“I don’t think he’ll change any more things, like women in the Church, though he was perfectly charming to you.”
“He never mentioned my stories.”
“Perhaps he didn’t know about them.”
“That would be the problem, wouldn’t it? Charm is no substitute for respect.”
“I saw him as an intelligent and gifted garrison commander for a Church under assault.”
“We’re not under assault.”
“Not in our neighborhood, Rosemarie.”
“He grew up in a neighborhood under assault, didn’t he?”
“That’s the whole point.”
“I still think he’s a wonderful man.”
We asked the driver to stop for a few moments by the Trinita dei Monte Church and slipped inside to pray for the Pope and the Church.
“That’s the end of the year of the three Popes for us,” I said, as we walked out of the church. “We have a lot of work to do at home.”
“Including our book on the conclaves.”
“I’d almost forgotten it.”
“We have to do it, Chucky.”
“Yes, we do. Only I don’t want to think about it now.”
We changed our reservations to the next day, ate a good supper at a trattoria down the street, made gentle love, and fell into peaceful sleep.
The plane was delayed in its departure and delayed even more in landing at O’Hare. It was eight-thirty before we finally cleared customs. We agreed that there would be no one waiting for us.
We had misjudged our family. Moire Meg, Seano, and Siobhan were at the door of the arrivals hall.
“Chookie, Rooshie!” our youngest shouted and rushed at us, clutching one of each of our legs in an elegant compromise. “Momeg say don’t go ’way again.”
Who would dare to argue with Momeg?
I picked her up and gave her to my wife. She hugged and kissed Rooshie and then was passed back to Chookie.
“I brought the lug along,” Moire Meg said, “because I knew I couldn’t cope with Rosie’s luggage.”
Rome was now far away. The ambiguous story was over. We were home, home to stay, I hoped, for a long time.
Rosemarie
1978
“The story can wait,” I insisted. “We have to get the framing done first.”
“It can’t wait,” my husband responded with quiet firmness. “I’ll do the frames, you work on your story.”
It was an order. I hear them rarely. Each time resistance and anger well up inside of me. How dare he! I give the orders, right?
“You’re right, Chucky. You work on your pictures and I work on my story.”
We had developed the protocol for such exchanges years ago. I work on the premise that when Chuck challenges me he’s always right. After the exchange is over and I calm down I know he’s right. In this case I should not neglect the revision of my story. Its final acceptance and the publication of the collection of my stories is important to my career.
It’s a powerful sexual turn-on too.
“You are sexually aroused when you bend your will to your husband’s?” Maggie Ward challenges me, the little soul-reading witch.
“Would that be wrong?”
“What makes you ask that question?”
“It’s like when he told me to stop drinking, those were terrifying days and unbearably sweet.”
I figured I would get points for that comment. I would have said in the past that he made me stop drinking. We’d spend the rest of the session arguing that he had done no such thing.
“Ah.”
“I feel vulnerable and protected.”
“And hence sexually aroused?”
“Safe,” I say.
“Someone has drawn outer limits to your self-destructiveness and you wish to merge with him?”
“I guess so … and celebrate with him.”
“Celebrate what?”
“Survival.”
“A delicate dance, Rosemarie.”
Often I would go home and flirt with Chucky after such a session. In our bedroom he makes me take off my nightgown and lie on the bed. Then with a single finger he traces delicate abstract designs all over me. His movements are slow and leisurely. My reactions are the same way at first. Then I become a tornado of twisting, turning, womanly hunger. He smiles and continues his unhurried amusements.
“Chucky Ducky, I am not a sex object to be played with.”
He just laughs.
“Please!” I scream, as the warmth in my body becomes intolerable. “Let’s finish it.”
He laughs again, kisses me, and continues his work.
He thus demonstrates his complete control over me. And at the same time he reveals how much my need for happiness controls him.
I don’t need that witch Maggie Ward to explain everything to me.
I cry out often. He continues to laugh. I fear that I will die of pleasure. Then finally, in an explosion of joy, we come together and ride to the stars.
“Well,” I say. “I hope you’re satisfied.”
He laughs yet again. He knows what has happened. We cuddle in each other’s arms and sleep long and peacefully.
Only that is not what happens on that rainy late-October night in 1978 when we have returned from the conclave and he works on the exhibition and I work on the story. We are too exhausted at the end of the day from jet lag and hard work. I’m even more to blame than he is because I am edgy from my struggles with the text.
We share our work at the beginning and the end of the day. Rather, he shows me his final scheme for cropping when we start to work in the morning and the final result in late afternoon. There is so little change in the picture that most would hardly notice it—as they will not notice the difference of the hung portrait from the one in the catalogue (which is already set in type). However, the final touch satisfies his need for neatness before he presses two prints into the matte, one to be carefully, indeed perfectly wrapped, and sent off to the Art Institute by messenger, the other to be shown to me and then locked in one of his cabinets against the day during the exhibition when someone has violated a photograph, a new anticipation in his preparations.
