Maggie-Now: A Novel
By Betty Smith
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
In Brooklyn’s unforgiving urban jungle, Maggie Moore is torn between answering her own needs and catering to the desirous men who dominate her life. Confronted by her quarrelsome Irish immigrant father, the feckless lover who may become her husband, and others, Maggie must learn to navigate a cycle of loss, separation, and hope as she forges her own path toward happiness.
With characteristic warmth, compelling insight, and easy, conversational prose, Maggie-Now poignantly illuminates one woman’s struggles and successes as she grapples with timeless questions of desire, duty, self-sacrifice, and the quest for fulfillment. Maggie-Now is an unforgettable masterpiece from one of the twentieth century’s greatest talents.
“Written with such unobtrusive skill that it seems to flow along as naturally as life itself.” —The New York Times
Betty Smith
Betty Smith (1896–1972) was a native of Brooklyn, New York. Her novels A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Tomorrow Will Be Better, Joy in the Morning, and Maggie-Now continue to capture the hearts and imaginations of millions of readers worldwide.
Read more from Betty Smith
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tomorrow Will Be Better: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Joy in the Morning: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond the Happy Ending Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
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Reviews for Maggie-Now
64 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I have to say that I might have set myself up for not liking this book from the start. I chose to read it right after reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn and, as superstitious as it might sound, there's not really anywhere to go but down when you like a book as much as I liked A Tree. The writing itself is okay but it didn't seem to connect me with the experience of the book or the lives of the characters in any noticeable way. It also felt like Smith was trying her hardest to make sure all the characters were as contrary as possible. Which can breed a good plot. But eventually something has to cave in order to grab on to my attention and it just didn't happen for me in Maggie-Now.
I do think I'll reread it at some point in the future. Just to be able to experience it on its own instead of colored by my experience of A Tree. - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Smith's book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is basically flawless, but this one didn't do it for me at all. It's completely different, to be sure: I think that Smith deliberately makes all the characters in MAGGIE-NOW unsympathetic, which is more like reality than we'd like to admit. However, it's *literature*, dudes, and self-involved human reader that I am, I'm not going to spend several hours of my life on people who are never happy, won't ever be happy, and don't deserve to be happy, not on account of unfortunate external circumstances but because of their own mindsets.There are plenty of books with unsympathetic characters that I appreciate (the book, and their depiction of those characters, not the characters themselves), and it's not like Smith does this badly. But MAGGIE-NOW is unrelentingly unsympathetic, and a little less than halfway through, I was forced to close the covers to this book forever, to spare myself the agony of watching these characters cause their own train wrecks.
Book preview
Maggie-Now - Betty Smith
One
YOUNG PATRICK DENNIS MOORE wore the tightest pants in all of County Kilkenny. He was the only boy-o in the village who cleaned his fingernails; and his thick, black, shiny hair had the widest, cleanest part in all of Ireland—or so it was said.
He lived with his mother. He was the last of a brood of thirteen. Three had died, four had married. Three had been put in an orphan home when the father had died, and had been adopted or bound out to farmers and never been heard from again. Once had gone to Australia; another to Dublin. The Dublin one had married a Protestant girl and changed his name to Morton. Patrick Dennis was the only one left with his mother.
And how she clung to her last baby—Patsy Denny, she called him. In her young days, she had had her babies like kittens. She nursed them at her huge breasts, wiped their noses on her petticoat, cuffed them, hugged them and fretted when they toddled away from her skirts. But when they grew older and stopped being utterly dependent on her for life itself, she lost interest in them.
Patsy Denny was a change-of-life baby. She was in her middle forties when he came along. (His father died four months before Patsy was born.) She had been awed and surprised when she found herself that way
with him, having thought surely she was too old to have another child. She held his birth to be a holy miracle. Believing he was a special dispensation from heaven, and realizing he was the last child she’d ever bear, she flowed over with maternal love and gave him all she had denied her other children.
She called him her eye apple.
