When the phone rang the next day, I was sitting on the front porch of my parents’ home on Lathrop Avenue in River Forest on a rainy autumn afternoon in September 1968, still trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Only three years ago, the Church had seemed embarked on historic and exciting changes. Now the whole process of growth and development had ground to a halt. The changes would continue of course, but the Vatican was no longer directing the course of events. It was either trying to play catch up or pretending that everything was normal again.
Mom came out on the porch and told me that the Chancellor of the Archdiocese was on the phone. I hated him. He had sat at the same table as I had when the Cardinal was in Rome and was the first one to say bluntly that the man was crazy. Yet he served him with total fidelity.
“The Cardinal wants to see you this afternoon,” he began bluntly. “Get down to the house on North State this afternoon at four-twenty.”
“Fuck you and fuck him too.”
“What!”
“I’m busy this afternoon. Tell him I’ll be there tomorrow.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Whoever I am, I have not sold out to evil like you have.”
I had nothing to do that afternoon, but I was not about to be treated like a cog in a machine. I was perhaps too harsh on the Chancellor. He would have argued that he was trying to protect the Archdiocese from worse harm.
The Cardinal was an hour and twenty minutes late for our appointment the next day, which meant that for him he was early. Astonishingly, he did not charge in with his usual bluster.
“Pat!” His fat face relaxed in a happy grin. “Great to see you again! I want you to know that I think you did a great job over there. It was a big mistake. I told the Pope he’d live to regret it. Don’t worry about your career, I won’t let them do anything to you.”
I was quite sure that he had told others just the opposite and that he had supported the Pope completely.
“Thank you, Cardinal.”
He was, I feared, much more dangerous when charming. What did he have up his sleeve?
“This is a terrible job I’ve got here. Not enough good priests to go around. You know St. Regina’s parish.”
“Sure.”
It was by many accounts the finest parish in the Archdiocese, a suburban community of college-educated business men and professionals. The people were reputed to be generous, enthusiastic, dedicated.
“The old man up there is something of a saint. But he’s senile too. Crazy. The people like him but they don’t want him as pastor any more and I can’t blame them.”
“I’ve heard there are problems.”
I still didn’t see what was coming.
“So I wonder if as a personal favor to me you’d go up there and take over for a while. It might be good to get back in touch with a parish again. Only till we get your career back on track.”
I was astonished. He was offering me just what Jane said I needed. Later I would realize that he wanted to keep me out of Rome, just as he wanted to keep all his priests out of anything that would bring them attention. Moreover, he thought that he would look bad if someone coming back from an important assignment elsewhere was not rewarded with an honorable appointment. Crazy, but for me grace.
“I think that’s just what I need, Cardinal. Sure I’ll accept the assignment. As Pastor, not as administrator.”
I was not so astonished as to trust him completely.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’ll get the letter off to you tomorrow.”
Out in the chill rain on North State Parkway, I felt wonderful. I would be able to see Jane often. And my family. Get to know my nieces and nephews. Play tennis with Maggie and Jerry. Spend some summer time at the Lake.
With Jane.
I did indeed play tennis with her often and also helped her to hold on through the agonies of the loss of her two children. I fell even more in love with her, but the thought of leaving the priesthood for her would remain deep in the subtenanean cellars of my consciousness for the next several years.
I continued to hear from Leo with increasing frequency in those years as he moved from Santa Barbara to Brandeis and then to Harvard. His marriage was on the rocks, if it had ever been off the rocks. Yet stubborn Catholic that he was, he stuck with it to the bitter end; giving up when Emilie in effect threw him and the luminous Laura (as he described her) out of the house.
Leo could verbalize about it—he could verbalize about anything—but he could not comprehend a wife who defined herself in competition with him and was envious of his success.
I did wonder occasionally whether eventually Leo and Jane would find for themselves a second chance. Part of me hoped they would and part of me resented the possibility.
1978
Jane
An ambulance siren woke me in the middle of the night. Some poor person being rushed to the medical center after a heart attack with a family desperately praying for life.
Briefly I joined my prayer to theirs.
The siren had jolted me out of a terrifying nightmare—an infrequent event in my nights. I had glimpsed the terrible reality of my hidden insight.
An insight about what?
And why do I have this headache?
Our lunch conversation rushed back into my consciousness. What an incredible mess. But somehow exciting too, filled with promise of maybe making some bad things good.
I hadn’t told him that I suspected that Martha and Iris had virtually raped Elizabetta Nicola. Elizabetta had always been extra nice to me in subsequent years, as if she were making up for something. At best she would be a reluctant recruit to such schoolgirl games—enjoying the pleasure perhaps but far more repelled by it than the other too.
My nightmare somehow had been about the Nicolas. There had been something very wrong in that charming family too. A different kind of wrong.
But that didn’t seem relevant. There was something else in the nightmare.
