“Nice metaphor,” I said cheerfully.
“I’d like to break his neck,” Vince murmured through gritted teeth.
“Settle down, Vinny,” I suggested. “That conversation from a self-proclaimed feminist all by itself gets us a huge jury verdict.”
I glanced at my knuckles. They were white as I clenched my fists.
“Chuck the pragmatist.”
“I know good litigation technique when I hear it,” I continued. “Charley tricked him into admitting that La Bella Diana had never seen the show.”
Charley smiled, content with my acknowledgment of her skill.
Vince wet his lips, struggled with residue of old Sicily, and grinned.
“Give her a couple of years and she’ll be a better lawyer than I am.”
“What do you mean a couple of years?” Charley snapped back.
“You did most of my work for me,” he admitted. “We know it’s a fly-by-night operation and that we can bury them. Rosie and I have already created a dossier that refutes all of their allegations. We’re still waiting for the videotapes.”
“In light of these facts,” Ed Murray, his silver hair in perfect place as it always was, joined the discussion, “I have prepared a plea to file in Federal Court here. We can follow up with a subpoena of all their records. That might be a bucket of cold water that Mr. Carstairs needs. It’s up to you, Chuckie.”
“Ducks in a shooting gallery, Chuckie?” Rosemarie said.
“Tell me reasons why we shouldn’t.”
“They’re so unimportant that it might not be worth it to slap them down,” Vince began.
“It will be a nuisance,” Ed continued.
“They’re vile people,” Charley went on. “You can get contaminated by their vileness if you fight them.”
“What do we get out of it, except revenge,” my wife concluded. “Maybe it’s not worth it, Chucky.”
“What about the Photography Gallery?”
Rosemarie shifted uneasily in her chair.
“Well, someone down there read the review in the Blast over the holidays. They’re nervous. For some reason they want to avoid controversy as though controversy does not make any art show a success.”
“Well, that seems to be a good reason to go after these morons.”
“There might be a backlash, Chuck. ‘Rich Chicagoan Tries to Crush Paper of Young Activists.’”
“Who lied about him twelve times.”
“I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle.”
She was probably right. Her bloodlust had dried up during the joyous season.
“That cokehead can’t talk to my favorite first niece that way!”
“Uncle Chucky, I encounter that kind of guy every day in my business.”
All of this was true, all of it was good legal advice. Even my fearsome wife had calmed down.
“Suppose they agree to publish a letter from us and admit that there were lies in her article. Then we could withdraw the suit.”
“The problem is their providing a lawyer we can negotiate with.”
“And if they don’t withdraw the lies, we can still let the suit die on the vine?”
“Sure.”
“And if the suit gets any attention in New York, it will expose them as reckless liars without ever going to trial?”
“Yes.”
“Go get ’em, Ed!”
“I agree.”
“You bet, Uncle Chucky!”
So it was settled.
I had another Uncle Chucky scheme up my sleeve. It was a long shot. But there were no risks in trying. According to my scenario, at some point the New York Times newspaper might carry a big picture on the front page of their art section of my wife.
My scheme would probably require that someone proclaim a new doctrine of art criticism—you don’t have to go into the shithouse to smell the stink. It was a solid Catholic philosophy, you don’t have to see a film to know that it’s dirty. There was not much I could do to arrange such a happy outcome, except to see that my legal team draft the kind of letter that might occasion such an outcry.
Why would I want to draw such attention to the portrait of my wife?
I had begun to believe the good Christina Freeman’s claim that it was one of the most important portraits of a woman in the twentieth century.
Chuck rides again.
That sustained me until we arrived in Tucson. Then I searched out my sad sack and climbed into it.
Rosemarie
1979
The elder O’Malleys—Vangie and the good April—had purchased a sprawling winter home in the Catalina foothills above Tucson.
“It’s just too cold in Chicago during the winter for old folks like us,” the good April pointed out.
In fairness to them, I chose the house, which was at least twice as big as anything they would have bought for themselves.
“You must have room for your children and grandchildren when they come to visit you.”
“I suppose you’re right, dear.”
Vangie worked on his watercolors all year-round, but in Tucson he concentrated on them. A gallery owner saw a few of them at a private showing and offered to sell them. They quickly disappeared from the gallery walls, much to the delight of April and Vangie.
Chuck’s father had always wanted to be an artist. Somehow his work never quite made it, though his best painting Rom Women did hang in the prestigious Worcester Gallery in Massachusetts. His fame rested on his architecture, especially church architecture, for which he had won several important prizes. However, the watercolors of his senior years were immensely popular.
“I’m glad you found all those old albums,” he informed his son. “I’m going to do a whole series on flappers.”
“Vangie, dear, that will be embarrassing, won’t it?”
“If my son can celebrate his wife, why can’t I celebrate mine!”
“Sauce for the gander is sauce for the gander, Pa,” Chucky said.
Before we left for Tucson I called Max Berman.
