A Christmas Wedding

by Andrew M. Greeley

  And maybe help make it so too. Her solemn high definition that I was superb in bed probably did make me better at the game.

  She was much less troubled by intimacy than I was. Modesty and privacy were whatever she defined them to be. Occasionally, in bed, she would snatch a garment from the floor to cover herself, but she would not tolerate my doing the same thing.

  One night, toward the end of our first week in Mexico, as I worked my way into our “good night” romp, there was a subtle change in her response. Ice floes were cracking up inside her, mountain streams beginning their race to the sea; her passive submission subtly changed to active cooperation. Delicately at first, then fiercely, she grunted and groaned, twisted and ground, heaved and struggled, climbing for the first time her own mountain.

  I shifted my strategy so that I might help her on the climb and then soar with her. She smiled briefly, knowing that I was with her, and returned to her now frantic effort.

  She was a long-distance runner, rushing with desperation toward the end of the course, her face contorted with effort and anticipation, her efforts more violent as the end came into sight.

  Her moans grew louder, her efforts more abandoned, her acquiescence in our joint movements more vehement. Then we were two wild creatures of the forest caught up in a common paroxysm that was beyond pleasure and pain, a desperate, glorious, finally triumphant quest for deliverance.

  Her sharp cry of pleasure was like a song of joy and her face was transfixed with elation. Elation and pride.

  Now she was completely mine. My conquest was absolute.

  And so was hers.

  We both plunged from our mountaintop toward exhausted sleep.

  “It’ll get better,” she whispered philosophically. “But not bad for a beginning.”

  The second thing I learned: While I was the lord and master in bed, I barely rated as an equal partner in all other activities. My suggestions about where we should eat supper were usually accepted, but in a manner that said that my bride was reserving the right to reject these recommendations if I started making mistakes.

  I was also presented with a long list of “ought tos.” As in, you ought to put more suntan oil on your back, you ought to take more pictures, you ought to work on your swimming, you ought to learn to water-ski, you ought to practice tennis, you ought to try to relax, you ought to stop budgeting your time, you ought to buy a new swimsuit, you ought to stop staring at that shameless girl, after all, you’re a married man.

  I was not being nagged. Rosemarie’s oughts were merely suggestions, something between objective advice and imperial commands.

  She only enforced the commands that were within her immediate power. If I did not apply the suntan oil, she did. If I did not swim in the pool in our private yard, she would push me in. And then throw off her robe and dive in naked after me. (You can imagine what that would lead to.) If I continued to look at the shameless girl, she would simply shift her position on the sand so that I couldn’t see the girl. If I wouldn’t buy a new swimsuit, she’d buy one for me at the same time she purchased the bikini for herself that made that shameless girl look like a paragon of modesty. (All swimsuits were banned in our private pool. If I tried to wear trunks, they were promptly pulled off with grumbles about “silly male modesty.”)

  I did try on my own to water-ski—lest I have no peace at all—and with some small, very small success. Which success was greeted with loud shouts of encouragement and pride.

  She was big, not physically but in presence. You could not help but notice her. When she sauntered down the beach in her new bikini imported from France, she was hard to miss. Similarly, when she strolled into a dining room in a white strapless dress, you knew that she was there, unless you were blind. Even if you didn’t see her but only heard her voice in the hotel lobby or on the street, you became very conscious of the presence of a confident, strong-willed woman.

  Yet she would wake up at night sobbing.

  “What’s wrong, Rosemarie?”

  “I’m crying for my mother. Her life was so sad. She was pretty and nice and everyone liked her and she had to ruin her life and die before her time.”

  I cuddled her in my arms.

  “She loved you, Rosemarie. She’s proud of you and who and what you are.”

  She sniffled. “Do you really think so?”

  “I know so.”

  She rested her head on my chest and drifted back to sleep. There was no one to protect poor Clarice. I promise You, God, that I will protect Rosemarie. Do You understand that?

  I think God must have laughed. He had another scenario in mind.

  My new wife was an exuberant filly who never walked when she could gallop. She would charge out of her hotel, turn in one direction and proceed at full tilt as though she were utterly confident that it was the right direction, which it often was not. She was a steam engine pulling out of I.C. Station, picking up speed as she went and trailing behind a cloud of dust and noise.

  Rosemarie did not enter a room, she swept into it, often knocking objects over with a fearsome clatter. She did not close doors, she slammed them. She did not open doors, she rammed into them. She did not laugh, she hooted. She did not put down a coffee cup, she crashed it into the saucer, one morning even breaking both cup and saucer.

  My aptly named wild Irish Rosemarie came in two tones: loud and louder.

  I told myself I would have to face a life in which there would be moments of quiet only when she was not around.

  Since she had known nothing but a room of her own, she was delighted to have a companion to chatter at and occasionally to torment. When there was nothing else to do, she was quite capable of deliberately driving me up the wall.

  “Chucky Ducky, are you napping?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you where you want to eat supper.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, you don’t mind?”

