A Christmas Wedding

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Big fucking deal.” Still, she backed off.

  There was a lighted cigarette on one of her precious Ming dishes. She was aware of a foul aroma.

  “Sit down, Rosemarie.” I gestured toward the judge’s chair behind her Sheraton desk.

  “I don’t have to.”

  “I said SIT DOWN.”

  Was that my voice? I wondered. What if she won’t? “Big fucking deal.” She sat down.

  Trying to maintain my appearance of calm, confident self-control, I walked to my appointed easy chair, removed an empty gin bottle from it, and deposited the bottle in the wastebasket.

  “You have two choices, Rosemarie.” I kept my voice firm and controlled as I recited my carefully prepared lines.

  “Yeah?” she sneered at me. “I’m impressed.”

  She picked up the cigarette, inhaled, and blew smoke in my direction.

  “The first choice”—I spoke very carefully—“is divorce. I spoke to Ed Murray this morning. He assures me that I will have little difficulty in obtaining custody of the children. I have every intention of doing so. I don’t know what will happen to you after a divorce, but then you will be your problem and not mine.”

  Had I gone too far? Did I sound too harsh?

  She drew on the cigarette again and then, impatiently, snuffed it out. “And?”

  “And what?”

  “The second choice, asshole.”

  “The second choice is that you phone a psychiatrist and make an appointment for treatment. Today.”

  She slumped back in her chair and bowed her head. Would there be an explosion? What would I do if she refused to choose?

  “Which do you want?”

  “The choice is yours, not mine.”

  She was silent for a few moments.

  “Yeah, I understand, but I have to have some idea of which you prefer.”

  “The second, of course.”

  “Why?” she lifted her head and stared defiantly at me. Would there be more about whether I wanted to marry Trudi? “Wouldn’t you be better off without me?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I love you, as much as ever.”

  She looked down again.

  I walked over to the window and opened the drapes so that the autumn sunlight could pour in. Such a beautiful day, not appropriate for ending a marriage.

  Would she never speak?

  And when she did, what would she say?

  I turned around, impatient to end the scene. “Well?” Her answer was one I could never have anticipated in all the scenarios that had run through my brain earlier in the morning. Yet the response was pure Rosemarie.

  “I don’t know any psychiatrists.”

  “What?”

  “I said”—she glanced up at me and then looked away—“I don’t know any psychiatrists. I mean, I can’t talk to Ted, can I? My sister-in-law’s husband and all…”

  Such an easy surrender? Even at her worst the woman was a magical mystery. And the ugly vision in the back of my brain loomed larger, as temporarily the lights went up on the stage and then flickered out.

  “Here are three names.” I removed a sheet of paper from my notebook and put it on her desk.

  “Ted’s suggestions?”

  “No.”

  She considered me suspiciously. “Whose?”

  “Dr. Berman’s.”

  “Oh. … He’s a good man, isn’t he?”

  “The best.”

  “Fixed up that cute Kurt man, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  She ran her finger down the list. “One’s a woman. Martha Stone. She’ll probably be best.”

  “Ted gave her the highest marks.”

  “All right, call her for me.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  If only I could stick it out for a few more seconds, I might just win for both of us. “You call her yourself.”

  “You want me”—she smiled crookedly—“to make it my commitment, not yours?”

  “Precisely.”

  She reached for the phone, then hesitated.

  Dear God, don’t let her change her mind.

  She ground out her cigarette (with a gesture that signaled the end), straightened her robe, flipped her hair off her shoulders, and sat up straight, like a seventh-grader right in front of S’ter’s desk.

  You look your best when you call a shrink for an appointment.

  “Dr. Stone? May I talk to her please?” She turned away from me so I wouldn’t see her face. “Yes, Doctor, I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Rosemarie O’Malley.” Smooth as Irish linen, the president of an affluent parish women’s society talking to Monsignor. “I’d like very much to talk to you. … That long a wait?” She turned to me, terror in her eyes. “Yes, I think you could say it’s very definitely an emergency.

  “Tomorrow? At two? Thank you very much, Doctor. I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  Very softly she replaced the receiver.

  Neither of us said anything for a long minute or two.

  “Okay?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay,” I said, and then realized that I still had to hang tough. “For the present.”

  “One step at a time.”

  I nodded. “One step at a time.”

  Too incredibly easy. Why had I been such a coward? What else could she possibly have said?

  “Chuck, I think I’ll go upstairs and sleep for the next twenty-four hours. I’ll look bad enough when I meet the doctor. I don’t want to look as bad as I do now.”

  “All right, I’ll ask Mrs. Anderson to clean up in here.”

  “No, don’t do that; poor thing has had to put up with too much of my shit this last week.” She rose shakily. “I’ll do it first thing in the morning.”

  She left the office on unsteady feet, but with a faint hint of determination in her shoulders.

  I’ve done it, I thought with enormous relief. I’ve done it! I began to straighten up the room.

  And, God help me, it was easy—the easiest thing in the world.

  33

  I woke up at four, fell back to sleep, and then didn’t get out of bed till ten. The house was back to its routine order. Rosemarie’s office was spotlessly clean and sweet-smelling.

