Maggie Cassidy (6 page)

“I told you Wednesday.”

“That's too far away—”

“You're
cray-zee
.”

—as lonely glooms fall enfolding all the warm organic rooftops of living Lowell—

After the last six o'clock shot put, the ball in the fingers delicately against the neck cradled, the kick, the hop, the twist of waist, the push up and out of the ball high and far—this was fun—I'd go in to showers and re-dress to again for the third time in my busy crazy high day stride Moody Street determined, young, and wild—a mile home. In winter darkness, the Baghdad Arabian keenblue deepness of the piercing lovely January winter's dusk—it used to tear my heart out, one stabbing soft star was in the middle of the magicalest blue, throbbing like love—I saw Maggie's black hair in this night—In the shelves of Orion her eye shades, borrowed, gleamed a dark and proud vellum somber power brooding rich bracelets of the moon rose from our snow, and surrounded the mystery. Smoke whipped from clean chimneys of Lowell. Now at Worthen, Prince and other old milltown streets as my feet shot me past I saw the redbrick faded into something cold and rose—unspeeched—throat-choking—My father's ghost in a gray felt hat walked the dirty snows—“
Ti Jean t'en rappelle quand Papa travailla pour le Citizen?
—
pour L'Etoile?
” (Remember when your father worked for the Citizen, for the Star?)—I hoped my father'd be home that week end—I wished he could give me advice for Maggie—and in the grim mill alleys of ink blue and lost solstice rose he moseyed shades aside moaning my name, big, shadowy, lost—I shot past the Library now brown-windowed for scholars of the winter eve, the reading room bums, the children's library roundshelved fairytaled and sweet—the profound bloodred bricks of the old Episcopalian church, the brown lawn, the jag of snow, the sign announcing speeches—Then the Royal Theater, crazy movies, Ken Maynard, Bob Steele, the French Canadian tenements seen up side streets, the gay winter North—remnant Christmas bulbs—Then Ah the bridge, the sigh of waters, the soothe big roar low wind coming in from Chelmsford, from Dracut, from the north—the orange iron implacable dusk skies pinpointing the steeples, and roofs in a still gloom, the iron arbrous brows of old hills far off—everything engraved and glided upon the eve and that frozen still. . . . My shoes clomped the bridge boards. My nose snuffled. A long and tiresome day and far from finished.

I passed the Textile Lunch windows, saw the bent fisty eaters through steam panes, and turned smartly into my gloomy rank doorway—736 Moody Street—dank—up four flights in eternity. In.

“
Bon, Ti Jean est arrivez!
” my mother said.

“
Bon!
” my father said, he was home, there was his face peeking around the kitchen door with a big Oriental grin—At table, my mother's loaded it with food, steamings, goodies, he's been feasting for an hour—I rush up and kiss his sad rough face.

“By golly I got here just in time to see you run against Worcester Satty night!”

“That's right!”

“Now you'll have to show me what you can do boy!”

“I will!”

“Eat! Look at the spread your mother's got here.”

“I'll wash!”

“Hurry!”

I wash, come in combed, start eating; Pa's peeling his apple with his scout knife. “Well, I'm all through at Andover—Might as well tell you now—They're laying off, their rush season—I can try Rolfe's here in Lowell—”

“
Ben oui
!” my mother in French. “It's much better you stay home!”—her tearful way of arguing and always her arguments are sweet.

“Okay, okay,” laughing—“I'll try my best. Well my little tyke, how are you my boy! Say, maybe I can get a job at McGuire's where Nin is—Say, what's this I hear about you going around mooning over some little Irish girl—Bet she's a beauty, hey? Well You're too young for that. Ha ha ha. Well dammit, I'm home again.”

“Home
agin
!”—Ma.

“Hey Pa I'll play you a game of football with the board—Whattaya say?”

“I was thinking of going down to the Club and bowling a few strings—”

“Well okay,
one
game—and I'll go bowl you a game!”

“It's a deal!”—laughing, coughing on his cigar, bending quickly with huge red-faced excitement to scratch his ankle.

“Okay,” says my mother proud and flushed and lala'ing to have her old man home again, “you do that and I'll clear the table right away and make a nice fresh pot of coffee—aye?”

