A Christmas Wedding

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t.”

  A half hour later my bride entered the house with the same stillness that would have marked the arrival of the First Cavalry Division.

  “Call Peg.”

  “You’re not supposed to answer the phone.”

  “Only for good news,” I repeated my prepared defense.

  “Good news?” she bellowed.

  “Oh, yes.”

  The armored division thundered across the house toward her study and the phone.

  When a sheepish Vince called me the next day, he sang the praises of reconciliation. “You can’t beat falling in love with your wife again, Chuck. Greatest pleasure in the world.”

  “I can believe it.”

  “And that’s some woman you’re married to.”

  “Especially when she lowers the boom?”

  “Wow!”

  “Indeed.”

  Both Rosemarie and I missed the lesson in the Antonelli reconciliation.

  And there was another lesson I missed, and would for years to come, until disaster forced me to see it.

  So Rosemarie and I drifted through the late fifties and there I was, hardly Burt Lancaster, but still a housebreaker in Shady Hill.

  Rosemarie never came into the darkroom anymore, and she withdrew after the arrival of Seano from her role as my agent, thus cutting two of the links that held us in common beyond ordinary ones of bed and board.

  I did not have the nerve either to ask her formally to continue to be my agent, or to hire another. I was afraid, I think not unreasonably, that if I hired another she would take such action as grounds for divorce.

  I had learned her style well enough: ask for more than you think you can possibly get and more than you can possibly believe you’re worth and then refuse to negotiate.

  It worked quite well.

  If she had been playing the agent role, however, the two big fights we had in the late fifties would have never occurred.

  She would not have accepted my assignment to cover racial integration in Little Rock in the fall of 1957 for Look.

  She was furious at me when I left.

  “Why do you waste your talent on something that you know is not nearly as important as it used to be? How many times do I have to tell you that you are not a goddamn photojournalist?”

  “This is a historic event, Rosemarie, I have to be there.”

  “Who says?”

  “My conscience.”

  “Does your goddamn conscience have anything to say about walking out on your wife and kids in September when two of the kids are going to school?”

  “It won’t happen again.”

  “Bullshit.”

  I have said that she was not a nag. I realize she sounds like one in this exchange. I must insist that both her fury and her language were unusual. And note that the anger was not about my trip to Arkansas at the beginning of the school year. That was flimflam. The real reason for her anger was that I was, as she saw it, wasting my talent.

  I would win another Pulitzer for my shot of the black and white tots looking up with awe, but not fear, at a rifle-carrying national guardsman. Need I say that my prize did not change Rosemarie’s judgment about wasting my talent?

  The shot has been criticized in years since for being “sentimental”; some of those who don’t like it even suggest that I staged it.

  I didn’t stage it, as those who were with me when I shot it will testify. Was it sentimental? I would like to think rather that it was a statement of hope, one of the few more or less explicitly ideological photographs I’ve ever made. I don’t think that was a false hope. Black and white children go to school in relative peace now. Most Americans accept school integration as a matter of course. Our racial problems are far from solved, but we are in some respects in better shape than we were thirty years ago. That is a modest achievement. It was all I expected in Little Rock that day. Not to mention the next day, when I was in the hospital.

  It’s hard when one looks back on that era to understand whether the Southern white leaders expected to get away with their policy of “massive resistance” to the Supreme Court’s 1954 school desegregation decision. Did Governor Orval Faubus really think that the federal government would back down in 1957 when he tried to “interpose” the Arkansas National Guard between the courts and the Little Rock school system? Or was he merely running for reelection?

  I think the wiser and more cautious southern leaders knew that they could only postpone implementation of the decision, not block it permanently. Eisenhower was, after all, a conservative president who had never expressed support for the 1954 decision; if he would send in paratroopers and federalize the Arkansas National Guard, then a Democratic president would act even more strongly. In the long run, Jim Crow’s days were numbered.

  But you still had to run for reelection in the short run, didn’t you?

  (While I’m talking about school desegregation, let me note what I think of that greatest faker of them all, Chief Justice Earl Warren, who went around the country taking credit for the decision and lecturing the rest of us on the need to grant complete racial justice. I suppose he did deserve credit for the unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, but I never heard him apologize for his activities during the Second World War when, as attorney general of California, he was one of the leaders of the campaign to ship Japanese Americans to concentration camps. Everyone makes mistakes, but Warren would never admit that mistake. I know, I asked him at a conference and he walked off the platform.

  I sent off the picture to Look knowing that it was a sure cover and maybe a prizewinner. If I’d had any sense, I would have flown back to the new O’Hare Airport, which had just opened in Chicago. I had seen Little Rock. I knew that the good guys would win. I had made my contribution. There was no reason to hang around looking for “one more shot.”

  I knew my wild Irish Rosemarie was right. I was not designed to be a photojournalist.

  So the next morning, I showed up early at the high school. Too early. The police and the troops were not in place. I was loading film when I saw four lean, hard men bearing down on me, classic rednecks if I had ever seen one.

