“At worst, my dear, it is a harmless illusion. At best … Well, it might help you to clarify your identity.”
“Can genes have that kind of power?”
“To reproduce over generations a person who looks a lot like an ancestor? Surely they can and do. Even to the temperament and personality.”
She glanced again at the album.
“Perhaps.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yet you are the present Rosemarie. Your husband is not a dashing Union Army officer, but a whimsical genius who probably could not ride a horse if his life depended on it. You are not the Rosemarie of a century ago. You are someone different.”
Tears stung my eyes. I didn’t want any dashing cavalry officer. I wanted my Chucky Ducky.
“I know that.”
“Still, there’s no harm in knowing that there was once another Rosemarie who looked like you and maybe acted like you and was beautiful all her life and was perhaps not nearly as conflicted as you are and never wrote a story like you.”
“No harm?”
“At worst, as I said before, a harmless illusion.”
“At best?”
“Maybe a positive reinforcement.”
“Okay.”
“You will show this to your children and your in-laws?”
“At Christmas?”
“Why not?”
“I showed the pictures to Moire Meg.”
“Her reaction?”
“Admiration and many tears.”
“Apples, it is said, do not fall very far from their trees … It is time, I’m afraid.”
As I walked to the door, she said in an undertone, “Informed sources tell me that this Joey Moran is a nice boy, which in their terms means that he does not grope or grab.”
“He wouldn’t do it twice.”
Chuck
1978
“Chuck,” my good wife asked, “do you have a few minutes?”
She was dressed in a dark blue business suit with white trim, clothes for visiting the ineffable Maggie Ward. I wasn’t sure that I needed another crisis.
“For you, Rosemarie Helen Clancy O’Malley, I always have a few minutes.”
She was sitting on the leather couch in her office, the de facto family room despite her insistence that it was private. On her lap was an old photo album of the sort which were piled up in my parents’ house.
“Would you look at this please?”
I sat down next to her, put an arm around her shoulder, opened the book, and turned to the first picture.
“Grandmother McArdle?” I whispered.
She nodded.
This album had become very important to her. I must strive for the proper reaction, to live up to the challenge every man must face, to listen to what his wife means, instead of what she says.
“The poor bastard,” I said, pointing to Colonel McArdle. “I know how he felt.”
She was laughing and crying, a good sign.
“He knows he’ll be taking orders from her for the rest of his life. He’s so happy he doesn’t care. Later in the day, he’ll take off her clothes and tell himself that he’s conquered her. Even then, however, he’ll realize that the prize taking goes in the other direction. Poor dear man … Looks like our kids, doesn’t he? But then he should.”
I went through the pages slowly. The pictures were astonishing. The elder Rosemarie not only looked like my wife; her gestures, frozen in the camera, look like hers, as did her facial expression. Her summer clothes at Geneva Lake were more modest than my Rosemarie’s sleep shirt, but she was as defiant and amused as her granddaughter, no, great-granddaughter.
“Great-grandmother?” I asked.
“Right, my poor mother’s grandmother.”
The stories were racing through her body, her mind, her soul. Be careful, Chucky Ducky, don’t blow it.
“What a wonderful, thrilling, scary experience for you, Rosemarie.”
She hugged me fiercely.
“I knew you’d understand.”
Ah, Chucky Ducky, so far so good. Now you let her spill it out.
“I feel guilty about my mother.”
Now here the great big strong male says that she has nothing to worry about.
Neither big nor strong, Chucky Ducky falls back on wisdom.
“I can understand that.”
“I’ve neglected her … I can’t remember her as a beautiful, talented woman who cared enough for the original Rosemarie to save these pictures and to name me after her.”
All I could remember was a lovely, vague drunk.
“I want to retrieve some of her memory if I can.”
Time to make a suggestion.
“I don’t know whether it would help. My parents have a stack of albums like this, not so neatly put together, because, alas, neither of them really knows what neatness means.”
She giggled.
“Maybe you could go through them. I can borrow them for you, though I will have to search for them. Maybe you could even go through them with the good April. Will you show her this album?”
“Oh, yes, in a day or two … I think I’d like to look at those other albums … Do you think I’m silly, Chucky?”
“I’ve never thought you were silly, Rosemarie.”
“It is all kind of silly. I can’t bring my mother back to life. I can’t protect her from the misery she suffered. I really can’t do anything.”
True but irrelevant.
“You can learn more about her, renew your love and respect for her, tell your children more about her.”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “that does make a lot of sense.”
“Have any of the kids seen this album?”
“Only Moire Meg.”
Naturally, daughter as confidante.
“And she was as moved as you were.”
“Yes, oh yes!”
The next day, I searched all day the nooks and crannies, the corners and the cabinets, the attic and the basement of my parents’ house. The good April followed me around for a while making many suggestions which were not helpful. Finally, she gave it up and pleaded that she had to address her Christmas cards.
I had learned to be patient with my parents’ confusion, perhaps as a preparation for marriage. Few people, I discovered, understood as well as I did how important it was to keep neat records.
