Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

steady job. And Claude brings home money. .

sometimes. And he always works for a Mole after he comes home and gives me every cent…."

"You would surely get an 'A' on finances and on a suitable home," he said with a smile. "Of course, there must be no history of sickness in the family, like tuberculosis or congenital. . well, social diseases."

"Oh, we're all so healthy," she exclaimed. "Nobody's ever been sick in the family with anything catching, except the time Denny and Papa had measles."

"That would be an easy 'A,"' he conceded. "However.

" he paused a long time before he continued. "The woman must have, or must have had, children of her own. She must be rearing, or have reared, children of her ov. n."

"I brought up Denny ever since he was born," she said.

"I have experience."

"Of her own," he repeated.

"I see." All the eagerness left her and she bowed her head again.

He rose, beginning to terminate the visit. She rose with him. "But you're a good mother, Margaret, even if you have no children of your own. If you have no child of your own within a year, come to me again. I'll speak to Mother Vincent de Paul and see what I can do. You can wait a year, Margaret?"

Yes, Maggie-Now could wait a year. She was used to waiting.

Denny got through that year without getting into too much trouble. He was grudgingly promoted. The only thing, he took to hanging out on the streets with a bunch of slightly older kids. He'd stay out until ten o'clock at night if he could get away

. .

with It.

Claude came home with the winter. There was that same tender reunion. He brought her a pair of white buckskin moccasins to wear as bedroom slippers. The name of a shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was stamped on the inner sole. At least, she thought, he divas where it divas warm. The gold piece was still pinned in his coat and she knew he had not been in want.

Their reunion was tender and their love-making seemed new again, the way it had been on their honeymoon night.

He worked a few weeks, someplace or other. He gave her all [333]

of his pay except the money he used for Christmas presents. He gave her a singing canary in a lovely bamboo cage. She named him Timmy. It was a nerd cross for Pat to bear. He was superstitious and instinctively his lips formed the words "rest his soul" whenever she called the bird by name.

Pat kept up a nudging feud with Claude all winter. To compensate, Denny openly worshiped Claude, and worked hard in school for good marks to get Claude's approbation.

It was a wonderfully happy winter for Maggie-Now. But he left again on that day when that certain wind called to him.

And she knew another year would pass and she would have no child.

Now when Maggie-Nt~w made her visits to Lottie, she was, in a way, visiting Timmy, too. Lottie acted as though Timmy were in the same room with them and she had stopped saying, "I make believe."

"Well, Aunt Lottie, I guess I'll start for home before the rain comes."

"Oh, it's not going to rain. L)o you think it's going to rain, Timmy?" She spoke to the empty chair. She waited.

"There! Timmy says he thinks the rain will hold off until nighttime."

Once Widdy was there and he drew Maggie-Now aside.

"I just happened to drop in," he said, "and Mom was eating her supper. But there was a full plate where Pop used to sit, and you know, Maggie, she was talking to him just like he was sitting there eating supper with her? Poor Mom!"

"Oh, I don't know," said Maggie-Now. "She's found a way to be near Timmy."

Annie had her worries that year. Tessie was growing too fast. She was thin and frai I and coughed all the time, Annie said. Maggie-Now assured Annie that Tessie would be all right when summer came and she: ould get out in the air and sun. Maggie 1 7541 Now took ~I essie over to Dr. Scalani but he wasn't there. A young Dr. Mahony, who had taken his place, said Dr. Scalani had gone into some other business. And have this prescription filled and see that the little girl gets plenty of rest and lots of milk, he said.

Maggie-Now was curious about Dr. Scalani and she went to Mr. Van Clees, who knew everything that went on in the neighborhood.

"That doctor goes by the school now to learn how to take care of the dead. He marries the widow of the undertaker on Humbol' Street when is a year the undertaker is dead. This for respect. Then he takes the undertaking business."

"Why, he must be in his fifties," said Maggie-Now.

"So; For twenty years Dr. Scalani goes by a woman's house every Sunday. And now, he don't marry her. She too is old as him."

"Poor thing!" said Magrie-Now.

(Dr. Scalani married the undertaker's widow. A week later, neighbors smelled gas coming from one of the flats of a side-street tenement. They broke open the locked door and smashed the kitchen windows. Dodie, the doctor's dressmaker friend, was lying on the black leather lounge. There was a small item in the paper.

. . fell asleep on the couch while waiting for the coffee to boil. It boiled over and extinguished the flame.

Neighbors became aware of the odor of escaping gas.

When the police arrived, it was too late to. .)

Denny and some other kids stood in front of Golend's Paint Shop. Out front was a big plate on a tripod. A scar of healing cement ran across what looked like a bad break in the plate. A chain went through a hole drilled in the plate and a heavy iron weight hung from the chain. It said on the plate that the cement was like iron and would hold the hundred-pound weight without breaking.

"I bet that plate would break right away if you even touched it," said Denny.

"Go 'head, then. Try it." One of the boys handed Denny a baseball bat. Denny tapped the plate.

Sure, it broke. It was made of cast iron, enameled white.

[33S 1 Maggie-Now heard tile hubbub on the street. She went to the window to look. To her horror, she saw Denny being escorted home by a tall policeman. A bunch of kids and some adults were following after. When they got to the stoop, the young cop dispersed the crowd with a genial: "Why don't you all beat it, now?"

They stood in the front room. The cop removed his hat.

Maggie-Now looked up at him. He was a clear-eyed young man with a nice, homely Irish face. He told about the plate.

"Golend was all for sending the kid to the electric chair," said the cop. "I talked him out of it. I said, let the kid's mother punish him. So here he is."

"I don't know how to thank you' Officer…. Anyone else would arrest him…."

"Oh, I expect to hate kids of my own, someday," he said.

"I \vouldn't want a boy of mine crucified just because it was vacation and the kid was full of beans and got into mischief."

"I don't know how t J thank you," she said again.

"Say, you look awful young to be the mother of such a big boy."

"I'm his sister."

"Well, that's fine! Just fine!" He grinned down at her.

She looked up at him with her wide smile.

After the policeman had left, Maggie-Now started in on lecturing Denny. But her heart wasn't in it. She kept thinking how nice it was to have a man look at her with admiration.

The following Friday, she went to the fish store to buy a flounder for supper. She was waiting for the man to dress it into fillets when the policeman came in. The fish-store man's wife smiled at the cop.