A Midwinter's Tale

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Dear God, woman”—I patted her back—“have you become a fashion model or something? You’re gorgeous!”

  “That’s the girl I married.” Dad beamed proudly.

  “Now I understand why!”

  “Chucky!” she protested, blushing happily. “Both of you are very wicked, flattering an old woman’s vanity.”

  “We’d better get her out of here, Dad.” I took his right arm. “This kind of American woman could drive the troops to desperate action.”

  “Chucky!” The blush deepened as I hugged her again. “You stop this minute!”

  God help me if I had.

  Dad was still bald, so there was no reason for me to think that he was too young. No reason except the navy blue blazer, the white flannel slacks, the trim waist, and the trim red beard.

  “Why the disguise?” I asked.

  “Isn’t it simply divine, Chucky? It makes him look so artistic.”

  “What the promising young architect wears? Kind of looks like a villain in a German opera, not that I saw any. Or maybe a pirate in Gilbert and Sullivan!”

  I began to hum a patter song about pirates from Penzance. Mom and Dad joined in.

  “We’d better get out of here,” I suggested, “before they summon the MPs.”

  “You do look, well”—my father hesitated—“more mature.”

  “Maybe I’ve grown up a little in the last two years. But don’t bet on it.”

  “What’s that ribbon you’re wearing?”

  “Legion of Merit,” I whispered because I still felt guilty about it.

  “For extraordinary service in a position of grave responsibility?” The poor man was as excited as if he had won it. All he had done in the service was to come close to being buried alive in the flu epidemic of 1918.

  “Something like that.”

  “You didn’t tell us about that,” Mom said.

  “Nothing much to tell. Someday soon I’ll tell you the story.”

  I had of course worn the ribbon to impress them.

  I had grown older and they had grown younger. The chemistry between the two of them, once barely hidden, was now completely out in the open. He’s a teenage lover with a beard and a woman in buttons and bows, and I’m an old man without any kind of woman.

  Somehow, this is all wrong.

  “You don’t want to eat here, do you?”

  “No thanks, Dad. Not another Army meal, not even an officer’s meal.”

  “Then let’s go, you two.” Mom grabbed one of us with each arm and marched us toward the door. “We have a real surprise for dinner. And a serious problem to settle. Then we’ll go home for a party with the rest of the family. They’re dying to see you, especially poor little Rosemarie, but we said we had first claim.”

  “Suits me.”

  Under the cloudless sky again, I was still disoriented. This attractive twosome were clearly my parents, but what had happened to them?

  Mom wore her sunglasses inside. Prescription lens? The new solution to nearsightedness—stylish bifocals?

  How much had it cost? All of it, the clothes, the makeup, the scent, the food, the exercise, the fancy sunglasses? All right, we weren’t poor anymore. The Depression (not yet called the Great Depression) was over, though I assumed that it would return. But Dad wasn’t making that kind of money, was he?

  “You want to drive it?” Dad gestured at the long, sleek, black Buick parked in front of the club. “You said you learned to drive in Germany.”

  “That’s our car?”

  “Your father’s car,” Mom said. “I have a cute little white Studebaker convertible.”

  “Matches the frames on your glasses? No thanks, Dad. I wouldn’t want to celebrate my return by banging up this black beauty Buick.”

  They both laughed, as though banging up cars was no longer a problem.

  Two cars? The only car the family had possessed when I left for Germany in late 1946 was a decrepit, old, secondhand 1936 Chevy that Mom had bought for a hundred dollars to drive up to the Douglas plant where she slapped paint on B-24s.

  “We can get you a car”—Dad hesitated as he opened the door of the Buick—“if you want one for school.”

  “A cute little Ford, maybe; or a Dodge?”

  What did my mother know about cars?

  “They don’t let students drive cars at Notre Dame.” I climbed in the backseat. Three-car family? Good God!

  “The vets can drive them,” Mom insisted.

  “Only if they’re married and live off campus.”

