Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

The next day, he was gone.

THE next morning was one of those rare ones that come sometimes in early March when you had made up your mind that the long winter would never end. Sunshine burnished the hummocks of frozen slush in the gutters and there was a warm breeze.

Claude was late getting home from work that morning.

Denny was leaving for school and still Claude hadn't come home. MaggieNow went out on the stoop with Denny to see if Claude was coming. She sniffed the air. It smelled like freshly watered flowers. A breeze lifted a tendril of her hair and let it drop back against her cheek. She shivered in sensual delight. It felt like a lover's touch.

"Yes," she murmured.

"What?" asked Denny.

"It's a south wind."

1 Aft] "How do you know?"

"Because it's coming from South Brooklyn."

"Kin I stay home from school then?"

"I should say not! Get going." She gave him an affectionate whack on the backside to propel him on his way.

She put Claude's slowly frying bacon on the back of the stove. She put his rolls in the warming oven and threw the warming coffee away; she'd make fresh when he came in.

She told herself that, because it was such an unexpectedly wonderful day, he was walking part way before he took the trolley. She knew how excited he was about all weathers.

When he comes home, she thought, we'll lie in bed and talk about what a worzderfz~l day it is before we. .

The day wore on slowly and she began to believe that he wasn't coming home. She wished and wished that she knew what hotel he worked at. Why didn't she make him put the address in a sealed envelope and let her assure him that she wouldn't open it ever except in a terrible emergency?

From time to time, as she went about her routine household duties, a whinnying sound came from her like an animal in pain. And while she was washing Denny's lunch dishes, her throat got dry suddenly and tightened up and an ugly sound came from her: like an "ugh" when one is kicked suddenly in the stomach. She leaned way over and put her forehead down on the sink and sobbed loudly and hoarsely until she was exhausted. She went about her housework with violent tremblings in her stomach. If I was going to have a baby now, she thought, I'd lose it. And she started to cry again, knowing she was not going to have a baby and Claude would never come back and there never could be another man….

What d,d I say to hires? What did I do? Was it Papa?

Denny? Was it the house? That we could never be i?Z bed together all night like other husbands and wives and all we had was a few hours in the morning? Corpse back, come back, darling, she prayed, and we'll have our own home.

even if it's only one room somewhere….

Then she got the idea that he had died where he worked or was deathly sick and they didn't know where he lived because he never told people things like that. She washed her face with shaking [2941

hands and got her hat on. She was halfway to the trolley stop when she remembered that she didn't know where he worked and could not go to get him if he was sick.

Denny came home from school. "I got nought in arithmetic today," he announced, "and I got double homework."

"Do it! "

"I want to go out and play first."

"Do your homework!" she screamed.

"It's too hard. You got to help me."

"Let me alone!" she screamed.

This frightened the boy. "I'm going to get Claude," he said. He went to the bedroom.

"Claude's not here," she said.

"Where'd he go?" She didn't answer. She went into her room. Denny went out on the street.

The three of them sat down to a haphazard supper that night. "Hey, Papa," said Denny importantly, "Claude N'`,ent away."

Pat put his fork down. "So," he said. "So. Three months was all he could stand, hey? Well, if he thinks I'm going to support his wife. ." Maggie-Now pushed her plate away and ran into her bedroom and closed the door.

"What did I say?" asked Pat of Denny. He sounded genuinely bewildered.

Maggie-Now lay on her bed in the darkness. She did not know how long she had been there. The house was quiet.

She heard someone knock on the door. She jumped up, thinking it was news of Claude, but it was only a boy with a message from the movietheater manager. It was seven-thirty and the manager wanted to know why she Noms late.

"Tell him I'm sick," she said. "Tell him I'm sick. I can't come to work tonight."

She went into the kitchen to clear the table and wash the dishes. She saw Denny's books still strapped up and knew he had not yet done his homework. She looked in his bedroom. He wasn't there. She surmised he had gone out with his father.

Her father came in at eight-thirty. "Where's Denny? "

she asked.

"Why? Ain't 'he home? ' "I thought he was with you."

"Well, he ain't."

[297] Without bothering to put on her coat, she ran out into the night, which had turned cold after the warm day, looking for her brother. She found him at last, three blocks away. There was a corner candy store with a newsstand outside. Denny, with two bigger boys, stood just around the corner. As she waited to cross the street, she saw a man pick up a paper, throw down some coins and go on his way. One of the bigger boys, quick as a flash, darted out, snatched the coins and went back to the others. As she crossed the street, she saw another man take a paper and put down the money. She reached the stand in time to see Denny duck around and grab the pennies.

When he saw her, he was petrified with fright. She grasped his wrist tightly, held his clenched hand over the newsstand and hammered at his hand until he opened it and the pennies dropped back on the papers. The other kids ran away. She dragged him home. He cried all the way.

When she remembered the episode afterward, she was always glad that the candy-store man had been too busy with customers to notice what had been going on outside his store. He was a mean man and would not have hesitated at all to call the police.

Pat offered cruel reasons for why Claude had left her.

All the reasons were to Claude's discredit. From time to time, Denny asked when Claude was coming home. There was talk in the neighborhood. One woman spoke to her bluntly.

"I don't see your husband around no more."

"No," said Maggie-Now.

Others, more considerate, said nothing to her but discussed it with others. "He was never no good in the first place," was the verdict, "and she's well rid of the dirty, black Pratt-ess-stant."

One woman said to a neighbor: "Now I'm just as broad-minded as the next one. But there's always two sides to every story and I'd sure like to hear his side. The way I look at it, a man just don't get up and leave his wife for nothing."

Maggie-Now endured the gossip, real or imagined, and it neither added to, took from, nor diverted her from her grief.

On her monthly visit to Lottie, she had to tell her Claude had gone. Lottie waited a long time before she spoke. "You know what I think about him," she said. "But that's got nothing to do [298]

with the way you feel. I won't run him down. You get enough of that from your father. But tell me this: Before you married him and you had known for sure that he would leave you, would you have married him anyhow?"

"Yes," whispered Maggie-Now.

"Well, so in a way, you bought it and now you have to pay for it. Still and all, that don't make it easier. I felt the same way, almost, when Timmy left me that time to go back to Ireland. I thought maybe he wouldn't come back and then I thought, anyways, I was lucky that I had him for the time I did have him even if he never came back."