But who could say? Must someone be responsible for every tragedy? Would God have to sort it out? Or was His love like that of April Mae Cronin, the love of a mother who doesn’t have to sort things out.
Father Ed told us that the pastor would lead the wake services. We would say a few prayers for Jane. Three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys—standard penance in the church in which Jane Curtin O’Malley McCormack had been raised.
After the prayers, the O’Malley clan arranged itself in the first few rows of seats. She was ours, damn it, and we were not about to let her go without insisting on that The Good April sat in the comfortable chair with her Amazonian guard. She was dry-eyed. Perhaps all cried out.
“You’re right,” my intermediate daughter nudged me, “Rosie is meaner than I am.”
“Yes, but she has had thirty years to practice.”
“There’s that.”
The local pastor led a wake service in which he preached about God’s implacable love.
Then Father Delahaye arrived, a thin, loose, and untidy man, with a clerical vest and the old-fashioned high Roman collar, a figure from a fundamentalist television revival.
He swept to the front of the room and, without any words to the family, turned to the assembly.
“We will now pray, pray, pray for this holy and innocent woman who died an untimely death because of the paganism, materialism, consumerism, and secularism of modern American society. We also pray for the conversion of the hearts of all those here present who are responsible for her death. We’ll pray for God’s mercy on all of them. We will now say the Rosary, the entire Rosary, that Mother Mary will intercede for all the sinners present in this room.”
He flopped to his knees in front of the casket and began the prayers in a singsong voice loaded with piety and monotony. It was worse than Father McNally’s performance at Dad’s wake. Why do these conservative clerics use the Rosary as an instrument with which to punish the laity?
I let him say the first decade, then gave the signal to my wife and my sister that it was time to leave. They nodded.
I would like to say we left quietly. But the assembled O’Malley clan can never do anything quietly.
The Good April went home with Peg, Vince, and Rita. Rosemarie drove us back to Euclid Avenue.
“Not bad all things considered,” my wife observed.
“Until that terrible priest came,” Mary Margaret said. “Why do they let men like that out of the nuthouse?”
“He will be preaching tomorrow and Chris will give the eulogy,” I added.
“Vomit city,” Mary Margaret said.
“We must do our best to act with dignity and respect to the Jane who was and who is now again and to the pain of the woman she was for a little while.”
There was silence for a moment.
“You know, Chucky,” my daughter broke the silence, “you might not make a half-bad priest.”
The jazz group had wanted to play their horns at. Calvary Cemetery just as they had at Queen of Heaven. I had vetoed the idea. It was the McCormack family’s funeral. O’Malley craziness would only make the pain worse for Dr. Ted. They had agreed to my wisdom, reluctantly.
“Surrealistic” is the only word to describe the funeral mass. Well, maybe you could also use the word “macabre.” Ed said the words and presided over the prayers with his usual post councilliar grace. John Raven and Packy Keenan and the pastor of the parish, all in their monsignoral robes, lent dignity to the sanctuary.
Father Delahaye’s homily, however, paid little attention to the deceased or her family. It was rather a thirty-five-minute jeremiad against the modern world and modern America and its obsession with sex, laced with quotations (many of them I’m sure apocryphal) from “Our Most Holy Father” which seemed to imply that he agreed with everything Fr. D had said.
Our friends in the sanctuary looked sick.
Chris McCormack outdid him. He vented all his feelings of hatred for the rest of the family, not by naming them exactly, but by describing the cold, harsh, punitive attitudes and behavior of those “closest to poor Mom.” It was the obvious lack of love which had driven her to an early death. Their own lives would be punished because “what goes around comes around” in life. They too would die in an icy, loveless place.
“The young-man has a genius for cliché, doesn’t he?” Rosemarie whispered to me.
I noted with some interest that Joey Moran had appeared to squire my intermediate daughter, whether by previous agreement or not. She certainly did not dismiss him.
At the graveside, the burial service returned to the calm, restrained, but joyous liturgy. Father Ed recited the prayers with his usual grace and said a few words about God’s maternal love. Across Sheridan Road, a solemn and peaceful Lake Michigan seemed to be watching with calm sympathy.
Peg and Vince were to drive Mom home and stay with her for a while. Rosemarie and I were to go to the dinner at their local club to sustain support for the McCormacks.
“Do you want to come with us?” I asked Mary Margaret.
“I have class this afternoon.”
“What about a ride home?”
She glanced at Joey Moran who stood next to her, ye parfait knight.
“I guess I can find one.”
“I think her eyes actually twinkled when she said she could find a ride home,” Rosemarie said when we entered our old Benz. “She’s revealing a little emotion about poor Joey.”
“Matchmaker,” I said with a disapproving sniff.
“Chucky darling, that match was made long ago.”
The lunch at the local club was relaxed, mostly because Chris and Maddy had absented themselves. The Lord made them and the divil matched them. By the time we left, new bonds had been fashioned between our family and the McCormacks. Crooked lines of God, maybe.