She did not ask that he work and support her. She worked for him. All she asked was that he be. All she wanted was to have him with her for always—to look her fill at him and to cater to his creature comforts.
She was the one who convinced him (and he wasn’t hard to convince) that he was above common labor. Was he not the talented one? Sure! Why, he could dance a jig, keeping his body rigid as he jumped into the air, no matter what intricate figures his feet beat out.
He had a friend known as Rory-Boy. The friend had a fiddle. Patsy and Rory-Boy entertained at the public houses. Rory-Boy banged his bow on the fiddle strings and wild, incoherent music came out to which Patsy pranced, jogged and leaped. Sometimes someone threw a copper. Patsy’s share didn’t come to much—just enough to keep him supplied with the lurid-colored handkerchiefs which he liked to wear around his neck and knotted under his left ear.
What was there said about Patrick Dennis in the village? Much that was bad and little that was good—except that he was sweet to his mother. And so he was. He loved her and treated her as though she were a girl he was forever courting.
Sure, he had a sweetheart. She was seventeen. She was a pretty thing with black hair and azure eyes with charcoal-black lashes. She was walking proof of the legend that sometimes God’s fingers were smudgy when He put in the eyes of an Irish girl baby. She lived with her widowed mother and her name was Maggie Rose Shawn. She was beautiful, she was poor. And mothers of marriageable sons warned them against Maggie Rose.
"And what would she be bringing to a marriage except her beautiful self? And it’s soon enough the bloom would leave that rose when the man would have to take the mother with the daughter for the Widow Shawn is not one to live apart from her only daughter.
"No. The Widow’s only son won’t take the old lady. Sure now, he’s a constable in Brooklyn, America, and it’s grand wages he makes. And it’s the constable’s wife, herself, with her American ways, who looks down on her man’s mother and his sister. Or so ’tis said.
No, my son, there is others to marry. Our Lord put more women than men in this world, especially in this village where the young men leave almost as soon as they’re weaned, to get work and to lead the wild life in Dublin or some other strange part of the world and leave the village girls behind.
The boys listened but looked on Maggie Rose with desire, and many there were who thought the care and support of her clinging mother was a cheap price to pay for such a darling of a girl.
But Maggie Rose would have none of their intentions. Patrick Dennis was dear one. He was the one; the only one.
Lizzie Moore was not too concerned when her eye apple of a son started walking out with Maggie Rose Shawn. She knew she had a strong mother-hold on her son.
Why would he marry,
she said, and play second fiddle to the girl and third to the Widow and him a king alone in me cottage?
She was sure, too, that Patsy was too lazy and selfish and too scared of hard work to marry a poor girl.
And what can the girl bring to a marriage with a honest boy-o? No bit of land, no sow, no cow, no bag of cloth with a few pieces of gold in it. Nothing! Nothing but a keening mother and a handful of picture postal cards from her brother, the constable in Brooklyn.
She gave out ugly rumors about the girl. "Marry, you say? And why should me last son marry the likes of her? A man marries for the one thing when he can’t have it no other way. But ah, me boy-o don’t have to go to the trouble of marrying for that—the way he is good-looking and all.
Patrick Dennis and Maggie Rose were together day and night except when he ate with his mother or performed in the taverns with Rory-Boy. Soon, all of Maggie Rose’s other suitors gave way. There was talk.
The shame of it . . .
"’Tis against nature . . .’
A healthy boy-o and a beautiful girl together all the time, it follows that . . .
So spoke the drink nursers in the taverns. The village biddies, arms folded and lips stern, nodded knowingly as they agreed that if the couple were not married, sure and they should be.
None of these things were true. Maggie Rose was a good, decent, churchgoing girl. But the talk came to her mother in time and Mrs. Shawn invited Patrick over for supper and had it out with him.
Sonny lad,
she said, I will talk to you about marrying.
I’m a-willing,
said Patrick.
To marry?
To talk.