  “Maybe you should get married.” Dad chuckled as he turned the ignition.

  “I’d rather walk.”

  I was still dazed as we pulled out of the Fort and turned south on Green Bay Road.

  “I thought I’d take Half Day Road west to Waukegan Road and then down that till it becomes Harlem?”

  He was asking for my approval of the route?

  “You’re the chauffeur.”

  “You’ll just love the new house in Oak Park, dear.” Mom turned in the front seat to look at me, still not sure that I was really hers. “You’ll have a room all to yourself.”

  For the first time in my life.

  Well, there was the room at the Bambergerhof.

  “And a darkroom in the basement,” Dad added. “All the latest equipment.”

  “Great. I can hardly wait.”

  I told myself sternly that there was nothing tasteless in their display of wealth. Well, maybe two cars and the thought of a third was a little tasteless.

  “Is the airlif. to Berlin going to work?” Dad asked, breaking the silence and interrupting the thought that these two strangers might look a little like my parents and sound a lot like them, but they were not my parents.

  “You bet,” I said. “It finally gives the military something to do besides hunting for an imaginary Nazi underground.”

  “Neither of you,” Mom sighed, “have any respect for our leaders.”

  “The lucky thing for us, Mom, is that the Russian leaders are even more stupid. Give Americans a technical challenge and they are certain to rise to the occasion. Which reminds me, what’s with the election? Time says it’s Dewey in a walk.”

  “There’s a little bias there.” Dad turned onto Half Day Road, concrete where there had been gravel before the war. “Did you hear the Democratic convention on the radio?”

  “No. They were jamming us into a C-54 for the trip home.”

  “I think Harry is going to give them so much hell that he’ll win. People don’t like Thomas E. Dewey. He’s able enough, but they don’t like his mustache and they don’t like the impression he’s giving that he’s got it all wrapped up. Americans love the underdog; heaven knows Harry is the underdog.”

  “Everyone says the poor Mr. Dewey looks like a statue on a wedding cake.” Mom laughed. “And really, he does.”

  “And my mother looks like a model.” I leaned forward in the car and brushed her cheek with my lips.

  “Don’t exaggerate, Chucky,” she warned with a complete lack of sincerity.

  “You’ve improved at the art of compliment giving,” Dad observed. “Of course no man ever is good enough at it!”

  “The rest of the kids,” he continued, “said that we should meet you and they’d wait at home.”

  Peg had said it and everyone had agreed. So, what else is new?

  “Rosie will be over later on.”

  “So, what else is new!”

  I would definitely not let her kiss me. On second thought, I would kiss her first, more vigorously than she would expect; and I’d play Nelson Eddy and sing Victor Herbert’s “Rose of the World” to her. That would stop them all.

  I would, in fact, kiss her twice.

  Maybe three times.

  “She’s becoming a very lovely young woman, Chuck,” my mother insisted. “Be nice to her.”

  “Maybe.”

  As we drove through Deerfield, Northbrook, Glenview, and Northfield, my eyes bulged at the n
ew construction. Homes and businesses had appeared in places that I remembered only as vacant prairie.

  “Is all the expansion here in the north suburbs?”

  Dad chuckled. “I have a hard time remembering that when you left, we had shortages and price control. The answer to your question is that the growth is even more dramatic on the west and the south sides. It’s the biggest building boom in American history. And, if one is to judge by the birth rate, it will continue for a long time.”

  “It’s so different from Germany, even from England,” I said slowly, remembering the pinched faces, the dull eyes, the hopeless slouch of shoulders.

  “Are those poor people really so terribly poor?”

  “Some of them just a notch above starvation, Mom. The Marshall Plan money is supposed to take care of that. Here we seem to have a head start. I suppose we’ll arrive at the next depression before they do.”

