September Song

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Don’t anyone worry about me,” he added. “I’m going to stay in school till the war is over.”

  Somehow I felt secure about Jimmy, safe in a monastery.

  Our house was almost empty, only two kids left, Seano would leave the following year, perhaps for St. John’s too, and ten-year-old Moire—or Moire Peg as she now wanted to be called—who was turning into a young beauty.

  Her baptismal name was Mary Margaret, after her aunt who was Margaret Mary. Moire is Irish for Mary and is properly pronounced (not by us) as Mary. Soon she decided that she wanted alliteration (she didn’t call it that) so she became Moire Meg.

  “Poor little Moire,” the good April observed, “is developing into quite the darling little character, isn’t she?”

  “Little character anyway,” I agreed, fearful that the last of our children had to be a character to gain any attention at all in our family. Had I failed her too?

  “Kids all gone,” Missus said sadly. “No need Missus anymore?”

  “We’ll always need you, Missus,” I said firmly, guilty that I had perhaps neglected this wonderful woman.

  “Not enough work. No mess.”

  “You come three days a week now and we’ll pay you for five anyway.”

  “Not fair.”

  “Is fair.”

  “Hokay. Is fair.”

  A Weathermen bomb factory blew up in New York. Those who live by the bomb will die by the bomb. I was convinced that April Rosemary was one of the unidentified female bodies found in the ruins of the brownstone house. I insisted that Chuck send her dental records to the New York police.

  “I don’t think she was there, Rosemarie.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you think! Send the dental records!”

  “Making bombs isn’t her style.”

  “Renouncing her family isn’t her style either … Send the goddamn records.”

  So he did. The New York police thanked us when they returned the records. Our daughter was not one of the victims of the blast.

  The next sighting was in Boston. Back in Harvard country again? A couple of guys from Harvard who had known and apparently admired her reported that they’d seen her in an Irish housing project in South Boston.

  “I didn’t know there were Irish projects,” I said to my husband.

  “Neither did I … What were the Harvard kids doing there?”

  “Working in some kind of settlement house. They were sure they saw her coming out of a bar. They tried to find her later but couldn’t track her down. They say they’re still looking. One of the kids told me they admired her gumption and honesty in class.”

  “Sounds like our daughter,” I admitted.

  Another one of our goddamn idealists.

  The kids promised they would keep looking. Our detectives said they could not “verify” the report.

  It was suddenly 1971. I was forty years old. Life had happened so quickly. You marry, you have kids, you struggle through their early years, you worry about them as teens, you watch their first tentative steps toward love, you celebrate their graduations and then, just as they seem to become semiadults with whom you can talk as a fellow semiadult, they disappear. You grow old so quickly.

  I absolutely forbade a party. I didn’t want to celebrate getting old and I didn’t want to celebrate when two of my children could not come to the party.

  That was mean and selfish of me. Worse, I knew it when I was doing it. I am, after all, an O’Malley not only by marriage but by early childhood association. I would say that I ought to have known better except I did know better.

  There were some gray strands in my hair. I could still fit into my clothes because of my exercise routine, which was necessary anyway for letting off steam. However, I felt old.

  There were also touches of white in Chuck’s hair about which I did not kid him since we didn’t kid anymore.

  His exhibit 1968—Year of Violence opened at the Art Institute and then was going to travel to New York and Washington and Boston. There was the usual gala opening with black tie dinners. I wore a strapless gown—blue and white (blessed mother colors in honor of the Beatles song “Mother Mary”)—just to show people I could do it. I was convinced that everyone was dismissing me as “oh, that’s his wife. I hear she’s very difficult to live with.”

  The reviews were ecstatic. “Major Contribution to the New Photography.” (Whatever the hell that was.) “O‘Malley’s work of genius.” “After twenty years of brilliant contributions to American photography, O’Malley has established himself in the very top ranks.” “There can be no doubt after his dazzling and powerful re-creation of that troubled year that Charles Cronin O’Malley is a master of photographic history. His oeuvre is a profound memorial of our times.” And that last from the New York Times—which made it officially true!

  The Boston Globe observed, “Clearly a number of people wanted to inflict severe physical harm on Mr. O‘Malley during 1968. A sensible person would have run. A courageous photographer would hold his ground and fire away with his camera. Mr. O’Malley chose the latter course, which will surprise no one. Yet one feels the need to say, ‘Chuck, already all right enough. Keep out of those tight spots in the years ahead. We need you.’”

  Amen to that!

  I was not such a bitch that I resented his success. After all, I had driven him into his art, had I not? Even if I wasn’t getting credit for any of it, I was proud of him. Yet I felt sorry for myself. I had sacrificed my career for his.

  What career? Singing? I still did funerals and weddings and an occasional recital, though no recitals in recent years. Sometimes, before Kevin left, I had sung with the band. I didn’t have the voice of a great concert singer or even of a jazz singer like Maria Elena.