And aren’t you the one for talking. And making talk, too—the way they talk about me only daughter and all the fault of you and your ways with her.
I’ll thrash any man what speaks against Maggie Rose—no matter how big he be’s.
You’ll have to be thrashing most of the women of the parish too, then.
She gave him the question point-blank. Now when will you be marrying me daughter?
Patrick felt trapped and frightened. He wanted to run away and never see either of them again. Not that he didn’t care for Maggie Rose. He did. But he didn’t want to be gunned into marriage. His gift of gab came to his aid.
Would I not be the proudest man in the world could I marry Maggie Rose and she willing? But I made a great promise to me old mother: never to marry the while she lived. For who else does she have in all the world? Only meself—poor thing that I am.
He appealed directly to Maggie Rose. You would not be wanting a man what was cruel to his mother, would you now?
Dumbly, and with eyes cast down, she shook her head No.
Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother,
he said, is bad to his wife? Ah, nothing but bad cess would come of it. Think on the poor children what would be born to us—and them blind and crippled—our Lord’s punishment was I to destroy me promise to me poor old lady.
He wiped an eye with a corner of the magenta handkerchief knotted under his left ear.
And the while you’re waiting for your poor old mother to die on you,
said the Widow Shawn, and she the one to make old bones and live to a hundred, me Maggie Rose is losing her chances with the other boy-sis.
’Tis true, ’tis true,
moaned Patsy. I don’t be having the right to stand in her way.
He turned to the now weeping girl. Me poor heart breaks in two giving you up, me Maggie Rose. But is not your good mother right? So I’ll not be standing between you and some other fine man. I’ll be bidding you good-by.
To his astonishment, he burst into tears. Is it a good player that I am, he thought, or is it that I love the girl?
He rushed out of the cottage. Maggie Rose ran down the path after him, weeping and calling out his name. He turned and waited for her. She put kisses on his face and buried her tear-wet cheek in his neck.
Don’t be leaving me, darling,
she sobbed. I’ll wait ever for you for I want no one else. I’ll wait till your mother dies. And may that be years to come,
said the good girl, for I know how you love her and I would not have you grieve. Only don’t leave me. Do not leave me because I love you so.
Things went on as before. Patsy kept on courting Maggie Rose and enjoying it more because he knew now that he didn’t have to give up his freedom. Sure, he intended to marry her someday maybe. But for now . . .
His mother was jubilant. She told her cronies: Her and her mother together: They tried to thrick me boy into marrying the girl and for all I know saying there was the reason for it. And maybe so. Maybe so,
she said insinuatingly. But if so, ’twas not me Patsy Denny was the feller. A girl like that, and sure, it could be anybody a-tall.
Rory-Boy told Patsy Denny he was lucky. Is it not so that the old cow’s got no husband and the sweet girl no living father to beat the hell out of you for not going to the priest with her? I tell you nowhere in the world is there such free love. Not even in America where all is free.
There was a tug at Patsy’s heart. Should I not be sheltering her against the dirty talk, he thought, by standing up in church with her? Ah, yes. But would I not be a poor stick of a man if I married me Maggie Rose because the old lady said: do you do so, now.
Mrs. Shawn took to waylaying the boy and inquiring after his dear
mother’s health. And how’s your mother this day?
she would ask.
Ah, she’s as well as might be,
he’d answer, and me thanks to you for asking. But,
with a sigh, she’s getting older . . . older.
And so’s me daughter,
she’d answer bitterly.
The harassed woman decided to put a stop to the affair. She told the girl she’d have to stop seeing Patsy or go into a convent.
I will not do so,
said the girl.
That you will. ’Tis meself has the say of you and you not eighteen yet.
Do you try to force me, Mother, I’ll . . .
she searched for a word she didn’t know. . . . I’ll stay with him in the way bad girls stay with men and they not married to each other.
To talk to your mother so,
wailed Mrs. Shawn. To dig me grave by breaking me heart. And you—such a good girl before you were spoiled by that black’ard! You who went to church every morning to receive . . .
