Maggie Cassidy (15 page)

She went back, everybody exchanged huge letters—To prepare myself I fixed my room at my grandmother's with dusty old books from the cellar—I seriously sat in the flagstone yard of little flowers and woodfence sometimes with a drink like ginger ale and read
Lust for Life
the life of Van Gogh I'd found in a bin and watched the great buildings of Brooklyn in the afternoon: the sweetish smell of soot and other smells like steam of a great coffee urn beneath the pavements—sitting in the swing—at night the buildings shining—the far train of great howls on the profound horizon—fear grabbing me—and with good reason.

I started football practice but sometimes played hooky to see shows all alone on Times Square, drank huge milkshakes for 5¢ impossibly aerated like cotton you drank illusion of liquid like the taste of New York—I took long walks in Harlem with hands clasped behind my back, staring at everything with great interest in roaring September dusks, no idea of the fearful complexities that would arise later in my mind about “Harlem” and blackskinned people—I got letters from G.J., Scot, Lousy and the Vinny—G.J. writing:

 
All fooling aside though Zagg, I just cant seem to get used to the idea of you being away. Sometimes I come out of Parent's Market and say “Well I guess I'll go to Jack's and listen to the 920 Club,” then I remember you're away. In one way, I'm glad you're in New York though Zagg, because down here it's worse than the Sahara Desert. By that I mean it's dead. Same old thing day in and day out. It's monotony at its highest. I'm going to school as a P.G. this year Zagg, or at least if I dont change my mind I'm going. My Ma promised me she would try her hardest to send me to college if I did. The way things are now it's a very faint possibility, but I'm hoping for the best. That's about all Jack except don't forget to give your Mother my best regards. [He thought she was still in New York with me.] And here's hoping you have the best of luck in everything.

Your Pal

GUS

Scotty in his brown house kitchen sat down at his mother's round table by the stove and wrote: “Hi Zagguth ye babe: Well I'm—“and talked about his work—“so when I go on days again or better still—“and then talked about Lousy in a way that made me see it had rained on a lot of things since Maggie'd spurned me in sweet Lowell, a bleary new barrel was filling, and all would drown in it—

By the way Lousy left Machinist and is now looking for a job as a foundry man. He's wacky. He ought to stick to Machinist but Zagg did you ever see a guy so bashful to ask for a job. This morning I learned that the Diamond Tool needed a man for a telephone job. I went and got Lousy and when we got down to see the boss you know big office Lousy wanted to turn back, because he was afraid the job was to be nights
when he didnt even know, Zagg
, so I had to make believe I needed a job and Kid Sam followed me in then we filled out the same old application and Belgium never let out a word. I'm telling you Jack he's got to talk his way into a job and if he acts this way he'll be a goner. I'll have to bang it into his head. Well I'll hear from you yet Jack and, you also from me so I'll say good night now as it is approaching the second hour of the Thursday and in about 15 hours I get $29.92 for my last weeks' pleasure. Your pay, SCOTTY, Write Soon.

Iddyboy, from Connecticut where he'd gone to work: ‘He thee boy!”—

Vinny wrote like he talked straight from the scene—

 
He tried it everyway he could, after we got through with her she still wanted more, Zagg please believe me I never seen a woman so hot in all of my life, a female rabbit and you know her very well. B.G. is her initials and she lives next door to me I dont want to write her last name down on paper but you know who I mean. Lousy and Scot were gone to show the unlucky stiffs. Well that's all in a lifetime I guess. Albert Lauzon still goes to the Social Club at half past 4 in the afternoon so he can be sure to be there when the joint opens up good old Belgium—[Lousy'd started to shoot pool in earnest in green night]. Well you old screwball I guess that's all for this time answer soon. Hope that you get lots of tail during the time you will be out there my saying is “there's nothing like a very good fresh piece to refreshen yourself.”

VINNY

Turn Over Other side

P.S. (A HORRIBLE UNPRINTABLE P.S.—SIGNED SHASSPERE)

Have pity on the next girl you take on.