Maybe I should tell him all about my suspicions concerning the Nicolas. It would be silly to be too delicate now. We must somehow find out the truth.
But that wasn’t the secret insight that part of me was trying to hide. It was in the nightmare too, mixed with my fears for Angie.
I put on a robe and walked over to the window. I would have to invest in something more erotic in the next few days. Just in case.
I opened the drapes a couple of inches and looked out on the Drive. Even in early morning hours there was a steady stream of traffic. Beyond in the darkness the flat Lake was ominous and still, a great force threatening to erupt at any time when the promised squall line came through.
A new robe. New lingerie. Sexy in an understated and elegant way. A man around the house. Apartment. Whatever. A man with his distracting presence and his persistent demands, with his monumental insensitivies and his foolish fears.
Conceited vulnerability, that’s what a man is.
I opened the window. The outside air was stale and motionless, a heavy hand on the city. In the distance however faint flashes of lightning crackled across the sky.
I closed the window and drew the drapes.
He’s different though. Has been since that day I tried to buy him the ice cream bar. Special delicacy combined with special passion. It was good he was wearing that medal finally. Maybe he was coming to terms with the truth that he was a hero. A sweet and tender hero.
Well he might do. On approval.
I grinned. All things considered it wouldn’t be bad to have him here right now because it be would a while before I fell back to sleep.
Was he a heavy sleeper? How would he react if I woke him with an insistent sexual demand?
Well, that wouldn’t matter. He’d make love to me anyway. No more of this business of a man who isn’t interested in love in the middle of the night.
No way, José.
Otherwise he’d get no TLC when he woke from his bad dreams.
This was silly non
sense. Life with my funny little redhead wouldn’t be like that at all. The real question is whether I would ever dare to wake him for early hour sex. What if I were not good at it? Phil said I wasn’t.
Then I gasped. The truth from which I had been fleeing flooded my consciousness. Of course. Why hadn’t anyone seen that. Not even Maggie. But it was obvious. Once you knew that his assignment to Korea was the result of a plot.
I reached for the phone to call him and realized that I didn’t even know his number. Or his address. How many Leo Kellys were there in the phone book? And he probably wasn’t listed.
I’d call him first thing in the morning.
What would he think when I told him what had really happened.
Leo
Rain was beating down on the Quadrangle as I hurried from an early morning meeting with the president at the Faculty Club (about a fund-raising appeal) to my office in the administration building.
I had not slept well. For hours I had tossed and turned, unable to sleep and unable to think clearly. Then I had finally collapsed into an exhausted sleep from which I was soon awakened by the lightning and thunder—or by the memories of the bitter cold nights at the Reservoir, which storms always recalled. I heard the bugles and screams as the Chinese charged.
I sat up stiffly, reached for my weapon, then for Jane. Neither was there.
Of course not.
I could not go back to sleep. Nor could I sort out any of the pieces of the puzzle that had been spread across my card table the day before, pieces deliberately cut, it seemed, so that they did not and would not fit together again.
As I rushed across the mostly empty and rain-drenched Quad (without an umbrella, naturally; wives and umbrellas inevitably conelate) I thought of Phil Clare again. The bastard. Never again would I call him a poor bastard.
Yet Phil would not knowingly send anyone to Korea, would he?
Soaking wet and irritable, I charged into my office at ten o’clock, an hour after I had hoped to be there.
“Mr. Kelly,” Mae scolded me, “you’re soaking wet.”
I almost lost it, almost took out my anger on her. Instead I leaned against the door and laughed.
“Is it raining!”
She shook her head in dismay. At least she didn’t say I needed a good wife to take care of me.
“A Ms. Devlin called this morning at nine. No message, she said she’d call back at ten-thirty. A very pleasant woman, full of fun.”
“Ah…I imagine she’ll call back.”
I had time to phone my sister Megan. It was eight o’clock in California. She’d already be up with those kids. I found her number in an old address book I had tossed in the bottom of the drawer.
The number, I was informed, had been changed. I frowned at the picture of Harry Truman that stared at me from the wall and tried the new number.
Megan answered.
“Megan, Leo.”
“Leo!”
There was music in her voice.
“Megan, in the words of my teenager, I’ve been an asshole.”
She laughed happily, “No you haven’t, Leo, no you haven’t.”
After that our conversation was pure grace. I agreed that I would spend some time with her family when I was in Carmel after Labor Day on a fundraising venture.
She asked, guardedly, about Jane.
“I’ll tell you more about that when I see you. There might be more to tell by then.”
“Really!”
“Maybe,” I said, hedging my bets.
“Give her my love.”
“I will indeed…”
“Are you going to call the others?”
“Before the day is out…unless you tell me not to.”
“Oh, no, you’ll make them as happy as you’ve made me.”
I spent a few minutes bringing my emotions under restraint and thanking incoherently whatever powers preside over family reconciliations.
