Younger Than Springtime

by Andrew M. Greeley

  The guy was sailing backward, feet off the ground, arms flailing, a cry of terror on his lips. He crashed against a table, rolled off it and tumbled to the floor.

  I glanced at Rosemarie, expecting that she would be crying. But her face was hard and grim. She held her hands, outside edge forward, at forty-five-degree angles, ready to continue the fight.

  Dear God, what have we done?

  A maelstrom of bodies swirled around us. The two men were hauled to their feet, threatened with terrible fates if they ever came into the bar again or even if they were seen in the neighborhood, and, on wobbly legs, forcefully ejected into the chill November sunlight.

  “Geez, kid,” Freddy said to me, awe in his voice. “That’s some girl you got there.”

  “I don’t got her, Freddy.”

  “She threw the guy like he was a little kid…really something. You’re really something too. That other guy didn’t know what hit him.”

  “I hope he wasn’t badly hurt.”

  “Boy, you two are really some team. I wouldn’t fool with her, kid, not if I were you.”

  “I have no intention, Freddy, of fooling with her.”

  Rosemarie was ice-cool, collected, in perfect possession of herself—just as I presumed the “revered master” had prescribed under such circumstances. She thanked her allies for their support, picked her coat up off the floor, slipped into it (with my ineffectual help), wished Wally a happy birthday, and with the aplomb of a queen empress, strolled out the door.

  Followed by her jester, who was trembling like the proverbial bowl of jelly.

  We crossed Woodlawn in silence. In the shelter of the shopfront at the stoplight, Rosemarie leaned against the wall and sagged.

  “First time that ever happened?”

  She nodded. “Like that anyway. Men make passes at pretty girls. Crude men make crude passes. They’d tell you I wanted it…blame it all on me. Maybe they’d be right.”

  “Huh?”

  “I wear a tight sweater, I come into a tough bar, I joke with the men, I push my way through the crowd…what kind of woman does that make me?”

  “I don’t understand, Rosemarie…I mean you had as much right to be there as they did. Wally and Freddy and the gang all respect you. Pretty breasts don’t make a woman a whore.”

  “Don’t they?”

  “They certainly do not. The dirt is in their minds, not in your body.”

  “Sweet Chucky Ducky.” She patted my cheek. “You always say the right thing.”

  Mind you, I had my full share of lascivious thoughts about her bosom.

  “The revered master would be proud of you.”

  “I must tell Peg,” she smiled wanly, “that it really does work…. Now, would you walk home with me? I want to take a little nap and get to work on my paper about Plato.”

  We walked the three blocks to her apartment quietly. I began to realize what a fool I had made out of myself.

  “I’m sorry, Rosemarie,” I said at the door to her building. “I made a real fool out of myself.”

  “Whatever are you talking about, Chucky? You were a hero again.”

  “Like I always am. You didn’t need me charging in like that. You were quite capable of taking care of those galoots yourself. Freddy and Wally and the guys would have protected you. I probably made things worse.”

  “Oh, Chucky Ducky.” She grabbed my arm. “You were so funny. If the revered master hadn’t taught us to concentrate at times like that I would have died laughing at you. Beer in their eyes! How wonderful!”

  I laughed too, despite myself. “Yeah, I suppose it was pretty funny. But I was unnecessary. You don’t need me to take care of you.”

  She patted my arm and released it. “Even if I didn’t need you, it was nice to have you there. It’s so good to know that someone will take care of you. Thank you, Chuck, thank you very much. Now I must have my little nap.”

  She bolted through the door and left me standing there, under the grim clouds that were scudding in from the prairies. How had I come to be cast in the “taking care” role?

  It had been a dumb scene, but, as Freddy had said, we were a pretty dangerous team.

  Rosemarie was not in the library on Tuesday.

  That night a kid who was in my econ class had phoned me. “O’Malley? I knew you lived in Oak Park. Hey, that lovely woman you study with in Harper? Well, I was in Knight’s bar until a few minutes ago. She’s drinking a lot. Shouting and arguing with people. That’s not safe for a woman in that bar, know what I mean?”

