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.
41
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.
42
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—”
43
From sweet Lowell Maggie came to sour New York in a rosy gown.
Corpse ridden Hudson rounded about the Glitter Isle of dark New York America as we raced to the April Prom in a taxi cab across Central Park. The preparations, events, all enormous—She’d come with her mother, stayed with her aunt, was staying the night of the Prom at Jonathan Miller’s family’s rich apartment, arrangements I had made in earlier attempts to save as much money as possible and probably suggested by Jonathan in the first place as in his brief profound friendship with me he directed my affairs and influenced my mind.
Now we raced across town in a cab—I was all dressed in white tie and tails. During that winter the uncle of Gene Mackstoll a London Man About Town Sam Friedman: “Here you are, Jack”—giving me the suit from his closet as nephew Gene grins “you ought to wear it for the Spring Prom. Take it. It’s yours. Here.” He gave me other things—To make myself handsome for the Prom I’d got a sunlamp sun tan in the Hotel Pennsylvania with a shave for about two dollars, like a Cary Grant I wanted to walk into the barbership clacking on heels head stiff courteous and cosmopolitan and have myself led to a chair saying something tremendously witty—or and with a feeling of rich security—instead it was a lonely walk among empty mirrors along the backs of empty barber chairs with an at-attention towel-wristed barber waiting at each one and I chose none in particular and was pulled up by no Ric
ardo Riduardo to my authority chair. The lamp burned and gave me a terrible lobster red face for the ball.
Maggie has put on the best thing she has—a pink gown. A little rose in her hair—the perfection of her moonlight magic Irish sorcery suddenly seeming out of place in Manhattan, like Ireland in the Atlantis World—Trees of her Massachusetts Street home I saw in her eyes. All week just because G.J. had jokingly written “My hand still burning from having been sat on by the perfectly rounded buttocks of M.C.”—this made her so valuable I wanted her to sit on the hand of my hope—I held her tight; felt suddenly protective in this big cab crossing the glittering Manhattans.
“Well, Maggie,” addressing her through all her troubles getting down from Lowell and everything ready, “there it is—New York.” Beside us, Jonathan, himself bemused on the skyscrapers with those seventeen-year-old intellectual first thoughts weighing him in and everything to me inconceivably glamorous because of his addition to the scene—
“Humpt—t’aint much to be in—looks nice,” says Maggie—her lips curled—I bend down to kiss and hold back, feeling myself too importantly dealing with Maggie’s proper reception tonight to be just kissing—the two of us miles apart in social fear, minds wandering to other matters like the ease of pain in the breast that wants out—not as in our sweet river’s nights—not as in love—but to little paranoiac wonderments in the complications of gowns, evening clothes, the corsage I had to rush and get—tickets, furlibues—to make you sigh—in brief, we were doomed to an unsuccessful night, I would never know altogether why.
Her little shoulders had freckles, I kissed every one of them—when I could. But my face was burnt from the lamp and I kept wincing and sweating so I worried what Maggie thought of me. She was too busy being snobbed by the wealthy lavishly gowned girls in there who’d not struggled 250 miles from a railroad brakeman’s old house by the tracks in day coaches of the railroad with the necessary striven-for free pass the gown in a box—but had had checks for half a thousand dollars waved under their noses by indulgent millionaire fathers who’d said “Go down to Lord & Taylors or someplace and get yourself something real nice impress the boy invited you—” For their shoulder blemishes and freckles they had sorceries of powder, boxes of shield-soft, sweet nascent poofs of puffs to dab all over and the best stuff available—Maggie didnt even know it was done or how to do it or how to know. Snowily they swam around her like swans, her tawny shoulders with touch of pink from last summer’s sunburn and freckles of Ireland were bedazzled by priceless necklaces and earrings. Their snowy arms were advantaged and powdered and glittered; her life arms were hung.
I sneaked her down to a little bar downstairs, in the basement of the Hampshire House, Jonathan was with us, for a moment we were like gay people in an Irene Dunne comedy took over a lounge and no one’s around and Jonathan officiated to make drinks and we giggled and talked and I thought we were in some wood panel New York of carpeted luxuries and Maggie felt better being alone and snuggled up to me—
Jonathan (in tails, behind bar) “All right, Jack, if it’s not Tom Collins I shall have to expel you from our haunt, all I can make is an exorcization dont ask for more—” I look proudly at Maggie for her to see these big words. She’s looking around skeptically. Her gardenia hangs sadly. My face is on fire, stiffly in whitetie collar I’d bent to a hundred conversations upstairs feeling that as I inclined my nose politely to the speaker’s nose it would reflect red on his face a big flush of silly heat—
“Oh fer krissakes Jonathan get it over with!” Maggie’s yelling as John tried to joke and goofed—Finally we were discovered by others, the parties floated in, we went upstairs again. A dazzling affair. A horde of young generation in white tie with promflower girls attending a melee, a gathering, in a building, a tower—crowded—rousing applause, speeches, music inside. Greed oozing from the Oos and Aas of false hellos and dreary compliments and presumptive conceited good-bys. Dancing, talking, looking out the window at Central Park and the lights of New York—all of it horrible—we were lost—our hands clutched but with empty hopes—just fear—empty chagrin—longfaced party in real life.
