Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

A look of alarm came over her face. "What did I do?"

she asked "Was it the supper? I know the potatoes weren't mashed good because Denny kept bothering me…."

"No, no. I mean. ."

"Is it my dress? I didn't take money to buy a new- c,ne.

This is an old one. I dyed it and put a new collar on."

"No. I just want to talk to you."

"About what, Papa?"

"Nothing Anything. IUSt talk."

'is something the matter? Something I can fix up? Just tell me what and I'll try."

"Never mind," he said. "Never mind. I just thought we could say things. I could say something and then \70U

could say somerhing."

"Say what things, Papa?"

"Well, like I'd say: 'l)enny's got red hair and nobody in me family or your mothe,'s family had red hair. Only Timmv ~ Z661 Shawn and he was no relation.' Then you could say. ."

"Denny can't help it that he's got red hair. And he's a good boy just the same."

"I didn't say he wasn't,' shouted Pat, now exasperated.

He sighed and got his hat and went down to the corner saloon for a beer. He had more than one.

"You know," he told the bartender, "I once had two of the nicest children a man ever had and I lost them."

"That's the way it goes," said the bartender.

"No," said Patrick Dennis Moore. "Denny goes to public school."

"But I went to parochial school," said Maggie-Now.

"Your mother wanted you to be with the Sisters. I let her have her way."

"I liked it and I know Lenny would like it too."

"I don't believe in mixing religion with education.

Weekdays for school and Sundays for church. He goes to P.S. 49. When the doctor in the clinic shows up, take the boy to be vaccinated."

Maggie-Now brought Denny to see Mr. Van Clees on the boy's birthday The cigar man had six blue candles for him.

"I have another friend," he said. "For her, pink candles;

six of them. Tessie came along two months after this young man was born. You know Tessie? Annie's little girl?"

"She was a baby when [saw her. How time flies! And how is Annie? "

"She works still by the lunch counter in the five-ten. She has now bad trouble with her feet standing up all the time."

"I thought she'd marry again a nice woman like that. It seems she'd have chances."

"No. Gus was the only man for her. Maybe some man would like to marry her, alone. But three children?" He turned up his palms and shrugged his shoulders.

~ /67 1 I sz~ppo.se, thought Maggie-Now, nobody will ever marry me because I have Denny. Maybe when Denny grows lip. . but by that time, I'U be too old.

"And how are Annie's other children?"

"Jamesie he is in long pants novv."

"No! "

"He is twelve and he is big. He works Saturday bringing the groceries to the houses for the man."

"That helps out a little."

"Ah, yes. And that Tcssie! My, she's pretty. And so good! But that Albie! You know him? No he wasn't born

— et, then. Almost four years old now. And bad? Oh, my!"

"That's a shame."

"He is bad because there is no father to say, 'No!' Was Gus still living. ." He sighed, then brightened up again.

"And you, Miss Maggie? A fine young woman you are now. Do you keep company with some nice young man?"

She shook her head. "A pity. You should marry and have children. You are such a good mudder."

"I don't have much chance to meet young men."

"Well, the boy goes to school soon. Then you have time for yourself. You go out then with the young girls and meet their brothers. Maybe you steal some man away from another girl. That's the way to do it. Was I only a young man," he said gallantly.

Maggie-Now was flattered and embarrassed. "Now where did that boy go to?" she sahl, frowning. "He knows I'm taking him tO be vaccinated and he s trying to duck out of it. Well, thank you, Mr. Van Clees, for the candles and give my regards to Annie when you see her."

Maggie-Now was twenty-two. She was restless and lonely and needed young friends. Of course, she had old friends. Father Flynn was a friend but she was too awed by him ever to have the easy but respectful friendship her mother had had with the priest. Then there was good Mr.

Van Clees and some of the storekeepers and neighbors who were her good friends, but they were all older than Maggie-Nos~o She longed for friends of her own age and generation.

1 1681 Of course, there was always but as Maggie-Now grew to womanhood she saw less and less of Lottie. The twins were living with Lottie now. Widdy, believing America's entry into the war was imminent and being afraid he wouldn't be drafted (because he had a wife and two children), enlisted in the navy. Gracie turned the twins over to Lottie and got a job and a room down near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She liked to see the ships come in.

Widdy might be on one of them.

Lottie had her hands full. Her mother was old and senile and needed constant care as did the twins. But she loved the twins dearly and supported them and her mother and herself on Timmy's pension. Lottie told Maggie-Now it vitas hard, sometimes, to make the pension

"reach."

Sometimes Gracie's mother love got the better of her and she took the twins away from Lottie. Lottie would cry because she missed the children. It always happened that, when Lottie got adjusted to not having the twins, Gracie brought them back again.

Whenever Maggie-Now went to visit her, Lottie was in a turmoil. If the kids were there, she'd complain about being overworked, getting no rest and the money not reaching. If the twins were away from her, she'd weep for De Witt and Clinton, whom she referred to as "My little steam-y boats," and she'd tell Maggie-Now it was "like a big piece was ripped out of me when the little steam-y boats were taken from me."

Lottie still wore her hair in a pompadour, although that was old-fashioned now. She wore the same kind of dresses she'd worn when her Timmy was alive. She no longer wore bustles and ruffles because, with adv.mcing age, she lost the urge to be desirable.

Maggie-Now did not enjoy poor Lottie's company as much as she used to. Lottie's life was standing still, and when MaggieNow was with her the girl felt that her life too had been frozen, as far as Lottie was concerned, in the year of Timmy's death.

Lottie still told the same old stories about Big Red and Patsy Dennis and Kilkenny and the thrashing and Margaret Rose and the Moriaritys. Maggie-No\v was tired of the old stories and she was irritated that Lottie's world was fixed in those olden times and that she expected Maggie-Now's to be fixed in the same times.

['69] Maggie-Now got r estless at the many repetitions of the phrases: "And that kept us sweethearts," or, "So we staved sweethearts to the end." Maggie-Now didn't think it right that this aging woman still considered herself a sweetheart when Maggie-Now, who was in her early twenties, had no anecdotes about sweethearts. It wasn't fair. The friendship waned as Lottie kept talking of the past and Maggie-Now kept wondering about the future.

When Denny started school, Maggie-Now was at loose ends. She had many lonesome hours on her hands. She got a little tired of the house and the same old streets and stores and the same Old people. She wanted a change to see and to know new things. She got a little frightened.

Why, I might get old aild die before I've ever lived, she thought.