My husband was a loser. Is it possible to love a loser? Not to pity him, but actually to love him?
I fell in love with Peter in a high school crush on a hero. I learned early on that he was not much of a hero. He threw the passes that brought the championship to Oakdale. But he was terrified before every game that he might blow it. In fact, he went through high school and all his life afraid of personal failure—as well he might have been. His father, Michael Reed Connors, was a great bear of a man, all-American tackle at Notre Dame. He didn’t like me at first because I was a Sicilian but he came through the years to respect me and be grateful for my love and care of Peter. His mother, Violet Egan, was a nervous timid little woman who had, I’m afraid, shaped Peter’s soul. She resented me all her life because I cared for that soul much more skillfully than she could.
Peter needed to be cosseted, propped up, sustained. I knew that the summer before he went to Notre Dame with expectations that he would be another Paul Horning or Angelo Bertelli. I hoped and prayed that he live up to his own skills. It would have eased his path through life. Alas for all of us, that goal, while within his athletic skills, was not within his personality skills. He never stopped being homesick. “I don’t like it here,” he said to me often on the phone. He couldn’t face personal conversation with me or write letters. Everything was on the phone.
Against my parents’ wishes, I had enrolled at NIU as a day student, riding back and forth on a bus. I did well enough my first semester to earn a scholarship, which didn’t make them happy. I should be earning money for the education of the rest of the family—that is, the boys in the family. The spring football practice at the Dome (as my kids call it) was a disaster. Peter was cut from the team. He came home a broken man.
NIU signed him up. He was second string during his sophomore year and did pretty well. We dated often. Peter was proud of me and the reaction of his athlete friends who were not bad guys. Old Michael Reed Connors was smart enough to comprehend that I was responsible for his son’s improvement.
“I used to think you were the problem with him, Maria,” he said in a tone which for him would pass for gentle. “Now I see you are his only hope.”
I thanked him.
I began to work in their real estate office after school and bought a car with which I could commute over to DeKalb. Mike, as I now called him, was proud of me.
I also was making enough money to pay for my brothers’ education. Still I didn’t please my parents and understood that I never would. They had not wanted a daughter people thought was beautiful. That was not good for a young woman.
Peter tore cartilage in his knee during a game in which he threw five touchdown passes for the Huskies, a record which still stands. It was a career-ending injury. The coach lamented the loss of such a promising player. I realized that Pete’s career ended in the nick of time.
We were married in the parish church the following autumn by the bishop of Rockford. It was a big wedding with a huge reception at the country club for which I paid with money that Big Mike had slipped to me. My parents were embarrassed by the whole event. We went to Europe for two weeks on our honeymoon and then on return we both went to work for the firm.
Sex between us was not much, though we managed to produce four adorable kids, two boys, two girls. They tell me that on balance I was not a bad mom—always with wicked grins, which have become their trademark when dealing with me. We sent them to the Catholic school in Oakdale and Oakdale High, then on to what they now call the Dome. I was never much of a Catholic and they are Catholic fanatics in a laid-back, comic way. The oldest three are involved in the ACE program from Notre Dame in which they teach in Catholic schools in impoverished neighborhoods after graduation and Clara, the youngest, intends to go the same route. I’ve become a much better Catholic because of them.
My husband had little aptitude for the family business. Big Mike made him president of the firm and me the vice president—inside and outside persons. He would sit in the front office of our storefront and chat with those who would drop by, take customers or influential folk or cronies to lunch at the country club, pick up all the local gossip which might affect our business, maybe even scare up some rich customers. I would do all the work and create our new ideas. I never resented this division of labor. Both roles were important. I liked running things and he liked talking. He never pretended that he was in charge and on the contrary praised me to his buddies as a genius at our game.
Oakdale had been a camp for Chief Black Hawk on the Kishwaukee River when Illinois troops, including young Abe Lincoln, were driving the Fox and Saux out of their Illinois homeland. Then it became a trail post on the road between Chicago and Rock Island, and later a station on the Rock Island Railroad and a commercial center for the surrounding farms, prospering as the farms prospered and suffering when the farms suffered. When the Rock Island ended its passenger service after the Second War, the town went into eclipse, the parks declined, and the storefronts on Chicago Avenue, as we called our main street, turned shabby and almost derelict. Donlan Development was a happy exception.
My premise through the years was that Oakdale, even almost halfway across the state, was a satellite of Chicago, only an hour by expressway from the Oak Brook complex and maybe an hour and ten minutes at the most from O’Hare. Our future lay in being a desirable exurb, “boonie,” for Chicago. So we developed a plan for sprucing up downtown and building high-quality homes in the empty spaces and elegant developments outside of town along the Rock and Kishwaukee rivers. There was some opposition from the local establishment, which had never quite adjusted to the end of the Great Depression. Big Mike won them over—after I won him over, which was easy because he approved of me. We had Chicago Avenue declared a historic district and pried loose some state money to refurbish it. We built a four-star hotel downtown with an inside/outside pool and a courtesy link to O’Hare—a quiet rural Illinois setting, we alleged, for weary travelers. We opened two excellent restaurants, one in the old railroad station, and persuaded the country club to permit visitors to play golf for an appropriately exorbitant fee. My husband organized a campaign to improve the course and we made a large contribution to the fund. I became president of Oakdale Civic Association and a member of the revived Kishwaukee County Democratic Organization. There were nice articles in the travel magazines and in one airline magazine. I loved the image of travelers reading it as they circled over O’Hare.
