A Midwinter's Tale

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Is this galoot yours?” He nodded at me.

  “Sometimes she’s not sure,” I responded.

  “Vangie, uh, John is in Washington,” Mom explained.

  “What grade are you in, son?”

  “I’m a junior at Fenwick.”

  “Do you play football?”

  “Quarterback.”

  “What string?”

  “Fourth.”

  “I thought there were only three strings.” Monsignor Mugsy and I were hitting it off just fine.

  “For me they made an exception.” I was not about to tell him that I was more mascot than player.

  “Where are you going to college?”

  “I’ve seen Knute Rockne, All American. Win one for the Gipper.”

  “Great,” the monsignor exclaimed. “Now, April, what’s on your mind?”

  Mom told him.

  “Dear God.” He breathed out and reclined in his swivel chair. “How can we do things like this to people? Someday we’re going to have to pay a terrible price.”

  “Mary Magdalene—” I began.

  “Shush, darling.”

  “I hear that old man Clancy is something of a crook.” The monsignor drummed his stubby fingers on the desk.

  “A big crook,” I said.

  “But you two are willing to vouch for the poor little tyke?”

  “Certainly.” Mom nodded vigorously. “She’s a lovely child.”

  “You bet,” I perjured myself because I thought my life might depend on it.

  “Well, that settles that . . . ah, Jack . . . don’t try to sneak by. I suppose you know the O’Malleys?”

  “I think so.” John Raven, golf clubs on his shoulder, grinned. “The kid has a reputation for switching wine bottles; watch him.”

  “Calumny.”

  “I hear”—the pastor peered shrewdly over his thick bifocals—“we have some trouble with the May crowning. Why don’t you talk to Sister, Jack, and . . .”

  Father Raven leaned against the doorjamb. “The smallest first grader has more clout with the War Admiral than a curate has.” He chuckled. “It’s your fight, Mugsy.”

  “And your parish,” I said.

  Everyone ignored me.

  The monsignor threw up his hands. “See what’s happening to the Church, April? Curates won’t do the pastor’s dirty work for him anymore. Well, go home and tell Peggy—I know which one she is, she looks like you did when you crowned the Blessed Mother at St. Gabe’s—that her friend will do the honors next week.”

  When we arrived back at our tiny apartment three blocks south of the rectory on Menard, Peg hugged me enthusiastically. “Oh, Chucky Ducky, you’re wonderful.”

  Rosie, her face crimson, considered doing the same thing but wisely judged from the expression on my face not to try. Instead, tears in her vast eyes, she said, “Thank you.”

  Actually, it would have been wonderful if she had tried.

  “It was all the good April,” I replied modestly. “I just carried her bowling shoes.”

  Parish reaction to Monsignor Branigan’s intervention was mostly positive. The Clancy kid was too pretty for her own good and a little fast besides. However, it was time someone put Sister Mary Admirabilis in her place.

  Was there any complaint that April O’Malley had gone to the new pastor to overrule the mother superior?

  Certainly not. If you are April O’Malley, by definition you can do no wrong.

  The Sunday afternoon of the May crowning, in the basement gym that had been Meany Meany’s bequest to the parish, the blue-and-white plaster statue (pseudo-Italian Renaissance ugly) of the Mother of Jesus was surrounded by a circle of six early-pubescent girls dressed as though they were a wedding party and one pint-sized, red-haired photographer clutching his new Argus C-3 and flash attachment.

  The ceremony had begun with a “living rosary” in the gravel-coated schoolyard next to the church. The student body was arranged in the form of a rosary, six children in each bead. At the head of the cross stood the May crowning party, Rosie in a white bridal dress, her four attendants in baby blue, and two of the tiniest first-Communion tots in their veils carrying Rosie’s train.

  The recitation of the rosary moved from bead to bead, the kids in the bead saying the first part of the Pater or the Ave and the rest of the school responding, accompanied with not too much enthusiasm by parents who had come to the ceremony with about as much cheerfulness as that which marked their attendance at school music recitals.

  I lurked on the fringes of the “living rosary” automatically reciting the prayers and capturing with my camera the most comic expressions I could find. It wasn’t hard to discover funny faces, especially when a warning breeze stirred the humid air and the bright sky turned dull gray.

  The voices of seventh and eighth graders hinted at the possibility of adolescent bass. The younger kids chanted in a singsong that might have been just right in a Tibetan monastery. The little kids piped like tiny squeaking birds.

  The spectacle was silly, phony, artificial, and oddly, at the same time devout, impressive, and memorable.

  As we moved from the “Fourth Glorious Mystery, the Assumption of Mary into Heaven” to the verses of the “Lourdes Hymn,” which would introduce the “Fifth Glorious Mystery, the Crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven,” the first faint drops of rain fell on the crowded schoolyard. The voices of mothers gasped in protest.

  It was decision time. John Raven drifted over to the War Admiral, nodded toward the sky, and then toward the church. Fingers caressing her handbell, she shook her head firmly. We would finish the rosary. God would not permit it to rain.

  Father Raven raised an eyebrow at Mugsy, resplendent in the full choir robes of a domestic prelate, red cassock and lace surplice.

