A Christmas Wedding

by Andrew M. Greeley

  Tears spilled out of her eyes and down the big black blotches.

  “Poor Rosie!”

  “I don’t remember what happened. The doctor—cute little blond guy—”

  “We saw him.”

  “He said I hit a stoplight. Knocked it down. Pretty near totaled the car. Thank God I didn’t hit anyone else.”

  “You just can’t get down on yourself that way.”

  “I know that, Peg. It was something one of my professors said, I guess… I’m terribly sorry, Chuck. I promise it will never happen again.”

  “Sure, Rosemarie.” I patted her hand.

  “Are you planning on marrying her, Chuck?” Peg demanded as soon as we began the long ride back to Oak Park.

  It was a straight question and deserved a straight answer. So I offered one that for me was pretty straight.

  “Probably.”

  Silence.

  “The two of you are in love?”

  “Possibly.”

  “I’ve never seen her so happy as she has been since St. Patrick’s Day. She’s put on five of the fifteen pounds her doctor says she needs. Her hard edges have softened. She sings a lot… Then something like this happens.”

  “She’s had a hard life.”

  “Now you’re making excuses for her instead of my doing it.”

  “You don’t think I should marry her?”

  That startled Peg.

  “That’s a very direct question, Chuck. I’ve never known you to be so direct.”

  “Is a direct answer possible?”

  “No … yes … I don’t know. Goof that I am, I thought love would straighten her out.”

  “No advice, then?”

  “I love her very much. But you’re my brother. I love you too. …”

  It was sufficient warning.

  She was out of the hospital in a couple of days, with only a few headaches and traces of double vision. The white convertible turned out to be repairable. Rosemarie was charged with driving too fast for conditions. Dad told us that there were only small amounts of alcohol in her bloodstream. I suppose her father had the ticket fixed.

  Coming home from my Saturday morning efforts at O’Hanlon and O’Halloran later in the day, I told myself that I was cured of Rosemarie Helen Clancy. Permanently and forever.

  If I need a powerful reminder of the dark side of her character, I had been given it. Stay away from the girl. She’s pretty, she’s smart, she’s willing.

  And she’s poison.

  That night there was a card—surface mail—from Tim Boylan.

  Charles C.

  Conas ta tu!

  That’s Irish. It means “How are you?”

  I figured you’d find me eventually.

  I like it here. It’s poor, but peaceful, and the people are wonderful. They leave me alone. Right now that’s all I want. Thank you for writing. Maybe we’ll see each other again someday. I’m off the sauce. For good.

  Slan go foil!

  Tim

  P.S. Give my best to your Rosemarie. Besides Jenny she’s the most beautiful woman I know. You’ll never get away from her, Charles C.

  I reread it, pondered it, and decided that it was a tiny bit more hopeful than not. I’d reply, but not like I was in a rush.

  For a little less than two weeks I stuck to my resolution to stay away from Rosemarie. We drove down to the Notre Dame graduation with Peg on a hot and humid June day. By the time we had reached South Bend I was as captivated by Rosemarie as I had ever been. She certainly would, I told myself, stop drinking soon.

  College graduations are anticlimactic. Parents, relatives, romantic partners, even the graduates themselves understand that real life still waits. At Notre Dame, under the oppressive sun and surrounded by fresh green grass and bright flowers, with the Golden Dome looming baroque and ponderous above us, happiness seemed to me to be edgy and forced, the cheerfulness and the joyous hugs not quite authentic, bright eyes and quick grins somehow haunted. Perhaps I’m reading back into it what was to happen in Korea before the month was over. Maybe all graduations are that way.

  I had expected I would be angry and bitter. I still hated the Holy Cross priests for what they had done to me, but I realized that I had not belonged there and they had unintentionally done me a favor.

  “What are you doing now, O’Malley?” one of them asked me as we were milling around outside after the ceremony.

  “I’m surprised that you recognized me, Father.”

