A Christmas Wedding

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Every word,” Rosemarie ordered, jabbing her finger at me. “I want to hear every single word.”

  So naturally I told her every single word.

  “Chucky! How wonderful! I told you all along that you are a genius.”

  “I’m not,” I insisted. “All I want is a simple, quiet life.”

  “You should know by now,” she said sternly, “that God has other plans for you.”

  “He didn’t ask me what I thought.”

  “You could be an academic and famous photographer at the same time.”

  “You know me well enough, Rosemarie, to know that I’m not an adventurer. All I want is to be a modestly successful accountant.”

  She laughed at me.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Let’s get back to our books.”

  She laughed all the way back to the Harper reading room. An unfair form of argument, I thought, but effective nonetheless.

  4

  On St. Patrick’s night, I kissed Rosemarie passionately for the first time. Or maybe she kissed me. It was hard to tell. Suddenly and without warning we were in each other’s arms. We clung to one another for dear life. Our lips locked together in joyous fury.

  “Oh,” she gasped when I finally released her. “You didn’t really do that, did you, Chucky Ducky?”

  “Nope,” I said hoarsely. “Not at all. It was someone else.”

  Someone else recaptured her in his arms and kissed her again, even more vehemently this time.

  It was her turn to ease away from me.

  “I always knew you’d be a good kisser,” she sighed. “I didn’t think you’d be that good.”

  Twice before I had engaged in my first passionate embrace with a woman, my lost Trudi in Germany and my equally lost Cordelia at Notre Dame. As I fought to regain control of my breathing, I realized that this encounter was utterly different. A forest fire was blazing in my soul. I did not want to put it out.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “About what?”

  “I assaulted you?”

  “Maybe I assaulted you.”

  “Let’s fight over it.”

  “We’ve had enough fighting for one evening, Chucky Ducky.”

  “Maybe if we fight again, we will kiss like that again.”

  “We don’t need a fight to do that!”

  This time she definitely assaulted me.

  For weal or woe, the whole direction of my life changed that night.

  Moreover, the question of who assaulted whom first is irrelevant. I started the whole process when I decided I would play the role of the perfect gentleman that night. Since I’m sure that was God’s idea, He is to blame for what happened.

  “You are going to wear a suit and tie tonight, aren’t you?” Rosemarie had demanded as we left Mass at the Calvert House that morning.

  “Certainly not!” I insisted.

  Bad enough that she had dragged me back to church. Worse still that she thought she could force me to become both a photographer and an academic. She would not turn me into a gentleman with a suit and tie.

  Then I decided that perhaps it was time for me to wear a new mask. I was after all now twenty-two years old. Maybe it was time to stop acting like Henry Aldrich, the stereotypical adolescent on the radio when we were in grammar school. Maybe a new, suave Chucky would be as intolerable as the old diamond-in-the-rough Chucky. I smiled to myself. That would disarm Rosemarie and everyone else. A Cary Grant Chucky might soon become more unbearable than a Humphrey Bogart Chucky.

  That’s how I rationalized it to myself anyway. As for the comparison with the two actors, remember I was only twenty-two.

  So that night I greeted Vince Antonelli in a charcoal gray suit (purchased several months earlier by the good April), a white shirt, and a conservative red-and-blue tie. I had even done my best to slick down my wire-brush red hair.

  Vince recoiled in surprise.

  “Do we have a wake to go to first?”

  Excellent!

  He, of course, also wore a suit and tie. Peg would tolerate my being a slob but not Vince’s.

  “The Catholic War Vets’ St. Patrick’s Day dance,” I said piously, “is a very important social event.”

  “It’s only a party in the old parish hall.” Vince continued to look very puzzled. “A bunch of vets and their girls or their wives and some other people.”

  “Chuck,” my father said, “is undergoing a metanoia.”

  “Now, dear,” Mom remonstrated, “I think he looks cute. Rosie is such a good influence on him, poor little thing.”

