Summer at the Lake

by Andrew M. Greeley

  He made a terrible mistake but he meant well. We are all so limited. I’m in no position just now to judge anyone. I don’t think that I’ve done anything to stand in the way of a new beginning for Leo and Jane. But my ambivalence and jealousy are both very strong. I want them both to be happy and I see that as they spar with each other they are happier than they have been in a long time.

  I want to be happy too. I don’t want to lose Jane.

  Which statement proves how daft I am. She’s not mine to lose.

  My hunger for her is worse than ever. I want her in bed with me, more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. Lust, I suppose. Terrible lust. Yet I still think I would be a good husband. After a couple decades in the priesthood, I know the damn fool mistakes men make with women and I wouldn’t make any of them. I’d be tender and kind and sensitive. I’d never make fun of her.

  Whom am I trying to kid? How many of my married classmates have made good husbands?

  Not all that many.

  Anyway, true to his indecisiveness to the end, the Pope, poor man as Maggie would say, backed off on getting rid of our sociopathic Cardinal. He called Baggio at Fumicino Airport in Rome at the last minute and told him that the whole program depended on the Cardinal’s voluntary acceptance. Baggio had a big shouting match with the Cardinal up at the House on the Hill at the seminary. I would have loved to have heard that!

  Now the new Pope will be saddled with the problem. We need more than a new Pope. We need a whole new structure for the Church so it is not run by men who will sell their souls, such as these may be, for a place in the Papal power elite.

  August 15 is Jane’s birthday. And the anniversary of the accident. I don’t see how she and Leo can resist the drama and the sentiment of that day.

  Leo

  The day before my mid-August trip up to the Lake was a frantic one. I took the South Shore downtown to buy a peridot ring for Jane. It was not a grossly expensive present, but the stone was substantially bigger than the one in the pendant I had given her long ago and which she had probably long since lost. I was supposed to meet Laura at O’Hare at three thirty and thus get a head start on the weekend traffic.

  I confess to considerable unease at the prospect of my sexual encounter with Jane. I was less afraid that she might reject me than I was uncertain of my own behavior in the critical moments. The naked body of a woman, simultaneously glorious and earthy, is a delight, a challenge, and a terror. Wedding night folklore pays little attention to a man’s fears, but John Ruskin, the English writer, was not the only man to be vanquished by the sight of his undressed bride. I did not think I would go Ruskin’s route, but I was less than confident about my performance—should we get that far.

  The Feast Day was on Sunday this year and in any case it would not have given us a long weekend—though Laura had announced that she didn’t care, she was going to take a long weekend anyway. I had tentatively scheduled an extra day for myself too.

  So I had two days’ work to clear off my desk in a half day of office time with delightfully obscene fantasies and fears of embarrassment contending in the sub-basements of my brain. Normally that would not have been a problem, not if I avoided conversations with various faculty worriers or malcontents, my principal activities during the summer it seemed.

  It is a rarely violated rule that professors never come to the point in the first half hour, a trait they share with Irish politicians.

  Unfortunately for my plans, the faculty malcontents and worriers crawled out of the woodwork that day, as did some of the rarely noticed crazies. I don’t mean crazy like all of us academics are a little mad (maybe everyone else in the world is too), but truly crazy.

  Then there was the call from my friend at the Pentagon.

  “Leo, Tim.”

  “Yeah, Tim.”

  “We found the damnedest thing in your jacket.”

  “Oh?”

  “You never went to Korea.”

  “I thought it was all a dream.”

  “The orders they cut for you in July 1950 are there in the file. Paris. Assistant to the naval attache. You ought to be a general today instead of a provost. You might have my job.”

  “I doubt it.” My stomach was churning in excitement.

  “You don’t happen to have a copy of your orders to the Western Pacific, do you?”

  “Somewhere.”

  “Would you mind sending them to me, not a copy you made, but the orders you originally received.”

  “I think I can dig them up.”

  “We know who actually went to Paris. Very prominent man in the Corps today. He won’t like us poking around in his past, but that’s his problem.”

  “You pull his jacket yet?”

  “Nope. We’ve got to get authorization to do that, but we’ll get it. What do you think we’ll find?”

  “His orders to the Western Pacific?”

  “I wouldn’t be in the least surprised…it doesn’t follow that he knows anything about this. He’s not the kind of man we’d normally suspect of such a trick. But you never know.”

  “I see.”

  “We have to go after it now, Leo, whether you want us to continue or not. This could have been a major crime, even if the statute of limitations has expired. You will send us your orders?”

  “You bet your life.”

  My guess was that the general, who as a young man went to Paris instead of me, was innocent. I still had no clue, however, as to who would have the power to change my orders. No, it wasn’t a change. It was a forgery of new orders.

