On the ride down the elevator I told him about Esther Stern nee Eileen Starr.
“She is naturally rebelling against her mother, her father to some extent, but her mother especially. If your parents are secularized Jews, then Orthodoxy is a wonderfully effective form of revolt … You have no idea, Chuck, how utterly without religion are the truly secularized Jews. They don’t keep Passover or the High Holidays.”
“Her parents have a Christmas tree.”
“Naturally. However, it has no religious meaning for them. Rather it is a sign of their rejection of what they took to be the yoke of Jewish law. Perhaps there was strict orthodoxy among some of her grandparents or great-grandparents.”
“Is this a passing phase in her life?”
“Most young rebels return eventually to the culture in which they were raised, perhaps with some modifications, especially if there was warmth in the family life. Presumably she can find some religious meaning in a moderate form of Judaism which would not be such a harsh rebuke of her parents … Yet I wonder why she would seek out a goyish young man with whom to fall in love.”
“Irish goy, the worst kind.”
“Naturally.”
We walked out into the oak-paneled lobby of the University Club.
“Perhaps,” Max continued, “she is considering at some subconscious level two options—either to become Orthodox or to become Irish.”
“There’ll be no pressure on her to do the latter.”
“Ha! When she is swept up in that family culture of yours, she will realize that if she wishes to marry your son, there is no other option, no matter what her formal affiliation might be.”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“It is surely a more tolerant culture.”
Max turned toward Michigan Avenue and the garage where his BMW was parked—a strange car for a man who was obsessed about German guilt for the Holocaust. His head bowed, his shoulders sloped, his thin hair disheveled by the light lake breeze, he looked like the traditional rebbe pondering the intricacies of a dictum in the Oral Torah.
I walked over to the L station at Randolph and Wabash for the ride back to Oak Park.
Are You anywhere around, Holy Spirit, Divine Wind, Paraclete, whatever? I am ready to receive Your message. I waited in a corner of the L platform just in case. There was, naturally (as Max Berman would have said) no message.
In the absence of the Holy Spirit I might as well go home and make love with my wife.
Why not?
She was in her office, windows open so the soft September breezes slipped through it. She was wearing white tennis shorts and a black Fenwick tee shirt and her reading glasses—which replaced her contact lenses when she was tired.
“Clean bill of health in body and soul,” she said, not looking up from the list she was studying intently.
“Here’re the test results.” I diffidently offered her the two sheets of paper.
She grabbed them and read them carefully, like a mother considering a second-grade report card.
“Well, it looks like you will survive a little longer.” She tossed aside the test results and returned to her list. “I’m arranging the table seating for the dinner at the Drake.”
“I can think of a lot more pleasant things to do on a warm September afternoon,” I said, kneeling beside her and not restraining the impulse of my fingers to slip under her tee shirt and touch her flat stomach muscles.
“Chucky! I’m working!”
Nonetheless her eyes grew round and soft as reason warred with Eros.
“That can wait.”
Her back arched in anticipation.
“Not here, not right now!”
“Yes here, yes right now. It’s Missus’s day off, the baby is sleeping, and Moire Meg won’t be home from school for a half hour.”
“Regardless.” She sighed as I tickled her ribs. “Should I expect this every afternoon when you come home from your session with Dr. Berman?”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
“You have only one thought on your mind while all the rest of us have to worry that we won’t get this party right.”
“The only one who could ruin the party is me, and you know I won’t do that.”
“I promised you an orgy after the parties are over.”
“I don’t want an orgy now, just a little tender affection.”
“You talked about me with Dr. Berman?”
“Sure.”
“What did you tell him?”
“What do you tell Maggie Ward about me?”
“That’s different … The internist gave you a new lease on life, so you want to celebrate by loving me.”
I managed to push up the tee shirt from my alma mater and lower a bra strap.
“Dr. Berman asked if I had ever wanted a mistress.”
“And you said?”
“That with a wife like you I didn’t need one.”
“Bullshit, Chucky Ducky, but it was sweet of you to say it.”
I licked her breast lavishly, then concentrated on its nipple, drawing on it like a nursing child.
She groaned.
“It’s not fair, Chucky Ducky. It’s not fair.”
“Yes it is.”
“Well, I suppose it is. I was tired of that damn list anyway … Oh I love you so much!”
When we were finished and lay exhausted in each other’s arms on the couch in the office, she said, “You are improving at this sort of thing, Chucky Ducky. If this is what your midlife crisis does to you, it can continue as far as I’m concerned—What’s that noise? Did I wake the baby up?”
“You did scream pretty loudly.”
She pulled on her clothes and dashed away. I dressed more leisurely, sat at her desk, and resolved the problems about seating arrangements, just to show that I could.
She reappeared, a sleepy two-year-old redhead in her arms.
“Someone wicked entered her dreams and screamed at her. It’s all right, Siobhan! See, Daddy’s home.”
The clever little brat grinned and extended her arms to me.
“How’s Daddy’s little sweetheart?” I asked her with an atrocious lack of originality.
