Same eyes, same smile, same lovely figure, same radiance.
Same Rosemarie, always beautiful, also facing the world with those dangerous eyes.
Maybe I would write a story about her, or a series of stories, or even a novel.
“Grandma Rosie,” I prayed to her, “I sense you’re near me today. I just know it. It’s nice to meet you. Maybe you’ve always been waiting around for me to introduce myself. There was so much suffering between you and me. My poor grandmother married to an unfaithful tyrant. My poor mother married to a madman. Poor me until Peg and Chuck came along to save me. I’m not a reincarnation of you, just because I have your genes. Yet there is a communion between us, isn’t there? I don’t know what that means. I don’t know why we have the same dangerous eyes and the same defiant smile and the same sexual allure and the same passionate loves. All I know is that we do. I won’t let you be forgotten, that I promise, though I don’t think in heaven you and Colonel Mike—did you call him that, I know you did—worry much about such things. I’ll show this book to Chuck, not right away because we have to get through this exhibition business. He’ll understand a lot more. So will I. Will I let him hang that damn picture? Of course I will. It’s a picture of both of us, isn’t it? Part of me will resist the idea that the picture is me at my best. But you and I know that it really is, don’t we?
“And what about that gypsy woman at Twin Lakes fifty years ago? She told Mom that she would have a daughter who would be a great woman. Do I believe in gypsy predictions? Certainly not! Still, if you see Mom—and I’m sure you do—tell her that I love her and I’m sorry and I’m trying to live up to that prediction as best I can.”
I was silent for a moment and I filled up with peace and love, quiet peace and gentle love. Was the original Rosie there with me? I don’t know. God was, I’m sure of that.
“See you later,” I said, as the peace and love faded.
Outside, the rain was so heavy I could not even see Delia’s house across the street. Slowly I came back down to earth.
There was something I had to do. My manuscript! To hell with it. Not today. They’d love it if I mailed the revision tomorrow. However, there was still more I wanted to do. What else was on my agenda?
“Chucky! My own version of Colonel Mike. How does he put up with me?
I pulled out one of my personal sheets of paper which proclaimed in large letters:
ROSEMARIE
Chuck,
I’ve been a real bitch. I’m sorry. You absolutely have to hang that portrait. I won’t forgive you if you don’t.
It’s beautiful. Again I’m sorry.
Rosemarie.
I folded it and put it in a matching envelope. I wrote “Chucky Ducky” on the envelope. Then I ran downstairs and without permitting myself to think about it, slipped it under the door. Then I returned to my office to await the expected reaction.
It wasn’t long in coming …
He rushed into my office and embraced me.
“I’ll explain someday soon why,” I said, as he smothered my lips with kisses.
“No explanations required.”
“I want to show you something,” I said. I took him by the hand and led him to the guest room where I had stored the canvas of my mother.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. “Was she the ghost?”
“Oh, no! I’ll explain about the ghost later. I’ve hidden that picture too long. I want to hang it in the parlor.”
“Great idea!” he said, though he had no idea what this change in me was all about. “Dad’s work, isn’t it?”
He put his arm around my waist.
“Who else? I’m going to ask Moire Meg to drive it over to their place this afternoon. The good April said he would clean it off and touch it up if it needs anything.”
“Shouldn’t we bring it ourselves?”
“There’s already been too many tears,” I said. “It will be easier for them and us if we ask herself to do it. I thought we might put it in the parlor for Christmas Eve.”
“Show it to Peg first. She won’t object, but don’t surprise her.”
I had forgotten completely in my rediscovery of my family that it was Peg who pushed Mom away and sent her tumbling down the basement stairs to her death. If she had not pushed her, Mom would have bashed out my brains with the poker in her hand.
I wondered then if maybe some of her anger at me when she was drunk was the result of her worship of her grandmother. I shouldn’t try to figure everything out all at once. Most of it I would have to guess at. That’s what stories are made of.
Both of us went back to work. It was hard for me to concentrate. Too many images of past and pleasant love.
“You want me to bring this over to Gramps?” Moire Meg asked me when I showed her the picture. “Sure, Grams makes the best cookies in all the world … This is your mother, isn’t it? Why haven’t we seen her before?”
“It’s a long story, which I will tell you very soon when I have figured it out completely.”
“She’s beautiful, but you don’t look like her at all.”
“I look like her grandmother.”
“Yeah? All I know about your family is that your mother had a hard life and died young. So did your father. Not that I need to know …”
“If I hadn’t walked over to the O’Malleys’ when I was nine or ten years old, I wouldn’t have survived.”
“To tell the truth, I think it might be the other way around.”
“They say that sometimes.”
“It’s stopped raining and turning totally cold … They know this is coming?”
“Yes. There’s likely to be a lot of tears.”
“I’m immune …” She continued to study the picture, as she would a blank space in a crossword puzzle. “Anyway, I’m glad you did wander over to their house. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here and there’d be no one to threaten to confiscate all your clothes if you didn’t lose more weight.”
