A Midwinter's Tale

by Andrew M. Greeley

  April Mae Cronin O’Malley.

  “Unlike the Mercy Sisters,” my father would say, looking up from a blueprint or a drawing, “old Joe Meany was well named.”

  “Vangie!” My mother would protest the irreverence and uncharitableness and then laugh, thus honoring the obligations of respect for the pastor, love for her husband, and truth with deft economy of effort.

  Meany expired consuming his third Scotch in celebration of the death of Franklin Roosevelt, two days after we walked out of the ten-o’clock mass. I had the good sense not to claim credit.

  I hated the monsignor, mostly because he had, I thought, cheated my father out of payment for his work. I did not feel the smallest hint of grief when he went to meet his maker because of a heart attack.

  “God knows the old man died happy,” John Raven, the young priest, said to my mother, “but if they assign Joe and the president to the same section of purgatory, he’ll ask for a transfer to hell.”

  “Where he belongs,” I added piously.

  “Chucky!” my mother protested. And then laughed.

  “Like father, like son,” Father Raven noted.

  “Look at the way he treated gold-star families,” I pressed the point. “He won’t even come down from his office to tell them that they can’t have a priest from outside the parish say the funeral mass. Instead he makes you do it. And he doesn’t even show up for the wake or funeral unless it’s a rich family!”

  “Chucky!” The tone this time said I’d better shut up. Even at sixteen I had sense enough not to argue with such a tone in the voice of an Irish woman.

  In Joseph Meany’s religion, there was only one sin—“impurity.” It was denounced with great vigor on every possible occasion—with, need I add, not the slightest indication of what it consisted.

  Hence his stern injunction to Sister Mary Admirabilis (“Mary Admiral” to us kids and then “Mary War Admiral,” after the Kentucky Derby winner) that only “a young woman who is a paragon of purity may crown the Blessed Mother. We must not permit Our Lady to be profaned by the touch of an immoral young woman.”

  “One with breasts,” my older sister, Jane, snorted. “If Rosie didn’t have boobs . . .”

  “That’s enough, young lady.” Mom didn’t laugh, but she kind of smiled, proud of Rosie’s emerging figure as though she were her own daughter.

  It was the middle of May, a week after VE day and the end of the war in Europe. Monsignor Meany was in his grave—and whatever realm of the hereafter to which the Divine Mercy had assigned him—and Msgr. Martin Francis “Mugsy” Branigan had replaced him. In his middle forties then, Mugsy was already a legend: shortstop for the White Sox in 1916, superintendent of Catholic schools, devastating golfer, ardent Notre Dame fan, genial, charming, witty.

  The red-faced, silver-haired Mugsy had been assigned to St. Ursula with indecent haste.

  “Old Joe is hardly cold in the ground,” Dad commented as he toasted (in absentia) the new pastor. There was always something to toast when he came home after the long ride from Fort Sheridan. “I guess the cardinal knows that he has a problem out here.”

  So, Monsignor Mugsy was ensconced in the great two-storied room in the front of the second floor of the rectory, the part that was covered with white stone. But Mary War Admiral had not yet extended diplomatic recognition to him. In the school, the word of the late pastor was still law.

  Even though, as John Raven remarked, there is no one deader than a dead priest.

  So Mary War Admiral voided the nearly unanimous election by the eighth grade, in solemn conclave assembled, of Rosemarie Helen Clancy as May queen because she was not the “kind of young woman who ought to be crowning the Holy Mother of God.”

  She then appointed my sister Peg as Rosie’s replacement. Peg would have won on her own—she never lost an election that I can remember—but she had determined that her inseparable friend Rosie was going to crown Mary, and that, being her mother’s daughter, was that.

  When informed by Sister Mary War Admiral that she was to replace Rosie, Peg replied with characteristic quiet modesty, “I’d kill myself first!”

  My mother’s reaction was that (a) she would go over to the convent and “settle this problem” with Sister Mary Admirabilis and that (b) I would accompany her.

  “I will not visit the parish,” she insisted, “unless I am accompanied by a man from my family.”

  “I’m a short, red-haired high school junior,” I pleaded.

