“Hey,” she said, glancing through the matted prints Chucky had brought up to the office, “this is a totally bitchin’ picture of you, Rosie. Out of sight! Great work, Chucky! Best yet!”
“It’s not me,” I said firmly.
“Oh, yeah, it is, Rosie, totally.”
“That’s what I think too,” my husband said.
“We won’t discuss it now.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not involving myself in this family argument,” she announced, and flounced out of the office.
“I have made up my mind,” I told my husband. “This does not hang in the exhibition.”
I had told him that several times before. He usually said that, of course, was up to me. I knew however that he was scheming and conniving in search of ways to avoid my wishes.
“If you say so,” he agreed. “It’s your call.”
It was a portrait he had made of me at Grand Beach the previous summer. It was not obscene or even erotic. I was simply not me. I was wearing an old maroon University of Chicago sleep tee shirt which fell modestly to my bare knees. I had not worn it for years. It was a student’s tee shirt I should have thrown away. I forgot about it and, when Chuck rediscovered it somewhere in the disorder of the house, he got the brilliant idea of photographing me in it. It had been a loosely fitting nightie when I first wore it. Now it had shrunk after many washings, as such shirts do. It covered me but it left no doubt about the distribution of the various parts of my anatomy.
Moreover, I had a crazy look in my eyes and an even crazier grin starting on my face. I was also wielding a hairbrush with which I might have brushed my tangled hair or hit the photographer.
In fact, I had thrown it at him.
“I might just as well be stark naked,” I protested.
“That wouldn’t do at all,” he argued. “This is much more erotic, but innocently so.”
“It isn’t erotic at all. It’s just plain dumb.”
I shifted back and forth between two arguments—the first was that it was indecent and the second that it wasn’t me at all. What these arguments lacked in consistency, I made up by my own fury.
“Well,” he said that afternoon when our middle daughter had withdrawn from the fray, “I’d like to remind you that a lot of our subjects say the same thing about their portraits, only to be overruled by their family’s insistence that it was too.”
“I don’t care!” I growled.
“I won’t hang it if you object,” he said again. “I propose, however”—and his eyes narrowed—Chucky plotting—“that we ask the opinions of others.”
“What others? That silly little teenage witch?”
“What a terrible thing to say about your daughter … No, I mean the high council of matriarchs.”
“What?”
“Convene a board of judgment made up of all the womenfolk—the good April, Peg, Jane, April Rosemary, Delia Murray if you want, even Moire Meg so there’ll be one vote on my side.”
It was a dangerous and insidious proposal which I could not reject without looking bad, something which would never do in an argument with my husband.
“Then, if you want, take it to your next tête-a-tête with your friend Maggie Ward and listen to her judgment. If the vote in both venues is against me, then I will yield the field of battle.”
“They’ll all say that it is a stupid picture.”
“If such womanly wisdom emerges, I’ll accept the decision.”
He was building a trap for me, ingenious little bastard that he was.
“Suppose they agree with you and I still don’t want this idiotic picture hung?”
“It’s your picture,” he said, moving his hands as though he were smoothing something out.
“Well …”
“Up to you.”
“You’re a clever little bastard.”
“I believe I’ve been called that before.”
“You forced sex on me after you took that picture.”
“Funny, I don’t quite remember it that way.”
“And how do you remember it?” I snapped, knowing full well that I would lose this argument.
“You threw the brush at me and then physically attacked me. I merely defended myself and one thing led to another … You seemed to enjoy one thing and another.”
“That’s irrelevant,” I shouted. “This is not me.”
Deep down in the lowest subbasement of my soul, I was scared that it might indeed be me. Then where would I be?
Nonetheless, I was confident that the High Council of Matriarchs, as my insidious little husband had called them, would support me. A woman had a right to her modesty, did she not?
I called April and told her that I was having a problem with a portrait of me that her son wanted to hang at the Art Institute and I wanted everyone in the family and Delia too, who was practically family, to look at it.
“Poor little Chucky is so clever with his camera.”
This had been her standard reaction to her son since he was ten years old.
So the next morning we all appeared at the elder O’Malleys’ home on East Avenue. April Rosemary had brought along little Johnny Nettleton, who seemed delighted at all the attention the various mothers showered on him. His mother was radiant again. The medication was doing its work.
Peg and her mother distributed coffee and tea and cookies. I accepted the tea and declined the cookies.
“Well, dear”—the good April called the meeting to order—“you have some kind of problem with a picture of you that Chuck wants to hang at the exhibition.”
That was an uncharacteristically direct opening from herself. She was dying of curiosity. So were they all.
“He took this shot at the Lake last summer. I think it is silly and stupid and humiliating and is not me at all.”
I unwrapped the picture with little attention to Chuck’s careful work on its packaging and laid it on the kitchen table for all of them to see.
There was a gasp of astonishment and then dead silence.
“Poor dear Chucky is so clever with his cute little camera.”
“April, you’ve been saying that since he was ten years old.”
“Well, dear, it’s been true since he was ten years old.”
“It really is you, you know.” Peg, my best friend in all the world, had gone over to the other side.