“I’m not planning another pregnancy.”
“You never know.”
She lifted the painting and walked toward the door of my office.
“Well, poor little useless Momeg is still good for running errands … Rosie, can I see a picture of your great-grandmother?”
I pondered her question.
“Certainly. Put down the painting for a minute and sit on the couch.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I removed my mother’s photo album from the bottom drawer of the cabinet in which I had locked it.
“I found this only today, though I must have seen it once before because I knew it existed. This is our secret, hon, till after we start the exhibition and I can show it to your father.”
“Okay.”
I gave her the album.
“Rosemarie.” She glanced at the title page. “Same name … Omigosh! Omigosh! Rosie! Omigosh! You’re a clone!”
“Just a great-grandchild that inherited a lot of her genes.”
“It’s like totally scary! Same eyes! Same smile. Same boobs!”
The color drained from her face as she turned the pages.
“It’s the woman in Chucky’s picture. The same one. No sleep shirt, but it almost doesn’t matter …”
She hugged me.
“Rosie! How wonderful! How terrible and how wonderful! Do you feel close to her?”
“Right now I do.”
“She looks like April Rosemary too, like she was before she went away.”
“Her confidence is coming back, Moire Meg.”
“Slowly … And this lug of a colonel is a clone of my brothers.”
“They’d look good with beards.”
“It would wear off.”
“He was a good man.”
“Rosie, he didn’t have any choice in the matter … You going to write about them?”
“I think so. I have to get my head around it.”
“Talk to Marina Keenan’s mother too.”
I had never told her about my
relationship with Maggie Ward. Naturally, however, she knew.
She gave me back the album and stood up.
“Off to Grams and Gramps’ … You’re going to let Chuck hang the picture?”
“I think this one would haunt me if I didn’t.”
“Fer sure … Hey, which gown are you going to wear to the grand opening? The silver or the blue? I’ll wear the other.”
“You’ll look great in the blue.”
“I’d look better in the silver, but you have seniority.”
At supper that night, Chuck asked her how his parents had reacted to the picture of Clarice Clancy.
“More water pouring inside than outside. Those guys must have been awful close back then. Gramps said that no one could dance the Charleston better than your mother, Rosie.”
“She was a flapper, just like the good April.”
“I bet they have lots of pictures of her.”
“I’m sure they do.”
“I’ll have to check them out … How old was she when Gramps painted her?”
“Your age.”
Our daughter shook her head. The mystery of time and generations and aging were too much for her.
“Well, like I go to Grams, at least she had all her clothes on when he painted her. That painting of Grams is really bitchin’ isn’t it? Both flappers. Sometimes I wish I were a flapper.”
“What did the good April say?”
“She smiled kind of contentedly and said well at least we were married. Then she added ‘almost.’”
“Standard answer. Your father dug it out of the basement of their house and made them hang it.”
“Father and son both had a fixation on naked women, huh?”
“At the risk, hon, of sounding like my foster mother, most men do.”
Chuck and I made love again that night, a lot more peacefully than we had in the afternoon. It was the last time, as I knew it would be, until the beginning of the show.
He grew more tense as the Tuesday after Thanksgiving approached, not irritable, not snappy, just quiet and distant. I figured it was best to leave him alone. One of the troubles of early success is that you have lots of time to wonder when your luck will run out.
I wasn’t worried. The portraits were the best work he’d ever done. The men and women and children leaped out of the pictures and demanded your attention, even, God forgive me, the artist’s wife, a West Side Irish Marthe to his Bonnard.
If the critics didn’t like them, they were simply wrong.
Wait till they don’t like my short story collection!
He did look simply adorable in the very expensive, tailor-made tux on which I had insisted.
“It fits pretty well,” he admitted, as I struggled with his tie. “But I feel like the little guy on the top of a wedding cake.”
“Cute little guy,” I said.
“That’s what they all say.”
“Charles Cronin O’Malley, hold still!”
“Yes ma’am … I thought you were wearing the blue dress.”
“Originally I was wearing the silver, then Moire Meg wanted to wear it, so I said all right, and then last night she said I should wear the silver because I did more for it than she did, which isn’t true.”
“Oh.”
“She is a very sweet child, Chucky … Well, you look all right now, as all right as you’ll ever be … Now help me on with my dress.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He made no pretense at being fresh as he zipped me up.
He did admit, “As always, Rosemarie, you are magnificent.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
He would have been in deep, deep trouble if he had not said something like that. “It’s disgraceful to be as nervous as I am,” he said as he helped me on with my cloak. “I ought to know better.”
“You do know better, Chucky. You’ve put a lot of work into those portraits. It doesn’t matter whether some people don’t like them, especially media people. They don’t count. The subjects like them. You like them. The people will like them. You shouldn’t give a few effete snobs control over your work.”
“I always used to think that. Now for some reason I can’t anymore.”
“Everyone who is praised at one time will be attacked at a later time and then praised again. It’s the system. Think of Mozart.”
