Moreover, I vowed I would not permit my camera to become the equivalent of Dad’s paintbrush and Mom’s harp—essentially distractions from the serious business of keeping the architect business running smoothly.
“Chucky Ducky,” Peg told me on one of those autumn weekends in 1949, her eyes glowing with admiration. “You’re the craziest O’Malley of them all.”
My life since then would prove Peg an uncannily accurate prophet. I can’t quite figure out how it all happened.
There was trouble in the house of the crazy O’Malleys on those October weekends in 1949. Michael seemed more withdrawn and reflective than ever. Dad and Mom were under great strain to complete the construction of the new St. Ursula’s Church, our parish church. Dad had won prizes for the design, but the contractors who were supposed to be building it were both incompetent and arrogant since the president of the company was a nephew of the late cardinal. Jane and Peg had romantic difficulties.
I had found Peg in the music room of our sprawling house about nine o’clock on that Saturday morning. Dressed in brown slacks and a blue Notre Dame sweatshirt, she was studying the score of a Brahms sonata.
“Isn’t my alma mater playing the hated Trojans today?” I removed a stack of harp music from one of the chairs in the room and seated myself on it.
“You mean Leon Hart’s team?” She grinned as she picked up her violin.
“And Vince Antonelli’s?”
“Who’s he?” She wrinkled her pert nose. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of him.”
“Oh?”
“He thinks we broke up.” She adjusted the violin under her chin.
“But you haven’t?”
“We’ll break up only when I agree we’ve broken up.” She sighed and rested the violin on her lap. “And I haven’t said that yet. You’re playing tennis with Rosie today?”
“I’ll do what I’m told. But you and Vince—”
“I hear”—her eyes flared—“that you give him the same advice Chris Kurtz gives you.”
“It applies to him, not to me.”
“He’s a dear boy.” She sighed again. “And I don’t propose to let him get away. But this social inferiority stuff would try the patience of a saint.”
“He’ll call up by tomorrow night and apologize?”
“Presumably.”
“And you want me to stay out of it?”
“Oh, no, Chucky.” She poked my ribs with her bow. “Keep preaching what you don’t practice. It suits me fine.”
That morning, however, Peg seemed a bit more disturbed than she was prepared to admit. I resolved that I’d warn Vince that people do fall out of love, especially when they grow weary of the same false song being sung over and over again.
“Too good for the Antonellis and not good enough for the McCormacks? Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”
Peg laid aside her bow, put the violin on the table, and folded her hands on her lap.
“Big difference. Vince’s stuff is a bore but it’s minor. If he doesn’t drop it, we won’t get married. Jane and Ted are already married. Doctor is trying to dictate her choice of an obstetrician.”
“And?”
“Ted is arguing that Doctor is right.”
“The jerk better make up his mind.”
“Remember how we put Doctor down at the wedding?”
“Great fun. It was all your doing.”
“Chucky Ducky, you were the ringleader.”
Not true, but you learn not to argue.
As we recalled our put-on of “Doctor” at the wedding reception, I studied my sister’s animated face in the glow of the autumn morning sun through the French windows of our music room, head tilted, hand under chin. I saw the perfect moment for a shot. But, not having my camera, I did not take the photo. Indeed there was no film in any of my cameras. I had not taken a single shot since I won the prize. I would not permit a silly hobby to seduce me away from my serious career.
A critic once wrote of my work, “It is in no sense a negative comment to say that O’Malley may be the best snapshot photographer in the world.” Later enemies transformed the comment to say that I was only a snapshot taker. Basically the remark is correct. I can do the usual technical things with camera, film, and developing chemicals that anyone can do. But what makes me different from a lot of photographers is that I have an instinct for exactly when to push the shutter button. No, let me be more precise: I sniff the crucial second coming even before it appears.
Edward Weston said it took him years of looking at light, texture, and form before he “saw.” I was lucky; I “saw” even before I ever picked up a camera. I often see, as I did the lovely lines and planes of Peg’s face that Indian summer morning, even though I don’t have a camera. I guess you can say that I became a photographer against all my better judgments because my “second sight” forced me to take pictures.
There were some humans involved too.
Sometimes the “sniffing” works better than others. Perhaps I remember that Saturday morning so clearly today because the “smell” of shape and light and texture was so acute that day.
Or maybe only because it was the first time I ever won a tennis set from Rosemarie.
Our laughter about routing Doctor that Saturday before Halloween was interrupted by the appearance of a young woman in tennis garb carrying a tray with cornflakes and bananas in one hand and a coffeepot in the other.
“Breakfast time, children; what’s so funny?”
“Doctor!” we said together.
“Bad man.” Rosemarie was not amused. “Bad man.”
She then dragged me off to the courts at Skelton Park, bordered that pre-Halloween day by oak and maple trees glowing in orange and gold. Rosemarie was a natural athlete. She picked up a tennis racket and held it without any reflection in just the right grip. She swung a golf club with an easy, unselfconscious swing. Her muscles were solid and her grace and balance was effortless. Rosemarie was a winner who did not like to lose. I was a loser who did not like to lose.
