Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

— Hi] She sat at the kitchen table and gloated over the card.

She thought his handwriting was beautiful; like engraving on a wedding announcement. She smiled fondly at the picture: mountains and sky and river bathed in rose light.

The title said: Western Sunset.

She erased the smudge with a moistened eraser but the postmark got erased along with the smudge. She looked at the crumbs and thought sadly that now she'd never know what city it had been mailed from.

And he'll never tell me either, she thought.

Even though she had no idea when he'd be back, she started getting ready for him. She washed her hair and was so happy she hadn't had it bobbed because she felt that he wouldn't like it.

She held the card and pressed it to her cheek, thinking: His hand rested on it when he wrote it. He pressed the stamp down with his fingers. She envisaged him standing at a mailbox in some strange city, reading the card once more before he dropped it in the slot.

After she had braided and pinned up her hair, she sat down and wrote to Sonny.

. . honored. But I must tell you there is someone else and. .

She thought of writing: I hope we can still be friends, but she discarded the idea immediately. She knew they couldn't be friends. It had to be love between them or nothing.

But I wish I could keep him as a friend, she thought sadly. Someone to talk to, to smile at, to like the way I

talk, smile at and like Father Flynn and Mr. Van Clees.

His answer came. She read it through her tears.

. . so, like we say in France, Ah Reservoir. But honest, MaggieNow, dear, I wish you all the luck in the world….

She put this last letter with his other letters and his picture, and tied them up with a piece of blue baby ribbon from a discarded petticoat, and put the little packet in the box with her mother's rhinestone combs.

Sonny never wrote again. She missed getting his letters.

[262]

IN November, Maggie-Now got a job as night ticket seller in a neighborhoodmovie house. When Pat went out nights, Denny sat in the back row of the cheater and watched the movies. He liked his sister's job fine.

ILlaggie-Now had an agreement with her father that he go out on Friday nights so Denny wouldn't have to stay up until ten on school nights.

Maggie-Now earned twenty dollars a week and saved most of it. She knew Claude was coming back and she knew they'd be married and she wanted to buy a dress for her wedding and some household things for their home.

She liked selling tickets and chatting with the customers.

When the weather got cold (there was no heat in the ticket booth), she brought a filled hot-water bottle from home, took her shoes off and rested her stockinged feet on the hot bottle. That kept her warm all evening.

Pat ate Thanksgiving dinner at Mrs. O'Crawley's with Mick Mack. Since he was spending the evening there, Maggie-Now took Denny to work with her. He'd seen the picture and didn't want to see it again. He stood in the booth and Maggie-Now let him tear the tickets off the roll. He got sick of that and said he was cold. She gave him a dime and told him to get a hot chocolate to warm up. He made three trips that night to warm up. The last trip, he brought two wafers back to Maggie-Now.

"I thought maybe you vitas hungry," he said.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving, it started to snow as evening came on. When l\laggie-Now closed her booth at ten o'clock, the streets had a covering of snow. She looked in on her father. He was rolled up in his blankets and snoring warmly. She checked on Denny. I lis blankets Nvere on the floor and he slept with his knees drawn up to his chin and his arms wrapped around his [26:3]

chest. She covered him securely, leaving only his head exposed. His head still looked like a baby's head: tender and vulnerable.

She looked down at him and thought: I want all my children to look like Claude, except the next-to-last one. I

want him to look like Denny, and the last one of all I want to look like me.

She undressed but didn't feel like going to bed. She put her Navaho-blanket bathrobe over her warm flannel nightgown and got into her felt bedroom slippers. She went into the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea. After she'd had the tea, she banked the fire in the kitchen range, got her hairbrush and sat by the window in the front room to brush her hair. The room was comfortable.

I here was still some fire left in the parlor stove.

That's one thing you can say for Papa, she thought. He does keep the fires up. I hope the snow doesn't get too deep.

How he hates to shovel snow! He'll go on sick leave if it's deep and I'll have to go down to the section office and lie and say he's sick and the super will say, like always, sure he's sick sick of working, and whoever is standing around will laugh….

She wanted him to go to work the next day because she planned to start making a new green challis dress to wear for Claude's return and she didn't want him hanging around the house. He'd spoil her pleasure in the making of the dress by making remarks like: "Another new dress?"

"Closet's full of dresses already."

"Think money grows on trees?"

And she'd say, "Oh, Papa!"

She smiled and decided she wouldn't let her father bother her if he were home the next day. I'll just think of Claude, she decided, and how happy I am because he's coming back.

She brushed her hair and watched the soundless movement of the snow coming down and her brush strokes took the down rhythm of the falling snow. She looked at the flames flickering behind the isinglass panes of the stove door. She recalled her wonderful delight, as a child, at seeing the fire glow through the isinglass.

What a pity, she thought, that you get used to things and never see them again the way you saw them for the first time.

[z64] She braided her hair, one braid over each shoulder, and tied the ends with rubber bands so the braids wouldn't unravel in the night. She leaned forward, idly swinging the brush between her knees, grateful for the warmth of the fire and aware of the quiet beauty of the night, and she had a feeling of peace and blessed relief; the kind of humble and thankful relief that comes to an anxious parent when a sick child's terrifyingly high temperature starts dropping back to normal.

The fire died down, the room started to get cold and reluctantly she decided to go to bed. She checked the front door to see if it was locked and noticed that the snow had drifted against the doorsill outside. She got the broom and swept it away before her as she went out on the stoop. She stood in the cleared place, hands resting on the broom handle, and absorbed the snowy night.

Silent night, beautiful night, and for such a little time.

Tomorrow the loveliness would be ugliness. The snow, with all the debris of the street beneath it, would be shoveled into hummocks at the curb. It would thaw a little, freeze a little and be veined with chimney soot and decorated with bits of dirty paper frozen into it and dogs would urinate against the peaks and leave behind dirty, mustard-colored patches.

Even now, the lovely baby-blanket look of the snow was being defiled by a man walking down the middle of the street and leaving dirty holes where his feet had stepped.

Maggie-Now thought he must be crazy he was wearing neither hat nor overcoat.

Suddenly, in her breast, where she judged her heart to be, something clicked out of place and then clicked back.