“Some enchanted evening?”
“Why not?”
“It’s not impossible. Not likely either. If you want her, now is the time, not later.”
That night I drafted a careful response and then copied it for my file of saved paper. The copy, in a fifteen-cent spiral notebook with a lot of other observations from those days, is on my desk now, under the pink vellum letter.
Dear Cordelia,
A number of possible replies to your letter ran through my head:
a) You bitch.
b) I didn’t know we were dating seriously. Maybe it’s some other guy.
c) It’s up to you, kid. See you around.
d) If you think it’s that easy to get away from me, you’ve got another thought coming.
I rejected all of them, the last most reluctantly. The first does not reflect the love I feel, the second would be a lie, the third is silly.
So I decided to write the truth, which is as follows:
You might be right. We’re both young and we both have plans and dreams. A summer off won’t hurt in the long run. Let’s try it anyway. You can count on me showing up in the office of Compact the first day of school in September, with all kinds of passionate longings in my head.
Until then I love you and propose to continue to do so.
Charles
I read it to Christopher on the phone.
“Faint heart never won fair lady,” he said.
“It’s fainthearted?”
“Ingeniously so.”
“That’s how I feel, I think.”
“If that’s how you feel”—his voice was impassive—“then send it.”
I did.
Rereading the letter now, I think it is a very clever exercise in cowardice.
What would have happened if I had taken the Northwestern up to Lake Forest, enveloped her in my arms, and claimed her as my own forever? What would have happened if I said we’d work out the dreams together?
Would we have been happy together? Would we have worked out our dreams so that the compromises would have been happy ones, better than the separate dreams because they were joint plans and commitments?
Would our passion have withered and died?
Was she just a delightful spring fling?
Or a lost opportunity?
I don’t know. I’ll never know.
In my most responsible moments, I conclude that it was an enchanting interlude in both our lives that ought to have ended and would have ended eventually anyway.
Maybe that mature reflection is correct.
Maybe not.
At any rate I mailed the letter and settled down for a long summer of loneliness.
13
The red Ford was not in evidence at our next softball game—this time against St. Agedius, near the O’Malleys’ Fair Oaks Avenue home. Agedius was Ursula’s most hated rival. Spoiled rich kids, we had insisted in grammar school. As evidence of the charge, we compared their grass softball field to our gravel field.
If one acquired a knee burn on the St. Ursula field, one picked at ugly scabs for a couple of months.
However, and despite the lovely homes around their field, the Agedius vets were pretty much like us, though their cars were newer.
“No red Ford,” I said to Monica as I sat next to her on the running board of Jimmy Rizzo’s Chevy.
“Whatever did you do to them, Chuck?” she asked in awe.
“Scared the living daylights out of them.”
“How?”
I considered the pros and cons of telling her some of the details and decided it might help her to know that there were two crazy people on her side.
I exaggerated a little, as I often do. In my narrative, Rosemarie actually came down the steps with the iron pipe. It was not exactly a lie. If the thin cop had hit me once more, she would have been all over him.
“Chuck,” she said in horror, “you didn’t really do those things, did you?”
“I’m afraid we did.”
“Why?”
“Get rid of the red Ford. Show certain people that you have allies.”
“Poor Daddy would never understand something like that.”
“He’ll think twice about sending cops after you and everyone else.”
“Daddy used to be such a nice man,” she said sadly. “Then he made all that money during the war and it seemed to change him. Isn’t that sad?”
“Very sad.”
So she still loved her father. That must be kept in mind.
Tim Boylan introduced me to his new date, a certain Jenny Collins, a lovely lass with long black hair and a great smile. She treated Staff Sergeant O’Malley, Charles Cronin, with elaborate respect.
“You won’t believe what Chucky just told me, James.”
“I think I’d believe anything.”
“He and Rosie got rid of the cops.”
Captain, my captain frowned. “How did they do that?”
Monica recited her version of my story, a version that emphasized our quick wits.
“That the sort of thing you did in the Constabulary?”
“Sometimes.”
“No wonder they gave you the Legion of Merit.”
“Great hit!” Jenny cried, interrupting our conversation.
Tim Boylan had smashed another home run, increasing our lead to ten runs.
Fascinating events were happening all around us. In Germany, a country I had finally begun to like despite my prejudices, the American airlift to Berlin had worked and the Russians abandoned their blockade. My old friend the Herr Oberbürgermeister of Cologne was the first chancellor of the new Federal Republic of Germany. The Communists were sweeping through China and, as if in reply, the Vatican had announced that it might have found some of the bones of Saint Peter. The British were testing the first jet transport, which they called the Comet. I had never been in an airplane—the Army had put me on troop transports both ways and I almost died from seasickness or at least so I claimed. However, I never wanted to fly in a plane, much less a jet. I vowed solemnly that I never would set foot in one. The Buick Roadmaster appeared, the first car with three or four holes on either side of the chassis.