“It’s the best thing Daddy’s ever done,” April Rosemary joined the consensus. “He reveals your beauty in a way that neither objectifies you or fetishizes you. You are a lovely and challenging woman in the middle years of life who isn’t afraid of the photographer or anyone who looks at the picture. Indeed she defies all of us.”
I contained my temper. What, I wondered, is a fetish? Maybe an obsession with a body part.
“It’s also really quite comic,” Delia, who had once dated Chucky, commented. “One wants to admire her, and laugh with her, and duck when she throws the brush, which presumably you did.”
My middle daughter, who had taken her godson away from April Rosemary and was playing with him, remained silent.
“Moire Meg,” the good April asked, “aren’t you going to vote?”
“Oh, do I get to vote? … What do you think, Johnny boy? Do you think it’s a totally bitchin’ picture of your gram? … Well since you asked me, I don’t think Chucky should hang it until Rosie agrees.”
“Well, I don’t agree,” I snapped. “I might just as well be totally naked.”
“Oh, no, dear,” the good April remonstrated with me. “That would ruin it all. It’s much more erotic because it is much more modest.”
My foster mother was still a flapper, always would be.
“The picture says,” Peg added, “that a beautiful woman can be erotic and chaste at the same time. And confident in her erotic powers too.”
“That’s bullshit, Peg.”
My foster sister and dearest friend flushed angrily.
“You’re the one that’s filled with bullshit, Rosie,” she fired back.
>
We’ve been arguing and fighting since I showed up outside their two flat in 1939.
“I wish my mother and my aunt,” Moire Meg joined the battle, “would stop using vulgar language and acting like assholes.”
“Now, darlings,” the good April said, “we must control our tempers … You know, Rosie dear, that all of us envy you because that picture is so wonderful. None of us would dare pose in a nightie like that for poor little Chucky.”
“I would hope not,” I said, simmering down. “Sorry, Peg.”
“Be my guest.”
“I have been for a long time.” My eyes stung with tears.
“I don’t think an artist could do a portrait like that of anyone who was not his wife or lover,” Delia observed. “One would need to be in a confident and intimate relationship with a woman to dare to attempt it. Even then the photographer took a terrible risk.”
Delia was from Lake Forest and talked like she had a Harvard degree. I ignored the drawl because she was so sweet. I was about to turn on her and then stopped myself.
“Maybe you’re right, Deal,” I said. “Himself didn’t look very frightened.”
“He wouldn’t look that way, would he?”
She had dated Chuck when they were at Notre Dame and then rejected him so she could pursue a concert career, only to discover that she didn’t quite have the talent. She did have some good insights into my husband.
“Too bad you didn’t marry her,” I would shout at him in some of our fights.
“Not enough passion,” he’d reply, and our fight would end in laughter.
“No, I suppose not,” I replied to her. “However, Chucky Ducky doesn’t have enough sense to be scared when he’s in danger. He didn’t even think I’d throw the hairbrush at him.”
Everyone laughed and we all relaxed. I felt like a real bitch.
“Well, dear,” the good April summed up, “we could be wrong and probably are, but we all think it’s a cute picture and it would look just fine in poor little Chucky’s show. Still as darling Moire Meg says, it’s your decision, not ours.”
Darling little Moire Meg handed her godson back to April Rosemary and hugged her grandmother.
Why was it always “poor little Chucky”?
“I’ll have to do a lot of thinking about it,” I said, putting off a decision. “Thank you for being candid despite my rotten temper.”
So the minifight ended early rather than late. I could easily have thrown the portrait at Peg and stormed out of the house.
“Did you expect anything different?” Moire Meg asked, as we went back to our house under a gray sky which hinted that Indian summer warmth could last only a day or two more. She would go on to class at Rosary and I to wrestle with my manuscript.
“I thought they’d understand. I guess they didn’t.”
“Maybe they understood all too well.”
I resolved I wouldn’t get in a fight with her. So I said nothing.
Why was I so afraid of a portrait that everyone else loved?
I made some progress on the manuscript, four or five paragraphs. At this pace I would be finished by Easter.
Chuck joined me at the end of the day, carrying a tray on which there was a teapot in a caddy and two mugs.
“Well, how did the Grand High Council of the Matriarchs rule?” he asked after he had poured my tea.
“You rigged the vote,” I complained. “You stuffed the ballot box.”
“Fat chance of that happening.”
“They liked it of course. They keep saying it’s my decision.”
“Shame on them.”
“It should be your decision. You’re the photographer.”
“All the other subjects have given their written consent. I won’t hang your portrait without your written consent.”
“It’s a stupid, silly picture,” I said, now without much conviction. “It isn’t me at all.”
“Your vote cancels all others.”
The little bastard was enjoying the game, like he enjoyed most of the games he played with me.
“Why can’t I just say that I won’t scream and shout and claw in protest?”
“Wouldn’t believe you.”
“Can’t I write you saying that I don’t like the picture because it’s silly and stupid and not me, but you can go ahead and hang it if you want to?”
“Hang myself too.”
