Younger Than Springtime

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “You’re inviting Monica Sullivan?” I asked Jane during a moment’s respite from our noisy celebration.

  “Sure,” she said. “We’re good friends and we both teach at St. Ursula. Why do you ask?”

  “Maybe you should ask my friend James F. Rizzo, late captain of the United States Marines and currently captain of my softball team.”

  Jane considered me cautiously.

  “They’ve broken up, Chucky.”

  “I know that.”

  Jane might be a lightweight as her younger sister often suggested, but when it came to matters of the heart, she was quick.

  “That’s a very good idea.” She nodded and smiled. “An excellent idea…You’re dangerous, Chucky.”

  “Who me?”

  “Have you heard the latest?” Peg informed me a week later at the final Notre Dame football weekend (this time a contest with the hated Trojans). “Dr. McCormack will double Ted’s allowance if he drops psychiatry and goes into a surgical residency. Poor Janey doesn’t know what to do.”

  “Do they need money? Doesn’t he have the GI Bill?”

  “They don’t really need the money, not yet. But Ted is nervous about rebelling against Doctor; more money might be an excuse to drop the fight. Then Doctor and Mrs. Doctor will own Ted and Jane for the rest of their lives.”

  “Psychiatrist heal thyself.”

  Ted was a slender young man of medium height (well, he was taller than I was) with a boyish face, sandy hair, and a ready smile. He moved quickly and decisively and exuded the confidence that the Navy looked for in its fighter pilots. When he turned on his charm and his blue eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, I thought he should have run for public office instead of becoming a doctor.

  Despite his vigor and assurance, he was no match for his overbearing father.

  Peg nodded solemnly. “Jane isn’t an alley fighter like me, poor thing.”

  Dr. McCormack divided the human race into two categories—surgeon and all other. He was convinced that his son would marry down if he wed Jane. In Doctor’s world there was little difference between an architect and a bricklayer.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a bricklayer, dear!” Mom’s normally smooth brow furrowed during one of our conversations on the subject of Doctor. “Your greatgrandfather was a bricklayer.”

  “And Doctor’s father was a saloonkeeper,” Dad responded. “A fact conveniently forgotten, it seems to me.”

  Dad was a distinguished architect now and Mom was the daughter of a doctor. But Grandpa Cronin was not a surgeon, you see. Ted was quite capable of flying fifty missions in a F4U Corsair during the war without his father peering over his shoulder, but not capable, in Doctor’s estimation, of choosing a wife or a professional specialty. Ted had revolted on the first point and had started a revolt on the second; but now the apron strings were being tightened. Jane had no idea how to respond to the pressures and could not imagine that she and the psychiatric profession had been lumped together as the Enemy of Doctor’s wisdom.

  “When he’s a successful psychiatrist,” the good April announced to us, “his mother and father will simply love Jane.”

  My father had started to open his mouth and then closed it slowly. His wife’s analysis was wrong, but there wasn’t much we could do to help Jane. As Peg had said, she was not qualified to be an alley fighter.

  Jane was as naïve as Mom and infinitely more innocent. She had charmed her teachers all through school just as I had before I ventured to Notre Dame and took it for granted that older folk would collapse in the face of her laughing effervescence. Now she was often in tears as a result of Doctor’s snubs.

  “Can we do her alley fighting for her?” I asked Peg.

  “Charles the Bold,” she laughed. “But, seriously, Chucky, maybe it will come to that. You and me and Rosie.”

  When I returned for my Christmas parole from Notre Dame, the O’Malley house was in that advanced state of chaos that weddings demand. I wisely kept my mouth shut, though there were scores of hilarious comments I might have made. Alas, they would not have been seen as funny. I withdrew to my room and strove to memorize answers for my philosophy and theology exams in which it would be required that I repeat verbatim sections of the textbooks. Liberal education in a Catholic university in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and forty-eight.