She cooed.
“Chookie!”
“You’ve been fooling with my list,” my wife thundered.
“Just solving your problems.”
She frowned and studied the list.
“Well, I guess you have.”
“See!”
“See, Roosie!”
On the whole a good afternoon for Chucky Ducky.
I insisted after supper that we go over to Petersen’s for malts, since my earnest doctor said I ought to put on weight. Our two daughters accompanied us.
“Just so you won’t misbehave!” Moire Meg informed us.
Rosemarie
1978
Chuck behaved remarkably well during the celebrations of his birthday. I knew he would because so many of us had invested so much time and energy in our efforts to make the golden birthday a festive event. If at times his heart wasn’t in it and he was worrying about what to do when he grew up, only a wife could tell. This wife saw only faint traces of angst. He did an excellent imitation of a man enjoying every second of the weekend, so excellent that maybe he really did enjoy it.
I’m afraid Esther Stern did not enjoy the noise, the jazz quartet—my three sons and young Gianni Antonelli with backup from the good April on the piano and myself and my daughter-in-law Maria Elena doing the vocals. Gianni was no longer “poor little Gianni.” He was now bigger than his father and destined for the Golden Dome and Memorial Stadium.
“A little noisy, huh, Esther?” I said.
“It is all very interesting,” she said cautiously. “We are generally not so loud in our celebrations.”
“The Jewish weddings I’ve been to,” I said, “are much louder. They’re wonderful, dancing and singing and carrying the bride around on a chair. Our weddings are tame by comparison.”
&n
bsp; I did not add the full truth—Irish weddings are tame and too much of the drink is taken.
“I have never been to a Jewish wedding,” she admitted.
“Try one. It makes this melee look quiet.”
“Mrs. O’Malley,” she asked softly, “you do not drink?”
“I’m a drunk, Esther,” I replied candidly, perhaps too candidly. “I haven’t had a drink in, oh, twenty years.”
Her reaction astonished me.
She embraced me and wept quietly.
“Please don’t say that, Mrs. O’Malley,” she said through her tears. “You are a good and wonderful woman. You are not a drunk.”
I calmed her down and she slipped away from me. I remembered what Max Berman had told Chuck. Perhaps at some level she was choosing whether to be strict Orthodox or Irish Catholic. There had to be alternatives which were not so stark.
I didn’t want another daughter. I had enough of them as it was.
“What was that all about?” Moire Meg appeared from nowhere.
“What?”
“Why was that fragile little doll crying?”
“She asked me why I didn’t drink.”
“None of her business … I suppose you gave her your standard answer?”
I admitted that I had.
“Not cool, Rosie. Not cool at all.”
“I guess not.”
“I wonder what her mother’s like.”
So saying, my all too perceptive middle daughter drifted away.
The good April embraced me for the third time.
“I think poor Chuck is enjoying himself,” she said, as though she needed reassurance.
“Your son is too much the gentleman even to hint that he wasn’t.”
I had never thought of Chuck as a gentleman. Shame on me.
April Mae Cronin O’Malley had been my surrogate mother for most of my life. If God gave me the challenge of playing that role for someone else, I’d better do a good job at it.
“It would appear, thoughtful wife”—Chuck embraced me—“that we’re expected to sing.”
So we went through our act, doing all the old Chuck/Rosie duets and ending, of course, with that old clunker “Rosemarie,” which we hammed up outrageously, though my husband’s kiss at the end was altogether too passionate.
Well, it really wasn’t but you have to say something like that.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw poor little Eileen/Esther, leaning against my Seano’s strong arm, smiling happily.
She doesn’t have to become Catholic, I said to God. After all she’s a relative of Yours. She can become one of us and still be Jewish.
Then it came time for the speeches. Or speech—by a vote of four to one, the monster regiment of women voted that the only speaker would be Chuck. I deputed myself to be the mistress of ceremonies.
“The steering committee for this joyous event,” I began, “voted four to one against limiting the speeches to one. I was the one who voted for the limitation so, since I’m the boss, there’ll be only one speech.”
Applause.
“The Birthday King will give that speech.”
Boos.
“I am the mistress of ceremonies. My remarks will be brief.”
Applause.
“They will last only a half an hour.”
Boos, cat calls, imprecations.
“Actually, I will sing my intro.”
(She sings “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”)
“In conclusion, I want to insist that I am one of the most fortunate women in the world. Gentle Souls, the Birthday King.”
Tumultuous applause.
(My husband waits patiently for the silence.)
“As you all know, I had no choice about marrying Rosemarie. My mother and my sister Peg made up their minds to that before I reached the age of reason—at which I may have arrived by the time of my fifteenth birthday. I must say that they made a very good choice. I would have never dared to pursue such a lovely, intelligent, and witty young woman on my own. They pushed me into it and I’m glad they did.
“Usually.”
More laughter and applause.
“So much of what I am today must be attributed to the various women in my family from the good April all the way down to my daughter Siobhan Marie.”
