September Song

by Andrew M. Greeley

  When Chuck appeared at the end of the jetway, my sons began the fun with a horn fanfare they had written for the event. Then, Moire, on cue, rushed up to her daddy with a bouquet of roses and jumped into his arms. Heedless of the roses and my daughter I embraced him and kissed him soundly. The sons did the fanfare again, this time with jazz improvisations.

  Then there was much hugging and kissing and embracing. My elder daughter clung to him for fear he was about to be swept up in a typhoon.

  See the conquering hero comes.

  The conquering hero, alas, looked liked death warmed over, maybe for the second time—tired, confused, anxious. Poor dear man. He might be an absolute idiot, but I loved him so very much.

  Then the TV cameras arrived. Someone must have called the stations and told them that Charles Cronin O’Malley was returning from Vietnam. I wonder who …

  “Mr. Ambassador, are we winning the war over there?”

  “We are not losing it, but we’re not winning it either.”

  “How long do you think it will last?”

  “In 1965 I predicted that it would last ten years and we would have at least a million men in country. I see no reason to change my opinion now.”

  “Was Tet a major defeat for the United States?”

  “No, sir, it was great victory, but that doesn’t matter. We can win many more such victories and not win the war.”

  “Will we win in 1975?”

  “My prayer is that the American people will force the government out of the war by then.”

  “Will you join the antiwar movement?”

  “I’m against the war. However, I think the antiwar movement will prolong it.”

  Okay, we’d made our point. I signaled the Chief Rover, the drums pounded, and the pipes began to mourn for Ireland and all lost heroes, even those who always knew where they were even if other people thought they were missing.

  “No one seems angry at me,” Chuck said, his arm around my waist.

  “No one is angry at a little kid that gets lost and then is found, are they?”

  “True enough … Except I was never really lost …”

  “You always knew exactly where you were, right?”

  “Right …”

  “I was never angry at you, Chucky Ducky. Scared maybe, terrified maybe. But not angry. Well, for no more than five minutes. I knew God would bring you back.”

  My husband shook his head as if he didn’t quite understand.

  “You have to be who you are, my beloved. It would be wrong for me to try to make you someone else.”

  I ignored the fact that all he wanted to be was an accountant and I made him a photographer. The point is, you see, that I did that only for his own good. Deep down he always wanted to be a world-famous photographer.

  The party went on at our house. Chucky Ducky looked bemused as he sipped the iced tea I had made specially for him (from tea leaves no less, a returning hero is entitled to something more than tea bags, isn’t he?). I worried about him because that’s what women are supposed to do about their men and because he was, after all, thirty-nine years old and he’d been cavorting around like he was twenty again—not that he was much good at physical things when he was twenty.

  Finally, the crowd drifted away, our kids discreetly withdrew, and we trudged up to the master bedroom, arm in arm.

  “I have designs on your glorious body, fair matron.”

  “Funny thing, I thought you might.”

  The ensuing interlude was not at all like the macho triumph I had expected. Chucky Ducky’s love for me was gentle and delicate, healing kisses and caresses, a slow, leisurely renewal, a sweet rededication of passion. I felt like I was sinking into a luxurious swamp of dark chocolate.

  He played with my boobs for the longest time. Noting that I was reveling in this attention, he sustained the game as the chocolate became darker and more luxurious. I had read in one of my books (I read every book I can find about sex) that in some situations if the man is patient enough and tender enough and determined enough and the woman in the mood (which is of course the critical variable in the game) sustained foreplay can lead the woman to the edge of the cliff, over which she then tumbles into orgasm.

  Chucky never reads my books because he says they give him dirty thoughts.

  As my arousal became more and more intense I wondered if maybe I was at the edge of the cliff (my metaphor). Why not see if it would happen? There was no hurry. We had nothing to do the next morning.

  “Don’t stop, Chucky,” I begged.

  “I wasn’t planning to.”

  Then it happened.

  Well, maybe I willed it to happen.

  Anyway, it happened.

  The result was an orgasmic wave, also chocolate, which swept through me, hot chocolate this time, warm, deep, full, and massive. Hot chocolate with rich whipped cream. For a few moments I wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know where I was, but it was wonderful. Then I found myself exhausted in Chucky Ducky’s arms.

  “Are you all right, Rosemarie?” he asked anxiously.

  “Of course, I’m all right,” I tried to sound snappish and managed only to sound deeply pleasured.

  “Did I do that to you?”

  I merely sighed. Or maybe groaned.

  “Interesting,” he murmured. “Is this in one of your books?”

  I groaned again. I found that I was covered with sweat like after a bitterly fought tennis match.

  “I think I’ll have to start reading those books.”

  “No,” I said weakly.

  “Why not?”

  “You already have too much power over me …”

  He laughed softly and kissed me.

  “I hope you’re not about to stop,” I said.

  He was not.

  Eventually we slept.

  Then the phone rang. The February sun was shining through our drapes, rebuking us for being decadent sensualists. I sighed complacently. I had my little redhead leprechaun lover back. I murmured a lazy prayer of gratitude to God.