  The Little Rock folk did not like either school integration or national publicity. They blamed the press for both. I was the press, a Yankee with a camera.

  I was too dumb to be frightened.

  “Let’s kill the fucking peckerwood!” one of them shouted.

  It dawned on me that I was the peckerwood. I was too scared to run.

  One of them hit me in the groin, another pounded my jaw. Then, as I fell to the ground, they stamped on my Hasselblad and started to kick me.

  I think they really would have killed me if a Little Rock squad car had not turned the corner.

  The rednecks took flight. The cops did not chase them. Indeed they were none too gentle with me as they drove me off to the hospital.

  “You should have stayed up north where you belonged, fella,” the sergeant next to the driver told me. “You only got what you deserved.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said politely, hoping I lived long enough to get to the hospital. I remembered the man’s name and gave him full credit for his quote in the article in Look.

  The loyalty of the press to its own being what it is, an assault on a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer was national news that night.

  I was described on TV that night as suffering from a brain concussion, two broken ribs, a dislocated jaw, broken teeth, and possible internal injuries.

  Attention on the national news that night was quickly shifted from me to my wife. She was asked, when her plane landed at the Little Rock airport, whether she blamed the people of that city for the attack on her husband.

  She drew herself up to her full five feet five-and-a-half inches of Irish pirate queen dignity and snapped, “Certainly not.”

  “Who do you blame, Mrs. O’Malley?”

  “Well”—she glared handsomely at the red e
ye of the camera—“let’s start at the top. I blame President Dwight David Eisenhower, who has never once expressed solid support for the school desegregation decision.”

  “You were great on the tube,” I told her when she came into my room. “Upstaged me completely.”

  I was favored with the same disapproving stare she had directed at the TV camera.

  “Go on, say it,” I muttered through my wired jaw, “‘I told you so.’”

  She burst into tears and threw herself on her knees next to my bed.

  “Is there anyplace I can kiss you,” she sobbed, “without hurting you more?”

  “All kinds of places,” I acknowledged.

  She never said “I told you so” when I finally came home, mostly in one piece again.

  What she did say was, “Don’t ever try anything like that again, not unless I’m along to take care of you.”

  My response was a docile “Yes, ma’am.”

  I suppose that was one of our moments of possible renewal lost. I told myself I ached too much to make love.

  Finally, on September 23, after I had returned to Chicago, still aching, the President spoke out: what was happening in Little Rock was a “disgraceful occurrence.” The orders of a federal court were not to be “flouted with impunity” by any individual or mob of extremists. He issued a proclamation ordering that the opposition “cease and desist therefrom and disperse forthwith.” To back up the proclamation he sent in a thousand paratroopers, whom Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia likened to “Hitler’s storm troopers.”

  I will always argue that if the sainted Ike had acted that vigorously earlier, much of the racial conflict of the next decade might have been avoided. I suppose he had enjoyed a bit too much the privileges of a racist military life.

  My photography did improve. I was now famous enough at a very young age to merit serious criticism, that is to say the kind of criticism that you should think about. So I thought about it and decided that for the most part it was either wrong or irrelevant. I continued to do what I had been doing.

  As my Rosemarie put it, “You’re the one who sees the form shining in the proportioned parts of the matter.”

  “Huh?”

  “Aristotle.”

  “Oh.”

  “Again, you’re the one who sees the sacraments more clearly, God lurking in the world.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Rosemarie.”

  “I like her better than Aristotle.”

  Neither Rosemarie nor Aristotle was present in Millie Edwards’s parlor, however.

  Millie crossed the room and sat next to me, her eyes glowing expectantly. Her face, underneath skillful makeup, showed lines that hinted at sadness. Her two children were still away at boarding school. Life had not been good to this bright, brittle woman.

  She leaned toward me and revealed two magnificent breasts—and myself with a breast fetish, in common with most Irishmen.

  “I want you, Charles,” she whispered. “I intend to have you.”

  I ought to find out what her powerfully erotic perfume is, buy some for Rosemarie.

  She began to kiss me, at first gently and then with savage persistence. Her fingers began to work on my shirt.

  Why not? Who would know? What harm would be done?

  I was saved not by my virtue, but the sudden collapse of my ardor. I realized that I could not make love even if I wanted to.

  When I’m being kind to myself, I add that maybe the memories of Rosemarie’s fingers on my shirt at Long Beach on our wedding night forced all other images out of my brain.

  “I’m sorry, Millie.” I slipped out of her grasp with as much grace as I could muster. “I’m a Catholic.”

  Can you imagine a dumber excuse than that? In Westchester County?

  Millie was hurt and sad, but a good sport. She went to her bedroom, dressed, drove me back to my motel, and kissed me good night with a quick brush of her lips.

  How often had she been rejected?

  I felt sorry for her.

  And did not sleep for a single minute that night. I tried to pray but, for the first time in my life, God was not interested in me.

  I didn’t blame Him.

  I was pretty much of a bum.

