“Please yourself.” Sister stalked out of the room.
“You never liked nuns,” I reminded her.
“I cannot stand people, especially women, who think that their own generosity gives them the right to preach to others like they’re a special agent of the Holy Spirit. It is time to get you out of this place.”
“Now!”
“Tomorrow. I don’t want that woman in here again.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll talk to the administration about it. They know they have a problem with her. She was too much for the people she was working with in South America.”
Looking back on it, Rosemarie was probably right … as always. In my enfeebled condition I did not need a zealot whispering in my ear.
“You’re looking better every day, Chucky Ducky,” she said.
“Time to get you out of here. We have already run up a huge hospital bill for you.”
“We’re insured, aren’t we?”
“Sure … You shouldn’t worry so much.”
She brushed her lips against mine. I felt the first stirrings of desire. I’d been afraid it might not come back.
“How long have I been here?”
“Two weeks, half in intensive care.”
“It must have been tough on all of you.”
“It was a lot more difficult for you.”
She kissed me again.
“You were delirious most of the time. You were babbling away most of the time …”
“Not untypical behavior.”
She laughed and kissed me a third time.
“You were arguing a lot.”
“Ghosts and demons.”
“And you were talking very respectfully to someone, a woman I thought.”
“Probably you … How’s the show in New York working out?”
“A huge success. The Faction managed ten people for their demonstration. The critics are comparing you to the Chicago Symphony.”
“Huh?”
“Unsuspected art treasures of Chicago.”
I reached up and touched her breast. Despite the covering of silk and bra it felt awesome.
“Still fixated on my boobs.” She laughed.
“Always.”
My hand slipped away, too exhausted to try anything more.
“A lot of loving to catch up on, Chucky Ducky.”
“I won’t be doing anything else all spring and summer … except work on the Conclaves book.”
“I’ll count on that.”
We were both quiet for a moment, perhaps being thankful for another opportunity in our lives.
“Rosemarie, there weren’t any flowers in intensive care, were there?”
“No, they’re afraid of the germs on them … Though the germs in you might have killed the flowers.”
“When I came out of the fever and woke up, I thought I smelled some.”
“Funny,” she said, “I thought so too. Probably something out in the corridor.”
“Probably.”
Like I said, it was a nice effect.
I had not told Rosemarie about the Lady. My visitor had not warned me that it was secret. I thought, however, my story might spook Rosemarie. Better that I kept it a secret for a while. Maybe a long while. I wasn’t certain myself what the story meant or even that the Lady had been anything more than a product of my fevered imagination.
It was indeed time to go home, time to get on with life and love.
Chuck
1979
I determined on the Memorial Day weekend that I would dedicate the rest of my life to taking pictures of immigrants. I would become a martyr for the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
“I think my next project will be refugees,” I told Rosemarie on the deck on Saturday morning.
We were sitting outside in warm jackets and sweatpants pretending that the clear blue sky really meant summer despite the wind and the cold. We had put aside the final draft of Conclaves, which we would send off to the publisher on Tuesday. Both of us were reading mysteries.
“Great idea,” Rosemarie replied. “Should be an important project.”
“It’s time I do something socially useful for the poor and the oppressed.”
“Huh?” She put down the book she was reading and stared at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I haven’t really showed much social concern in my work till now.”
“Charles Cronin O’Malley, you’re out of your mind! Little Rock! Selma! Marquette Park! Vietnam! The convention! Catholic schools in the inner city! No photographer in the country has shown more social concern!”
“Yeah, but it’s time to move on to something else.”
“I don’t disagree. But don’t do it as a rejection of all your previous work.”
I thought about it. She was right.
“It’ll be hard,” I went on. “I’ll be away from home for a year and a half, maybe two years. It’ll be tough for Shovie, not having her father around. You’ll be able to cover for me.”
“It’s that damn nun that was trying to brainwash you in the hospital! Max Berman warned us that you shouldn’t make any decisions till the end of the summer. Poor little Shovie will not put up with an absent father, neither will poor little Shovie’s mother, and that’s final!”
“But I have to do this project—”
“No you don’t. I won’t permit it.”
Clancy had lowered the boom.
“But—”
“See that up there, Chucky, that white streak against the sky?”
“Yes. It’s contrails from a jet.”
“Right. And where is the jet from?”
“O’Hare probably.”
“So we go off for a shoot one week every month or every two months and come back here to work on the prints and put our notes in order. Sometimes I come with you. Sometimes, when it’s safe, like filming Cubans in Miami, Siobhan Marie comes with us. Simple. None of this stuff about leaving your family for two years, understand?”
Clancy had lowered the boom for a second time. Oh, that Clancy!