  “You’re the kind of person that’s hard to forget. I hope you’re planning to go back to college.”

  Rosemarie cheated me of my line.

  “Charles is graduating from the University of Chicago in two weeks, Father. Then he has a fellowship at the University to go on for his doctorate in economics.”

  “Well, don’t lose your faith there, O’Malley.”

  “If he didn’t lose it here, Father, he won’t lose it anywhere.”

  The priest drifted away.

  “My lines.”

  “More effective from me, Chucky.”

  We went through the same little act with many of my former classmates, especially those who thought that the University of Chicago was a hotbed of Marxist paganism. Then we came upon Christopher, splendid in his Marines uniform with its shiny gold second lieutenant’s bars. Cordelia was chatting with him.

  “Been telling everyone about your own graduation?” Christopher asked with a wicked grin, before I could congratulate him.

  “Rosemarie is saving me the trouble.”

  “And I’m telling everyone that he has a fellowship to study for a Ph.D. in economics at the University,” she added.

  It was not quite the truth, but it was adequate as a shorthand.

  We all congratulated one another. Rosemarie, with a winner’s good sportsmanship, was especially nice to Cordelia.

  Actually she wasn’t the winner. I was kind of a recovered fumble.

  “I’m leaving for Paris next week,” Cordelia told us joyously. “Two years at the Conservatory.”

  We congratulated her again. Rosemarie hugged her. She slipped away to talk to others.

  “Nice girl,” said Rosemarie.

  “You’re kind to your rivals,” Christopher said with a wink.

  “She never was a rival, not really. Are you still convinced that she has no talent, Chuck?”

  “Lots of skills, no talent.”

  “Poor kid. Someone will have to pick up the pieces someday.”

  I had yet to learn that when my foster sister said that sort of thing she meant that she would eventually pick up the pieces if no one else did.

  “Maybe she’ll meet a nice Frenchman,” Christopher said.

  “There are no nice Frenchmen,” I informed him.

  We all laughed. Chucky was reformed but still outrageous.

  Christopher had his orders to leave for the Western Pacific the following week. We wished him well.

  “You two are being civilized to each other,” he said, his brown eyes darting back and forth between Rosemarie and myself.

  “I’ve always been civilized,” she replied. “Chucky Ducky is learning.”

  We found Vince and Peggy and Ed Murray and his current date, whose name I don’t remember, and their friends. We congratulated them all, Rosemarie hugged everyone in sight. Peg raised an eyebrow in approval.

  “She seems fine.”

  “Why wouldn’t she?” Vince asked.

  We didn’t answer.

  Peg would stay with the crowd and join us later at Long Beach. Rosemarie and I slipped away.

  “Odd experience for you, wasn’t it Chucky?” Rosemarie asked as she drove her convertible down U.S. 20 toward La Porte.

  “Not as odd as I thought it would be.”

  “They’re all nice boys, but you’re not like them, are you?”

  “Old man.”

  “The years in Germany?”

  “Probably.”

  “And a feeling that you’re going in a differ
ent direction?”

  “Maybe.”

  She chuckled to herself.

  I was still planning on being an accountant, right? Okay, an accountant with a Ph.D., but still an accountant. How was that any different from the plans for law and medicine and business of my Golden Dome contemporaries?

  Yet I did sense that I was different from them, even from Christopher with his plans for Republican politics on the North Side of Chicago. Did I have other, as yet unspecified, games to play? Had my years at the University made me different, perhaps given me illusions? Or was it Rosemarie who had filled my head with nonsense? If it was nonsense.

  I banished such foolish thoughts.

  On that warm Saturday evening of the Memorial Day weekend, Rosemarie and I, in our swimsuits, lay in each other’s arms on the dark beach, content that night merely to embrace.

  “I absolutely promise that I’ll never do it again,” she said, for perhaps the tenth time.

  If it had required only willpower, I’m sure she would have kept that promise.

