September Song

by Andrew M. Greeley

  I know you did not intend to do that. You are part of the capitalist system that makes us all what we are, a system of greed and exploitation and injustice. I can’t forgive you for raising me in the same system. I do not however blame you for it.

  I hate your family environment. While you sing and dance and carouse and enjoy your two beautiful homes and your fine cars, young men and women my age are suffering all over the world, including this country. You must know this is true, yet you say nothing about them. Young Vietnamese boys are dying at this very moment because of your capitalist greed. Young black men and women are suffering from genocide while you have your silly parties. The whole world is dying from hunger and starvation while you sing your silly songs. How can you possibly be innocent of all these crimes?

  How can you spend so much time in the voyeuristic entertainment of photography which violates the privacy of people and exploits their poverty and suffering. I have given away all my equipment. I never want to take another photograph again.

  I have little hope that you will ever change. That is why I have to disown you. I must break away completely from the capitalist greed and oppression in which I was raised. do not know what will happen to me. I’m not sure I can ever become authentic or ever find my true self. I must try, however.

  I ask you to let everyone in the family read this letter. I am disowning them too. I never want to see any of them again. I never want to see you again.

  I will disappear from your lives. Do not search for me. Treat me as though I were dead. You may try to hunt me down with capitalist police. Believe me if you do I will simply disappear again. To try to find me will be a waste of time.

  I do not want to rot in your capitalist slime ever again. I will not.

  The one you call April which is no longer my real name.

  PS You may collect my things—despised remnants of a life I’m giving up—at my residence hall. They will tell you where they are. Do whatever you want with them. Burn them! I don’t care.

  I brought the letter down to the darkroom, where Chuck was working on his 1968 exhibit and gave it to him.

  He read it carefully and then read it again. He slumped into a chair.

  “I knew we shouldn’t have sent her there,” I wailed. “I tried to tell you that and you wouldn’t listen.”

  He glanced at me, trying to read my mood.

  “It won’t help, Rosemarie, if we become angry at one another.”

  “Did you ever hear such nonsense in all your life! Who has filled her innocent little head with such shit! It’s your fault!”

  “Didn’t we hear the same thing from some of our young teachers at THE University. We just laughed at them.”

  “Times were different then.”

  “She is different from us,” he said slowly.

  “That’s no excuse.”

  I was losing it. I knew I was. I wanted to calm down. I tried. I couldn’t quite make it. I would struggle with this conflict for many years. I tried to be reasonable on the subject of the disappearance of my first child. Often I could be reasonable. Other times I could not.

  “This is a lot of bullshit”—he gestured at the letter—“that she absorbed from some idiot of an instructor.”

  “What does that have to do with it? We’ve lost her.”

  “For a while, Rosemarie, only for a while. She’ll be back.”

  “She’ll never come home, never.”

  I realized even then that my anger was aimed at my daughter. Since she wasn’t there, I turned it on my poor husband. I must stop this, I told myself, I must stop it or I’ll lose him too.

  “I think she will,” he said. “She’ll be back.”

  “What are we supposed to do? Just sit around and wait for her?”

  “The first thing to do is to drive down to Boston, collect her belongings, and see if we can learn anything about what happened.”

  “I will NOT go to that place ever again!”

  “All right, I will.”

  “I don’t think we should show this to the other kids or the rest of our family.”

  I was trying to make him fight with me. He wouldn’t do it. Not ever.

  “How can we not show it to the kids or tell the rest of the family? They won’t understand what’s happening if we don’t?”

  “Well, I won’t show it to them!”

  Which was a lie. I could hardly wait to share the letter with Peg.

  “Not till after Kevin’s graduation anyway.”

  “Do whatever you want.”

  Chuck drove down to Harvard by himself, leaving me to do all the work for Kevin’s graduation from Fenwick.

  “Where is Sis?” Kevin asked one day. “Shouldn’t she be coming home about now?”

  “She’s not coming home!”

  “Huh?”

  “She has disowned us because we’re materialists. She never wants to see us again.”

  He shook his head sadly. “Sounds like Sis … Poor kid, she goes off on idealistic tangents because she hasn’t developed enough common sense yet.”

  That was as perceptive an analysis as we would ever have—not that Kevin would display much common sense either.

  “She never wants to see us again.”

  “She won’t be able to make it stick. She’ll be back just like she never left.”

  “That’s what your father says.”

  “Yeah, well Dad is usually right.”

  I could not dispute the truth of that assertion. So I ignored it.

  “She wants us to read her letter to all of you. We were planning on doing it after graduation.”

  “No way! She can’t make us listen to her crap and we won’t do it! To hell with her!”

  “Kevin! She’s your sister!”

  “And I love her. No way I have to listen to her bitchy crap. Forget about reading it to us. I’ll tell Seano and Jimmy.”

