Sean sighed. “You’re a very remarkable sixteen-year-old, Nora,” he said. “No, I don’t like the way that sounds. You’re a very remarkable woman.”
Nora leaned forward and touched his face with amazingly tender fingers. Time stood still. For a moment it seemed that the peace would never end. Then she broke the spell of the magic moment and said, with a laugh, “Young woman!”
Sean was confused by his reaction to her nearness. You’re a seminarian, he told himself. You’re going to be a priest. You shouldn’t feel this way about a girl. He retrieved The End of the Affair. He did not want to see the light in her eyes.
* * *
Jimmy McGuire and Sean Cronin sat on the edge of the raft watching the sun sink toward the horizon through the haze of Chicago.
“Sets earlier every day, doesn’t it?” said Sean.
“They call that the changing of the seasons,” replied Jimmy. “We morose Irish can make of it whatever we want, so long as we remember that after Christmas the days get longer again.”
Sean’s slim red-haired friend from the seminary was at Oakland Beach for a long weekend. His visit provided a welcome interlude, breaking the routine.
“Your golf game left a lot to be desired today,” Sean said accusingly.
Jimmy kicked at the waters of the lake. “My God, how could anyone play a good game of golf with Nora around? I’m sorry, I know she’s your sister, but a body like hers ought to be barred from the golf course.”
Sean laughed. “She’s not really my sister. And I’ll make her wear a very loose shirt tomorrow.”
“Don’t you dare!” Jimmy exclaimed.
“Then don’t blame me if she beats you tomorrow as badly as she beat you today.”
“Losing to Nora”—Jimmy grinned mischievously—“is more fun than beating anyone else. And I know she’s not your real sister, but if she isn’t a sister, what is she to you?”
Such shifts from the facetious to the dead serious were characteristic of Jimmy McGuire.
“I don’t really know,” Sean said slowly.
“Don’t you think you ought to find out?”
“I guess I’m trying to,” Sean said. He was alarmed that the intensity of his feeling for Nora was so obvious.
“You’re in very deep waters, Sean. If you’re not careful, you and Nora are going to get hurt.”
“I’ll never hurt Nora,” he said stubbornly. “Never.”
“Excuse my skepticism,” said Jimmy. “I don’t see how you can possibly avoid hurting her.”
* * *
Nora rested her head on the leather car upholstery as they watched An American in Paris on the drive-in movie screen. In the back seat of the Chevy there were smothered sighs from Maggie Martin and Tom Shields. Nora couldn’t understand how Maggie could neck with so many different boys. Poor Maggie. Everyone liked her, she was the life of the parties at which Nora stood shyly on the fringes. Yet Maggie did not like herself and would turn unpredictably petulant just when she had everyone’s attention and affection.
Her date, Tom Shields, was a tall thin young man with limp brown hair, destined to become a doctor like his father, Roy, the Cronin family doctor and longtime friend. Tom was too serious for fun-loving Maggie. He had gone to Quigley Seminary with Sean and would graduate from Notre Dame next year. He was as interested in conversation as necking, but Maggie didn’t think she was smart enough to talk seriously. So they necked instead.
Nora was not greatly concerned about the electricity that seemed to be leaping back and forth between her and Sean. The summer would soon be over and Sean would return to the seminary. Confident that Paul was still alive, she did not take seriously Uncle Mike’s plan that Sean should leave the seminary and, in a few years, marry her. She had to admit to herself, though, that the thought of being Sean’s wife was an interesting one.
Nora looked at Sean out of the corner of her eye. The movie was ending and he was removing the sound box from the car door. He was not strikingly handsome like Paul, but at six feet one, with a strong trim body, soft warm eyes, neat blond hair, and a cleanly carved face, Sean was more than merely good-looking—and when he looked sad your heart ached and you would do absolutely anything to bring back the magic smile. It occurred to Nora that she was glad she would never have to make a choice between the two brothers.
They dropped Maggie and Tom at Maggie’s house and returned home. It was an unusually hot night, and Sean proposed a walk on the beach. Nora was delighted.
“I think Tom’s hooked,” Sean said as they arrived at the bottom of the stairs on the sundeck. “He’s always been sweet on that little baggage, and she lets him do whatever he wants.”