  “Yes, I do mind.”

  “Good, where shall we eat?”

  “I’m TRYING to sleep.”

  “Oh, is little Chucky Ducky mad that his poor little bride-ums woke him up?” Luscious kiss for little Chucky Ducky.

  “All right, where have you decided that we should go?”

  “Would I wake you up if I had?” She turned from kissing to tickling.

  “Yes.”

  I couldn’t keep up with her but there wasn’t much choice. She ran. I followed.

  Her vigor did not extend to keeping our suite clean save at the end of the day. Clothes, towels, robes, American newspapers, postcards, gifts, bottles of Coca-Cola were scattered about in utter disregard of the proprieties. At the end of the day she would diligently rearrange the mess, while murmuring that it was just her bad luck to marry a fastidious man.

  When we returned home, I reflected, there would always be help. Poor, dumb Charles C. O’Malley had gone through life thinking that if you wanted an orderly house you married a neat wife. It had never occurred to him that it was just as easy to marry a rich one who could pay someone else to keep the premises clean and respectable.

  I did not know, in fact, how much money Rosemarie possessed. We had no more talked about money than about sex. I had resolved that I would support my wife and family with my own money. But it would be proper for her to provide the upkeep on the house since the house was hers.

  Male chauvinist?

  What can I tell you?

  I raised the issue of accounting for the costs of the honeymoon (she had made all the arrangements with a travel agent.) It was proper, I said, that I pay for it, since I was the husband.

  “Ha!” She continued to rub cream on my back.

  “We could split it, since we’re both wage earners.”

  “This empress will not discuss money at the present.” She tossed aside the tube and performed one of her cartwheel stunts to the water’s edge.

  Literally. Among the many things she had “taken” in grammar school was gymnastics. Proud of her athletic
skills and barely able to hide her dismay at my lack thereof, she would frequently walk down the beach toward the ocean on her hands or cartwheel into the water.

  My Rosemarie cartwheeling into the water in a bikini attracted lots of attention, as she fully intended to. The lifeguards were particularly interested, even when I was introduced as her husband, the welterweight boxer.

  So I spent much of my time on our honeymoon simply watching her, admiring her, trying to figure her out, studying the responses of her body to my assaults and the response of her person to the world around her.

  She knew what was happening and reveled in my curiosity. I’m sure she went out of her way to be outrageous merely to befuddle me the more.

  Late one afternoon, the sun already reaching toward the cobalt waters of the bay, she sat at her vanity in bra and girdle, brushing her long, shiny hair.

  A Coke in hand, I sat relaxed on a chair across the room admiring the grace in her motions and the tiny sprinkle of freckles across the tops of her breasts.

  “You ought to take pictures, Chucky Ducky, instead of just staring.”

  “Pardon?” I stirred out of my fantasies.

  “I don’t mind being sized up by a cameraman’s eye, but I’d like it better if he recorded what seems to interest him so much.”

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “Mind?” She put down her brush. “If you don’t realize by now that I’m a bit of an exhibitionist, what can I do to persuade you?”

  “Take off your bra—but only after I get some shots just the way you are.”

  “Well”—she went back to brushing—“finally.”

  So I used all the film I had brought with me and a lot more besides.

  She didn’t seem to mind the constant eye of the camera. “After all,” she sighed philosophically, “if you finally have a nude woman to shoot, Chuck, you should take advantage of it before she becomes big and fat and pregnant.”

  “You’ll be beautiful when you’re pregnant too.” Enjoy her while you can.

  My third discovery: She was even brighter than I realized in our study sessions at the University. She had somehow picked up enough Spanish to flatter the help and the other natives with her knowledge of their language. She knew all about the history of Mexico. She knew that the crime rate in Guerrero, the state in which Acapulco is located, was the highest in Mexico. She knew that Our Lady of Guadalupe had originally been a pagan goddess in Spain before she migrated to Mexico.

  “You wonder where Jesus is in the painting?” she asked me as we considered the statue in the local church.

  “I hadn’t, but now that you raise the point, where is he?”

  “Inside her. The Mexicans will tell you she’s pregnant.”

  “She doesn’t look pregnant.”

  “How would you know?”

  “A point well taken.”

  “You’ll know soon, Chucky Ducky,” she warned. “Then you’ll be sorry when you have to share me with your son.”

  “Why would I be sorry?”

  “Because”—she clapped her hands—“there’ll be another man in my life.”

  Smart, quick, intelligent—and she knew practically everything. I was no match for her and in the fervor of my passions I didn’t care whether I was or not.

  Finally, for all her beauty and charm and vigor and intelligence and her increasing sexual experience, she still seemed to me to be a doomed young woman. For most of the first week of our honeymoon I was able to put aside my foreboding of doom. I did not worry about what her father might have done to her psyche. I refused to be troubled by memories of the self-destructive incidents in the past. I would not permit myself to agonize over what the dangers might be for our children.