  It was not immediately clear whether “poor” applied to Rosemarie or to me.

  “Well, maybe she’ll straighten him out, like someone tried to straighten me out.”

  The good April giggled complacently.

  My parents were waiting for the apparition of the mountain lion and the timber wolf in their full St. Patrick’s Day array, an epiphany of gracefulness.

  They walked down the stairs together, hesitantly, as if they were not quite sure of the impression they would create, my sister in white with green trim, Rosemarie in dark green. The former wore a diamond pendant (borrowed from the good April) around her neck, the latter a flashing emerald. Though they usually condemned makeup, both had permitted themselves light touches.

  “Do you think, Vince, I would get in trouble if I whistled?” I asked.

  “I think you might get in trouble if you didn’t”

  “But I can’t whistle!”

  My parents applauded.

  Peg’s gown was formfitting and reached to mid calf. Rosemarie was impossibly beautiful in a dress that fell freely like a shift to her knees. Peg’s shoulders were bare, Rosemarie’s supported thin green strips without which her garment would surely have fallen to the floor. Both had piled their hair up on their heads.

  Archduchesses at least.

  “Would you two young women mind holding that pose while I take a picture?”

  They didn’t mind.

  “Just one more,” I begged.

  They didn’t mind several more.

  “I had thought of bringing this gift from the charming beauty in the green dress along to the dance, if there is no objection?”

  “Are you feeling well, Chucky?” my sister asked suspiciously.

  “It’s just a new act,” Rosemarie said, hitting very close to the truth.

  I kissed her cheek. “I’ve never seen you look so beautiful.”

  She blushed, the rose tint creeping down to her throat.

  “I think he is sick, Peg,” she said, but her eyes glowed.

  We drove over to St. Ursula’s in Rosemarie’s Buick. The four of us took the dance by storm, the newly burnished Chucky almost as much of an attraction as the two lovelies.

  “Shall we dance, my dear?” I asked my date almost as soon as we entered the hot, crowded room which was already permeated by the smell of gallons of beer.

  “You don’t dance,” she said dubiously.

  Lieutenant Nan, a young woman with whom I’d half dated before I found her a man she would marry, had taught me to dance. I had told no one of this accomplishment

  I put my arm around Rosemarie and led her to the dance floor.

  “Not bad, Chucky Ducky. In fact, pretty good.”

  I held her close, but not too close. That’s what gentlemen do, isn’t it? Early in the evening I discovered how little there was to hen: hardly a bag of bones, but so slender that you might think she’d break in two if you squeezed too hard. There was no need for the armored corset under her dress.

  The bare skin of her back sent electric currents racing through my body. I must keep that under control if I was to continue in my Cary Grant role. I kept my eyes on her eyes, swimming in happiness, and restrained myself from looking down at the top of her breasts.

  Well, most of the time.

  Intermittently she would consider me quizzically, trying to figure out who this new Chucky really was. I enjoy
ed every minute of it.

  We danced and we sang and we danced some more. Then the Rosie-Chucky duet was called upon to lead the songs. We went through our whole Irish repertoire (including “Clancy Lowered the Boom”) and then, for some odd reason, turned to Victor Herbert, who was also Irish, and then sang our songs from Rose Marie. I rejoiced in Peggy’s wide-eyed astonishment as I sang this romantic love song like it was intended for the Rosemarie standing next to me, which maybe it was just a little.

  “You’d better dance with poor little Jenny,” Rosemarie instructed me.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Let her think it was her idea.

  Jenny enfolded me in her sweet smile when I asked. “Rosie won’t mind?”

  “Does she look like it?”

  “No.”

  We danced quietly for a few moments.

  “To answer your questions, Chuck. I have not heard from him. I know he will return. I will wait for him. Is that enough?”

  “I wasn’t going to ask.”

  “He’s worth waiting for. He will be all right eventually, you know.”

  “He’s a good man,” I agreed cautiously.

