We joked that we would be incompatible marriage partners. Rosemarie was a morning person. She bounded out of bed with full-steam energy. The eight-thirty class was her favorite of the day. I on the other hand did not join the human race (her words) till ten-fifteen.
I flourished at midday, when Rosemarie began to think of a nap. And I crashed early in the evening, when she had acquired her second wind.
“It wouldn’t work, Chuck. Our schedules would be so different that we’d never produce children.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
But even in my groggy, early-morning daze, she still seemed gorgeous, a potential bed partner who would be attractive at all hours of the day.
And if Mom’s snapshots of Rosemarie’s grandmother were any basis for judgment, at all the times of her life.
“Rosie has such fine facial bones, Chucky dear, and a naturally splendid figure. If she takes care of herself, she’ll be lovely all her life.”
“Did her grandmother drink too much?”
“Not at all,” Mom replied, ignoring the implication of my question, as she frequently did. “Neither did her mother until after she married.”
Then the good April added one of her non sequitur comments that only seemed irrelevant. “Most women would die to have a waist that slim.”
“Skinny, emaciated,” I replied.
Mom and Dad both chuckled. I had indeed protested too much and thus admitted my interest in Rosemarie’s body. I’d have to be more careful.
“Well, the poor little thing could use five or six more pounds.”
“More like ten.”
“And maybe that would slow her down on the tennis court, huh, Chucky?” my father asked, with no respect for his son’s mediocre athletic ability.
“Well,” I said, deliberately trying to shock, “she sure has great teats!”
The good April, whom I had expected to reprove me for my language, only sighed and said, “I’m surprised you noticed, dear.”
Would Rosemarie be as attractive in her middle forties as the good April? And as sexually appealing as the good April was to my father?
Such questions, I warned myself sternly, were not appropriate. You’ll mess up something good if you even think about them. Naturally, I thought about them all the time. In Bamberg I’d had a lover, a young woman I had planned to bring home as my wife. She disappeared after I had saved her and her mother and sister from the Ruskies, who would have raped them to death. I had never found her. I had learned from her, however, the pleasures of sexual love. A least I thought it was love. It was certainly pleasurable. Trudi had been a straightforward young woman, fighting to stay alive. Our affair, if it could be called that, was straightforward, uncomplicated. Rosemarie was much more problematic.
What would happen if they ever met? Thank God there wasn’t much chance of that ever happening.
Rosemarie was a good friend, loyal and helpful. I enjoyed being with her and she seemed to enjoy mothering me. We were not suited to be lovers, I insisted mentally, but we might well be lifelong friends.
We even went to an occasional film in the early evening, and during the seasons to the opera and the symphony. We did not hold hands. People do that on dates, you see, but we were two friends watching a movie or an opera together, not a couple on a date.
Was I kidding myself? Of course.
Did I realize I was kidding myself?
To tell the truth, I can’t remember. Not that it mattered.
We saw Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral and agreed that the last temptation was indeed the greatest treason, to do the right thing for the wrong reason.
Neither of us thought that we might ever do that in our lives.
And we saw Christopher Fry’s The Lady’s Not for Burning and argued about whether Rosemarie was like the heroine, I taking the affirmative position and she the negative.
“I’m not that smart.”
“You are too.”
“Or that good.”
“Better.”
(Storm clouds gathering). “Don’t say dumb things, Chucky, when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
We listened in awe to Fry’s A Sleep of Prisoners on tape and agreed that we thanked God that our time was now, when the enterprise was exploration into God.
We didn’t know what that meant.
There were no romantic exchanges between me and Rosemarie at that point. In fact, we avoided touching as though it would transmit an infectious disease. Both of us were satisfied with our friendship and did not want to risk endangering it with romance.
At least that’s how I reasoned, though it’s clear from the way I write about her today that she had become an obsession, a delightful and mysterious obsession. I had no idea how Rosemarie viewed the matter. Could not a man and a woman spend a couple of hours every day with each other, take care of each other, listen to each other’s hopes and ideas, and occasionally sit next to each other in a theater without having to worry about love or sex?
The answer obviously is no. Not at our stage in life anyway. And not with a woman as spectacularly attractive as Rosemarie.
“Do you go to bed with her?” one of my classmates asked as we left the library and Rosemarie slipped away in the direction of her next class.
“Oh, no, we’re just friends. We were practically raised together.”
“I’d say she was a distracting friend.”
“After awhile you hardly notice.”
Lie.
“Thank you for the help,” she said when we had put away the last glass on the night of the session with Père Danielou. “You make a great kitchen maid.”
“Faithful servant.”
She hesitated, made a face, and then said, “Chucky, you shouldn’t look at me that way during talks.”
“What way?” I asked, feigning innocence.
“Ogling me, like you did during poor Père Danielou’s talk.”
When an Irishwoman uses the adjective “poor,” it invariably serves as a warning that the person in question is temporarily immune from criticism.
“You don’t like it when a man ogles you?”
“It depends on the man.” A rose tint appeared on her face.
