Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

"Why? "

"Because I love you and could never love another man in the way I love you. Because I slept with you and could never sleep with another man. And then, there's no divorce in the Catholic Church."

"The Church cannot prevent a legal divorce."

"No. But what good would it do? I couldn't ever remarry in the Catholic Church. I wouldn't want to marry any other way because it would be adultery."

"Nonsense! "

"Adultery. Yes! According to my Church."

He thought on that for a while. She put some more coals on the fire and basted the duck which was roasting in the oven.

"We are married then for life," he said.

"For eternity."

"That is, married until one of us dies. I am your husband. You love your husband."

"I love you, Claude. I do."

"Then send those children back to the orphanage."

"I can't! Oh, Claude, if You only knew how long I

waited; had to wait. Because it was so hard to get them.

If it hadn't been for Father Flynn. ."

"The point is, you did get them."

"Yes. Father Flynn spoke up for me," she said proudly.

"He told them I was all right."

And so you are, he thought. And I'm as much of a sadistic sorlof-a-bitch as that super who hires college men to shovel snow. Belt, by God, I'm not going to let those children take my place. I want her f or me alone. I ve got to have that. Someone who's all mine… who waits for me….

He grabbed her arms alla held them so tightly that his finger C355]

nails went: into her flesh. "You give them up. Hear me?

Will you take them back where they came from or must I go to your priest and make him take them back?"

"If you make me, I'll take them back, Claude."

He was instantly mollified. "Yes, Margaret, that's best."

"But you know that, as soon as you go away, I'll get children again. If it's too hard to get them from a home, I'll manage somehow to have one of my ONvn." She hardly knew what she was

.,

trnplylng.

But he knew. He knew of many women, many barren wives who got with child by another man and the husband believed the child was his. Claude was afraid.

"Margaret, love, I'll never leave you again. I've had my lesson. I have been too careless of you. But a man can change. I'll get a job. I can always get a job. We'll be together all the time as married people should-not for just a few weeks in the winter. We'll have a child. If, after three or four years, we don't, we'll go together and adopt one or two. I'd want them to take my name. But I swear it, Margaret, I'll never go away again if you will only send those children back."

"You will always go away," she said quietly. "Because it is in you to go away. The ~ ay it's in me to be a Catholic. The way it is in me to want children, to need them so bad that I'll get them any way I can."

I've lost, he thought. Bzlt their, 1 hall no right to win.

"The duck's done," she said.

"The hell with the duck," he said wearily. I hate her, he told himself.

They went to bed, and, because essentially and in spite of everything they loved each other, and because they loved to make love to each other, and because they had not been with each other for so long, everything was new and wonderful again.

Afterward, he drifted off to sleep. She prodded him awake. "Claude," she asked, "what's so wrong with being a peasant?"

He laughed and he found that he didn't hate her any more. "Nothing, my little Chinee," he said. "Nothing."

1 556]

CLAUDE got up next morning to say hello to Denny before the boy left for school. He kept the boy company with a cup of coffee. Claude didn't speak to l\laggie-Now, and when Denny went off to school Claude went back to bed.

It was nearly ten when Claude got up and dressed. He went into the kitchen and had a cup of coffee and a roll.

Then he went into the front room. The baby was sitting in the high chair at the window with a rattle in his hand.

Mark was on the floor quietly playing with some of Denny's discarded blocks.

"I'll fix your breakfast," called Maggie-Now from the babies' room, "as soon as I finish making up the cribs." He didn't answer her.

Claude walked around the room restlessly. The baby's eyes followed hirn. Claude walked diagonally, the eyes followed him. He walked behind the high chair and, awkwardly, the child turned its head and body to keep him in sight. He came around to face the child. The child looked up at him, still clutching the rattle. He didn't play with the rattle or make it jingle, he just clutched it.

Claude looked down at the child and thought: Spaum.

As he thought the word, he had a curious feeling of tenderness toward the baby.

He looked down at Mark. "What are you building?" The child didn't look up. The child didn't answer. "A house?"

No response from the child. Claude clapped his hands loudly. The baby dropped the rattle on the high-chair tray but Mark neither looked up nor started. He picked up another block. Claude had an instant of fear. He went in to Maggie-Now.

"Is that boy dumb?" he asked. "Deaf and dumb?'' "Oh, he can talk when he wants to," she said. "You heard him call me Mama last night.' Claude was disgusted at the feeling of relief he felt.

She heard a clock strike ten. She dropped her work and went L3s7]

into her bedroom. When he followed her in there, he saw that she had put a quarter on the dressing table and was pinning the gold piece back into his coat.

He crushed her in his arms. "No, no, no," he kept saying. "No, I'm not going away. I just got home."

"But you said. ."

"Why must you take everything so literally?" he asked desperately. "I was shocked; angry. I said a lot of things…."

"But you told me. . ' "Hush, now. Hush! I always wanted a family. You know that. You gave me a father and a brother. And now, my sweet love, you throw in a couple of sons that I don't deserve."

She broke down and cried.

"Listen! Listen now! Listen, Margaret! Listen, Maggie-Now!" He got her quieted down finally. "Listen, Margaret, what do you want more than anything else in the world? Aside from me and children? "

"A furnace?" she said tentatively.

He had to laugh at that. She told him the nurse had said a furnace was needed with the children in the house.

"Your husband will get you a furnace," he said gallantly.

"Where are my old clothes? I'm going to get a regular job; a hard-working job with good pay."

True to his word, he got a job which paid seventy-five dollars a week. This seemed like fabulous pay to Maggie-Now. He didn't tell her what he worked at but she noted his broken fingernails and, after he combed his hair, she saw little grains in the teeth of the comb.

I\iTarble dust? Grains of cement? Flakes of plaster?

She gave him a dollar a day expense money and used some of his salary for food and household necessities. At the end of a month, there vitas one hundred and eighty dollars left of the three hundred he'd earned. Claude decided that was enough to start the furnace on.

A man came and gave an estimate. A hot-air furnace with registers would be cheaper than steam heat and radiators. Three hundred was his price: half down now and the balance after the heating had been installed. The deal was made; the hundred and fifty dollars paid. Then terribly cold weather set in and it was agreed that it was a ball time to tear up the house to install the