  “Looks as pretty,” my father had remarked of the robes, “as doctoral robes from Harvard.”

  Mugsy peered at the sky through his thick glasses, as if he really couldn’t see that far, and nodded.

  John Raven shrugged: you’re the pastor, Pastor.

  Mugsy stepped to the primitive public address microphone and said, “I think God wants us to go inside.”

  Obediently the altar boys in white cassock and red capes—cross bearer and two acolytes with candles long since extinguished by the stiffening wind—began to process toward the church. The girls in the crowning party fell in behind.

  The War Admiral’s bell rang out in protest. Several other bells responded. A couple of nuns rushed forward and pushed the kids in the first decade of the rosary into line behind the altar boys: the rosary would unlink itself into a straight processional line with the crowning party at the very end, the way it was supposed to be, instead of at the beginning.

  In which position it was most likely to be drenched since the rain clouds were closing in on us.

  I snapped a wonderful shot of the War Admiral twisting a little girl’s shoulder back in line and another of her shoving Peg to a dead halt. My sister had challenged the ringing of the bells and begun to cut in front of the procession and dodge the raindrops, which were even now falling rapidly.

  Irresistible force met immovable object.

  The conundrum was resolved by the push of parents, not bound by the wishes of the mother superior, rushing for the church door—despite the outraged cries of the handbells.

  Peg simply ducked around the War Admiral, snatched up into her arms one of the first-Communion tots, and followed by Rosie, who had seized the other tot, raced for the church door in the midst of a crowd of parents.

  I still have the prints—on my desk as I write this story. Peg was not to be stopped.

  God may not have been sufficiently afraid of the War Admiral to hold off the rain. But He (or She if you wish) was enough enchanted by Peg to stay the shower until the crowning party had pushed its way into the shelter of the church.

  Peg reassembled her crew in the vestibule at the foot of the steps leading to the basement church, waited till everyone was inside,
then led the crowning party solemnly down the aisle toward the altar.

  The nuns were too busy pushing and shoving kids and glaring at parents in a doomed effort to restore the “ranks” to cope with a determined young woman who knew exactly what she intended to do.

  Peg would have made a good mother superior in her own right.

  Doubtless given a signal by John Raven, the organ struck up a chintzy version of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance,” an exaggeration if there ever were one for this scene.

  Only about half the schoolkids were soaking wet when they finally struggled into their pews. The War Admiral’s determined efforts to restore order had deprived the kids of the “sense to come in out of the rain”!

  If Sister says you stay out in the rain, then you stay out in the rain.

  The nuns all miraculously produced umbrellas from the folds of their black robes and stayed dry if not cool.

  By the time the Admiral and her aides could turn their attention to the crowning party, Peg had herded them safely to the front of the church. There they waited patiently under the protection of Monsignor Branigan and Father Raven—and naturally in the presence of your and my favorite redhead photojournalist.

  I still laugh at the pictures of the nuns turning misfortune into calamity.

  Monsignor nodded to the younger priest, who strolled over to the lectern that served as a pulpit and began, “To make up for the rain, we will have a very short sermon. My text seems appropriate for the circumstances: ‘Man Proposes, God Disposes’—I almost said, ‘Sister Proposes, God Disposes’!”

  Laughter broke the tension in the congregation and drowned out the clanging handbells. We were no longer wet and angry, we were wet and giddy.

  I could imagine Mom and Dad arguing whether Father Raven had gone “too far.” Mom would giggle and lose the argument.

  The air was thick with spring humidity, girlish perfume, and the scent of mums, always favored by the War Admiral because, as I had argued, they reminded her of funeral homes.

  The crowning party fidgeted through the five-minute-and-thirty-second sermon. Eighth-grade girls were too young for such finery, some of them not physically mature enough to wear it, and all of them not emotionally mature enough.

  Peg, however, looked like a youthful empress, albeit a self-satisfied one.

  And Rosie?

  She was shaking nervously and deadly pale.

  And, yes, I’ll have to admit it, gorgeous.

  She kept glancing anxiously at me, as if I were supposed to provide reassurance.

  I ignored her, naturally. Well, I did smile at her once. I might even have winked, because she grinned quickly and seemed to calm down.

  The sanctuary of the “basement church” was in fact a stage. The statue of Mary had been moved for the event to the front of the stage on the right (or “epistle”) side. A dubious stepladder, draped in white, leaned against the pedestal. Of all those in church, only the statue was not sweating.

  After the sermon it was time for the congregation to belt out, “Bring flowers of the rarest”—“from garden and woodland and hillside and dale” as I remember the lyrics. Rosie bounded up the shaky white ladder, still the rushing timber wolf. The ladder, next to my shoulder, trembled.

  Anyone who attended such spring rituals in those days will remember that the congregation was required to sing two times, “O Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today, queen of the angels, queen of the May!” During the second refrain, much louder than the first (which itself was pretty loud), the ring of flowers was placed on the head of the statue.

  I had been charged to take “a truly good picture, darling. For her parents, who won’t be able to come.” Given the state of flashbulb technology in those days, that meant I had one and one chance only.