“Max, I know you can’t discuss your patient with me …”
“So who’s a patient? Chucky? So we only chat at lunch once a week.”
“All I want to know is whether you think we should get him some medication.”
“So who are this ‘we’?”
“Me, I suppose.”
“So.”
“So,” I resolved to wait him out.
“Chuck doesn’t need pills, Rosie.”
“So.”
“You know that of course, but like a good wife you want to be sure.”
“So,” I agreed.
However, by the time we arrived in Pima County, he did need pills—cold pills. Another cold had knocked my poor little husband over. He sneezed, he coughed, he slept, he stretched out under an umbrella and slept some more. When he wasn’t sneezing, sleeping, or coughing he worked his way through Tony Hillerman’s wonderful novels. When he felt up to it, he helped me arrange the most telling pictures of my mother from the flapper era.
“I can’t tell the difference between the depression from my cold,” he complained to me, “and the depression from my midlife crisis.”
I bought him some model airplane kits. He actually made them and was very proud of his work.
The kids were with us, Moire Meg because Rosary had a long midyear vacation and Shovie because she wanted to come. The latter wore herself out every day in the pool and the former was content to read Graham Greene at poolside. Unlike most young people her age, she seemed to feel no compulsion to make phone calls back to her friends in Chicago. There was, however, a male voice on the phone every evening who identified himself to us as “Joey” and asked me dutifully about the weather and Mr. O’Malley’s cold.
Naturally all of us, including the baby, went to the opening of Vangie’s show. Crowds of people milled about the gallery, which was luminous with his bright, soft colors. It was like walking into a blossoming spring garden.
“
You’ve got it this time, Dad,” Chuck said in unfeigned admiration.
“It’s taken a long time,” his father replied. “Better late than never.”
“Sold” signs appeared on many of the paintings while we watched. The elder O’Malleys didn’t need the money, but they loved the popularity.
“Well, dear,” the good April said repeatedly, “I’ve told you for years that you should do watercolors.”
“Irish wife,” Chuck whispered to me.
“Hush.”
Then we saw off in one corner, three small frames with pictures of two flappers in swimsuits—undoubtedly April Mae and Clarice Marie long ago.
My eyes welled up with tears, as they often do.
“Oh, Chucky, it’s the two of them! Aren’t they beautiful!”
“Already sold.”
“Don’t worry, dear, your father is going to paint a lot of those two. They are kind of drippy, aren’t they?”
“Springtime,” he said.
“And that is the ultimate reality.”
“Totally excellent,” said Moire Meg, who had materialized behind us.
“Gram … ,” Shovie observed, pointing at the flapper with the brown hair.
Later that day, as the sun was sinking behind the Tucson mountains and painting the saguaro cacti rose and gold, I approached my spouse, who was napping on a chaise, his face at peace.
“Dreaming of me?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the chaise.
“Actually I was dreaming of one of my mistresses.”
“Fictional,” I said. “Why do all these homes have walls around the patios?”
“Old Mediterrean custom. This is not a patio, this is an atrium. The Latins like to protect their privacy. Even the older homes in the center of the city which don’t have pools are into this atrium idea, though they probably don’t know the word, much less the origins of the custom.”
“Oh.”
I touched his hand. He smiled contentedly. Mommy taking care of her baby because he was sick. He was wearing the chinos and beige sweater I had bought him, a nice ensemble for dinner at El Charro. On the table next to the chaise was a cheap and tattered windbreaker which said “Bonn”—almost eighteen years old.
“I suspect that we have them up here in the foothills,” he went on, “so that folks can skinny-dip in their spas and swimming pools.”
“People don’t do that, Chucky!”
“Sure they do. This is the new ‘let-it-all-hang-out’ America.”
“Only in California.”
“This is vest-pocket Beverly Hills,” he said, closing his eyes.
“Well … You can’t do it when your children or in-laws are around.”
He opened his eyes, then closed them again.
“Certainly not. No respectable Irish Catholics would think of such a thing.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said at the gallery.”
“Hmmn?”
“About the flapper pictures of my mother and your mother representing springtime. Then you said that springtime was the ultimate reality.”
“Did I say that?”
“You did.”
“Must have been the medication.”
“It was a very profound inspiration.”
He began to sing, “It Might As Well Be Spring.”
I joined in as the scenario required.
Then we did “Younger Than Springtime.”
“That’s what you think life means?” I asked, when we were finished.
His eyes remained closed.
“Eliminate some of the sentimentality, but only some of it, and you have what we believe. Life is stronger than death, right?”
“Some of us don’t live to the next springtime.”
“So they have to be content with the everlasting spring.” He opened his eyes and examined my face very carefully.
He didn’t close his eyes.
“You really believe that my mother is like that flapper in Vangie’s watercolor?”
“Last time I looked at it we were still registered members of St. Ursula Roman Catholic parish. We gotta believe that.”
“So I’m wrong to mourn for her?”
He sat up, with a touch of a sigh, and extended his arm around me.