  My head had been whirling with images of the summer of 1948 during the past several days. Again I felt like a pawn who had been maneuvered around the chess board of life by the rich and powerful at the Lake. I began to wonder about the possibility that two events had combined in accidental concatenation on that hot August night—an attempt to kill me and an attempt to bring money from the Mob or their financial backers either to Dr. Clare or Mr. Murray. Both projects had backfired, perhaps because they were not related. Or maybe they were related because the same people were involved but the projects were different. Thus perhaps Tino Nicola had decided for reasons of his own to dispose of me and Jim Murray and Phil Clare sent their sons to pick up the money and the latter took the wrong car. It was a reasonable model. All I had to do was to prove it—and then fink it to my changed orders. Nicola had the clout to do that too, didn’t he?

  Alternately, Ita Devlin certainly wanted to get rid of me so that Jane would marry Phil. But would she go so far as murder? And where would she get the clout with the Pentagon?

  Rich people determined to have their own way and to destroy any poor kid who happened to get in their way. My old social class paranoia.

  I understood now that they were not really rich or powerful, not by the standards of the truly rich and powerful. Nonetheless I had been their pawn.

  I also understood that I should have been in contact with Jane after our lunch at the Cape Cod Room, on the phone at least if not in person. My old fetish about our relationship being confined to the Lake was absurd now that both our mothers were dead.

  Yet I wanted to resolve our past and begin our future on site, a silly and romantic notion like the yellow-green stone that was burning a hole in my jacket pocket.

  Also part of my character defect of postponing final decisions if I possibly could.

  I shuffled through one of my file cabinets while I talked on the phone with a certifiable faculty crazy, the kind of man whose subjects and predicates fit together but whose sentences don’t cohere one with another.

  I found my file of “memories”—degree from Loyola, commission, various sets of orders, the citation for my medal—while I listened to the man babble. I could put him on hold and he would continue to babble. Sure enough there was my assignment to the Fifth Marines in the Western Pacific, a death warrant, so to speak.

  I pulled it, waved to Mae in the outer office and whispered to her, my hand on the phone, “ma
ke a copy of this and send it to my friend at the Pentagon. Send the original and give me the copy.”

  She nodded in agreement.

  While the madman raved on, I tried to find some coherence in the images that had rampaged through my mind during the past weeks, some meaning to the bizarre events of my first summer life at the Lake. Sometimes I thought I briefly saw a pattern and then I lost it.

  I also fantasized about Jane. She would turn fifty on Sunday. I resolved that she would be mine that day or perhaps even the day before. Or the night before that. This time there would be no evasion. I would no longer tolerate evasion.

  Big talk, I told myself. You may not do anything at all this weekend.

  You’re the one who is evading. Why haven’t you called her, coward?

  If you evade again, you’d be a damn fool. You just say to her, Jane I won’t wait any longer. She’ll cave in right away.

  Would she really?

  Probably.

  Maybe.

  Who knows?

  What would she be like in bed? Her marriage to Phil could not have been a very useful training camp in lovemaking. Well, that didn’t matter, I was no prize either as far as that went.

  Maybe together…and besides there were some things that would be interesting experiments which I had never tried with Emilie…

  I finally got rid of the pest and ordered my fantasies to leave me alone. I had work to do.

  Laura’s plane from Boston was an hour late. We were caught in the Friday afternoon rush to the countryside.

  “Hi, good looking,” I greeted her.

  She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and looked dazzling, to my admittedly prejudiced eyes.

  “Daddy!” She wrapped her arms around me. “You look like totally happy!”

  “Do I?”

  “Have you talked to Jane lately?”

  Never a moment’s respite. “Well, not in the last couple of weeks.”

  “Shame on you!”

  “We’ll see her this weekend.”

  “Big deal,” she sniffed.

  I was in trouble.

  “How is your mother?” I asked her when we got into my Volvo.

  “Same as always.”

  “Which means?”

  “Sad, lonely, angry, pathetic.”

  “So.”

  “It’s not your fault, Daddy. You did your best.”

  “Did I?”

  “No one,” she said judiciously, “ever does their total best, but even if you did, it wouldn’t have made any difference. You did more than most men would.”

  “She was so sweet and so fragile when we first met, Laura.”

  “Terrible need to dominate by preying on your sympathies.”

  “Uh-huh. Sounds like something Aunt Maggie might say about someone.”

  “She might even say that she’s a lot like your own mother.”

  “She might indeed…are you planning on being a therapist like Aunt Maggie?”

  “Probably.”

  “I’ll be sunounded.”

  “That would be good for you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Her birthday is this weekend.”

  “Sunday.”

  “You did remember.”

  “I’m not completely senile.”

  “Buy her a present?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “None of your business!”

  She clapped her hands and laughed.

  “Is it anything I can see?”

  “It’s not an engagement ring, little Miss snoopy!”

  She laughed again.

  Well, not exactly an engagement ring.

  Jane

  Fifty years old. I don’t feel that old. Maybe I don’t look that old. As I see myself naked in the minor I think I am still a pretty good prize for a man. No, an excellent prize.

  Even better, there is a man who thinks I’m the greatest prize in the world.

  I took off those extra five pounds so I’d look really sleek for him. He probably won’t notice, but that’s all right. I’ll know. If he does make love to me, I promise I’ll never put them on again.

  I better get in the shower. Shouldn’t have dirty thoughts about myself.

