Irish Tiger

by Andrew M. Greeley

  I agonized for three weeks, sleeping poorly and not listening as carefully as I should to my staff. They knew something was wrong, but they would never have guessed. ELG stock, in the meantime continued to climb, not wildly but steadily. Good investment. Better than I thought it would be.

  Finally, on impulse, I phoned her.

  “Maria Connors,” she said crisply.

  “Jack Donlan.”

  “I knew someone by that name once.”

  “I wonder if we could have supper at Ambria this evening. Pick you up at seven o’clock?”

  She should have bawled me out for the delay.

  Instead she said, “Good, I’ve been waiting for an occasion to wear my brand-new black lingerie!”

  Maria Angelica

  I DID not mention the subject at hand when I climbed into his Lexus. I was scared again, not that he would say that he didn’t want me, but that he would say that he did. I was fully prepared to rebuff him if all he did was hit on me. That was unlike my Jackie, however. He would rather affirm his eternal love for me and then lead me off to his apartment. Unless I said, no, not yet.

  I wouldn’t do that to him. I loved him too much. If he told me that he loved me, that would be for the moment as good as a marriage vow. He’d been without a woman too long. The only sensible thing would be to give myself to him completely. I had never done that before. What would it be like? Scary—like clinging to the mast of Mary Fran.

  And fun too—of a terrifying variety.

  “I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

  “You had less than twenty-four hours before I took out my personal phone book and drew a big black line through your name.”

  “Really?”

  “No, a red line!”

  “I’m glad you’re not angry. . . .”

  “Who said not angry, ‘white man’?. . . Do you realize you could have lost the best crew you’d ever get for that silly old boat of yours? A woman has her honor to consider, after all.”

  We kept up the banter until we left the outer drive. Then at the stop light at Lincoln Park West, he crushed me in his arms. Preview of coming attractions. Yet very gentle and very sweet.

  “You plan on raping the poor chaste matron, even before she drinks half a bottle of Barolo?”

  When we were shown to our table, I noted that an uncorked bottle of Barolo was already waiting for us. Nice touch.

  After we ordered, Jack Donlan began what would be for him a painful conversation. I resolved that I would not make it more difficult for him by any smart-ass remarks.

  “I must begin by apologizing for taking so long. I made up my mind this morning that I was acting like an idiot. . . . How long did you ruminate?”

  Mistaken word!

  “I bought some Wrigley’s gum so I could chew on a cud and decided the next morning that I love you very much and can accept the possibility of sleeping in the same bed with you for the rest of my life. . . . You don’t snore, do you?”

  “I don’t believe so. . . . You would be perfectly right if you just got rid of me. . . .”

  “Perfectly wrong.”

  He reached into an inside pocket of his brown Armani and produced a small box. Pure corn! And I was from the prairies. . . .

  “Whatcha got there?”

  It was the biggest diamond in all the world. . . well not quite, but certainly satisfactory.

  “The standard response,” I said, “is that you shouldn’t have spent so much money and I hope you didn’t have to sell the Mary Fran to pay for it. . . . But it is beautiful. . . . Too beautiful for the likes of me, but I’ll wear it anyhow.”

  Then, without any planning, I began to cry. How like a woman!

  “Don’t cry, Maria!”

  “Tears of joy,” I sniffled.

  “I’ll love you always,” he said, again displaying little creativity.

  “You’d better!” I replied and then broke down completely as he put the ring on my finger. It was indeed huge.

  I’d better say something memorable.

  “I guess we’re engaged, huh?”

  Maria Angelica being memorable.

  “That’s a fair assessment of the situation.”

  “I’ll try to stop making my idiot remarks.”

  “If you do that, I’ll take the ring back. I fell in love with you in the office that day because you were beautiful and you had a wonderful gift for wit.”

  “Oh,” I said very quietly. “I hope it doesn’t dry up.”

  “Not a chance.”

  I was floating toward the sky. We were a pair of happy kids.

  “Second childhood,” I said, “is better than first.”

  “Experience helps us enjoy it more.”

  Under the table his knee touched mine. I quickly pulled back.

  “Sir, are you hitting on me?”

  “Yes, ma’am, but it’s all right because we’re engaged.”

  “That’s true. . . . Incidentally I reject out of hand the vulgar phrase get engaged, as in ‘Jack and I got engaged last night.’ ”

  “I think I can remember that.”

  I moved my knee back in contact with his. He rested his hand on my thigh. That was very nice.

  “I want to say something serious, affianced one.”

  “I await your words, madam.”

  “I have learned through the years that if a woman is going to give herself to a man, she should be a total gift. So at this minute, halfway through the roast beef and more than half through the Barolo on this our engagement day with our knees touching and your hand pleasantly on my thigh, I give myself to you totally and completely, John Patrick Donlan. Henceforth I am yours and you can do with me whatever you want.”

  He gulped and his hand tightened on my thigh. Grandma in delirium.

  “I will always treat you with respect and reverence, Maria Angelica Sabattini Connors.”