I went through the football season with a bang, there were big explosions of fiesta on the fields of folly and autumnal golden screaming glory—and the 7th of November all of a sudden when I was established and already vexed, mixed, blest, guffawing in the immense things of my new life, new gangs, new New Year's Eves—when on little envelopes for memo I'd write “Keresky job” or “Garden City Defense” (study of the opposing team's diagram) or “$5 Lab fee” or “write math formulas in subway”—and had about fifty crazy screaming friends who climbed the steep hill from the subway to the palace of the school in the red mornings always haunted by new birds—voila—bang—comes a letter from Maggie, and on the back of the envelope (in words as dreamy as an old touchdown before dead men) it says: “Maggie Cassidy, 41 Massachusetts Street, Lowell Mass.”

 
Jack,

Right off I am going to tell you who it is, it's Maggie. Just in case you want to tear this letter up.

It must seem funny to you, to have me writing to you. But that's beside the point. I am writing to find out how you are and how you like school. What is the name of the place anyhow.

Jack wont you try to forgive me for all I have done to you. I suppose you are laughing at me
but I am serious
really.

About 2 weeks ago I met your mother and sister downtown. I just spoke I would have stopped and talked if we had been going together at the time, but I felt ashamed, if they had even asked me if I wrote to you I wouldnt know what to say.

Jack cant we make up I am so terrible sorry for all I have done.

I dont know how it is but some of the fellows you know have been trying to date me up as soon as they found out we broke up such as Chet Rave and some I would much rather not mentioning. I like Chet but not to go out with. He told me your address after much teasing. Bloodworth has been askin for you also.

Well Jack so long if you dont answer I will know you dont forgive me.

MAGGIE

In the study class, thinking, but also seeing the funny face of Hunk Guidry our center on the team, I passed him the note to read, to show him I had girls, he said no. He wrote on the envelope: “Some shit! You're a heartbreaker just a Casanova.”

I wrote to Maggie a little later.

I invited her to the spring prom. After a few preliminary letters, and I'd learned all about the way things went with their big program of dances.

In November I went home, hitch hiking with my madcap friends Ray Olmsted and John Miller; John Miller, Jonathan actually, a horn-rimmed genius-knobbed hero of the New York Central Park West thickcarpet, his sister played piano, at dinner his lawyer father'd say “
Mens sana in corpore sano
—” “A healthy mind in a healthy body”—which was one of my proudest sayings about myself and coming from an aged lawyer—Ray Olmsted was the tall good-looking Tyrone Pemberbroke of American Love Magazines, handsome, a flat hat, a pipe—They didnt get along with each other, they were separate friends of mine; we had lost adventures on an old New England road, hasseled through New Haven, proceeded to Worcester—dark roads of early hitch hiking with a turkey dinner at the end of the string.

Night. From wild subsequent events with mixups of my gang of Lowell and the New York smart boys such as Lousy breaking a huge windowpane on Moody Street from nothing but sheer glee that Olmsted and Jonathan Miller were so mad—in other words I had brought the gang the cream of the wild Horace Mann world then, looking briskly, I'd dodged out and cut down to see Maggie at an appointed-by-phone time and she hit me from the side with kisses as I half turned away from too much the moment I saw her and we started bending back big kisses to the carpet floor and lurching and pushing in big climax kisses of movie magazines' photos—the seriousness, the long Latin study over lips, the furtive over-the-shoulder peeking at the paranoiac world—But Maggie had tears, and wept her little dimple chin under my bent neck me with my hair hanging low like a French beast now looking into his wild Parisian woman for the lifetime of love—we're about to learn the great lay of life pun blunt. But we dont have time, it's an exciting night when everything's happening not only to you but to everyone because of to you!—we're glowing, rich, sick to happiness, I look at her with such love, she with hers, I didnt see any prettier lovers in the sunflower prairies of Kansas when larks squawk in thrashing sunset trees and the old hobo hoes out his sad old can a beans from the pack and bends to eat them cold.

We loved each other.

Therefore no immortal love blood was exchanged between us that night, we understood each other with tearful eyes. I would see her Christmas—soft sweet time.

