But perhaps I exaggerate. Who looks good in one of these? And do I read too much of what I would later learn and of subsequent events into this picture? He is not a nice man. That does not mean that all his life he has been a man who enjoys giving pain, does it?
I put the picture back into the envelope. I still hate him. God forgive me for it. He’s been dead all these years. And he probably wasn’t to blame for most of what he did. He is nothing more than a short funny little man with a bald head.
He is funny until you examine his face. Then your heart skips a beat at what you see.
Hunger, raw, ungovernable hunger.
And hatred.
42
We broke up the week before Christmas.
It was a warm December day, temperature in the fifties. The snow was melting, the streets gloriously slushy, as if spring were just around the corner. One could pretend that the worst of winter was over. I suggested to Rosemarie, who had settled in her room in our house, that we walk over to Pedersen’s Ice Cream Parlor on Chicago Avenue near Harlem to celebrate our first quarter at the University.
“You just want to rub it in that you got four A’s and I got a B.”
“Yep.”
“They give you A’s,” she said, “because you have a reputation in the whole university for taking on faculty and getting away with it. They think you’re a genius.”
“Better that than they think I’m shanty Irish punk.”
I had taken on a faculty member who had made fun of Catholicism and won the whole class to my side. He ended up liking me. Hence my fourth A. It was General Meade and Coach Smith all over again.
So, we drank a toast in the best malts in Chicago Land, as the Tribune presumed to label much of the Midwest, to our future at the University.
Rosemarie seemed preoccupied. I had learned not to press her about her problems unless she gave a hint that she wanted me to.
I had two malts. My reputation would have suffered if I settled for anything less. She let me pick up the tab, which should have been a warning that something serious was about to happen. On the way out of Pedersen’s we encountered my St. Ursula classmates Leo Kelly and Jane Devlin, who I had heard were now a summer item up at Lake Geneva. Leo was a quiet kid who had left the seminary after three years and was now at Loyola University. Jane was a vivacious woman whose dark blue eyes sparkled with mischief. She was a taller and a somewhat more voluptuous version of my companion.
“Back from Germany, Chucky?” Jane began. “I hear you prevented World War Three while you were there.”
“A couple of times,” I said modestly.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” she went on. “Has he, Rosie?”
“More impossible than ever.”
“Two malts today?”
“Naturally.”
“Are you in school?” Leo asked.
“Not really. Rosemarie and I are both students at the University.”
“Notre Dame?”
“Chicago!”
“Wow! Do you like it?”
“He faked his way into four A’s this quarter.”
“Same old Chucky,” they said in chorus.
“You’re at Loyola, Leo?” I asked.
“I graduate this year. Then four years in the Marines. You were lucky to get off with two years.”
It would be much less than four years for poor Leo, who would disappear in Korea.
“He had a great time,” Rosemarie informed them. “Ran the whole Constabulary Regiment over there. Even the generals asked him for advice.”
They all laughed again.
Actually, generals had asked me for advice.
“I heard,” Leo continued, “that you won a medal over there and not just a theater ribbon. Legion of Merit?”
“What’s that?” Rosemarie demanded. “You never told me.”
“I never told anyone, except Dad. Somehow Janey found out and told Monica who told Jimmy, but it’s still a secret.”
“What did you get it for?”
“Won’t tell.”
“Leo?” She turned to him for an explanation.
“For extraordinary service in a position of grave responsibility.”
“Chucky!” the two women exclaimed. “You didn’t?”
“It was all a mistake, like winning that football game.”
“You have to tell us what you did,” Rosemarie warned me.
I’d better tell her.
“I helped break up a black market.”
“Was it dangerous?” Jane asked, wide-eyed.
“I banged up my knee, but they wouldn’t give me a Purple Heart.”
“How did you do that?” Rosemarie insisted.
“I was attacked by a parked car.”
More laughter.
We promised each other that we would get together in the spring, before Leo went off to the Marines.
“Marines!” Rosemarie exclaimed as we walked back to the O’Malley manse. “That could be dangerous.”
“He could be attacked by a parked car too.”
“Silly!” She slapped my arm.
“I’d say they’re in love.”
“No doubt about it.”
We never did get together at the lake. Leo was already on his way to Korea.
Rosemarie became silent as we sloshed through the melting snow. The sky was clouding over again and there was a chill in the air.
“I have four things to say,” she informed me.
“All right.”
“First, I am sorry that I let you and Peg down on Thanksgiving when you were arguing with the good April and Uncle John. I’ll make up for it.”
“Okay.”
“Second, you have to forgive Notre Dame and even Father Pius. You only pretend to be a hater, Chuck. But you’re too sweet even to pretend. Okay?”
Now the woman was preaching to me. Women do that.