Naturally, the O’Malleys bought one of them for the good April, so that Peg could inherit Mom’s Olds convertible to match Rosemarie’s Study. The family thus owned four cars. I resolutely refused one, though I can’t quite recall the reason for my high principles.
“What are the holes for?” I had demanded of Dad. “What do they do?
“They don’t do anything, dear,” Mom had replied. “They’re just cute.”
“Form follows function,” I said, quoting Louis Sullivan, one of the most famous of the Chicago School of architects.
“Have you seen the decorations on the Carson’s building?” Dad had replied, referring to one of Sullivan’s most famous works.
Touché.
“They still look funny.”
Dad, I thought, looked more frazzled than ever. Someone had to do something about straightening out the mess in his office.
“They’re supposed to look funny, aren’t they, Peggy dear?”
“Not as funny as Chuck in his business suit when he goes to work.”
And so it went.
At the St. Agedius ball field, Jenny Collins kissed Tim lightly on the cheek as he finished his dash around the bases. He hugged her briefly and over her head winked at me.
“Are you and Rosie together again?” Monica asked me.
Women assume they have the right to take responsibility for everyone’s love relationships. There’s no point in arguing, I had long since learned, in trying to resist that assumption.
“We were never together in the first place,” I said firmly. “She’s my foster sister. She is also a very clever, uh, colleague.”
Monica smiled, gently, as though she could see my little subterfuge.
“Your heart still belongs to the girl up in Lake Forest…what’s her name?”
“Cordelia Lenn
on.”
“She’s still your summer date?”
No good would come of trying to lie.
“We decided to cool it for the summer.”
“She decided?”
St. Ursula’s heroes finally permitted themselves a third out. The team rushed back to the field.
“Mutual agreement.”
“Why?”
I was squirming mentally.
“She wants to be a concert pianist.”
“Is she more beautiful than Rosie?”
“No one is more beautiful than Rosemarie, Monica, except maybe you.”
She laughed and ended her cross-examination, satisfied apparently that she had figured everything out.
“Thank you,” she said, “for getting rid of the spies.”
“Anytime.”
We won the game of course and then all adjourned to the Magic Pub. Tim Boylan, his arm confidently around Jenny’s shoulders, lifted a bottle of Coke to me in a laughing toast.
As the crowd sang “Younger than Springtime,” I told myself that, although my romantic life, never much to begin with, was in limbo, I had accomplished something that summer. I had helped Tim Boylan and James (as Monica now called him) Rizzo. As it would later turn out, that was presumptuous self-congratulation.
The images of the softball games come flooding back into my memory—the smells of male sweat, beer, the grease in Jimmy’s car, and Monica’s perfume. The noise of our cheering supporters, the hollers of triumph as we swarmed off the field, Jimmy’s crisp commands as he barked instructions, Monica’s gentle tones, the shots in the pub after our victories, the cries of horror as I dropped fly balls in right field, the noises in Kerrigan’s after the game, the songs from South Pacific that rocked the walls of the pub. Especially “Younger than Springtime.” The glow in Jenny Collins’s green eyes as Tim pounded around the bases, the sun sinking behind the rising walls of our new church, the eager young faces of the vets who had escaped death and were now escaping the Depression, Father Raven’s approving smile.
The images fade. We were all so young and so hopeful. Admittedly, I never quite fit. I was not a real vet, I was a rotten athlete, my language, son of the good April that I was, was much milder than that of the other vets. They all liked me—who wouldn’t like poor little Chucky?—but I was odd, unusual, different, headed down a different path.
Do I learn anything from recalling those images? I don’t know. Maybe like that French novelist I am recalling those memories and writing about them so I can capture them in the net of eternity.
Still, that’s what it was like when I was twenty.
14
“Do you know this boy Christopher that’s a friend of Vince’s?”
Rosemarie in swimsuit and robe had come from the beach. Peg had, as usual, picked me up at the train on Saturday morning. I was sitting on the porch staring balefully at the pretty blue lake—sometimes Lake Michigan elects to be pretty.
“Sure,” I said.
“What’s he like?”
She sat down across from me, her head cocked to one side, a usual pose for Rosemarie when she wanted to learn something that you know.
“He’s my closest friend down there, a thoroughly admirable young man.”
“Oh,” she said, as if she were disappointed.
“Why do you ask?”
If I were not an idiot, I would not have had to ask.
“Well…Vince wants me to triple with him and your old friend Ed Murray and some girl from the South Side.”
The last clause hinted at a generalized suspicion toward anyone from the South Side, a required attitude among us more civilized West Siders.
“You’ll have a good time,” I said as casually as I could. “He’s a German and a Republican and pretty serious but he can be fun too.”
I was naturally furious. What was Christopher doing? How dare he date Rosemarie?