  Obviously my writing career. I was too busy being the wife of a great man to pursue that career.

  Was this bullshit? Sure it was. I half knew that it was, but that half wasn’t operating.

  Finally, my self-pity reached its limit. I blew up at him, poor man.

  I stormed into his workshop next to the darkroom and dumped on the table all the bills for the opening of the Exhibition.

  “I’m sick and tired of being your servant,” I screamed. “Pay your own goddamn bills!”

  He was startled. He should not have been. He must have known that an explosion was coming.

  “If that’s what you want, Rosemarie,” he said guardedly, his eyes trying to figure out quickly what was going on so he could respond.

  We had been through this a long time ago when I had retired for the first time as his factotum. Maybe he thought the same thing was happening now. Well, if he did, he was wrong.

  “I’m fucking tired of being the woman at whom people point and say, oh yes that’s his wife. I want to be my own woman from now on.”

  A direct quote from my daughter. Wisely he refrained from pointing that out.

  “I’ve never heard anyone say that,” he said cautiously. “The adjectives beautiful and gifted are usually added.”

  “I am sick of that goddamn horseshit. I’ve sacrificed everything for your goddamn career and I have nothing to show for my work. I want to be someone else besides just your wife.”

  He might have asked if I still wanted to be his wife. He didn’t however.

  “Have I ever interfered with your singing? If I did, I’m sorry … I didn’t realize it!”

  “Fuck the singing.”

  I note in my own defense that I almost never talk that way, not when I’m sober and I was sober then.

  “I see … What do you want to be?”

  “A writer, that’s what I want to be!”

  His face lit up in a smile.

  “How wonderful! I think you’ll be a great writer! What can I do to help?”

  Clever comeback, Chucky, but that’s not nearly enough.

  “How can I be a writer when I have to spend all my time on this shit!”

  I gestured at the bills and realized that I was raging b
eyond all sense. I had been writing secretly for years.

  “Spend all the time you want on your writing. I’ll do whatever I can to help!”

  So generous, so reasonable, so besides the point.

  “Goddamn you! You’re not listening to what I’m saying!”

  I stormed out of the workroom in full fury.

  Back in my study I broke down and wept. Somehow everything was going wrong. What was I supposed to do next?

  I could go on with the battle and ruin what was left of our marriage and family life.

  Or …

  Or what?

  Pick up the phone and call Maggie Ward, the smart little bitch.

  26

  “There’s one area of possible exploitation by your husband that you apparently did not mention with your consciousness-raising group,” she said softly. “That puzzles me.”

  She seemed unperturbed by my long absence. She did not raise an eyebrow at the mention of consciousness-raising. She expressed no surprise at my account of the deterioration of our marriage.

  “What’s that?”

  “You didn’t seem to think that his use of you as a model, often clothed just within the limits of modesty, was exploitive.”

  “I don’t think it was!”

  “Many feminists would have thought it was. I’m sure the women in your group would have said so.”

  “I didn’t think the pictures were dirty!”

  “So I understand, but it would seem to me that if you were determined to awaken your husband to his lack of concern about your independent identity, you would have used that as prime proof. He subjected your body to his artistic vision.”

  Good point.

  “It just didn’t occur to me.”

  “Did he resist your announced intention to pursue a literary career?”

  “No.”

  “Did he warn you that it might very well be an unsuccessful pursuit?”

  “Uh, no, he didn’t.”

  “How then did he react?”

  “As though any success I had as a writer would redound to his fame.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Ah, what did he say?”

  “That he’d support me in any way he could,” I admitted reluctantly.

  “That made you even more angry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he wasn’t listening to what I really meant.”

  “And what did you really mean?”

  “Uh, well …”

  “That you felt worthless?”

  That was unfair. How dare she say that.

  “Yes.”

  “That your life had always been worthless?”

  “All right.”

  “Tell me, Rosemarie, let us suppose you had published four or five novels and a successful book of short stories, would you not still feel worthless?”

  Tears formed in my eyes. I fought them back.

  “I suppose so.”

  “Only then your husband would not have been such a convenient target?”

  “I would have blamed him anyway,” I admitted honestly.

  “I see … Could you have found the time to write during the last twenty years of your marriage?”

  “Yes, if I worked hard at it.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “Oh, no,” I said, realizing that the game was up. “I’ve actually written some.”

  “How many?” she demanded implacably.

  “I donno …”

  “Five?”

  “A little more than that.”

  “Rosemarie, I will not tolerate this game playing!”

  “Shrinks shouldn’t say things like that.”

  “I just said it.”

  “Well … maybe between twenty or thirty … maybe closer to thirty.”

  For the first time in our relationship, Maggie Ward permitted herself to look astonished.

  “And who has read them?”

  “No one.”

  She was backing me into the corner. I was scared of the corner but willing, indeed eager, to be backed into it.

  “And who knows about them?”

