Second Spring

by Andrew M. Greeley

“John three,” I said. “Don’t stop kissing me.”

  “I wasn’t planning to … What’s John three?”

  “John’s Gospel, third chapter. Where Nicodemus comes to see Jesus and Jesus talks about the Spirit who blows where He wills.”

  “Really? I never heard that.”

  “It used to be in the Gospels at Sunday Mass every year, now it’s there every third year. You don’t listen to the Gospels!”

  “Too busy fantasizing about women!”

  “Shame on you … Chuck, we can’t keep this shower up forever.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I can’t think straight anymore.”

  “I like you that way.”

  By the time we turned to the matter at hand I was a blubbering idiot. I like myself that way.

  As far as orgies go, it was very sweet.

  “You notice Esther at the party?” I asked him as we clung to each other afterward, too spent to move into bed.

  “That’s her name. I blanked on it and called her Eileen.”

  “Sure you blanked on it!”

  “She didn’t seem to mind … She spent a lot of time talking to Moire Meg. What was the point of that, Rosemarie?”

  “Moire Meg was sizing her up.”

  “That’s pretty ruthless.”

  “Our penultimate child, Chucky Ducky, can be very ruthless when the welfare of someone she loves is at stake. That goes along with the wisdom and grace you attributed to her tonight.”

  “It did seem that they liked one another.”

  I didn’t want to wake up the next morning.

  “I’m going to sleep all day. I was battered and abused last night.”

  “You have a party this evening,” he insisted, the very triumphant male the day after he had pleasured the woman beyond her rational control.

  “I won’t go to it.” I buried my head in a pillow, secretly proud of myself.

  “The promised orgy is only half over. Remember we have a suite reserved for ourselves at the Drake. Your idea.”

  His laugh was obnoxious. He had conquered me completely. Male warrior with the captured matron.

  “Stop it, Chucky, I have to shower and get ready for all the nonsense.”

  “We can take one together.”

  “I know what that will lead to. The answer is no.”

  Somehow we were huddling again.

  “Well,” I said as I struggled out of bed, “I guess I won’t forget last night for a while.”

  “Tonight will be even more unforgettable.”

  As the hot waters of the shower ordered my skin to wake up so I could get to work I understood that the night would indeed be even more memorable.

  We should have a birthday party every month.

  And we had asserted the triumph of life and love over death.

  It was Peg’s turn to do the introduction in the Grand Ballroom of the Drake. The Mayor was there and the Governor and the president of The University and a very elderly Msgr. Mugsy who asked the blessing before the meal.

  Peg, trim and slender as always, brought her violin to the podium.

  “My foster sister and sister-in-law sang her introduction. I’m going to play mine on my fiddle as my brother has always called it. The first part of the introduction is a capricious rondo by that fellow Mozart, which captures the vividness of my brother’s personality, a vividness which has always guaranteed that there will never be a dull moment in our family. The second is a tune from our youth which looks brightly to the future.”

  The Mozart piece was pure Chucky—silly, wacky bravado. Like last night in bed.

  The second piece was “Begin the Beguine,” which in Peg’s rendition was a shining story of hope surging to a hard-fought victory over melancholy.

  “I thank you, Margaret Mary,” Chuck began, “for the highly optimistic suggestion that I could dance the Beguine or anything else. When I hear you play it, however, I think I might like to try.”

  He was on another roll.

  “I am wearing my economist’s hat tonight,” he continued. “I want to make an announcement of considerable importance. Anyone who wants to leave the room and call the media should feel free to do so.

  “The announcement is that I am now convinced that the Great Depression is over.”

  Applause from the audience.

  “I realize that I am the last economist with a degree from The University to accept this phenomenon. However, I take my decision to mean that you can bank on it, you should excuse the expression, the prosperity of the postwar years is real.

  “Every once in a while the media, having nothing better to do with their time, announce that some economic blip is a warning that Depression might be lurking if not just around the corner at least down the block. I will say to folks like the Mayor’s good friend Walter Cronkite, folks, you weren’t there! When unemployment rises to twenty-five percent, then you can start talking about Depression! Till then, go away and do something useful with your lives.

  “I was a Depression baby. My parents were not. They faced up to economic horror with the confident, if totally unjustified, expectation, that someday their ship would come in. Clear-thinking realist that I was and am, I saw through this mythology. Their ship would never come in.

  “Only when I returned from my hapless military service in Bamberg, I discovered that the vessel had indeed plowed at very high speed into port. Again, with the clarity of insight which has marked my whole half century of life, I insisted that it would soon weigh anchor and depart. It never did. I am now prepared to admit that I was wrong.

  “Don’t expect any further such admissions in the remaining years of my life!

  “More seriously, I want to spend a few minutes tracing the impact on all our lives of the flotilla of ships which were crowding our ports in the late nineteen forties. Those years are, I think it safe to say, the axial era of this century, a time when everyone’s hopes expanded exponentially—with the tragic exception of some of the nonwhite peoples in our society. We now take prosperity for granted, with, as I now ruefully admit, good reason.