  “Thanks, Howard, I’ll be right out.”

  There were no expressways in Chicago, so the ride from Oak Park to Hyde Park required forty-five minutes.

  Rosemarie was behind the bar, her clothes disheveled, sound asleep and smelling like a brewery.

  “I didn’t know what to do with her,” the soft-spoken bartender told me. “A guy said he was going to call her boyfriend, a tough little redhead, he said. That you?”

  “My twin brother.”

  He paused and then laughed. “She’s a real looker. You shouldn’t let her come in this place alone.”

  “Ever try to argue with an Irish woman?”

  He laughed again.

  I woke her up, found her coat, pushed her arms into it, and dragged her back to her apartment. It was a disorderly mess—dresses, shoes, lingerie, books, notebooks tossed around. I helped her to remove her dress, dumped her into bed, and pulled the blanket over her.

  “Chucky, you’re an asshole,” she murmured as I turned out the lights.

  “At least you know who it was that took off your dress.”

  “A real asshole.” Her voice was slurred. “Why didn’t you leave me in the bar?”

  “That’s a very good question.”

  When she thanked me the next morning, she was properly contrite. I’m sure she didn’t remember the use of language that was strictly forbidden in the O’Malley house.

  “I’m glad I was there,” I had said fervently. If I hadn’t found her in the bar on Fifty-fifth, she might have been there all night or collapsed in the snow on the way home. Rosemarie needed a keeper all right, only it shouldn’t be me.

  “You didn’t take my slip off this time.” She nudged my arm.

  It was the first reference she had ever made to the incident at Lake Geneva.

  “Dress and shoes seemed to be enough for the occasion. Mind you, I thought you might do well with a nice warm bath!”

  “You’re wonderful, Chucky.” She squeezed my arm this time. “Simply wonderful.”

  “Why, Rosemarie?”

  “Why do I do things like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure. I become discouraged and I don’t care…but I won’t do it again. I promise.”

  I didn’t quite believe her, but I didn’t know what to say.

  At our Thanksgiving dinner she was nervous and quiet—her eyes ringed in dark shadows. Had she drunk herself into oblivion again?

  Moreover, our after-dinner, over-the-port confrontation with Mom and Dad was a failure, mostly because Rosemarie listened silently while I carried the ball and Peg tried to run interference for me.

  They were delighted to learn that they were not running short of money as they had feared; but they didn’t want to reorganize the office.

  “There isn’t enough room for all those people,” Dad said. “Mind you, Chuck, we appreciate the analysis. At least there’s one sound business head in the family.”

  “You could expand into the library for the time being and then build an addition in back in the spring. You are an architect and the house does need something in back to match the music room on the other side.”

  “That’s true, but we’d have to get a zoning permit.”

  “Just like you did for the music room,” Peg commented.

  “It’s such a change, dear.” Mom shook her head unhappily. “All those strangers in our house.”

  “Two more,” I said. “And they’d be i
n the office wing. You’d have as much privacy as before.”

  “I don’t know; what do you think, Vangie?”

  “Well, it makes economic sense.” He gestured at my neat books. “As Chuck has proven. Maybe we can think about it in the summertime when we find out whether this recession is going to get worse. I’d hate to have to cut back after expanding.”

  “This really isn’t the time to think about a change.” Mom shook her head. “Is it, dear?”

  Peg signaled me to lay off, wise advice.

  “Well, so long as you think about it.” I abandoned ship quietly. “There’s no need for immediate action. You’ve been doing fine for almost five years this way. I only wish you could find more time to enjoy your success.”

  “We’ll certainly think about it,” Dad agreed, glad that the troubling discussion was over.

  “And we’re very grateful for you help, Chucky,” Mom chimed in. “You’re so smart about these money things.”

  “He takes pretty good pictures too,” Rosemarie said glumly.