  I nibbled at her bare breasts. She moaned with pleasure.

  Either I had to end our relationship, or we were headed toward the altar and the marriage bed.

  Later I paused at the top of the stairs leading from our house to the beach, took one step down, and then made the rest of them in a flying leap. Pleased with this accomplishment, I trotted down the beach and took the one leap to the top of the house next door. I turned at the top and floated back to the beach and soared briefly over the lake. Then I raced down the stairs to the cafeteria at Fenwick High School and made the last half of the trip in another quick soar. The white-robed Dominican priest at the bottom of the stairs whirled on me and pointed a warning finger. Only it was Rosemarie, naked underneath the robes, who was screaming at me. I discovered that I had lost my clothes.

  Then I experienced a terrible agony of pleasure.

  I woke up with a jump. It took me several moments to realize that it had been only a dream. I had flown at Fenwick, hadn’t I? After thinking about it for a couple of minutes, I realized I hadn’t done that either.

  What was that all about? I asked God. Never mind, I don’t want to know.

  Mostly because Rosemarie insisted, I continued to work at O’H and O’H during June and began my graduate work at the University. I told Palmer Tennant that it was an experiment and I could make no promises. He must have decided that it was a rational economic choice to settle for that.

  I was distracted at both the lectures and at my job downtown by obsessive and delectable fantasies about Rosemarie. I would like to be able to say that I tried to think out, clearly and sensibly, what I ought to do. I didn’t do that, however. I’m not sure that any young male would have. I drifted, postponing both thought and decision.

  7

  Rosemarie made the decision for me, as the woman usually does.

  “Would you stop the car in front of that big Dutch Colonial house, Chucky Ducky?”

  We were driving north on East Avenue, returning from the Lake Theater on a hot June night. We had seen Twelve O’Clock High and stopped at Petersen’s for our two malted milks each.

  Rosemarie was wearing white shorts and a blue blouse that matched her eyes. The shorts made it possible for me to caress her thigh in the theater. She had, however, arranged our seating at Petersen’s so she was out of reach.

  “I’ll have to stop this soon,” she had told me with a wink. “I have put on twelve pounds in the last five months. My doctor says fifteen is about right. … Do you think I’m getting fat?”

  “You’ll never get fat, Rosemarie.”

  “That’s what my doctor says too. He says the real danger is that I’ll end up a beanpole. Still, some of my clothes don’t fit me anymore. Do you notice the change, Chuck?”

  “I notice that you are happy most of the time.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s because I’m in love. But I mean do you notice that I’ve put on weight?”

  I was naïve about women, but not so naïve as to think that would be an easy question to answer.

  “You’re more shapely,” I said cautiously. “There’s more of you to cuddle. Either way, you’re beautiful.”

  She blushed and beamed.

  “Same old Chucky Ducky. Always clever with words”—she touched my hand affectionately—“especially when the woman asks a loaded question.”

  I kissed her hand. She giggled.

  “I’m glad you weren’t flying in one of those B-17s.”

  “I’m sorry I ever wasted time in the Army.”

  “If there’s another war, they won’t be able to take you.”

  “There’s not going to be another war.”

  We sang “Good Night, Irene” as we drove north. I was to drop her off at her father’s house. He was away in Las Vegas. Then I would pick her up the next morning and drive to Long Beach and join the rest of the family. Neither of us was willing to risk my staying.

  Then she told me to drive over to Euclid and stop in front of the big Dutch Colonial.

  “They’re doing some work here,” I said.

  “Remodeling it completely.”

  “Nice place… whose is it?”

  “Mine.”

  “Yours?”

  “Uh-huh. My guardian had no objection to my buying it. … I’m putting in a really big darkroom. All modern equipment”.

  Gulp.

  Double gulp.

  “You’re going to take up photography?” Slap on the arm. “When are you planning to move in?”

  “Probably January.”

  “A Christmas wedding?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who’s the lucky man?”