“Baggage is not a nice word,” said Nora, kicking off her loafers. “And he does the things she wants him to do. They’re both hooked.” She felt the warm sand seep around her toes.
Then, they were in each other’s arms, kissing, at first awkwardly, hesitantly, and then fiercely.
“Sweeter than wine?” Nora asked after a few minutes, quoting one of the hit songs of the summer to cover her confusion.
“Sweeter than the finest German Eiswein,” Sean said hoarsely. He stroked the firm muscles of her back.
“Too warm for this clinging to each other,” she said into his chest.
“I guess so.” She felt as though they would stand there, holding each other, ankle deep in the sand of Oakland Beach, for the rest of eternity.
He tilted her chin up and brought his lips down to meet hers. His kisses became more demanding. His hands followed the contours of her body.
“Very, very nice, Sean,” she murmured through the haze into which she was sinking. “Too nice, I think.”
“Too nice,” Sean agreed heavily, pulling back from her. “I … I hope you’re not angry?”
“Of course I’m not angry,” she said, trying to sound relaxed. “It’s summer and we’re young, so we must cling to each other while we still can.”
* * *
Nora Riley considered the young woman opposite her in the mirror as she applied her eye makeup exactly the way she had been taught in modeling school. Not bad, she told herself.
When her instructor had told her that she had the body of a Greek goddess and the face of a Titian madonna, Nora had laughed. Then she had gone home and looked at herself in the mirror. She was astonished to find that the description was not altogether inaccurate. She had never expected to be anything more than plain.
“Getting ready for the country club dance?” Uncle Mike burst into her room, smiling cheerfully. “I don’t approve of all that makeup.”
“Then you wasted your money sending me to finishing school,” she said, “because I’m doing exactly what they taught me.”
“Sean has to leave the seminary,” he said, in his direct manner. “Now that Paul’s gone, he has to assume responsibility of the second-in-command.”
“I keep telling you”—Nora tried to keep the hand with her makeup brush steady—“that Paul isn’t dead.”
“Sure he’s dead,” said Mike harshly. “Sean is only kidding himself by going back to the seminary this year. I can tell that he’s sweet on you, and you can keep him from going back to the seminary if you want.” His voice was ingratiating. Nora adored Uncle Mike, despite all his faults. She wanted him to be happy. If marrying Sean would make him happy … but that was ridiculous.
“Sean is never in his life going to do for someone else,” she said decisively, “something that he has not already made up his own mind to do.”
* * *
Father McCabe looked up at Sean, an ominous anger showing on his lank, unshaven face. “Mistah Cronin, will you ever learn that there is not a special set of rules for the Cronin family simply because your father is a rich man?”
“I do my best to keep all the rules, Father,” Sean said, trying to control himself.
“Oh, you keep all the small rules.” Father McCabe scratched his bristly chin. “It’s the big ones you violate. You know you are not supposed to rec
eive mail from young women, yet such letters still come to you. How do you expect us to recommend you for ordination when you have such involvements?”
Nora again, he thought helplessly. Her letters were utterly harmless, not the slightest reference to the passions of last summer. “I’m not aware of receiving anything in the mail, Father,” he said uneasily, watching heavy snow flurries falling outside of the disciplinarian’s window.
“What do you call this, then?” Father McCabe triumphantly displayed a blue envelope and two pages of notepaper.
“I told you many times, Father, that Nora Riley is my foster sister. She writes to me once a month.”
“Sisters don’t write letters like this,” insisted McCabe, holding the letter between thumb and forefinger as though he were afraid it was contaminated with infectious germs.
“Nora is an innocent child,” Sean said. “I’m sure, Father, that you can’t find a single inappropriate phrase in her entire letter.”
“Oh?” said McCabe triumphantly. “What about the way she ends the letter?”
Sean sighed with momentary relief. As he had hoped, Nora was too discreet to say anything incriminating. “Father, she’s ended her letters to me for the three years I’ve been here at Mundelein with the words, ‘All my love.’ They don’t mean anything more than such words would mean from anyone’s sister.”