Urged on by my zealous Catholic children I also became chair of the St. Cyril’s financial council, which approved an expansion to the Catholic school which I had never attended.
My brothers, Jimmie and Paulie, were a problem. They had founded a construction company which might have done a lot of work for us. Unfortunately their bids were sloppy and unreliable and their work was often shoddy. My parents were furious at me because I wasn’t willing to “help your brothers out.” I had sold out, they shouted, to old man Connors.
“I’ll be eager to help them,” I replied curtly, “when they submit proper bids and do professional work.”
“You’re not loyal.”
“And this is not Sicily.”
Actually we were not Sicilians. But we were very poor Tuscan dirt farmers, which may be almost the same thing, though my mother and sister and I looked like aristocrats born on the wrong side of the bed.
Instead they built a new riverboat gambling complex outside of Rockford with ties to the Chicago outfit. My brothers, overweight bodies stuffed into expensive Italian suits, seemed to fit right in. Then the Chicago mob made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. They would continue to manage the casino and take a percentage from the profits, but the “boys” owned it.
My sister, Gina, moved to Chicago, got a job as a nurse at Northwestern, and married a rich doctor. We drifted apart, though the last couple of years after I had opened an office in Chicago, we’d have lunch occasionally and became if not quite friends, at least pleasant siblings.
“I don’t wa
nt either of those guys in the store,” I told my husband and father-in-law, “and I don’t want either of you to associate with them at the club. They’re bad news. We’re Caesar’s wife.”
They didn’t argue. They never argued with me when I laid down the law, which I did rarely. I also told my kids to stay away from their cousins.
“Get real, Moms,” my elder daughter, Marissa, admonished me with the required crooked grin. “We’re Florentines, not Sicilians.”
“Sienese,” I insisted.
“Whatever!”
The idea for Elegant Homes slowly developed through the years—designer homes that you could create for yourself with our software. It caught on quickly. My instinct seemed correct that some of the newly affluent Boomers would want their own tasteful and environment-friendly home that they designed and furnished themselves on the Net. We provided the alternatives and the builders and the decorators, who dared not be tardy or go over estimates.
“You gotta go ahead with this,” Big Mike insisted. “It will make a lot of money and a lot of people happy.”
“Fersure,” my husband agreed.
I noticed that I didn’t age much through the years. I had managed to slide through menopause rather easily. My children told me that I embarrassed them by being a “dish.”
“I can drink three malts every day if you want.”
“Won’t do any good,” Clara replied. “It’s in your genes, like your mother. Only you’re not a wicked witch.”
My husband got along fine with the kids. They figured he was another kid like themselves. They were not far from wrong.
He deteriorated slowly through the decades, so slowly that I would notice only when I’d recall the difference between birthdays. A hint that his world was disintegrating came five years ago when he withdrew from the annual country club golf tournament, which he had won twice when he was in his twenties.
“Just too tired,” he sighed. “Mar, you go out and defend the family honor.”
I had never played in the tournament because I did not want to humiliate him. It was silly because he knew how good I had become while I was working on the golf course modernization. I’ve won it twice since then, but only after he had died.
Peter began to go to Mass every morning. Clara or I would drive him down the street to St. Cyril’s. Usually we both would go with him. My children had made me a good Catholic. My husband made me a devout Catholic.
I refused to think about his death, though deep down I knew he would be lucky to live to be sixty. Big Mike once said to me in a choked voice, “I’ll outlive my own son. It’s all my fault.”
“The doctors say that his depression is genetic, not psychological.”
“I didn’t help matters by pushing him so hard in high school and college.”
“That’s what fathers do. You weren’t worse than anyone else in this town.”
You’ll have to take care of him when Peter dies, I told myself with Italian fatalism. But I didn’t think it would happen so soon. . . . Nor that Big Mike would die a year after.
I awoke a couple of nights after our thirtieth wedding anniversary. Beside me in bed—better a sexless bed, I often told myself than an empty bed—Peter was twisting and turning restlessly. Then he doubled over and cried out in pain.
“I’m dying, Maria! Call the ambulance! Oh, please call the ambulance! Now!”
I had made a deal with Ladislas, the director of our town ambulance service, that I would call him on his top secret number when we had an emergency, and just tell him my name. He would come immediately. I had precoded his number in all my phones.
“Laddy, it’s Maria.”
Then the rectory, “Father Matt. It’s Maria.”
“I’ll be right over, Maria.”
“Hold my hand, Maria, PLEASE!”
“I love you, Peter. I always have. I always will.”
“Best wife a loser like me ever had.”
“You’re not a loser, Peter. You never were.”
Then Big Mike.
His whiny wife answered.
“Do you know what time it is, Maria . . .? We both need our sleep.”