  “Missus went for a long walk,” Mrs. Anderson told me. “Poor thing was up before me. She done cleaned up that whole mess by herself and threw out all them terrible cigarette boxes she bought.”

  I wondered what Rosemarie thought when she found her study neat and clean. She probably knew who had done it.

  Poor thing? Mrs. Anderson had been around the Irish too much.

  Rosemarie returned home at four, pale and haggard in a smartly tailored, light gray autumn suit. She went directly to her study, and, door open, scribbled furiously on a yellow legal-size notepad.

  Progress, I supposed.

  April Rosemary came to the darkroom, where I was preparing to develop my film from the trip to Germany. “Daddy…”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Mommy is all pretty again.”

  “Thank you, dear, for telling me.”

  “You’re wonderful, Daddy. You made her pretty again.”

  “Thank you very much, honey. I love you.” Fine time to start crying.

  “I love too, Daddy.”

  Rosemarie, a little less haggard, ate dinner with the rest of us. First, she asked the kids about what had happened in school the last week. Then, as though nothing had happened between us, she asked about the details of my last week in Germany.

  “I arranged for shipment of the roadster.”

  “Oh, did you? That was very sweet.”

  What would happen next? There was no road map for this. I used my private darkroom line to tell Mom and Dad that it was so far, so good.

  “Wonderful, darling, I knew you could do it. Now, excuse me, I must call Peg.”

  Everyone on the sidelines cheering.

  I slept that night in
the guest bedroom as I had the night before. I would not intrude back into the master bedroom unless I was asked.

  Was that… proper?

  Trudi’s word.

  I didn’t want to fall back into old habits so quickly.

  I figured that it was “proper” for the present, but not for the long run. Besides, my libido was dormant.

  So it went to the end of the week, through the weekend (no discussion of a trip to Long Beach), and into the next week.

  She was attending Mass again every morning. And certainly she was in daily contact with Mom and Peg. The old conspiracy of the three Irish goddesses was functioning again.

  On Tuesday afternoon I abandoned the darkroom about four o’clock. My eyes were blurry from long hours of work. It was still too early to be certain, but it looked like the shoot in Germany had worked. There was, oddly enough, no discernible difference between pictures before our battle and afterwards.

  As I opened the closet to find a light sweater, a very meek voice called from Rosemarie’s study.

  “Chuck, do you have a minute?”

  I put the sweater back on its hanger. (You can guess who kept the closet neat.)

  What would happen now? Another surprise, that much was certain.

  Trim in a beige sweater and skirt, she was sitting at her desk. In front of her were a new legal-size notepad and a pen.

  Resting against one of the legs of the desk was a green Marshall Field’s package.

  “Sure you have a minute?” she asked anxiously.

  “As many as you want.”

  “That’s sweet. It may take less than a minute, even. … This is embarrassing. … My shrink wants me to ask … well, why you want to stay married to me. No”—she flushed—“she wants me to ask why you love me.”

  “It will take longer than a minute.”

  “As many as you want.” She smiled wanly. My wild Irish Rosemarie was sneaking back, but slowly and cautiously.

  “Let me figure it out.” I tried to order my thoughts. “Now don’t argue, let me finish.”

  “I promise.” She picked up the pen and poised it over the yellow pad. “I have to write it all down.”

  “Like my idea notebook?”

  “No, like your yellow pad!”

  We both laughed, pleased that we were able to break the tension.

  “These are not,” I began unsteadily, “in their order of importance.”

  “I understand.”

  “You’re a wonderful mother, except when you’re compulsive and when the kids resist and you stop. You play the big-sister game with them to perfection. I’ve never seen anyone better at it.”

  She wrote rapidly.

  “You’ve forced me”—my voice choked a little—“to do what I was afraid to admit to myself I wanted to do, and to be what I was afraid I couldn’t possibly be. I don’t think anyone else could have done that.

  “You’re smart, smarter than I am; shrewd, shrewder than I am; funny, funnier than I am. I couldn’t find a better agent. You know everything. By next summer you will have passed me in the darkroom and God help me if you ever start looking through a viewfinder. And, oh yes, even when you’re being hard as nails with clients, you still charm the birds out of the trees.”

  She hesitated, then continued to write.

  “You’re a marvelous lay, always were good, and you’re getting better.”

  She was blushing furiously but still writing. “How do you spell ‘lay’?”

  “You’re a magical mystery, always unpredictable, fascinating, hypnotic. I delight in your mystery. The more I know you, the more mysterious you become. Even if you weren’t as beautiful as you are, you’d still drive me out of my mind by your marvelous surprises. Layer upon layer of mystery and surprise, even more fun to peel away than peeling away your clothes.”

  She looked up, pen still poised. “This is the first time I’ve heard a lot of these things.”

  “My fault for not saying them before and more clearly than I have.”

  She waved the pen, brushing aside my apology. “Regardless. I’m astonished. Finished?”

  “No, put down that I think you have the most beautiful breasts in all the world.”

  “Chuck, I can’t write that.”