  That was a great relief. My cavalry son did not tolerate crap gladly.

  There was still poor little Moire.

  “April Rosemary isn’t coming home this summer, honey. She thinks she needs some time off from our family.”

  My youngest accepted my announcement with little surprise.

  “Well, Mommy, maybe we need some time off from her too.”

  “We’ll miss her a lot.”

  “Maybe she’ll stop being bossy when she comes back. You know, Mommy, she doesn’t act like a real grown-up.”

  That settled that.

  “The little bitch,” Peg said when she had read the letter. “The stupid selfish little bitch. She’ll regret this letter for a long time.”

  “Chuck thinks she’ll come back eventually.”

  “Of course she will. She can’t survive without her family … It may take a while.”

  “I don’t care if she ever comes back.”

  “Yes you do … How’s Chuck taking it?”

  “You know what he’s like. All calm and reasonable, figure out what happened before we try to find her.”

  “That’s how he would be. He is a man after all. He’s hurting too, Rosie. Don’t blame him.”

  “He should never have let her go to Harvard. That was a terrible mistake.”

  My best friend through the years looked at me for a moment as she contemplated what to say next.

  “Don’t take out your grief on him, Rosie. Don’t, whatever you do, let it ruin your marriage.”

  It was a solemn warning. She was right. I had been acting like an idiot.

  “I can’t believe she’d be so cruel,” I said, and deteriorated into tears.

  “Carlotta says that April Rosemary has kind of freaked out. She uses a lot of pot, some LSD. That is probably part of the problem.”

  “A drug addict! Dear God in heaven!”

  “Not an addict exactly. Not yet. A lot of kids their age are into drugs but they never quite become addicts because they’re too well stitched together.”

  “Her mother was an addict,” I said, close to tears.

/>   “A long time ago …”

  “She was old enough to know. She had to be a little mother for the other kids.”

  “A completely different situation, Rosie. Don’t blame yourself. That won’t help anybody …”

  Solid sensible advice with a lot of warm support. What good were advice and support when you have lost forever the first child you carried in your womb?

  Dr. Panglossa, my lovely mother-in-law, as always viewed the incident benignly.

  “Poor dear little April Rosemary.” She sighed. “She just needs some time off from the family. She’ll be all right I’m sure.”

  “How can you be so confident, April?”

  “Well, dear, everyone loves her so much that she’ll just have to come back.”

  “What if something happens to her?”

  “We’ll have to pray to God that nothing does.”

  The trouble with the good April’s Panglossa was that she was so often right. That was no consolation to me in my pain and rage.

  “You blame yourself for this letter?” Maggie Ward raised one of her damn eyebrows at me.

  “Did I say that?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “I suppose I do,” I admitted

  “So you take out your anger on your poor husband?”

  “If you say so …”

  “I don’t say so. I’m asking what you say.”

  “Sure, I blame him. He’s there.”

  “Not a good idea for the marriage.”

  “No,” I admitted. “Yet Harvard was his idea, not mine.”

  “Come now, I think we both know better than that. It is absurd to blame the school. She probably fell under the influence of some overpowering instructor who exploited her naive idealism. That’s no one’s fault except his. She could have encountered the same kind of person at Notre Dame these days.”

  That was certainly true, even if I didn’t want to admit it.

  “Maybe,” I replied.

  “You are hurt because of what she has done as any parent would be when a child writes a foolish letter. That’s understandable. You must grieve …”

  “As though she were dead?”

  “As though she was accurate when she said you would never see her again. Do not postpone the grief.”

  “Everyone says she will come back eventually.”

  “That is a reasonable expectation. I would not be surprised if she did. Nonetheless, you must work through the grief of the present moment as if she will not return. Otherwise, it will poison your life and your marriage.”

  “I resist that.”

  “Resist it all you want. It’s still true.”

  “Yes, I guess it is.”

  “Your real anger is at yourself because she may have inherited your addiction tendencies?”

  “Yes,” I said sorrowfully.

  “You brought those tendencies under control long ago. The dominant example for your daughter was of a woman who beat addiction.”

  “Maybe it’s in the genes.”

  “For which you are not personally responsible.”

  “I know …”

  “Many young people who use drugs today don’t come from addictive backgrounds.”

  “I know …”

  “Moreover, all the explanations for drug usage are multivariate, a combination of many different variables. April Rosemary uses drugs because she freely decided to use them.”

  “Will she ever be able to freely decide to stop?”

  Dr. Ward hesitated.

  “Given her family background, her intelligence, and her character, I would think there’s a good chance of that. But, Rosemarie, don’t count on it.”

  “Tough words.”

  “I know that. You are suffering terrible pain. It will not go away immediately. You will have to live with it. Gradually it will diminish. There will always be a residue of pain in your life, the sort you are not unfamiliar with from your own family experiences …”

  “Can I handle this?”