“Besides, if I weren’t along for the ride, you’d get lost the first week.”
What had the Lady said?
Listen to Rosemarie, my guiding star.
“Damn fanatic nun,” she said, still not ready to simmer down. “Should mind her own business.”
I began to sing “Clancy Lowered the Boom!”
We sang it together and danced on the deck, much to the surprise of Kevin and Maria Elena, who were the first to join us.
I felt an enormous burden lift from my soul and drift off over the Lake.
EPILOGUE
Chuck
1979-1980
In the late summer as I relaxed in my newfound freedom, I received a call from Vince as I was sitting on the deck at Grand Beach.
“Chuck? Vince.”
“I played football with you once, as I remember.”
“I need a favor.”
“I think the proper response is name it and you got it.”
“It’s about the people who work for Cardinal O’Neill.”
“Yeah?”
“You ever hear of a guy named Hanraty?”
“Nope.”
“Would you call your brother and see what the word is on him?”
“Sure.”
Pause as Vince made up his mind.
“There’s this first assistant United States Attorney that gives me a ring.”
“Yeah.”
“He says this Hanraty walks in off the street, says he works for O’Neill, and tells my friend over there that his conscience is bothering him about all the money that’s misused.”
“Hmm …”
“My guy says it looks like something really big.”
“They’d go after him?”
“Sure … Anyway, he wonders if you can find out from Ed if they should trust this guy.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I found Edwa
rd at his Youth Ministry office.
“Ed, a friend of mine wonders if you have a take on a guy named Hanraty who works for your good friend O’Neill.”
Ed didn’t hesitate.
“Good guy. Absolutely honest. Dedicated. Hardworking. I don’t how he’s survived so long over there.”
“Thank you.”
“Absolutely straight arrow,” I told Vince.
“Yeah … I’m not sure my guy will like that … It’ll be a big thing.”
I thought about it for an hour or so. Vince had not bound me to secrecy. So I called my old friend the Apostolic Delegate.
“Ah, Mr. O’Malley! I heard you were very sick but are recovering nicely.”
“I’m doing fine … I think I ought to tell you that the government may well be starting an investigation of our mutual friend.”
“Mutual friend? … Oh, yes, of course.”
“Money. Big. They have a good witness.”
“Oh, that must be stopped.”
“Too late now.”
“That is most disturbing!”
“The Pope should have dealt with it when he was here earlier in the year.”
“He did not think it appropriate.”
“Well, he’ll have a big mess on his hands now.”
“I understand.”
“I thought I would warn you.”
“Yes, of course. Merci.”
He phoned me the next day.
“The Pope will see our mutual friend tomorrow. You must pray that all will go well.”
“Let me know what happens.”
“But of course.”
The next day he called.
“I have bad news,” he said sadly. “The Cardinal shouted at the Pope. He refused to resign. He said he would fight publicly. The Pope thought it prudent to defer.”
“He’s going to have a big scandal on his hands. The press are on to the story.”
“He prays that scandal can be avoided.”
This was our tough Polish Pope who tolerated no nonsense, save from cardinals it would seem.
The scandal did break. The Cardinal sent one of his lawyers to Washington with a couple of hundred thousand dollars to bribe whoever he could bribe at the Justice Department. I don’t know what happened to the money. The paper that had the story backed off because of pressure from conservative Catholics on its staff. The presiding judge refused to convene the grand jury which was considering the case, stalling till the Cardinal died. Everyone in Chicago knew about the story and the final attempts at cover-up. Packy says it will take twenty years for the Archdiocese to recover.
The Delegate was the only one who held the job never to be made a cardinal. He was blamed doubtless for the O’Neill mess. Strange bunch over there. I would not play their game again.
The Arabs turned off the gas spigot again and the cost of living index went sky-high. In November of 1979 a bunch of Iranian students seized the American Embassy in Tehran and held it and the Americans there hostage for 441 days. That fraud Walter Cronkite counted off the days each night, thus destroying completely the Jimmy Carter presidency and preparing the way for Ronald Reagan, whom I subsequently referred to on every possible occasion as “the Iranian candidate.”
Poor Jimmy Carter would have gone down anyway without Cronkite. I was glad I wasn’t working for him. I didn’t know what advice I might have given. Probably I would have told him to continue the policy of trying to free the hostages by negotiation. The alternative—bomb the hell out of Iran—would probably lead to their deaths.
Better to sacrifice a badly scarred presidency than lose lives.
We baptized two new grandchildren. The first to make his appearance was Juan Carlos O’Malley, named for his maternal grandfather and his paternal great-grandfather and also, I guess, for his grandfather. He would be known, I was told, as Juan Carlos. The mix of the two heritages made him sound like an Admiral in the Argentine Navy. Unlike his red-haired sister, Maria Rosa, he was a sleek Latin type. The sister viewed him with considerable suspicion.