“Ah?”
“I don’t mind it from you because you look at me so sweetly, but you shouldn’t do it during a lecture.”
“People notice?”
“Certainly not! I notice! You should pay attention to great men like Père Danielou.”
For my own good.
Did she know what was the content of my sweet reveries? I almost asked her, and then realized that the ice beneath me was getting very thin. “As your faithful servant, I hear and obey.”
“A little mouthy, but basically all right… Charles C. O’Malley, look at that snow! Eight inches already. I’m not going to let you drive home in that funny little car. You can stay in my guest room.”
Gulp.
“It’s not that bad.”
“It is too.” She reached for the phone. “I absolutely forbid you to go out in it.”
“But I have to—”
She waved me to silence. “April? Rosemarie. Sorry to call so late but I am not going to let your older son drive all the way back to the West Side in this weather. …I’m glad you agree. You know how much he likes to play the hero. … Oh, I’ll lock him in the guest room. And, anyway, you know how he is. He doesn’t go in for that sort of thing.”
Triumphantly she handed the phone to me.
“Rosemarie is perfectly right, dear,” Mom said, trying to sound severe. “You can’t drive home tonight. You stay there till the streets are cleaned.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And be good.”
“Mom! You know me. I wouldn’t even think of not being good.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, dear.”
Rosemarie promptly ushered me to the guest room, pointed to the bathroom, and waved good night. I inspected the room. Very neat. Nothing out of
place. I took off my khaki sweatshirt and hung it up neatly. I folded my fatigue trousers so that the creases were perfectly in line and hung them up too. Then, in my old but serviceable GI shorts, I knelt down for my nightly prayers, a custom I had begun in Germany when there was no one else in the room and then resumed after my expulsion from Notre Dame to reassure the Deity that my problem was not with Him, but with the Catholic Church and especially the Congregation of the Holy Cross.
I am sorry, I informed Him, if I took excessive delight in imagining Rosemarie without her clothes. I tried to be respectful. She even thinks that I ogle her sweetly. I wonder what she means by that and what she thinks I’m doing. However, I hold You partially to blame because You made her so attractive and me so horny. You know that I would never do anything to hurt her. I am in somewhat unusual circumstances tonight, compromising, one might say. Like a lot of bad movie plots. If You ask me, and You rarely do, I think the good April went along a little too easily with this situation. Besides, I’m too tired tonight for romance. If it is all the same with You, however, I’d just as soon fall asleep instantly so my imagination won’t run wild. I could do without the dreams too.
God apparently heard my final prayer. Clad in my shorts, and having dispossessed one of Rosemarie’s teddy bears, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. If she did indeed lock the door, I thought in the last few seconds of consciousness, she did it very quietly.
“Are you awake and decent?” I heard her voice from a great distance.
“Yes to the latter”—I rolled over and buried my head in the pillow—“and no to the former.”
She propelled herself through the door, a tray laden with bacon, eggs, toast, raspberry jam, and tea in her hands, a newspaper under her arm.
“My hotel provides these services erratically,” she announced briskly. “Guests are advised to take advantage of them while they can.”
She put the tray on the bed next to me, bustled over to the window, and pulled open the drapes, illuminating the little bedroom with glittering winter sunlight reflected in a thousand icicles, a ballroom in a fairy wonderland.
Rosemarie was a tidal wave of fresh energy, a robust, well-scrubbed erotic presence, a clean and healthy promise of coming springtime. You realized that she was also a well calculated and discreet temptation only when you had been lured into her glowingly wholesome trap.
In other words, that morning she had designed herself to be an interesting hint of what it might be like to wake up next to her every morning.
Much too energetic for my tastes, but it might be pleasurable to be swept up in that energy.
She was wearing a tightly belted white satin robe. Her freshly brushed hair hung neatly to her shoulders, her face glowed from a recent shower, and she smelled of soap and inviting scent.
A carefully arranged entry.
“The maid service in this hotel,” I observed, rubbing my eyes, “is loud, pushy, and extremely attractive.”
“Thank you, sir.” She bowed. “And a good morning to you too.”
“The door wasn’t locked?”
“Really, Chucky”—she waved her hand—“I have a lot of more serious worries than defending myself from your amorous intentions.”
“You don’t think you could seduce me?”
“I didn’t say that and you know it. I said I wasn’t afraid of your seducing me.”
“Ah.”
I would doubtless make a mess of it.
“Chuck,” John Raven had told me, “your tragic flaw with women is that you help them when they’re vulnerable. So naturally they fall in love with you. You can’t resist a vulnerable woman who is in love with you.”
“I’ve resisted a couple of them.”
“Just barely.”
Rosemarie waved her hand again. “Not that it wouldn’t be interesting to see you try.”
“High comedy.”
The wave was becoming a familiar gesture. It was a little flick, upward and outward, of her right hand. It said that I was perhaps an amusing little boy, but wasn’t it time, after all, that I began to grow up? However, the implication was always of patient, maternal affection.