(Some of the muscle development was the result of jujitsu—as we called it then—training from a Japanese American veteran of the Italian campaign called respectfully “revered master.” Peg and Rosemarie must have been among the very first American women to take the martial arts seriously.)
She was, moreover, a good teacher, even when her pupil was doomed from birth to be forever clumsy. He did not, be it noted for posterity, object to lessons from a young woman, especially a very pretty young woman who found more than one occasion in which it was necessary to put her arm around him in order to facilitate her instructions.
Then he had the ill grace to win a set, partly because of luck, partly because his teacher was weary from having won three already that morning, and partly because he wasn’t completely clumsy.
Rosemarie was not amused.
“I’m sure that last serve was in.” She tossed a maroon sweater around her shoulders. “I think you cheat.”
“Would I cheat?” I sat next to her on the bench.
She considered me suspiciously. “I suppose not. Anyway, I won’t be a bad loser. You played real good.”
“Very well too.”
“Shut up.” She shoved my arm, none too gently, with her racket, now securely protected in its press (where I put it immediately after the last point).
“Yes, teacher.”
“You are definitely a fraud…admit it, you did try to score the touchdown in the last game with Carmel. You weren’t just running away from their linemen, were you?”
“Uh, I just wanted to escape them when Vince’s blocked pass tumbled into my hands.”
“I know that’s the public story, but I don’t believe it. I think you deliberately won that game and that you enjoy being a hero and that you enjoy even more pretending that you’re not a hero.”
“Me?”
“You…” The racket poked me again. “And when you fished me out of the lake after the prom, you told everyone that the water wa
sn’t deep and I wouldn’t have drowned anyway.”
“It wasn’t deep.”
“I could have drowned in a bathtub that day.”
“You were pretty heavy then. Baby fat, I guess. It would have been hard to pull you out of a bathtub.”
“Beast!”
“Me?”
“You.” No poke this time. Instead she wiped the sweat off her forehead and slipped her sweater on. “Put on your Ike jacket. I don’t want you to catch cold.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Is there something wrong with my knees, Chucky? Why are you staring at them that way?”
I felt my face become warm. “Pretty knees, nice architecture, right fabric, good light. If I crop the shot here”—I traced a pattern above and below her crossed knees—“I could do a pretty good abstract design.”
“Really?” She considered her knees with interest. “Anyone’s knees?”
“No, your knees. They’re the only ones here.”
“But you don’t have your camera.” She transferred her gaze to me. “Do you just go around seeing shots?”
I nodded. “Even before I owned a camera. I guess that’s why I started taking pictures.”
“Really?”
“Really.” I took her hand and dragged her to the other side of the court. “Now isn’t that maple gorgeous, every shade of red and gold and orange?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Now, come over this way; duck down here, next to this bench, and kind of squint through the frame my hands make. See what I mean?”
“Oh, Chucky, it’s so gorgeous that it’s scary. You see things that way all the time?”
“Sometimes more than others, especially on days when I beat stuck-up girls at tennis.”
“Chucky the accountant,” she sighed. “All right, have it your way. Come on, let’s walk home. Tell you what.” She unbuttoned her sweater and began the task again, this time taking care that each button went into the proper buttonhole. “I have an accounting job for you.”
“Oh?”
“Take charge of your parents’ records. They don’t have any idea how much money they’re making or losing or whether they’re broke or wealthy.”
“I thought Mrs. McAteer was keeping their books.”
“Mrs. McAteer is one of the best bookkeepers of the late eighteenth century. Moreover, she’s senile.”
“Mom won’t want to hurt her feelings.”
I didn’t like Rosemarie’s idea. What if I found that they were broke or hopelessly in debt? Or owed the government money? Well, better me than the IRS.
“You can soft-soap her like you do every other woman. Make her think she’s teaching you how to do accounts, just like”—her eyes lit up with mischief—“you make me think I’m teaching you how to use your backhand.”
“Who me?”
“You.” Her racket resumed its assault on my defenseless ribs.
A battered old black 1942 Ford was parked on Fair Oaks Avenue in front of our house.
“Gosh.” Rosemarie pointed at it in disgust. “I’m surprised they let a car like that on the streets here in Oak Park.”
“Not overnight.”
The available family was gathered in the music room, the usual assembly point. Michael was at school, Quigley having class on Saturday in those years to protect seminarians from association with the laity. Mom and Dad, Peg, and Jane and Ted were waiting for us.
“We thought you’d like some nice apple cider, dears.” Mom peered at us over her glasses. “Before the ceremony.”
“What ceremony?”
Ted had his arms around Jane’s expanding waist, he proud, she content, both of them dizzily in love with one another. How could Doctor fight that?
Or maybe the question was, could that finally beat Doctor?
“Just a little ceremony. Now drink your cider first and eat a doughnut.”
“One, Chucky,” Peg insisted.
“As many as he wants, dear.”
“That means every doughnut in the world.” Rosemarie drained her cider glass. “I’m ready. Let’s start the ceremony.”
“I’ve written a little poem.” Dad cleared his throat.
There were a few boos: Dad’s doggerel demanded boos. In their absence he would have been disappointed.