“No. You mourn for the pain she suffered, for the loss you suffered, for the waste of life and talent, for terrible agonies of your youth. You still know that Clarice Marie Powers is younger than springtime.”
“Then all of this agonizing is silly?”
“The only silly thing you’ve ever done, Rosemarie, is marry me.”
He kissed my neck, a signal of reassurance, not desire.
“You’re trying to rediscover her and part of your own life. I’m sure that in her springtime, where it doesn’t get cold when the sun goes down like out here, she’s happy that the two of you have rediscovered one another.”
I started to weep. I’m sorry, I do that all the time.
He caressed the back of my neck.
“You’d better rush into the house and write this conversation down.”
“Why?”
“For the next story!”
I pushed him back down on the chaise.
“Charles Cronin O’Malley, you’re simply outrageous!”
He closed his eyes contentedly.
“I’d rather think of myself as outrageous in a complex and fascinating way.”
“Anyway, I’ll never forget what you said.”
I leaned over and rested my lips on his.
“The fog is dissipating, Chucky. Thank you.”
“I’m like one of those machines they used to have at the airports to break up fog. I like that metaphor.”
“Now go in the house and find yourself a better windbreaker, one that matches your sweater. And put on your shoes. The sidewalks get cold here at night.”
“Such as they are.”
The phone rang at eight the next morning. I grabbed it.
“O’Malleys’.”
“Hi, Rosie, I hope I didn’t wake you up. It’s ten o’clock out there, isn’t it?”
“No, Vince, it’s eight o‘clock here and nine o’clock in Chicago and ten o’clock in New York. The farther west you go the earlier it is.”
“That’s what Charlotte said, but I told her she was wrong. I guess I’ll have to apologize.”
“Indeed!”
“I hope I didn’t wake anyone up.”
“Besides me, only Chucky, who is pretending he is still asleep … Pick up the other phone, Chucky. It’s Vince.”
He buried his head in a pillow.
“I’m a sick man. I need my sleep.”
“It’s Vince.”
“Vince who?”
He picked up the phone and put it inside the pillow.
“Vince who?” he repeated.
“Sorry to wake you so early, Chuck.”
“When you and Peg are out here, I will call you every morning.”
“I had a conversation with a nice lawyer in New York, a refined gentlemen. Very Talmudic. Turns out we know a lot of the same people in Democratic politics.”
“I’m impressed.”
“We chatted for a long time about a lot of things, especially the Mayor.”
“That’s the way Irish politicians do it, even when they’re Jewish and Italian.”
“His whole point was that we should try to settle this matter before it gets worse.”
“I can hear the restrained agony in his voice.”
“Exactly.”
“On our terms!”
“He accepted that. Incidentally, I played the tape of his client’s conversation with Charlotte. He was appalled.”
“Doubtless … What’s going to happen?”
“We draft a letter saying that Ms. Robbins has defamed you at least twelve times and that we have furnished evidence of this in our petition before the United States Court for the Northern District of Illinois. We ask that they acknowledge that her assertions are false an
d in reckless disregard of the truth. Then we say that we have no quarrel with the rights of Ms. Robbins and the Blast to their critical opinions but we are dismayed that she felt free to make them apparently without visiting the exhibition at the Art Institute. We ask them to acknowledge this also unless they are able to provide proof that she indeed visited Chicago at that time—”
“Do we have the right to demand that?” I interrupted.
“We have the right to demand it as an alternative to proceeding with depositions, which our friend does not want to happen, because he knows, though he doesn’t say so, that his clients are coke-heads.”
“Then what?” Chucky rolled over and looked at me like I was a complete stranger who had invaded his bed. Then he smiled and touched my face.
“They agree to publish the text of a letter which we have already approved, admitting the defamation and apologizing for it. Then, absent persuasive proof, they also admit that they cannot establish that she ever visited the exhibition.”
Chucky looked at me. I nodded.
“When you get those drafts in final shape, you’ll send them out here Federal Express.”
“We sure will … You can trust us, Chuck. We won’t let them get away with any tricks. If they do, we’ll go after them in court. Our friend knows that.”
“Good work,” I admitted.
“Bad time, good work. Give our best to Peg and Charley.”
“I’ll listen to her the next time.”
“Well?” I asked my husband.
“I’m a sick man. I need my sleep.”
“You need your breakfast. Feed a cold, starve a fever.”
“Old wives’ tales, with all due respect.”
Chuck
1979
My scheme to sneak my Rosemarie masterpiece onto the front of the Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times was proceeding apace.
In a dream the night before Vince’s ill-timed call, someone—I’m not quite sure who—came to me and informed me that the woman was my masterpiece and that the shot merely captured that.
I don’t believe in people that come in dreams, especially when I am perishing with a cold and my bloodstream is filled with strange chemicals. I dismissed the message as patently false. I hadn’t done much besides be a good husband for her, especially when, however belatedly, I had lowered the boom on her drinking. Polished the jewel up a little bit maybe but nothing more than that.
Second Spring Page 31