  “There are some people,” Dad spoke judiciously, weighing the evidence, “who think it won’t happen for a while, maybe not so bad ever again. There were a lot of things people couldn’t buy during the thirties—homes, cars, radios, fridges, boats, washers—because they didn’t have the money. During the war they couldn’t buy them because the products weren’t being made. So now there’s a big buildup of demand.”

  “And a lot more babies.”

  I tried to digest it. The economics courses I had taken in Barn-berg admitted such a possibility. But no depression? Hadn’t there always been one?

  “Interesting thing about the word depression,” Dad mused. “Hoover used it as an alternative to recession, which was supposed to be much worse. Now the words have the opposite meanings.”

  Not so long ago, the Depression was a reality that had blighted their lives, not a term to be pondered academically. The doctor’s daughter and the politician’s son had lost their home, their summer home, their parents, and almost everything they owned. They were forced to live with their four children in a small, crowded, drafty third-floor apartment. Mom had to carry dirty clothes down to the laundry tub in the basement. Dad earned twenty-two hundred dollars a year as an “assistant architect” at the Sanitary District. They had bought new clothes for themselves only every couple of years. They rode the el and the streetcars. Sometimes I had been sent to the store to buy twenty-seven cents worth of beef stew ground for supper. They never stopped laughing or singing, but lines of poverty and worry had been etched on their faces.

  Now they owned two cars and a house in Oak Park and dressed like men and women in a fashion magazine.

  Wonderful, but . . .

  But what?

  “I suppose the country has changed a lot since you went away to Europe?” Mom considered me anxiously, perhaps sensing my confusion.

  “It sure has. For better or for worse?”

  “Both, I think.” She paused to consider. “More better than worse.”

  “It is no fun to be poor,” Dad agreed.

  I’d known we were poor. No one had told me, exactly, that we weren’t poor anymore.

  “A lot of people are making a lot of money,” Mom continued. “Some of them think it’s because they deserve to.”

  “Do we?”

  “Deserve to?” Dad snorted. “Hell no, Chucky. Like most of the rest of them, we were lucky enough to come out of the Depression with our health and our skills. There’s a lot of building, which means they need a lot of architects. Pure luck.”

  “The ship came in?” I asked.

  They both laughed at the old promise from the Depression, as in “We’ll buy a new bike for you, Chucky, when our ship comes in.”

  I ought to be happy about the ship, I told myself. And I suppose I am. But I can’t quite believe any of this.

  “The point is, Chucky,” Dad went on, “we can afford to pay your Notre Dame tuition now.”

  “You won’t have to. The GI Bill takes care of all my expenses.”

  I’d joined the Army to earn a college education. I could have saved myself the effort.

  (And, though obviously I didn’t know it then, I would have been drafted for Korea.)

  “We’d like to help,” Mom said softly.

  “I appreciate that.” I searched for the words. “You’ll have to educate the other kids too.”

  “That’s all taken care of.”

  “Buy war bonds then.”

  All of us laughed, more than a little nervously.

  At Harlem and North we turned west. I hardly recognized North Avenue, too many new buildings, too many stores. Would I gawk at the new America for the rest of my life?

  “Where are we going?”

  “A surprise,” they said in chorus.

  We turned north on Thatcher. There were new homes everywhere in Elmwood Park and River Grove.

  “A lot of these houses don’t look like much,” I observed.

  “They’re not. Thrown up in a hurry by developers who are making millions.” Dad shook his head. “Everyone wants a home of their own.”

  “They’re a lot nicer than the places in which these poor people used to live,” Mom added.

  “Some of the people in these homes didn’t have indoor bathrooms in the old neighborhood.” Dad turned off Thatcher to the right. “They think they’re in paradise. And, mark my words, they’ll keep up these homes like they’re priceless treasure. Which maybe they are.”

  We passed under an arch of oak trees and through a wide green lawn. A big, elegant Tudor building awaited us.

  “What’s this?”

  “Oak Park Country Club.”

  “Wow!”

  “We thought you might like to eat your first civilian dinner here, dear.”

  “Whose membership are we using?”

