Younger Than Springtime

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “How did the business go?”

  He shrugged. “Pretty good, I’ll make some money, but it’s not as important as having friends like you and April.”

  Then why weren’t you here all day yesterday to keep me from falling in love with your girl?

  He hurried off to the Blackstone to dress for mass—coat, tie, and hat in hand, unless you wanted to be stared at, no matter how hot it was.

  I never asked what his mysterious business trips were about. I was afraid that he might tell me that he was financing bootleggers, probably independents since the professionals didn’t need financial backing anymore.

  Somehow, we missed the girls before mass. By the time I spotted them in the crowd the priest had already begun. I saw the solemn and devout look on April’s face and yanked Jim back.

  “Wait till after mass,” I whispered. “She won’t like to be distracted while she’s praying.”

  “Why?” His small boy’s disappointment was almost a whine.

  “You said you wanted my help, didn’t you?”

  “Okay,” he grumbled, “if you say so.”

  The atmosphere at those outdoor masses was not especially reverent. The priest and the makeshift altar on the pergola seemed too far away to be sacred. Since there was no public address system, you couldn’t hear the prayers, not that it made any difference because they were in Latin. The crowd was restless and uneasy, eager to be done with the ritual so that the day’s amusements could begin.

  The humidity was thicker and more oppressive, hinting perhaps at a thunderstorm before the day was over. Since Memorial Day was Saturday, it was not a three-day weekend. The last train for Chicago left Genoa City at six o’clock. After mass and breakfast there wouldn’t be much time for golf or swimming or tennis.

  There was no sermon, which was a blessing, but there was a collection. Naturally, it was a Catholic church, wasn’t it?

  Jim put a twenty-dollar bill in the basket.

  I tried to sort out my thoughts.

  Jim didn’t stand a chance with April Cronin. She would be nice to him because she was nice to everyone. He confused her courtesy with love. The most she could ever feel for him was amused affection.

  Still, I had to permit him to pursue his courtship. If perhaps she did come to love him, she might save him from his own mistakes.

  It did not occur to me to worry about her. She seemed quite capable of taking care of herself. Perhaps I gave her too much credit. Despite her poise and self-sufficiency, she was only a twenty-year-old kid.

  A bell tinkled from the altar. The crowd, in unison, pounded its chest, quite unaware, I was sure, what the gesture meant. It was nonetheless a link with the mysteries up at the altar.

  The sensible thing for me to do was to sail off on the Rex next week and let Jim pursue his courtship of April Cronin. That’s what would have happened if I had not permitted him to talk me into coming to Barry for the weekend.

  If he was successful, fine. April might bring him some peace and happiness. If he was unsuccessful, I might get in touch with her sometime in late summer or better early autumn. Either way, what would be, would be.

  What was wrong with that strategy?

  What was wrong with it was that I wanted the woman.

  I noticed that she was striding up as vigorously as her ridiculous high heels permitted to receive Communion. I followed her, telling God that if He was upset, it was a problem He would have to discuss with her.

  You’ll have a hard time winning an argument with that one, I informed the Divine Omniscience, which doubtless already knew that.

  I couldn’t tell whether she saw me or not when she passed me coming back down the pergola steps. Her eyes were devoutly downcast, but I thought that April Cronin’s eyes, even devoutly downcast, would not miss much.

  They had no trouble finding us after mass. Both the young women were wearing light pastel dresses with very short skirts and matching hats, pure flapper.

  I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her all day long.

  “You look tired, Jim,” April began after she had led us to a bench near the lake. “I bet you drove all night. You shouldn’t take chances like that. Maybe you should have a nap. Doesn’t he look tired, Clarice?”

  Clarice nodded serenely.

  “I’m fine.” Jim beamed at her concern. “Let’s have fun.” He opened up the black bag he’d been carrying. “Who needs breakfast. I brought everyone a two-pound box of Fanny Mae’s. Bought them at the store at 111 North Lasalle. Aren’t they swell?”