We picked our way back across the North Side of Chicago in search of Oak Park. I argued that we should take the Drive down to the Congress, but my wife insisted on driving to Harlem Avenue on Touhy, patently a mistake.
“How did you think April was?” she asked me as we waited at one of the many stoplights that would slow our trip home.
“Deep, deep inside herself. Not the flapper at all, nor Panglossa either.”
“And maybe just clinging to her own life?”
“I sure hope not.”
“I forgot all about Joe Raftery’s dreams!” she exclaimed suddenly.
“I didn’t.”
“Bride Mary couldn’t have known about the pictures.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Then how could she send messages to her husband to talk to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve got to know … I got it! Joe knew in his preconscious or unconscious or something that you’re good at lost causes.”
“What lost causes?”
“Like Fenwick against Carmel … Like met …”
“You were never a lost cause, Rosemarie.”
“Heck if I wasn’t … Well that’s what it had to be.”
“I suppose so … Maybe some seraph invaded his dreams.”
I didn’t add that said seraph might have pushed my books off his shelf.
“Chucky Ducky,” she changed the subject, “are you planning on love when we get home?”
“Yes, if we ever do get home. I was preoccupied with lascivious thoughts all through Mass about the woman next to me in the black dress.”
“I was the woman next to you.”
“Come to think of it, you were.”
So we went home for our nap and a celebration of the fundamental Catholic truth that life is stronger than death.
CONCLUSION
Mary Margaret
Well, I graduated from Rosary College finally. Summa cum laude, which I dismiss as irrelevant. No one will cut me any slack at Loyola Law School because of it. However, in my heart I am extremely proud, for which I hope God is not too angry.
The cycles of life seem to change each spr
ing. New babies everywhere—Vangelisto O’Malley, to be called “Van”; Marianne Nettleton, to be called “Polly” after her grandmother, Charley’s Patricia McGrath because as her cute husband Clete McGrath says it’s both an Italian and an Irish name. She’s likely to be Patty or maybe Patty Anne The first two, as might be expected seem to be redheads. I could write a version of the Sherlock Holmes story and call it “The League of Redheaded Women.”
Both of Aunt Peg’s sons are engaged, Gianni to an Armenian and Vinny to an Irishwoman. More grandchildren soon for Aunt Peg and Uncle Vince.
Chuck and Rosie are still obviously dizzy over each other. Her article in The New Yorker and their book about Russia stirred up a storm. Many of the critics said that he is a better photographer than he is a political analyst. He laughs and says, “Just wait!” He’s busy collecting pictures of our various redheads. If I ever have any kids, they’ll probably all be black Irish like my brothers.
Erin and Sean are edging close to engagement, maybe by Christmas, though maybe before so that, as Rosie says, we’ll have another Christmas wedding.
The Joey Moran person graduated from Loyola, also summa cum laude, much to everyone’s surprise except me. He’s going to Loyola Law School too, but that’s not the way to put it. I gave up on sociology at THE University because I didn’t need that place. Looking around for something else to do, I decided why not law and why not at Loyola—where Joey will be. Convenient, Chuck says. Rosie just laughs.
We have not discussed our future. However, we will ride to school together on the Lake Street L and the State Street Subway and study together. If we don’t fight too much, our relationship will certainly grow and I might find myself expecting a ring the Christmas of our second year of law school.
I become very frightened as I think of that.
Yet Joey is a lot like Chucky—funny and tender, though not quite as crazy as Chuck is sometimes. However, maybe he’s that way too and I’ll discover it. Rosie says she realizes more each year who Chucky really is.
A couple from California came to visit us during the winter. Joe Raftery and his wife, along with their daughter Samantha, who’s about Shovie’s age. Nice people. Chuck and Rosie apparently did something wonderful for them.
Shovie is growing up too fast. She makes me feel ancient.
Father Jimmy said his first Mass and everyone was extremely happy. He’ll make a fine priest.
The bad news is that Grams died.
She lived to see all the new great-grandchildren and for Father Jimmy’s first Mass. Then one night she slipped away into paradise.
I was the one who found her, which was probably best. I visited her several times a week when I ran. She always laughed at how I was all sweaty but didn’t smell. This one morning I show up and Madge tells me that she’s still asleep. Right away, I run upstairs and open the door to her room. She looks so peaceful. I feel her forehead and know she’s dead. I kiss her cold lips and say through my tears, “Good-bye, Grams. I’ll see you again someday and I know you will always be with us.” I kneel down and say a decade of the Rosary. Then I call Father Packy at St. Agedius. He says he’ll be right over. Don’t worry about Ed, he tells me. I’ll bring him. Father Ed lives at St. Agedius.
Then comes the hardest call. I punch in our own number.
“Rosemarie Clancy,” Rosie says, cool like always.
I don’t know what to say, so I say it outright.
“Rosie, I’m here at Grams’s. She woke up this morning in heaven.”
She breaks down and so do I.
Among the sobs, I manage to say, “Father Packy is on the way over. I’ll call Aunt Peg.”
I get my act together and call Aunt Peg. Same exchange.
