“I don’t think so … Here, look at it.”
So I looked at it.
“Not bad for available light.”
“It catches all the tragedy of this death.”
“Uhm …”
“I called home. Dad and the good April have moved into our house to take care of Moire Meg and Missus as well as your youngest.”
“Can’t run the risk of Moire Meg convening her own party.”
“And the next Pope will be a Hindu … Your youngest told me she was praying for the poor dear Pop and for us too and Gram and Gramps were taking good care of her. Which means they’re spoiling her rotten.”
I rolled over and buried my head in a pillow.
“April Rosemary called. She wants me to come home.”
“Ugh,” I muttered in disapproval.
“She hasn’t been taking her medication. She and Jamie had a big argument. She told him that she was addicted once and doesn’t want to become addicted again. He said that she was stupid. She said that she would work her way out of her depression without any medication. He said that was most unlikely. Now he insists that she swallow the pills while he’s watching. She says she wants to leave him.”
“How long?”
“How long hasn’t she been taking the pills? Almost from the beginning. Her OB doctor, a woman, by the way, is furious too.”
I burrowed deeper into my pillow.
“You’re going home?”
“Certainly not,” she said, surprised that I would ask such a foolish question. “I told her that it was time to grow up. Tough language, but she needed to hear that from me more than she needed my presence.”
I did not want to cope with family, Church, world, life, God, or even my wife in black lingerie.
“Go ’way,” I said.
“Chucky, darling, you’ve had enough sleep. Time now for your shower. Msgr. Adolfo will be here in a half hour for dinner.”
“I don’t want any dinner,” I insisted.
“That’s what you say now. In a few minutes you’ll be so hungry you’ll want me to call room service for a hamburger.”
Two hamburgers …
“Do you think your friend Peg’s husband is one of Mayor Daley’s invisible men?”
“Certo,” she said, chuckling. “Pretty big guy to be invisible, isn’t he?”
I struggled out of bed and stumbled toward the bathroom. I closed the door and turned on the shower. Then I opened the door.
“Rosemarie, you look absolutely gorgeous in black lace!”
She glanced at me, her face covered with an appealing flush.
“Ah, you are coming alive, Chuck my love.”
“Not for years, maybe not ever.”
“The real boffi in the Curia,” Adolfo said over our aperitifs—Cinzano for him, Cokes for us—“are trying to tell the world that the Pope died because the papacy was too big a job for him. Therefore, the next Pope should be a man of the Curia who understands what must be done.”
“Who do they have in mind?” I asked.
“Cardinal Siri of Genoa, who else? He’s been there a long time, made archbishop back in 1954. Bright young man in those days. He’s never been in the Curia. They say he’ll be a strong leader and we will need a strong leader in the hard times that lie ahead. They also say he’s been passed over three times and he’s entitled to it.”
“Isn’t the obvious response that if he’s been passed over three times people have thought before that he was not the man for the job?”
“That is irrelevant, Carlo, to the logic of the Curia.”
“Does he have a chance?”
“For the moment everyone is talking only about him. When the stranieri Cardinals arrive they’ll remind everyone that he opposed the reforms of the Vatican Council on every possible occasion. That’s why the Curia wants him.”
“Who is the opposition now?” I said, just as I sneezed.
“My old boss, Benelli. He’s a dynamo of energy. He made things happen when he was Paul VI’s chief of staff. He is a man of the Council, though I would not say that he is a democrat. He gets things done. Many people hate him, but many respect him too. He was one of the leaders of the coalition which elected Papa Luciani. He knows the Curia and would probably shake it up more than any of the other papabili. I think he has probably made too many enemies to win.”
“So what will happen?” my good wife asked. She had been watching me sternly since I sneezed.
Rae Adolfo shrugged.
“Stalemate. There are no other Italians available for one reason or another. We may at the end have a Pope who is not Italian.”
“That would be an improvement, wouldn’t it?”
“Perhaps. There are few stranieri who would be better than the Italians. The College of Cardinals does not have, how do you Americans say it, a very deep bench.”
I sneezed again. Rosemarie’s brow furrowed. She knew all about my colds.
Cold or not, I was wolfing down my bistecca fiorentina like I might not eat for another couple of days. I was a well man; a few sniffles would not interfere with my taking pictures at this conclave.
“Can we afford another funeral and conclave?” I asked brightly. No, I was not getting sick. No way.
“It is interesting that you should ask,” Adolfo replied. “No one mentions that problem, but the simple answer is that we cannot. Both are expensive. We will have to borrow money from the Italian banks to pay for it. That is not a good idea. They already have too much influence. We will have no choice.”
“The resources here are that thin?” Rosemarie said.
“Everyone believes, cara, that the Church is very rich—all the treasures, the Vatican Palace, the museums, San Pietro. To whom could we sell them?”
“You might sell the air rights over St. Peter’s for condo builders.”
“Believe me, if we offered the sale, there would be a long line of buyers.”
I started to fade. What was I doing here in this creepy city? Why was I learning more about this creepy Church than I wanted to know? Why wasn’t I back in Chicago struggling with my portrait exhibition? It was Rosemarie’s fault for dragging me out of the peace and contentment of Cook County.