  I ventured forth into the winter cold a couple of times to visit Marco’s corner and the Magic Pub. The corner was deserted the first two times but my friends from the Catholic War Vets filled the pub and greeted me warmly. Everyone wanted to know how Notre Dame was. I told them that it was too early to tell. However, neither Jimmy Rizzo nor Tim Boylan were there.

  I did find Tim on the corner of Menard and Division, however, shivering in the cold.

  “No action here tonight, Charles C.,” he said. “All sensible people are somewhere that’s warm.”

  “And if they’re outside they’re not wearing Ike jackets like we are.”

  “Two misfits, huh, Charles C.?”

  “I don’t know about you, Timmy, but I feel like a misfit.”

  “Serves you right for going down to the Golden Dome.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Your friend Dr. Berman tell you I was seeing him a couple of times a week?”

  “Certainly not. That would be a violation of professional ethics.”

  “Are you going to ask how it’s coming?”

  “Not unless you want to tell me.”

  He laughed.

  “Okay, I want to tell you, so ask.”

  “How’s it’s coming with Dr. Berman?”

  “He’s a hell of an interesting little guy. I really like his Jewish style. Best shrink yet.”

  “So?” I said, imitating the Doctor’s style.

  “So I’m still a bundle of anger that would be better off dead. But I’m talking to him and feeling…well, feeling good about doing it, to tell you the truth.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Are you going to tell me to stick with it?”

  “If you want me to.”

  “I do.”

  “Okay, Timmy, stick with it.”

  “My whole future could depend on him, huh?”

  “No, your whole future depends on you.”

  Silence in the cold darkness.

  “I suppose that’s right…. Well, I’m going somewhere where I can find some liquid warmth.”

  “Merry Christmas, Tim.”

  “Yeah,” he said with a sneer, “Merry Christmas, Charles C.”

  As I walked back to Oak Park I wondered where the words I said to Tim came from. Was someone whispering in my ear?

  John Raven had told me once that in the confessional or the rectory office words leaped out of his mouth that seemed to come from somewhere else.

  “That happens to me all the time,” I said.

  “I don’t doubt it, Chuck.”

  “So I should be a priest?”

  “I do doubt it, but don’t take my word for it.”

  Anyway, I said to whoever was in charge, thanks for the help.

  I slipped into the house and quietly climbed to my room. I was caught, however, and informed by Mom that I would have to be fitted for my tux the next morning. Wisely I agreed without comment.

  I’m sure the subsequent laughter was aimed at me.

  The next night I found Jimmy Rizzo on the same corner.

  “Why aren’t you at the Magic, Captain, sir?” I demanded.

  “Too many people ask me about Monica.”

  “Good enough reason.”

  “She won’t even talk to me now. I never knew your Irish women could be so stubborn.”

  “You haven’t been very observant.”

  “I love her more than ever.”

  It was a pathetic remark to a guy five years younger. So maybe I should be a priest after all. That would solve a lot of problems.

  “You’re waiting for her to call you and back down.”

 
“Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Then you don’t understand her or really love her.”

  Silence.

  “I’m turning down the law schools.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Uncle Sal will pay me as much next year as I would earn as a lawyer in ten years.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “I don’t think I’d make a very good lawyer.”

  “You’ll make a great lawyer…. What’s your deadline for accepting Princeton?”

  “March first.”

  “Uncle Sal pushing you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Promise me you’ll hold off till then.”

  Maybe, just maybe, we could celebrate a solemn high reconciliation at Oak Park Country Club.

  He hesitated.

  “Okay. No harm done, I guess.”

  As I walked home I wondered whether there was a chance in hell that I would ever go to Princeton if I had the chance.

  Doctor behaved abominably during the preparations for the wedding. He forbade Mrs. Doctor (as his wife was always called) from attending the tea and the shower for Jane. He threatened that they would not come to the wedding. He ordered Ted’s cousin, a former major in the infantry, not to participate, an order that the major ignored.