“When he was my age, he was already dead for sixteen years.”
I gave up on him.
I insisted that a limo pick us up and take us to the Art Institute. No search for a parking place for Prince Charming and his Magic Princess. Besides, my silver outfit would look its best as I emerged from a long limo.
Prince Charming stumbled as he was getting out. This was going to be a long night.
The night was clear, the air was fresh and still, a mild winter evening on the shore of the Lake, as people in evening dress glided into the stately building. I loved these scenes. Chucky had a hard time climbing the stairs. I almost helped him.
“Is this the guy who speared me in Hansen Park?” Ed Murray asked, as we met them at the door.
“Defamation,” Chuck insisted. “You attacked my head with your chest. Besides, I had not recovered full consciousness after you had committed unnecessary roughness on the previous play.”
“It never stops, does it, Rose?” Deal Murray said. “You were there. What really did happen?”
“In those last seconds, Delia, Chucky was too frightened to know what he was doing … You look great tonight by the way.”
“And silver is positively your color, you sparkle.”
“No one has paid any attention to my new tux,” Chuck protested.
“You have to take your coat off before they can see it, eejit.”
Our whole gang was inside, an attractive and imposing extended family. Two surprises: Sean had brought Esther, who was wearing a pale gray gown which set off nicely her golden brown eyes. And Moire Meg had a date, an Ignatius/Marquette boy with whom she had gone to grammar school, one Joey Moran by name. He seemed dazed that he was among the Crazy O’Malleys. There was much hugging and kissing and shaking of hands. I wondered if the jazz group had smuggled in their weapons.
“Guard of honor?” I asked.
“Blocking backs against Carmel,” Vince replied. “I think I see one of them among us. Don’t worry, Chucky, we’ll protect you.”
My husband stood at the fringe of this circle of beauty and warmth, once more the bemused kid peering in the window.
“Vince, will you take the quarterback’s coat and hang it up somewhere? Treat it gently, he’s owned it for thirty years. Now everyone, please admire him! It’s his tailor-made tux, bought especially for tonight.”
Applause from the crowd.
“Gingiss’s didn’t have my size. The old one fit fine.”
“I think, dear, we should go into the dining room,” I said, sounding again like the good April. “We don’t want to keep the trustees waiting.”
Esther brushed my cheek with her lips.
“You look lovely, Mrs. O’Malley.”
“Thank you, Esther … Are your parents here?”
Her father was a trustee of the Art Institute.
“He thinks Mr. O’Malley is a conservative.”
“Funny,” I said without thinking, “I didn’t see him at Selma.”
Her feelings were not hurt.
“That’s a good line, Mrs. O’Malley. I’ll use it sometime.”
“We brought the whole meshpocha here tonight.”
“That’s a Yiddish word, Mrs. O’Malley. It’s not Jewish.”
“What can I tell you, Esther! Yiddish is Jewish.”
She smiled enigmatically.
Our wine and appetizers were being served in the rebuilt Chicago Stock Exchange room in the bowels of the Art Institute.
I had paid for the wine and catering. It would be the best wine and the best food for Chuck’s coming-out party. Enough food so we wouldn’t have to eat dinner afterward.
Chuck opposed the Stock Exchange for the party. It would remind him, he argued, of the Great Depression. He might forget where he was and shout out a sell order.
Neither the staff nor the trustees nor I took him seriously.
A crowd had assembled already, most of them in evening dress, though it was not strictly required—trustees, civic folk, journalists, gossip columnists, hangers-on, the usual suspects.
“You see that ugly woman over there in the brown suit and blond hair, the tall one?”
“She’s not ugly, Chuck. She may not be Irish but she’s pretty.”
“She’s from the New York Times and she’s a monster.”
“She doesn’t look like a monster.”
“That’s all they send out these days.”
The chairman of the Trustees would introduce my husband. He would say a few words and that was all. No speeches, I had decreed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is not often that the Art Institute devotes a major exhibit to a native Chicagoan. We are delighted tonight to present our Christmas treat for the city of Chicago. Ambassador O’Malley has won Pulitzer Prizes for his photojournalism. In recent years he has turned to portraiture and demonstrated, we believe, that his shrewd, probing eye is especially suited to that genre. Chuck, we are glad to have you with us.”
Chucky sidled up to the mike.
“Thank you, Lawrence. I can’t help but feel that this show is for someone else and that I wish my mommy would take me home. I’m never quite sure what a snot-nosed little brat from Menard Avenue is doing inside this august building. I had to come because my wife, about whom more inside, bought me a new tuxedo. She won’t let me go home till everyone else has gone home. I hope you like my pictures. As I say in the catalogue, I have tried to capture my people not as they are at any given moment, but as they are at their best. I aim to challenge, not to flatter. Finally, there will be no collections, raffles, or door prizes, though to dispense with these traditions does deep violence to my Catholic soul.”
Laughter and applause.
Second Spring Page 26