  Thirty years ago this week we talked about marriage. Sensibly, we said.

  Stupidly, I’d say now.

  Hum. The shower feels good. I must look my best and smell my best for him. Ail he’ll have to say this weekend is that he won’t take no for ah answer. I’ll surrender. I want to sunender. And if he doesn’t try, I’ll go after him. Lee, my dearest, haven’t we waited long enough?

  Will I really do that?

  I don’t know. I just don’t know.

  I might.

  I become horny even thinking about it.

  I’m entitled to a little happiness am I not?

  He’s such a romantic, he’s probably put everything off till this weekend. Anniversaries, a couple of them. He wants to redo the past. That’s fine but it’s the future that matters.

  The son of a bitch hasn’t talked to me for almost a month! What the hell is he up to?

  I wish he’d let go of the past. Maybe he’s right, maybe we have to get rid of the demons, maybe we should destroy those who have treated us like pawns. But they can’t take away our future happiness if we make up our minds that we will be happy, come what may.

  I’m afraid. I’ve always been afraid. I’m not much of a lover, I know that. I’ll disappoint him. But he’s a kind person. He’ll help me improve, won’t he?

  I should get out of the shower now.

  My delight is mixed with terror, my terror with delight.

  I hope Lucy doesn’t act up.

  Lucianne as she wants to be called.

  Even if the mirror wasn’t steamy, I’d still look pretty good. If I were a man I think I’d want me.

  We both want each other. Please God, please Mary the Mother of Jesus, help us this time not to blow it.

  Leo

  “Lucianne is, like a total asshole,” my daughter announced to me.

  “Really?” I looked up from Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, a libelous attack on our ancestors of the fourteenth century. Someone was playing Mozart piano music on the stereo in the Keenan ballroom.

  “I go, Lucianne you are suffering from a terminal case of assholeism.”

  I closed the book. There were perhaps more serious issues at stake than Ms. Tuchman’s arrogance.

  “I see.”

  “I mean, she really blew it this time, you know?”

  When dealing with Laura’s generation, you must become accustomed to listening to a number of highly charged symbolic statements before they are able to tell you what is really troubling them.

  “She, like, took her mother’s brand new Mercedes out and totaled it.”

  “Is she all right?” I said anxiously.

  We had arrived at the Keenan compound, for such it was now, late for supper. Maria Reilly, the oldest of the grandchildren, had welcomed us.

  Maria was a tall slender woman with her father’s height and fair skin and her mother’s auburn hair, gray eyes, and whimsical smile. In her arms squirmed her own happy girl child, Margaret, known to the young people as “Maggie Two.”

  “Hi, Uncle Leo, welcome! Everyone is out somewhere. You know what it’s like here on summer weekends. Laura, Jamie, and Roger, and Lucianne are around somewhere looking for you.”

  “Great!” Laura had bounded out.

  “Shouldn’t you eat some supper, Laura?”

  “I ate on the plane,” she shouted as she thundered out the door.

  “There’s some sandwiches in the fridge,” Maria had continued, “and blueberry pancakes or just plain blueberries for cream or ice cream.”

  “Fine. Happy birthday, by the way!”

  “Thank you, Uncle Leo, I don’t feel like I’m thirty.”

  “I hope I look as good as you do when I’m thirty, Maria. By the way, I found this box on the road and I tho
ught I might give it to you.”

  I gave her the Chanel Number 5 I had purchased at Fields at the same time I had bought the ring for Jane.

  “Oh, Uncle Leo, how thoughtful! Do you mind if I don’t open it till the birthday party for me and Jane tomorrow evening?”

  “Am I invited?”

  “Of course you are…how very sweet to remember.” She had kissed my cheek.

  Nice old uncle.

  I was not likely to forget the day of her birth, August 15, 1948. Not ever.

  I had put on white slacks, running shoes, and a University sweatshirt and found the ham and cheese sandwiches, the blueberry muffins, and the plain old blueberries and efficiently disposed of them, the latter with a large scoop of ice cream—from the Rose Bowl of course.

  I then had settled down on the porch with my book and a glass of cognac and Mozart (Alfred Brendel playing, I thought) and a light breeze to keep me company.

  It was too late and I was too tired to take on Jane tonight. Tomorrow would be plenty of time.

  Then Laura burst in upon my peace with her tidings of doom.

  “Well, like she’s under observation at the Warburg hospital and maybe has a brain concussion and her eyes are really black and she looks totally terrible.”

  “Nothing worse?”

  “The doctors say she’ll be out in a day or two and poor Jane really lost it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, like she went into orbit. I never saw her do that. She’s usually so cool. She was like hysterical. Jamie was worried about her. Really.”

  “Jamie?”

  “We like found the car where she had driven it into the ditch and took her to the hospital and Jamie goes to me like you’d better call her mother, so I did and she lost it even then.”

  Slowly the story was emerging, backward perhaps but not without a certain vividness of narration.

  “You found her?”

  “And like, Daddy, she isn’t even legal yet.”

  Laura was striding up and down impatiently, like her father has been known to do when he’s upset.