  “Your father’s in Washington this week at some meeting with

  the War Department, young man, and you will come with me.” “You don’t need a man to ride the Central bus with you up to the Douglas plant,” I countered.

  “That’s different. Besides, you’re as bad as your father. You’re dying to get into a fight. Now go wash your face and comb your hair.”

  “My hair doesn’t comb. Wire brush. Good for scraping paint. Bad for combing.”

  “Try!”

  “Yes, ma’am. . . . Why can’t Mr. Clancy protect his goofy daughter? Why do I have to do it?”

  “Not another word, young man.”

  “I hate him!”

  “I said . . .”

  “Not another word.” I exited quickly toward the bathroom and a hairbrush.

  I kept my opinions on the May crowning to myself. Sister Mary War Admiral, I thought, might have a point. The word from Lake Delavan (alias Sin Lake) the previous summer was that for someone just entering eighth grade, Rosie Clancy was terribly “fast.” Admittedly, “fast” in those days was pretty slow by contemporary standards.

  At that time, she and Peg were slipping quickly and gracefully—and disturbingly as far as I was concerned—into womanhood. Standing together, whispering plots, schemes, tricks, and God knows what else, they seemed almost like twins—same height, same slim, fascinating shapes, same dancing eyes, same piquant, impish faces. Like Mom, Peg was brown-tinged—eyes, hair, skin—an elegant countess emerging from chrysalis. Rosie was more classically Irish, milky skin that colored quickly, jet-black hair, scorching blue eyes.

  Peg was the more consistent and careful of the two. She worked at her grades and her violin with somber determination. Her grace was languid and sinuous, a cougar slipping through the trees. She rarely charged into a situation—a snowball attack on an isolated boy (such as me)—without first checking for an escape hatch or an avenue of retreat. Rosie was more the rushing timber wolf, attacking with wild fury, mocking laughter shattering the air. If Peg was a countess in the making, Rosie was a bomb thrower or revolutionary or wild barroom dancer.

  She might also have been, to give her fair credit, a musical-comedy singer; she had a clear, appealing voice, which, I was told to my disgust when I was constrained to sing with her at family celebrations, blended “beautifully with yours, Chucky Ducky.”

  I must give her due credit. If she and Peg tormented me by, for example, putting lingerie ads from Life in my religion textbook and stealing my football uniform the morning of a game, they also came to my aid when I was or was thought to be in trouble.

  Once when I was in eighth grade, two of the more rowdy of my classmates made some comments that Dad was a “slacker” because he was stationed at Fort Sheridan. In fact, he was the oldest serviceman from the parish. Moreover, neither of their fathers were in the service.

  Instead of pointing out these two truths I made some more generalized comments on their ancestry and on their probably sexual relationship with their mothers.

  And thus found myself on my back in the schoolyard gravel being pounded, not skillfully perhaps but vigorously.

  Even one of them would have outnumbered me.

  Suddenly two tiny fifth-grade she-demons charged to my rescue, kicking, clawing, and screaming. My two assailants were then outnumbered—not counting me.

  “Where did you guys learn those words?” I demanded.

  “From listening to boys,” Peg, breathless but triumphant, answered.

  “Boys l
ike you, Chucky Ducky,” Rosie added, her face crimson with the light of battle.

  They then, without my knowledge, went to the rectory and enlisted John Raven’s support. The two rowdies were put to work sweeping the parish hall until, as Father Raven put it, “the day before the Last Judgment.”

  Rosie was or at least claimed to be brokenhearted at her demotion by the War Admiral, much to my surprise since I would scarcely have thought of her as devout. “I feel so sorry for Peg,” she told me. “It’s not fair to her.”

  “It’s not fair to you,” Peg snapped, “is it, Chucky?”

  “My position on Sister Mary War Admiral,” I observed, “is well-known.”

  “Stop talking to the girls,” Mom intervened. “We must settle this silly business tonight.”

  So, we sallied forth into the gentle May night, an ill-matched pair of warriors if there ever were such.

  “Now please don’t try to be funny.” Mom tried to sound severe, always a difficult task with her husband or her firstborn son.

