MARGY DRESSED CAREFULLY for her semiweekly visit to her mother. She knew Flo’s alert eye would ferret out a missing button, take notice of a baggy skirt or a wrinkled shirtwaist and she would be quick to deduce that Margy, like so many women after marriage, was “letting herself go.”
Margy took a slow walk from Bushwick Avenue over toward Maujer Street. It was a day that presaged spring. The sun shone warmly but there was a nippy wind coming in from the sea. The air smelled like hot sun shining on cold snow. The day was like an Easter Sunday that comes too early in the year. Margy had known many such Easters; sun and wind mixed with sober thoughts of Resurrection. A day too cool for a suit, too warm for a coat.
Margy enjoyed the weather. She thought: It’s the feeling of the first straw hat of the season; of a corsage of three dark pink rosebuds tied with silver ribbon to wear to church. It reminds me of the wish I wished when I was very young—that I had a good-looking boy to go to Mass with me and kneel next to me as we took Communion together.
It’s the smell and look of weedy Madonna lilies, twenty-five cents for each flower and a dime for each bud on the stalk, set out on the sidewalk in front of a flower store in new pots too small for them. (How I used to want to work in a flower store!) It’s the clay smell of new flowerpots and if life itself had a smell, it would smell like new clay flowerpots.
And it’s the passing a store window and stopping to look at the white, blue and pink hyacinths and aching all over because you can’t afford to lay out fifty cents to buy a hyacinth plant. Yes, this day is like all those days mixed together.
Then there happened one of those things that make people believe in small miracles. She saw a wagon rounding the corner. It was a slow-moving platform of scent and color. It made visual a hundred times over the things she had been thinking about. Small fir trees with burlap-wrapped roots were crowded in the front part of the wagon, then came geraniums, white, rose and red. Little berry boxes holding tightly crammed pansies were on a small board extension nailed to the back of the wagon.
The shaggy horse obeyed the gentle pull on the reins and slowed down. “Want to buy a nice plant, lady?” asked the driver.
“I don’t know,” said Margy.
Her tentative answer so encouraged the peddler that he tugged the reins decisively. The horse seemed glad of a chance to stand still and let his head hang down for a while. The peddler turned on the wagon seat to speak to her.
“I got nice little trees only seventy-fi’ cen’s apiece and the bes’ geraniums on the market and I’m only askin’ a quarter for those.”
“I was just looking at the pansies,” explained Margy.
The man, pleased by a sales prospect whose interests narrowed down so easily, swung himself off the seat. “And I don’ blame you for lookin’,” he said feelingly. “You won’ fin’ no better pansies anywheres in Brooklyn.”
“How much?” she asked.
The sale was coming too quickly. It was no fun. He wanted to practice more salesmanship on her. “I wan’ you should examine a box first before we talk price,” he said. He picked up a box and held the pansies under her eyes. “I don’ have to talk up these flowers,” he said. “They talk for theirselves.”
And indeed they did—velvety purples, smoldering yellows, smoky garnets and the more prosaic blues and whites.
“Yes. But tell me how much,” said Margy.
“So I’ll tell you: I give twen’y cen’s a box for’m at the market. I as’ twen’y-fi’ cen’s when I sell’m. Is that too much?” he wanted to know. “A nickel profit, bein’s that I got to get up in the dark and go down to Fulton Street to buy’m and then drive throo the streets all day sellin’m?” He answered his own question. “No, it ain’t too much.”
Margy agreed it wasn’t too much but admitted that she couldn’t afford to lay out a quarter for flowers.
“A quarter!” he argued with suppressed passion. “What’s a quarter if it buys somethin’ what makes you happy if only for a minute?”
“You said it,” she agreed.
And their words weren’t banal because their eyes met as she spoke and she and the peddler had the same brief thought: that quickening happiness wasn’t as hard to grasp as people thought.
“But I shouldn’t’ve taken up your time,” she apologized. “I was only looking for something reasonable to take to my mother. Thanks!” She started to walk away.
“Wait a minute!” She came back. “Now you don’ wanna go and be so hasty,” he said, “because I got just the thing for you.” He reached into a secret recess under the wagon seat and brought out a box of dilapidated pansies. “Box lef’ over from yesterday,” he explained. “Got a little crush’. So it don’ look so nice, you think? But they’ll straight’n up. A little sun, a little wa’er. And you can have this box . . .” he looked intently into her face not wanting to miss the look of pleasure that he was sure would grow there, “. . . for a dime!”