  “Fanny Mae’s!” April grabbed her white satin box like she was an Armenian refugee being offered a loaf of bread after a month’s starvation. “I just love them!”

  She pulled off the top with total lack of womanly delicacy and began wolfing them down.

  “I knew you liked them.” Jim beamed happily.

  “You’ll ruin your stomach eating candy that way on Sunday morning.” I sounded exactly like my mother.

  “Or get fat.” Clarice turned up her nose at her friend’s gluttony.

  “My mother says”—April licked chocolate off her fingertips—“that we come from a long line of skinny women with cast-iron stomachs…. Do you think I’m a glutton, Vangie?”

  She cared what I thought, but I was pretty sure that if I said that yes she was making a pig out of herself, she would be sorry but would keep right on gobbling down the candy.

  “I think chocolate is less harmful than scotch.”

  We all laughed. April went right on demolishing the two pounds of candy. Clarice and I were content with one or two nibbles. Jim Clancy didn’t eat any. The candy was a gift for others, not something he particularly liked for himself.

  How could someone be so observant in certain matters and so thick-skulled and thick-skinned in other matters?

  “Hey!” He erupted with a new enthusiasm. “You want to play tennis? Doubles? Johnny is real good.”

  “I beat him yesterday. Why don’t you and I play him and Clarice. It should be a swell match.”

  “Great! Great! Let’s get our tennis clothes on. Who needs breakfast.”

  “I need a cup of coffee,” I murmured.

  “I’ll bring a thermos to the tennis courts,” she said. “Come on, let’s hurry up before it rains. Jim is entitled to a little fun.”

  I quickly revised my analysis. She did like him, in a maternal, protective way. A girl with a warm heart could stumble into marriage with those emotions.

  Then the bell in front of the dining hall on the other side of the hill began to toll. I glanced at my watch. Official breakfast was already over, though coffee and rolls waited for those who had received Communion at mass. It was still three hours to lunch.

  “What’s happening?” Clarice looked around nervously.

  “It’s scary,” April agreed. “Like a funeral.”

  Jim’s eyes were sparkling.

  Dear God in heaven, he was up to his old tricks again. There was always a second swipe to his elaborate practical jokes. Just when you thought it was over, there’d be one final comic twist—Saint Robert Bellarmine standing up in the crib in the chapel at St. Ignatius College on Christmas Eve, two weeks after the last mustache had been painted on a Jesuit saint.

  And now a mustache on the Blessed Virgin.

  Prove that Jim had done it? Impossible.

  “I smell something”—Clarice grabbed April’s arm—“something’s on fire!”

  “Probably just grease burning in the kitchen,” I said, knowing full well that it was a stink bomb or two made from rolls of Kodak film and planted with a slow fuse, most likely in a trash can, before mass.

  Jimmy, Jimmy, why do you do things like this to yourself?

  I was assailed by a terrible temptation to tell April that it was Jim’s idea of a joke. It would destroy his chances with her.

  I didn’t spill the beans and not because I was feeling all that loyal. If I told her about his jokes, such a disclosure might also destroy my chances with h
er.

  “If it’s just grease, why are they ringing the damn bell!” Poor Clarice was almost hysterical.

  Very gently, like a mother reassuring a frightened child, April extended her arm around her friend’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Clarice. Don’t be afraid. We’ll take care of you. It’s just a little smoke.”

  “Let’s go see.” Jim was bursting with excitement. “It’s probably nothing serious.”

  The aftermass crowd, not yet dispersed back to their cabins, was already streaming up the hill toward the Drake and the dining hall, nervous, worried, a little frightened.

  As they were supposed to, they were worried whether the Kenosha Fire Department would race the twenty miles to Twin Lakes for a second alarm.

  Clever, Jimmy, really clever.

  “What a terrible smell!” Clarice cried.

  “Like the stockyards on the South Side.”