  I might have been able to get away with these denial mechanisms (as I would learn to call such behavior later) if it had not been for what happened the night after she had joined me in a romp up the mountain of physical love.

  Before supper I walked to a photo shop a couple of blocks from our hotel to buy some more panchromatic film. (I was using the Leica for black-and-white and the Kodak for color.) Rosemarie was already in the hotel dining room waiting for me when I returned.

  “Got hungry.” She frowned at me. “Hurry up. Let’s have an early dinner and get a good night’s sleep.”

  Such an untypical concern should have alerted me. But I was riding high on the wave of pleasure with my masculine success. I even brought the Leica to the supper table.

  “No pictures,” she snapped. “I’m not in the mood to be a fantasy model tonight.”

  “All right.” I put the camera on the chair next to me.

  “Where did you ever get that ugly little camera?”

  “It used to be a funny little camera.”

  “Well, it’s ugly now. And I want to know where you got it.”

  “In Germany.”

  “From whom?”

  “A friend?”

  “A woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did she give it to you?”

  I knew now that she had been drinking while she waited for me. If we split the bottle of wine that was already on the table, she would be thoroughly drunk.

  “She thought I saved her life.”

  “Hmf… a trollop. A whore.”

  “No, Rosemarie, that’s not true.”

  “I don’t want to talk about her.”

  “Fine, we won’t talk about her.”

  “Good.” She splashed wine into her glass. “I hate her.”

  “That’s not fair. You never met her.”

  “I still hate her. I hate all your other women.”

  She couldn’t finish the fish dinner. I guided her to our suite and eased her into bed.

  “I’ll sleep it off, Chucky. Sorry. Won’t let it happen again. Not your fault.”

  The next morning she was ready to cartwheel on the beach as if nothing had happened. We did not discuss the incident. I cooperated in pretending that it had never occurred and hoped the problem would quietly go away.

  “You know, Chucky Ducky”—she clung to me the last night of our honeymoon after we made love—“you’re a strange one, not completely normal.” I extended my arm down her back to her delicious rear end and drew her even closer. “That’s nice. I’ll know you’re still here when I wake up afraid that I’ve lost you.”

  “And I’m not normal.”

  “No, you’re really not,” she continued, as if she were trying to figure out a puzzle. “I mean, you pretend to be a dull bean counter and you’re actually a wildly passionate lover. You’d like people to believe you’re mediocre and dull, and you’re actually a genius—”

  “Rosemarie”—I patted her derriere—“you’re being absurd.”

  “No, I’m not. I don’t know what kind of a genius you are, but I know you have the mark of greatness on you. I smell it.”

  “You smell your own sexy perfume.”

  “And you’re going to be famous as a great man whether you want to or not, if I have anything to say about it.”

  “That sounds like a threat.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  Then she seemed to sleep. The only sound was the Pacific surf thumping against the beach, like a gentle and soothing metronome. I felt serene and content, sad only that the days of relaxation and pleasure were coming to an end. The ride through snow and cold to the “Gray City” on the Midway was hardly an appealing alternative to a honeymoon in the sun with a cartwheeling wife.

  It was a great university doubtless, but I was still a neighborhood boy from the West Side of Chicago. I would never quite be part of that world. Did I really want a doctorate from there? Did I really want to work in the madness of the pit at the Board of Trade?

  Then the troops swarmed ashore. They wore bandoleers and sombreros and carried bayonets. They were killing people on the beach. I faced them with a BAR, a Browning Automatic Rifle. They kept charging. My bullets had no effect on them. One of them was running at me with a bayonet
.

  Then I half woke up. I had to go back to the dream to drive them off. This time they were wearing North Korean army uniforms and the beach was covered with snow. My BAR worked this time. I killed them by the hundreds. Finally they withdrew in their rubber boats.

  When I woke up and realized it was a nightmare, I reflected I had never touched a BAR in my military career. So why did I know how to operate one?

  I fell asleep again. I woke up, flaming with passion.

  What had I been dreaming about? Who? Trudi?

  Dear God, Trudi. I had forgotten about her. A different love, simple, straightforward, guileless—till the end anyway. I was older now, and I had known this woman most of my life, which only made the love more intricate. Maybe it was better with Trudi.

  In my dream, she had been weeping. Why, had I been hurting her? Is that what aroused me?

  No, not Trudi. It was Rosemarie who was crying.

  Groggy and confused, I tightened my arm around her.

  “What ails you, woman?” I mumbled.

  “I’m such a little shit.”

  “No, you’re not. I don’t want to hear you say such things.”

  “You could have found yourself a sane and sensible wife instead of a crazy freak.”

  “Is it my fault I like freaks?”

  “It’s not funny. I’ll ruin your life.”

  “An hour ago you were going to make me a great man.”

  “No, I wasn’t. Why do you always misquote me? I said you were going to be famous as a great man whether you wanted to or not. That’s different. But I’ll still ruin your life, I just know it.”