Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

What will

~ 3~' 1 I do, she thought in panic, ~vLeiZ he gets trig and does»'"

need me ally more? Oh, I must have children. I must! I need so much to be needed.

She went to see Father Flvnn a few days later and asked him how she could go about adopting a baby.

"I'm afraid that's impossible, Margaret. Babies are not given out for adoption except to good devout Catholics."

"I try to be a good Catholic," she said.

"But your husband is non-Catholic." She hung her head.

"Couldn't I adopt a Protestant baby or a Jewish baby?"

"No, my child. Methodist orphanages permit only Methodists to adopt their children. And the Baptists and Lutherans and Episcopalians, the same. The Hebrew orphanages place their children with good, orthodox I

iebrew families. You understand, Margaret? "

"Yes, Father," she whispered.

"We have an orphanage out on the Island and it boards out some of its children with foster mothers. The foster mother is given an infant and keeps it, and gives it a mother's love and care until the child is six, when it is taken back by the orphanage and put into school."

She leaned forward, tense and pleading and with her clasped hands extended to him in appeal. "Oh, Father, could you. . would you ask. . please if I could have one?"

"You should have your own children, Margaret. You're young and strong and healthy…."

"But I don't have any! ' she said piteously.

"Be patient a while longer, my child. Pray to our Holy Mother. And make a Novena. I will say a prayer each day for your intention."

"Thank you, Father."

It was December and still there was no snow. Nobody wanted snow but everybody was worried, thinking there would be no white Christmas. Snow or no snow, Maggie-Now prepared each day for her husband's homecoming. He came back on a cold, crystal-clear night full of stars, in the middle of December.

When she saw him, she held out her arms and smiled.

She didn't ask him where he'd been. She didn't ask him never to leave her [392]

again. She hugged him tight and smiled and said: "What took you so long?" as though he had just stepped out an hour ago to go to the store.

She said: "I knew you were coming back. And I'm so happy."

She took him into the kitchen and shot home a small bolt she had set up some weeks before, so that her father or brother wouldn't walk in on them. He had brought home some meat: half a loin of pork.

"Pork?" she asked.

"Not pork. A symbo!. It means that technically I'm your provider."

"I'll cut off some for chops and broil them because it takes all day to roast pork and you have to have applesauce which I haven't got." He started to laugh. "All right," she said. "So I'm practical. Laugh all you want to."

He grabbed her and hugged her tight. She felt the pressure of the gold coin in his pocket. He didn't need it there, she thought. She unbuttoned his coat and took it off and hung it over the back of a chair. He had a package under his pullover sweater. She pulled it out.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Open it."

She did so. It was a beautiful kimono of jade green, dull silk. "Oh, how loNely. . lovely. ." she said. "Oh, Claude!"

"I thought it \vas time that my little Chinee had a kimono. Put it on, love."

It looked beautiful on her. She held out her arms so he could see how wide the sleeves were. She looked up into a sleeve. She sane the label, The Chinese liazaar. She couldn't read the street and number but the city was San Francisco.

So he was way out there, she thought.

She admired the kimono profusely and he admired her profusely and they had the broiled chops and coffee and he asked her what she had been doing with herself and she told him about the sewing class and Lottie and Annie and Dennv. It was as if he had been away for but a day.

Early the next morning, he put on his good suit and shoes and went out job hunting. She took the gold coin out of his old coat and wadded up his old suit and shoes and hid them on the top shelf 1,23 1

of Denny's closet. When he left in the spring, she wanted him to wear the good suit, because the old one was threadbare. Already, she was making preparations for his leaving in the spring.

He got a job on the third day out. He didn't say where or at what, but the first day he came home from work she saw tufts of cotton clinging to his shoulders. She smiled inwardly, but said nothing. He gave her his first week's pay, thirty dollars. The second payday fell on (Christmas Eve. He didn't bring home his pay. He had bought Christmas gifts with it.

"I noticed, old sir, that you do not have the pipe I gave you last year,' said Claude. "So I bought you another one.

Merry Christmas."

It was a cheap pipe in a cardboard box. Pat muttered a reluctant thanks anal, under his breath, he said: "The bastid!"

Claude gave Denny a Waterman fountain pen with a fourteenkarat-gold clasp. Pat eyed it enviously. Claude gave his wife a book. It was a beautiful book bound in smooth and supple blue leather, the pages were gold-edged and there was a fringed, blue satin page marker. The book was Sonnets from the Portuguese. Inside, in his fine hand, he had inscribed: Sonnets for my little Chinee and Love and Claude. At the bottom of the flyleaf he had w ritten: How do I love thee? Let one count the ways.

Then Denny and Claude went out to buy the Christmas tree and Maggie-Now got out the ornaments. Denny was allowed to stay up and help trim the Christmas tree inasmuch as now he was too big to believe in Santa Claus.

Pat sat in the kitchen with the boxed pipe in his hands. I

le was very angry because the pipe was too cheap to pawn.

It was as if the cardboard box was magic, because every time he opened the lid the word "bastid" came out of Pat's mouth. He promised himself that he'd find some way to get back at his son-in-law.

Maggie-Now called bedtime on Denny and Pat followed his son into the boy's bedroom. "I'll swap you this new pipe for that old fountain pen Claude gave you."

"I don't know what to do with a pipe," said Denny.

[324] "Blow bubbles."

"I'm too big to blow bubbles."

"You can take this pipe on the street and swap it for something. . marbles or a Daisy air rifle. It's a dear pipe."

"I'll go out and ask Maggie-No\v should I," said Denny hesitantly.

"Never mind! Never mind!" said Pat hastily. He went up to his room.

As they were preparing for bed, Claude told her casually that he was out of a job; it had been merely a Christmas job. She said that was all right and he said he'd get another job and she said she knew he would.

Claude didn't bother looking for another job. He again took to sitting at the window and at ten o'clock asking for a quarter for cigarettes and the paper. Maggie-Now didn't care. He'll be gone from me long eno?`g,'', she thought. I

want him here with rile all day the f ew weeks he's home.

One Monday morning early in February when Maggie-Now went up to wake her father, Pat said he wasn't going to work that day and not any day for two weeks.

"I'm on me vacation," he announced.

"Vacation?" she said aghast. "But you always take it in July."

"What do I do when I take it in July? I just sit by the winder in me stocking feet. If I got to sit through me vacation, I might as well sit in winter when it's cold outside anyhow."

"But. . but Claude's Income."