He was rewarded by the instant look of happiness that leaped into her face. “I’ll take it!” she said breathlessly, afraid that he might change his mind.
It was only after he had put her dime in his pocket that she noticed the plants in the middle of the basket were withered and dead. She flashed him a look of hurt disappointment and not meaning to, she spoke her instant thought aloud.
“People like us,” she said, “shouldn’t do things like this to each other.”
He lowered his eyes and the hand in his pocket tightened on the dime an instant before he brought it out and held it out to her.
“Here,” he said, ashamed. “Take your dime back an’ keep the flowers.” She declined the dime, shaking her head.
“A bargain’s a bargain,” she said. “And I’ve never gone back on one yet.”
She pulled out the withered plants and dropped them into the gutter. There was one perfect plant left in the box. He picked up the discarded plants and held them out to her.
“If you put these roots in wa’er when you get home they migh’ freshun up and then you’d have a boxful insteada only the one plant. And they’d be good enough.”
“No, I’m funny that way,” she said with a slightly superior air. “I’d rather have only one good thing than a whole lot just good enough.”
He considered her remark, then opened his hand and let the plants drop back into the gutter. He put one foot up on the hubcap of the back wagon wheel, leaned forward and rested his arm on his raised thigh. He pushed his shapeless busted-peak cap back from his beaten-down face.
“You know,” he said in mellowed, measured tones, “that’s jus’ the way it is with me. I d’rather have one plain thing—you know—grade A, number one, then a whole lot of fancy stuff secon’han’. I always say to the wife, ‘I sooner have one nice piece a crusty rye bread,’ I say, ‘wit fresh sweet butter on it,’ I say, ‘than a sir-line steak what’s tough and stric’ly secon’ grade.’ That’s what I always say to the wife.”
His little speech transformed him. Gone was the shabby little peddler with the wincing eyes. His pose while he rested his foot on the hubcap gave him an attitude of debonair self-confidence. His views made him a man of personality. Margy took all this in, but the only words she was able to give him were again, “You said it!”
They had nothing more to say to each other. The little business deal that had brought two strangers together for a few moments of communication and understanding was completed. He climbed back on the wagon seat, slapped the reins on the tired horse’s back and went his way bellowing out his wares to the deserted street.
The little contact added some excitement and imagination to Margy’s day. She met so few people and spoke to no man outside of Frankie, her parents and the tradespeople. She got interested in trying to visualize the peddler’s private life.
I bet he was quite a guy in his young days, she thought, when he was keeping company. I can just see him going to his girl’s house all decked out and full of swell ideas about himself and the world. And probably she thought he was wonderful. Maybe he never told her he was a peddler but made out like he was a big shot and let her believe he was a regular florist. She must have thought that would be nice—living in back of the flower store and, between the times of minding a baby or two, helping him fix up graduation and wedding bouquets.
Probably he always wanted a flower shop himself. So he started out first with the wagon and thought that was only temporary—the wagon, and the first thing you know he’d have enough money saved up to buy a store. But I guess that never happened.
Or it could be that he started out selling bunches of flowers in a pail of water on a street corner and worked up to the wagon. Maybe he thinks owning his own horse and wagon is tops and he doesn’t want to go higher. I wish I really knew. I could have asked him, I suppose, but that would have taken too much nerve.
She stopped at the corner bakery and bought two charlotte russes. She paused on the stairs out of old habit, hoping for familiar sounds; her mother’s quick step behind the closed door, the thump of the lard hitting the frying pan, the smell of onions beginning to fry and the small clean sound of eggs cracked on the rim of the pan. For a moment she wanted things to be as they had been. Her days at home had not been happy but they had been full of hope. Everything good had seemed to be in hand’s grasp just around the corner. In marrying she had turned a corner. While she wasn’t sorry for having turned it, she was a little sad having it behind her instead of before her. She had one less thing to dream about.
“Hello, Stranger,” said Flo, emphasizing the stranger.
“Now, Mom,” came Margy’s automatic protest.
“So you finally found the time to come see your mother.”
“Why I was here a little less than a week ago.”
“I could be dead and buried in my grave in a week,” said Flo.
“It’s such a nice day, Mama,” pleaded Margy obliquely. “Almost like spring.”
After considering that fact briefly, her mother said, “Sit down and stay a while.” She started the kettle of water to boiling.