Father McCabe ignored his argument, demonstrating that it was effective. “You may write to her tonight and tell her that she is never to write you again as long as you are at this seminary. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Father.” Sean could hardly contain his anger. “May I have the letter so I can reply to it?”
“You certainly may not,” McCabe said brusquely. With three quick twists of his thick fingers, he tore up the fragile paper into tiny pieces and threw them in the wastebasket. “Now go to your room.”
Sean, his fists clenched in violent rage, pounded the desk in his room. That goddamned bastard. Why would anyone want to be a priest when a vicious fool like that had power? What right did he have to read Sean’s mail, to tear it up, to forbid Nora to write him?
Abruptly he grabbed his journal, gripped his pen in rage, and began to scratch angry words on its pages. Then, slowly, he calmed down.
I’m as bad as McCabe. Nora’s letters are innocent enough and so, for that matter, is Nora. But my feelings for her aren’t innocent. Not a day, not an hour, has passed over the last five months that I have not thought about her or felt the sensation of her lips pressed against mine. I’m hungry for her like a starving man is hungry for food, and I can’t persuade myself that my feelings are sinful. I suppose I ought to leave the seminary and marry her now, before Paul comes back and takes her away from me. I’ll tell McCabe after dinner that I’m leaving.
He pondered the words he had written. At the end of the seven-fifteen recreation period, he would corner McCabe and tell him what he could do with his seminary. Then he wrote a brief appendix to his decision.
We’re not supposed to ask for signs from you, and I’m not asking for a sign. I’ve made up my own mind. If you want to change it, that’s up to you. You’ll have to do it by 7:15 tonight.
Sean and Jimmy McGuire took a walk during the recreation period after dinner.
“I’m going to see the Moose at seven fifteen, Jimmy,” Sean said. “I’m leaving.”
“Don’t be a fool. Of course you’re not leaving.”
“Dad wants me to. I have to replace Paul.”
“I won’t discuss it,” Jimmy said. “You’re the only good seminarian in this whole miserable place. You keep the rules because you believe that they really are the will of God.”
“I’ve never told anyone, Jim, but I’m plagued by doubts all the time. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t need a sign that he’s out there and that he cares about me.”
“Shit.” Jimmy was unimpressed. “You think you’re an archangel or something? Everyone has doubts. You know as well as I do that doubt and faith are compatible. Hell, I heard you say that in class last week.”
“How can I go through life as a priest and not believe in God?”
“If you mean”—Jimmy was losing his patience—“how can you go through life as a priest plagued with doubts, the answer is, Why should you be different from anyone else? I’ll tell you what your problem is, Cronin: you’re mad at God because he took your mother away from you. Me, I wish I had a strong enough sense of God to be mad at him.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Sean conceded. “But I’m still leaving.”
“I won’t bet on it, because I don’t want to take your money away from you.” Jimmy sounded like a professor ending a difficult lecture to which the class had paid little attention.
* * *
Sean strode into his room at seven sixteen and threw the heavy pseudo-West Point overcoat that he was required to wear onto his bed. The last time he would have to put on that goddamned thing. Just before he stormed out of the room down to McCabe’s office, he noticed a tiny sheet of paper that had been slipped under his door—the carefully cut quarter size of typing paper that McCabe used for his notes. Sean picked it up impatiently.
Your father called this afternoon to say that the Defense Department has confirmed that your brother Paul is alive and a prisoner of war in North Korea.
BOOK II
Jesus, fully aware that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from the meal and took off his cloak. He picked up a towel and tied it around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel he had around him.
—John 13:3–5
CHAPTER FOUR
1953
“You can’t be brainwashed unless you have a brain.” Paul Cronin grinned engagingly. “They tried but gave up when they found they had nothing to work with.”
The group of young women around him, dressed in their Sunday morning summer dresses, giggled their approval.
Paul tilted his head and stuffed his hands in his trousers pockets. “They weren’t exactly pleasant folks, to tell you the truth,” he said soberly. “I’m glad it’s all over.… Come on, Sean, we’d better get home for breakfast before Aunt Jane has a fit.”