“Any calls come in while I was talking to my sister?” I asked Mae.
The phone rang. Mae picked it up. Hand over the mouthpiece, she nodded, “Ms. Devlin, right on time.”
“Naturally, I’ll take it in the office.”
Devlin, huh? Back to her maiden name. That was a good sign.
“Leo Kelly,” I said formally into the phone, reaching for a letter opener to start on my mail while we were talking.
“Lee, Jane. I have something horrible to say.”
I put the letter opener down. “Say it.”
“The killer wasn’t after Phil or the Murrays.”
“Oh?”
What kind of nuttiness was this? Had she been talking to the Good Witch of the East?
“I mean it’s so obvious that we didn’t even think of it, not till Tom Keenan told you about Korea.”
“What are you driving at, Jane?”
“Whose car was it?”
“Packy’s of course. But he was away at camp with the orphans or whatever they were.”
“Right. So who was driving it most of the time that summer?”
“I was. Who else?”
“Who should have been killed then?”
The horror of the phantasm she had seen reduced me to total silence. It was the same dark vision I had been seeing. Both of us had seen it at the same time.
“Lee?”
“I’m still here Jane.”
“Whoever weakened the brakes wanted you dead. When Phil borrowed the car without even asking you that day, he and the two Murrays were not only accident victims, they were accidental victims. You were the target.”
“Why would anyone want to kill me, Jane?”
“Why would anyone want to change your assignment so you’d be a platoon leader at Inchon and Wonsan and the Chosin Reservoir?”
“Someone wanted me dead the worst way.”
“What other reason?”
“Why?”
“I haven’t figured that out, Lee, but I’m convinced that it’s true.”
“It is, Jane. I’ve had the same insight striving to be born.”
Hail pounded against the window of my office, a warning of horrendous forces lurking in my peaceful world, far more horrendous than narcissistic biology professors.
“Do you or did you know something that someone might want to keep a secret?”
“Nothing I can think of now.”
“Are you convinced I’m right, Leo?”
I thought for a moment or two.
“I think so, Jane. It makes sense. I’m just not able to absorb it.”
“Did you call Megan?”
“Yes I called Megan and we both had a good cry and I’m going to spend some time with them after Labor Day when I go out to California to see a major donor.”
“How wonderful!”
“She said she knew it would work out eventually. I didn’t even know till you told me there was something to work out…she sends her love to you.”
“Good old Megan, classy, classy lady.”
“You bet.”
Then we were somber, life giving away once again to death.
“I feel like a pawn, Lee. Like a piece in a game someone else is playing.”
“I do too, Jane. A pawn for most of my life. From now on, however, we make our own moves. The game is about over and they’re going to lose.”
“Be careful, Lee,” she begged. “Please be careful. Promise me. They might still be out there.”
“I will certainly be careful,” I replied, a prediction of my future behavior, which was unfortunately not accurate.
1947
Leo
“Maggie, these two are urchins who hang around during the summer, so you’d better meet them. Leo Kelly and Jane Devlin. Lee, Jane, my wife Margaret Mary.”
“She’s probably worth hunting around the country,” I said to Jane.
Margaret Mary Ward Keenan was dressed impeccably in a gray dress that conformed to all of the requirements of Dior’s “New Look”—tight bodice and waist with a hint of ling
erie lace at the tantalizing V neck, wide, flowing and long skirt, matching gloves and purse, and even a matching hat. She was definitely sexy in a diminutive way with pert breasts and deftly carved body, and had the glint of mischief in her eyes.
“Not really loathsome like I thought she’d be,” Jane agreed.
“I think Jerry should keep her.”
“Yes, I think so too—if she can play tennis.”
You don’t greet strangers that way usually. But Margaret Mary Ward Keenan was the kind of stranger that you knew on sight would not only not mind, but would love such a breaking of the ice.
Jerry Keenan was bursting with pride over his apparently solemn waif-child with pale cream skin, vast gray eyes, auburn hair, and a slow and magic smile. When they had come into the house, Packy had swept his new sister-in-law off the ground and into the air and planted a kiss on her giggling lips.
“Welcome to the Lake, Sis!”
She had giggled happily.
Packy had deposited her on the ground and, after she had also kissed the elder Keenans, Jerry had introduced her to us.
Jane and I had instinctively recognized a kindred spirit.
“I think her eyes are really sweet,” Jane continued our dialogue. “And such pretty hair.”
“And a slow and magic smile.”
“All of us women are going to have to buy new clothes to dress that impeccably. Note that her ensemble matches her eyes.”
Maggie and Jane hugged enthusiastically. Looking over Jane’s shoulder at me, she asked, “Do people use that hair of yours for cleaning pots and pans?”
General laughter.
“The Marines,” Jane said, “use it for cleaning latrines.”
Summer at the Lake Page 28