  “I didn’t want to give up the Great Depression and still don’t. My good wife Rosemarie—who now follows me around with a notebook jotting down quotes to put on the lips of an utterly fictional character she has created out of her vivid imagination—does not trust me to make hotel reservations when we travel for fear I will put us in a cheap fleabag to save money. So she has reserved to herself, much the way the Pope used to reserve forgiveness for certain sins to himself, the making of such decisions. Driven by good sense and good taste, she always puts us in an acceptable place. Similarly, I leave to her, mostly in the name of making a virtue out of necessity, all financial decisions about the furnishing and decoration of our home, which is apparently an ongoing project.

  “I say to you today, good wife, that you can continue to exercise power in these areas of our common life. I do promise, however, that I will no longer feel guilty about the comfort and convenience you choose.

  “Well, not too guilty!

  “My children roll their eyes when I talk about the Great Depression. They view it as a myth not unlike the biblical flood and of about the same era. They also refuse to believe that there was ever a time when TV did not exist or when the Mayor’s good friend Walter Cronkite did not pompously pontificate on it.

  “Some of them firmly believe that the Civil War was carried on television!

  “What can I tell you!

  “Each generation has its experiences which it believes are unique. My own children lived through the Vietnam era which was critical for them. The point tonight is not that my experiences are better or worse than that of earlier and later generations, only that they are different.

  “Moreover, and this is the center of it all, I have thought for most of my life that my formative experiences were in the Great Depression and the war of my childhood. Now I have come to realize that far more important in my life were the surprises of the postwar
world, surprises beyond the expectation of any of my generation. It’s not merely that the reality of my life has been beyond my wildest dreams when I was a kid. Rather they are in a world which I knew then could not possibly exist. In the Kingdom of God’s love there are always surprises. The ships did come in and they did stay, there was a revolution of expanding expectations. We Irish Catholics had demanded MORE for years and, Mr. Mayor, more was finally there and we took it. In the midst of the surprises, Chucky O’Malley took his camera in hand and ventured forth into the world to record all the surprises. I hope someday that someone will accord me a variation of praise that Walter de la Mare offered to G. K. Chesterton: he lived in an age of miracles and dared to take pictures of them.

  “I can’t believe all the surprises really happened. I can’t believe that this beautiful, talented, and challenging woman is my wife, that this swarm of handsome and gifted young people are my children and grandchildren, I can’t believe that Edward and Jane are my siblings and that Peg, in conspiracy with my wife, is still trying desperately to make something out of me. I can’t believe that I have flapper era parents. I can’t believe that so many people want to look at what the good April has always called ‘Little Chucky’s cute pictures.’ Miracles, miracles everywhere. I don’t deserve any of them, but I’ll enthusiastically embrace all of them. And in gratitude to God I will try to continue to take cute little pictures of them.”

  Oh my! Peg and I both rushed to the podium. She struck up “Begin the Beguine” and Chuck and I joined her in a duet. Then the jazz group, which had been hiding its instruments, joined in.

  Happy pandemonium.

  The Crazy O’Malleys indeed. My darling Chucky was the craziest of them all.

  The orgy that night was pretty crazy too. And pretty wonderful.

  Chuck

  1978

  After the birthday parties, I settled down to work on my exhibition People: One Hundred Portraits by Charles C. O’Malley. My heart was not in the work. None of my shots seemed good enough to exhibit. None of my problems had been solved. I was still flailing around. I had gone through a good act at the time of my birthday, so good that it had almost persuaded me. Nothing, however, had changed.

  “The Divine Wind blew by the parties,” I said to Max Berman, “but She didn’t drop in.”

  “In the Kingdom of God’s love there are always surprises. Strong words, Chuck. You are saying you don’t believe them.”

  “I guess I think the surprises are over for me.”

  “Ah, that makes God fairly selective, doesn’t it?”

  “I said all those crazy things at the party because in my head I believe them and my family wants me to believe. In my heart, or wherever the emotions are …”

  “The unconscious, perhaps.”

  “Whatever … I’m not sure about them at all.”

  “Or about God?”

  “Why should God bother about me?”

  “Why should Rosemarie bother about you?”

  “Fair point,” I admitted grudgingly.

  “Do you want some medication?” he asked abruptly.

  “WHAT!”

  “Perhaps some mild antidepressants …”

  “Are you recommending them?”

  “Naturally not.”

  “You think I am depressed?”

  “You report that you fall asleep easily at night and then wake and cannot go back to sleep?”

  “Not all the time.”

  “But often?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “That is a sign of mild depression.”

  “Charles Cronin O’Malley depressed. Who would believe it?” I asked sadly.

  “Very few people because you are such a superb actor.”

  Now I was really scared.

  “For the moment I’d rather not rely on medication.”

  “I quite agree.”

  I never like the food at the Standard Club much. That day it tasted like lined yellow paper.

  The always troubling Moire Meg reported to us at supper that night that we ought not to worry about Sean and Esther sleeping together.

  “Not that I think you two are worrying about it,” she added. “Esther’s brand of Judaism says that a woman waits till her wedding night to give herself clean and pure to the husband.”