  “Beast, monster, savage.” April jabbed at my ribs. She smiled while she poked, fiercely enough, a soft, affectionate smile that enveloped me and assured me for the first time that she loved me as much as I loved her.

  Let the whole world burn down.

  The bell stopped ringing before we reached it. The crowd was already breaking up.

  “False alarm,” someone said. “Second time.”

  “Just a couple of stink bombs in the garbage.”

  “They ought to put the one who did it in jail.”

  “Stick him in a room with his own stink bombs.”

  Jim’s face was purple with suppressed glee.

  “See, there was nothing to worry about, dear,” April purred at Clarice. “Just some poor person who has to do mean things. We should feel sorry for him and say a prayer for him. Maybe even light a vigil light tomorrow at mass.”

  Jimmy turned pale, as if he had been stricken with a stomach infection. “Maybe we should thank the person,” he burst out. “He’s kept the day from being dull.”

  “He’s just a poor sick man, Jim dear. We don’t need help to enjoy ourselves.”

  “May I bring sweet rolls to the tennis courts, please, Miss April, ma’am?”

  She smiled at me again, the Lady of the Manor amused by a clever little servant boy. “Bring one for each of us, John the Evangelist. And hurry! We don’t want someone to beat us.”

  “May I eat an extra one on the way, Miss April?”

  “Only one.” She jabbed at me again, but the poke was light enough to be a caress.

  I thought about poking back.

  The tennis match was not the runaway I had expected. Clarice was a more competent player than I had anticipated. And Jimmy, who when he was serious could give me a run for my money, acted the clown, showing off for April. Moreover, April, who had routed me with gentle intensity, played the clown back.

  I was annoyed with both of them. The more fatuous was their play, the more deadly serious I became. When we were up 5–3, April turned serious enough to win four straight games, one of them with four serves.

  “I knew we’d win!” Jim exulted. “Rematch! Rematch!”

  “I think we’d better swim while we can.” April examined the sky. “It’s going to rain.”

  We gathered our bags and our thermoses.

  “Would you carry these back to the kitchen, John?” she asked me.

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll help.” Jim reached for the coffee jug.

  “I thought you might get us a fresh batch of towels, James.”

  “Right! Right!” He bounded away enthusiastically.

  “I’ll be right up, Clarice,” she said when we reached their cabin.

  April waited till her friend had entered the screened-in porch.

  “I want to apologize, Vangie,” she said solemnly.

  “No apologies,” I said. “I thought we made that rule last night.”

  She blushed deeply. “This is different. I’m sorry I ruined the tennis match. I hope you’ll forgive me. But poor dear Jim is so tense after his ride up here that I thought we really ought to let him blow off steam. Did you notice how that fire in the garbage upset him?”

  There were a lot of things I could have said. What I did say was, “You’re very generous and thoughtful, April Mae Anne Cronin.”

  “I could tell you were upset.”

  I touched her waist with my hand. “You’re wonderful. Now go put on that splendid swimsuit, so I can admire you till the rains come.”

  “Discreetly admire me.”

  “I won’t drool.”

  “Beast.” Her hand rested on my waist. We stood there for a moment, enjoying each other. I went back to our cabin to dress for the lake, more than ever confident that she would be mine eventually. And then forever.

  Like all the confidences of those falling in love, that one lasted for perhaps ten minutes.

  If anything she looked more lovely that day than she had the day before.

  It was Jim’s turn to wrestle and dunk and be dunked. I noted, with considerable satisfaction, that it was a much less ardent struggle than my contest with April.

  She feels sorry for him, I told myself with more conviction than I felt, but she loves me. Well, she’s beginning to love me.

  Then the storm came. Jagged bolts of lightning cut across the black sky. Thunder roared all around us. The rain beat down in torrents. In the city, it would have been one more storm. Somehow in the country it was more threatening and dangerous.

  We were driven back to our cabins to escape the rain. The day was pretty much ruined.

  “Isn’t she wonderful?” Jimmy demanded again as we struggled into dry clothes in our cramped room. “A great beauty, huh?”