“Okay,” I said doubtfully, knowing that I’d have to think about it.
“Well, at least think about it. Third, I wish you’d go back to your camera. You’re going to a great photographer someday. You won’t be able to escape it. You are too good and you like it too much. You’ll never be an accountant, not for long anyway. I don’t want to argue about it. I’m just stating a fact.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Maybe you’re right. I don’t think so, but maybe you are.”
She sighed. She had said that she didn’t want to argue about it, but of course she did. Actually, she was wrong. Or so I told myself then.
“Finally”—she took a deep breath—“I think we should stop dating.”
“Why?”
“There’s a chemistry between us, Chuck. When we were kids it made us fight. Now it makes us like each other. We’re a good team. We make each other laugh and we know how to make other people laugh, like Leo and Jane. Sometimes we help people out like Jimmy and Monica.”
“That’s bad?”
“There’s a sexual component to the chemistry. We play it very low-key. But it’s there.”
“A touch of it,” I admitted.
“But mostly we really like each other, we enjoy each other’s company, we have fun together. We’re good dates for each other. You make me laugh all the time.”
“This is bad?”
She nodded.
“Chuck, we pretend that we’re not dating, that we’re not really serious. The truth is that we’re very close to courting.”
“Huh?”
We crossed Augusta Boulevard. The north wind was blowing in our faces. We both shivered.
“Like Vince and Peg, without his social-class hang-ups.”
“Shouldn’t it be hangs-up?”
“Don’t distract me. I’m serious.”
“I can see that.”
“You may be ready for courtship, Chuck. I’m not. I’m too young and I have too many things I have to resolve.”
Like drinking too much.
“If you want to b
reak up,” I said slowly, “it’s your call.”
Twice in six months. I was on my way to being a perennial loser. Both times because women thought they were too young.
“It’s not breaking up, Chucky darling. I’ll still be around a lot, both here at home and out in Hyde Park. We can go out occasionally if you want. Or if I get an opera ticket. It’s just that I don’t think we should go out as steadily as we have been.”
“Okay.”
“Are you angry at me?”
“Rosemarie, how could I possibly be angry at you?”
“I realize that I must sound a lot like Cordelia.”
“It’s totally different.”
Suddenly it was totally different. When Cordelia dumped me, I felt relieved almost at once. Now I didn’t feel relieved at all. I didn’t want to lose Rosemarie. I had worried about her drinking. I had halfheartedly searched for an excuse to escape from what might be a trap. Now there was a valid excuse. I didn’t want to escape.
“How?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”
“It’s not that I don’t love you, Chuck…. I suppose that sounds like Cordelia.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Sure you’re not angry?”
“Why should I be angry if you’re doing something that you think you have to do?”
“You’re so quiet.”
“I’m surprised. I have to think about it for a while. Even after I think about it, I won’t be angry.”
“You are really sweet, Chuck my love.”
She kissed my cheek.
“She solved your problem for you, didn’t she?” Christopher asked me the next day at Berghoff’s as he systematically disposed of a dish of sauerkraut.
“Yep. I don’t have to worry anymore about falling in love with a drunk.”
“You don’t sound too happy about it.”
“Nope.”
“Why not? Don’t like a losing streak?”
“Nope.”
“You’re beginning to think maybe she’s worth the risk?”
“Maybe.”
“Think you can save her?”
“She has to save herself.”
“Without any help?”
“Nope.”
“Think you can get her back?”
“Maybe.”
“What makes you think that?”
“She looks like her heart is breaking.”
“Oh,” he said softly.
Then after a moment’s silence, he added, “And that gets to you?”
“Yep.”
“Breaks your heart.”
“Could be.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I can’t violate her wishes to cool it, can I?”
“Can’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I guess I’m no help,” Christopher sighed.
“Yes you are, Chris. You make me think.”
The problem was that I did not know how to begin to think about my Rosemarie problem.
Father John Raven was not much help either.
“Do you want her, Chuck?” he asked me when I stopped by St. Ursula’s rectory.
“Yes…No…I don’t know.”
“I have no doubt that if you want her and play your cards shrewdly enough, you can get her.”
“And the drinking?”
“That has to stop, Chuck. Do you think she’d stop it for you?”
“I don’t know…. Can she stop?”
“With your help, perhaps.”
“That’s not much.”
“What more can I say?”
“Dad quotes Grandma O’Malley that you shouldn’t marry anyone to save them, but only because it would be intolerable to live without them.”
“Sound advice.”
“If I can’t live without her, then I should pursue her and hope and pray that we can beat the booze and her evil old man together?”
“That’s one possibility.”
“Big ‘if.’”
“It sure is, Chuck. And a very big risk.”
A foolish risk, I told myself as I trudged home in the falling snow.