The gaggle of worshipers, eyes still shining, scattered. Sean got into Paul’s new Corvette, wondering at how little his brother had changed. A year of combat and a year and a half in a POW camp seemed to have touched him only lightly. There was perhaps a bit more strain around the eyes and a little more restlessness. Otherwise he was the same genial, gregarious Paul.
“What’s next for you, Paul?” Sean asked as the car turned down the lake drive. A thin haze hung over the lake already. It would be another humid windless day.
“I guess it will be politics, like Dad wants. I learned to make decisions and issue orders in the Marines. I’m good at it.”
There was a hint of seriousness in Paul’s gray eyes. Beneath the charm and the laughter there was ambition. Not, perhaps, a ruthless, compelling urge for power, but rather a relaxed low-key delight in the joys of victory.
“Law school, then?”
“Sure, why not?” Paul shrugged and turned the car into the long driveway. “But first I want to take a year off, see the country.”
“Dad won’t like it,” Sean said.
Paul turned off the ignition. “Speaking of Dad, he seems to have changed since I left.”
“Sometimes I think he’s like a rubber band that is stretching and stretching and—”
“Does he really expect me to marry that overgrown tomboy?” Paul interrupted.
“You’d better ask him.” Sean climbed out of the Corvette.
“Nothing against her,” Paul continued, smiling cheerfully and tossing the car keys into the air. “She just isn’t my kind of woman, if you know what I mean.”
“Not quite,” said Sean. “Anyway, Nora has a mind of her own.”
“I don’t think he means it,” Paul pocketed his keys. “He won’t insist.�
��
“Don’t bet on that, big brother.”
* * *
Paul Cronin enjoyed being a war hero. It kept his father off his back, and ever since he had come home from Korea, Paul had enjoyed more girls with less effort than all the rest of the years of his life put together. Maggie Martin was only one of his conquests.
They were in her parents’ house at Oakland Beach while the rest of her family was in Chicago. “Jambalaya” was playing somewhere in the background.
“Why don’t you get me another beer?” he asked, giving her his most winsome boyish smile.
“Sure, Paul,” she said. “Anything you want.”
Outside the window, a jagged lightning flash raced madly across the sky, briefly illuminating the restless waters of the lake. Then there was a roar of thunder.
“Here’s your beer, Paul,” she said, pathetically eager to please him.
“I’d like more than a beer, Maggie,” he said, rising from the couch and pulling her to him. He kissed her expertly, his hands caressing her back.
When it became clear that Paul would not be satisfied with only necking, Maggie at first tried to pull back. But the lure of Paul Cronin was too strong, and she finally gave in.
Later, soothing her sweat-drenched body, Paul realized that Maggie Martin, for all her wide-eyed blond innocence, was the most sensual virgin he had ever possessed. In fact, she was just about perfect—eager to learn and unbelievably hungry. There were more good times to be enjoyed with her, he thought, as he drifted to sleep, but he would have to make certain that she understood that there would never be anything more between them than just a good time.…
A Chinese bugle slashed the cool night air. Paul rolled over in confusion, trying desperately to clear his head of the effects of the beer he had drunk before his bout with Maggie. At first, the nightmare duplicated reality. Where was Makuch? Where the hell was that damn Polack? He twisted around in his foxhole, just as a flare exploded above him, then dropped with agonizing slowness into the smooth waters of the reservoir. Oh, my God.… Chinks, thousands of them, swarming up the side of the hill. Automatic weapon in one hand, hand grenades still attached to his belt, Paul squirmed out of the foxhole and began to run. The enemy was coming toward him. To hell with Makuch. To hell with the rest of the outfit. He ran in a crouch along the ridge. He had to get away. Then he tripped on a pile of loose rocks and plunged headlong down the side of the ridge. He had stumbled into a deserted .50-caliber machine-gun position. He rolled over in time to see a half dozen Chinks running toward him with bayonets in ready position. There were more coming. He grabbed at the gun, pulled the trigger, and watched as the Chinks collapsed in front of him bellowing with pain. The machine gun jammed. He fired his automatic. Then the nightmare took over. Maggie Martin, naked and screaming, was the first of the Chinks whose heads exploded in front of him.…
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