“Hush.” Mom began to pluck at her harp.
We come to honor Chucky this Octoberfest
Of our second-born children surely the best
Kinky redhead, camera hero, always filled with zest
At present signs the last one to leave our family nest.
Peg and Rosie applauded; Mom increased the beat on her harp. Poor Ted was trying unsuccessfully to control his laughter.
Each day he journeys to Moscow Tech
Through storm and rain and snow by heck
And comes home again at night a wreck
So long an El ride, a pain in the neck.
We all groaned. Dad beamed contentedly. Moscow Tech was what the Chicago Irish called the University in the totally mistaken assumption that it was a radical institution.
We know you’re too poor to afford a motor car
Chuck, caught in the Depression you still are,
Though inflation is the worse threat by far
And you our prize-winning camera star.
“What’s this leading to?” I demanded.
Peg and Rosemarie cackled derisively.
It is not our intent to mock or tease
We want your daily ride to have more ease
Since you’ll only take a bag of fleas
Chuck, here for your battered Ford, the keys.
Mom, joined quickly by Peg and Rosemarie, sang “My Merry Oldsmobile,” an inaccurate but in their mind an appropriate song. Then they turned to “Some Enchanted Evening.” There was hugging and kissing and congratulations.
I had been mouse-trapped. Like it or not, I was stuck with a car. I had no choice but to accept it graciously. Well, graciously for me.
“Gee, I was expecting a Cadillac. Or maybe a Benz.”
Boos from the assembly.
“But I’ll make a deal with you: Mom and Dad, I’ll accept this Halloween treat on the condition that you let me get some practice for my accounting career by working on your books.”
Rosemarie beamed and nodded her head in approval. Sometimes, Chucky Ducky, you show a few signs of intelligence.
Mom frowned. “I don’t know, Chucky dear. We don’t want to hurt Mrs. McAteer’s feelings.”
“Mrs. McAteer is one of the most accomplished bookkeepers who ever retired from Sears. I’ll just explain to her that I want her to teach me accounting the way Rosemarie teaches me tennis.”
The latter worthy blushed and rolled her eyes in feigned dismay.
So, it was arranged. Just the way Rosemarie Helen Clancy wanted it to be arranged.
That night after supper the family was wasting time as it usually did over a bottle of port—a special bottle opened to commemorate Chucky’s “new” Ford. I drank apple cider. Unfermented apple cider.
The phone rang. Since no one else even heard it, I slipped off into the living room to answer it (that was in the days when even a big house had only one phone).
“Crazy O’Malley residence, least crazy speaking.”
“Chuck…”
Vince, naturally.
“So you slaughtered the evil Trojans.”
“Sure did.” He didn’t seem too happy about it.
“You’re an idiot, Vince.” I continued my practice of offering him the same advice that Christopher gave me—appropriate in Vince’s case but not in mine. “You’re never going to find a better girl or one who loves you so much. If I were her, I’d tell you to creep back into your hole in the ground with all the other Neapolitans who are ashamed of their heritage.”
“I know,” he said humbly. “I’ve been acting like a jerk.”
“‘A damn fool’ would be a better expression. I don’t know why she puts up with you.”
“I don’t know why either…I don’t suppose she wants to talk to me.”
“I don’t think she should want to talk to you, Vince. But I suppose she will. Don’t go away; we’re having one of our affluent Irish orgies and I may have to drag her away from it.”
I ambled back into the dining room. Peg caught my eye as soon as I came in the door. So, she had heard the phone too.
“The Neapolitan.” I jerked my head in the direction of the phone.
Peg thundered by me like she was running for the finish line at Arlington Park.
“ ’Bout time, the big jerk,” Rosemarie murmured.
“Hush dear.” Mom raised a finger to her lips. “Men are that way.”
In bed that night I did not wonder if the car and my assignment to straighten out the crazy O’Malley family accounts were Rosemarie’s ideas.
Obviously they were.
38
“Cordelia,” I said urbanely, “this is Rosemarie Clancy…Rosemarie, this is Cordelia Lennon, a friend of mine from the Golden Dome.”
My date smiled genially and extended her hand.
“I’m very happy to meet you, Cordelia,” she said cordially. “I’m interested in what a musician like yourself thinks of the soprano.”
We held all the cards. I had caught Cordelia off guard in the lobby of the Chicago Opera House.
“Cordelia, great to see you again! How are things going at Compact?”
Her usual savoir-faire deserted her.
“Chuck…”
Her date was someone named Chad who went to Northwestern Law School, at least half a foot taller than me. He seemed utterly bored at the prospect of wasting time with shanty Irish from the West Side of Chicago, even if one of them was totally gorgeous in a black cocktail gown with thin straps.
Trying to recover her poise, Cordelia stumbled again. She ignored both our questions.
“It was so unfair what they did to you at Farley Hall, Chuck. So terribly unfair…Are you in school?”
Christopher had not told her. Good for him.
Rosemarie had made me dress up for La Traviata, gray double-breasted suit, white shirt, conservative tie. I would have been thoroughly presentable if she had been able to do something with my hair.
Younger Than Springtime Page 38
