Mary Margaret and Shovie joined us. The former glanced from me to her father and back and approved of us with a slight smile.
Little witch.
We walked up to the front of the funeral parlor. Father Ed was waiting for us, brooding over the casket. We said a few prayers and stood up to greet our fellow mourners. Our kids—mine and Peg’s—joined us. The great-grandchildren had been left at home. One night was more than enough for them. Shovie and Mary Margaret were at the end of the line, where they could make quick exits if necessary.
“I AM going to Grandpa’s wake,” Shovie had informed me earlier with determination. “He EXPECTS me to be there.”
Family stubbornness, from my side of the family doubtless.
I turned on all my charm as we greeted our fellow mourners. If Chuck said I was beautiful, then I was. So I should act like I was. I don’t know that it made any difference, however, though a lot of women complimented me on, “how wonderful you look tonight, dear.”
My poor husband, however, looked absolutely awful. He was fading quickly. His body clock was a mess, still on Moscow time. The allergy medicine limited his sneezing and coughing but made him drowsy. He should have been in bed sleeping.
As afternoon turned into evening, the procession of mourners became a blur. You smiled at them, hopefully greeted them by name, took their hand, gratefully acknowledged their sympathy, smiled again, and thanked them for their prayers. If you did not know them, you tried to remember their name from the introduction and thanked them by name at the end. They deserved the best of your attention and grace. I tried to provide both.
Occasionally, someone would say that the tribute in The New York Times was wonderful and asked whether my husband had anything to do with it. I would say with a grin that he might have.
A few would comment on how tired Chuck looked. His father’s death has been a great strain on him, hasn’t it?
“On all of us. Chuck and I just returned from a month of photo shoots in Russia. He’s still on Moscow time and allergy medicine.”
“It’s lucky for him that you travel with him.”
“That’s what he married me for, someone to take care of him on trips.”
Jane appeared about seven in a gray pantsuit and lots of diamonds. I didn’t think she’d been drinking this time. But the rest of the act was the same, sobbing over Mom, elbowing her way into line, assuming control of access to Mom, cutting Chucky out of the picture. She was more embarrassing than obnoxious I decided. Most people would have no trouble reading her act. Poor woman. We should do something to help her, though that would be very difficult because her sad, apologetic husband (“Sorry, a lot of bad traffic on the way”) had taken on the role of protecting her.
I was angry because her brat children had not come to the wake either night. Chris, Ted, Micky, and Jenny had always seemed to me to be self-satisfied prigs, complacent slugs, hollow phonies. I didn’t like them much either. Yet Vangie was their grandfather too. One shouldn’t compare one’s own children with other people’s children. But everyone does. Peg’s kids were wonderful, genial and handsome cousins. No comparisons permitted there, though I was sure that, if there were comparisons, mine would win. But Jane’s kids never seemed to be alive. Well, it was none of my business.
Not much.
Vince brought a chair for Mom.
“Thank you, Vincent. You’re so thoughtful.”
Vince had progressed through the years. Peg did not have to remind him of such thoughtfulness nearly as often anymore.
“Chucky looks like he needs a chair too,” he whispered to me.
“More likely a bed … But you know Chuck. He’d be much happier if he passed out.”
We both laughed softly. Chuck would never pass out.
Father Packy Keenan arrived with his brother Jerry and the latter’s wife, the notorious Maggie Ward, my shrink. I would have to be on my very best behavior.
“These are very difficult experiences, Rosie,” she said, her gentle gray eyes carefully examining my face for signs of strain. “And a troubled woman like your foster sister don’t help.”
Witch!
“She needs a Maggie Ward in her life,” I said gracefully.
Maggie, a lovely little woman with gray hair and a warm soul, smiled.
“You look exceptionally beautiful tonight, Rosie.”
“We Irish defy death,” I said.
“So I understand.”
