Maggie Now Read online

  "Want to eat now, them''

  "Let's see." He lifted a foot out of the dishpan and

  watched it drip. "Not yet. Me feet lin't done yet."

  He was content. He looked fondly at IZjS wife. She was

  teasing a lock of hair; making it frizzy by holding one hair

  and pushing the others up on it in a tangled ball.

  He was proud of her. >Jo matter how hard she worked

  in the house or taking care of their son, she always

  dressed up for his homecoming. She got into her corsets

  and tied on a bustle pad (not that she needed one) and

  pinned the lace ruffles to her corset cover (not that she

  needed them either). The bustle and ruffles filled her out

  more and Big Red liked a well-filled-out woman.

  Her dusty blond hair was in dips and waves and the rat

  made her pompadour stand up high. That was the way she

  had worn it when he first met her and she hadn't changed

  her hair style a bit in ten ~years.

  Come to think of it, few women changed their hair style

  after they married. You could tell how long a woman had

  been married by looking at her hair style. He recalled

  when he was a rookie cop keeping company with Lottie.

  He and three other rookies had been a quartet going

  around to different precincts and singing:

  And may there be no motlrning of the bar, When I put

  our to sea.

  Over the biers of dead pol cement

  By coincidence, all four of the rookies had married in

  the same year and had been each other's groomsmen and

  ushers. And all of their wives still wore their hair the same

  way.

  Why is this? he pondered. Is it because they try out

  differentt styles to attract a feller acid when they land him

  they hold 07Z to the old hair style because i, worked in the

  first place? Or is it that they don't care no more after they

  got a feller hooked? He realized he was thinking too much

  and he shuddered. I mustn't think so deep, he advised

  himself. Nothing good comes 071t of deep thinking.

  Il~he~` a man thinks deep, he ain't contented MO more.

  And he was a contented man. He loved his wife and his

  SOn

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  and his job and his home and his fellow cops. He didn't

  love his mother-in-law. A man wasn't supposed to love his

  mother-in-law. That was the tradition. But he loved

  everything else about his work and home. He even loved

  washdays. Their weekly recurrence assured him that life

  was a mighty sure and safe proposition.

  Washday was a weekly ritual. Before Big Red left for

  duty on Monday mornings, Lottie had him lift the

  water-filled, copperhottom washboiler up onto the stove

  for her. Of course she could have put the empty boiler on

  herself and filled it from the teakettle, but she loved little

  attentions like that from her husband. As she wrote to an

  older sister in Weehawken: It keeps HIS sweethearts.

  She shaved half a bar of I;irkman's yellow soap over the

  soaking clothes, put the cover on, let it come to a boil,

  throttled it down to simmer and then set up the boiled

  dinner for supper.

  She filled her iron cook pot half full of water, threw in

  a hunk of corned beef, a whole head of cabbage and six

  unpared potatoes. When that came to a boil, she put on

  a tight cover and got it down to simmering. It cooked all

  day long.

  At noon, the boiled dinner smelled like boiling black

  socks and the laundry smelled like overcooked cabbage.

  At supper, Big Red's plate would be filled with shreds of

  boiled beef that got between his teeth. (That's whv the

  shot glass on the table always held toothpicks.) Next the

  beef would be limp black cabbage and water-logged

  potatoes.

  That was exactly the way Big Red liked it!

  He wouldn't eat that particular dinner cooked any other

  way. Once when Lottie's mother was sick and Lottie had

  to be with her, Big Red had had to eat out. He had

  ordered a corned-beefand-cabbage dinner. The beef came

  in a smooth unshredded slice, the cabbage was in tender

  and still-green leaves and the potatoes mealy. Big Red

  told the waiter to take it all back; that it wasn't fit for a

  clog to eat.

  At half-hour intervals, Lottie turned the cooking boiled

  dinner upside down in the pot with a wooden spoon and

  stirred the clothes around in the boiler with a sawed-off

  broomstick.

