Second Spring

by Andrew M. Greeley

Adolfo met us outside the Audience Hall, two blond and handsome Swiss Guards in tow. They saluted smartly. No one salutes better than the Swiss Guards. When they salute you, you begin to believe that you deserve it. Dangerous temptation.

  “You noticed the apparent deviations from his text?” the Monsignor asked.

  “We sure did!” my wife exclaimed.

  “Impressive spontaneous wit, was it not?”

  “If it was spontaneous,” I said. “If it wasn’t spontaneous, it was even more impressive.”

  “You are quite right, Carlo.” Adolfo chuckled. “I saw his final draft. He had penciled in every comment and joke. He’s a polished catechist.”

  “Even if he is not the intellectual the French seem to want?”

  “Often the French do not understand.”

  The Monsignor and I laughed at our little anti-French joke.

  “You have all your camera equipment, Carlo? Shouldn’t you have more?”

  “Real photographers do, Monsignor,” my wife informed him. “You must understand that Chucky is not a real photographer. He takes pictures.”

  “Ah,” he said, winking at me.

  “When do you go up to the papal apartments?” I asked.

  “Our appointment is in a half hour. Might I suggest that we arrive early. That will give you time to, ah, arrange your equipment.”

  I have no complaints against my professional colleagues who travel with enough stuff to establish a studio. I would rather do my portraits in the studio I have established at our house. But I don’t bring a lot of stuff along with me on a shoot. Maybe I’m just too lazy. Or maybe I think it gets in my way. As Rosemarie says to me, “Chucky, you’re a snapshot artist. Always have been, always will be.”

  I think that’s a compliment.

  “The Pope’s health is good?” Rosemarie asked.

  “Not at all, Rosie. It is quite bad. There is already fear.”

  “I assume he has the best doctors in Rome?”

  “Ah, no, cara. The Vatican doctors are the ones with the most influence in the Curia. Excellent Catholic laymen, if you understand me.”

  “I don’t think I like that,” I said.

  He shrugged as would a character in a Fellini film.

  We were shown into the papal office, the Oval Office of the Catholic Church, all polished wood and thick damask drapes—a place that would have done nicely as the office of a late-nineteenth-century funeral home. I shuffled around lining up my lights and taking light readings at various spots. Bright Roman sunlight filtered into the room. Maybe I should shoot Pope John Paul with available light. Rosemarie followed after me, adjusting the lights and the shade so that it was the way she thought it should be.

  I had learned long before that it was pointless to argue with her about such matters. She was almost always right, not only in high theory but in actual practice. Adolfo watched our act with an amused little smile.

  The Swiss Guards had vanished. However, I suspected they were lurking outside the big oak door, just in case the crazy little American with the beautiful wife might prove to be dangerous. Obviously, he was not a man to be trusted.

  Then the door opened and Pope John Paul entered, his smile brighter than any illumination my flashes might produce. He was a medium-sized man (which means he was as tall as I am and that if my wife were wearing high heels she would have towered over him), spare of frame and girth, with brown eyes whose sparkle radiated through thick glasses. He stretched out his arms to us in a gesture of vibrant warmth. He was indeed a simple priest of the land of whom no one in his parish could ever be afraid.

  Adolfo translated for us, though the ineffable Rosemarie needed little translation.

  “What a beautiful book!” the Pope exclaimed, holding up my book Kids. What beautiful bambini! Some of them are yours?”

  We stood at his desk as he leafed through the book and we identified which of the kids were ours. Well, Rosemarie, dazzling in her black dress and veil, did the identification. I relapsed into my familiar role of the punk kid from the West Side who was out of place in the presence of royalty.

  All I could think of was how much I loved her and how beautiful she was and how I would make love to her back at the Hassler—terrible dirty thoughts on the fifth floor of the Vatican Palace.

  It had started with that whiff of perfume, Chanel I think, in the Audience Hall. My desire hadn’t changed through the years, I told myself; it was if anything more intense. Now it was also erratic.

  “And these are the children now!” The good Rosemarie informed the Vicar of Christ, as she pulled her foldout gallery from her purse. “This is April Rosemary, our oldest. She’s studying photography, something her father never bothered with. This is Kevin, our oldest son, he’s studying for a doctorate in musicology; the O’Malleys are a very musical family. And Jimmy is studying to be a priest, like his uncle …”

  “He was Cardinal O’Neill’s secretary for some time, was he not?”

  “Yes,” my good wife said smoothly, “he works with young adults now … And Sean graduated from college. Moire Meg graduates from high school.”

  “And a grandchild?”

  My wife turned an attractive shade of crimson.

  “We have some of them too. But this is our youngest, Siobhan Marie—Joan Marie in Irish—She’s two and she’s just like her father, a little Irish imp!”

  “Red hair too!”

  “Two of our grandchildren have red hair, so there’s four of them in the family! All imps! Here’s a picture our eldest took of them all!”

  This was part of the priestly role of which I had never been aware. The priest was expected to marvel at pictures of children, whether they appeared marvelous or not. This man was clearly a pro at it.

  “Three generations! How beautiful!”