  “They’re superstitious,” Peg whispered to me later. “Afraid that if they try something new fate will take it away from them again.”

  “I guess…Hey, what’s the matter with Rosemarie?”

  “She’s down on herself again.” Peg shrugged as though it were a minor matter. “By the way, she tells me that you are sensational in barroom brawls.”

  “And without help from any revered master either.”

  Christopher and I went to the first screening of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre on Friday morning, not early enough to escape half the adolescents in the city—none of whom were capable of understanding the subtle ironies of the B. Traven/John Huston classic.

  At lunch at Berghoff’s, over two sauerkraut sandwiches, we debated the question of who Traven really was. I held out for the theory that he was in fact Jack London, who had only pretended to die.

  There was no response to such an argument—erroneous as it now turns out—other than some literary similarities, but I found it sufficiently bizarre to be amusing and to twist Christopher’s logical, reasonable Teutonic mind.

  “So how is your love affair with the Clancy child progressing?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “It is not a love affair, Christopher,” I insisted. “It is rather a modest friendship, remarkably free of passion.”

  “Oh?”

  “We enjoy each other’s company. We study together and occasionally eat together and on very rare occasion attend some cultural work together. Nothing more.”

  “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”

  “It’s true. We hold hands on occasion or extend our arms around each other. Our kisses at the end of an excursion, I could hardly call it a date, are very gentle.”

  “Not nearly as satisfying as your exchanges with Cordelia or Trudi?”

  I figured I’d better tell the truth.

  “Far more so.”

  “Aha!” he said triumphantly. “And you are very gentle and tender with her because you figure that’s all she’s ready for right now!”

  “I don’t want to hurt her,” I pleaded.

  “So speaks a man who is really in love,” he insisted.

  Then I told him about the bar brawl and Rosemarie’s retreat from the world for two days.

  “You didn’t call her that night?” he asked.

  “Well, I didn’t think about that.”

  “Or the next day?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “You didn’t go over to her apartment to see if she was sick?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Charles, even if you don’t love her, wasn’t that pretty thoughtless?”

  “I didn’t want to embarrass her, know what I mean?”

  “It would have given you an opportunity to clear the air about her drinking.”

  “I don’t want to clear the air,” I said stubbornly. “If she wants to become a fall-down drunk like her mother, that’s her problem not mine.”

  Christopher shook his head. “Sometimes I don’t understand you, Charles, I really don’t.”

  “Sometimes I don’t understand myself either.”

  I should either expel Rosemarie from my life or assume some responsibility for our friendship. Christopher was right. Why had I not thought of calling her? Why was I so triumphant at the possibility that she had gone on another binge?

  I should stay away from Harper library till the end of the quarter—only two more weeks.

  Monday morning, bright and early, I was at our table waiting for her to appear.

  When she came she was radiant and cheerful, bright summer sunlight in the midst of the winter’s first major snowstorm.

  40

  We all went to the Rizzo-Sullivan wedding. It was the first time I had been in church since I was ejected from the Golden Dome. I ostentatiously refused to go to Communion.

  Rosemarie was displeased.

  “They’ll think you and I are doing something sinful,” she whispered.

  “I should be so fortunate!”

  “Shame on you.”

  I realized that my anger at the Catholic Church could not go on much longer. I would never make a good Mediterranean anticlerical.

  The Irish are not very good at that sort of thing.

  The wedding was a massive celebration, much to the delight of Jim’s numerous family. Sal the Pal appeared in full three-piece navy blue pin-striped glory—complete, would you believe, with spats.

  Monsignor Mugsy and Father Raven held their own over the murmuring congregation but only just barely.

  “I hear,” Rosemarie said, as she drove us out to Butterfield, “that Big Tom has done a complete turnaround. He thinks Jimmy is a wonderful guy.”

  We were in her car because she informed me that it was “unthinkable” that they would let my car into the club’s parking lot.

  “Who did you hear that from?”

  “Father Raven, whom else?”

