Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

Maggie-Now registered last, after the others had left.

She wrote her name slowly and carefully because she knew he was watching her and she wanted to write nicely.

Watching, he thought: Beautiful hands. Strong, shapely, capable and thank God she doesn't file her nails to a point like so many wom: erl do.

Why, oh ~why, she thought, didn't I take time to file my nails and buff then? My hands must look just awful to him.

"Thank you," he said, when she returned his leaky fountain pen, the point toward herself, as the nuns had taught her to do.

He gave her a slow smile. She grinned back. He stood up and took a deep breath. "Tell fine about the pretzels,"

he said.

"I'll put the stool away first," she said.

She carried it into the dentist's lavatory. She looked at herself in the mirror. She was surprised she looked the same as before because she felt that some great change had taken place in her during the evening.

She searched her mirrored face and thought how queer it was

[~7~?]

that she didn't know him at all and yet had that feeling that she had known him always. And how natural and right it seemed that they were alone together in this place sort of like keeping house.

She straightened the hanging mirror. She noticed some spilled face powder on the basin's ledge and wiped it off with a piece of toilet paper. She pulled the roller towel down until a clean place showed up. Lastly, she put the seat down on the toilet. The cubicle looked neater that way. She gave the place a last searching look before she left it.

There! she told herself with satisfaction.

She went back into the waiting room and told him about the pretzels. She straightened the room as she talked. He'd put the magazines back on the little table.

(They had been put on the floor to make room f`,r his copies of The Book of l~verytinng.) The magazines were piled helter skelter. She interrupted her story to chick, "Tech! Tsch!" \vhile she stacked the magazines neatly.

I hope she's not a `'oily straightener, he thought. If she is, I'il break her of it "So I had twenty cents. ." she went on with her story.

She started to push the settee back to the wall.

"No, no," he protested. "You stand there and look pale and helpless while I move it."

"Helpless?" she asked, pu7.71ed.

No sense of humor. 'he told himself.

". . Then you bought fort\ pretzels."

"And it rained. ."

Under the settee, she found an orange powder puff Iying in a little nimbus of face powder that had shaken off when the puff dropped to the floor. ',he threw it into the wastebasket. He fished it out and put it in his pocket.

"Have to get rid of it," he said. "Compromising. Dr.

Cohen may be married."

So may you, she thought.

As if divining her thought, he said: "lout I'm not;."

First she looked startled, then relieved. She finished the pretzel stores He tucked his books and pictures under his arm. They stood

~ d'?8 1

at the door ready to lease. She looked around the room lingeringly as some women are prone to do when they leave a room which belongs to them and which they had attended to.

"Now 1'1] wind the cat and chuck out the clock," he said.

"What?" she asked, puzzled.

Serious minded. I warns you, Bassett, he admonished himself, she's not one to like joking.

"Nothing," he replied. "A poor joke. Something out of my childhood."

With her finger extends d toward the switch plate, she paused. She had seen the dentist's mezuzah higher up on the door frame. Something out of her childhood. .

Ida was a friend. Maggie-Now was in Ida's kitchen, visiting just before supper. There were the candles on the table and the kitchen smelled of chicken soup and baked fish. Ida's father came in from work. He closed the door, turned and touched the mezuzah with two fingers.

"Why did he do that?" asked Maggie-Now in a whisper.

The father overheard and answered.

"So we shouldn't forget," he said. "This is a mezuzah. It holds the prayer." Then he intoned: "Hear, oh Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord. .

"The prayer is here. I touch it and I remember. In the old times the prayer was written on the posts of the house.

It was the Hebrew law." He quoted: "And thou shall write them upon the posts of thy house."

"But we move away all the time we Jews. We own no house posts to write the prayer on. The mezuzah is the post the house post that we carry with us when we move."

If Mama were here now, she thought, she'd say, "And they touch the mezuzah the way we dip our fingers in holy water."

He noticed her abstraction. "Tell me," he said.

"As you said: It's something I remembered out of my childhood." Outside in the hall, she said: "It's funny, but tonight seems to be the night for remembering things of when I was a little child."

('7Y] He was about to say that was because she was sorting out her past and putting it away because she had no need of it now that her future was starting. Instead, he said as they went down the stairs: "I don't believe you were ever a little girl."

"Oh, yes. I was," she somberly. "And for a long time, too."

I told you before, he reminded himself. She is a serious

— vo~na,~. And very literal, too.

Down on the street, she held out her hand and said: "Good night, Mr. Bassett. I enjoyed the lesson."

"I have to go past your house on my way home, and, if I may, I'd like to walk with you."

"I would like you to walk with me," sue said frankly.

"Thank you. Now v here do V U live?"

"But you said. ."

I warned you, Bassett. .

"Anyhow, we turn at the next corner and then it's three blocks."

"Thank you, Miss Floors. It is Bliss isn't it?' he asked suddenly.

"It's 'bliss' all right,' she said.

"All the men around here must be stupid or blind.'' "Oh, no."

"Yes. Else you would have been snatched up long ago by one of them and put away in cotton wool."

"You mean, marry me?" she said in her frank way. "No.

No one ever asked me. You see, I have a brother and some people think he's my son. (He's just started in school.) My mother died when he was born. I brought him up. I mean, new people coming to the neighborhood think he's my child and. ." She thought briefly of the yard and the boy from upstairs. "Anyway, a man wouldn't want to marry a girl and take her brother, too." She sighed.

"Another thing: My father's strict. He wouldn't let me go out with anyone."

"I'd like to meet your father and shake his hand."

";lly father?" She was astonished. "But why?"

"For heating oflf all the boys and men. For keeping N' U locked up. I mean for keeping you safe for me."

He's kind of rip, she thought critically, pleased that she had 1: I8'() 1

found a flaw in him. I'm Clad I Jocund that out so I don't fall in love with him so quick.

Again, as if reading her mind, he said: "You think I'm flippant, don't you? "

"Flip. . flippant. .? ' "I)on't you?" he persisted.

"I don't know what to think," she said honestly. "I never knew anyone like you before. I don't know whether you're serious or making fun of me."

"Of you? Never!" he said earnestly. "Really, I'm a serious person. Or so I like to believe. I say things lightly.

I mean, I say light things. I've traveled around a lot, met many people, got to know none of them well and got into the way of saying things quickly and lightly. . no time to really get to knov. anyone enough to be sincere. . that takes a little time. ."