Indeed, he is much more uneasy about this exhibition than any of the others. In the past he hasn’t cared much about the shows. He’s done his work, he’s taken the pictures, printed them, matted them, and that’s that. To hell with what anyone thinks or says. Now he worries constantly about the reaction both of the crowd and the critics. It’s been too long since the last one. He’s also not sure that he has done anything worthwhile, a fear that never bothered him before.
Damn midlife crisis!
“Charles Cronin O’Malley! To hell with the critics!”
He grins at me.
“You’re right, Rosemarie. They didn’t like Mozart either.”
He doesn’t mean it. He continues to worry.
Sometimes in the day while we’re both working in different parts of our home, the baby drifts into my office with a load of toys. She’s breaking the rules that Mom (or in her case Rooshie) is not to be bothered when she’s at work in her office. However, I have granted a temporary indult because we abandoned her for so long during the conclaves. She plays very quietly, interrupting her fantasy games only to periodically hug and kiss me.
“I love you, Rooshie!”
“I love you too, Shovie.”
I wear my usual work uniform of jeans and either tee shirt or sweatshirt. I have enough varieties of this garb to last at least a month without repeating myself. However, since it developed that Moire Meg and I could wear the same clothes and she began to “borrow” mine, I’ve had to stride into her room, unbearably messy, and borrow mine back, usually with threats of severe punishment if she kept it up. She’d laugh at me, as she usually does, which is no way to treat a mother, is it?
Late in the afternoon, the aforementioned Moire Meg ambles in, book pack over her shoulder, and pecks my cheek.
“How many sen
tences did we get through today, Rosie?”
“That’s my Vienna tee shirt.”
“I’ll give it back.”
The small one abandons me to rush to embrace her adored big sister. Little brat.
“Momeg! Momeg!”
The two daughters desert me and I continue to stare at the computer screen. Somehow revision is a lot harder this time.
Then Chuck arrives to show me, with the pride of a kid showing a drawing to his mother, the day’s work—four or five pictures on a good day. I respond by admiring his work. His eye is as good as ever. Alas, he’s not so sure.
Then I show him my work?
No way! I don’t permit him to read a single word of a story before it’s ready to be sent to an editor. He doesn’t even look at the computer screen lest I screech at him that he’s breaking the rules.
Is this asymmetry silly, even wrong?
Yes, it is. However, it’s the way we work.
Two people afraid that their efforts are not worth anything.
Our love life is temporarily suspended because of darkness. Or rain. Or something.
Then one afternoon in early November—only ten days left before final delivery of our work—Seano shows up and asks if he can talk to us for a few minutes.
Certainly he can. I close the door to fend off his sisters. He’s wearing chinos and a blue blazer and a blue dress shirt, open at the neck-business-school student and part-time worker at the Board of Trade. The shortest of my three sons (towering over his father by three inches), he is also the most handsome. His flawlessly carved face is touched by the late-afternoon shadow which could so easily become a beard if it were part of his current persona.
My heart is in my throat because I have a pretty good idea of what’s coming. I hope that my husband is tuned in. Seano sits at the edge of one of my maroon leather easy chairs.
“I’m planning to marry Esther,” he says, trying to sound relaxed and casual, “in June, right after I graduate.”
“Is she planning the same thing?” I ask without thinking.
That stops him.
“I haven’t asked her yet. I imagine I’ll have to do some persuading. I’m sure I’ll win her over.”
What a dumb male thing to say. I almost responded, “Wanna bet?” I didn’t. Maybe I should have.
“We respect you too much, Sean,” Chuck says smoothly, “to try to change your mind. We’ll stand by you.”
Nice going.
“I know that,” Sean says uneasily. “I’ll always be a Catholic. I couldn’t possibly be anything else. Esther respects that just as I respect her Jewish faith.”
“You realize that it won’t be easy,” I chime in. “It would be all right if one of you was not a strong believer in your heritage.”
“I think our love is powerful enough to support us through those problems.”
My heart ached for this child of my womb who was repeating the easy clichés of one besotted by what he thought was undying passion.
“The children?”
“We’ll raise them in both heritages and let them choose when they’re old enough to make up their own minds.”
A recipe for constant family infighting.
“Esther agrees to this?” Chuck asked.
“We haven’t talked about it, but I’m sure she will. I thought we could discuss those things after we’re engaged.”
“Those things” were minor problems, hardly worth worrying about.
“When do you think that will be?”
“I plan to give her a ring at Christmastime.”
“Not at Christmas, Seano,” Chuck said gently.
“Why not?” my son seemed surprised.
“That’s a Christian feast. As I remember her family celebrates Christmas much to her chagrin. Try New Year’s.”
“Oh, yeah, Dad … Good idea.”
How naive can a late-adolescent male be? Even when he’s my own son, pretty damn naive!
“I’m sure you understand,” Chuck went on, saying all the things I should have been saying, “that Esther is in the midst of a particularly painful crisis with her own family, indeed a religious crisis. She is angry at them for denying what she takes to be her religious heritage. They are angry at her for buying into what they think is outmoded superstition. I won’t speculate about the reasons for this conflict, but it is a wrenching experience for her.”