  “I’ll be just like Dad.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  The war in Europe was over. Churchill’s “long night of barbarism” in Europe had ended. Some men were being released from the service. Dad expected an early discharge. We were destroying Japanese cities with firebomb raids. They were wreaking havoc on our ships with their kamikaze attacks. We had lost twelve thousand men in the battle for Okinawa. Mom was worried that I would be drafted when I graduated next year and would have to fight in the invasion of Japan, despite my plans to be a jet pilot. (A legitimate worry as it turned out. If it had not been for the atomic bomb, I would surely have ended up in the infantry. They didn’t need pilots.) The cruiser Indianapolis was about to sail for Tinian (and its own eventual destruction) with the first atomic bomb. Bing Crosby was singing that he wanted to “ride to the ridge where the West commences and gaze at the moon till I lose my senses,” so long as we undertook not to attempt to fence him in.

  A battle over a May crowning surely did not compare to the major events that were about to shape the new, more affluent, and more dangerous world.

  But it was our battle.

  The O’Malleys were “active” Catholics as naturally as they breathed the air or played their musical instruments. Mom had been president of the altar guild. Dad was an usher, even in uniform. Jane had been vice president of the High Club. I was sometime photographer in residence, and the always available altar boy to “take” sudden funerals, unexpected wartime weddings, periods of adoration during Forty Hours, and six-o’clock mass on Sundays. When our finances improved, we discussed together increasing our Sunday contribution.

  We voted, over my objections, to quadruple the amount we gave. Dad insisted that the Sunday gift be anonymous because he didn’t believe in the envelope system or the published list of contributions.

  “Why give if we don’t get credit?” I demanded, at least partially serious.

  “Chucky!” the other five responded in dismay.

  Despite the anonymity of our gifts, we were still prominent members of the parish. Even Monsignor Meany almost came to our house for supper one night. So Sister Mary War Admiral must have known she was in for a fight.

  I whistled, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” as we walked up the steps to the convent.

  “Hush,” Mom whispered; and then joined in with “All aboard, we’re not a-going fishin’.”

  “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition and we’ll all stay free,” we sang in presentable harmony as the light turned on above the convent steps.

  “You’re worse than your father,” she informed me when she managed to stop laughing.

  There was a long delay before the door opened—it is an unwritten rule of the Catholic Church (as yet unrepealed) that no convent or rectory door can be opened without a maddening wait being imposed on the one who has disturbed ecclesiastical peace by ringing the bell.

  Sister Mary Admiral did not answer the door, of course. Mothers superior did not do that sort of thing. The nun who did answer, new since my days in grammar school, kept her eyes averted as she showed us into the parlor, furnished in the heavy green style of pre–World War I with three popes, looking appallingly feminine, watching us with pious simpers.

  The nameless nun scurried back with a platter on which she had arrayed butter cookies, fudge, two small tumblers, and a pitcher of lemonade.

  “Don’t eat them all, Chucky,” Mom warned me as we waited for the mother superior to descend upon us.

  “I won’t,” I lied.

  The convent cookies and fudge—reserved for visitors of special importance—were beyond reproach. I will confess, however, that I was the one responsible for the story that, when the lemonade had been sent to a chemist for analysis, he had reported with great regret that our poor horse was dying of incurable kidney disease.

  “April dear, how wonderful to see you!” The War Admiral came in swinging. “You look wonderful. Painting airplanes certainly agrees with you.” She hugged Mom. “And Charles . . . my how you’ve grown!”

  I hadn’t. But I did not reply because the last bit of fudge had followed the final cookie into my digestive tract.

  The War Admiral hated my guts. She resented my endless presence with camera and flashbulb. She suspected, quite correctly, that I had coined her nickname. She also suspected, again correctly, that I had been responsible for pouring the curate’s wine into the monsignor’s wine bottle. Finally, she suspected, with monumental unfairness (and inaccuracy) that I had consumed most of the monsignor’s wine and was thus responsible for the necessity of filling the bottle with lesser wine.

  “You look wonderful too, Sister.” Although Mom had blushed at the compliment, she was too cagey to be taken in by it. “My husband is at the War Department this week, so my son has come with me.”