  “Naturally,” I said dismissively. “Incidentally that is, though now officially permitted, a strong grip you have on my thigh.”

  He moved his hand up and down, as though he owned me and everything about me. I wanted to shout with pleasure.

  “Strong thigh,” he observed.

  “All the better to squeeze you with, my dear.”

  We went back to my apartment and he carried me triumphantly inside.

  “I have the feeling that the captive matron will be violated in this cave.”

  “Count on it,” he said, absorbing me in a total kiss.

  So we began the dance of consummation. I had expected that it would be a clumsy and awkward waltz as we began to discover one another. It was not that way at all, however.

  It was an exquisite pleasure as he slowly undressed and aroused me.

  “What’s your fantasy now?” I demanded through lips tightly pressed together.

  “I’ve violated the modesty of a chaste suburban matron. . . . But as I progress I see how regal and graceful she appears as I strip her, I perceive that she is perhaps a grand duchess or maybe even an empress.”

  “I want to be a high priestess.”

  “Virgin high priestess?”

  “Yes but very horny. . .” I gasped.

  “Who am I? A pagan high priest?”

  “A desert warrior,” I whispered, “who has kidnapped me from the temple and has made me his slave.”

  We were both laughing in this exchange, but the laughter was no more than erotic background music.

  We melted together and soared, floating above the ordinary world of problems and fears into a state of body-wrenching pleasure where multicolored surprises waited with promises of wonders unimagined. I was ecstatic with victory. He was mine forever. Then we slipped back into the world we had left behind, but it was now a place of peace and tranquility where a good night’s sleep was possible. I wanted to proclaim my victory but was too weary with joy to speak

  “Jackie Pat,” I murmured, “you’re pretty good at this kind of thing, just like sailing the boat. . . . You’re a keeper. Don’t
ever think of trying to get away.”

  “I wasn’t,” he was able to murmur.

  “’Cause I’ll never let you go.”

  That seemed to settle that.

  “And you should watch some old Valentino films to see how desert warriors treat their slave women, not that you were all that bad at the game.”

  John Patrick

  IN THE days and weeks to come, I had expected the ordinary stresses and strains of intimacy to rear their mean little heads as we rushed from our work to our beds, either at her apartment or mine. Yet while we bantered constantly, we did not squabble. It helped that we were both fastidious neatniks. Moreover my wife, as I had come to define her in my own mind, seemed possessed by the conviction that it was a wife’s responsibility to keep her husband happy. I suggested once, very gently, that there was no such obligation in our relationship.

  “I always spoil my boy kids rotten,” she replied.

  I wondered if I would ever grow weary of her brash “last words.”

  Probably not.

  She enjoyed sex and seemed ready at any time I was ready and even if I were not.

  However busy we were during the day, at night we lived in an indolent and luxuriant paradise. Then we visited Ambria for a second time and the news of our romance made it into the media.

  “Looks like we’d better get married,” I said to Maria.

  “I suppose I gotta make an honest man out of you.”

  Then my eldest daughter, Evie, phoned me on my private line in the office, her voice tight with rage.

  “Dad, what the hell are you doing to our reputation?”

  “Whose reputation, Evie?”

  “Our family’s reputation. Why are you letting yourself be seen in public with that whore?”

  “That’s a harsh word, Evie.”

  “It’s the only word to describe her. Don’t you know her reputation?”

  “I’ve looked into her reputation. There’s nothing in it of which she or I should be troubled.”

  “Then, Daddy dear, you’re an asshole.”

  I was in a nightmare. None of my daughters had ever spoken to me with such disrespect.

  “My investigation was carried out by a highly respectable agency.”

  “Then they’re full of bullshit. . . . Look, I’ve talked to the girls and they agree that if you want to have a fling with her, screw her every night, and carry on with her in public, then go ahead and do it. But if you marry her, which is what she wants, we will never accept her and you will no longer be part of our family. I will not permit that woman to be near my children.”

  I hung up.

  A few minutes later, the phone rang again.

  Irene, my second daughter, did not waste any time on preliminaries.

  “Why the fuck did you hang up on Evie?”

  “I don’t like your language, Rene.”

  “We don’t like your behavior, Dad. How dare you humiliate us by appearing in public with that hooker?”

  Different words, same party line.

  “She’s not a hooker.”

  “You’re full of shit. If you dare to marry her, we’ll disown you.”

  “That will be your problem.”

  I hung up on her too.

  I waited a few minutes for Mary Fran to call. Evie had a powerful influence on her sisters. She was the oldest, the most articulate, the most determined. She bitterly opposed Mary Fran’s decision to be a psychiatrist. Mary Fran did not argue, but she ignored her sister, which created a permanent state of war between the two sisters.

  I concluded that Evie had seen the piece in the Chicago Herald and jumped to a conclusion. This would mean a long and bitter conflict because, once Evie made up her mind, she was not likely to change it.

  A dam burst inside me and sadness swept through me. It was all too good to be true.