  Just as Rosie raised the circle of blossoms, I saw an absolutely perfect shot frozen in my viewfinder. I pushed the shutter button, the bulb exploded, the ladder swayed, and Rosemarie Helen Clancy fell off it.

  On me.

  I found myself, dazed and sore, on the sanctuary floor, buried in a swirl of bridal lace and disordered feminine limbs.

  “Are you all right?” she demanded. “Did I hurt you?”

  “I’m dead, you clumsy goof.”

  “It’s all your fault,” Peg snarled, pulling Rosie off me. “You exploded that flash thing deliberately.”

  Leo Kelly, a gentle and intelligent young man who was going off to Quigley to study for the priesthood (and who later disappeared in Vietnam), helped me as I struggled to my feet to be greeted by an explosion of laughter.

  “Nice going, Chuck,” he observed with a wicked grin.

  What’s so funny? I wondered as every handbell in every nunnish hand in the church clanged in dismay.

  Then I felt the flowers on my head. Rosie had crowned not the Blessed Mother, but me!

  Even the frightened little trainbearers were snickering.

  I knew I had better rise to the occasion or I was dead in the neighborhood and at Fenwick High School.

  Forever and ever.

  Amen.

  So I bowed deeply to the giggling Rosie, and with a single motion, swept the flowers off my wire-brush hair and into her hand. She bowed back.

  She may have winked too, for which God forgive her.

  These days Catholic congregations applaud in church on almost any occasion, even for that rare event, the good sermon. In those days applause in the sacred confines was unthinkable.

  Nonetheless, led by Monsignor Branigan and Father Raven, the whole church applauded.

  Except for the nuns, who were pounding frantically on their handbells.

  Rosie looped the somewhat battered crown around her fingers and joined the applause.

  Then someone, Any mother I’m sure, began, “O Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today . . .”

  Rosie darted up the ladder just in time to put the crown where it belonged. As she turned to descend, the ladder tottered again. I steadied it with my left hand and helped her down with my right.

  She blushed and smiled at me.

  And owned the whole world.

  There was, God help me and the bell-pounding nuns, more applause.

  Rosie raised her right hand shyly, acknowledging the acclaim.

  The monsignor stepped to the lectern.

  “I think we’d better quit when we’re ahead.”

  More laughter.

  “Father Raven, who has better eyes than I do,” he continued, “tells me that the rain has stopped. So we’ll skip benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and end the service now, with special congratulations to the May crowner and her, uh, agile court. First, we’ll let you parents out of church, then our bright young altar boys will lead the schoolchildren out, then, Chucky, you can lead out the wedding party. It won’t be necessary for the children to go to their classrooms. We want to get everyone home before the rains start again.”

  It was a total rout for the War Admiral. To dismiss the kids from church without requiring that they return to their classrooms was to undo the work of Creation and unleash the forces of chaos and disorder, indeed to invite the gates of hell to triumph against the Church.

  The clanging handbells displayed a remarkable lack of spirit.

  Afterward, back in our apartment, the sun shining brightly again, Mom insisted that I was the hero of the day. Peg did a complete turnaround, a tactic at which she excelled, and told everyone that “Rosie would have been badly hurt if Chucky hadn’t caught her,” a generous description of my role.

  Dad, returned from Washington in time for the show, affirmed that at last St. Ursula had a real pastor.

  “Joe Meany is now in his grave permanently.”

  “And War Admiral has been put out to stud.”

  I was old enough to know vaguely what that meant.

  My prediction was accurate. The following year, Sister Angela Marie, even older it was said than the War Admiral, appeared at our parish and governed with happy laughter instead of a han
dbell.

  In the midst of the festivities, I wondered whether in my eagerness to freeze what I had seen in my viewfinder I might have brushed against the ladder.

  And what was the instant I froze on my Plus-X film?

  That night, when the apartment had settled down, I crept off to my makeshift darkroom in the basement of our building. After developing the film and exposing the paper, I watched the magic instant come up in the print solution.

  What I saw scared me: two shrewd young women, one of them recognizable as a marble statue only if you looked closely, making a deal, like a buyer and seller at the Maxwell Street flea market. Rosie was about to offer the crown in return for . . .

  Well, it wasn’t clear what she expected from the deal. But she expected something. No, she was confident she would get it.

  I hung the picture to dry, thought about claiming that the film had been ruined, and then reluctantly decided that I wouldn’t get away with it.

  “You could call the picture,” Mom would say, “the way Time magazine does, ‘Rosemarie and friend.’ ”

  None of them would see in the photo the deal being consummated. They would say that it was all in my imagination.

  After the ceremony that afternoon, my friends from Fenwick had demanded to know did I “cop a feel” when “Clancy” was on top of me.

  “Nothing to feel,” I insisted with notable lack of both honesty and loyalty.

  “What was she like?” they demanded with horny insistence.

  “Heavy,” I told them.

  Now, as I watched a second print materialize in the solution, I admitted in a deep, untended, and secret subbasement of my brain that the sensation of Rosie’s body on top of mine had been so sweet that, if the ever-vigilant Peg had not pulled us apart, I might have been content to remain there always.

  To hell, I thought, with Jim Clancy.