He had me where he wanted me and wouldn’t let me sneak away.
“Well, first thing next week.”
“After you’ve collected Maggie Ward’s vote.”
“I don’t care what she says. I’ll make up my own mind.”
“Dare I ask how the manuscript is coming?”
“I’ll be finished before summer … Now we have to worry about what we feed Esther tomorrow.”
Chucky
1978
Esther, nee Eileen, wore a pale gray shift and had put up her hair in a ponytail, thus heightening the impression that she was a solemn little waif. Our poor son hung around behind her in the parlor like a cashiered knight-errant who had no idea of what to do or say, poor bumpkin. Esther was frightened. She did not want to be with us for Sunday supper. She was afraid of us. She didn’t exactly like us. Well, she had bonded with Moire Meg in a new generation of the monster regiment.
“Would you like something to drink, Esther?” Rosemarie asked politely.
Thank the good Lord that she did not adopt my mother’s “dear.”
“If I might have a small glass of dry white wine,” she whispered.
“I’ll have a large glass of the same, Rosie,” the ineffable Moire Meg informed her mother.
We didn’t serve liquor at or before family meals. Perhaps bottles of wine would be placed on the table when the extended family was around. Moire Meg had never before had an opportunity to order a preprandial drink at home.
“Not your usual dry martini with a twist?” I asked.
“Chucky!” she protested.
“Jews consider wine to be sacramental,” Esther said softly.
“So do we,” Moire Meg responded. “We believe that in some mysterious way Jesus is present in it.”
“You eat and drink Jesus, don’t you?”
“That’s silly,” Moire Meg dismissed the attack. “It doesn’t understand what Catholics mean by ‘sacrament.’”
Esther nodded solemnly as if she understood, which she certainly did not. The waiflike child did not stand a chance in the forthcoming Talmudic argument.
Poor Seano simply looked confused.
“You don’t have to worry about the meal, Es,” Moire Meg went on. “Everything fits with the dietary laws.”
“The Lord gave us these laws,” Esther said softly, “to remind us of His loving presence among His people.”
“Yeah, well, I understand that similar food codes were widespread in the Near East. They were intended as primitive public health measures.”
“Still, God gave them special meaning for us when He gave them to us through our rabbi Moses.”
“Does your shul have a mikveh?”
Where had our daughter picked up all this stuff? Esther, however, seemed pleased with the questions. They gave her something to talk about.
“What’s a mikveh?” Sean asked, in a tone of voice which said why are you talking about such stuff?
“It means a ritual bath in which women purify themselves after they’ve had their periods.”
“Oh, no,” Esther said, “only a few of the big Orthodox synagogues have them. I spend much of my time in the tub during those days.”
“Why?” Sean demanded.
“To remove my impurity.”
“Impurity!”
Moire Meg adopted the tone of an impatient full professor with her brother.
“The Torah requires that men not touch a woman who is ritually impure, during her monthly period and also after childbirth. Remember the Purification of Mary in the temple?”
“Why?”
; “To protect the poor women from male lust!”
“Dinner is ready,” Rosemarie intervened, her eyes wide with surprise at her daughter’s “engaging” our guest in religious discussion.
We sat around the supper table. I said grace, which we didn’t do routinely every night. Esther bowed her head respectfully.
After Moire Meg helped her mother bring soup to the table, she continued her “dialogue.”
“Same thing with circumcision, I gather,” she said. “Public health measure in those days. Not clear anymore that it really works, but a lot of people thought so in those days.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Esther said. “Yet, those of us who follow the Torah also believe that the Lord demands these obediences of us because we are His people. That makes the observance of the law different for us than it is for others.”
“Does your shul believe that women should have as many children as possible?”
Our guest’s eyes brightened. “A good Jewish woman knows that it is her duty to bring children into the world so that the Lord’s holy people may grow and prosper.”
“Most Jews don’t believe that, do they?” Rosemarie asked.
“Oh, no, Mrs. O’Malley. Only the very Orthodox. But the others, like my dear parents, are practically goyim—gentiles.”
“Jewishness is passed on through the mother, isn’t it?” Moire Meg said.
Setup question. My daughter undoubtedly knew the answer.
“Oh yes, Moire. It is the Lord’s law that all of my children will be Jewish.”
“I suppose the reason,” Moire Meg said, “is that one can always be sure whether the mother is Jewish or not.”
“Isn’t it hard to be an observant Jew?” I asked because I figured I should say something. Rosemarie and Moire Meg slipped into the kitchen to bring the salad.
The clear soup which Moire Meg had bought at a kosher store up in Skokie was terrible. I finished as much of it as I could as a gesture of interreligious friendship.
“It is very difficult here in America, Mr. O’Malley. That is why I hope after graduation to emigrate to Israel, where I can raise my children to be good Jews.”
“Does religion really mean keeping all those rules?” Sean asked in a tone which was a mixture of surprise and dismay.
“Keeping God’s law is what makes us a holy people. You Christians believe in salvation, we Jews believe in sanctification. To become sanctified we keep the Lord’s law.”
Second Spring Page 24