  “You sound skeptical, hon,” my wife said.

  “Not about chastity, but about the idea that it’s a virtue only for the woman … She also says that she believes a man and a woman should have as many children as possible to hasten the coming of the Messiah.”

  “Oh, my,” Rosemarie said.

  “Yeah, well, we used to believe that too, didn’t we? It doesn’t consider the decline of infant mortality rates … She shocks her parents and her Jewish friends with that idea.”

  “Or the poor thing’s health. A half dozen or a dozen pregnancies would kill her.”

  “Half dozen didn’t kill you,” she said with her patented wicked grin.

  “I’m different.”

  “You sure are!”

  “You think, Moire Meg,” I asked, “that they’ll marry?”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it. My poor brother has made up his mind. I don’t think she has.”

  “What should we do?”

  Our middle daughter frowned.

  “When was I named the Ann Landers of the family? Just because Chucky says I’m a wisewoman, doesn’t mean I am. Anyway, wisewomen were witches and they burned them at the stake.”

  “You didn’t answer your father’s question, hon.”

  “You both know the answer. You shouldn’t do anything. If poor Seano wants to talk about it, you listen to him but don’t argue. He’d want you to argue because that would confirm his determination. Boys are like that.”

  “Not girls?”

  “Chisel it on stone, Chucky. This girl kid would never marry anyone unless you and Rosie were enthusiastic about him. I’ll write it out in contract form and sign it for you.”

  “That would be sweet, hon, but it’s not necessary.”

  “Rosie, you sound more like the good April every day. But it is too necessary, at least for me.”

  Well, that settled that.

  On the last Thursday in September, we attended the wedding of Leo Kelly and Jane Devlin at the parish church. Msgr. Packy presided. The marvel was not that these two classmates of mine should marry. In 1948 it seemed like a sure bet, a much safer wager than one on a lifelong relationship between me and my present wife (and only wife). It took Leo and Jane thirty years to overcome the problems of war, death, suffering, confusion, and anger.

  “A shame that they had to wait so long,” Rosemarie commented after Mass. “They looked beautiful, didn’t they?”

  “Like two people who could hardly wait to get to bed.”

  “Chucky!”

  “Well it’s true.”

  “I’m sure they’ve been together for a couple of weeks, since whatever happened this summer at the Lake. I don’t think they would have taken the risk of marriage unless they were dizzy over one another.”

  “It’s different when it’s official,” I replied, as though I had reason to know, which of course I didn’t. “You know that no one will take the woman away from you again, so you’re free to enjoy her without any worry.”

  “CHUCKY!”

  “And vice versa.”

  “Well, Leo did look very pleased with himself.”

  “He should. She’ll be great in bed.”

  “How like a man to look at it that way,” she sniffed.

  “Only honest. Everyone in the church at a wedding knows that before the day is over the bride and groom will be fucking. We cover it up because we’re embarrassed.”

  While I believed in the truth of what I was saying and while my imagination permitted itself brief images of the lovely Jane spread-eagled in the advanced stages of pleasure, I was playing the usual banter game in which Rosemarie and I indulged.

  “Well,” she sniffed in reply,
“that’s what they should be doing unless the groom has had too much champagne.”

  A vicious and unfair slash of the knife.

  “Touché,” I admitted.

  The groom was now the provost of The University and the bride a high-quality travel agent. Both worlds were represented at the wedding, to say nothing of the neighborhood. My wife and I kind of belong to both the neighborhood and The University, but actually to neither.

  “I thought Msgr. Packy was wonderful,” Rosemarie said, as we waited in the reception line at Butterfield.

  “Good loser.”

  “He loved her,” Rosemarie agreed, “but he would never have left the priesthood for her.”

  “You’re right. Still it’s hard.”

  “Life is hard, Chucky Ducky.”

  In my foolish brain I wondered whether I would be better off with a brand-new wife to occupy my attention till my midlife crisis—or whatever—had disappeared. Then I realized that a brand-new wife would never put up with me as patiently as Rosemarie did. Or love me so much.

  We hugged the bride and groom. They thanked us for bringing them together again, giving us more credit than a couple of phone calls merited.

  They both looked proud of themselves, as they should have.

  “Don’t let her get away this time, Leo.”

  They both blushed.

  “No danger of that, Chuck. I think for us ‘better late than never’ should possibly be just ‘better late.’”

  “Well,” my wife said with some satisfaction as we found our table, “all’s well that ends well.”

  That night in bed, she added another comment.

  “We don’t see many brides and grooms whose passion is as intense and focused as theirs, do we, Chucky?”

  “Uhm …”

  “The kids, even our own, are hungry for sexual release but they don’t understand, can’t understand the terrible binding power of love the way those two do. That’s the way of it when the lovers are older. Sometimes anyway. Forest fire stuff. Only gets stronger.”

  “Uhm …”

  “You agree?”

  “Uhm-hum … I had another thought too. I said to myself that if you had a new wife like Leo does you might be able to break out of your midlife crisis or whatever the hell it is. She’d take your mind off it.”