  “Certainly you can … Should your daughter return to your family the same person that she was only wiser and more experienced, that must be a wonderful surprise.”

  I understand.

  I did understand. I was one very tough, strong-willed woman. I had survived. I would continue to survive.

  No easy way out, Clancy. There never has been for you and never will be.

  So when Chuck returned from Cambridge, morose and beat, I apologized.

  “Chuck, I was a terrible bitch. I’m sorry. You’ve put up with a lot from me through the years. You always forgive me. I hope you’ll forgive me this time.”

  Pretty stiff and formal, huh? That was the best I could do. Besides, I knew how my husband would react.

  With his wide grin, which took in all the world and the whole solar system.

  “Have I ever complained, Rosemarie?”

  “No …”

  He put his arm around my shoulders.

  “This is a hellish experience. We’ll survive it and be better for having survived. We may fight sometimes about what to do. But we won’t blame each other ever again. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  I meant that when I said it. I tried my best to keep my promise. Usually I did. However, guilt and anger are as persistent as they are pernicious. They did slip back into my soul through the back door and cause me and Chuck many serious problems.

  That day, however, I told myself firmly that he was suffering as much as I was.

  “What should we do with her trunk?” he asked.

  My answer, inspired by Kevin’s attitude, was, I think, brilliant.

  “Nothing! Nothing at all! We’ll just leave it in the storeroom downstairs. If she ever comes home, she can open it herself. I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of hurting us more.”

  Chuck nodded. “Good idea.”

  “What did you learn in Cambridge?”

  “The dean at Radcliffe was no help at all. She knew that April was under stress, but she had no idea that she was leaving school or cutting her relationship with her family. She gave me the impression that she couldn’t care less.”

  “Ugh, secular nun!”

  “Not all nuns would react that way … Anyway, I found some students who were more open. April was very popular, they said. Fun and funny. She took the school too seriously, however. Should have been able to beat Harvard without any trouble at all. Wouldn’t admit it to herself. Worried about everything. Eventually stopped being funny and had no fun at all. Brightest kid we knew. Really had trouble with this Professor Agostino. Sociologist who’s hung around here for years. Hasn’t finished his dissertation. Pretends to be one of the kids, though he’s at least thirty. Gets off on attacking rich kids or kids he thinks are rich. His family has plenty of money. Corrupt slime of American capitalism, that kind of stuff. No socialist country would tolerate him. Harvard dumped him this year. He got to Rosemarie. I don’t know why. Last person in the world you’d expect to be guilty about being upper middle class. Some kids say her idealism was really deep. He exploited it. No romantic involvement, I believe. He’s still hanging around acting like the asshole he is. ‘I was astonished when April told me that she wasn’t coming back. She never said she intended to disappear. We’ll really miss her.’”

  “Dear God in heaven … Such a strange story.”

  “We raised her to be an idealist, Rosemarie. She happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lots of reason to be hurt, no reason to be angry at anyone, not even at the poor kid herself.”

  “I hate to admit it, Charles Cronin O’Malley, but you’re probably right.”

  I told him that all the kids knew. Family too. He smiled slightly, as if he were not surprised. I told him also that at Kevin’s suggestion we would not read the letter to the others.

  “Kevin has grown up with common sense.” He smiled.

  We would have reason to doubt that too in the years ahead.

  The two of us went over
to St. Ursula, to our court of last resort, John Raven, the young assistant at the parish when we were growing up and now the white-haired but always youthful pastor.

  He read April Rosemary’s letter with an expression of increasing pain on his red face.

  “The poor kid!” he exclaimed.

  No sympathy for us, but lots of it for the little brat.

  “Oh?” I said with a note of disapproval in my voice.

  “It must have broken her heart to have to write this letter.”

  “Huh?” Chuck said. “What do you mean?”

  “Look, guys, you’re the gifted firstborn of a West Side Irish Catholic liberal family which has inculcated more by example than by word, a powerful idealism. Your idealism, naïve and inexperienced, turns against the way your family lives. You can only be true to your ideals if you break with them and find out who you are. What else could she have done?”

  “Talked to us?” I asked. “Come home and have it out about the way we live?”

  “Wouldn’t work. Because she loves you so much and you have so much influence on her life, she knows she’d lose the argument. She has to find out for herself.”

  “Will she find out who she is?” Chuck demanded.

  “If she does”—John Raven glanced at the letter again—“she will discover that she is the very gifted daughter of a West Side Irish Catholic slightly zany liberal family.”

  “What are the chances of that, John?”

  “I don’t know, Rosemarie. She’s a smart kid. Clearly she saw through Harvard. I wouldn’t write off the possibility she will. Then she will return as if she’d never gone away.”

  “I can’t see that happening,” I said. “She cut her ties too completely.”

  “Had to if she was going to find out who her true self is.”