

She smiled through her tears and looked up at him with her hands clasped appealingly on her breast. "Did he, Patrick? Did he? "

"Sure," he said. "But be was a relation by marriage only."

So Mike was indicted for graft and corruption. But he never stood trial. Just before the trial. he had a stroke and his "ticker" gave out.

It was nearly night when they got home from the funeral. Mary sat in the dark kitchen. Her face was pale and drawn. Patsy tried to find something ~ omforting to say to her.

"After all, he was your father," he said.

"Yes."

"And he was good to you."

"Not always, Patrick I remember 1 must have been about ten years old when I thought I didn't like him. I

thought he wasn't nice to my mother and it seemed that he was always punishing me or scolding me.

"One night, I suppose he got free tickets somewhere, he took me over to Manhattan to hear a singer. I remember it was snowing and everything looked so beautiful. I had a little white muff and tippet with ermine tails. There was an old woman selling violets on the street. I remember the cold, sweet smell. He bought a bunch and pinned them to my muff. He gave the old woman a bill and he wouldn't take his change.

"He had a friend who had a high-class saloon. We sat in the ladies' back parlor, of course. My father introduced me to the man as though I were a grown-up lady. The man bowed as he shook my hand. He served me a big glass of lemonade on a silver tray. There was a tablespoon of claret in the lemonade to make it pink and a cherry on top. I thought it was wonderful. Papa and the man had a brandy together and talked about old times in Ireland.

1–6 1 "The man had left the door leading into the saloon open and I saw it all. The bar was beautiful! All the shining cut-glass decanters on the shelves with silver stoppers and glasses as thin as bubbles and that big mirror over the bar with a filigreed brass frame and oh, the chandelier with cut-glass crystals, or do they call them prisms? It was so beautiful with the gas lights in ruby bowls here and there….

"Then we went to the concert. I don't remember now what the lady sang, except her encore song, 'The Last Rose of Summer.' I saw Papa take out his handkerchief and wipe his eyes.

"After the concert we were walking down to the cab stand and there was this little store still open. They sold trinkets and things. Papa took me in and told me to pick out a little bracelet or a locket. But there was a pair of side combs in the showcase. They were tortoiseshell and all full of rhinestones. I couldn't stop looking at them.

"Papa said, 'You know you're too little to wear them and they'll be out of style by the time you grow up. Now here's a nice little locket. It opens. . ' But I couldn't take my eyes off the combs.

"Then Papa said: 'You krlow you can't wear them. What do you want them fort' I said I didn't know. Then he said:

'You want them just to have them, don't you?' I said, yes, and he told the lady to wrap them up "I loved my father that night. I loved him so much I

didn't know what to do.