  Lottie was funny for broomsticks sawed off. She must

  have

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  had a dozen in the closet. Why, a broom was no more

  than half used when she had Big Red saw it down for a

  wasUstick. As she wrote to another sister who lived in

  Flatbush: Jimmy likes to make wasksticks for 7;7le. Things

  like that keep us sweethearts.

  She sang lustily as she stirred the simmering socks and

  shirts and food.

  l lIe ice Illan

  1 a nice man....

  At noon, Widdy, the son, came home from school for

  lunch. They shared a pick-up lunch of ham bologna,

  potato salad, coffee, hard poppyseed rolls and charlotte

  7~u.sse from the baker's. It was hardly a pick-up lunch

  but Lottie called it that because, like the boiled dinner, a

  pic17~-up lunch was traditional for washdays.

  About Widdy: He was the pride of his father's heart.

  Big Red was sure they broke the mold when Widdy fell

  out of it.

  "My kid," he'd brag to his fellow cops, "is a plain,

  ordinary, everyday kid. Nothing fancy. No A's on his

  report card. No sir! He makes straight C's. Oh, maybe a

  D once in a while in deportment," said Big Red modestly,

  not liking to brag. "That's the way he is and I wouldn't

  want him no different."

  If it were possible for Big Red to have a fly in his

  ointment, his son's name would be it. The kid's full name

  was De Witt Xavier Shawn. He had been named for a

  ferryboat.

  It was the time Lottie and Tirn had been going steady

  for a couple of years. One summer's day, he took her on

  a policemen's picnic up the Hudson. They drifted away

  from the other couples and stood alone on the bank. She

  wore a floppy leghorn hat with a big pink rose on it and

  black velvet streamers.

  "Somebody looks mighty pretty today," he said.

  "Oh, go on," she said. "I bet you say that to all the girls."

  "That I do. So why shouldn't I say it to me best girl?"

  "Timmy," she said out of the blue, "the time is come

  when we got to get married."

  His eyes rolled wildly It the suddenness of it. He was

  crazy about her and had always s intended to marry her

  but he felt trapped all the same.

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  "I been intending to ask you meself someday. Now you

  spoiled the surprise."

  "When was you going to ask me, Timmy?"
/>   "Oh, when I got to be a sergeant or a lieutenant on the

  force." (He was a rookie at the time.)

  "Well, I went and asked you. Now what do you say?"

  "I accept you," he said in a deep voice.

  He felt relief. Now it was done. Now they would be

  married and he wouldn't have to go through the Purgatory

  of making up his mind.

  "Oh, Timmy," she said, her eyes full of happy tears.

  He took her in his arms and gave her a kiss that

  knocked the leghorn hat off her head. A steamboat came

  by. The captain, seeing the couple in a locked embrace,

  blew the whistle in salute. The passengers waved, and

  hollered and whistled and yelled things like: "Does your

  mother know you're out?" and, "Oh, you kid!" Big Red

  released Lottie and turned away, embarrassed. Lottie

  picked up her hat and waved it at the steamboat,

  screaming:

  "We're gonna get married!"

  "AI1 your troubles should be little ones," yelled the

  captain through his megaphone.

  As the boat steamed out of sight, or before, Lottie

  caught the name painted on the side: The De Witt Clinton.

  "If the first's a boy," she said, "we'll call him De Witt in

  remembrance of the boat."

  So the kid was baptised De Witt Xavier; the Xavier

  because it was a Catholic name and because Lottie said

  that parents owed it to children to give them an interesting

  middle initial.

  As a baby, they called him De Witt. When he started to

  walk, they called him Witty because he wouldn't respond

  to De Witt. When he started school, he told his teacher

  his name was Widdy. (He couldn't articulate the t sound.)

  Lottie thought it was cute, and from that time on he was

  called Widdy.

  Often Big Red wished he had not been so beguiled at

  the time and had insisted that the kid be named Mike or

  Pete or even Tim.

  He sat in his parlor, then, contented, soaking his feet and

  trying

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  not to think too deep. Lottie was folding towels and

  singing her iceman song under her breath.

  . . . of one thing 1 am sure. There's something about his

  business That affects his temperature.

