Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

Maggie-Now almost ran the two blocks to the Jewish delicatessen The bread wagon was just leaving. Inside the store, Mrs. Fine was arranging the warm round mounds in the showcase.

"You come just in time," she told Maggie-Now. "Only now did the breads come. Still warm. Half a loaf like always?"

"Like always," smiled Maggie-Now.

The woman wrapped the half in a clean rag. "So it should stay warm for you," she said kindly.

Maggie-Now went to the dairy next door. Three tubs of butter lying on the side faced the customers across the counter. The vats were labeled: Good, Better and Best.

"A half pound of the best sweet butter," said Maggie-No\v. The man lifted the glass door and picked up the wooden paddle. "And all in one piece," she added. "No crumbs!"

He faced her, hands on hips. "No crumbs! No crumbs, she says! So I'm magic and can cut exact-tle one half pound! Sure! Well, look con bottom the tub. Look on all the pieces from people what don't want crumbs. Them," he said dramatically, "them pieces is my profits."

"My bread's getting cold," she said.

He put the wedge of butter on the scale. His hand trembled as

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he did so because he feared the worst. His fear was justified. The wedge weighed an ounce over the half pound. He hit the side of his head with the flat of his hand.

"My profit! My profit!" he cried out. "Now I must cut off my profit and throw it on the floor of the tub!"

"Oh, I'll take the whole thing," she said.

"Don't do me no fav`,rs," he said bitterly as he wrapped the butter.

She made the coffee vie ry strong and heated a saucepan of milk and served it half coffee, half hot milk.

She brought the still-warm bread to the table and stood before Claude holding it in her hands.

"Ceres!" he said.

"I guess you'll think it s funny bread and butter for dessert," she said.

"No, my little Chinee, 1 think it's a very nice idea."

"We always have it for- Sunday dessert because it's better than any pie I could bake or Cooke I could buy."

He stood up. "It's wonderful, Margaret. Beautiful bread Nice to look at and it smells so good. It's nice to the touch and will be nice to the taste. Like good wine, it appeals to all the senses except sound."

"Listen!" she said. She pressed her forefinger on the eњ,rr,rshellthin but crisp crust. An inch of the crust collapsed into flakes with a sound like a small sigh.

"The clink of touched glasses that gives sound to good ovine," he said.

"Can I have a piece now? " asked Denny.

She cut the bread. She watched while Claude broke off an edge and spread it thinly with butter.

"Let me do it for you," she said. She took his slice and spread the whole thing thickly with the good butter. "That way, it's dessert," she said. "Eat it all in one piece."

He took a bite. "Wonderful! Wonderful!" he said. "It deserves to be brought to the table under a glass dome like pheasants and mushrooms."

They're startin`,r up that do talk again, thought Denny r esentfully.

He decided to make a diversion. He folded his buttered bread in half and defiantly plunged it into his cup of coffee and milk.

f 7~] "Denny!" cried out Maggie-Now. "Where are your table manners? "

Claude put his hand on the boy's arm. "Thank you, Denny," he said. "You opened the way for me to do exactly the same thing." He dipped his bread into his coffee.

"What can I do with you, the both of you?" said Maggie-Now in pretended despair.

"Nothing. Just smile and put up with us."

She gave him her big smile. "You make everything seem so special," she told him.

"Ah, no, Margaret. You do. You're the one. You make the simple ordinary things of life seem good and new and wonderful. You put a shine on life."

Denny couldn't stand any more. "When you go," he said to Claude, "don't forget your package. It's on the lounge in the front room."

"Denny!" she said, horrified at the broad hint.

"What's the matter with me?" exclaimed Claude. "I

forgot to give you the little present I got for you." He got up from the table. "Come on, Denny." To Maggie-Now, he said: "I hereby give notice that I'm not the type of man who helps with the dishes."

"And I give notice," she said, "that I can't stand a man fussing around my kitchen."

The package contained an Easter gift for Denny, a beautiful little kite made of paper-thin red silk as transparent as a bubble, with a dragon design picked out in gold thread. The sticks were thin bamboo, lacquered black, and the tail was of jade-green and turquoise-blue strips of paper. Maggie-Now said it was too beautiful to fly and that it ought to be framed and hung on the wall. Of course Denny had to go right out and fly it.

Left alone in the house with Claude, Maggie-Now worried. Suppose her father came home and found her alone in the house with Claude! She suggested that they take a walk. But he begged to be allowed to sit and talk with her for a while.

He told her how much he'd enjoyed the dinner how much it had meant to him that she'd let him share for a while a part of her family life. He spoke of Denny with fondness and understanding and seemed genuinely disappointed that her father hadn't been

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with thern. After that, he fell silent. She stole a look at him and saw a muscle twitching in his cheek.

She thought: He 5 It yi??g to figure out a Fly to ask?Z?e SOlMethi?zg important.

"Margaret," he said. "About religion."

"Yes?" There was a faint warning bell in her mind.

"The services this morning. ."

"Yes? You mean the Mass?"

"The.\Iass, then. It was wonderfully beautiful with the pageantry and the chancing and the glorious Latin. A

revealing experience to me. The stately progress of the ritual. ."

"High Mass is always like that," she said, uncomfortable because he used words like "pageantry" and "chanting" and

"ritual" words that nice outsiders used when they spoke of a Class.

"Do you understand it?" he asked.

"Not all of it."

"Aren't you curious about the things you don't understand'" "Why, no. I believe. I don't have to understand."

"How can you believe without understanding? "

"Oh, I believe that my heart beats and that I breathe, but I don't understand a thing about how those things happen. Well, let me say it this way: I believe without understanding it but I k~zoqv, that when the priest elevates the Host, the wine changes into the blood of Christ and the bread into His body."

"But you can't explain it."

"No. A convert might be able to explain it. They're the ones \vho understand every small thing about the Catholic religion. I don't know why."

"Do you know any converts?"

"No. Yes, I do. She never said she was a convert, hut I

kilos. she is."

"How do you know " "By the way she talks."

"How does she talk?"

"Well, she lives down the block and sometimes I walk home from church with her and this lady will tell me how she went to confession the night before and what penance she got and how she went to bed early so that she wouldn't forget and take a drink of water after midnight.

Then she'll say she took communion.

~ 2]4 1 (I always say, I received.) And she'll talk a long time about hoNv wonderful she feels after confession and communion."

"Don't you feel wonderful afterward?"