  The phone kept on ringing. I picked it up on my side of the bed. Chuck’s face was resting on my belly.

  “O’Malley residence,” I said, hoping that there was not too much sexual fog lurking in my voice.

  “Rosemarie?” said a New England voice.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “John McNaughton here. Is Chuck home from Asia yet?”

  “Yes, he is. I warn you, John, we are prepared to resist any attempts of you Feds to take him away.”

  I was nudging my husband to wake up. He grunted in protest.

  “Just now, Rosemarie,” he said with a chuckle, “the Feds are terrified of Charles Cronin O’Malley … Do you think I might have a word with him?”

  “I’ll see if he’s awake.”

  I put one hand over the phone and shook Chucky with the other.

  “Go way,” he ordered me.

  “Chuck, John McNaughton wants to talk to you.”

  “Who?”

  “You know, the Assistant Secretary of Defense.”

  “Why?”

  “You ask him.”

  He tried to snuggle deeper into my belly.

  I shook him again.

  “All right, all right.” He rolled over and reached for the phone.

  I pulled it away and gestured toward the other side of the bed. I had every intention of eavesdropping.

  “O’Malley,” my husband murmured.

  “John McNaughton here, Chuck.”

  “I have every intention of suing everyone in that building. I want Willy Westmorland’s head on a silver platter.”

  “You might have that already …”

  “I want it understood that no one over there gets blamed by the big brass, especially the people on the Kittyhawk, for my adventures.”

  “They won’t, Chuck. I’ve seen to that.”

  “And I want my luggage back.”

  My beloved husband, I thought, was bluffing. He didn’t have any high ca
rds, so he compensated by being outrageous, a style which came easy for him.

  “It’s on the way.”

  “It had better be …”

  “Now let me ask you a question,” the Assistant Secretary of Defense went on. “Did you find anyone over there who thought we would eventually win the war?”

  So maybe my husband did hold a card or two.

  “Only the Ambassador and he was drunk, I think.”

  “Did we win at Tet?”

  “Sure, it was Pyrrhic defeat for General Giap.”

  “Khe Sanh will hold?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Is there any light at the end of the tunnel?”

  “Not the slightest hint.”

  “Some of us down here have been pressing the same point. Town Hoopes has put together a memo which we arranged for the President to see.”

  “Around a lot of people’s backs?”

  “Well, we didn’t want to worry them.”

  “And Lyndon begged you to get him out of the war, just as he begged me three years ago.”

  “Something like that … Anyway he has asked Clark Clifford, the new Secretary of Defense, to convene a group of, uh, wise men to reevaluate the whole situation. Candidly, I think Westy went too far by asking for two hundred thousand more troops. The military, of course, support him.”

  “That’s generals for you. They don’t do good things. They do the things they do well.”

  He chuckled again.

  “This is a very important group, Chuck. The President accepted our suggestions about who should sit with it. Mr. Clifford offered some names. The President insisted that we include George Ball.”

  “Really!”

  “And you … He was particularly taken by the pictures you sent back.”

  He caught my eye. I nodded vigorously.

  “When is this meeting?”

  “Week from tomorrow at the White House.”

  “An ill-omened place.”

  “Yes, indeed … Will you come?”

  I nodded vigorously again. My husband grinned.

  “Certainly!”

  “Excellent! I’ll send a messenger today with a copy of the memo Town wrote.”

  Chuck reached for one of my boobs. Glutton.

  “See you then, John.”

  I tried without much sincerity to push his hand away.

  “I want to insist, Charles Cronin O’Malley …”

  “That you fly to Washington with me … Naturally, I’ll try to read more of those books of yours so we can amuse ourselves in our old love nest at the Hay-Adams. Now, let’s have some breakfast.”

  He gave my boob one last light squeeze and relinquished it.

  “I’ll make pancakes and bacon.”

  “I’ll help,” he said with obvious lack of sincerity.

  “We’ll give you this morning off. You’ve had an exhausting time. Rest while you still can.”

  When I returned with the first tray for breakfast, I found him sound asleep, with a beatific smile on his face. I wept to myself with joy at my having him back.

  16

  “Daddy,” April Rosemary asked, her brow furrowed in a deep frown, “why aren’t you part of the peace movement?”

  Chuck, clad in pajamas and robe and lying on the living room couch, had been reading and rereading the memo from John McNaughton, when our daughter had returned from Trinity High School in her plaid uniform. During his absence her relationship with me changed from day to day, sympathetic on one day, furious on the next because I was to blame because I had let him go. She had grimaced when Chuck had told the TV cameras at the airport that he thought the peace movement did more harm than good to the cause of peace.

  He looked up from the memo with a bemused scowl.

  “What?”

  “If you are against the war, shouldn’t you be for peace.”

  “I am for peace, darling.”

  “Why don’t you join those who are demanding immediate withdrawal from Vietnam?”

  “I thought my pictures made it clear where I was.” He glanced down at the memo.

  “Daddy! You are not paying any attention to me!”

  He looked up again.

