Maggie-Now by Betty Smith

Author:Betty Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Nine

APRIL WENT INTO MAY and the lilac bush in Father Flynn’s yard came into bloom and it was Decoration Day again. Then it was June. And all the days of that spring, Maggie-Now sat by the window each evening after supper, and waited. But he never came by. She stood at the window watching for the letter carrier, but there was never a letter from Claude.

She lived on hope; persuaded herself that he was in the army and overseas in a trench and unable to get a letter out. As the weeks passed, she assured herself that there had been no difference between them; that the discussion of religion had been merely a friendly debate and she had been wrong to get so serious about the whole thing.

I shouldn’t have said that about the woman, the convert and about her hair washing. Maybe he was thinking of becoming a convert and he thought I made fun of converts. And that silly talk about asking a baby whether he wanted beer or milk. Men don’t like women to be too serious by they don’t like them to be silly either.

She lived on hope and became a little thin and drawn-looking on this diet. She took little pleasure in shopping for and preparing food and less in eating it. She had to work very hard (for instance, painting and papering the upstairs apartment after the Heahlys moved out) so she’d be tired enough to sleep at night.

She stopped in at the church every other day or so and lit a candle at the altar of the Blessed Mother, beseeching her to intercede with Her son to keep Claude safe wherever he was.

She no longer enjoyed conversations with the storekeepers. It wasn’t enough for one to sell a bag of salt. He had to explain how necessary salt was. (One had said: “If you have nothing but salt, bread and water, still you can live.”) In a dim, inarticulate way, she had realized that the selling of stuff was the all of most storekeepers’ lives and they had to round out their lives by giving background and interest to everything they sold. Before Claude left, she had enjoyed their home-made philosophy, but now it irritated her.

Talk, talk, talk, she thought. All about nothing. What do I care? I don’t want to know how it is with them and I don’t want anybody to know how it is with me.

But they knew; more than she thought they did. Van Clees knew. He had seen her pass his store arm in arm with Claude and had noticed the way they looked at each other when they spoke. When she came into the store, he sometimes adroitly inserted Claude’s name into the conversation to see her expression.

“And your friend, Mr. Bassett, how does he do?”

Her face fell into sad lines as she said: “I never hear from him. He’s in the war, I guess.”

“Ah, so?” he said. He waited, hoping she would confide in him. But she didn’t.

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