A Midwinter's Tale

by Andrew M. Greeley

  An Irish tinker the sight of whom would make you wish you had hidden your silver.

  I wandered through the house. Either the others had left for home or were amusing themselves somewhere else. I found Rosie in the two-story living room, curled up in front of the fireplace, smoking and reading a book. She was wearing a white sweater and matching slacks and was wrapped in a red blanket that might be authentic Navajo.

  When she saw me, standing in the door, she put the book aside, snuffed out her cigarette, and straightened up, the blanket hanging like a royal cloak from her shoulders. “Are you all right?” we both asked together.

  “Sure, fine,” we responded in unison, and then laughed. Weakly.

  The book, I noted with disapproval, was Brideshead Revisited. Why was a mere girl reading a serious book?

  I sat uneasily on the edge of a chair in which one could have sunk almost as readily as into the lake. The room had been created out of an original parlor and an upstairs bedroom or two. Strong oak arches soared to the ceiling. The wall was paneled in knotty pine. An enormous picture window looked out on the bright waters of the lake.

  An idealized painting of Mrs. Clancy hung on the wall opposite the fireplace. She was probably an attractive woman for a few years long ago. Before she started to drink. They’d say the same thing about Rosie someday.

  “Sorry about your camera.”

  “Sorry about your prom dress. And slip.”

  “They found the dress.” She brightened. “It drifted ashore.”

  “Cameras don’t drift.”

  “I know. I’ll buy you a new one.”

  “You will not.”

  She winced as though I had hit her.

  “You’re sure you’re all right?” again we spoke simultaneously. Neither of us laughed this time.

  “Prom dresses tear pretty easily.” I tried to sound lighthearted. “Slips too.”

  “I’m sure”—she flushed—“you’ve had lots of experience.”

  “I try to rip off a dress—and a slip too—whenever I go to a prom. I haven’t any experience with corsets yet.” My tongue took over on its own. “I need practice in ripping off corsets.”

  She giggled and seemed to relax.

  I charged on, “You really do look lovely in a corset, Rosemarie. Though I can’t imagine why someone as beautiful as you would have to wear one. I’m sure you’d look even more beautiful without it. But, like I say, I have no experience in that area yet.”

  What in the hell had got into me? I couldn’t possibly have said those absurd things.

  Rosemarie flushed deeply and then began to laugh. We both laughed together.

  “Chucky, when you choose to be, you’re the sweetest boy in the world!”

  “I think you may have said that before.” My face was burning.

  “You knew exactly what to say to make me laugh. God knows I needed to laugh. . . . You wouldn’t have dared to pull off my corset.”

  “Never can tell what I might do with an unconscious body of a lovely young woman floating on the lake.”

  More laughter.

  Ought not she be offended by my risqué remarks?

  For a moment I was again the knight in shining armor who had saved the Princess Rosa Maria and even made her laugh.

  Forget that my remarks were stupid.

  She stopped laughing and smiled wanly. “They say you saved my life, Chucky.”

  “I don’t think so. You were pretty close to the shore.”

  She sighed. “At first I was terrified. The water was so cold. Then, well, I kind of knew I was going to die and it seemed peaceful and I wasn’t afraid anymore. Why hang on to life anyway?”

  I listened silently. Who was this girl? What furies tormented her? I wished I could disappear like an invisible man. I did not want to hear her bare her soul.

  “Then when I knew it would only be another minute or two, I sort of changed my mind and wanted another chance. I tried to pray, but I knew God would not listen to me. Then you were there. I’m sorry you had to hit me.”

  “It was kind of fun.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you for saving my life, Chuck,” she said solemnly. “I’ll never forget what you did. I promise I’ll never do anything like that again.”

  “You really look terrible,” I blustered to cover my embarrassment. “I mean, as far as a pretty girl like you can look terrible. You should see a doctor.”

  “I’m all right.”