It hurts more to lose her than to lose Cordelia.
But maybe it’s the best outcome for both of us. Again.
43
Christmas 1949 at the crazy O’Malleys’ was a mess. Even the picture of the Romany women over the fireplace didn’t cheer us up. No one said anything about The Girl with the Harp in the library. We pretended it wasn’t there.
For much of the day it was the first unhappy family Christmas I ever experienced. What’s the point in being crazy unless you can celebrate it? Midnight mass in the old St. Ursula—the gym in which Rosemarie had toppled off the ladder on top of me at the May crowning when she was in eighth grade—was depressing because the new church had been scheduled to open for Christmas. It wasn’t Dad’s fault, but he was shame-faced when people asked him if the church would ever be finished.
“Next Christmas for sure.” He would try to smile.
“Blame the contractor, not him,” I would snarl at the offending parishioner.
“Hush, dear,” Mom would say. “Wasn’t the choir wonderful?”
Neither Peg nor I had the courage to drive home the sword: if they had reorganized the firm a year ago, they would have known that the contractor was too busy making money on a suburban development to fulfill his contractual commitments to St. Ursula.
But Mom and Dad both knew what we were thinking.
It was time that I reestablish diplomatic relations with God. In previous conversations, the Deity had not bothered to reply to me. On that particular night, He seemed ready to engage in a long conversation, though it was merely my imagination making up the responses. Maybe.
“Good evening,” I began during the carol singing.
“It’s morning, Christmas morning.”
“I understand.”
“It’s nice to see you back.”
“You noticed?”
“Oh yes…I notice everything, as you well know.”
“I know.”
“Rosie was right, you know.”
“Rosemarie.”
“I call her Rosie, okay?”
“You’re the boss.”
“I know.”
“What was Rosie right about?”
“About hate…That could be a bad habit if you don’t stop it now.”
“I can’t hate Notre Dame or Father Pius any more?”
“Nope.”
“I gotta forgive them?”
“If you expect me to forgive you.”
“That won’t be easy.”
“I didn’t say it would…. Also, she was right about your camera. Or cameras.”
Well, He didn’t rub it in and say that a woman had given me each of them.
“I can’t be an accountant?”
“I didn’t say that. I said that she was right when she said that you have to start using them again. You know that without my having to tell you.”
“I guess so.”
“Okay.”
“Was she right about breaking up?”
“It’s about time you got to that.”
“Well, was she?”
“Nope.”
“Nope?”
“Nope…I want Rosie.”
“Should God want a woman?”
“God wants everyone. I need help usually. It’s your help I need with Rosie. We both love her desperately, I more than you.”
“Ah.”
“She’s the best hint of what I’m like you’ll ever encounter. You must not let her get away.”
“Okay.”
“That’s not enough.”
“I’ll do whatever I can.”
“That’ll be enough. For the present.”
“Can I receive Communion tonight?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I turned my back on you.”
“You tried, but you rea
lly didn’t. No one can turn their back on me.”
“Won’t it be a sacrilege?”
“Am I a Dominican religion teacher?”
“I hope not.”
“Okay.”
“Why do you sound so much like me?”
“Because I have to work with your imagination.”
“You also sound a lot like Rosie.”
“That’s because she’s always in your imagination.”
Then He signed off.
“Thanks for getting me out of that place,” I shouted (mentally) after Him.
I made it all up? God did sound a lot like me when I’m in a certain mood. Or like Rosie when she’s in a certain mood. Excuse me, Rosemarie. Maybe I was just being honest with myself.
Anyway, I did receive Communion. When I told John Raven about our dialogue later, he laughed. “It was God all right, Chucky, even if He was talking through your imagination.”
“I know that.”
Then as now Catholicism messes up a lot of opportunities provided by its tradition, but midnight mass is so powerful a narrative symbol that even the most vigorously incompetent clergy can’t mess it up.
It has everything—the crib scene, evergreen trees, poinsettias, carols, maybe snow on the ground, young people home from college (even in 1949), engagement rings, joyous greetings after mass. I suspect that maybe half of the Catholic tradition gets passed on at Christmas and half of that at midnight mass.
Later I would try to make up to God by doing my book Midnight Mass, which turned out to my publisher’s surprise if not to mine to be a coffee table best-seller.
For symbol and for photographs you can’t beat renewal.
Dear God, how much we needed renewal that Christmas of 1949. And how ingenious Your response was to our needs.
I was still sulking over my expulsion. And not touching my cameras.
Michael was more silent than ever. Vocation problems, I thought. Who is the girl?
Jane and Ted would not be with us at all during Christmas Day. Doctor had threatened to cut off the allowance completely if Ted left the family home at all. He said he didn’t much care what Jane did because she had nothing to add to the McCormack family celebration.
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