  Actually Sister Mary Admirabilis looked terrible, as she always did. Like the late pastor, she was tiny and deceptively frail. Her eyes darted nervously and her fingers twisted back and forth, perhaps because she did not bring to the parlor the little handbell that she always carried while “on duty”—the kind of bell you used to ring on the counter of a hotel reception desk.

  Most of the other nuns also carried little handbells, on which they pounded anxiously when the natives became restless.

  War Admiral launched her campaign quickly, hook nose almost bouncing against jutting chin as she spit out her carefully prepared lines. “I’m so sorry about this little misunderstanding. Your precious Margaret Mary should be the one to crown the Blessed Mother. She is such a darling, so good and virtuous and popular. I often worry about her friendship with the Clancy child. I’m afraid that she’s a bad influence. I hope you don’t regret their friendship someday.”

  You praise the daughter, you hint at the danger of the friend, you stir up a little guilt—classic mother superior maneuvers. And how did my mother, soft, gentle, kindly April Cronin O’Malley, react?

  April Mae Cronin O’Malley.

  “Oh, Sister, I would be so unhappy if Peg did not graduate from St. Ursula next month, just as Jane and Chuck . . . uh, Charles here did.”

  Oh, boy.

  “But there’s no question of that . . .”

  Mom ignored her. “The sisters out at Trinity did tell me that they’ll accept her as a freshman with a music scholarship even if she doesn’t graduate.”

  “But . . .”

  “And though it would break my heart”—Mom seemed close to tears—“I’ll have to withdraw her from St. Ursula if she is put in this impossible situation.”

  “She wouldn’t come back to school anyway,” I added helpfully, licking the last trace of fudge from my lips.

  “Shush, darling,” Mom murmured.

  “Please yourself.” The Admiral took off her velvet gloves. “If Margaret Mary does not choose to accept the honor to which she has been appointed, we simply won’t have a May crowning.”

  “Please yourself, Sis
ter.” Mom smiled sadly. “My family will have no part of this unjust humiliation of Rosemarie.”

  I began to hum mentally, “Let’s remember Pearl Harbor as we did the Alamo . . .” This was a preliminary scrimmage. Mom was touching a base before cornering Monsignor Mugsy.

  “My dear”—the Admiral’s voice was sweet and oily—“we really can’t let the Clancy girl crown Our Blessed Lady. Her father is a criminal and her mother . . . Well, as I’m sure you know”—her voice sank to a whisper—“she drinks!”

  “All the more reason to be charitable to Rosemarie.”

  “Like Jesus to Mary Magdalene,” I added helpfully.

  “Shush, darling.”

  “Monsignor Meany established very firm rules for this honor.”

  “Monsignor Meany is dead, God be good to him.”

  “Cold in his grave,” I observed.

  “His rules will remain in force as long as I am superior.”

  “Time for a change, I guess,” I murmured.

  “You give me no choice but to visit Monsignor Branigan.”

  “Please yourself.”

  The warm night had turned frigid.

  “I shall.”

  “Don’t say anything, dear,” Mom said as we walked down Menard Avenue to the front door of the rectory. “Not a word.”

  “Who, me?”

  After the routine wait for the bell to be answered, we were admitted to a tiny office littered with baptismal books. Monsignor Branigan, in black clerical suit, appeared almost at once, medium height, thick glasses, red face, and broad smile.

  “April Cronin!” he exclaimed, embracing her; unheard of behavior from a priest in those days. “Greetings and salutations! You look more beautiful than ever!”

  “April Mae Cronin,” I observed.

  They knew each other, did they? Sure they did. All South Side Irish knew one another.

  Monsignor Mugsy was right. Without my having noticed it, she had, as she passed her fortieth birthday, become beautiful. The worry and the poverty of the Depression were over. She no longer had to send me to Liska’s meat market to purchase twenty-eight cents of beef stew ground from which to make supper for six of us. Her husband was safe at Fort Sheridan. The war would soon be over. Her children were growing up. She was earning more money than she would have dreamed possible. She had put on enough weight so that curves had appeared under her gray suit. A distinguished countess now.