  “Haven’t made up my mind yet!”

  I realized that the decision had been made long ago, long before the St. Patrick’s Day dance, long before the night at her apartment, long before I had been thrown out of Notre Dame. Probably when we had started corresponding during my time in Bamberg.

  “Well, if you don’t find anyone else, I might be available.”

  I thought of Trudi, my lost love from Germany. I had tried to find her, had I not? She probably had found someone else.

  “I’ll consider that possibility.”

  We laughed and hugged fiercely and assured each other of our enduring love.

  “I’ve made some other arrangements too.”

  “Oh?”

  Why did I feel a trap closing on me?

  Doubtless because one had.

  “I’ve bought a seat on the Board of Trade!”

  “What!”

  “Not for myself.”

  “I don’t want it,” I said firmly, knowing that I would have to take it. “I’m no good at exciting situations!”

  My hand, working entirely on its own, found its way to her breast. She held it and pushed it harder against herself, unbuttoning her blouse with her other hand.

  “Yes, you are. I don’t know what you did in Germany, but they would not have given you that medal unless you did something exciting.”

  “I want to be an accountant,” I said stubbornly, as my fingers probed beneath her bra.

  “Accounting is boring.”

  “It is not”

  “It is too. This way you can go to school and take your pictures in the afternoon.”

  “I don’t want my wife to support me.”

  “I’m not supporting you, I’m loaning you the money. Some capital to trade with too.”

  “Absolutely not!”

  She considered my refusal.

  “I don’t want to live in your house either,” I said.

  “If you want to live with me, you’ll have to live in my house.”

  I found her nipple, already hard, and caressed it gently.

  “Chucky,” she gasped.

  “You want me to stop?”

  “Certainly not!”

  “All right, I’ll live in your house till I can afford to buy one, but I won’t take your money.”

 
“Fair enough compromise,” she said. “Now you’d better take me home… to my other home, that is.”

  I slipped her bra back into place, buttoned up her blouse, and kissed her solidly.

  Even as she trotted up the steps of the house at 1105 North Menard and turned to wave back at me, I knew that she would find an indirect way to put me on the floor of the Board of Trade.

  Fair exchange? A risky job in exchange for her body?

  It certainly seemed so that night.

  Back at the O’Malley residence on East Avenue, I realized that our engagement would become common knowledge at Long Beach the next day. Doubtless she had requested Father John Raven to reserve the day at St. Ursula’s. No escape, not that I wanted to escape. Exactly.

  Yet I was scared, terrified, if truth be told. How had I managed to slip into the trap so easily?

  I would be expected to provide a ring for her. I chuckled to myself. Fortunately I had bought a ring with a presentably large stone at a sale I had seen in a small jewelry store on State Street. Just in case I should need it.

  The next morning I put the ring on her finger as she sat next to me in the car in front of her father’s house at 1105 North Menard.

  “Chucky!” she exclaimed. “Did you go shopping this morning? Oh, what an idiot I am! You’ve had it all along!”

  “I learned in the Army that a good soldier has to be prepared for everything.”

  She kissed me enthusiastically.

  “It’s such a big stone, Chuck darling, you shouldn’t…”

  “Yes?”

  “Strike that last comment,” she said grimly. “I’m an ass.”

  I laughed. “Don’t use such terrible language about my fiancée!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She stared at the ring in fascination as we drove through the city.

  On Sunday morning of that weekend the headline in the Tribune reported that North Korean troops had invaded South Korea.

  8

  “Are you sure they can’t take you, Chuck? Aren’t they calling up the reserves?

  “Only after the women and the children.” I sighed, contemplating my first malted milk with distaste. “It’s the active reserves they’ve called up. I was inactive and my term expired in June.”

  We were sitting in Petersen’s on a drab September evening. Rosemarie, having added twelve of her intended fifteen pounds, was now limiting herself to but one malt. I didn’t feel like a second, but for the sake of my reputation I would have to drink it.