  I was exhausted and guilty when I arrived late that Friday afternoon at our house in Long Beach.

  It was one of those glorious June days when summer exists in gentle promise and not yet in its mature heat.

  “Charles Cronin O’Malley!” Rosemarie shouted from the front porch. It was her Clancy-is-about-to-lower-the-boom voice.

  “I have to leave for Miami tomorrow morning.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I do.”

  “I canceled the shoot.”

  I stuck my head out on the porch. She and Seano were watching the lake roll in on our beach in big, self-satisfied rollers.

  “I’m going to put this little ape to bed—right, little ape? Then we talk. This is Daddy, Seano, remember him? Yes, that’s right, kiss him. It may be the last time because I propose to push him off this porch shortly and into the lake.”

  I sat down on the swing, knowing that I was in trouble.

  Rosemarie reappeared, a thin blue robe over her bikini. So there wasn’t going to be any sex. Well, that figured. I was too tired for it anyway.

  “Wanna drink?”

  “Not now.”

  “Good.” She sat down on the porch swing across from me and pointed an accusing finger at me. “Charles Cronin, this has to stop.”

  Did she know about Millie? Even if she didn’t, I was still in deep trouble indeed.

  How deep would be clear before that summer was over.

  28

  “To begin with”—she crossed her legs and drew the robe tightly around them—“I love you and I don’t propose to lose you.”

  The stereo system inside was providing waltz music, soft and quiet waltz music. “Rosemarie,” I said tentatively, “there is no one else.”

  Not my fault, maybe, especially after last night.

  “There goddamn well better not be.” She smiled ruefully. “I know there’s not, Chucky, no thanks to me.”

  We’d been married seven years and she was still a fascinating and unpredictable puzzle.

  “Then you’re not going to lose me.”

  “We are going to establish some new rules.” She waved away my comment as utterly beside the point—and probably dumb too. “First of all, I’m your agent again, check?”

  “I didn’t know you weren’t.”

  “When was the last time I arranged a shoot or signed a contract?”

  “I didn’t fire you.” The cool breeze off the lake was not helping my body temperature. I felt sweat begin to ooze into my brown poplin suit. Wash-and-wear for traveling.

  “I know that.” She dismissed my point as irrelevant with a brisk wave of her hand. “I fired myself. I’m rehiring myself? Okay?”

  “Sure.” I took off my coat, folded it neatly, and placed it on the deck beside my chair.

  “Secondly”—she ticked the number off on her finger—“in my capacity as your rehired agent, I arrange our schedule so that I accompany you on half your trips and work at least two days in the darkroom, okay?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  I knew I had no more a choice than I did when it was decided that I should marry her. The difference this time was that I no longer pretended to myself that I wanted a choice.

  “Sure you have a choice.” The wind went out of her sails. “I mean these are just strongly worded suggestions. You can say no.”

  “I haven’t yet. Thirdly?”

  “Huh? Oh, thirdly”—the sails filled with wind again—“lemme see… well, thirdly you stay here for the next month, enjoy the scenery”—she waved at the lake and the beach and the sky—“and get to know your wife and children again. The Michigan dunes are one of the most beautiful places in the world and you’ve never really bothered to appreciate them.”
r />   “There was a winter night years ago—”

  “That does not count.” She actually blushed. “Besides we still do provide those entertainments if you want.”

  “I see.”

  “Well?”

  “There’s the problem of the study I’ve promised for our autumn exhibition.”

  “Oh, that.” She waved her hand airily. “Do something up here.”

  “Like what?” I would be inside her very soon, no doubt about that. She knows too, I can tell the way her eyes are darting.

  “Like”—she paused and then leaned forward eagerly—“I’ve GOT it. Do another one of those foggy things with the kids. Up here. Call it… “Angels in Summertime”!

  “You know”—I reached for my jacket and removed from the inner pocket my ever present notebook for recording ideas—“that’s actually an excellent idea.”

  She smiled tolerantly at my compulsive note taking. “Am I not worth the cost as an agent?”

  “Among other things.” I carefully replaced my notebook in its proper place.

  “The kids are over at Mom’s.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Sean is asleep.”

  “Fourthly?”

  “Fourthly…” I had distracted her. She counted on her fingers again. “Oh… well, I think five kids are enough, don’t you?”

  “Five!” it was my turn to count on my fingers. “We have four, don’t we? April Rosemary, Kevin, Jimmy Mike, and the little punk? You’re not—”

  “Certainly not.” She dismissed this possibility as so absurd as not to be discussed. “I’m speaking of an upper limit. I mean I can do five like we agreed at our pre-Cana, I think, and keep my sanity. But at the present rate, it could be fifteen.”

  “Easily.”

  “So I’ll have another one sometime, but that’s enough. I love them all. I wish there had been a little more time, but that’s neither here nor there, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So five is enough?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I want more agreement than that.”

  “I agree. I mean four would be enough too.”

  “Five.”

  “Okay.”

  “So that means birth control.”

  I knew we’d come to that.

  “But we’re Catholics!”