44
“Jack let’s get out of here, let’s go away—” She wanted to go to secret bars, ballrooms, be alone—I thought of Nick’s in the Village—But the arrangements had been made for a gay party of cars to go downtown, uptown, places—She sat in a corner sofa, against me, almost crying—“Oh I hate it here—Jacky let’s go back home and sit on the porch—I loved you much better with your skates—your earmuff hat—anything but this—You look awful—watsamatter with your face?—I look awful—everything’s awful—I knew I shouldnt of come—I guessed it—Something was wrong—My mother wanted me to. She persuaded me. She likes you, Jack. She says I dont appreciate a good boy when I see one—The hell with it—Give me home any time. Jacky,” taking my chin and turning my face to her, looking swimmingly, littly into my eyes with her small perfect eyes here lost in the hurrahs, white roars, chandeliers, “if you want to marry me ever dont ever try to have me come to this New York—I couldnt stand it—There’s something about it I don’t like—Oh let’s get outa here—The hell with all these people—”
“They’re my friends!”
“Friends?—Pah—” She gave me a scornful look, as though she never saw me before, and surreptitious—“Buncha no good loafers—Some day’ll be begging at their backdoors and they wont even give you a crust of bread you know that as well as I do—Friends—for now friends—later it’s good-by Jack—You’ll be on your own, you’ll see—They wont throw shirts at ye when it starts raining in the mountains. And isnt she the huffy puffy one in her dress cut low enough to show her breasts to the lot of us the hussy she must have more sass than my sister Sissy and seventeen others—”
“You’re all s’s,” I said.
“All s’s and dont give a shit. There! I wanta leave. Come on. Take me to a burlesque. Take me anywhere.”
“But we’re supposed to go to the cars after—lots of plans made up by a whole bunch—”
“I like that Knowles playing the piano—he’s about the only one I like—and Olmsted—and Hennessy I guess because he’s Irish and you dont catch him here do you? Humph: I’ve had my see, my fill of your famous New York. You know what you can do with it. You’ll know where to find me from now on, Bub. Home. Good old home . . .” Dizzy, sweet, all the combined ankles of your raving beauties couldnt measure against the atom of Maggie’s flesh in the crook of her underarm, all their eyes, diamonds and vices no competition on the keen point of Maggie’s Stardust Personal Me.
“I’m not even looking at any of these other women—”
“Aw go on—there’s that Betty everybody’s been telling you about all night—Why dont you go dance with her—She is beautiful—You’ll make out in New York—crap’s paradise—”
“What are you mad—?”
“Oh shut up—Oh Jacky come home have Christmases with me—never mind all this charivary—fancy fanfares for nothing—I’ll have a rosary in my hand at least—to remind you—Little snowflakes’ll fall on our pretty roof. Why do you want these French windows? What are the towers of Manhattan to you that needs love in my arm every night from work—Can I make you happier with powder on my chest? Do you need a thousand movie shows? Sixteen million people to ride the bus with, hit the stop—I shoulda never let you go away from home—” Rich lips brooded in my deaf ear. “The fog’ll fall all over you, Jacky, you’ll wait in fields—You’ll let me die—you wont come save me—I dont even know where your grave is—remember what you were like, where your house, what your life—you’ll die without knowing what happened to my face—my love—my youth—You’ll burn yourself out like a moth jumping in a locomotive boiler looking for light—Jacky—and you’ll be dead—and sink—and you’ll be dead—and lose yourself from yourself—and forget—and sink—and me too—and what is all this then?”
“I don??
?t know—”
“Then come back to our porch of the river the night time the trees and you love stars—I hear the bus on the corner—where you’re getting off—no more, boy, no more—I saw, had visions and idees of you handsome my husband walking across the top of the America with your lantern—shadow—I heard you whistle—songs—you’d always sing coming down Massachusetts—you thought I didnt hear, or I was dumb—You dont understand the dirt—on the ground. Jacky. Lowell Jacky Duluoz. Come on home leave here.” She saw aces of spades in my eyes; in hers I saw them glitter and shine. “Because I’ll never come to this New York to live you’ll have to take me at home and as I yam . . . You’ll get all lost around here, I can just see you—You shoulda never left home to come here I dont care about anybody says about success and careers—it wont do you no good—You can see it with your own eyes—And lookit her with her fine and fancy ways, I bet she’s as balmy as the day is long and they have to spend thousands a dollars on bug doctors for her—you can have em brother—so long.—Huh,” she concluded, through her throat, which throbbed, and I kissed her and wanted to devour her every ounce of her mysterious flesh every part hump rill hole heart that with my fingers I’d never even yet known, the hungry preciousness of her, the one never to be repeated altar of her legs, belly, heart, dark hair, she unknowing of this, unblessed, graceless, dull-eyed beautiful. “They can put me away any time, I’m ready,” said Maggie, “but dont let the birds sing in this hole—”
Out of her eyes I saw smoldering I’d like to rip this damn dress off and never see it again!