Finally, in a small subbasement under a stack of ancient blueprints—for which there had doubtless at one time been frantic searches—I found a stack of eight photo albums like the one over which my good wife was mooning these days.
I carried them up two flights of stairs to the good April’s study (not to be confused in any respect with my wife’s office). She was bent over a stack of cards and a disorderly pile of papers with addresses on them, some crossed out, others handwritten in corners and margins.
“I think I found them.”
She took off her glasses.
“Pictures of flappers?”
“I didn’t look.”
We opened the album on top. It was nowhere as neat as the Rosemarie collection. Some pictures were mounted, others were piled between the pages, still others wrapped with rubber bands.
“Oh my,” the good April said as she lifted the top picture from a pile. “Here we are. Clarice and I in 1924. Can you believe how young we look? And can you believe those swimsuits? Weren’t they awful?”
“The young women in them are not awful,” I insisted.
“You always were sweet, Chuck.” She patted my arm.
“Tell you what, Mom. The woman I sleep with wants to rediscover her family past. She found an old album of pictures of an earlier Rosemarie …”
“McArdle of course. She was a legend. Grand woman.”
“Clarice Powers went to a lot of work to create that album. That made Rosemarie think about her again.”
“Poor dear woman,” she said, dabbing her eyes with an ever-present tissue. “We tried to talk her out of marrying Jimmy Clancy. Sh
e wouldn’t listen to us. Still, she gave us Rosie, didn’t she?”
I did not intend to slip into this nostalgic swamp.
“I think it would be helpful to Rosemarie if I ask her to come over here and show you her album and then you and she can go through all of these.”
“We will cry all day long,” she said, with considerable anticipation I thought.
“Lay in an extra supply of tissue.”
“Will she write about these times, Chuck?”
“I think that will be the best way for her to work it through.”
“Have you ever shown her your father’s account of our courtship, silly old thing that it is?”
“No, but that’s a good idea. I’ll give it to her tonight.”
“Are you sure you can find it?”
Mother, you’ve forgotten that your son is an anal-retentive obsessive when it comes to documentation.
“I think so.”
Rosemarie was in her office, briskly addressing Christmas cards. I had created a file system for her that made it easy. Soon we’d be able to put it on computer.
I reported my successful search and described my proposal for her visit to the elder O’Malleys’ house.
“That sounds like fun,” she said, glowing happily.
“The good April promises to lay in an extra supply of tissue. I would suggest, however, you bring your own.”
“You think of everything, Chucky.”
“I also thought of this. It’s a journal my father kept of their, uh, love affair, if one could call it that. I don’t know why I didn’t show it to you before. Well, yes, I do. You will understand when you read it.”
“My mom is in it?”
“Yes, Rosemarie, she is.”
“I’ll read it after supper.”
I went downstairs to work on prints for the conclaves book. I made no progress. Something inside me simply collapsed. Perhaps I was suffering from a letdown after the excitement of the opening of the show. I was tired, so very, very tired. I had not slept well at night for the last couple of months. I’d fall asleep for a couple of hours, then toss and turn. For her part my wife slept soundly through the night and was unaware of my restlessness.
I assumed that Max Berman was right. I was afraid of being exposed as a fraud. My struggles to sustain the act were growing more frantic as death loomed ever more certainly around the corner. Possibly I wasn’t a fraud. That alternative somehow didn’t seem very likely.
Foolish, foolish, sad sack.
Supper was devoted to a discussion of the newly discovered love life of Moire Meg. She denied that there was anything to talk about, but patently wanted to talk about it.
“Joey Moran seems to be a nice young man,” Rosemarie began.
“You sound like April,” her daughter responded.
“Are we likely to see more of him?” I asked.
“Who knows?”
“Like on Christmas Eve?”
“Maybe. If he doesn’t have anything else to do.”
“What’s he studying at Marquette?”
“Prelaw, of all the dumb things.”
“Is he smart?” I asked.
“Smart enough.”
“Smart enough to keep up with you?”
“No boy is smart enough to keep up with me.”
“Is he that rare male who likes smart girls?” my wife asked.
“If he wasn’t, would I have invited him to Chucky’s show?”
“He certainly is cute.”
Loud sigh of protest.
“Well, at least he’s not tiresome like most boys?”
“Totally cool?”
She considered that.
“Well, cool anyway … Now I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
“Can I ask one last question?”
“All right, Chucky, so long as it is the LAST!”
“Is he a Democrat?”
“Would I be seen in public with a Republican?!”
She swept out of the room, paused at the door, and turned around.
“He laughs at me a lot, which IS totally cool,” she informed us, and departed under full sail.
Rosemarie waited till she was out of sight and sound and laughed.
I went down to the darkroom and tried again to pull some order out of myriad shots we’d taken at the conclaves. Recalling that experience made me angry once again at the leaders of the Church.