The wave almost always melted my heart. It offered me warmth and comfort and a secure spot on the desert island she brought with her. Secure, but not necessarily restful.
“Anyway”—she sat on the edge of my bed—“your wife, whoever she’s going to be, poor woman, will have to resign herself to love between eleven and noon, because that is the only time you’ll be wide enough awake to have sex on your mind.”
Her robe slipped away, to reveal a touch of ivory thigh.
“I suppose you’re right.” I sighed. “I mean you can’t make love with raspberry jam on your fingers.”
“You couldn’t anyway. … So what do you think?”
“About love with raspberry jam?”
“About last night, silly. And the whole business.”
“I’m a lot happier here than I was at Notre Dame,” I began.
She nodded. “That’s obvious.”
“I’ve studied harder than I thought I possibly could. My head reels sometimes from all the ideas. I’ve learned more about Catholicism from your friends than I did in sixteen years of Catholic schools. It’s exciting. What more can I say?”
“Better than Notre Dame in everyway?”
“No.” I thought about the rest of my answer. “You and I share some basic values with the guys at Notre Dame that we don’t with many of the people here. Notre Dame is less arrogant, and heaven knows it has reason to be less arrogant than this place; and loyalty—what we’d think of as loyalty anyway—is almost invisible here. But universities are about ideas and there are a lot more ideas in a day here than in a semester at Notre Dame.”
“The people last night?” she drew the robe over her thigh.
“They’re not St. Ursula people, Rosemarie. Not that everyone has to be. But they’re something new in the Church and I think there will be a lot more of them.”
“And what they stand for will eventually affect St.Ursula’s and everything else in the Church. Our children”—she blushed deeply and tightened the belt on her robe but did not completely cover her delicious thigh—“in separate families, will live differently because of their ideas.”
“Maybe,” I admitted.
Which turned out to be an understatement. But then no one, not even someone as perspicacious as Rosemarie, could have anticipated the Vatican Council.
“And you?” she persisted.
“Early morning catechism?”
“Why else did you think I kept you here all night?” Her grim lips indicated that she was not joking. “I wanted to catch you off guard.”
“With me in my GI shorts and you in that lovely robe?”
“Shut up”—she poked at my naked ribs with a quick, sharp finger—“and answer my question.”
“Yes, Mommy.” I ducked away from her tickling jab.
“Well, someone like you needs at least two mommies.”
“I ask myself sometimes what a would-be accountant and an occasional photographer—”
“Too occasional, but go on.”
“—needs with so much heavy thought and so many tantalizing ideas.”
She rose from the bed and walked over to the sun-filled window. I squinted to watch the satin-covered back. Yes indeed, a perfectly acceptable rear end too. Maybe I would shock the good April with that comment. (“I’ve just noticed, April Mae, that Rosemarie has a lovely ass.”)
“Accountants are members of the human race too, Chuck. They need ideas and vision as much as anyone else. Besides, you’re a lot more than just a potential accountant with a camera.”
“What am I then?”
She turned to face me, a living statue bathed in wonderful backlight that turned her long dark hair to black fire. “I’m not sure,” she said slowly and carefully, choosing every word, “but I know you’re someone with the mark of greatness.”
“Come on
, Rosemarie, that’s a romantic daydream.”
“No it isn’t. But hurry up and get dressed or you’ll miss your first class.”
She spun toward me again at the door of the room.
“You really ought to give yourself more time.”
Front-lighted now, she was a creature of pure, radiant light, not a faerie sprite over a bog but a seraph from next to the throne of God. I would have to bring along my camera the Kodak C-3 she had given me, and not the Leica that had been Trudi’s gift, and open once again my Rosemarie archive.
“More time?”
“To think, to reflect, to pray, to play. You have to stop filling every second of your day with obligations.”
At that moment I could have lost myself forever in the luminosity of the goddess looking down on me.
“You don’t need a degree and a job, Rosemarie. I do. I admire the way you study. I wish I could concentrate on learning too. But…”
“Why can’t you?”
I didn’t have a quick answer.
“See!” she proclaimed triumphantly, turned again, and departed from the room in a rustle of satin and a cloud of light.
So our early morning tête-à-tête was finished. Rosemarie had said what she wanted to say. And chosen the circumstances, complete with the halo of backlight, to say it forcefully.
She would be a superb lover, I told myself, if she were not crazy. Last night she was wonderful. The night before she was so drunk she could have been raped behind the bar or have frozen to death on the way home. Do you want to spend the rest of your life with someone like that?
The answer was obvious.
And the proper conclusion was that, regardless of her radiance that morning as a creature of pure light, she was a threat. The friendship could not go on forever.
Somehow I would have to end our romance after the spring quarter.
Still, when I returned that evening to Oak Park, I informed the good April, when she had asked how the night at Rosie’s had been, that I had discovered she had a quite adequate rear end.
I expected a reaction of shock at my observation. Instead she replied, “Well, dear, I’m surprised you noticed that too. You’re making good progress.”
A Christmas Wedding Page 3