Hold on, Chucky Ducky. He doesn’t know about Rosemarie and he certainly doesn’t know the name of the girl in the photo. Peg doesn’t know about him either. Moreover, she and Rosemarie think I’m still in love with Cordelia. I had kept my relationships neatly compartmentalized.
“You don’t mind if I go out with him?”
Yes, I mind. I’m in a rage.
“Not at all,” I said benignly. “I think you’ll like him and I know he’ll like you.”
“I probably won’t have much fun,” she said, rising from the chaise.
You’ll have too damn much fun.
“I bet you do.”
Isn’t our hero mature and generous?
When I saw Christopher at our next weekly lunch, he seemed embarrassed.
“I almost died when I saw she was the girl in the picture.”
“You didn’t say anything about it?”
“Charles, I’m not a complete idiot. You never told me the name of the girl in the picture.”
“What did you think of her?”
He ignored the question and went on with his explanation.
“Vince and Ed said they wanted me to triple with them and a girl who was a friend of your sister, whom by the way I have never met before.”
Peg had undoubtedly put them up to it. Since I was involved with Cordelia, Rosemarie must look elsewhere for a summer romance. Peg had never heard of Christopher from me. Vince and Ed were too dumb to catch the nuances. It was enough for them to be told that I had a date of my own.
“So what did you think of both of them?”
“You really grow up with those two?”
“Yeah.”
“Absolutely dazzling. I could hardly believe my eyes.”
“So you had a good time.”
“I certainly did. Your Rosemarie is a beautiful, brilliant, exciting young woman.”
Yeah.
“I’m glad you did.”
“You don’t mind? I’m not trespassing on your territory?”
“She’s a foster sister, Christopher, that’s all.”
He frowned.
“I would have thought from the picture that there was more to the relationship than that.”
“Not at all.”
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
“Neither of them mentioned you.”
“Why should they?”
“Ed and Vince must have told them that we are friends.”
My sister and my foster sister were playing their cards very carefully.
“That wouldn’t have made any difference.”
“You’re sure?”
“For the final time, yes, I’m sure.”
I had no right to complain, absolutely no right to complain. But I was furious. However, I kept my mouth shut.
The next weekend Peg asked the inevitable question when she picked me up at the Yards.
“How are you and Cordelia doing?”
“Who?”
“The girl up in Lake Forest our parents got the summer formal jacket for.”
That was one way of putting it.
“She dumped me.”
“What?”
“She just washed me right out of her hair.” I did an imitation of Mary Martin and Rosemarie singing that song.
“Why?”
A highly personal question but I was now under obligation to respond to the catechism.
“She thought we were getting too serious.”
“Usual baloney…Were you getting too serious?”
“She thought so.”
Very gently, “Do you love her, Chuck?”
“I thought I did. Not enough to disagree with her judgment, I guess.”
She nodded sympathetically.
“Did she love you?”
“I think so.”
“A lot?”
“Hard to tell. Maybe.”
“Once you’ve found him, never let him go.”
“I’m sure the good April would agree with that sentiment.”
“What was her reason?”
“She wants to be a concert
pianist. Marriage and motherhood, she said, would interfere.”
“Is she good enough?”
“Let me explain. She has had a first-rate education and has sound technical skills. But she is different from your fiddle playing in one important respect.”
“Violin playing…And what’s that?”
“When you do Paganini a very considerable fire in your soul explodes. You and the fiddle come alive with passion and power. The wild woman inside of you, the cougar, comes alive in the music. Poor Cordelia can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Dull parents, I think. Not like ours.”
“Did you tell her that?”
“Come on, Peg.”
“All right, all right. Did she break it up or just postpone it?”
“A bit of both. We’ll reexamine the relationship in September.”
“What will happen then?”
I sighed.
“Unless I’m prepared to insist, it’s finished.”
“And if you do insist?”
“Then she’ll cave in.”
Peg’s turn to sigh.
“Chucky, what an awful situation.”
We turned into the gate at Grand Beach.
“Maybe I fell in love too quickly. I don’t know.”
“Would I like her?”
“Probably.”
Silence.
Peg drew a deep breath.
“Will you insist?”
“I don’t think so. Too noble maybe. Or perhaps too proud.”
“More likely too wise.”
We got out of the car.
“Maybe.”
“She has to find out herself that her dream can’t come true.”
“That’s what I think too.”
Inside the house, I warned her that this information should not interfere with Rosemarie dating Christopher. I did not doubt for a moment that Peg was debating that subject in her agile mind.
“We wouldn’t have started that if we had known.”
“I have no claim on Christopher and no claim on Rosemarie. Let it play itself out.”
She inclined her head in a quick nod.
“I guess that’s the only fair thing to do.”
“Right.”
I went out on the porch to glare at the lake, feeling very sorry for myself. Would a friendship between Christopher and my foster sister grow and flourish? I didn’t think so. She was a little too wild for him and he a little too staid for her. Maybe, however, it was a match made in heaven. If it wasn’t, I shouldn’t be the one to tell either of them.
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