The papal funeral would be on Wednesday. Everyone hoped that the bitter rain which had lasted now for four days would end by then. The meteorologists said it would not.
“It fits the mood of the Church,” Adolfo said sadly as he wished us good-bye.
I sneezed again in the elevator, several times.
“Why is it, Charles Cronin O’Malley, that every time I get you all to myself in a luxurious hotel suite in a romantic city, you come down with a cold?”
This was a reprise of my complaints about her ill-timed periods.
“I’m not coming down with a cold,” I insisted. My voice trailed off in a cough.
“I shouldn’t have let you stand outside in that terrible rain today. You know what rain and chills do to you.”
All sensible people know these days that colds are caused by viruses and that one can stand out in a cold rain without a cap all the day long and not “catch” a cold. The viruses, being more sensible organisms than we humans, stay warm and comfortable inside the cabins of airplanes.
However, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, all mothers are convinced that wet chills will be the death of you. Moreover, they are also convinced that various old wives’ remedies like honey or a toddy of hot lemonade, whiskey, and honey will reduce the two weeks of a cold to something less than fourteen days. Evidence to the contrary does not shake these convictions. Having served as an apprentice under the good April, my wife was convinced that she could heal my cold quickly, if only I did what she told me to do.
I also, incidentally, had to drink a lot of water and fruit juice.
My only choice was to accept her tender loving care which soothed and comforted, even if it failed to heal. She would place cool compresses on my forehead if I had a fever and warm
ones if I did not. It was like having a mother all over again, especially since she had learned it all from my mother.
The hot toddy of honey, lemonade, and whiskey would not cure anything. However, it would reduce me to a state where I was hardly aware that I was sick.
In our suite she found some fruit juice in the minibar and required that I drink it as well as consume a bottle of Pellegrino water. This was the beginning of her treatment. It was all very consoling and maternal. Since the virus exorcised every trace of desire from my body, there was no chance of taking advantage of her tenderness for other purposes.
She felt my forehead and declared that it was not fevered and promptly put me to bed.
“Drink all that orange juice, Chucky,” she ordered me.
“Yes, ma’am … It’s too red to be orange juice.”
“Sicilian oranges.”
“Oh.”
“And take these two aspirin. They’ll beat the fever.”
“I thought I didn’t have a fever.”
“Take them anyway.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Rosemarie, be it noted, never has a cold. It is not fair.
The next morning we had a medical consultation—my wife, the hotel manager, and an Italian doctor—round, short, bald, dressed in a neatly tailored three-piece suit and very smooth. I participated in the discussion only by coughing violently.
The first decision was that I would live. The second was that I need not go to the clinic. The doctor prescribed medicine which would dry my sinuses and control my cough. He adjured me to drink much water and fruit juice and sleep much.
Then, having exhausted the limited capabilities of medical science, Rosemarie turned to surefire remedies. Room service was ordered to bring a tumbler of bourbon, hot lemonade, and honey. A pretty young waitress appeared, pushing a massive table with these requirements neatly arranged on it. She was as solemn as a nurse in surgery.
Rosemarie explained in Italian that her poor husband had become the victim of a cold by standing outside in the rain and the wind. The young woman nodded sympathetically. Men were that way. She watched with considerable interest as the mysterious American cure was concocted.
“It is wonderful, signorina,” I explained to her. “It is so powerful that you don’t know you’re sick anymore and you don’t bother your wife with your complaints.”
“Chucky!”
The kid grinned.
The harsh truth is that the toddy tastes awful. Moreover, no one in his right mind consumes a glass of unadulterated bourbon in a single swallow. Yet that was a requirement of the treatment, so I took a deep breath and drained the magic potion.
I did feel a little better, though I’m sure for the wrong reason. My wife tipped the young woman generously, too generously the lingering Depression kid thought, and dismissed her. Then she placed the required hot compress on my head and departed for the farmacia. I went to sleep.
I knew for sure and she probably knew that none of this medical attention would have the slightest impact on the curing of my cold. However, a wife and a mother had to do something. It would have been enough to give me the cough suppressant and antihistamine. However, such behavior would reveal a culpable lack of concern for the poor, sick boy child.
Sometime later, Rosemarie returned from the farmacia and made me drink some foul-tasting medicine which was probably an Italian version of NyQuil. I went back to sleep.
Later she called home, reported to the good April that I had “one of his usual colds,” and then talked to Missus and to the baby. She required me to say hello to the latter.
“Hi, Siobhan. Are they treating you right?”
Her response was gibberish.
“Tell them to be good to you or I’ll come right home.”
More gibberish.
Rosemarie removed the phone from my hand.
Apparently our youngest missed us but not to the point of desperation.
Then I caught snatches of a conversation with April Rosemary.
“I’m glad you feel much better, dear. That’s what the medication is supposed to do for you. You’ll be fine … Don’t worry about poor Johnny Nettleton. He’s a good little baby. He knows you love him. He’ll be fine.”
Not easy being a mother or a grandmother, especially with a sick husband-child on your hands.