  Naturally Rosemarie wanted to know what Jenny said.

  “Poor little Jenny.”

  The party continued. Rosemarie continued radiant. Then suddenly the magic vanished.

  “I want to go home,” Rosemarie insisted angrily. “Now. Immediately.”

  It was a warning sign I had seen before. I’d better get her out of the hall before she started to drink. I told Vince and Peggy that we had to leave. My sister seemed to know why. They assured me that they would have no trouble getting a ride home.

  We rode back to East Avenue in stony silence.

  Inside the house she blew up at me.

  “What the hell are you up to, you creepy little runt!”

  “Uhm…”

  “You’re not fooling me with that disgusting little act you put on over there. You’re playing one of your sick little games! Why?”

  “I was merely trying to act like a gentleman should act,” I stammered, “when he is on a date with a lovely young woman.”

  Her face, crimson in anger, twisted in disgust. “You couldn’t act like a gentleman if your life depended on it. I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”

  Thereupon she began to pound my chest with hammer blows from tightly clenched fists.

  I retreated a few feet. She pursued me and resumed her attack.

  Then she stopped, looked at her fists, looked at me, and began to sob.

  “I’m sorry, Chucky! I didn’t mean it!”

  Then we fell into each other’s arms and the passionate kissing began.

  “Can we sit down and talk?” she gasped.

  “Sure.”

  We sat on one of the couches the good April had brought from her family home on South Emerald. I put my arm around Rosemarie and we huddled together while she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue and then rearranged her makeup.

  “I don’t even know why I was angry,” she said, fighting back another outburst of tears. “You were wonderful, like I always knew you’d be someday. I couldn’t figure out why…”

  “Well, maybe because it was that vision of you coming out of the shower.”

  “Chucky Ducky, you are still impossible.” She sniffed, touching my arm gently.

  I began to massage her neck and her back, very gently and slowly. She relaxed herself into my care. “Regardless”—she waved her hand weakly—“I’m sorry.”

  “I will hold it against you for the rest of your life.”

  She giggled.

  “I promise I won’t ever hit you again.”

  “Except when I deserve it.”

  “Of course!”

  We laughed together.

  “How long is this 1950 model of Chucky Ducky going to be around?” She turned her face and looked at me cautiously.

  The haunted beauty of that face silenced me for a moment.

  “I don’t know. Not all the time. Some of the time anyway. I think Sir Charles, le parfait gentilhomme, would be unbearable if you had to put up with him all the time.”

  I kissed her bare shoulder. She sighed. I drew her closer and kissed the front of her neck.

  “I like him a lot,” she said. “Especially when he turns into a gentle lover.”

  Oh, boy. You’re in deep water, Chucky.

  “It’s time I grew up.”

  “Don’t ever grow up completely, please.”

  “Yes, Wendy.”

  We laughed together again. Two young lovers.

  We cuddled for a while. Time stood still. We kissed passionately a couple of times more. Then we heard a car outside.

  “The good Margaret Mary returns.”

  “How long have we been doing this?”

  “I don’t know. It seems like no more than eternity.”

  “Silly!”

  She drew away from me, rearranged herself, and moved to an easy chair some distance away.

  “What if April had seen us?” she said piously.

  “She would have thought it was about time.”

  She giggled again.

  Then Vince and Peg came in. They paused to take in what must have seemed a strange picture—the two of us sitting in the parlor like an old married couple having a casual conversation.

  “What’s going on?” Peg demanded. “Are you all right, Rosie?”

  “I’m fine,” Rosemarie responded brightly. “I think the heat in the hall affected me. Chucky has been amusing me with stories of his romantic conquests in Germany.”

  I gulped. That would be the day.

  “What did he talk about after the first minute?” Vince demanded.

  “The Marshall Plan,” she said innocently.

  “It won’t last,” Peg said uncertainly, still trying to get a reading of the situation. She would have to wait till she and Rosemarie were alone.