My fabled photographer’s eye failed me again. I attempted several times to sort out the good shots from the bad. Then I shoved them all together in a pile and gave up. What if I had lost my eye? What if I could never tell a good shot a fraction of a second before it took shape? The fraud would be over and I would be finished and I could retire to scholarly ease of writing obscure articles for even more obscure economics journals, lose myself, so to speak, in the dismal swamp of the dismal science.
So I retreated to my workshop and began to plow through back issues of dismal journals. Perhaps I could become a fraud at dismal prognostications and win a Nobel prize. That would not only be cool, but in the jargon of my middle daughter, totally cool.
I gave it up as a bad business. Perhaps tonight I could get a good night’s sleep. What I needed was a long rest, peace and quiet under an umbrella in the desert sun.
I peeked in the office. My good wife was poring over Vangie’s memoir, probably for the third or fourth time.
Upstairs Moire Meg was at the screen of her new Radio Shack computer, her shoulders set in the businesslike manner of someone who would brook no serious interruptions. Miles Davis was playing softly in the background.
I peeked in the nursery. “Shovie” was sleeping the sleep of the just, her favorite dolly clutched in a chubby arm.
All that was left for Charles C. O’Malley was a ride with the steeds of night. I said my prayers, such as they were, and promptly fell asleep.
Sometime later there was the noise of a person entering my room and discarding clothes. She slipped into the bathroom and closed the door to perform her nightly rituals in silence so as not to awaken me. Then she emerged again, turned off the light, and crawled into bed with me.
“Are you asleep, Chucky?”
“Yes,” I said.
She snuggled in beside me, smelling nice at the end of the day as she usually did.
“It’s a beautiful story, and terrible, and beautiful. Will they know I read it?”
“I don’t think they’d mind. Dad wrote it to be read.”
“I understand so much more about my mother, poor dear woman. She was already doomed even then, wasn’t she? I’m sure your parents tried to talk her out of the marriage.”
“Uhm …”
As she is wont to do, my wife went into the land of Nod almost immediately.
It was one of those delicate moments in a marriage in which one partner is ready for love but not insisting. Normally, I am only too willing to take advantage of the situation. This time I did not. I was too tired, I told myself.
Charles Cronin O’Malley, you’re a worse sad sack than I had hitherto realized. Not so long ago when you were young and healthy you would not have passed up the slightest opportunity to make love with that woman. Now she’s endured a traumatic experience and needs loving pleasure. You turned her down. You’re a jerk.
Why?
Because it would involve too much effort.
You’re slipping not only into early senility but early impotence. Who would have thought it! You’ve never failed to respond to the woman when she was fragile. You did it this time because you’re a mess. You don’t deserve her.
This sense of failure would lurk at the edges of my conscience for a long time.
Rosemarie
1978
Christmas was closing in on all sides. The O’Malleys have an elaborate Christmas schedule to facilitate the craziest time of their crazy year. Ted and Jane have the party on the Sunday before Christmas. Peg and Vince celebrate Christmas Eve for all the children and now grandchildren.
We do the time after midnight Mass (including the adult gift exchange) and Vangie and the good April do the big festival on the afternoon of Christmas Day. We also do New Year’s. Christmas morning and early afternoon are ad libitum for individual families.
The dramatis personae vary from venue to venue. However, the hard-core O’Malleys (of whom none are harder than Chucky and me) never miss a minute of the partying. The Lord has come among us again, so certo we must celebrate. Since the crowd is relatively abstemious (and I totally so), there is no heavy drinking. Good food, good music, good kissing, and good conversation are more than enough to make all of us light-headed.
There’s always some people missing. This year the Nettletons would travel to Boston for Christmas Day and Kevin and Maria Elena would spend Christmas Eve with her family in the Pilsen neighborhood. Chuck and I swore we’d never be possessive about our kids at holiday time, but in our heart of hearts we both missed them.
Seano told us that Esther would not be with us for our celebrations.
“She really doesn’t believe in Christmas,” he said. “I don’t quite understand why.”
“Christmas is a Christian feast, hon,” I tried to explain. “And she’s not Christian.”
“Jesus and Mary were Jewish.”
“You told her that?”
“She said I didn’t understand. Jesus was an apostate. I didn’t want to argue.”
“He talked to her about engagement,” Moire Meg reported. “She turned him down flat and really hurt his feelings. I don’t know what he expected. She’s made it clear enough that she is not ready to marry. She expects to go off to an Orthodox kibbutz in Israel this summer and is not sure when or if she will come back … I don’t think she’ll like it that much. Those places are pretty patriarchal and she’s an American woman who believes in her own rights.”
“Poor child.”
“I know.”
“And will we see Joey Moran?”
“Can’t tell,” she said with indifference. “I gave him the schedule and told him he could show up if and when he wanted.”
He’d show up all right.
This floating party with variable guest lists requires an enormous amount of work from the women members of the family, since the men don’t have a clue about preparing food for parties, decorating trees, mailing invitations, and sending out Christmas cards. Chucky pretends to do his part by printing a schedule of events.
Second Spring Page 28