And in from the joyous cold night of the North come Lousy, Billy Artaud and Iddyboy, there are big jokes and laughs, and we choose sides, toss coins, pick teams and play a game. In the windows is slow frost, the lamplights below are in a cold and lonely black but quick figures breathing fog pass swiftly beneath them to definite eager destinations—

Not knowing that I dont deserve life without praising God I sneak off from the kitchen for a quick quiet phone call in the dark parlor—calling Maggie—Her little sister Janie answers. Maggie comes to the phone with a simple tired-sounding “Hi.”

“Hi—Wednesday night I'm comin over huh?”

“I
told
you.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Oh nothing. I'm bored to tears. Roy and his girl are pl—that are getting married in August are playin cards. My father just left to go to work, they gave him a short call, you shoulda seen him run out the door—he forgot his railroad watch on the dresser—He'll be hoppin mad!”

“
My
father's home.”

“I'd like to meet your father sometime.”

“You'll like him.”

“What'd you do all day?—not that it's important . . .”

“I do the same thing every day—walk, school, walk back for a nap, walk back for track—”

“Spendin all your time talking to Pauline Cole under the clock?”

“Sometimes.” I didnt hide it or anything. “Doesnt matter.”

“Just friends, huh?”

In the way she said “huh?” I saw her whole body and lips and wanted to clup her a mad one she'd never forget.

“Hey—”

“What?”

“If you're bored to tears I'll come over tonight!”

“Okay.”

“But I havent got time” (surprised I was). “But I will.”

“No. You said you didnt have time.”

“Yes I do.”

“You said you dint.”

“See you in an hour.”

“Never mind . . .”

“Hah? I'll be right over. Hey.”

To my father and friends riotously laughing in the kitchen: “Hey, I think I'll go see . . . Maggie Cassidy . . . that girl I know . . . she . . . we just . . . have to help her brother with his homework—”

“Aw,” said my father looking up with frank stunned eyes, very blue eyes, “it's my first night home, you said we'd go bowling—We'll choose sides with the boys—”

“Zeet? Me and your Pop against you and Iddyboy!” cried Lousy in eager glee squeezing himself, then, to me, low, looking over his shoulder, for the benefit of everybody, “Maggie Cassidy that was? Ah Zagg you Babe that aint right cheatin on Pauline Cole! Hee hee! Hey Mister Duluoz we call Jack Zagg-you-Babe now—Hear that,” grabbing me by the neck and making a frown, “now he's cheatin on Moe Cole—Let's drown him in the water, throw him in the snow—”

“Eeedyboy!” echoed Iddyboy with shining eyes showing me his huge fist. “I going to fix you Jack and knock you through the fence!” We made wrestler faces at each other.

Impatiently my mother: “Stay here, stay home Jean—”

Rubbing his hands wirily Billy Artaud: “He knows when he's beat! Doesnt wanta accept that challenge bowling—Let him go!” he finally yelled above all the others triumphantly as a commotion in the kitchen rose making little spiderwebs of the corner ceiling wave. “That leaves four of us,
we'll
have a bowling party—and Missiz Duluoz can keep the score!”

This raised roars of noise and laughing. I had a chance to go. All in life, prime, youngjoy days, riches of sixteen, I sneaked off to the lazy unresponsive girl three miles across town by the tragic-flowing dark sad Concord.

I took the bus—at the last minute avoiding my father's eyes—telling myself “I'll see him tomorrow for gosh sakes—” Ride the bus, guiltish, depressed, looking down, always the dross and dirty loss spine ribbing down life's poor gold and it so short and sweet.

It was a Monday night.

