September Song

by Andrew M. Greeley

One morning we had a completely empty nest—Moire Meg was at a basketball camp. We were eating breakfast in our robes. My husband was reading the self-righteous editorials which the New York Times editorial board can grind out in their sleep. He periodically snorted derisively, like a judge hearing a government lawyer trying to pull a fast one.

  “Do you ever get tired of me, Chucky?”

  “Hmm?” he said, as if he hadn’t heard me, which of course he had. He always hears me.

  “I mean a little bit bored?”

  He folded the paper and placed it on the table, promptly soaking it in the maple syrup left over from his waffle.

  “Bored?”

  “I mean, like making love with the same woman all these years. No variety.”

  “Well, Rosemarie, you do tire me out often, on the tennis courts and in other places … But bored? The last adjective I would use to describe you is boring … in bed or anywhere else.”

  He picked up the paper and, oblivious of the maple syrup, continued to ridicule the pomposity of John Oakes and his buddies.

  “You wouldn’t call me exciting, would you?”

  He cocked his head thoughtfully.

  “That word might not be strong enough.”

  “What word might be strong enough?”

  He pondered for a moment. “How about enchanting?”

  “Nice word.”

  One wife now reassured.

  Chucky Ducky, once on a roll, couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

  “You cast a spell on me at Lake Geneva when you were ten years old the day you kissed me …”

  “You kissed me!”

  “Regardless,” he said, stealing my word and my dismissive gesture. “The spell has only grown more powerful with time. It will never fade.”

  Very good lines, Chuck Ducky.

  His fingers found my ribs underneath the robe. This time he was only touching, not arousing. We leaned on each other’s shoulders for the longest time. Then I sobbed and collapsed into his arms.

  Late in the summer, Trudi and her husband and their seventeen-year-old daughter Rosemarie visited us for a long weekend at the Lake. The blond kid was a dead ringer for the picture of Trudi in Chuck’s first book, without the pain and the terror in her mother’s eyes in those days. Jimmy and Seano were delighted to squire her around the beach.

  Their son, Karl, was now a pilot for Lufthansa.

  I did not invite Ed and Delia Conway from down the beach. There was no reason to line up Chucky Ducky’s previous loves—though he had never slept with Delia.

  We had a grand time, singing songs in German and in English, especially “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” and telling stories and eating massive meals that Trudi cooked for us. She rolled her eyes at me when Chuck used the camera she had given him to record the event.

  Since my husband does few things without a reason, I was sure that he displayed the camera to assure her that he still treasured it and her.

  “What memories, Chucky?” I asked him in bed that night.

  “Bittersweet mostly. And more sweet than bitter.”

  “You saved her life and she saved yours.”

  He knew I meant that she had saved his life by disappearing and thus not permitting him to bring her home to America for a marriage which she knew would have never worked.

  “Still love her?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Not the way I love you … It’s all in a golden haze of youthful days that perhaps never existed.”

  “They weren’t very golden then.”

  “They were drab and dangerous and boring and bitter cold … Even in August.”

  “Still she taught you how to love …”

  “And maybe I taught her that men could be tender.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “Do you mind that I still love her?”

  “Certainly not! You would be a monster if you didn’t.”

  We were invited to photograph the new President Gerald Ford in November. He served the same Michigan wine at his White House dinners as we served at our meals at the Lake. I warned Chuck that I might hit him over the head with a bottle if I heard him say once more, “It is a simple wine of the countryside, but I think you will find its pretensions amusing.”

  April Rosemary was still a painful ache in my soul, one of which I was often not conscious. There were so many other matters which required a mother’s attention and worry.

  Then it was Labor Day and the summer was over. We deserted the Lake. The leaves had begun to fall. Only the dazzling, daffy Moire Meg remained in our house.

  One more September song as our days declined to a precious few.

  28

  On the first Saturday after Labor Day, Moire Meg and I went shopping in the fading Oak Park Mall. I had delayed this expedition too long, because she absolutely refused to come in from the Lake to prepare for her freshman year at Trinity High School or shop with me at the Marquette Mall in Michigan City.

  “You just want to feel melancholy, Rosie,” she informed me, “because I’m the last teen you’ll have to prepare for high school.”

  “It’s thirty years since I started at Trinity,” I said with a sad sigh.

  “Well, there’s always a way to find yourself another freshman, like fourteen or fifteen years from now.”

  “You, young woman, are a little brat!”

  She chuckled complacently.

  Somehow we had become best buddies and with that relationship she assumed the right to ask me confidential questions and give me advice.

  For example, “Do you and Chucky still make love, Rosie?” “That’s a very personal question, dear.”

  “You sound just like Grams … Well, do you?”

  “Certainly we do. We love each other very much.”

  I remembered with a pang that April Rosemary had once asked me that question.

  “Uh-huh … How often?”

  “Quite often …”

  “And you enjoy it?”

  “More than ever.”

  She grinned happily.

  “That figures.”

  We did not bicker during our shopping expedition, an unusual phenomenon.

  “Don’t think I’m getting soft, Rosie. This is your big day and I don’t want to ruin it.”

