Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

She frowned over Denny's poor report card. "Oh, Denny, if you get left back again, what will Claude say when he gets home? He'll be so disappointed."

". . every day, like clockwork, he'd show up for a pack of cigarettes and a paper."

"He's gone on one of his trips, Mr. Brockman. He'll be back again in the fall."

"Don't ask me how I know, Aunt Lottie. I just know he'll come back. In the war, women had to wait for their men to come back. I can wait, too."

". . anything I can dot Father, to fill in the time until my husband comes back."

"Perhaps Miss Doubleday over at the settlement house could use some help," suggested Father Flynn.

"You mean hand sewing? Oh, yes, I could, Miss Doubleday. I could teach them hemstitching and darning and fagoting and how to make buttonholes. I'd love it!

Two hours, one night a week? That would be just fine!

Only I must tell you that I'd have to give up the class in November when my husband comes home from his trip."

"You see, Annie, I kno x. Because if he wasn't coming back, he would have taken me witl' him."

~ 3~8 1 "But, Jan, she knows he comes back again."

"Do I fight with you about it, Annie? Sure, he comes back. Like a bad penny, he always comes back."

"He'll never come back," said Pat to Mick Mack. "Never!

When he knew I was onto him, he got out before I had a chance to throw him out.

"You know, it got so I couldn't sit and talk with him no more. He gave me the willies. He asked them questions about me mother and did I remember me father what died before I was born and did I know where all me brothers was. He eats off-a people was the way I

fingered it out. He keeps chewing away at me life till he's got it all for hisself, but he don't give me nothing of his life; like where he ~ as born and where his relations is now."

"Like that pitcher I seen," said Mick Mack. "Where them zombies climb out-a their coffins nights and go upstairs and eat the blood off-a people what's sleeping in their bed."

"You danm fool!" said lent, contemptuously.

Maggie-Now was so sure Claude was coming back that she prepared for his return the day after he left. She sponged and pressed his new suit and hung it in the closet with a sheet over it to keep it dust free. She shined his new shoes and wrapped them in newspapers. She washed and ironed his few shirts and wrapped them in tissue paper and put them away in his drawer. She knitted a dark maroon tie for him and two pair of socks. She washed and ironed his palamas and put them under his pillow and kept them there.

She made a sort of shrine of the little dressing table he'd given her. On it, she placed the little red suitcase he'd given her, The Book of Everything with his autograph, and the postcard with its message, Wait for me.

While she waited, she filled in her days as best she could. She visited Lottie each first and third Sunday of the month, and Annie each second and fourth She had her sewing class, and nearly every Saturday afternoon she had the little girl sewers over to her house for hot chocolate and crackers.

Again she took care of Tessie and Albie during Holy Week and, when Annie came each afternoon to pick up the children, she and

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~`Iaggie-Now had coffee and cake together or some little snack, and their friendship grew stronger.

She sat in church one Sunday afternoon and saw Gina Pheid married to her Cholly. Outside the church, she shook Cholly's hand and kissed Gina and wished them both luck. Gina invited her to the reception but Maggie-Now didn't go.

A month later, at Mass, she heard the banns read for Thomas Pheid and Evelyn Delmar. She wondered whether that was the girl who had once given Sonny the go-by because he didn't have money to spend on her. I ler name sounded like the name of a girl who liked spenders, thought Maggie-Now.

Maggie-Now did not go to see Sonny married. Not that she was jealous or anything. she assured herself, and not that she didn't know he'd marry sometime or other. She just didn't want to see him be married.

Denny caused her some concern that spring. He played hooky from school a couple of times. The first time Father Flynn brought him home; he had found Denny wandering around the streets. The next time, the truant officer brought him home and told Maggie-Now to see that it didn't happen again.

"There's a law, you know," he said.

For the rest of the term, she walked to school with Denny each morning and stood outside and waited until he was safely inside before she went home.

When she told Lottie, Lottie said that it was nothing.

All boys played hooky now and then. Even her Widdy had. "I remember like it was yesterday. Timmy caught him and the next morning Timmy saicl: 'I want you to play hooky today and if I ketch you sneaking in school, I'll give you a licking you'll never forget.' So every morning, he made Widdy go out and play hooky, and the first thing you know, Wi,ldy was sneaking back in school and he said:

'Don't tell Pop that I'm going to school.' "That Timmy!" Lottie smiled a tender, faraway smile of affectionate memory.

Annie said it was nothing. Even Jamesie, she said, good as he was, played hooky once in a while. "Boys is men,"

said Annie. "They like to go away from the woman folks sometimes. Like your man: he plays hooky." Then, worried that she had made an

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untactful remark, she put her hand on Maggie-Nov.~'s arm and smiled beseechingly.

"Yes, Annie That's right." Maggie-Now smiled hack.

She pried ten dollars out of her father and sent Denny to camp that summer for two weeks. Denny had been gone but two days when Maggie-Now got so lonesome that she went over to Lottie's to try to get her to stay v.

ith her.

"You've never been to our house, Aunt Lottie, since the day I was christened. You can have Denny's room. I'll cook the things you like. You owe me a long visit."

"No," said Lottie. "I got to be here when Timmy gets home nights." Maggie-Now looked startled. "Don't look at me so funny. I only make believe he's c oming home. I

put out the pan of hot water with Epsom salts for his poor feet right in front of his chair. Don't think I'm funny in the head. When I was a little girl I used to make believe I had a little girl friend. I even gave her a name, Sherrv.

And I'd have a little tea party and talk to her and make believe she talked to me. Well, that's how I do with Timmy. Thanks anyway, Maggie-Now, dear. But I'd get homesick if I went away."

Well, Denny didn't finish out his two weeks at camp.

He'd been gone only four days when Maggie-Now got a letter from the head counselor saying Denny wanted to come home; that he would not participate in the activities of the camp, had to be coaxed to eat; and his tentmates said he cried nights and said he wanted his sister. The counselor wrote that she was sending him home.

Maggie-Now knelt before Denny and put her arms around him when she noticed that his face had gotten thin in the time he was away and that there were black circles under his eyes.

"Why didn't you want to stay at camp, Denny?" she asked.

"Because I wanted to c ome home.'' "Did you have fun, swimming and. ."

"I wanted to be home with you."

"Denny, you're a big boy now, almost nine years old.

You shouldn't be so dependent on me."

"I don't want to go no place if you don't come along."

Maggie-Now knew that she shouldn't be thrilled because he needed her so much. But she fleas thrilled and moved.