Loud cheers.
He lifted the little brat into the air.
Applause for her. She waved like the reigning monarch she was.
The whole performance was vintage Chucky. We used to joke that he had a fast mind and a faster tongue. In fact, he was rarely at a loss for words, even, when the occasion required them, elegant and graceful words. I never saw him write anything out beforehand (as I had written and then memorized my introduction). I suspect that he prepared very carefully and then pretended to spontaneity. Yet it was possible that he was one of the great ad libbers in all the world.
“I must thank all of these valiant women for my sartorial splendor tonight. I am a symphony in color-coordinated gray as befits a man whose systematic graying we are gathered here to celebrate. I warn you that this is the last time that you will see me in this outfit that I won’t look like a slob. Something happens to a nice gray suit when I wear it for the second time. It adjusts itself, I suspect, to my own slobbery and thus defeats the efforts of the women in my life to make me look chic. However, I want to go on record as thanking them for their concern, as ineffective as it may be.
“My remarks tonight will be confined to my immediate family who are responsible for this gala if somewhat noisy event and indeed responsible for me.
“First of all, I must thank the good April Mae Cronin and her steadfast consort Vangie O’Malley for keeping the flapper era alive and flourishing not only when I was growing up but even unto this day. The Jazz Age is alive and well at least in this corner of Oak Park.
“I must also thank them not merely for bringing me into the world but even more for their courage in bringing me home from Oak Park Hospital. They must have had strong doubts about the wizened little redhead with the pinched face and the loud mouth, doubts which certainly have not diminished through the years. Chuck from day one spelled trouble, a contentious dissident, a white sheep in a family of black sheep, a soberside in a family which then and now and not without reason, are called the Crazy O’Malleys. My youngest son’s date, the good Eileen, has been looking on in astonishment at this show. I have to say to you, kid, if you are looking for sanity in this clan, I’m the only one in whom you will find it.”
General and deserved laughter. Chuck was the craziest of all of us, by far. Esther flushed happily and smiled broadly.
Count on Chuck to use her Irish name.
“Moreover, I must thank the women siblings who have bracketed me—Jane, who decided early on that I was a troublesome but funny runt who should be a source of constant impatient amusement, and Peg, who loved me so much that she was determined that I would amount to something. I don’t know whether I have or not—the verdict isn’t in yet—but it was not, Margaret Mary, for the lack of your effort and that of your constant ally about whom more later.
“Edward taught me what idealism really means and loyal and faithful service to a Church about which we all are ambivalent but which we cannot forsake. He dragged me kicking and screaming into the St. Crispin’s Day of our generation at Selma, Alabama, and has more by example than by word kept the tiny flame of idealism somewhere in the subbasement of my soul from flickering out.
“I have learned more from my children than they have taught me, from April Rosemary courage and maturity beyond her years, from Kevin an unshakable sense of personal identity, from Jimmy an idealism which matches that of his uncle, from Sean the importance of laughter, from Moire Meg, for a long time our baby, wisdom and grace not only beyond her years but beyond the years of her mother and father put together, and finally from our new youngest, the redoubtable Siobhan Marie, the joy of having a child around the house. Since there is little reason to think that I deserve such
an array of talent, beauty, and goodness around me, full credit must be given to their mother, who will claim it anyway.
“Academic authors like myself have the custom of saying that all the good things in their books are the result of the efforts of a long list of colleagues and the mistakes must be attributed to the author. I would ask you to accept the same judgment about me as I ease with some reluctance into my second half century—credit for that which may be admirable must belong to others and blame for that which is perhaps a little less admirable must be attributed to the skinny and wailing little red-haired organism that the flapper and her husband brought home from Oak Park Hospital.
“I return finally to the mistress of ceremonies as she suggestively styles herself. Rosemarie, my love, you have dragged me, often kicking and screaming, into a happy and productive life, one filled with joy that has spoiled me rotten. I serve notice that I expect exactly the same high-quality TLC in the next half century.”
Then he began to sing “Night and Day.”
Tears streaming down my face, I joined him in the chorus.
There was much hugging and kissing from the crowd.
I had been sure he’d do well. Yet I feared that he might become philosophical about life and death, youth and aging, success and failure, and all that stuff which was making him miserable these days.
Typical of my husband, he had made such a powerful case for joy that he actually experienced a good deal of it, despite himself.
Later in the shower as we gently caressed one another, I realized what a frail-seeming little punk he was—skin and bones and sex organs. I began to cry again.
“What’s the matter?” he asked softly.
“You were very gallant tonight.”
“Gallantry doesn’t draw me into the shower with you, only hormonal drives.”
“Silly! I meant you salvaged the party for the rest of us.”
“I’m staring into the fog,” he replied, kissing my breast, “waiting for the Divine Wind to disperse it. Until that happens we celebrate.”
“What Divine Wind?”
“That’s what Max Berman calls the Holy Spirit. Blows wherever She wants. Whenever She wants. Can’t force Her hand.”
Second Spring Page 15
