Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

Mark, the four-year-old, sat in the high chair eating his bowl of oatmeal with soft sliced bananas on top. From time to time, gently and patiently, she transferred the spoon from his left hand to his right. Just as patiently, the little boy transferred the spoon back to his left hand.

John, not quite a year old, was in her arms. She fed him with a spoon. He inhaled the oatmeal, gummed the soft banana and tried his best to drink milk from his mug with a sucking motion.

~ 347 ~

lye never took his eyes off Maggie-Now's face. He stared at her unblinkingly, moving his eyes only when she leaned over to change Mark's spoon.

The children were quiet children. Mark seldom spoke and the baby seldom cried. Mark obeyed any order instantly. The instant they were put in their cribs, they closed their eyes. They had been well trained at the home.

Maggie-Now had been astonished at the way Pat took the news of the foster children. She'd had them three days when he came home from Mrs O'Crawley's. She told him all in one sentence and all in one breath. She ended up saying she would get five dollars a week to buy their food.

"For the two of them"' he asked.

"Five dollars each."

"Say! That's all right," he said. "Them two kids won't eat up ten dollars of food a week."

"The money is for the children and the children only,"

she said firmly.

Who knew the workings of Pat's mind? He got the idea that Maggie-Now got the babies to take the place of Claude and that now Claude was out of her life forever.

He explained it to Mick Mack: "Me daughter says: '1 got the chilthren in place of you.

And now when you go away don't come back no more.' And he says: 'So now the chilthren have taken me place and I am no longer wanted."' "And you living at the O'Crawleys' the time he says that!" said Mick Mack. He was not doubting his friend's veracity. It was merely one of the little man's automatic compliments.

"I don't have to be Johnny-on-the-spot," said Pat icily, "to know what goes on in me own home. Anyways, warm weather comes and the bastid says: 'Nooky!' NO, that ain't the word. Yeah! 'Chinook! "' "And what would that be ~meaning?"

Pat had to think quick. "Why. . why, it would mean 'so long!' In the Eskimo language," he added. The little man looked as though he doubted that, but Pat clinched it. "It stands to reason: First he says: 'Chinook!' Then he goes away. What else could it mean?"

EMS] It cannot be said that l'at fell in love with the children;

he hadn't even fallen in love with his own children when they were small. But he got on with them; especially Mark. Pat was garrulous and, since his retirement, he had the whole day to talk in and Maggie-Now was not one to sit and listen. But little Mark listened. Pat told the boy all the things he thought his daughter should know about the beautiful room he'd had at the widow's; the exquisite meals she'd fed him and, yessir, he'd marry her in a minute but what would his daughter and son do without him? Although he spoke to the little boy, he raised his voice so's l\laggieNow could hear him.

The little boy didn't know what Pat was talking about most of the time, but he listened with flattering concentration.

As for Denny, he was neither interested in nor indifferent to the newcomers. He was tot, old to play with them and too young to feel protective toward them. He gave them each a nickname: the baby, "Pee Wee," and Mark, "Snodg7rass." That was the total of his relationship to the orphans.

Lottie was ecstatic abol t it. "Now you'll have one of your own. I never known it to fail. As soon as a woman adopts a baby, bang! She gets in the family way. You wait and see."

"I didn't adopt. ."

"It amounts to the same thing, Maggie-Now."

"I've given up hope," said Maggie-No\v. "Soon I'll be in my thirties and it'll be too late."

"Don't talk foolish. Your mother had Denny when she was in the change. Take me: I didn't have Widdy till I was thirty-two. Of course, though, I didn t get married until I

was thirty-one. I'll never forget it. We W: IS on this picnic up the Hudson, and when I hollered to the boat that we was going to get married, the captain said all our troubles should be little ones. I wish you could've seen Timmy's fact! Well, so we was married…."

And Lottie was off, red iving again her wonderful life with her sweetheart.

The nurse came once a month to check the children and the cribs and the condition o f the home. Her report was always favorable; extremely so. On one visit, she said: "Mrs. Bassett, you ought to have a furnlce put hi, you know. Your heating

[,49]

would not be adequate if we happened to have a severe winter. It would really pay you. You could get more rent for your upstairs apartment, you know." Maggie-Now said she'd talk to her father about it.

Fall came. Maggie-Now told her father he'd have to go to Mrs. O'Crawley when Claude came back.

"He ain't coming back!" said Pat.

"He always comes back in the fall."

"But you threw him out when you got the kids." By now, Pat believed the story he'd told Mick Mack.

"I did no such thing! That's all in your imagination."

"Well, I won't go."

"But all summer you re saying how wonderful it was there and how good the cooking was and how much you liked it."

"I still won't go."

"But why, Papa? "

"Because them orphans need me here."

"Oh, Papa!"

The inevitable time came. She let her father eat his supper first before she told him she had made all the arrangements and that Mrs. O'Crawley expected him in the morning. Without a word, he got up and went up to his room. He signaled Denny to follow him.

Upstairs he said: "Denny, get Father Flynn."

"You sick, Papa?"

"Don't tell him I'm sick." (Pat didn't want Extreme Unction again; that was too close to dying.) "Say I am troubled and need me priest. Here's a quarter and don't tell your sister you're going for the priest."

Maggie-Now opened the door. "Why, Father! What a nice surprise!" Then she sat` he was carrying the Host. She preceded him into the house walking backward.

"Dennis said your father needed me."

"I. .] didn't know." she stammered. "I did not prepare

. . forgive me, Father. .' She took him up to Pat's room and left after setting up the crucifix and lighting two candles.

"You are not ill, my son?" asked Father Flynn gently. L3so] "Only in me heart and me soul," said Pat. "Father, tonight me only daughter says to me: 'Papa, pack up and leave the house.' I says. .

"Then," continued Father Flynn, "get out of bed, get on your knees and make a good confession."

"But. . but. ." spluttered Pat.

"A good confession," said the priest.

They knelt on the floor. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. 'Tis one year since me last c onfession."

Pat paused. That, he thought, will get me five Hail Marys and five Our Fathers to start or with.

When it was all over and Father Flynn was packing his bag, the priest said: "Patrick, have you ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf?"

"What boy? " asked Pat.

Father Flynn told him the story. When he had finished, Pat was indignant at the fabled boy. "Was he mine," said Pat, "I'd take a stick to him fooling good people that way."

"Someday, you'll cry wolf," said the priest, "and nobody will come. Yes, someday you'll cry wolf once too often."

Surreptitiously, Pat pressed his knuckles three times against the wooden headboard of his bed.