Maggie’s past, before she married Jerry Keenan, was a mystery. She had apparently married very young and had lost both a husband and a child. In her office there was a small frame with a picture of a very young sailor and a very little child. Somehow one knew that one did not ask about them.
Packy Keenan began the wake service with a reading about the daughter of Jairus.
“You’ve surely noticed the gracefulness of Jesus in this scene. He lets the little girl play. In the middle of all the celebration the important thing for the child is to get back to her play. She doesn’t know that she’s been dead. She does understand that it is the role of kids to play, so she plays. New life is not a big deal unless you can play. I suspect that this is a hint of what the life of the resurrection is like. We will wake up as little kids and begin to play because that’s what we’re supposed to do. We’ll be children like Siobhan Marie here looking forward to life, or teens like Mary Margaret and Rita here were a couple years ago eager for the next surprise, the next excitement, the next joy in our rapidly expanding lives. We who have the faith know that whatever else might be ahead of us, there’ll be lots of fun. And wherever there’s fun that’s where the Crazy O’Malleys will be with their music and song.”
Laughter and applause from the congregation.
“What’s he talking about?” Jane said in an angry stage whisper. “No priest at Faith, Hope would say anything that stupid.”
I felt a charge of rage leap through our receiving line. I wanted to brain the little fool.
It takes a lot more than a stupid woman like Janie to shake Packy’s cool. Like John Raven the night before, he went along the line with words of hope and healing for all of us after the brief wake service. Except Jane, who turned to talk to Ted as Packy left April.
“Rosie,” he said to me, “I hear you’re going to do your music in the church and the cemetery?”
“Who told you that?”
“Your husband, who else?”
“He never could keep a secret.”
“He wanted me to promise to prevent McNally from disrupting it. I promised that I would.”
Packy, a big, burly man like his brother, could certainly do that.
“He’s not likely to go to the cemetery,” Packy continued, “It would disrupt his schedule … The jazz group is going to do ‘Saints’?”
“Yep.”
“I wouldn’t miss that for the world … By the way, Rosie, you look stunning tonight.”
When he had left, Jane spoke up again, “Mom, you certainly have strange priests here on the West Side …”
“Janie, dear, you shouldn’t say things like that. Father Keenan has been a good friend to the family for a long time. We all love him dearly. That’s why we’ve asked him to preach tomorrow.”
“No one talked to me about it.”
I was now convinced she had been drinking.
The crowds continued to pour in. I was astonished to learn how many people Vangie had helped, especially GIs coming home from the War and priests in poor parishes who needed a design to repair their churches. He had not only designed them for free, but sometimes paid for the construction work. Many people who lived in the suburban developments for which he’d won prizes told us that they had to come to the wake to express their thanks for the wonderful homes he’d built.
“I feel I never really knew him,” Peg spoke softly in my ear. “He certainly hid his generosity. That’s the way it should be.”
“There was more of Chuck in him than I realized.”
Peg laughed
. She knew what I meant. My husband is obsessively generous, not bad for a man who only at his fiftieth birthday party admitted that the Great Depression probably would not return.
Jane was growing more restless. Her show had worn her out. She turned to her husband, “Ted, I can’t stand any more of this. Please take me home.”
Ted McCormack calmly nodded, doubtless glad that it was almost over.
“I have to go home now, darling,” she said as she drooled over the Good April. “My kiddies are expecting me. I’ll be at the Mass tomorrow of course, but I won’t be able to go to the cemetery. You know I can’t stand cemeteries.”
“I understand, Janie dear. Give my love to your children.”
Mom seemed to be relieved to be rid of her.
She left the funeral parlor with a noisy display of distress and weariness, as though it all was too much to bear. Jennifer, her youngest “kiddie,” was three years older than Mary Margaret and was allegedly working in an “alternative” record store at Old Orchard.
That was a nasty thought. I should be ashamed of myself. I glanced at my husband. He had been looking at me. He rolled his eyes and seemed to sway. He might still pass out. Then what would we do with him?