“She’s made up her mind that she’s Jewish,” Seano replied. “She won’t change on that.”
“I’m sure she has. However, you must realize that she’s not Jewish in the sense that you’re Catholic.”
“What do you mean, Dad?” Sean was puzzled.
“You’ve been raised Catholic, you’ve been Catholic all your life, you’ve never been out of the Catholic environment, even when it was a degraded environment at that college you went to. Esther has only recently become a Jew.”
“Her mother is Jewish. In Jewish law that’s what makes Esther Jewish.”
I wondered how much his experience at that rinky-dink college contributed to his sudden, late-adolescent passion.
Irrelevant question.
“As you would be Catholic if you had been baptized and then raised in a completely secular environment.”
“I suppose that’s true,” he admitted, not seeing the point, the poor jerk.
“So you have to cut her some slack until she feels relaxed in her newfound faith.”
“I don’t plan to be married till summer,” he said, somewhat defensively.
Summer was so far away.
Well, maybe it will all work out.
“That’s your decision, Sean.” I finally found my tongue. “We’ll support whatever you decide. Your father and I are really suggesting that you should be very sensitive to Esther’s current emotional state.”
“We’d be about the same age you were when you were married,” he said, not hearing a word of mine.
“That was different,” Chuck replied, the usual idiot cliché.
“How was it different?” Sean bristled.
“You’re a lot more mature than I was at your age.”
Brilliant, husband mine!
Sean laughed and, sensing that the conversation was over, stood up.
“I wonder,” he said as though it were an afterthought, which it surely wasn’t, “whether we could have her over for supper on Sunday. Just us—and Moire Meg of course. She finds our whole family intimidating.”
“Intimidating?” I snapped.
“Well, what she said was overwhelming.”
“That I can understand. We are after all the Crazy O’Malleys.”
“We’d be happy to have her for dinner on Sunday,” Chuck said easily. “Why not?”
“Certainly,” I added, again too little and too late.
“Gosh, thanks a lot,” our son said fervently, and slipped out of my office.
“Well done, Chucky.”
“Only because I more easily become phony.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“I think, as is usually the case in these matters, it will depend on Eileen …”
“Esther.”
“Yes … Esther. It is usually the case that women bring these matters to closure. Either to force a marriage decision or to end the courtship, the former being the more frequent. At some point Esther will either go along with our son’s wishes or brush him off. In which case we may need a blotter.”
“Women see things more clearly.”
“I recall hearing that said.” He grinned at me. “I would not dream of debating it.”
Moire Meg appeared at the door of my office in her tantrum modality.
“Rosie, your son is an asshole.”
She was still wearing my Vienna tee shirt. For the first time that day I noticed the radiance of Indian summer outside the window and the front lawn bathed in gold-and-crimson leaves.
“I don’t disagree,” I said.
“That poor kid doesn’t want to come here for
supper on Sunday. She’s scared stiff of us.”
“Frightened of the Crazy O’Malleys?” the young woman’s father asked.
She threw herself on the same chair that her brother had just vacated.
“Sure! I can’t figure out why her parents let her go to Loyola. She was certain to encounter some Orthodox Jews at the Hillel Center or whatever they call it up there. She was also certain to stumble into the Irish Catholic Chicago subculture. She isn’t prepared for either. My idiot brother is too tumescent to understand that.”
“She has to choose between the two of them?” I said.
“Or retreating to the safety of Jewish secularism.”
“We’re a threat then to her newfound Jewishness?”
“Oh, yeah, Rosie, sure. I can’t imagine that she could have lived in this city all her life and not know about our kind, except a few clichés. She finds us all very attractive. She told me so. Especially your husband, who is such a nice man, right? That’s why she won’t want to come here for supper. Asshole takes it for granted that she’s dying to know the family better and doesn’t even ask her whether she wants to show up here on Sunday.”
“How do you know that?” I wondered.
“I asked him. He looked at me blankly and goes like, ‘I know she’d love the invitation.’”
“And you said?”
“I told him he was an asshole. He seemed surprised … Rosie, there’s something missing in his education, like how to relate to a woman.”
“We do our best,” I said defensively.
“Yeah, well, you two don’t argue with her much. She’ll come ready to play Talmudic games with us. Jewish people love to argue, like Chucky’s friend Dr. Berman. She’ll pick up a load of arguments at Hillel before she shows up here. Let me do the arguing. I’m her age and she thinks I’m a friend. Which I am. I’m the one to take her on.”
She stood up, her displeasure vented on her defenseless parents.
“One question, moonbeam,” her father asked.
“Yeah?” She smiled happily as she always did when he called her moonbeam.
“How did an eighteen-year-old like you acquire such wisdom?”
“Actually, nineteen, Chucky … And I learned all I know by growing up in this house.”
She cackled like a Halloween witch.
Second Spring Page 23