  It got worse that night. We went over to St. Freddy’s to make arrangements with the new pastor for a wedding the week after Thanksgiving. The housekeeper informed us that Father Hennessy would not see anyone who had not made a previous appointment. I informed her briskly that I had lived in the parish since my baptism and had made major contributions to it and that I demanded to see the pastor. I wondered if my daughters had put in the fix against us.

  She shrugged and left us standing in the hallway. I led my fiancée into an office. A half hour later, Father Hennessy, a large young man wearing a cassock and a biretta, stormed into the office. We stood up.

  “You rich people are all alike,” he said. “You assume that the priest must be at your beck and call. To talk to your parish priest is a privilege, not a right.”

  “We want to arrange for a wedding.”

  “So I am told. . . . When will this wedding take place?”

  “In the week after Thanksgiving.”

  “Typical . . . I must inform you that it is impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the guidelines require six months’ preparation for marriage, including a Pre-Cana conference.”

  “Father, Ms. Connors and I have both been married before and we are in our early fifties. I assure you that we do not need a Pre-Cana conference.”

  “Nonetheless you attend one if you wish to be married here. . . . Are you living together?”

  “I fail to see that’s your business, Father.”

  “It is my business because I have made it a rule that no couple who are living in sin may be married here.”

  “We are not living in sin, Father,” Maria said calmly. “Are you living in sin, Father? We will not be married by a priest who has a partner.”

  “Do you live in this parish, young woman?”

  “I live in Oakdale, Father, and I am old enough to be your mother, who clearly did not teach you good manners.”

  “Then you must marry in Oakdale. That settles the matter. I ask you to leave the rectory.”

  “Father Matt from our parish has agreed to perform the wedding ceremony.”

  “Father Matt will in fact not preside over the ceremony. I do all the weddings in my parish. I bid you good evening.”

  He stomped out of the office.

  A chill wind blew across the Lake.

  “Did the Vatican Council ever happen?” I asked.

  “Only the first one . . . What do we do now?”

  “I call my friend Cardinal Sean Cronin tomorrow. He will straighten that fat slob out.”

  “The shortage of priests must be serious if men like that are appointed pastors.”

  The cardinal congratulated me on my forthcoming marriage. “I met the woman at some kind of civic event. She is clearly a very special person. I’m happy, Jack, that she has found a special spouse. Now tell me what that idiot at St. Fred’s said to you.”

  I described our visit to the rectory in careful detail.

  “That young man will end up shortly as a hospital chaplain if he doesn’t grow up. . . . Let me call you back.”

  “There are no Masses scheduled for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. . . . Can you imagine how many couples he’s driven over to Old Saint Pat’s? You deliver the documents to Father Lulu, a wonderful young Filipino who will shortly be the next pastor—baptism, confirmation, death. He will fill out the forms. Father Matt is authorized to preside over the wedding ceremony. If you have any more problems let me know.”

  And that was that. Cardinal Cronin was one of the more liberal American bishops, but he is not afraid to use power to protect the layfolk from crazy priests.

  Okay, we’d be married (get married was banned just as get engaged was) at St. Freddy’s and Father Matt would be the officiant. But we’d have to fight our way through my family. That would be very unpleasant. My daughters were choosing to assume the role of my in-laws. I permitted the family’s influence in my first marriage. I permitted them to kill her. I would not tolerate similar behavior from my daughters. They thought they could disown me. I would disown them first.

  I called Maria on her personal line.

/>   “Sabattini,” she said with a thick Italian accent.

  “Johnny Pat.”

  “I’ve slept with a lot of men who call themselves that.”

  “I had a phone conversation with your very good friend Sean Cronin.”

  “Darling man.”

  “The St. Freddy’s problem is solved. Father Matt has the cardinal’s permission to preside. . . .”

  “I’ll vote for him in the next conclave.”

  “Let’s have lunch at the Chicago Club and I’ll tell you the details.”

  “I can’t go there.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve never been there before. I won’t know how to act.”

  “Noon, Maria Angelica.”

  “They’ll all stare at me.”

  “They are too old to be the staring kind.”

  I then hung up, having the last word. That was the only way I’d ever have the last word.

  They did stare, however.

  “The cardinal did not say those things about me.”

  “He did so.”

  “He never said that I was beautiful.”

  “He did so. . . . But now I have something serious to talk about.”

  “We’re in love, Jackie Pat, and we’re going to make love tonight and we’re going to be officially united by the Catholic Church. What could be serious?”

  “My daughters.”

  She put down her salad fork.

  “I was afraid they might not like me. Kids don’t like stepmothers.”

  “That would be an understatement.”

  I recited my conversations of the morning.

  “They don’t know me.”

  “They think they do.”

  “Can I win them over?”

  “Evie is the problem. I don’t think she has changed her mind from a snap judgment in all her life.”

  She swallowed nervously.

  “They threaten to disown you if you marry me?”

  “Literally.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Of course it’s not . . . I’ve told you how their aunts and their grandmother and their great-grandmother define reality so it fits their suppositions. Apparently my daughters inherited that propensity.”