  “Put it down. Otherwise your shrink will think I don’t have any hormones. And add that the ass isn’t bad either.”

  “All right.”

  “Finally, for the moment, I admire—no, adore—your guts, courage, determination, willpower, gallantry, whatever it should be called.”

  “Gall?”

  “A lot more than that. Put all the words down.”

  “Yes, sir.” She glanced over the list. “It’s awfully hard to…”

  “To believe?”

  “No, Chuck, I believe you. You really have said most of this before. I just didn’t hear it. It’s hard to connect it with what I think of me.”

  “I’m right.”

  “I know you are,” she answered promptly. “It will take a little while to absorb it, that’s all.”

  She folded the paper and put it in her purse.

  “I’m going to make it, Chuck.” She sighed. “It’ll be tough and it’ll take time, but I’m going to make it.”

  “The shrink say that?”

  “Certainly not.” She waved her hand in dismissal of such an absurd thought. “Shrinks never commit themselves like that. She said that I had lots of resources, including a strong husband. Besides, I’ve survived this long, haven’t I?”

  “You have indeed, against long odds.”

  “And”—her voice cracked—“I’ll be eternally grateful to you”—the tears begin to flow—“for insisting…”

  She reached out across the desk to me.

  I jumped up, grabbed her hand, kissed it, and then knelt on the floor next to her, the precious hand still pressed against my lips.

  “My cute little redhead.” She ruffled my hair and wept softly.

  “One more thing,” she said when it was time for the tears to stop. “Well, two more. I have to apologize.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do.” Her hand slipped away from my lips. “And I have to do it without hating myself like I’ve done the other times.”

  I wrapped my arms around her knees and rested my head on her thighs—an appropriate enough position to receive an apology.

  “You see… well, that’s how it went all wrong in Stuttgart. I knew right after you left the hotel that I’d been terrible. I was astonished by Trudi and Karl and upset and angry and that was all right. But I should have listened to you and accepted your explanation, which was obviously the truth. Instead I was furious, mostly at myself. I tried to write out an apology, I wanted to say that it was really kind of a sweet story and that it shouldn’t have hurt me at all and that I knew you loved me and that I’d been a little shit. Then I concentrated on me as shit instead of you as hurt. So I tore up the apology and ran away. I was mad at me, not you.”

  I tightened my grip on her knees.

  “So I apologize twice, first, for being so angry at you when I had no reason to be, second, for punishing you because I was mad at me. I won’t do it again. No, that’s too much. I’ll try not to do it again.”

  “You’re not a shit.”

  Silence. Then, “The woman on this page isn’t. She does shitty things sometimes, though.”

  “And who is she?”

  More silence. “Me. I. Whatever.”

  We both laughed again, cautiously, hopefully.

  Then we were silent again, each with our own thoughts.

  “It’s the business with Daddy, poor man. Not just the rape. He wanted a son. I’ve always felt second-best, like I’d let him down. And kind of soiled.”

  “You’re not soiled.”

  Her fingers tightened in my hair. “That’s what you say.”

  “I’m right.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “I know… we never talked about it after that night.”
>
  “I didn’t know what to say.” I shifted uncomfortably. “I knew it was the problem, but…”

  “You’re not my therapist,” she growled. “You don’t have to say anything, unless I say something, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Just so you understand that none of the shit has anything to do with you. When I drink it’s me I’m mad at, not you. Ever. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  For the moment.

  Again I waited for her to resume the conversation.

  “And one more thing, Chuck.” She hesitated. “I’m terribly sorry for laughing at you.”

  “When did you laugh at me that you shouldn’t have laughed at me?”

  “That day at Riverview… when you got sick on the Flying Turns.”

  “My God, Rosemarie, that was in 1945!”

  “I know… and I’ve felt guilty about it ever since.”

  “I think I was rude when you tried to help me. I’m sorry about that too, but…”

  “It’s always bothered me, I was such a little bitch.”

  “I was scared stiff by your concern afterwards. Does that help?”

  “A little.” She slipped out of my grip. We both rose.

  “Finally?”

  “Finally… my, I’m as organized today as you are… well, finally… I mean, that Field’s package.”

  Inside the package I found a white diaphanous gown and robe. They made them more transparent every year.

  “If you want to do the lace and candlelight and claret”—soft laugh—“for you, that is, and steak thing tonight after I put the kids to bed… I mean, you don’t have to…”

  “I think”—I placed the package on her desk—“that I might want to.”

  “Great!” She snatched the gown up and beamed as she draped it around her body. “I figured you might. Now go back to your darkroom and let me get the family organized.”

  “I think I’ll take a walk first.”

  “Whatever.” She dismissed me with a wave of her hand.

  I should have been overwhelmed with joy. My gamble had paid off. My Rosemarie had been reclaimed from the brink. It was the high tide and the turn, as the poem says. Yet as I walked very slowly through the autumn finery, I now knew what it was that I had been afraid to look at in the vision of our marriage. The ugliness of what I saw dismayed me.

  The floodlights illumined the stage of my second big mistake in my marriage, just as they had the first mistake in the airport in Mexico City when we were returning from our honeymoon.