Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

And this became the pattern of their lives.

He'd come home with the first snow and bring her something and he'd work a week or two and then not work and she'd be happy treasuring each day of his being there, and he was always so tender toward her and so kind to Denny and so patient with her father. And it was all so u onderful because she knew it was for such a very little time.

Then would come that day in March a day like no other day. The next day, there might be a blizzard, but on this day there would be that sweet south wind. And people would walk along the street with their coats hanging open and a newspaper on somebody's stoop would unfold itself and its sheets would swoop into the air like kites.

And Claude would be restless and open the window and lean out and feel the wind on his face and close his eyes as though in ecstasy and listen as though he heard a faraway and well-beloved voice calling him. He'd whisper: Chinook, and bow his head as though making a promise.

I-hat was the day he'd leave her.

As he sat by the window in the winter, looking out on the street and UK, at the grey skies, was he waiting. .

waiting. . for that day and that feeling he'd get that told him there was a chinook wind blowing over the mountains of Montana and that it was time for him to leave? And as he sat there, silent, waiting, watching, what was in his mind?

[329] Did he dream great dreams of prairies with the wheat like bowing gold in the winds? Or how, where the great Rockies pierced the sky, you hall to believe in God because the world was so grand? Did he get lo the old Southwest and believe that he had walked into Spain? Did he think of a time he had followed a river to find out where it began or where it ended? Did he recall standing on a beach somewhere in southern Florida and looking out over the wide Atlantic Ocean and thinking that it was the same ocean that he mzelled in Brooklyn just before it rained? And if he started wall ing north along the beach, in time he'd come to Rockaway just an hour away from his dear love?

Did he go because those great dreams led him on? Or was it, as Father Flynn had deduced when he first spoke to Claude, that he roamed the country trying to find a name, a place or a human soul who would tell him who he was, what he was, where he had come from? Was he looking. . searching for his birthright? Did he think of that in his hours by the window in the winter?

Or did he sit there all winter with no such thoughts, no such dreams waiting only for cogs within him to mesh and put into motion that slow, patient walk that would propel him across the country for no reason at all except that that was his destiny?

No one knew. He told no one what his thoughts were.

When her father lashed out as he did from tone to time and called Claude unspeakable names, Maggie-Now defended her love and tried to explain to her father that he roamed away because he was in love with the country, "Its rocks and rills," she quoted from a song she used to sing in school; because he was in love with rivers and mountains and cities….

But Pat had his own version of where Claude spent his wandering months. He told no one but Mick black.

"He's got me poor daughter fooled," said Pat. "The bastid! The innocent girl thinks he goes away to look at the sky and smell the flowers. But I knov. better. You see, I'm the one what knows what men is. I'm a man meself."

He waited.

"You are that!" said Mick Mack emphatically.

"So I wouldn't be surprised a-tall if he had another woman over in Jersey or somewheres. And he lives with her until cold weather comes when he has to put coal in the furnace and carry out the

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ashes. Then he comes back to me ~\laggie-Now and stays with her till it gets warm again and the furnace is out in Jersey. And I wouldn't be surprised either if he ain't got three or four kids by this here woman."

"Ah, poor, poor Maggie- Now," said Mick Mack.

"Me daughter don't want none of your sympathy," said Pat coldly.

~ ClIAPTI,R FORTY-SIX ~ SHE missed him, as she would always miss him. But missing him had become part of her life now and she was able to stand it more or less. . if she kept busy and didn't think about it too much. But she never adjusted herself to not going to bed with him. As far as sex went, her time with him was very wonderful. For a few months each year, she had a fulfilling and contented love life. The lack of it anguished her terribly physically, emotionally and mentally.

She tried to fill her life with substitutes. The sewing class again; the bimonthly visits to Lottie and Annie;

stopping in at his store to exchange gossip with Van Clees;

scrubbing and polishing up her home; shopping carefully and economically for family food and necessities;

preparing meals carefully; going to Mass every day; getting Denny ready for his Confirmation; seeing to it that Denny served as altar bov at half a dozen Masses because she thought every Catholic boy should have the high and humble honor of serving as an acolyte sometime during his youth.

(Of course, Pat had something to say about that. "Don't try to make a priest out of the boy," he said.)

Maggie-Now ran into Cdna on the street. Gina was pushing a beautiful white perambulator. Gina's baby was dressed like a valuable doll in lace and ribbons. The blanket, of fine angora wool, had been knitted on needles as thin as hatpins. The blanket cover was shell-pink silk topped with a pink satin bow. A pink rattle, with hand-painted blue forget-me-nots, hung by a pink

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ribbon from a strut of ~ he perambulator hood.

"How beautiful she is," said Maggie-Now, "and how beautifully you keep her."

"You only have yot r first baby once in your life," said Gina. "My mother says wait ll I have three or four. I won't be so particular."

"What's her name?"

"Regina. After me. But Cholly you know how Cholly is? He calls her Reggie. Honest! My mother has fits!

Reggie! And, oh! Ev's expecting in Octcber."

"Ev? "

"Evelyn. You know. Sonny's wife?"

"Oh! "

"You better catch up. Maggie. When you got married, I thought you'd have a baby every year, the way you're so religious and the way you're built for having children."

"Yes. Well. ." Maggie-Now could think of nothing to say.

"Come see us sometime, Maggie. We often speak of you."

"Thanks, I will." (But she knew she wouldn't.)

Soon after that, she went to see Father Flynn about taking in some orphans to live w ith her.

". . and it's been a year, Father, since I asked you."

"The home has strict rules, Margaret. It will not give children to a family living in a flat or apartment. It has to be a house and yard. Of course you have that. And the child or children must occupy a separate room in the house."

"I have an empty room waiting."

"The home pays five dollars a week for each child. No foster mother must profit from that; nor divert the money to her own uses. It is for the child's food and necessities.

Therefore, there must be proof that the husband works and has a steady income."

She bowed her hea.l and squeezed her hands together in anguish. She did not ha\ e that kind of husband. The priest's heart went out to her.

"Of course, in the case of a widow, a son or daughter living at home and supporting the mother. . or if she has a small legacy. i" "I own my own home," said Maggie-Now, with eager hope, "and I have rental property and it's my money and Papa has a F33'1