  No one in our family could understand Doctor’s behavior. What did he have against us?

  I kept my analysis (Doctor loves being mean) to myself since I figured Chucky Ducky’s wit and wisdom would not be well received under the circumstances.

  Ted finally admitted, his head bowed in shame, that from the moment of her birth the two families had planned that Ted would marry the daughter of a fellow surgeon with whom Doctor had gone to medical school.

  “So why didn’t you marry her?” I piped up, breaking my vow of silence.

  He grinned at me, the F4U pilot once again.

  “I can’t stand her, Chuck. And she can’t stand me. She congratulated me fervently when she heard about Jane.”

  “Good for her!” I said.

  Dummies! If they had left the two young people alone, it might have worked out. Too bad for them. Good for Jane.

  Why were parents so stupid?

  Would I be stupid as a parent?

  I addressed a brief prayer to the Deity that I be a parent like my parents.

  “They’ll grow to love Jane, I’m sure,” my maternal Dr. Panglossa asserted.

  Doctor and wife finally relented and promised that they would come to both the wedding and the rehearsal dinner. The latter in 1948 was much less elaborate than such events came to be subsequently. Only the wedding party and the immediate family were invited. Doctor should have scheduled it at Butterfield Country Club, to which he belonged, or at Nielsen’s restaurant on North Avenue. However, he was furious because Mom and Dad had decided that the reception after the wedding would be at Oak Park Country Club to which Doctor did not belong.

  I don’t remember the reason for this decision. Perhaps it was to show the Protestants who still dominated Oak Park that we were as good as they were.

  Anyway, Doctor informed us that the rehearsal dinner would be upstairs at Hayes’ at North and Harlem (on the Elmwood Park side of the four corners). There was nothing wrong with Hayes’. It was a great place to go after a date for a bite to eat, I was told, since I never really had a date.

  “The food is very nice,” Mom insisted, “and the upstairs is very quiet.”

  “A lot cheaper too,” I added. “Surgeons have to be careful because they don’t make much money.”

  “That’s not very nice, Chuck,” Mom warned me.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But it’s true,” Peg whispered in my ear.

  My cougar sibling was convinced that the reception would need some “spontaneous” extra entertainment beyond that provided by the orchestra (big band music, of course). Therefore, she insisted that Rosemarie and I practice our spontaneity, accompanied by her on the violin. She permitted herself a gigue from Niccolò Paganini as a solo.

  “Peg,” I said when she was finished, “that was sensational!”

  “Thanks, Chuck,” she said with a pleased smile. “I worked awfully hard on this thing.”

  “Too good for Doctor,” Rosemarie said, now definitely the timber wolf.

  We all giggled.

  Doctor and Mrs. Doctor were not at the rehearsal. The women in my family were painfully distraught that we might make hideous blunders in the ceremonies that would be a blot on the family tradition. Given a chance, they would have forced us to practice over and over again till midnight.

  Fortunately, John Raven turned the rehearsal into comedy. Our clan dissolved into laughter, which was never far away from the crazy O’Malleys, no matter how serious the circumstances.

  “Do we really want Chuck in this wedding party?” he asked. “He’ll never be able to walk down the aisle at the right speed.”

  “Great idea!” I agreed.

  “But, Father,” my foster sister protested, “he looks so funny in a formal suit!”

  “A point well taken.”

  General laughter.

  “And we’ll make him comb his hair,” Peg added.

  More laughter.

  “I won’t invite any of you to my wedding!” I threatened.

  Still more laughter.

  Everyone but me was worrying about whether Doctor would show up at Hayes’. I wasn’t worrying because I knew he wouldn’t.

  Sure enough, neither of them came. Mrs. Doctor called the restaurant before we arrived to report that Doctor was “in surgery” with an emergency.

  Poor Ted was humiliated.

  I whispered to Dad, “Be sure you send him the bill.”