  “There are different ways of opposing the war, darling. You have to persuade the American people that we should withdraw. We’re not there yet. A lot of our people still think that we’re doing God’s will by resisting godless Communism. They need convincing. I’m afraid that protest marches by those they consider spoiled rich kids will delay their change of mind.”

  “I’m not a spoiled rich kid!” She stamped her foot angrily.

  “I didn’t say you were,” he said gently. “I’m only saying that some of the people whose support we need will think you are.”

  “Why should we care what they think!”

  “Because they vote in elections!”

  “Maybe they shouldn’t vote; maybe we need a revolution; maybe young people will have to take to the streets to force peace on the rest of the country!”

  I was surprised. She’d never talked that way before. I wanted to slap her face. What would happen next?

  “Doesn’t forcing peace sound like a contradiction?”

  “S’ter Anne Marie says that only people who are ready to take to the streets can stop the killing.”

  The new revolutionary line was coming from a nun. Probably one of those who had warned my generation against wearing patent leather shoes.

  “What if those who still support the war take to the streets too?” Chuck folded the memo, put it on the end table, and sat up.

  “Well … They have no right to take to the streets because they’re morally wrong … They want the killing to continue.”

  “Suppose both sides take to the streets and your side loses. Then the war goes on forever?”

  “We can’t lose because we are the young people of the country!”

  “My strategy,” Chuck remained patient, “is to win people over against violence without using violence. I think we have a chance to do this. Perhaps soon.”

  “Perhaps never!”

  “I’ll tell you my worst fear, April Rosemary. It’s that Richard Nixon will win the election in November and the war will go on for seven or eight more years. Your brothers will all be drafted. Maybe some of them will be killed. Burning flags, tearing up draft cards, pouring blood on draft records as the Berrigan brothers do will help Nixon win. The demonstrators will feel good, but they’ll prolong the war.”

  Our daughter had no patience with such political analysis.

  “Bullshit, Daddy, just bullshit!” She raced out of the room and thundered up the stairs, sobbing hysterically.

  “Chuck …”

  “I know, Rosemarie. I know. She’s torn apart. She’s wrestling with complex and twisted problems and she doesn’t have the experience or the emotional maturity to deal with them.”

  “The nuns are teaching her simpleminded morality.”

  “We can’t talk her out of it, Rosemarie. We’ll just have to hope she grows out of it. Probably she will.”

  Maybe she would have if it were not the year of Our Lord 1968.

  Kevin appeared from the basement, coronet in hand.

  “Trouble up here?” he asked. “Someone is making noise louder than ours.”

  He was so tall now, so handsome, so charming. All he needed was a blue uniform and a horse and he could ride down the Shenandoah with Phil Sheridan.

  “Political argument between your sister and your father.”

  He fingered the valves on his instrument, as though he were trying to reason out the situation.

  “She’ll grow out of it.”

  He returned to the basement and his guys.

  “What if she doesn’t grow out of it?” I asked my husband. “These are bad times, Chucky.”

  “And I’m afraid,” he said returning to the memo, “that they might get a lot worse.”

  Lyndon Johnson had won the New Hampshire primary, but Eugene McCarth
y had captured several delegates. Suddenly, Johnson looked vulnerable. The Democrats had turned against the war. They had discovered that LBJ had deceived the American people, that he had led them into a major war without warning them or obtaining their consent. The most obvious development would be that he would lose to Bobby Kennedy in the primaries and Kennedy would win the election on an antiwar ticket.

  It would be Camelot again.

  We would never have believed in early March of 1968 how many things could go wrong.

  “We’ll lose her, Chuck,” I warned solemnly.

  “I hope not,” he said, glancing up from the memo. “If we do, she’ll come back eventually.”

  “Unless some redneck cop shoots her in the back.”

  He kept on reading.

  That night Father Ed and Father Packy Keenan, both of them in secular garb, joined us for a late supper. They had high praise for Chuck’s war photography.

  “That’ll do more good than a thousand peace marches,” Ed said.

  “Changed your mind on the marches, Ed?” I asked with an edge in my voice.

  My brother-in-law is in love with me. Always has been. It’s a different kind of love, however, than most loves, sort of a goddess-adoration kind of thing. He would never dream of making a pass. Rather he is content to worship me from a distance and absorb what he thinks is my wisdom. I’ve kept him in the priesthood with that alleged wisdom but only because he wants to stay in the priesthood. Nothing increases adoration more than help to do what you want to do anyway. Eddie, poor guy, is the only one of the Crazy O’Malleys who is short on what that bitch Maggie Ward calls ego-strength. Maybe that comes from being Chucky Ducky’s little brother.

  Packy, a burly giant like his brother Jerry, with a big smile and a bigger laugh, was a classmate of Chuck’s in grammar school. He views me with that mix of amusement and respect reserved for sexy hellions. I’m not sexy anymore but he thinks I am. As for the hellion part, I’m not denying that. I want to establish that I always do the cooking when we have guests. I am proud of my cooking. Tonight it was Italian, northern Italian.

  “I don’t know, Rosie,” he replied. “Some of the priests and nuns in the peace movement seem to be running away from their own religious problems. They’re not certain about religious faith and since they need to be certain about something, they turn to political faith.”