Sometime later I was awakened for lunch.
“Not hungry,” I protested.
“Feed a cold, starve a fever,” she said, as though she were the Pope speaking ex cathedra. “You have to get proper nourishment. Drink your orange juice. You need lots of vitamin C.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“RTE has been showing pictures of the cardinals coming out of their meetings in the Vatican. Not a very encouraging bunch of guys. Also some arriving at the airport. Including Cardinal O’Neill, fat, ugly little man. Why should we women in the Church take seriously leadership that is all old, fat, little celibate males who don’t have any women or children?”
“No reason I can think of … There was a time when some of them did have women and children. That was probably worse.”
“Also they say that Cardinal Lorscheider of Brazil is sick and won’t attend. He is one of the good guys, isn’t he?”
“That’s too bad. The good guys will need all the help they can get.”
“Also they’re doing the poor little Pope’s funeral Wednesday morning. Outside. Rain or shine.”
“They’re doubtless hoping for rain to keep the crowd down and thus prove he wasn’t loved.”
I was beginning to think like a Roman. There was always a “they” who were up to something nefarious.
“Are you planning on going?” she asked tentatively.
“I have to. Pump me up with medicine, wrap me in a coat and a hat and a scarf. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll have to run out and buy you a warm coat and a scarf.”
“And gloves!”
“Chucky! You’re making fun of me.”
“Would I do that!”
“You do it all the time.”
“You look awful pretty in that robe—kind of diaphanous, isn’t it?”
“Chucky! This is no time for romance.”
“I’ll probably be incapable of that ever again. Still, it’s always a good idea to invest a little in the future. Kind of nice thighs.”
“Will you shut up!”
“It must be the bourbon in me talking … Hey I have a great idea for your next story …”
“Well?” She glared at me.
“The punk gets sick in a hotel room, Vienna maybe. He’s a miserable patient, but the narrator cures him with her magical potions.”
“It won’t work. Everyone knows that a hot toddy never cures anything. A wife would make one only as a bit of magic or superstition.”
“Oh …”
“But that could be the story! He gets better. Thanks her for the magic cure, which couldn’t have cured him at all! Not bad. I’ll have to think about it.”
She reached for her ever-present notebook, providing me with a chance to grasp one of those nice thighs.
“You’re terrible,” she said. However, she did not pull away.
“I know.”
Alas, viruses and romance are incompatible.
The next morning found me way up near the front of the Piazza (courtesy of a pass produced by Rae Adolfo), dressed for arctic cold, watching the dreary obsequies for Pope John Paul. The rain had paused, but thick black clouds scudded over the Piazza and in the distance flashes of lightning carved up the sky. There was none of the usual flair and drama which marks Vatican ceremonies. It was as though the Catholic Church wanted to rid itself of this troublesome little Pope as quickly as it could, end what had been a bad job.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong. The Sistine Choir was as good as ever, the performance of the clergy as punctilious as always. Maybe the grim-faced cardinals were worrying about the debt they were building up.
&nbs
p; Or maybe it was my own virus-induced depression.
I encountered in my search for good camera perspectives the local Time man.
“They’re certainly in a hurry to get rid of him, aren’t they, Chuck?”
“You noticed that too?”
“There are now rumors that there was rat poison in his blood system.”
“I hear he was taking raffin for circulatory problems. That is rat poison.”
“Is that for attribution?”
“What does a picture taker know?”
“Right. A high-placed Vatican observer?”
“Why not?”
“Have you noticed the crowd?”
“Yeah,” I said, “remarkably silent and sullen for a crowd here.”
“Almost as if they would storm the altar and kill the cardinals if they could find a reason.”
“They loved him, even if the cardinals think they are well rid of them.”
“What do you hear about the conclave?” he asked.
“Probably a deadlock and then a foreigner.”
“Really?”
“What do I know?”
I turned my camera on faces in the crowd. Perhaps the valiant Rosemarie would persuade Reuters to distribute some shots of angry Catholics.
“Chucky, where have you been?” that lovely woman demanded when I collapsed on the hard chair next to her.
“Taking pictures. That’s what I do for a living.”
“A lot of very sullen people here. They believe the Curia killed him.”
“That’s what my pictures say. Do you think …”
“That I can get prints and give them to Reuters? Sure. That’s a good idea. Now let’s get out of here. We’ve paid our final tribute to the man. Those rain clouds are closing in again and you look shaky on your feet.”
Lightning crackled, it seemed, just above the Dome. Many of the onlookers scurried for cover. Some of the Cardinals opened umbrellas.
Rosemarie assumed the role of a blocking back and led me to our limo, parked just outside the Sala Stampa. The car escaped much of the crowd but not all of it. Our ride back to the Piazza Trinita dei Monte was slow and bumpy.
“If I can’t have you, I want another hot toddy. I’m cold and wet and depressed and sad and sick.”
“You’re a real mess, my love. But you can’t cope with me just now. My old wives’ tale says only one toddy per cold. We’ll give you cough medicine and that will put you to sleep just fine.”
Second Spring Page 18