  "Where's the kid?" he asked.

  "Over to Mama's."

  "Why? "

  "He's eating supper over there."

  "What for?"

  "Well, Mama took him to the butcher's with her and

  they had these rabbits hanging outside a barrel with hair

  on? You know. So Widdy wanted a rabbit- foot for luck

  and the butcher wouldn't sell just a foot so Mama had to

  buy the whole rabbit and she couldn't eat it all by herself

  so he's eating over there."

  She got up, went to him and ran her fingers through the

  few red curls left on his head.

  "Why'n't you tell me before?" he said.

  He gave her a slap on the backside. He felt that, with

  their child out of the house, he could take a liberty. He

  lifted one foot out of the dishpan. It Dolled like a

  mummy's foot.

  "Listen, Jimmy," she said. "Dry your feet and go down

  to Mike's for a pint of beer and we'll eat."

  "Sure." But he looked ill at ease. "But first I got a

  letter today. It came to the station house." He stiffened,

  reached back, and pulled a letter out of iliS hind pocket.

  "Who from?"

  "Me mother."

  "What does she want now?"

  "Now' And 'tis five years since I heard from her last'"

  "What does she say?"

  "I don't know. I saved it to read in front of you."

  "Aw, Timmy, that's all right. You could've read your

  letter in the station house."

  "We share."

  "I know. Tllat's what keeps us sweethearts."

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  "From Ireland." He turned the letter over and back.

  "County Kilkenny." He dreamed:

  "Ah, I can see it plain, Lottie, the Fedders and all. And

  me mother's sod shanty with the rushes always blowing off

  the roof and the clay hearth and the black pot ever on

  the bob and the skinny cow and the few bony chickens

  and the praties ve scratched out of the ground . . ."

  And, thought Lottie, not bitterly, his mother standing ill

  the doo~r~voy arid holding vat her hand once a month for

  the letter with the ten-dollar hill in it that he sends and his

  mother afar,' sister never writing to say, yes, no, or kiss my

  foot.

  "And," dreamed Timmy, "the village walk and the girls

  with no corsets on and the skirts turned back to show the

  red petticoat and their hair flying in the wind . . ." He

  sighed. "Ah so. And I wouldn't go back there for a million

  dollars."

  "Will you read the Ictter now," she said, a little piqued

  about the girls not wearing corsets, "or will you frame it?"

  He opened the letter and read.

  Estee ned Son: I take my pen in hand to compose this

  sorrowful epistle . . .

  "Me mother can't read or write," he explained.

  "Go on!" she said in disbelief.

  "Bertie, the Broommaker, wrote it for her. I bet vou he's

  still living! Why, he must he seventy . . . no, eighty years

  . . ."

  "Will you read or will you frame?" she asked. He read:

  . . . to convey to you, esteemed son, the sorrowful tidings

  that one who once was with us and who had a loving place

  in our hearts and who was esteemed 'oy all, has heeded

  the call of a Higher Being, and is now in A Fix.

  "Who died, rest his soul?" asked Lottie.

  "Nobody yet. Let me read."

  Oh, better, esteemed son, 'that we two lay sleeping in our

  nest in the churchyard sod," than to endure the grief of

  The Fix she is in.

  Big Red paused to vipe a tear from his eye and to give

  his vife a pleading look.

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  "You read it to yourself, ]~hl~mNr, dear," she said,

  'and tell me after."

  He mumbled through sollle more of the letter and

  suddenly let out a snarling cry and stood upright in the

  dishpan of water.

  "What?" she cried out. "Oh, sweetheart, what?"

  "The blacktard!" he snarled. "The durrrtee black'ard!"

  He stepped out of the dishpan and strode up and down

  the parlor with Lottie following hint w ith a towel. "Oh,

  me baby sister. Me baby sister," he moaned.

  She tried to comfort him. "NVe all got to go someday,

  TinllllN darling."

  "She's not dead. But 'twas better if she vas."

  "Oh, why-, my sweetheart?'