  So he knew who we were and probably that I had been involved in attempts to remove Cardinal O’Neill. Not only a hopeful holy man who smiled, but a smooth operator too. Very interesting. Maybe there was hope for the Church after all.

  “Perhaps we might do the portrait now,” Rosemarie said, not at all hesitant to give instructions even to the Pope.

  “Yes, it would be good,” agreed the Pope with a smile.

  How wise of God to have created woman for man to reverence, adore, desire, and make love with. How convenient for humans to pair off one with another so the loved and desired person was always more or less available. First of all I would unzip her black dress … .

  Then professional responsibility took command. Temporarily.

  It would be an easy shoot and yet a very difficult one. Our new Pope was telegenic. It would be easy to get a shot of his smile and his twinkling eyes. Yet I had to capture something else. What was it—determination? Willpower? Or merely the shrewdness of a priest of the countryside?

  I suspected that he was a man who could make the tough decisions as they came along and have a good night’s sleep afterward. Or at least no worse than any other night. No more Hamlet.

  We talked as I fired away. Finally, I came up with the right question.

  “What is the toughest part of being Pope?” I asked.

  His smile was unwavering, but there was steel in his answer.

  “Protecting laypeople from the mistakes we poor priests make.”

  I continued shooting, but I knew that I had captured just the right expression. Before September it would be on the front page of every newspaper in America.

  When we had finished and I was packing up the equipment—God forbid that the Grand Duchess Rosemarie should dirty her hands with such work—he gave my good wife several handfuls of rosaries, medals, and holy cards and imparted his blessing on us and all of our families.

  “May they always be a consolation to you and you a consolation to them!”

  The second part sounded difficult.

  When we left his office I felt like I had made a weeklong retreat, exhausted, exhilarated, happy!

  “You are impressed, no?” Adolfo asked, as we t
ook the elevator to the ground floor.

  “Enormously,” I admitted.

  “You noted that he alluded to the Chicago dossier?”

  “Very indirectly.”

  “He is an Italian, after all.” The Monsignor laughed. “He has read the whole dossier and is deeply troubled by what he read. He does not like the thought of hurting Cardinal O’Neill, but he realizes that it is necessary to do so. He will do it before the month is over. Also he plans to invoke another commission on birth control.”

  “One more?” Rosemarie, whose eyes were glowing with admiration for the man who had blessed each of her children so warmly, sighed.

  “Their task will be to find a way to go beyond Humanae Vitae without contradicting it.”

  “That won’t be easy.”

  “On the contrary, cara, that will be very easy.”

  “God grant him a long life to do all those good things.” Rosemarie sighed, an Irishwoman’s prayer that, even though things are supposed to go wrong, this time would be an exception.

  I had returned to my lascivious, indeed tumescent, thoughts about my wife. We were packed for the trip tomorrow, at my insistence. There would be nothing much to do all afternoon. I would undress her very slowly, admire her nakedness, revel in every curve of her lovely body, and then make her mine, just as she would make me hers.

  Her breasts had obsessed me since the first day they had made their tentative appearance. I had fantasized about them for years. The fantasies never stopped after we were married. Though they were not as firm as they once had been, they still made me delirious with desire. How clever of God to arrange such delights.

  “You will send us several prints?” Monsignor Adolfo asked, as we walked out into the Belvedere Courtyard, to the accompaniment of the usual salutes of the Swiss Guard.

  “A half dozen or so,” I replied. “I know which one I’m going to use, however.”

  “He’s all instinct, Monsignor,” Rosemarie explained. “He’s read the books and studied the masters, but he knows what he wants to do. A little undisciplined, perhaps, but natural brilliance.”

  We said “ciao” to one another and promised that we’d meet again. None of us knew how soon that would be.

  “Charles C. O’Malley,” she protested as we walked out of the gate and into Italy, “it is unspeakably obscene to have dirty thoughts about me in the papal apartments. You embarrassed me terribly.”

  She didn’t seem upset, however.

  “I did no such thing,” I insisted.

  “Chucky Ducky, I’ve slept with you so long I can smell your lust.”

  “I was thinking how wise God was to have created woman for man to reverence, adore, desire, and make love with. How convenient for humans to pair off one with another so the loved and desired person was always more or less available. I thought that was a perfectly presentable thought to have in the papal apartments, especially when my wife was so beautiful and charming that even the Pope was impressed.”

  She paused to consider that.

  “That’s very beautiful, Chucky Ducky,” she said, a catch in her voice. “Seductive of course, but still quite lovely.”

  “Thank you.”

  She stopped, opened her purse, and drew out her “Helen Clancy” notebook in which she made notes for her stories.

  “How did that go again?”

  I repeated my words.

  She nodded, jotted them down, and then closed the notebook briskly and returned it to her purse.

  “You’re not going to quote the little redhead punk as saying that in one of your stories?”

  “I might just,” she said aloofly.

  “You’ll accuse the poor little guy of lusting after you in the papal apartments?”

  “I might just … After all, Chucky Ducky, when I know a man is thinking that way about me, my body begins to act up too.”

