Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

[302] Though the army is in ~lover, sang out a voice, and everybody else sang the next line:

'Twas the navy brought them over.

And everybody agreed songfully in the punch line that the navy would bring them back.

Maggie-Now saw Sonny's sister dance by with Cholly.

"Look!" called out Gina. She pointed to the chevron on Cholly's sleeve. "Private first class!" she called out proudly.

Cholly whirled Gina around so he could talk to Maggie-Now over Gina's shoulder. "I fought and I fought,"

he hollered, "but I had to go anyhow."

"Yeah," said a soldier, evidently a buddy of Cholly's.

"Yeah! He fought a good clean war up there at Yaphank."

Someone started to sing: You're ire the army now. There were cries of "Shut up!" and "Drop dead!" and "You should live so long! "

The next time Gina danced around, Maggie-Now called out: "How's Sonny?"

"As if you cared," said Gina bitterly.

Maggie-Now waited until Gina danced around again. "I

ask as a friend," she shouted above the noise.

Gina made Cholly pause and they stood, swaying to the rhythm of "There Are Smiles," while she answered Maggie-Now. "Strange as it may seem to you, Mis. Bassett, he's just fine."

"Meow!" said Cholly, and they danced away.

"It's late, Denny," said Maggie-Now. "Let's go home."

Then it was Thanksgiving again, and soon after that MaggieNow lost her job. The manager of the movie house told her that the veterans were coming home and needed jobs and it was only right that he give her job to a guy who was willing and ready to die to make The World Slfe for Democracy. Maggie-Now agreed that she felt the same way.

"Yeah," said the manager, "they fought for the privilege of eating apple pie and watching the Dodgers play ball.

And the least we can do. ."

"That's right," agreed Maggie-Now.

She wasn't worried. She had fifteen hundred dollars in the bank [3 3]

saved from her salary and the rent from the rooms upstairs. If Claude came back. . if, and if he didn't get work right away, there was enough money to go on for a while without her father getting nasty about finances.

It was December. There wasn't much snow. One day it did snow real hard but it changed to rain. Then it snowed again a little and for three days it snowed on and off.

Maggie-Now did not believe that Claude would come back. What did she have to go on? True, he had come back last winter, but then he had been free to go away in the first place. He had come back because he wanted to marry her then. But now. .

Still, she waited for him, pretending…. Each night at ten, she dressed warmly and went out on the streets, walking for blocks in the direction he had come from the year before. Then she'd go home, prepare for bed, put on her white robe, go out and sit at the window, brushing her hair, and wait. No, she didn't expect him to come back, but the waiting for him, the pretending that he might come back, gave her a kind of surcease.

One night she was out walking. The snow had been around for days now and she told herself there was no rule that he would come back with the snow. She heard her name spoken in his voice but there was no one on the street. I'm getting queer, she thought, hearing voices when there is no one here.

"And where did you get that funny hat?"

She turned around. He had come up behind her from the opposite direction. She looked at him, then put her hands over her face and wept. He took her in his arms and comforted her in the old way.

"I know, I know. There, now. There, Margaret, there, MaggieNow."

"If you had only sent a line, a note, just a card with your name on it. . something that I could have hoped on,"

she wept.

"I know, I know. Someday when we are old and have run out of things to talk about, I'll tell you all about it.

Why, I must. ."

"If you go away again, please, please, oh, Claude, tell me first. I won't keep you, I won't hold you, I won't. ."

"If I go again, will you come with me, Margaret?"

"Yes! Yes! Anywhere. . anyplace just so we are together."

[3 4] He had brought back two small steaks which were wrapped up and pushed in his coat pocket. She made coffee and prepared to fry the steaks. He emptied his pockets and placed nearly thirty dollars on the table.

"I earned it," he said, "and I want you to buy a dressing table so that, at night, I can lie in bed and watch you brush your hair and see you from the back and see your face in the mirror at the same time."

She put the coffeepot clown. He was sitting, she standing. She took his head in her hands and held it against her breast, but all she said was: "Oh, Claude!"

He asked about Denny and about her father and said: "I hope he doesn't wake up and come out here. I'm too tired to spar with him tonight. I'll take him on tomorrow."

"I'll see that he doesn't bother us," she said.

She went up to her father's room. She was going to tell him under no circumstances to come out into the kitchen, that Claude was back and they wanted to be alone and, if he wouldn't let them be alone, she would leave with Claude immediately.

"Papa, wake up!" He groaned. She shook him awake.

"Now what?" he said irritably.

"Claude is back and. ."

"What?" he shouted.

"Sh! Don't holler. The tenants. ."

"The hell with the tenants! " he shouted louder. "What did you say?"

"Claude just came home and I want you. ."

He jumped out of bed. "If you think for one minute I'm going down there and give him the big welcome and sit there half the night talking to that bastid. ." He was ranting and raving and cursing and stamping his foot like Rumpelstiltskin, the dwarf in the fairytale.

The tenant occupying the rest of the apartment banged on the wall, and yelled: "A little quiet in there. We want to sleep."

"Drop dead!" Pat yelled back.

"Yeah?" came the weary voice of the wife. "You drop dead!"

Pat shook his fist at the wall and shouted: "I'll bury youse all!"

After a while, Maggie-Now got him bedded down and quieted.

[3 5] When she got back to the kitchen, Denny was standing there in his pajamastalking a blue streak. Claude, almost asleep, was nodding his head from time to time.

". . Ieft back and I went to summer school and got promoted on prohibition" (he meant probation), "and I

belong to a gang, The Rotten Roosters, and we got a password…."

"Denny," she said sharply, "what are you doing out of bed?"

"I got up to say hello to Claude."

"Say good night."

"Good night."

"Now get back to bed."

"But. ."

"Don't let me tell you again," she threatened. He went back to bed.

Claude fell asleep while he was eating his steak. She got up and pulled him to his feet. She pulled one of his arms over her shoulder and got him into the bedrom.". .

sleepy," muttered Claude. "Don' know why. . getting older. ."

She sat him on the bed and got his pajamas from under the pillow where she always kept them. She got her nightgown from under the other pillow. But Claude had keeled over and was sound asleep. She pulled back the covers, got his legs up onto the bed, pulled his shoes off, and, not bothering to try to undress him, she got him under the covers. She undressed. She thought of the half-eaten food on the table and the unbanked fire and she didn't care. It was the first time she'd ever left the kitchen untidy.