He might be falling in love with me, but there would be no sex tonight, even if we didn’t have to drag him down to Oak Park Hospital. How would he ever give his eulogy tomorrow morning?
Suddenly I was very tired too. My feet hurt, my back was sore, my mouth was dry. Would this ever end? Shovie and Mary Margaret had disappeared. Big sister was doubtless hovering over sleeping little sister. I was thankful that Jane would not be at the cemetery.
Then a good-looking, slender man with white hair was shaking hands with me.
“You’re holding up a lot better than Chuck, Rosie,” he said with a slow smile, “but I bet you’d love to sit down and kick off your shoes.”
“It would be great, Joe Raftery.”
“I was very happy to hear that you and Chuck had married. It seemed a perfect match. If I’d any sense in those days, I would have sent you a note. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s been a happy marriage.”
“Chuck will do until someone better comes along,” I said with a laugh.
He seemed to be a normal, intelligent man, with more grace and courtesy than most. Looking for a dead wife? Chucky knew how to attract some weird stuff.
Finally, it was over. A quarter to eleven. Only the Good April was sprightly.
“It was an evening I’ll always treasure, wasn’t it, Peg dear?”
“A little hard on the feet, Mom, but a night to remember. Dad was truly a remarkable man.”
“Is …” she replied. “Poor Janie took it harder than anyone else, didn’t she? Ted really ought to see that she gets some help.”
Panglossa, as usual, spoke harsh truth under the guise of sweetness. No, that was not right—she mixed sweetness with harsh truth.
My husband was slumped in a chair, his eyes closed, his shoulders sagging, his mouth hanging open.
“Are you all right, Chucky Ducky?”
“Mommy, I wanna go home.”
“Daddy sounds just like me!” Shovie, who had just joined us, exclaimed. “Better take him home, Mommy.”
“Right away, dear.”
“Don’t let him go to Russia ever again.”
“Good idea, hon.”
So I took them both home, put Siobhan to bed, and discovered my husband sound asleep.
Falling in love again, indeed!
He descended to breakfast at seven the next morning in a charcoal gray suit with a black tie, scrubbed, shaved, polished. It was the first time in a major event in our years of marriage that he had accomplished these or similar tasks on his own initiative. His eyes were clear and focused, his back and shoulders in almost military posture. We were back in Bamberg in 1946.
“Take your allergy medicine?”
“Not till after the eulogy … no, just a cup of tea … Afterward I will.”
“Your manuscript ready?”
“Charles Cronin O’Malley should need a manuscript? Come, dear wife, you jest?”
His eyes sparkled. He had put on his fun mask.
“Pardon me, sir husband. I assume you know what you’re going to say.”
“More or less.” He waved off my concern, in a gesture that I have often occasioned. “I am obviously no match for John Raven. So I will be brief and simple.”
“And I’m the queen of Sheba.”
“Woman, you are not. You are my wife Rosemarie with whom I am falling in love again.”
“Big talk,” I scoffed.
The soft late-September weather of the previous days was followed that morning by a cloud cover that might be described as “preominous.” It fit the mood of the day. The battered family, which assembled at the funeral parlor, seemed eager to get the day over with, something like a necessary but painful physical exam. We worried, as Chuck said we should, about Father McNally and Jane, the latter not present at the funeral parlor. She would surely make another demonstration at the funeral against the rest of us. I did not expect that I would be the target.
Pulling up to the church Vangie had built and for which he had won a prize was a depressing experience. Our marriage was the first one in it. Other marriages, Baptisms, First Communions, confirmations, concerts made it one of the important monuments of our lives. This was the first funeral in the family.
The air was heavy as Chuck and Vince got out of the limo, as were our hearts. April, Peg, and I, all in deep black and with veils (April’s idea) waited till the mourners lined up on the sidewalk and the casket was lifted onto the dolly, which would bring it into the church. We were signaled to line up and lead the procession behind the casket.
The pallbearers lifted the casket, carried it up the steps, and placed it again on the dolly. The three of us paused at the bottom of the steps.