Next up was April Anne Nettleton, named after her mother and her grandmother (Polly Nettleton’s real name being Mary Anne) and of course her great-grandmother O’Malley. She too missed the red-haired genes but looked so much like my Rosemarie that I was close to tears. We dug out the album of pictures of the original Rosemarie and realized that we had another clone.
There was considerable rejoicing at both baptisms that Grandpa Chuck looked so well again.
Sean graduated with his MBA at the end of the summer and went to work at the Board of Trade. He had not heard from Esther since she left for Israel. However, she continued to correspond with Moire Meg.
That latter turned twenty in August. Joe Moran continued to hang around. “He’s always one step short of being a nuisance,” Moire Meg explained to us.
Siobhan Marie became three in July. She thought she was in charge of everything.
Rosemarie and I flew over to Dublin to consult with some Irish missionaries about the places in Africa to find refugees. We brought along Shovie, who proved herself a durable traveler, though we tried to restrain her from walking around the Aer Lingus plane and introducing herself to all her fellow flyers.
I had pretty much forgotten about the woman at the end of the hospital bed. She was a product of fever and drugs though she was absolutely correct in her advice. I had always known in my subconscious the way out of my identity crisis—I was Rosemarie’s husband and that was that.
I had escaped colds since my encounter with the Lady, but what did that mean? Maybe I’d absorbed all the virus that was “going around” as the doctors say.
We were ambling down Dawson Street. My wife stopped at the window of an art store.
“Isn’t that a stunning picture, Chucky?” She pointed at a painting in the window.
For a brief moment, I felt dizzy. I had bungled into the world of the uncanny.
“Chucky?”
“It is wonderful … Let’s go in and look at it.”
It was the woman at the end of my hospital bed. How could she be here in Dublin? What kind of trick was this?
“Pretty lady,” Shovie informed the owner of the store.
“It’s Our Lady, dear,” the woman said. “Mary.”
“Jesus’ mommy,” Shovie agreed, proud of her religious knowledge.
Everyone has a mommy. Jesus is someone. So of course he has a mommy. Council of Ephesus said so.
“It’s very striking,” Rosemarie said.
“It’s called Madonna by the Hospital Bed.”
What else?
A chill ran through my body. Then it came back for a second time. I must not go catatonic. Chuck O’Malley never did that.
“Fascinating,” Rosemarie said.
“The poor dear artist had a very difficult surgery. While she was in great pain and under severe medication, this woman came to visit her. I don’t know whether she imagined her or …”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said softly.
So we bought the painting and it hangs in my workroom.
Right next to the portrait of Rosemarie.
Where it belongs.
DESCENDANTS OF JOHN E. O’MALLEY
BY ANDREW M. GREELEY
from Tom Doherty Associates
The O’Malleys in the Twentieth Century
A Midwinter’s Tale
Younger than Springtime
A Christmas Wedding
September Song
Second Spring
Bishop Blackie Ryan Mysteries
The Bishop and the Missing L Train
The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain
The Bishop in the West Wing
Nuala Anne McGrail Novels
Irish Gold
Irish Lace
Irish Whiskey
Irish Mist
Irish Eyes
Irish Love
Irish Stew!
Irish Cream*
All About Women
&n
bsp; Angel Fire
Angel Light
Contract with an Angel
Faithful Attraction
The Final Planet
Furthermore!: Memories of a Parish Priest
God Game
Star Bright!
Summer at the Lake
White Smoke
Sacred Visions (editor with Michael Cassutt)
The Book of Love (editor with Mary Durkin)
*forthcoming
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The art theories behind Chuck’s portrait of Rosemarie are based on Wendy Steiner’s book Venus in Exile.
The image of the Madonna by the hospital bed is based on a painting by Darina Roche.
The story of the year of the three Popes is based on my book The Making of the Popes 1978. However, the involvement of Chuck and Rosemarie is fictional. Their opinion of the process by which the Church selects its leaders is one I first expressed at that time.
There is no such place as the Photography Gallery in New York.
Siobhan is pronounced Shuvhan—hence “Shovie.”
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
SECOND SPRING: A LOVE STORY
Copyright © 2003 by Andrew M. Greeley Enterprises, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429912358
First eBook Edition : May 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greeley, Andrew M.
Second spring : a love story / Andrew M. Greeley.—1st Forge ed.
p. cm.
1. O’Malley, Chucky (Fictitious i. 2. Irish American families—Fiction. 3. Irish Americans—Fiction. 4. Middle-aged men—Fiction. I. Title.
Second Spring Page 35