  She was saved from being an obnoxious little brat by her humor and her instinct about how far to go.

  “Why do you call your mother ‘Rosie’?” her father asked the first time he heard that name. “Isn’t ‘Mom’ good enough?”

  “I never call her Mom, Daddy. When other people are around I call her Ma. When she says something silly, I call her Mo-THER. And when I’m being affectionate and intimate, she’s Rosie. Is that all right, Chucky?”

  That broke my husband up.

  “Her real name is Rosemarie.”

  “That’s your pet name for her and I don’t want to desecrate it!”

  “What will you be like when you’re eighteen?”

  “Probably a lot more cautious than I am now!”

  It was a lovely late-summer, early-autumn afternoon when we returned from the mall, leaves under our feet, a haze in the air, a tinge of color on the trees, a mildly erotic breeze on the face.

  Too early autumn, I thought. We don’t need death yet.

  Chuck was waiting at the door of the house. I unloaded my packages into his arms. That’s what husbands are for, aren’t they?

  “We’re having a couple of overnight guests,” he said cautiously.

  “Who?”

  “Our daughter and a boy named Jamie … In separate bedrooms … They’re not sleeping together she tells me.”

  “Holy shit!” exclaimed Moire Meg, grabbing me before I collapsed.

  I didn’t have the strength to warn her about her language.

  “The little brat! She thinks she can return without any warning!”

  “Cool it, Mo-THER,” Moire Meg instructed me as she helped me to a chair in the parlor. “If she wants to come home, we have to welc
ome her with outstretched arms.”

  “What did she sound like?” I asked Chuck.

  “Like April Rosemary. Very nervous. Frightened.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “That we would look forward to their visit with great joy!”

  “Chucky swallowed the Blarney Stone,” my younger daughter observed, quoting one of my favorite aphorisms.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked, aware that my head was whirling and my brain racing.

  “We’re going to have a very polite reception for her and the young man …”

  “I think Jamie is a cool name,” Moire Meg informed us.

  “I informed the senior matriarch and told her to spread the word that everyone should stay away from the house until we said it was all right to come over and then we might, just might, have a big O’Malley party.”

  “She doesn’t deserve a big party!”

  “ROSIE, why don’t you go read the gospel about the man who had a feast for his son who came home?”

  Ouch.

  I took a deep breath.

  “How come you know so much, Moire Meg?”

  “Because I’m a Catholic!”

  “I can hardly wait to see her,” I admitted, with a catch in my voice.

  “Now, as for you, young woman, as soon as we see their cab pull up, I want you to go upstairs and wait till we see which way the wind is blowing. When I tell you, call Grams and tell her to unleash the party. Got it?”

  “Yes, Pa,” she said with fake docility.

  “Was the good April surprised?”

  “She said that she always knew that poor little April Rosemary would come back.”

  “Did she know?”

  “She might have …”

  “If you wanted to find out,” I said, twisting a tissue which had appeared in my hand, “whether the coast was clear for a return, whom would you call?”

  Chuck nodded his head.

  “Seems reasonable.”

  “There’s a cab out front,” Moire Meg announced, peeking out the window. “Hey, this Jamie guy is really cool!”

  “Upstairs, young woman!”

  “Yes, Pa.”

  I dashed into the powder room to make sure my face was on right and that I looked calm and collected. The doorbell rang.

  I stood behind Chuck while he opened it.

  There was no question that the young woman in the brown autumn suit at the door was April Rosemary, relatively unchanged, a slightly more developed figure perhaps, but the same dancing eyes, the same infectious smile, the same jet-black hair.

  “Daddy.” She threw herself into Chuck’s arms. Doubtless she knew from the phone call that she would receive a warm reception from him.

  “Mom!” She opened her arms, a bit hesitantly for me.

  Fresh little brat.

  I enveloped her in my own arms. Our two trembling bodies came together and our hearts beat in unison. We clung to one another as though nothing and no one could ever tear us apart. She rested her head on my shoulder. We were both crying, of course.

  “April Rosemary,” I said, “you look absolutely fabulous!”

  “So do you, Mom. More beautiful than ever. I knew you would.”

  And so that was that.

  “Mom and Dad, this is Jamie. Excuse me, James Nettleton, M.D., my fiancé.”

  She was wearing a very large diamond ring. Not bad, kid.

  The young man was a giant, taller even than my cavalry raiders and more solid, yet another Black Irishman. He wore rimless glasses, a navy blue suit, and a sweet smile.

  “I trust,” Chuck said, “that Captain Polly and Colonel John are both well!”

  His superior officers from Bamberg! God was a humorist!

  “Very well, indeed, Staff Sergeant O’Malley. They send their compliments. They have fond memories of you and are eager to meet you again.”

  “And great stories too, Daddy. You were a real character over there … and terribly brave.”

  “I deny all charges.”

  Then this witty giant kissed me on the cheek.

  “Mrs. O’Malley, April told me how beautiful you are. I see now that you are even more beautiful than her descriptions.”

  “Rosemarie, Jamie,” I said.

  The young man talked funny as everyone from Boston does. He had also swallowed the same stone that his future father-in-law had swallowed.