  “It might.… Wasn’t that a great party! I really felt sorry for poor Alice. She’s still carrying the torch for that creep. …”

  So we talked about the gossip and the old pairings and the new pairings and who was pregnant and who was dating.

  “I’m tired,” Rosemarie said finally. “I’m going to bed.”

  The 1950-model Chucky waited a few discreet moments and then said, “I guess I better leave you two lovebirds alone. I’ve had a hard day. See you in the morning, Peg.”

  My sister and her date were too astonished to reply.

  In my room I hung up my suit and put a robe on over my shorts.

  It’s all Your fault, I told God. You were the one who sent the snow that kept me in her apartment that night. I’ve never been the same since. Now You’ve got me just where You want me. I’m in love, damn it. Sorry. … I don’t want to be in love with Rosemarie or anyone else. I’m too young to be in love. I don’t have time to be in love. I don’t have the money to think about being in love.

  Now what am I supposed to do? It’s all Your fault. You want me to take care of her. You sent those other women into my life to give me some practice. It’s not fair.

  You’re trying to tell me that I’ve been in love with her for a long time? Well, that’s true, but it’s irrelevant!

  She is wonderful!

  I didn’t mean that. Well, I did mean it. But it’s irrelevant. Am I supposed to marry her?

  I shivered at the thought, partly perhaps with delight at the prospect.

  “Anyway,” I said aloud. “She’s Your problem as well as mine. Take good care of her for me.”

  I unfastened the belt on my robe, thought a moment, fastened it again, and then slipped out of my room and hurried softly to the other end of the corridor.

  What if Mom or Dad or Peg found me?

  Well, that would be too bad!

  A trail of light escaped from beneath the door of “Rosie’s room.” I pushed the door open without knocking.

  She was sitting in front of a vanity mirror clad in the black, strapl
ess corset which had been the armor under her dress. She was brushing her long hair, disconsolately, I thought.

  “Chucky!” she exclaimed.

  She cowered, surprised and frightened and delectable. I took her chin into my hand and tilted her face up so I could look into her eyes. “I forgot to say something.”

  She gulped.

  I touched her lips lightly with my own and touched her bare shoulder with my free hand. “I forgot to say that I love you, I have always loved you and always will love you.”

  I kissed her a second time, with equal gentleness, and tightened my grip on her shoulder. “I don’t intend ever to let you go.”

  Her eyes were wide and confused.

  And wonderful.

  “Now go to bed and get a good night’s sleep and don’t worry about anything.” I turned and walked to the door. Luck or providence kept me from falling flat on my face.

  I turned at the door. My love was still sitting on the vanity bench with the hairbrush frozen in her hand, a wonderfully erotic statue.

  Why had I not brought my camera? Next time.

  “Good night, Rosemarie. Pleasant dreams.” I closed the door before she could answer.

  Just as I reached the door to my room, I heard Peg drifting up the stairs. I managed to make it into my room in time. Just barely.

  I leaned against the door and realized my heart was pounding furiously. Why had I taken such a foolish chance?

  Because I was in love?

  Why else?

  And she did look lovely in that black corset, didn’t she?

  You win, I informed the Deity as I collapsed into instant, satisfied, and peaceful sleep.

  I woke before the rest of the house and rushed to the darkroom. Before I began on the previous night’s work, I opened my Rosemarie file, extracted the best of my shots, and pinned them, in neat order of course, on the walls—a little private Rosemarie showing.

  When I developed the new rolls of film, I found a dozen shots from the Vets dance that were worth printing. Great archival work of Peg and Rosemarie!

  And, I sighed to myself, such beautiful women!

  Their beauty would fade, I told myself. They would age and die. So would I. Morose thoughts on a morning when I had admitted to myself that I was in love, indeed hopelessly in love. Yet I knew dimly, in ways I could not understand or articulate, that the beauty of these two beloved young women would triumph even over death. What I had caught in my camera the night before could never disappear.