Mrs. Shawn went into a time of weeping and keening. When that was out of the way, she sent for Bertie, the Broommaker, who was also the village letter writer. Bertie brought his book along: Epistles for All Occasions. There was no form letter that suited the Widow’s exact occasion. The nearest was: Epistle to Be Written to a Relative Across the Water Announcing the Demise of a Dear One. Bertie said he’d copy it off and make it fit
by changing demise to my daughter’s fix whenever demise came up, and to substitute my esteemed son, Timothy for my esteemed great-uncle Thaddeus.
After the letter was carefully addressed to: Constable Timothy Shawn, Police Department, Brooklyn, U.S.A., Bertie inked in his trademark on the back of the envelope.
Two
OFFICER TIMOTHY (BIG RED) Shawn sat in the parlor of his East New York flat. His beat was the Bowery in Manhattan, but he lived in Brooklyn because he liked to live in the country, he said, and because his wife wanted to live near her mother. It took him more than two hours to get home each night. He had to journey by ferry, horsecar and foot.
Now, his day’s work done, he sat in his parlor in his undershirt soaking his poor feet in a dishpan of warm water in which Epsom salts were dissolved. The stiff red hairs on his chest pushed through the cloth of his undershirt like rusty grass seeking the sun.
Why don’t you soak your feet in the kitchen and save the parlor rug?
asked Lottie, his American-born wife of Irish descent. She asked the same question each night.
Because me home is me castle.
He made the same answer each night.
He surveyed the parlor of his castle. The narrow windows that looked down on the street were hung with lace curtains. They were sooty but starched. A taboret, fake Chinese, stood between the windows. Its function was to hold a rubber plant in a glazed green jardiniere. The unfolded top leaf of the plant always had a drop of rubber milk on its tip. A gaudy and fringed lambrequin draped the fake marble mantelpiece over the fake onyx fireplace. On the mantelpiece with a china pug dog lying on its side and with four pug puppies lying in a row, frozen eternally in the act of taking nourishment from their mother.
We got bedbugs again,
said his wife conversationally.
Where’d the buggers come from?
"From the people upstairs. They always come from the people upstairs. Where the cockroaches come from."
Ah, well, they got bedbugs at Buckingham Palace, too,
he said. He sniffed the air. What are we got for supper tonight?
We got boiled dinner for supper tonight, being’s today was washday.
If there’s anything what I like,
he said, it’s a boiled dinner like you make it.
Want to eat now, then?
Let’s see.
He lifted a foot out of the dishpan and watched it drip. Not yet. My feet ain’t done yet.
He was content. He looked fondly at his 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. No 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 hairstyle a bit in ten years.
Big Red sat in his parlor, then, contented, soaking his feet and trying not to think too deep. Lottie was folding towels and singing her iceman song under her breath.
. . . of one thing I am sure.
There’s something about his business
That affects his temperature.
Where’s our boy Widdy?
he asked.
Over to Mama’s.
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 looked like a mummy’s foot.
Listen, Timmy,
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 his 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. That’s what keeps us sweethearts.
From Ireland.
He turned the letter over and back. County Kilkenny.
He dreamed:
Ah, I can see it plain, Lottie, the medders 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 hob and the skinny cow and the few bony chickens and the praties we scratched out of the ground . . .
And, thought Lottie, not bitterly, his mother standing in the doorway and holding out her hand once a month for the letter with the ten-dollar bill in it that he sends and his mother and 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 letter now,
she said, a little piqued about the girls not wearing corsets, or will you frame it?
He opened the letter and read:
Esteemed 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 you he’s still living! Why, he must be 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 by 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 wipe a tear from his eye and to give his wife a pleading look.
You read it to yourself, Timmy, dear,
she said, and tell me after.
He mumbled through some 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 black’ard!
he snarled. The durrrtee black’ard!
He stepped out of the dishpan and strode up and down the parlor with Lottie following him with a towel. Oh, me baby sister. Me baby sister,
he moaned.