From Pawtucketville to South Lowell the route by bus encompassed the city—down Moody, to Kearney Square below the high school, the fleet of buses, the people huddled waiting against doorfronts of soda parlors, 5 & 10s, drugstores—The sad traffic crunching in from winter, out to winter—The bleak blue raw feel of the wind from the woods cityfying by the few sad lights—There I changed to the South Lowell bus—It would show up always catching at my throat—the mere name of it as the busdriver'd rolled it in the window enough to make my heart beat—I'd look at other people's faces to see if they saw the magic—The ride itself grew grimmer—From the Square out up Central, to Back Central, to the outlying dark long streets of the town where dim frost sits the night by howling-wind garbage pails in cold moonlight—Out along the Concord where factories enlisted its famous flow—out beyond even them—to a dark highway where Massachusetts Street under a brown dumb streetlamp spoked in, small, mean, old, full of my love and the name of it—There I'd get off the bus, among trees, by the river, and dodge the mudholes, seven cottages down on the right to her rambling old unfenced brown-windowed house overtopped by clacking skeletal trees of the sudden from-Boston sea winds blown over wilderness, railyards and hoar—Each house meant my heart beat faster as it passed my rapid step. Her actual house, the actual light that actually upon her was bestowing and around her bathing, mote by mote made rare gold, dear magic, was the commotion hysterical light of wonder—Shadows on her porch? Voices in the street, in the yard? Not a sound, but the dull Victorian wind moaning New England by the river in the winter night—I'd stop in the street outside her house. One figure within—her mother—gloomy pawing in the kitchen, turning sadly in life, putting away her sweet dishes that some day they'd pack away with guilt and sorrow and say “I never knew, I never knew!”—The dumb, the spittling mankind crawing in his groin to make nothing.

Where is Maggie? O wind, songs have ye in her name? Plucked her did ye from midnight blasted millyard winds and made her renown ring in stone and brick and ice? Hard implacable bridges of iron cross her milk of brows? God bent from his steel arc welded her a hammer of honey and of balm?

The rutted mud of hardrock Time . . . was it wetted, springified, greened, blossomied for me to grow in nameless bloodied lutey naming of her? Wood on cold trees would her coffin bare? Keys of stone rippled by icy streaks would ope my needy warm interiors and make her eat the soft sin of me? No iron bend or melt to make my rocky travail ease—I was all alone, my fate was banged behind an iron door, I'd come like butter looking for Hot Metals to love, I'd raise my feeble orgone bones and let them be rove and split the half and goop the big sad eyes to see it and say nothing. The laurel wreath is made of iron, and thorns of nails; acid spit, impossible mountains, and incomprehensible satires of blank humanity—congeal, cark, sink and seal my blood—

“
There
you are. What are you standing out in the road for? What'd ya come for?”

“Didnt we decide on the phone?”

“Oh . . . maybe you did.”

This made me mad and I didnt say anything; now she was in her element.

“What are you so quiet about, Jacky Boy?”

“You oughta know. Dont call me Jacky Boy. Why were you on the porch. I didnt see you!”

“I saw you com in down the street. All the way from the bus.”

“It's cold out.”

“I'm wrapped in my coat snug. Come on in with me.”

“In your coat.”

Laugh. “Silly. In the house. Nobody home. My mother's goin to Mrs. O'Garra tonight to hear the Firestone Hour, some singer.”

“I though you didnt want me to come. Now you're glad.”

“How do y'know?”

“When you squeeze my hand like that.”

“Sometimes you get me. Sometimes I cant stand how I love you.”

“Hah?”

“Jacky!” And she was on me, all of her, thrown socko into me all huddled to my frame, clung, kissing me wild and deep and hot—desperate—it would never have happened on a regular Wednesday or Saturday night planned date—I closed my eyes, felt faint, lost, heartbroken, salt-sunk drowned.

In my ear, warm, hot lips, whisperings, “I love you Jacky. Why do you make me so mad! Oh you make me so mad! Oh I love you so! Oh I wanta kiss you! Oh you damn fool I want you to take me. I'm yours dont you know?—all, all yours—you're a fool Jacky—Oh poor Jacky—Oh kiss me—
hard
—save me!—I need you!” Not even inside the house yet. In there, by the hissing radiator, on the couch, we practically did everything there is to do but I never touched her in the prime focal points, previous trembling places, breasts, the moist star of her thighs, even her legs—I avoided it to please her—Her body was like fire, packed soft and round in a soft dress, young—firm-soft, rich—a big mistake—her lips burned all over my face. We didnt know where we were, what to do. And dark moved the Concord in the winter night.