  I almost corrected her and then, after a quick review of the appropriate grammar, realized that as always she was right.

  “He appreciates the irony of that change?”

  “Naturally. He doesn’t understand what happened, however.”

  “I wouldn’t believe the bastard.”

  “Father Raven does.”

  That made it official.

  “He wants us to be gracious and forgiving. I said I would but that I wasn’t sure about you.”

  “Forgive him! He almost killed me!”

  “Father Raven says that forgiveness is the essence of Jesus’s message. He forgives us everything and so we’re supposed to forgive everyone, just like Our Father says.”

  “You win,” I said. The Lord knew well how much forgiveness I needed.

  In the receiving line we were hugged and kissed by the bride and groom, both of whom insisted that we were responsible for the happy day.

  They didn’t know the half of it.

  Big Tom shook hands warmly.

  “You know, you guys were right. He is a hell of a fine guy!”

  “You don’t mind a dark-skinned grandchild?”

  “A healthy grandchild will be all that matters.”

  “You’ll get a bill for our services,” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” he said with a broad smile. “I’ll take care of that eventually. I owe you…And I mean that positively.”

  “He didn’t even ask that we tear up the letter.”

  “He knew we wouldn’t.”

  In the midst of all that joy, there was sadness, heartrending sadness.

  When Rosemarie drifted away with Peg for the women’s room, I wandered around the vast club. In one of the small rooms, I encountered Jenny Collins. She was slumped in a chair, head and shoulders bowed. She looked like a little girl S’ter had banned from school for misbehaving.

  “Where’s Tim?” I asked stupidly.

  She looked up. Her eyes were dry, her face twisted in anguish.

&n
bsp; “I’m so glad to see you, Chuck…Tim’s gone.”

  “Gone!”

  She handed me a handwritten note on lined paper.

  “Jenny, I’m leaving. I’ll never come back. Forgive me. Don’t wait for me. Tim.”

  Trembling, I sat down on the chair next to her.

  “What happened, Jenny?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing. Everything. We had begun to love each other, I mean seriously love each other. We didn’t make any plans exactly. I didn’t want to push him. He was the one who talked confidently about our future. Then we got the invitations to this wedding. He seemed delighted to be my date…. Then I got this note in a plain envelope.”

  “The jerk!” I said angrily.

  “Don’t blame him, Chuck. He tried.”

  Was I to blame anyone?

  “I’m sure he did. Did you talk to Dr. Berman?”

  “He couldn’t tell me much for ethical reasons. He only said that it was as much a surprise to him as it was to me.”

  “I’m so sorry, Jenny.”

  “Thank you, Chuck. I’ll be all right. I’m the resilient type.”

  “I don’t doubt that, Jen. One tough Irish woman.”

  She smiled sadly.

  “My question is whether I should wait for him. What do you think?”

  It didn’t take me long to think about that question.

  “A month or two, Jenny. No more. I’d take him at his word.”

  She nodded. “So would I.”

  I told Rosemarie only after we had left Butterfield.

  I had expected her to be angry, but she was not.

  “High-risk prospect, Chuck,” she said softly. “Poor guy.”

  “Poor Jenny.”

  “She knew the risk she was taking…. It’s just like the risk you’re taking with me.”

  She would have surprised me no more if she had stuck a knife into my stomach.

  “I’m no risk-taker, Rosemarie.”

  “The hell you’re not.”

  41

  I was indeed a risk-taker, more than I realized.

  I look at a picture of Jim Clancy from an article in the business section of the Daily News at the end of that year. Clancy’s investments in hotels in Las Vegas are described. The names of his colleagues have a suspicious First Ward look to them. The Outfit. Clancy argues that gambling is not wrong. Rather it is entertainment. And provides a tax base for “worthy projects.” The picture makes him look like an Outfit killer, a gross little man who might hide in an alley waiting for a target to walk by. The eyes are the eyes of a psychopath, devoid of emotion or conscience.