She tried to comfort him. We all got to go someday, Timmy darling.
She’s not dead. But ’twas better if she was.
Oh, why, my sweetheart?
Because a black’ard by the name of . . .
he consulted the letter, . . . P. D. Moore, Esquire, scandalized her name and now he won’t marry her.
He sobbed in big gulps.
Sit here,
said Lottie gently, and I’ll dry your poor tired feet.
She knelt before him and patted his puckered feet dry. He wept until his feet were well dried. Then he made a fist and shook it at the ceiling.
I’m going to Ireland and beat the be-Jesus out of him, God willing,
he said.
Three
THE TAVERN WAS SMOKY, crowded and smelled of warm, spilled beer. Rory-Boy’s fiddle was squealing wildly and Patsy Denny was jigging his heart out. It was a noisy Saturday night. The door opened and a big, red-headed stranger came in. He wasn’t exactly red-headed, being almost bald, but there was a rusty glow where his hair had been. A clot of ale-drinking men at the bar opened up to let the stranger in and then closed about him; absorbing him, as it were.
Rory-Boy saw the stranger come in and his Irish intuition told him that the stranger was Maggie Rose’s big brother come all the way from Brooklyn to beat the hell out of Patrick Dennis. He was too scared to warn Patsy. He forgot the notes of The Irish Washerwoman
as his fingers froze on his fiddle strings. His desperately sawing bow brought out a continuous one-note, high wail. Patsy thought the tune was ending and he went into the frenzied leap into the air where he usually clicked his heels together in a finale.
Never have I le’pped so high!
he called to his friend as he went up.
Indeed his leap was prodigious. He went up . . . up without the volition of his legs and he stayed suspended in the air. For a second, he felt like an angel with wings, then he wondered what made his pants so tight. He found out.
Timothy (Big Red) Shawn had slipped out of the knot of men, and at the moment of Patsy’s leap he had, like a trained acrobat, gotten a purchase on the seat of Patsy’s pants and on the scruff of his neck and had given Patsy’s leap a grand fillip. As Bertie, the Broommaker, who happened to be there, later wrote in a letter for a gossiping client: All conviviality ceased and silence reigned.
Big Red held Patsy in the air and shook him as though he were a rag puppet. Big Red had rehearsed a speech coming over in the steerage. He had planned to give it as a prelude to a thrashing, but he forgot it entirely and had to ad-lib.
You durtee, wee, little black’ard you!
he said loud for all to hear. I’ll learn youse to break the only heart of me only mother and . . .
(Shake! Shake!) . . . scandalize the name of me baby sister. You jiggin’ monkey! You durtee bog trotter, you!
What do you mean, bog trotter?
gasped Patsy, scared but insulted. I never cut peat in all me life.
Finally Big Red set him down and gave him one of those old-time lickings. When he had finished, he threw Patsy in the general direction of the exit and dusted off his hands.
And don’t forget, fancy man,
he said, there’s more where that come from.
Patrick Dennis backed out of the tavern. He wasn’t taking any chances of being kicked in the behind.
* * *
The next day, Sunday, a scared, chastened Patsy went to Mass with his mother. He saw his girl wedged in between her simpering mother and her burly brother. Patsy started to feel sick as he stared at Big Red’s broad back.
Father Crowley came down from the altar and stepped to one side of it before the railing to make the routine announcements of the week. Patsy hardly listened to the rise and fall of the voice until, as in a nightmare from which there is no awakening, he heard the sound of his name.
. . . weekly meeting of the girls’ Sodality.
The priest cleared his throat. The banns of marriage are read for the first time between Margaret Rose Shawn and Patrick Dennis Moore. Your prayers are requested for the repose of the soul of . . .
Lizzie Moore gave a hoarse honk like a wild goose calling the flock in for a landing. There was a stir like a great sigh as the congregation turned to stare at Patsy and his mother. Big Red turned around and gave Patsy a grin of victory. His lips silently formed the words: There’s more where that come from.