I ran home from school and arrived the 21st of December—many things behind, many in front of me. In church I gazed at the old rosary beads of my First Communion given to my by my Aunt Anna of Maine—The golden crucifix now darkened but terribly beautiful the little tortured image, the fists, the little muscles—
Inri
inscribed always like the mark of the mute—the feet nailed on little blocks of yellow metal in my hand—I looked up high, the roof of the church, it's an afternoon service, a great big high school church service, gray dark Sainte Jeanne d'Arc basement, former Mayor Archambault is attending and the priest will mention him—Next to me, front, sits a beautiful honey-colored girl, Diane de Castignac of Pawtucketville, I dream of forcing her to some kind of anteroom to wrestle and moan with her, back of the altar, she has nothing on underneath, I force myself on her and finally surprise her by really getting her and completing the job—charming, juicy—When the church service is over I'll file out with everyone else and there she'll be by the door in the aisle, I'll brush my lips on the sleeve of her coat, she'll say “You'd better!” (we've already made an appointment for later)—Out on the church porch instead of going down the steps in the Lowell real rainy alley gloom I go over the balcony, bump Ernie Malo's head with my foot, he says “Ouch” and oldlady-crazy guy kitchen houses in back, scuppers, board fences, garbage gangs of Brooklyn, I climb and come somehow to the tremendous sea, iron purples brood on its fantastic scape, clean, clear, I rush down the sand, the waves of dawn are enormous, our boat is to the right waiting, I'm going two years before the mast to that desolated spectral North Pole—The purple clouds, the gigantic waves—I jump in and dash around scared—the cannons are booming over the surf—Morning and new seas.

“But dont nettle the rose,” said the beautiful Visage of the Virgin Mary as I stared at it.

As though She'd never come to me, but could only come to women and men of final Last Quartets of life not raw me's. But I pray. For the success of all my things.

I'd already been to the redbrick hotels of midtown New York in 1939 and had my first sex with a red-headed older girl a professional whore—I'd gone around boasting about it like all the other maniacs in the school, had gulped in the bed waiting, she came down the hall on sharp heelclacks, I waited with a pounding heart, the door opened, this perfectly built Hollywood beauty piled in with her wealth of heavy breasts—I was terrified—I'd even told Maggie about it but not directly, hinting at it in letters in some way that she caught on—She was just as awed as I was.

So I'm in church worrying about sins, syphilis, girl of my heart and dreams—home from school—neat combed, big coated, I nod politely as Mme. Chavert nods politely at me, I'm getting to be a big grown-up man of Lowell . . . with histories of events in New York, awed news, futures—enemies imaginary and none otherwise—

New Year's Eve Maggie wants me to do to her what I did to “them girls in New York”—

“Aw Maggie I cant do that to you!” I say, thinking it too sinful bigcity to do it to her and not realizing my arms are broken on a dumb idea. But Maggie is frightened too, she “shouldnt a said it!” she thinks—we're on the porch, in the wintry cold of Jan. 1, 1940—I have also been drummed with the idea that if I want to marry Maggie it's better to wait.

At home I tell my mother that I love her and want to marry her; time to go back to New York is near, no more walks to Maggie's three miles down the cold sidewalk—I'll have to go back to my books, friends, huge Metropolitan interests in everybody—It makes me cry.

“Okay Ti Jean—I know you love her—You've got to finish school to fix and prepare yourself for your times—She'll help you if she loves you—if not, she doesnt love you. You see that? Your studies will count in the end—by that time she'll realize everything. Tell her what I said—I'm not interfering in your affairs. You dont have to tell her if you dont wanta—But take it easy—Dont hurry, girls nowadays invent all kinds of troubles—Little Maggie seems okay—go—go see her, tell her good-by—Try to arrange for her to come like you say to your little dance in New York. . . .”

My father was gone by then.

I saw Maggie, said good-by, we looked tearfully at each other and she with new woman eyes deeper than and showing through her own eyes amazing me and making me feel on some wheel of nature.

Everything is perfect; I get invitation cards. They are big cards with gold paint, and RSVPs chrome tipped like the Chrysler Building. I send one to Maggie.

At the last minute, she wrote me: “Jack, Well I guess I'm in for a swell time Friday or should I say this week end. Call me up at my aunt's before you come over so I will be sure to be ready. And by the way I am wearing a pink gown with blue assesories. You know what if you can get me a wrist corsage get it if not it's OK” (no signature).

Ah, terribly sad the look of her writing on envelopes. In the dust of my black books I saw the moons of death. “Wow,” I told myself, “is it true I want a woman?—” I felt sick, “Ruin all my—”