Then Jane, in a black dress which was too tight, shoved me out of the way.
“You don’t belong here,” she snarled. “You’re an interloper in our family. You’re not one of the family. I belong with Mom. I will walk with her.”
I was astonished though I should not have been. Jane must have believed for a long time that I had taken her rightful place in the family. I was the cause of her unhappy life. I had never noticed the rivalry. Neither had anyone else.
I backed away silently. April and Peg stumbled forward, not wanting to create more of a scene. What do I do now?
Mary Margaret and Shovie eased me into line with them, at the very end of the immediate family. They too were wearing veils. The three of us slowly climbed the stairs. Inside, Jimmy’s seminarians were singing beautiful Latin chant, sad, but hopeful, which is what the Catholic liturgy is supposed to be about. Either way life is a toss-up. Catholics opt for hope, though sometimes just barely.
I was in another world, not far in the distance, only two blocks away on Menard Avenue, but light-years in time. I had barged my way into the family because I knew that my life depended on finding a family of my own. Heedlessly, I had elbowed another child away, as surely as she had elbowed me aside a few moments before. I had never realized what I had done. Vangie and April, always sensitive to their kids’ emotions, had not even considered the possibility that Jane would feel that they had abandoned her. Yet the wound must have festered for forty years.
Dear God, why did You let this happen?
My reverie was interrupted by a loud tapping sound. The choir stopped in midverse. The funeral procession came to a dead stop. I looked up. Father McNally, in cassock, surplice, and long cape was at the pulpit, impatiently tapping at the microphone to gain attention.
“I am Father James Francis McNally, the pastor of this parish. I wish to make it clear that this liturgy is in explicit violation of the normal rules of my parish. Ordinarily I preside over all the funeral liturgies in this parish. Ordinarily I prescribe the music for the liturgy. Ordinarily we have funeral liturgies only for registered members of the
parish. However, this is a special situation and I have acceded to a temporary suspension of the rules.
“I wish to make it clear that in no sense should this liturgy be considered an invitation to receive the Holy Eucharist when it is distributed. Only Catholics in good standing and in the state of grace should approach the altar.”
He turned and walked back into the sacristy.
For a moment there was total silence in the church, Vangie’s church, I thought. Then the choir resumed its interrupted hymn and the procession moved slowly forward. Next to me, my sainted Mary Margaret was stiff with rage.
The liturgy moved forward with stately grace, marred only by Jane’s bubbling tears. What do Peg and April think? Their emotions are probably a mix of anger and pity, with the latter stronger. Poor April, she had lost the love of her life and her firstborn was adding to her grief. She must have wondered where they had gone wrong with Jane. Naturally she would blame herself.
In the back of my head or maybe down in one of the subbasements of my consciousness a story was taking shape that I might send off to The New Yorker. I asked God to forgive me for the distraction, but I assume that God knows how powerful the imagination is when it has fixated on a story.
It was time for the Gospel and the homily. Jesus raised from the dead the little brother of Martha and Mary, silly little teens. He told them that he was the Resurrection and the Life. A very Catholic story.
John Raven walked down to the edge of the sanctuary to deliver the homily on Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life. He spoke as the great men of gold and silver always speak, in a calm, matter-of-fact, reassuring voice. Like priests of his generation, he quoted many of the Catholic writers he had read in the seminary. He began with G. K. Chesterton’s story about the ‘bus that ran out of control and raced madly toward the Thames. Faced with sudden death, G. K. realized that life was too important to ever be anything but life. With that as his theme he pointed out all the instances of resurrection in our lives—the baby must die to become an infant, the child must die to become a grammar school kid, the eighth-grader must die to be reborn in high school, the teenager must die to rise as a young adult, the young adult must die to become a spouse, and the spouse must rise to become a parent. Life and death are patterns of life. John O’Malley was now experiencing another death and rebirth, one in which we all would eventually join him.
Golden Years Page 9