Patsy was caught and he knew it. Trapped, he moaned to himself. And by what thrickery did he get me name up for marrying and me the one should have the say of it? Caught! Before two weeks is out I’ll be married forever.
His mother wept foggily into the hem of her top petticoat. He kept it from me, she mourned. Me lyin’ son. He went to the priest with the girl and gave himself up. And Big Timmy was sent for to give the girl away and she having no father to do so. Oh, for me son to treat me so, and he me last baby and the hardest to bring into God’s world with his head the size of a hard, green cabbage at the time.
She wept and Patsy was ashamed. He left during the final prayer. Maggie Rose, kneeling, turned as he got up and made an instinctive movement to follow him but Big Red pulled her back down.
Patsy felt friendless and disgraced. He was sure that by now all the village knew he had been licked by his girl’s brother. Before night the whole village would know whatever trick Big Red had used to get the banns read and he, Patsy Denny, would be the laughingstock of the county.
It came too late to Patsy—too late—the knowledge that he loved Maggie Rose and would never love any other woman. Why, oh, why hadn’t he married her when their love was fresh and new—before it had been dirtied by scandals and beatings and public disgrace?
’Tis not to be endured, decided Patsy. Oh, better to be dead—to go to America . . .
America!
He’d heard that the steamship company paid your way and got you a job in America. And there was a little office in a village not ten miles away where the steamship man from Liverpool arranged everything. He almost whistled as he sneaked home in a round-about way.
His mother wouldn’t speak to him when he got home. She had her good, black dress and a pair of black stockings she’d been hoarding for twenty years laid out on the bed. She was polishing her black shoes from a tin of caked blacking. He chattered, trying to get her to speak to him. But she had nothing to say until he asked politely:
Are you going a-visiting, Mother?
And who would I go see, the way I’m ’shamed to show me face in the village? No, I’m getting me good black clothes ready—the clothes I’m wishing to be laid out in.
Not for many a year yet, God willing.
Soon. Soon. The day you marry is the day you’ll see me in me casket.
Don’t die on me,
he begged.
You marry on me and I’ll die on you.
She buffed the shoe which gloved her hand.
I’ll never marry the while you live.
Ah, so. Never marry, he says, after having the banns read and all!
It took him an hour to convince her that the banns were said without his consent or knowledge. She refused to believe him until he told her of the beating he’d had from Big Red.
And so he licked you, me poor boy, and you saying you fell off your wheel.
’Twas shame made me say it.
And he’ll lick you many a time till you say, ‘I do.’
I’ll die first!
You won’t die first or last. You’ll be made to marry the girl.
I can’t be made if I go to America.
And you’d be leaving me like me other chilthren did?
Only for a while. I’ll send for you before the year is gone.
You’ll not be sending for anyone. You’ll bide here with me. Die if you have the wish. But you’ll not marry and you’ll not leave me.
’Tis hard to die,
he said, and our Lord forgive me for saying I would and me not meaning it a-tall. I will stay, Mother dear, and marry Maggie Rose, and I will be shamed in the county all the days of me living and I’ll not be caring, because I love Maggie Rose.
"You say so."
I would do so.
She put the lid on the tin of blacking. In a year you say? You’ll send for me?
I swear it.
’Tis for the best.
She put the blacking away. Go, then, to America and make a place for me and I will come to you.
* * *
The next morning, he cycled ten miles to the next village. The Liverpool sport who represented a steamship company made things easy for Patrick Dennis Moore. Passage was arranged and everything was free—free for the time being.
Yes, Patsy would have to pay for the ticket in time, but that was easy, too. There was a job waiting for him in America. One Michael Moriarity—and, oh, he was Lord Mayor of Brooklyn or something near as grand, was the sport’s opinion—would pay Patsy all of five dollars a week and give him room and board. And all for what? For nothing. For taking care of two darling carriage horses.