  “You’re both most welcome,” Chuck said. “Come in and sit down. Let’s talk.”

  April Rosemary, tense and worried, plunged into a preliminary explanation. I wanted to tell her that it could wait, but she had to speak her prepared piece.

  “Jamie is about to begin his residency at Northwestern,” she said, “and I have to finish up my college requirements this year before I enroll at the Art Institute for my master’s. We hope to be married a year from December and plan to live in Chicago …”

  “So,” I said, “you’d like to live here while you attend Rosary and be married from this house at St. Ursula’s?”

  She gulped.

  “If no one minds.”

  “You’re certainly welcome, as far as I’m concerned. You’ll have to learn to put up with your no longer little sister who is like totally bossy … Chuck?”

  “I’ll be outnumbered by three bossy women. It gives me an idea for a new sequence. I’ll call it Bossy Women.”

  April Rosemary’s shoulders slumped in obvious relief.

  “Thank you,” she said, desperately resisting the impulse to bubble over. “I can hardly wait to see Moire.”

  “Moire Meg as she calls herself now.”

  “Speaking of pictures”—April Rosemary straightened her shoulders—“Dad, that exhibit of yours was overwhelming. Your best work ever. Only I hope you read what that man in the Globe said about not taking any more chances …”

  “Whether I read it is not the issue, kid,” he said. “Your mother read it and it’s now official family policy.”

  “And Mom,” she raced on, “I can’t believe how wonderful your stories are. Dad is just perfect in them, every detail right.”

  “They’re not about him!” I protested.

  The three of them laughed at me.

  “And he always wins!” I added.

  “Only,” Chuck said, “because the wife makes him win!”

  “WELL,” our daughter was fitting back into the family banter, “that’s the way it should be, isn’t it!”

  “Could I make some tea for all of us?” she then asked.

  I should have made it myself. However, she needed time to breathe.

  “Everything’s where it always was, dear, even the cookies for your father.”

  She rushed out to the kitchen.

  Jamie Nettleton, M.D., beamed at us approvingly.

  “You guys done real good,” he said.

  “Did you save her, Jamie?” I asked.

  “April saved herself, Rosemarie,” he said. “I might have helped a little the last couple of years. She’s a very resourceful and tough young woman. However, I don’t have to tell you that. She’s fine, terribly nervous today, but you don’t have to worry about her anymore … You have to understand that she wanted to be sure that she had everything together before she came home.”

  “We don’t believe in budgeting the Holy Spirit’s time,” Chuck added.

  “You noted,” he glanced at both of us, his pale blue eyes dancing, “when we’ve scheduled our wedding?”

  “Next Christmas,” I said … “On our silver anniversary!”

  “On or about.” He grinned.

  Great torrents of tears welled up behind my eyes. I restrained them, but only with enormous difficulty.

  Then Moire Meg peeked around the corner of the door, a tray of cups and saucers in hand. She was wearing the grim frown with which on occasion she greets the world.

  “She”—she nodded toward the kitchen—“said I should bring these out.”

  She had donned the beige miniskirt and ma
tching sweater which we had purchased at the mall, just so there would be no doubt about her budding figure.

  “Ma, he’s cute”—she pointed at Jamie—“I vote for him.”

  “The fabled Moire Meg.” Jamie stood up and shook hands with her.

  “She didn’t know I’m now Moire Meg,” she said suspiciously.

  “I’m psychic,” he replied.

  My younger daughter then deigned to smile, which has the same effect as a battery of flashbulbs exploding.

  “Thanks for bringing her home, Dr. Jamie,” she said demurely. “It’s good to have her back.”

  “Would you make that phone call I mentioned, Moire Meg?” Chuck said.

  She looked blank for a moment, then nodded and rushed up the steps.

  “What an adorable little brat!” Jamie marveled. “And so sweet!”

  “She wears a thousand faces,” I admitted. “The one you just saw is the deepest one … She beat me to it. Thanks for bringing her back!”

  “You done real good too, Jamie,” Chuck agreed.

  April Rosemary returned with the teapot and a large plate of cookies.

  “What happened to my helper?”

  “She’ll be right back,” I said.

  “She’s really special,” April Rosemary said. “Absolutely unique. She told me that she was glad I had come home because, in her very words, taking care of Rosie and Chucky is too much for one poor little teen.”

  “That’s just the beginning,” I warned.

  “She’s authentic,” Moire Meg’s big sister said. “She loves to play Actress maybe?”

  Moire Meg thundered down the steps and into the parlor.

  “Boys, boys, boys,” she said, “they drive me crazy!”

  “What will you be doing your MFA in, April Rosemary?” I asked.

  Her eyes darted around the room anxiously.

  “Photography,” she said, her voice quavering.

  I was not even close to saying something nasty, like it’s not parasitic anymore. Instead, I said, “Why am I not surprised?”

  “April supported herself in Boston last year,” Jamie said proudly, “by her photography. She specializes in pictures of children, and especially babies.”

  “You haven’t become a Republican, April Rosemary?” Chuck asked suspiciously.

  “Like great-grandfather O’Malley?” she asked, revealing a terrible family secret that we had tried to hide from the children.