  Dad, who had kept his fury at Doctor to himself, under the same restraints as I was, whispered back, “I thought of that before you did, Chuck, and I will.”

  The next morning was one of those bitter cold winter days in Chicago on which the pure blue sky, the clean white snow, and the crystalline air made you forget for a moment the icy bite when you walk out of the door of your house.

  The nuptial mass was a huge success, mostly because the women of my family were dazzling. I noticed also how strong and handsome my father was in his formal suit. A tall bald man with a wonderful red beard, he looked dangerous but was as gentle as a mother with a newborn child—until someone pushed him too far.

  I worried about him. He had lost weight since our days of poverty because he could devote time to exercise. Yet there was a touch of anxiety in his eyes that I had not noticed when we were poor. The demands of a successful business were taking their toll. I had to do something about that.

  A mysterious decision, about which I was not consulted, had decreed that Rosemarie and I were paired.

  “You look fabulous, Chuck,” she whispered. “Really cute.”

  “You’re so beautiful,” I replied, “that I’m speechless.”

  Which was the honest truth. In her dark green bridesmaid’s dress with red trim, quite modest save for a slight hint of décolletage, my foster sister did indeed render me inarticulate, something that doesn’t happen very often.

  Even today when I take the wedding pictures out of my files, I gasp.

  After the bridal procession, Doctor and Mrs. Doctor, two short and overweight people, he egg-bald, bustled down the aisle. I resolved, quite uncharitably, that we would get him good before the day was over.

  Monsignor Mugsy presided over the exchange of vows. John Raven said the mass. His sermon was about as candid about sexual love as you could be in those days.

  I pondered the possibility that I would be the groom on some such occasion.

  No, it could never happen.

  My sister, my foster sister, and I, in unspoken agreement, headed right for Doctor after the receiving line finally ended. He had declined to participate in it.

  I was an ant who hardly merited notice. But Peg and Rosemarie were so beautiful that he had to acknowledge our presence.r />
  “It must be wonderful to be a doctor,” the good Margaret Mary began, her eyes wide with fake admiration.

  “Yes, it is,” Doctor said, puffing up. “The wonderful aspect of being a physician and surgeon is that you wake up every morning with the knowledge that you’re going to do good things for people all day long.”

  “And get paid well for every good thing you do,” Rosemarie, the soul of worshipful innocence, continued.

  Doctor simply nodded proudly.

  Peg really went too far when she said, “And every penny of that goes into keeping the American economy going despite that man in the White House.”

  The dummy missed it all. Doubtless he told Mrs. Doctor later that we were three very bright young people.

  I figured that the cougar and the timber wolf were waiting for the clown to speak his lines.

  “A tremendous achievement for a shopkeeper’s son,” I said.

  Doctor had hesitated at that one and decided it was a compliment.

  “I thank God for His blessings every day.”

  “What did your father sell?” Peg had asked, all wide-eyed innocence.

  “Groceries,” Doctor had replied shortly.

  Rosemarie, drat her, beat me to our punch line.

  “That was after Prohibition wasn’t it, Doctor? My father said your family owned a very nice saloon before Prohibition.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with owning a saloon, Rosemarie dear,” Peggy said in an admonishing tone.

  “Some very respectable people own saloons,” I chimed in.

  At that point the good April bore down upon us and chased us up to the head table for grace.

  “I’m so happy that you’re being nice to Doctor,” she bubbled.

  I glanced back at Doctor. He was frowning, as though he were trying to figure out what had happened to him.

  “We vindicated our family honor,” I said to Rosemarie, as we waited for Monsignor Mugsy to say grace.

  “We sure did…. But I feel so sorry for poor Ted.”

  “Don’t,” I replied. “He gets to sleep with Jane tonight.”

  She cocked an eye at me. “Take off her clothes and play with her and then sleep with her. I hope he plays with her for a long time!”

  “Rosemarie!” I was genuinely shocked.