  "Because a black'ard by the nallle of . . ." he consulted

  the letter, ". . . ]2. D. Moore, l squire, scandalized her

  name and now he won't marry her." He sobbed in big

  gulps.

  "Sit here," said Lottie gently, "and I'll dr!r NrOur poor

  tired feet. "

  She knelt before him and patted his puckered feet dry.

  He wept until his feet w ere wt ll dried. Then he made a

  fist a
nd shoals it at the ceiling.

  "I'm going to Ireland a ld beat the be-Jesus out of him,

  God willing," he said.

  "Sure, sure," she soothed. "But where will you find the

  money?"

  "Let me think," he said. He sat there and thought deep

  while she put his socks and shoes on his feet.

  "I could ask the boys to run a benefit dance for me like

  the! did for Connie Clancy ~ he time his mother passed

  away in Chicago and he needing money to go there for

  the funeral. I could say me mother's at deatil's door, God

  forgive me, and ask for a month's sick leave. . ."

  Her heart was in a panic. 11 he left me to co to Ireland,

  she thought, would he eater cr,me hack?

  "No, I can't go."

  "Why? "

  "Me examination for sergcallt: It comes Up in two

  weeks. If I take it, I'd have a hard rime trying to pass it.

  If I don't take it, I won't pass a-tall."

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  "I wouldn't care," she said. "I got stuck on you when you

  vitas just a plain rookie. Remember?"

  "I'd care. But not for meself. Did I not take the same

  examination four limes already and not pass and not care

  a damn except for you? That's why I keep on trying. If I

  die a sergeant, sure, you'd get a bigger widder's pension."

  What have I done in my life to deserve this good man, she

  thought.

  She remembered the night when he had been two hours

  late coming home from worl;. One of the horses pulling

  the car he was in had dropped dead and held up traffic.

  Not knowing about the horse, Lottie was sure that Tim

  had been beaten to death by the Hudson Dusters or

  hatcheted by one of the Chinese tongs. She had spent the

  two waiting hours on her knees in prayer.

  Please, Holy Mother, let him be alive. Let him be drunk or

  with another woman just so he's alive. Oh, Holy Mother,

  intercede for me!

  Hail, Mary, full of grace . . .

  I'll give him everything . . . everything I've got to give. I'll

  never nag him again. I'll give him everything he asks for....

  Now he was asking to go to his mother and sister. But

  how could she bear to let him go? She couldn't. But

  because she loved him so, she made it easy for him to go.

  "Take the examination next year. Skip this year. It's only

  . . . well, it's only a year. And you'll only be gone a few

  weeks and what's a few weeks in al] the rest of the life we

  will have together?"

  He doesn't really want to go, she thought. I know it. He

  wouldn't leave me.

  "I'll buy you a new dress for the benefit dance. You'll be

  the belle of the ball."

  "I don't want a new dress. I want only you. Old, Timmy,

  you won't stop loving me while you're gone?"

  "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," he said.

  Out of sight, out of mind, she thought. Will he come

  back? He always says he hates County Kilkenny. But an

  Irishman loves the land he came from. All the songs they

  love prove it. She ran over some of the songs in her mind.

  "I'll take you home again, Kathleen." And, "Where my

  heart is,

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  I am going," and, "Ireland must be heaven for my mother

  came from there." And . . .

  "Lottie," he said, putting his hand on her head, and

  flattening her pompadour down to the rat. "Lottie, tell me

  not to go and I'll stay and not hold it against you."

  There were nine of us girls, she thought, and times was

  hard. Annie died and Jeanie and Katie went in the convent.

  Eileen and Martha went living out. Girly and Maudie and

  Wily got married. I was the last one left and getting nearly

  thirty. I never had a feller until I met Timmy. If it hadn't-a

  been for him, I'd be a old maid; old Aunt Lottie living with

  one of my married sisters; a servant girl without pay and

  bringing up her kids instead of my own.

  And Timmy's good to ?Ifama the five dollars he gives her

  every week. And I'm homely but he thinks I'm beautiful. He

  loves my cooking and I can't cook worth a nickel. I'm older