“I'm glad I came!” I told myself jubilantly. “If Pa could see this or feel this he'd
know
now, he wouldnt be disappointed—Lousy too!—Ma!—I'm gonna marry Maggie, I'm gonna tell Ma!”—I pulled her yielding yearning waist, it popped her pelvis bone right into mine, I gritted my teeth in the memory of the future—

“I'm goin to the Rex Saturday night,” she said, pouting in the dark as I licked her lower lip with my fingertip then threw my hand on the floor off the couch and she was suddenly stroking my profile. (“You look like you're cut out of rock.”)

“I'll meet you there.”

“I wish you were older.”

“Why?”

“You'd know more what to do with me—”

“If—”

“No! You dont know how. I love you too much. What's the use? Oh hell—I love you so! But I hate you! Oh go home!! Kiss me! Lie on top of me, crush me—” Kisses—“Jacky I wrote you a big note today and tore it up—too much in it—”

“I read the one—”

“I finally sent that one—I wanted you to marry me in my first note—I know you're too young, I'm robbing the high school cradle.”

“Ah—”

“You have no trade—You have a career ahead of you—”

“No no—”

“—be a brakeman on the railroad, we'll live in a little house by the tracks, play the 920 Club, have babies—I'll paint my kitchen chairs red—I'll paint the walls of our bedroom deep dark green or sumpin—I'll kiss you to wake up in the morning—”

“Oh Maggie that's what I want!” (Maggie Cassidy? I thought wildly. Maggie Cassidy! Maggie Cassidy!)

“No!” Slapping me on the face—pushing it—angry, pouting, rolling away, sitting up to roundabout her dress again straight. “Hear me? No!”

I'd wrestle her to the bottom of the dark couch retwisting her dresses slips belts and girdly toot pots both of us panting, sweating, burning—Hours passed, it was midnight, my day was not done—Reverently my hair was falling in her eyes.

“Oh Jack it's too late.”

“I dont wanta go.”

“You gotta go.”

“Ah okay.”

“I dont want you to go—I love you to kiss me—Dont let that Pauline Cole steal you away from me. Dont make faces like that I'll get up and walk away—Jacky—I love you I love I love you—” She kept saying it into my mouth—through my teeth, bit my lip—There were tears of joy in her eyes, on her cheeks; her warm body smelled ambrosial brew in the profound struggle we waged sinking in pillows, bliss, madness, night—hours on end—

“You better go home, dear—You gotta go to school tomorrer—You'll never get up.”

“Okay Maggie.”

“Say you love me when you wake up in the morning, to yourself—”

“How could I . . . otherwise . . . do . . .”

“Call me tomorrer night—come Friday—”

“W—”

“I mean Wednesday! Kiss me! Hold me! I love you I always will and no one else ever ever—I never was so much in love—never again—you damn Canook you—”

“I cant leave.”

“Leave. Dont let nobody tell you nothin about me.”

“Nobody
does!
”

“If they do . . .

“If they did I wouldnt lissen—Maggie that house by the railroad tracks, the red chairs . . . I . . . I . . . cant—dont want to do anything else with anybody else—ever—I'll tell—I'll—we'll—Ah Maggie.”

She'd cradle my broken head in her all-healing lap that beat like a heart; my eyes hot would feel the soothe fingertips of cool, the joy, the stroke and barely-touch, the feminine sweet lost bemused inward-biting far-thinking deep earth river-mad April caress—the brooding river in her unfathomable springtime thoughts—The dark flowing enriched silty heart—Irish as peat, dark as Kilkenny night, sorcerous as elf, red-lipped as red-rubied morn on the Irish Sea on the east coast as I have seen it, promising as the thatched roofs and green swards there bringing tears to my eyes to be an Irishman too and lost and sunk inside her forever—her brother, husband, lover, raper, owner, friend, father, son, grabber, kisser, keener, swain, sneaker-upper, sleeper-with, feeler, railroad brakeman in red house of red babycribs and the joyous wash Saturday morning in the glad ragged yard—

I walked home in the dead of Lowell night—three miles, no buses—the dark ground, roads, cemeteries, streets, construction ditches, millyards—The billion winter stars hugeing overhead like frozen beads frozen suns all packed and inter-allied in one rich united universe of showery light, beating, beating, like great hearts in the non-understandable bowl void black.

To which nevertheless I offered up all my songs and longwalk sighs and sayings, as if they could hear me, know, care.