Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

He walked down to the saloon feeling pleased with himself. That'll learn her riot ta get srlotty with "TT]e, he told himself smugly.

Denny wasn't afraid to stay in the house alone. He just didn't like it. He went out and sat on the stoop. He told himself that he wasn't lonesome, yet he wished some boy would come along so they could talk about his new marble. A woman came by and asked: "What class are you in?"

"One B." he said.

"That's nice," she said and went on her way.

Denny was not an introspective child but he couldn't help wondering why people always asked him what class he was in, and his sister and father were always asking him, how's school, and, did he do his homework Why did people think he had no other life than school?

Gloomily, Pat watched the bartender shave the foam from the small beer he'd ordered. With no preamble at all, he started in on his troubles.

"You raise a kid. \170rli like a dog. Do without things yourself to give her things. Then she gets big. And just when she could be a help pay back the old man what happens? She goes loony over the first gink what come.

her way."

"That's the way it goes," said the bartender, giving the bar a ritual wipe.

"That all you got to say about it?" asked Pat.

[704] "What do you want for a nickel beer?" said the bartender. "The Gettysburg Address?"

"I had to earn that nickel for that beer, I'll have you know," said Pat.

"Well, you better earn a dime for the same next week.

Maybe fifteen cents. Beer's going up now that we're getting in the war."

"War or no war, sooner than pay fifteen cents, I'll go without me beer," said Pat.

"You'll go without it pretty soon whether you want to or not. This here prohibition is going through someday and then, goodby, Charlie. ' The only other customer further down the bar now entered the conversation. "It's a Goddamned shame," he said. "That's all I got to say."

"Another county heard from," sneered Pat, and he tried to wither him with a look. Rut the man was at the other end of the bar and the saloon visas dimly lighted. In lieu of the look, he raised hi, voice.

"Yeah, and I suppose you went down and enlisted today, hey?"

"Met" called back the stranger. "Why I'm fifty-two if I'm a day*!' "Who asked you your age?" said Pat.

"Nobody."

"Who you calling nobody? ' asked Pat, itching for a fight.

"Nobody. "

'Dry up, then," said Pat.

I feel I know him from someplace, brooded the stranger, staring down into his beer.

Walking home, Pat had the same feeling. I ~nz~st-a seen him someplace before, he thought. But where?

Denny saw his father turn the corner. He scuttled back into the house and did his crayon work all over attain so he wouldn't have to gfJ to bed right away.

Claude and Maggie-Now were walking arm in arm. "I'm disappointed," he said. "I had hoped to meet your father."

"I thought it wasn't the right tine…."

"I see." He solulded offended.

[-US] "I mean, he's not used to the idea that I. . I. ."

"That I ~. you and I. ." He didn't finish because, startlingly enough, she was blushing. "You haven't told me much about your father, excepting that he vvas born in lkilkenny."

"There's not much that I know about his childhood.

Anyhow, I talked too much last night."

"Oh, no! No, it was wonderful every word of it. I'd like to hear it all over again. You see," he said simply, "I never had a childhood with parents and a home and relatives and stores to go to and penny candies and a sled in winter. No, I never had the things you had."

"Please tell me how it \vas," she said impulsively. "I'd like to know more about you."

"There is nothing to sell nothing to know," he said harshly.

"Excuse me," she said humbly.

His face cleared and he smiled. "Oh, someday, when we're old Ed sitting by the fire and it's snowing outside, I'll tell you everything."

"I will wait," she said shyly.

"She lives way over in East New York. Some night next week. . I'd have to send her a card first."

"I may not be here next week."

Her heart fell. He dian't mean If, she thought sadly, about HIS getting old with each other. I must try izat to believe everything he. . anybody says.

"Maybe," she said tentatively, "you'd like to see the house where my grandfather lived ~ here my mother divas brought up?"

Enthusiastically, he told her that was exactly what he wanted to do.

It hadn't changed much since Magerie-NoNv was a little girl. The white swan, now grey from dust, still sat placidly in the showcase. Claude visualised the house as it must have been in the nineties. He admired the fine, \vrought-iron grillwork of the basement door and house railing.

"Yes, like New Orleans homes," he said.

~ ~6 1 "Then you've been there, too," she murmured.

The stable plumbing shop was more up-to-date now.

Showcase windows hid the lines of the stable. A new auto truck stood in the yard. The sign over the door, Pheid e) Son. Plum/~ers. Day Cal Night, was now framed in electric bulbs.

A young man came out of the store and walked toward them. "That's 'And Son,' I believe," whispered Claude.

The young man smiled at Maggie-Now and said, "Yes?"

inquiringly, as his father had done twelve years ago.

Claude answered. To Maggie-Now's distress, he used his acadenmic voice on the young man. "May we be permitted to browse around? "

Young Pheid looked at him \vith distaste. "HON\PS that again?" he asked.

"My grandparents. . my mother used to live here,"

explained Maggie-No,~v.

"No kidding!" said young Pheid, smiling at her.

"My grandfather owned this property."

"Kolinski, the notary?"

"No. His name was Moriarity. Michael Moriarity."

"Hey, Pop," the young man called back to the store. "Did you know a Moriarity?"

"Moriarit`,r? "

"Yeah. Moriarity."

The name was sounded back and forth and, for a breath, I\like Moriarity seemed to lee again.

"Naw," said Pop Pheid, and the breath was gone. "Sorry,"

he added.

"That's all right," she said. "We just want to look around."

He said what he had said many years ago to her mother: "Help yourself." Pop and Son went back into the store.

"There used to be a hedge of snowball bushes, Mother said, along here."

"Snowball. .?"

"Some people call them hydrangea, I guess. Mother loved them so."

Walking back home, she told him how her father had lived in the stable loft when he first came from Ireland and how he had hated the horses.

~ ~o-1 "The more I hear about your father," he said, "the more I want to know him."

"You wouldn't like hi7n."

"I'm sure I would. If for no other reason than that you like him."

"Oh, I don't like him.' "You don't?" he asked, astonished.

"I suppose I love him, though."

"How can you love without liking?"

"I don't know. But he's my father and a child should love its father."

"I see. You love him because he loved your n-~other."

"No. Because my mother loved him."

They said good night on her stoop. He turned his head away to tell her he couldn't see her the next night; he'd be busy. And she turned her head away to say that was all right.

This is the end of it, she thought. I'll never see him again.