  As far as I could remember, we didn’t have any friends who belonged to the club.

  “Our own.”

  “What! They don’t admit Catholics!”

  “They do now.” Dad beamed as we pulled up to the awning leading to the entrance.

  “They wanted your father to design a renovation.” Mom waited for the doorman to open the car. “And then they asked him to join.”

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. O’Malley . . . Colonel.”

  “Good afternoon, Mike. This is our son, uh, Charles. He’s just returned from Germany.”

  The man bowed and smiled. “Good afternoon, Charles.”

  “Chuck.” I winked at him and he winked back. We two members of the working class against the gentry.

  “He plans to attend Notre Dame.” Mom smiled proudly.

  “Wonderful. My daughter will be going to Marquette next year.”

  Working-class kids don’t go to Marquette. Or do they now?

  Maybe I should return to Germany and start over again.

  “Why didn’t you join Butterfield, if you had to join a club?” I asked in a whisper as we entered the solemn sanctuary of the club. “Didn’t we Catholics start that because they wouldn’t let us in here?” “Oh, we belong to Butterfield too.”

  “Your father thought it was important to break the religion barrier here.” Mom removed her sunglasses and replaced them with clear glasses, also with white frames. “He plays golf at Butterfield most of the time.”

  “Golf!”

  “Sure.” Dad motioned for the maître d’. “I used to play before

  the Crash. Too busy with work now to play as much as I’d like.”

  “But his handicap is down to eight. Mine is fourteen.”

  “Eight!”

  “This way, Colonel O’Malley. We have a table by the window for you. Lovely view of the sunset these days.”

  “Colonel!”

  “You don’t have to salute.”

  We were poor people. How dare we belong to two country clubs?

  “The usual wine, Colonel?”

  “No, Steven. Let’s try some Château Lafitte tonight. We’re celebrating our son’s return from the service.”

  “Rothschild!”

  There was nothing extravagant a
bout the behavior of my parents, I reassured myself. They were not showing off. They were not recent new rich. I could have lived with that, I suppose. What troubled me was that they casually took it all for granted.

  I ordered a fillet and disposed of it in perhaps two minutes.

  “They’re not going out of style, Chucky.”

  “Will they throw me out, Dad, if I ask for another?”

  “Certainly not. More wine?”

  “You bet.” I remembered that I didn’t drink. Well, it was a special day.

  “There’s something we want to discuss.” Dad shifted uneasily.

  “Your reaction is very important.” Mom nodded.

  I put down the wineglass. “Bad news?”

  Peg, my beloved sibling, in trouble?

  “Not at all.”

  “Good news really.”

  “We’re thinking of building a summer home, Chuck.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your father and I both think Grand Beach over in Michigan would be nice. For us and for the children and for the grandchildren too.”

  “Grandchildren?”

  “Jane is getting a ring at Christmas.”

  “And someday not too far away, you and Peg will have kids too.”

  “Not me!”

  We all laughed. My laugh was phony.

  “But we know how much you like Lake Geneva. Maybe you’d like to raise your children there?”

  “Me?”

  “Grand Beach has a better future.” Dad began to tick off reasons. “Not as crowded, better scenery, closer to Chicago, I’ve already designed some houses there, and over in Dune Acres and Beverly Shores—”

  “But you can play golf here!”

  “Do you want to play tomorrow, say four o’clock?”

  “No . . . yes . . . maybe . . . I don’t know!”

  “If we build the house down at the lake”—Mom, who had spent her girlhood summers in the Indiana dunes, moved a fork nervously on the tablecloth—“we could always join Long Beach Country Club if you wanted to play golf down there.”

  Three clubs!

  “The other kids”—Dad frowned uneasily—“say it’s up to you. They know how much Lake Geneva means in your life.”

  Since when?

  My mom and dad were asking my permission to build a summer home in the dunes.

  “I don’t care. Build it wherever you want.”

  I hadn’t said that properly.