  Then my mouth took over again. “I have an idea.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah . . . we didn’t dance much last night. Why don’t we do one more.”

  “Wonderful!” she exclaimed happily.

  She jumped to her feet, turned on the phonograph, which just happened to have “Tenderly” ready to play, and gathered me into her arms. We stayed a respectful distance from one another.

  And so we danced, like longtime lovers, easily, happily, without comment or conflict.

  We kissed each other gently a couple of times. I’m not sure what would have happened if Peg had not stuck her head through the door.

  “Chuck!” she screamed. “What are you doing!”

  “Dancing,” I said.

  “Being the sweetest boy in the world,” Rosemarie added, a smile in her voice.

  “You healed her,” Peg whispered in my ear when we finally arrived back at Menard Avenue. “You made her feel that she was worth something. She was smiling and laughing like nothing had happened. Chuck, that was wonderful!”

  “Naturally,” I said urbanely.

  The secret of prom day at Lake Geneva did not survive the next twenty-four hours.

  ATHLETE SAVES DATE’S LIFE AT LAKE GENEVA

  Charles “Magic Chuck” O’Malley, the reserve quarterback who led Fenwick’s football team into the Kelly Bowl last year, proved on Friday that he could be a hero off the football field as well as on it. At a picnic after the Fenwick Senior Prom, he plunged into the icy waters of Lake Geneva to save the life of his prom date, Rosemarie Clancy, 15. Rosemarie had stumbled off the pier in her prom dress and, according to witnesses, would have drowned if it had not been for O’Malley’s quick-thinking bravery.

  Rosemarie is the daughter of the well-known commodities trader James P. Clancy. O’Malley’s father, Lt. Col. John E. O’Malley, is an architect and former commander of the Black Horse Troop of the Illinois National Guard.

  Mom and Dad (who never commanded the Troop, by the way) stared at the story as though they did not really believe it.

  “The poor child doesn’t have much on, does she?”

  “It was kind of fun pulling off her clothes,” I said modestly. “It would have been more fun if I were not freezing to death and I knew what to do about a corset.”

  “Chucky!” Mom protested, but not enough to stop her from laughing.

  “I don’t know what’s happening to you, Brother.” Jane looked at me as if she had discovered a new species of amusing elf.

  “She was drunk, Mom.” Peg was somehow defending me. “It was the first time she ever drank that much. She’d be dead if it weren’t for Chucky.”

  “Pulling off the slip,” I sailed on merrily, “was the most fun. You can’t drag a victim to shore with all those clothes.”

  “Not another word, young man!”

  “I can basically sympathize with his position.” My dad looked up from the comics.

  “Vangie! Shame on you! She’s too young even to think that way!” Mom was still trying to suppress her own laughter.

  “Not that young,” I said wisely.

  And then everyone laughed.

  “Anyway, darling,” Mom said, striving to regain propriety, “we’re all very proud of you.”

  At supper the next night, an envelope was on my plate. Expensive parchment stationery. From James P. Clancy, Esq.

  I opened it with nervous fingers while the other five watched me intently.

  Inside there was a check. N
o note, only a check.

  “Five thousand dollars,” I said.

  Multiply it by ten in 1946. My college education. Graduate school too, if I wanted.

  “Five thousand,” I muttered through tight teeth. If he were in the room, I told myself, I would tear Jim Clancy’s head off. The bastard! He was responsible for his kid’s problems.

  I looked around the table: every face expressionless.

  I tore the check in two, put it back in the envelope, and scrawled Clancy’s name and address.

  “She’s either worth a lot more than that or she isn’t worth anything.”

  “What do you mean, Chuck?” My father cleared his throat.

  “If she were my daughter”—my fists clenched and unclenched—“she’d be worth either a million dollars or an honest ‘thank you.’ Nothing in between.”

  They applauded.

  “What’s the matter with him?” I demanded. “Why is he so evil?”

  “He’s not really evil, dear,” Mom said. “He means well. His mother spoiled him.”