“We’re taking Peter to the hospital.”
“Can’t it wait till the morning?”
Miserable little bitch.
“Put him on!” I shouted into the phone.
She whimpered but put Mike on.
“We’re taking him to the hospital, Mike. He may have had a heart attack.”
“I’ll meet you there . . .! How bad is it?”
I hesitated.
“Pretty bad?”
“I think so.”
The ambulance wailed outside. I put on a sweatshirt and jeans and grabbed a raincoat. Then back to my husband. I held his hand with all the passion I possessed.
“I love you, Peter. I love you with all my heart and soul.”
“I didn’t deserve you, Maria. But I’m happy you’ve been with me. You have to get yourself another husband.”
“Don’t be silly. . . . I better open the door.”
The paramedics eased him out of the bed and carried him gently down the stairs. I trailed behind, cell phone in hand. Pete’s young wife, Vicki, whom he met during their term in ACE, halfway through her first pregnancy, answered the phone.
“We’re taking Dad to the hospital, hon.”
“Oh, Mom, how awful!”
“How bad is it, Mom?” Pete was on the phone.
“Pretty bad. We’re putting him in the ambulance. Father Matt is here and is riding down the street with us.”
“We’ll be right there.”
“Let Vicki drive. You call the kids. Tell them not to be reckless driving home, especially Clara.”
“I’ll tell her to wait till morning. She usually does what I say.”
“You must marry again,” Peter pleaded with me, clinging to my hand.
Father Matt performed the Last Rites with sincerity and grace as we rolled down the street to St. Angela’s Hospital. Big Mike and Pete and Vicki arrived at the same time. Just inside the entrance of the hospital thunder growled above us and lightning danced across the sky, my husband sat up on the stretcher, his face glowing, his eyes bright.
“I’m here, Jesus,” he said with a strange laugh. “Please take me home.”
Then he fell back on the stretcher, closed his eyes, and died.
None of us said anything. In fact it would be months before we allowed ourselves to speak about that last half minute of his life.
I was numb through the wake and funeral, unable to weep, hardly able to speak. I thought I had prepared mentally for his death, but I knew nothing about grief.
The wake and funeral were overwhelmed by strangers, men and women I had never met and did not know, but who worshipped the legend of Peter Connors. My brothers and parents did not appear. Gina and her handsome doctor drove in from Chicago. My kids steered me around and whispered instructions in my ear. After the burial in Oakdale Memorial, they urged me to go away for a couple of weeks. Instead I went back to the office the following Monday morning. Life went on and so did the firm. So too did Elegant Homes, my firm.
Denial and grief continued for a year. Mourning will never end. I was finally able to ask myself whether I had been happy, whether I would do it all again if I had the chance, whether I had any regrets. I didn’t know the answers and I still don’t. I do know that I had been a shallow and naïve young woman who knew nothing about life or marriage and who was unaware that she had other choices. I also concluded, after several conversations with Father Matt, that I had been a good wife and a good mother, a conclusion on which Big Mike and my kids vigorously insisted. I had not failed completely in these responsibilities. In that hardly dramatic and minimal conviction, I found solace.
I also decided that I would not try marriage again, it was far too demanding a venture to attempt more than once. After my required year of mourning, I put away my widow’s clothes (always fashionable, mind you) and began to act like
a responsible aging grandmother. “Men are going to start hitting on you, Mom,” my adorable Vicki informed me.
“Vick, men have hit on me all my life. They didn’t pause for more than a moment or two when I had a husband or when I was wearing black. The only problem is that none of them are the kind of men I wouldn’t mind hitting on me.”
She and my son both laughed, as did my grandchild, who laughed all the time. They didn’t realize that I was speaking the literal truth. I had had it with men.
Or so I thought.
Maria Angelica
WE HAD, I told myself, nothing to lose by going public with Elegant Homes. We needed more money to spread our software and offices around the country. If the shares went up, my children and I would make a tidy sum of money, enough maybe for my grandchildren’s college education and for me to retire to my native Sienna some day. Actually I don’t think we are Tuscans, more likely Lombards or Goths or some other barbarian crowd.
Nor did I resist the idea of offering a large block of our stock to Donlan Assets Management. I had some money in Frodo, which had paid for my kids’ long residence at the Dome. Jack Donlan apparently knew what he was doing. His accountants and lawyers swarmed over our offices both in Oakdale and Sears Tower.
“Very smart people,” my son, Pete, who ran the Oakdale office now, observed. “If they think we are a good investment, a lot of other people will too.”
“He makes mistakes like all of them.”
“Not very many.”
“His Frodo fund paid for your education.”
“I told them that. . . . I don’t know whether he knows you’re a client.”
“I’m sure that wouldn’t affect his decision.”
Finally the day came when he and I would meet. Apparently we had passed all but the final test—his meeting with me. Was I the kind of person who could be trusted to protect the stockholders’ wealth he had put in Samwise, his more speculative fund. I didn’t like the idea of the test. I wore a conservative navy blue suit with a single oak pin. I had not removed my wedding ring for two years. I solemnly resolved that I would choke all my wisecracks.
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