  “Really?” I extended an arm around her waist.

  “Gimme a break!”

  “I had another gift in mind.”

  She pretended to try to squirm out of my partial embrace, but without much sincerity.

  “You think you can do anything you want to me, anytime you want.”

  “I know I can.”

  “That’s because you’re so perceptive and so sweet.” She sighed and collapsed against my arm.

  It is not good, I reflected, for a man to have that kind of power over his woman. Well, I had worked at it a long time.

  So we made love in the afternoon in the heat of a Roman August and felt very good about everything, especially about the future of the Church we both loved. Also we were pleased with God’s arrangement for men and women.

  Back home in Chicago we reported to our families and friends about the new Pope: yes, what you saw was the real thing. This time we lucked out. We distributed prints of the shot I knew would be the best. Rosemarie adjured everyone to pray for his continued good health.

  “He’s a wonderful man,” she said, “but he’s under terrible strain.”

  The plans for my fiftieth birthday on September 17 continued apace. I was, needless to say, barred from any participation in the plans. The monster regiment of women had taken charge, especially my sister and my wife and my two older daughters and my mother. I imagined all too easily the good April saying of some madcap scheme, “I think that’s cute and I know poor Chucky would love it.”

  She knew full well that I wouldn’t love it. What she meant was that I ought to love it, whatever it was.

  I was relegated to playing with Siobhan Marie, who assumed as a matter of right that, since I wasn’t part of the serious planning, I had plenty of free time to play with her. She was, as should not have surprised me, a very bossy playmate.

  “What do you think of this?” Rosemarie handed me a letter.

  The handwriting was obscure, deliberately so I decided as I deciphered it. It was on cheap, lined paper of the sort we used for tests in grammar school.

  O’Malley,

  I am writing to you to inform you that I shall come to Chicago in November to learn your tricks with the camera. I propose to devote my life to honest photography, especially photography which tells the truth about patriarchal discrimination against women, the young, nonwhites, and gays and lesbians. I believe you have a serious moral obligation to share your secrets with me so I can present an alternative to your racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic vision of the human species. In studying with you I will engage in honest dialogue about the meaning of photography as art. I will not become a wage slave or an assistant to you as that would reveal false consciousness. However, I expect to be paid a wage commensurate with my talent and experience.

  Ms. Diana Robbins.

  “Oh,” I said, handing the letter back to my good wife. “It’s a joke, it’s like someone on Saturday Night Live.”

  “No, it’s not. She’s real. I asked April Rosemary whether there were still young people like that. She said there were. Her exact words were, ‘Not all of us grew up.’”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Coming out of it. Has begun to enjoy her kid. She’ll be all right.”

  “What should we do with that?” I gestured at the letter.

  “I’ll write Ms. Robbins a nice note, which will infuriate her more than a nasty note, and explain that you don’t work with students, unless they’re doctoral candidates in economics and that your skills with a camera are innate and instinctive and that you don’t even understand yourself what you’re doing. I’ll tell her that she’d learn a lot more by studying your work itself than by hanging around with you.”

  “I don’t know, Rosemarie,” I said. “Maybe we could help the poor kid.”

  “You really are the original bleeding heart liberal, Chucky. She’s a spoiled rich brat who’s working out her conflict with her mother. She’d drive you crazy. April Rosemary said it sounded like something she might have written when she was working out her conflicts and that no way should we let her anywhere near you.”

&
nbsp; “I guess so,” I said.

  “I know so.”

  That settled that.

  “Another thing,” my wife continued, taking a deep breath under her maroon University of Chicago sweatshirt, an action which always had an effect on my libido.

  “Bad news?”

  “Probably.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sean has a girlfriend.”

  “SEAN!”

  “That’s right.”

  “Serious?”

  “I think so.”

  “He’s much too young.”

  “No younger than you were when you forced me to marry you.”

  “That was different.”

  She grinned.

  “You sound like it’s your seventieth birthday next week instead of your fiftieth.”

  “Things were different then.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You don’t like her?” I demanded.

  “She’s a sweet little thing, pretty in a waiflike way. Orthodox Jewish.”

  “Jewish!”

  Our children married Catholics, right?

  Well they didn’t have to. Good liberals that we are, we had always told them that we must not discriminate against other religions. We must respect all religions and all people.

  Yeah, but still that didn’t mean … did it?

  “Don’t be a curmudgeon, Chucky. He loves the poor little kid. There’s no way we can talk him out of it. We have to be supportive and hope that they’re both happy.”

  “You sound like they’re planning marriage.”

  “He is. I’m not sure about her.”

  “What does Moire Meg say?”

  Moire Meg was the next sibling after Sean and they were very close.

  “She thinks it’s silly. She goes ‘April Rosemary had to flake out, Kevin had to go to Vietnam, Jimmy had to become a priest, now Seano has to fall in love with an Orthodox Jew. They’re all testing us to see how we’ll react.’”

  I ignored her lapse into teenage language. At least she didn’t say, “she goes, like.”

  “Did you ask her how she’ll test us?”

  “She said that would be juvenile.”

  “What’s this young woman’s name?”