  “He never really grew up,” Dad added.

  “That’s no excuse,” I added.

  “Poor Rosie,” Peg sighed.

  “I don’t intend to grow up either,” I announced, “but I won’t ever be a cruel bastard!”

  There were no reproofs for my bad language. Instead, my mother and my two sisters hugged me, affection that I pretended not to like.

  There was one more surprise before I left for Fort Benning.

  It appeared at the door of our apartment just as I was leaving with a backdrop of five sets of watery eyes, a small package, wrapped carefully in white gift paper.

  I opened it slowly. A new, postwar Kodak 35mm camera.

  No note or card. Not that there had to be one.

  “Rosie,” Peg breathed softly.

  “I won’t tear it in half,” I said, a catch in my voice.

  Of all the surprises during those years, that was the one that would most change my life.

  I insisted that I would ride up to the Fort Sheridan induction center on the North Shore line by myself. After bidding everyone good-bye with a brave Chucky wisecrack, I walked over to Austin Boulevard, took the bus to Lake Street, and rode the el downtown. I got off at Randolph and Wabash and waited for the North Shore train that traveled around the Loop before heading north again. I thought about calling Rosemarie to thank her for the gift and to bid her farewell. Why had she not come over to our place for the session of tears? I had not asked and Peg had not said.

  What difference did it make? That part of my life was over, was it not?

  Still I tried a call from the public phone on the el platform. The line was busy. Probably she was talking to Peg.

  Was there a lump in my throat as I rode up to Fort Sheridan and my new life?

  I can’t quite remember.

  11

  “Just exactly what do you think you’re doing, young man?” a woman’s voice demanded.

  “Studying accounting,” I replied politely.

  Then I looked up to behold the goddess Maeve looking down upon me with thunder in her dark blue eyes.

  I’m not sure that I knew who Maeve was in those days. However, the woman towering over me looked like a goddess. Even if she wasn’t, she wore captain’s bars, which meant trouble for the poor little orphan redhead. I wasn’t an orphan of course, but I felt like one.

  I struggled out of my chair and endeavored to stand at attention, something I was not good at. About all I had learned in basic training was how to talk military. I knew nothing about how to be military.

  In my clumsy effort to look like a soldier, I knocked my stack of accounting books off my desk. I tried to pick them up off the floor and dropped them. The captain, her eyes threatening at least court-martial and probably immediate execution, retrieved them for me and stacked them neatly on the desk.

  “You have a name surely?”

  “Yes, Captain, ma’am,” I said, wondering if it was too late to salute. “O’Malley, Corp. Charles Cronin, Army of the United States, serial number oh nine—”

  “You are not yet a prisoner of war, Corporal,” she interrupted me. “You only look like one.”

  “Yes, ma’am, Captain, ma’am. I only arrived an hour ago from Nürnberg, ma’am.”

  She was real old by my standards; that is to say, twenty-four or twenty-five. She was also paralyzingly attractive, maybe six feet tall, willowy in a flawlessly fitted uniform, pale complexion, a halo of curly, black hair, and those dangerous, dangerous eyes. There was also I noted, a slight twitch in her lovely lips, a hint that maybe, just maybe, she found me amusing.

  “I’m not interested in your excuses,” she said implacably. “I’m Capt. Polly Nettleton. I seem to be the senior officer present.”

  She spoke English with a foreign accent. Boston.

  “Yes, ma’am, Captain, ma’am.”

  “Have you been assigned to this unit, Corporal?”

  “If this is the First Constabulary Regiment, Captain, ma’am, then I have been assigned here as a clerk typist.”

  “Clerk typist?” she said with a sneer, all trace of the latent smile vanishing.

  “Yes, ma’am. I asked one of the other men where the new clerk typist worked. He pointed out this desk.”