“I brought you some . . . I mean a pansy plant.”
Flo accepted the box and buried her nose in the three blooms on the plant. A look of tender pleasure almost showed in her face. As if embarrassed by being pleased, she said, “You shouldn’t waste your money.”
“Only a dime,” explained Margy.
“Dimes grow into dollars.”
“Oh, no,” smiled Margy. “Dollars melt down into dimes.”
She watched her mother set the box on the window-sill garden where the plant looked very modest among a Boston fern, a rubber plant and a rose geranium.
“How’s Papa?” asked Margy.
“Your father,” said Flo, as though disclaiming all relationship to the man, “ain’t doing so good. He was laid off two days last week.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t say. All they did was give an excuse. Times is hard, they told him.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” soothed Margy.
“You wouldn’t,” agreed Flo. “But I got to.”
“Why?”
“Because if I don’t worry, who will? I imagine they’re getting ready to let your father out but he’s been working there so long they haven’t got the nerve to fire him outright. They’ll keep on laying him off more and more until finally he’s laid off altogether.”
“He’ll get another job.”
“Where? A man his age.”
“Papa’s still young—only forty-three.”
“A workingman’s old when he gets past forty. The bosses are always looking for younger men. If he’d only studied and passed Civil Service then he’d have a pension in his old age. How much did these Charley Ruches cost?”
“Ten cents.”
“They’re nothing but air. There’s more on a coffee ring for the same money.”
“All right. Next time I’ll bring a coffee ring. But don’t worry, Mama. If Papa loses his job maybe Frankie and I can help out.”
“We’re not asking help from nobody,” stated Flo. “Only we might have to move to a cheaper flat. Drink your tea while it’s hot.”
“It won’t come to that,” protested Margy, wondering how any flat could be cheaper than her parents’ home.
“Now that I don’t have your money coming in every week, it’s hard to raise the rent. I was thinking that if you and Frankie moved in with us—you could have the front room and the bedroom next to it—we could share the rent and the cost of cooking. You and Frankie could save a lot that way. Us, too,” she added honestly.
“That wouldn’t work out, Mama, and you know it.”
“I wouldn’t interfere,” said Flo humbly. “You’d be private.”
“It’s just that Frankie wants his own home.”
“If his mother wanted you to live with them, you’d run.”
“I certainly wouldn’t,” said Margy too quickly.
“You mean you and his mother don’t get along?” asked Flo sharply.
“We get along fine,” lied Margy. “It’s just that every couple likes their own home. Maybe someday Frankie and I will buy a little house out on the Island,” she dreamed. “And we’ll live downstairs and you and Papa can live upstairs.”
“No, thank you,” declined Flo proudly. “I’ve always had my own home even though it was only a few cheap rooms. It would be terrible if I couldn’t have my own home in my old age after working hard all my life. Is that too much to ask? A home of my own in my old days? No. Besides, I always said I’d never live with my daughter and son-in-law.”
“But you want us to come live with you.”
“That’s different. I’d still be in my own home.”
AS MARGY WAS leaving, Flo said, “Don’t stay away so long the next time.”
“I won’t. But you must come see me.”
“I haven’t got the clothes to go anywhere.”
“You don’t have to dress up to see me. You ought to know me pretty well by now. I’m the girl you once gave birth to. Remember?”
Flo’s heart turned over when she saw the old familiar smile of aching archness come to her daughter’s face. She knew it was a time to say something memorable or tender. But all she said was: “As if I could forget. Such a hard time I had.”
Her mother called after her as she went down the stairs. Margy turned and looked up. “Are you all right?” asked Flo. Margy knew she was asking whether she was pregnant.
“I guess so,” she called back.
“You guess! You guess!” Her mother’s voice was full of sudden panic. “Don’t you know?”
“Of course I’m all right. Yes, I know I’m all right,” she called up the stairs. She heard her mother expel a sigh of relief.
WALKING HOME, MARGY came to the decision that there was no use worrying about her father. He’d never liked that job anyhow. When he first took it he said it would do until something better turned up. Nothing better had turned up in fifteen years. He had never dared leave that stopgap job to look for a better one. Now if he got fired he might have a chance to find that better job. He was still young, Margy assured herself vehemently, and there was nothing at all to her mother’s idea that a workingman was washed up at forty.
But somehow it didn’t seem like such a nice day any more. The sun had got lost behind some clouds and the wind blew damp and chill.