  “Clarice is more beautiful,” I said primly.

  “Sure, but no personality. April has great legs and tits and she’s lots of fun.”

  “If you love her, Jim”—I pulled on my socks—“you shouldn’t talk about her like that.”

  “Why not?” He paused, one arm in his shirt. “It’s true, isn’t it? Really great tits. I mean, I wouldn’t say it to her, but can you imagine playing all day with them? Boy, would that be swell!”

  How could I explain that it was all right, even normal, to think that way, but that you really didn’t talk about women in those terms?

  I gave it up.

  A kid knocked on our door.

  “Miss Cronin says she’s going to sing again and that you don’t have to come to listen to her but she’ll never speak to you again if you don’t.”

  April entertained for another two hours inside the clubhouse, leading us in group song. I stared at her in mute adoration, causing an embarrassed blush now and again. Jim bounced around nervously, moving back and forth from the concert room to the slot machines. He won two jackpots and crowed that he had made all the expenses of his trip.

  Finally, at my orders, he slowed down long enough to listen to April’s songs. The same look of quiet rapture that I had seen in the speakeasy appeared on his childlike face, peace, joy, and understanding. Why couldn’t Jim be that way more often?

  Clarice watched the three of us placidly. Dear God, I prayed, find that poor kid a good man.

  Then the storm ended. The temperature had fallen twenty-five degrees and it was time to go home. Jim announced that he could fit the two girls in the Duesy and the harp in the rumble seat. Did I mind taking the six o’clock from Genoa City?

  Reveling in my self-pity, I said no, that would be fine.

  He would drive me to the train station.

  Nonsense. I could ride the hack or the truck. He and the girls should enjoy as much of Sunday as possible.

  I was, he told me, really a swell guy. He presented me with a bottle of single malt that somehow had appeared from nowhere.

  April walked with me from the clubhouse back to the Blackstone. Neither of us spoke, there was nothing much to say.

  She walked up the steps with me and into the screened porch on the first floor, a braver move than I would have attempted over at her cabin.

 
“You stared at me all afternoon,” she said. “I was embarrassed.”

  “But not displeased.”

  “I should have been.” She looked away from me, embarrassed again.

  I turned her face back toward me. “Better get used to it.”

  She removed my hand from her chin and held it lightly in her own. Our eyes locked.

  “It’s been a wonderful weekend, John,” she said shyly. “It will take me a long time to figure it out.”

  I embraced her with one arm and drew her to my side. “I don’t think either of us will ever figure it out, April.”

  “I hardly know you”—she leaned against my arm—“yet I feel that I’ve always known you.”

  “Your dreams,” I said lightly.

  “I don’t mean it that way. I mean I know you better after thirty-six hours than people I’ve known for years.”

  “Do you like what you’ve discovered?”

  “Yes. Very much.”

  I tightened my grip on her.

  “Me too.”

  We said nothing for a moment, enjoying the peace of our tentative pledges.

  “I’ll see you in two weeks?” She looked up at me.

  “I’ll be in Italy by then, or on the boat to Italy.”

  “I’d forgotten,” she sighed. “Or maybe I hoped you’d changed your mind.”

  There it was. A perfect opportunity.

  “I’m afraid it’s too late.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll be back in early August.”

  “And I’ll see you then?” She brightened.

  Two months seemed like eternity, but not a long eternity.

  “You certainly will. And I’ll think of you every day that I’m in Rome.”

  “A couple of days a week will do.”

  “Nope, every day.” I kissed her, gently and tenderly. Now was no time for a repetition of last night’s passion.

  “Will you write?”

  “I sure will.”

  “Let me know your address.”

  “As soon as I get to Rome.”

  I knew the address already, but I wanted to think about whether I should tell it to her.

  She kissed me and ran out the door and down the steps.

  It was cold on the train riding back to Chicago. I thought that the young women in their light clothes would freeze in Jim’s Duesenberg. I worried about an accident.