Staunchly, Patsy promised to pay the passage money back. That he would, the sport assured him. A man from the steamship branch in Brooklyn would come once a week and take two dollars from his wages until the ticket was paid up. Patsy agreed with the sport that the remaining three dollars was a forchune
—in America or anywhere else.
Patsy put his name on a paper.
You’ll be wanting some loose change for the trip,
suggested the sport.
Glory be,
said Patsy. Does the company give out spending money, too?
Well, hardly. But your wheel. You’ll have no use for it when you’re gone. I’ll take it off your hands for two pounds. You ride over on it Tuesday when the coach leave for Cóbh Harbor and I’ll take ownership then and give you the pound notes.
Big Red wasn’t happy. His mother and sister forever found fault with him. Maggie Rose was not a bit grateful. She told her brother she hated him because he had thrashed her love and shamed him and herself in the village.
Now he’ll go from me forever,
she wept.
Over me dead body,
vowed Big Red.
Why did you come a-tween us?
she sobbed. I was willing to wait till his mother died. Why did you make him the clown of the county?
Anyone,
he said bitterly, who would marry a sharp-tongue girl like you—his mother living or dead—is a clown born and not made.
He was instantly sorry. Forgive me wild talk, Maggie Rose, do,
he said.
There was that pain coming in his left temple: a sure sign that he was thinking deep. God forgive me, he thought, if I did a wrong to this boy what never knew me, by giving him a licking and putting his name up to be read in church with me sister’s.
His mother’s reception of the wedding gift his Lottie had sent by him wasn’t appreciated by Big Red. It was a pair of pillow shams with hand-crocheted edges. Mrs. Shawn claimed the linen was coarse and that Lottie had changed crochet patterns in the middle of an edging.
’Tis not so,
shouted Big Red. Everything my Lottie does is beautiful.
Ah, the sloppy house she must be keeping for me only son,
sighed the Widow.
So help me, God, Mother . . .
he shouted.
Raise your voice to me again,
she interrupted, and I’ll give it to you. Big as you are!
Holy Mother, he prayed, let me not be losing me temper and me here for only a bit of a while with the mother what bore me and me only baby sister.
By agreement, Patsy and his mother pretended to be all for the marriage the following Sunday. When the priest read the banns for a second time and the congregation turned around to gloat, Mrs. Moore smiled and bowed graciously and Patsy smiled tenderly at the Shawn family. This threw the villagers into confusion. After Mass, they gathered in groups outside the church and held worried, whispered consultations. Had something gone wrong, they asked each other. Would he marry the girl after all? It was a big letdown. Big Red relaxed and was happy. He felt he had done the right thing after all.
* * *
Two days later, Patrick Dennis strapped a homemade knapsack, made of coarse linen, on his back. It held all he owned: six colored handkerchiefs, his other shirt and a pair of woolen socks knitted by his loving mother.
And you will send for me before the year is out?
she asked for the tenth time.
That I will, Mother dear.
Swear!
He swore on the little black leather prayer book she had given him when he made his First Communion.
May I drop dead,
he swore, if I don’t send for you within the year. As God is my witness.
Amen,
she said, as she tucked the book in his knapsack.
He looked around once more before he mounted his bicycle. The soft, green, rolling hills . . . the blue sky and tender white clouds and the pink, wild roses tangled on the tumble-down, gray, rock wall around the cottage.
And he didn’t want to go—he didn’t want to go. But he was caught up in the momentum of all the events and the arrangements were made and it was easier to go than to stay.
Patsy jigged with impatience while his mother sprinkled the bicycle and himself with holy water and ceremoniously pinned a St. Christopher medal to his undershirt. When that was done, he got onto his bike in one frenzied leap. His mother’s parting words were:
God grant, me son, that his bastid of a brother don’t ketch you sneaking out of Ireland.
He turned to wave and wheeled out of his mother’s life, and out of Ireland forever.
Four
PATRICK DENNIS MOORE STOOD on American soil once removed by the slate pavement. His first impression of America was that half the people in the new world were riding bicycles.