  I noted that the others in the room—the grand ballroom of the Residenz of the prince bishop of Bamberg—were watching with interest. How would the ridiculous little punk cope with Captain Polly? “You have orders?” she asked crisply.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Did not they teach you at Fort Benning that you were supposed to present your orders to the senior officer present?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “They didn’t teach you much of anything, Corporal, did they?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I see. . . . What do they call you?”

  Her lips were twitching again. Ah, there was still hope.

  “Chuck, Captain, ma’am.”

  “All right, Chucky, do you think that as a matter of military formality you might present your orders to me so we can make you part of this outfit, find quarters for you, issue you a proper uniform, and maybe even put you to work?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Where then are your orders?”

  That was a good question.

  “They’re around here somewhere, Captain, ma’am.” I searched frantically in my trousers, my Ike jacket, and my wallet for them.

  No orders.

  “Do you think this might be what you’re looking for, Chucky?”

  She reached into my Principles of Accounting and removed the pertinent bureaucratic document. It was dog-eared, crumpled, and dirty. She held it between her thumb and forefinger as if it might contain dangerous bacteria.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I take it that upon presentation of these orders you are reporting for duty?”

  “I think so . . . er, yes, ma’am, Captain, ma’am.”

  “Good. . . . Can you type?”

  “Yes, ma’am. My MOS [military occupational specialty] is clerk typist.”

  “I can see that. . . . My question was whether you can type.”

  Of course I could type. Hadn’t I typed half the term papers of my Fenwick graduation class? Perfectly.

  “Try me, Captain Polly, ma’am.”

  A snicker floated around the room. The good captain smiled, the kind of Irish womanly smile that made the sun flee in shame because its light suddenly had become dim, a smile like that of the good April Mae Cronin O’Malley.

  “All right, Corporal Chucky. We’ll do just that. Here is a sheaf of letters that Gen. Radford Meade, our commanding officer, dictated this morning. They are all directed to Gen. Lucius Clay. Am I wrong in assuming you have heard of the military governor of Germany?”

  “No, ma’am . . . yes, ma’am. I mean, Captain, ma’am, that you are not wrong. I have heard of General Clay.”

  “Good! These letters must b
e typed perfectly by twelve hundred hours. That’s noon, Corporal. You have two hours to do your work. If the letters are not flawless, we may just send you up to the border of the Russian zone for the rest of what promises to be a very cold winter.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I amused her. That was good. Another Coach Angelo. One who smiled like my mother.

  A half hour later I strolled up to her desk, which was in front of an ornate oak doorway, behind which there was either the prince bishop or the commanding officer of the First Constabulary Regiment (there was no Second Regiment, by the way).

  “Captain Polly, ma’am . . . ,” I said timidly as I handed her the stack of letters.

  She considered me skeptically.

  “They had better be perfect.”

  “Infallible,” I replied with my best Chucky Ducky grin.

  She glanced over the papers quickly, then read each of them carefully.

  “Catholic high school, I suppose?” She looked up at me, her totally radiant smile almost breaking my heart.

  “Yes, ma’am. Fenwick in Chicago. Well, Oak Park to be precise.”

  “Dominicans. . . . What are you doing out here at the end of the earth?”

  “Earning money to attend Notre Dame,” I said candidly.

  She smiled again. “My husband went to Notre Dame.”

  “A fortunate man on many counts.”

  She threw back her head and laughed, the rich, happy laugh of a woman who loved her husband so much that any reference to him, even by a miserable little runt of a corporal, made her even happier.

  All the others in the ballroom laughed too.

  “I’m not sure we need another glib mick here in Bamberg,” she said. “However, you certainly can type.”

  At that moment the great oak doors swung open and two officers emerged, one with the eagle of a full colonel and the other with the twin stars of a major general.

  No one in the room seemed to change his or her manner in the presence of the two officers.

  “General Meade,” Captain Polly observed, “this child is our new clerk typist, Corp. Charles Cronin O’Malley. Despite all our expectations, he actually can type. Quickly and skillfully.”