I call Madge and Theresa upstairs and continue the Rosary. I imagine that Grams is smiling at me. The last of the flappers. We’re saying the Rosary when the rest of them arrive. They join in, I pass my rosary to Monsignor Packy. He smiles and shakes his head.
The family is completely devastated. Too much death in too short a time.
Rosie says to me, “I feel like my family doesn’t exist anymore.”
“You have six kids and six grandkids, what do you mean you don’t have a family anymore?” I say, though I know exactly what she means. “Families change.”
She looks at me in surprise, then smiles kind of wanly.
“The world of Menard Avenue is all gone.”
“No it’s not. It will always live in the memories of those who were there and in the stories that they have told to us who weren’t there. Just like the first Rosemarie still lives.”
She cries but she still smiles.
“I forgot I had a daughter who reads Proust.”
This time I have to be the total Ms. Take Charge. Everyone else is too wiped out to do anything. Fortunately, I suspend my Miss Know It All mask and ask Rita Antonelli to help me. She’s a feisty little Sicilian with wonderful eyes and a great smile. We’ve always been friendly, but never exactly close, which is probably my fault because some people say that I come on strong. Maybe there’s a little rivalry there too because we’re exactly the same age. Also she went to Notre Dame, which is probably only a venial sin. So we work out the details for the funeral, just like Aunt Peg and Rosie would if they were functioning.
“We’re the new high command,” she says as we prepare our lists.
“Time they had a rest,” I agree.
We bond totally, which is a very good thing. She tells me that she’s thinking of going back to her real name which is Margaret Mary, Aunt Peg’s real name. I tell her I think it’s a bitchin’ idea.
I also receive emotional support from Joe Moran. I’m surprised at how good he is at it, but then I never gave him the opportunity before.
Rosie and Chuck, Aunt Peg and Uncle Vince, are destroyed altogether as Erin says. They cry all through the wake and funeral. Dr. Ted comes with my old friend Ted Junior and Jennifer and Michele, who are very sweet. They join the crying scene.
We have the Mass at St. Agedius. Father Ed and Father Jimmy concelebrate and Father Packy preaches. Aunt Peg gives the eulogy with her violin (which I suggested). She creates a musical portrait of Grams which is like off-the-wall sensational. We sing the Ave Maria and do “The Saints Go Marching In” at the cemetery.
Rosie and Aunt Peg cling to each other at the burial. THE woman in their life is gone. While neither of them is much like Grams in her personalities, deep down they’re mirrors of her. It will be hard for them without her example of wifely and motherly love. Now they have to do that for the rest of us.
I’m pretty much in control of myself by then, though I break down during Aunt Peg’s eulogy. Like Rosie says, all Grams wanted at the end of her life was to be with Gramps again. I can understand that. Someday, if my husband, whoever he may be, dies before me I’ll probably feel the same way.
“WELL,” I say to Rosie, “you’re like the total family matriarch now.”
She hugs me and says, “And I know who the number two is.”
Which is kind of cool.
I look forward to going over to the Lake in a few days before I leave for Appalachia to help build homes. At the Lake this time of the year, the promise of resurrection is everywhere.
Chicago
Indian Summer 2003
Chuck O’Malley’s prediction in the early 1980s is not fiction. To read the original prediction, see The Book of Predictions by David Wallechinsky, Amy Wallace, and Irving Wallace (Morrow, 1980). See also the comments by Willard Mathias of the Office of National Estimates, which Chuck quotes to President Reagan. The comments are cited on page 374 of Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 (Little, Brown, 2003).
DESCENDANTS OF JOHN E. O’MALLEY
ALSO BY ANDREW M. GREELEY
from Tom Doherty Associates
All About Women
Angel Fire
Angel Light
Contract with an Angel
Faithful Attraction
The Final Planet
Furthermore!: Memories of a Parish Priest
God Game
The Priestly Sins
Star Bright!
Summer at the Lake
White Smoke
Emerald Magic (editor)
Sacred Visions (editor with Michael Cassutt)
The Book of Love (editor with Mary G. Durkin)
BISHOP BLACKIE RYAN MYSTERIES
The Bishop and the Missing L Train
The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain
The Bishop in the West Wing
The Bishop Goes to The University
The Bishop in the Old Neighborhood
NUALA ANNE MCGRAIL NOVELS
Irish Gold
Irish Lace
Irish Whiskey
Irish Mist
Irish Eyes
Irish Love
Irish Stew!
Irish Cream
Irish Crystal1
THE O’MALLEYS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
A Midwinter’s Tale
Younger Than Springtime
A Christmas Wedding
September Song
Second Spring
Golden Years
Praise for Andrew M. Greeley and the O’Malley Clan
“A genius for plumbing people’s convictions … That and his rich literary imagination make him truly exceptional.”
—Cleveland Press
“Always entertaining, Greeley’s O’Malley series is a triumph of the steadfastness of this family … . Readers will eagerly anticipate the next installment in this series chronicling the lives of this warm, witty family.”
Golden Years Page 28