  “No one … Well, you do now …”

  “And you blamed your husband for inhibiting your career as a writer, although you have secretly written thirty stories?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Wasn’t that terribly unfair?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why did you not show him any of your stories?”

  “Maybe he would have made fun of them.”

  “Has he ever made fun of anything serious you’ve done?”

  “He wouldn’t dare!”

  “You nonetheless think he would have ridiculed your stories?”

  “He might have.”

  “Rosemarie!”

  “If they were weak, he would have said so very gently and if they were any good at all, I’d be like a female James Joyce.”

  “Aha!”

  “I thought they were probably worthless.”

  “Like you yourself are?”

  “Kind of …”

  “You didn’t want to expose one more aspect of your worthlessness?”

  “I suppose …”

  “And you’ve been willing to risk your marriage to hide that worthlessness?”

  “Kind of …”

  I hadn’t looked at it that way. Pretty dumb, huh?

  “Kind of?”

  “I was trying to blame Chucky for my fears.”

  “Rosemarie, you are paying a heavy price for clinging to this low self-esteem, despite the fact that you know it’s wrong.”

  “I don’t know it’s wrong!”

  “Come on! At the opening of Chuck’s exhibit you wore a daring dress that only a woman who knows she’s beautiful would wear!”

  “How do you know what I wore?”

  “In addition to seeing the picture in the papers and on television, I was there. Remember?”

  “Spying on me.”

  “Do you think your stories are any good?”

  “How would I know? A lot of them are humorous. I think they’re pretty funny … Oh, all right, I’ll say what you want me to say …”

  “I only want you to tell me what you think is the truth.”

  “Uh … Well, I think they’re great, but I’m the author …”

  “Rosemarie, this nonsense has to stop. I understand its origin in your childhood experience. However, at this stage in your life, you clearly know who and what you are. What is the cost of abandoning your old self-concept?”

  “Then I’d be free!”

  “And that is terrifying!”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s almost time, Rosemarie. I insist you show your husband all the stories.”

  “NO!”

  “That is an order! You will go home and do it, understand?”

  “Shrinks don’t give orders!”

  “This one does and has, especially when she knows the client came here today to get that order!”

  Bitch, bitch, bitch.

  I went home, took all my stories out of the locked cabinet in my study and went down to Chuck’s workshop, where he was reading a German economic journal, and dropped the whole untidy mess on his desk.

  “Read these,” I said.

  He looked up, confused. “What are they, Rosemarie?”

  “My stories.”

  “The one’s you haven’t been able to write?”

  “Yeah … Maggie Ward said I should show them to you.”

  “Did she now?” A faint grin appeared on his leprechaun face.

  “She did. Read them today. Now. I want your honest opinion. No bullshit, understand?”

  He leafed through a few pages.

  “I promise that I will be dispassionate and objective.”

  “You’d better be. If you think they’re not much good I want to know it. I’m no James Joyce.”

  “No reason you should be.”
>
  He turned aside from his journal and began to read the stories. I escaped as quickly as I could and fled back to my ornate study with its red silk walls and thick drapes and oak furniture. I tried to begin another story, one about a husband telling his wife that her work was worthless. I couldn’t get beyond the first paragraphs of pain.

  “Goddamn it, Chuck,” I cried. “They’re not worthless!”

  I made myself a pot of tea and drank it all. I thought I might take a shower. However, he might come to my study looking for me and not find me there.

  We had a dinner date at the Conways’ that night. Why doesn’t he hurry up?’

  Finally, there was knock on the door of the study, a shy tentative knock. I knew him well enough not to trust Chucky Ducky when he was shy and tentative.

  “Come in, damn it!”

  He peeked in, like he was making sure I wouldn’t throw something at him. He looked very satisfied with himself.

  “Well,” he began as he put the pile on my desk, “I’ve read them all.”

  The pile had been transformed. Compulsive neatnik that he is, Chuck had placed each story in a separate folder with the title neatly printed on the cover and then arranged all the folders in a loose-leaf notebook.

  “I note with interest that many of the stories are about a marriage.”

  Damn him, why was he grinning that way? He knows I find him irresistible when he grins that way.

  “Yes,” I said carefully.

  “I personally find the husband a rather charming person. He’s a dull oaf, I admit, stupid, unperceptive, and obsessed with sex. Yet I quite agree with the wife that he’s not without his appealing aspects.”

  “It’s not you!” I shouted.

  “Rosemarie, the hell it isn’t!”

  “Well, he wins most of the time.”

  “Only because his wife makes him win.”

  He was grinning broadly, delighted to have found me out. Maggie, drat her, would insist that all along I wanted him to find me out.

  “That’s what happens in most marriages … I’m just using the particular to rise to the general …”

  “And while no unseemly details are provided, it is broadly hinted that he is not without skills in bed.”

  “He does improve over time,” I conceded.

  “He seems quite harmless as a lover, doesn’t he?”