Sure, he thought, here they must give them away with a pound of tea for where would all these people be getting money to buy them?
He stood on the curb, knapsack on back and card with Moriarity’s address clutched in his hand. Ask a cop,
a man in the steerage had instructed him. Be sure to call him ‘officer’ and he’ll tell you how to get the ferry to Brooklyn.
Patsy saw a cop across the street but the traffic confused him so he didn’t know how to cross.
Great beer trucks, some drawn by six Percherons, pounded by; horse-drawn cars clanged along on iron tracks. A funeral procession, composed of a hearse, an open carriage full of floral pieces and ten coaches of mourners, crawled along. The dead man, likely as not ineffectual in life, was important enough in death to hold up traffic for ten minutes.
Two-wheeled carts, some loaded with fruit, others with junk, were pushed along by men with long, patriarchal beards. The junk carts had cowbells on a leather strap across the top. The bells made an unholy, discordant jangle in the jungle of noises. A lot of cursing, most of it directed at the bearded men, seemed necessary to keep all the vehicles moving.
Bicycles skimmed in and out, confounding all traffic. The riders irritated everyone by their nervous tinkling of the bicycle bells. The men rode looking constantly over a shoulder, which made the bicycles swerve from here to there.
A bell-clanging fire engine thundered by and the horses’ hoofs drew sparks from the cobblestones. Patsy stared in amazement at a spotted dog that ran along under the fire truck, avoiding, by some miracle, being ground to death by the fast-turning wheels.
There were hansom cabs and lacquered traps and varnished carriages drawn by nervous, shining horses and with elegantly dressed dandies and ladies lolling back on the cushions.
The cop across the street was moving away. Patsy was afraid he’d lose him so he made an attempt at crossing the street. Bedlam! Whistles blew, bells tinkled, gongs clanged, drivers cursed, horses reared and a man fell off a high-wheeled bicycle. People yelled at Patsy:
Get out-a the gutter, yer Goddamned greenhorn!
This was Patsy’s first greeting in the new world.
Wipe-a behin’ ears, doity mick,
yelled an Italian fish peddler. This was the first instruction Patsy received.
And, Go back where you come from, why doncha,
from one of Horatio Alger’s newsboys, was the first piece of disinterested advice Patsy received in America.
Patsy scuttled back to the sidewalk, thinking: I’ll get to know the language in time, for ’tis almost like English.
A hansom cab worked its way over to the curb where Patsy was standing. The driver sat high up on the back of the cab. Of course he had a red nose and a battered top hat.
Cab, sir?
Eagerly, gratefully, Patsy held up a card which had Moriarity’s Brooklyn address. Would you now, old Da’, take me to this place?
he said.
Not all the way, me boy, sir. Horse can’t swim. But I’ll take you to the dock and you take the ferry from there.
How do I get in your wagon, then?
asked Patsy. Or do you be having room up there with you where I can see the sights of the town?
Let’s see the color of your money first,
said the driver. Patsy showed him a pound note. Counterfeit!
gasped the cabbie. Then he said: Oh, no, you don’t, sport. Lucky I don’t turn you over to the cops.
He flicked the horse with his whip and worked his way back into the stream of traffic.
A businesslike young man, with a sheaf of papers in his hand, who had been watching Patsy for some time, now approached him.
Name, please!
he said briskly, giving Patsy a keen look.
Patrick Dennis Moore,
said Patsy obediently. The young man riffled through his papers.
And you are going . . . ?
Patsy gave him the card. The young man read the name and address. Ah, yes,
he said. He pulled a paper out of the sheaf. Here it is. Phew!
He wiped his face with his hand. I thought I lost you. I’ve been looking all over for you since the ship docked.
You know me, then?
asked Patsy, astonished.
I know who you are. I work for Mr. Moriarity, too.
He extended the hand of friendship. Deliriously happy, Patsy wrung it. Gee, Mr. Moore,