“Tired?”
I jumped. “Certainly not.”
“Scare you in the dark? Are you afraid of the dark, Vangie?”
“No, I am not….” Then I remembered the rules. You tell the truth to April Cronin. “Well, maybe a little. You surprised me. I was thinking.”
“I won’t ask about what. Do you want to walk over to the dance hall?”
“Sure.”
“We won’t be able to drink anything, not even water, if we want to receive Communion tomorrow.”
“All right…Is Clarice asleep?”
She linked her arm with mine; we followed the dimly lighted path toward the even darker highway.
“The poor dear. She’s really very, very intelligent. But her father is such a terrible man. He still spanks her and won’t let her do anything or be anything. It’s really quite terrible.”
“Beats her?”
“And fights all the time with her mother, who stands up for Clarice some of the time. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the poor dear.”
“Her father let her come up here for the weekend?”
“He’s away in California. He spends a lot of time out there. If he knew she spent a weekend away from home without a chaperone, he’d be furious.”
“You seem to be a fine chaperone.”
“Would you trust me,” she giggled, “to protect your daughter?”
“Absolutely.”
“You would not, not if you were real old.”
I thought about it. “I still think I’d trust you.”
We paused on the highway, gravel of course, to let our eyes adjust to the darkness. Only two cars passed us during the twenty-minute walk to the dance hall.
They were playing the Charleston as we walked up to it.
“Oh, good! I just love the Charleston, don’t you?”
“I’ve never danced it. It looks kind of wild.”
“Don’t be a stodgy old bachelor.” She patted my arm.
“That’s what my mother says.”
“She sounds like a very wise woman.”
“This place smells like the stockyards.”
“Careful, sir”—she grinned at me—“you’re talking about my neighborhood. Besides the smell—”
“I know…it’s what puts the color in your skin.”
We chuckled together and plunged into the maelstrom.
The Twin Lakes dance hall was a rickety old building that had been built in the eighteen eighties and was probably run-down the day the construction was finished. It was as hot as a furnace room at the South Works and filled with gyrating, undulating, sweat-smelling young bodies.
We had hardly pushed our way inside when my companion, who smelled quite sweet I had noted on our walk through the hot night, began to gyrate and undulate with the best of them.
Her legs were quite breathtaking when disclosed, almost up to her hips, by her bouncing skirt and slip. Such revelations hindered my efforts to learn the dance.
Nonetheless I finally did the Charleston right—because April Mae June (as I still thought) Cronin was determined that I would learn to do it right.
“You stare at my legs,” she said when we had settled into a more relaxed fox-trot number, “like you’ve never seen a woman’s legs before.”
“Never more spectacular legs, that’s certain. But it’s the astonishing woman who walks on them that fascinates me.”
I gripped her hand a little more firmly as I said that.
“That’s very sweet…still, no man has ever looked at me before quite the way you do.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be. I’m not angry, just a little unnerved.”
“Me too.”
“What would the painting be like?” she asked.
“Which painting?”
“Of the nude harpist, silly.”
“Oh, her!”
“Yes, her!”
“Well, she’d be well protected by the harp, of course. But the viewer would be able to see that she had firm and full and very lovely breasts.”
After I had spoken, I realized that I had drank far too much single malt.
“Well, that certainly wouldn’t be immoral, not very immoral anyway.”
We huddled a little more closely.
“I suppose you stare at me because you’re an artist and examine shapes and forms closely.”
“That’s part of it, I’m sure. But your shapes and forms are special.”
“Silly.” She pushed me away a little and then nestled in more closely. “I hope they do the Charleston one more time. I want to make sure you have learned how to do it right.”
They did play it once more and I did do it, if not exactly right and not intolerably wrong.
Then they played the Black Bottom, which my mother had said no self-respecting girl would dance.
Nonetheless, April danced it and made me dance it too.
Then, astonishingly, there was a waltz.
“My kind of stodgy old bachelor music.”
“You’re none of those things.” She snuggled into my arms. “Are you thirsty? I’m terribly thirsty.”
“I have another bottle of single malt back in my room.”
“I meant thirsty for water.” She frowned disapprovingly. “But we’re going to Communion tomorrow, aren’t we?”
“I guess.”
There was no reason why I wouldn’t go except I didn’t want to seem too pious.
“A little thirst isn’t much compared to the terrible thirst Jesus suffered on the cross for our sins, is it?”
I murmured my agreement.
The words were nunish piety, but they were nonetheless authentic on the lips of April Cronin. There was no contradiction in her soul between such notions and the Charleston and discussing the breasts of a half-naked harpist. My son the seminarian (my younger son) tells me that it is the Catholic genius to be able to say “both…and.” Heaven knows April Cronin was in that respect as in many others the most Catholic person I ever met.
Finally the band played “Show Me the Way to Go Home”—the hit song of the year and now the sign that the party was over. April, who had kind of taken over the dance floor, led all of us in singing the song. It sounded like we were all so drunk that we could hardly walk. In fact, although bottles were passed constantly around the dance floor, no one was very drunk.
I had sweated off my part of the single malt by the end of the first Charleston.
April decreed that it was necessary to remove our shoes and socks (she performed the latter operation after my head was chastely turned away) and wade along the lakeshore under the stars. I rolled up my trousers and tagged along after her.
That was when I said it was a shame Jim was not with us to enjoy the fun and she said that someday he might grow up.
I continued to slosh through the water, not certain how to reply or whether to reply. I remembered again that she was Jim’s girl, at least to the extent that if it hadn’t been for him I would not know her.
Looking back on it, I realized she was telling me in her sweet fashion that there were no claims staked on her yet. Perhaps she was even hinting that all was fair in love and war.
I was innocent of how the love game was played, mostly because I hadn’t played it much. So I didn’t hear what she was telling me—the same message I had heard earlier from Clarice. Or maybe I did hear it and could not bring myself to betray Jim.
We were friends. He knew her before I did. And he needed to find a sensible, stable wife more desperately than I did.
So I thought.
Or so I told myself I thought.
We put on our shoes when we arrived back at the pergola.
The Barry grounds were as silent as a cemetery. Everyone else was in bed. From a far distance I heard a baby, disturbed in the middle of the night, protest with a routine wail.
“Wasn’t that fun?” she demanded with enthusiasm appropriate for the beginning and not the end of the evening. “What shal
l we do next?”
“April Mae Cronin,” I said, taking her collarbones in my hands, “you are one of the most remarkable women I have ever met. I’ve known you for sixteen hours and already it seems like sixteen wonderful years. Nonetheless and with all due respect for your beauty, talent, and vitality, I don’t give a—”
“Careful!”
“I was about to say I don’t give a hoot what you do. I’m going to walk you back to the Drake. Then I’m going to the Blackstone and sleep till I wake up even if it’s the day of the Last Judgment.”
“Maybe you are a stodgy old bachelor,” she said giggling.
I set her on the darkened path to the Drake and gave her a shove. “Walk, woman, and walk quickly.”
“Yes, sir.” She giggled again, so tired herself that she was close to mild hysteria.
We giggled together as we struggled up the hill to her cabin.
“You’re silly,” she said with mock seriousness. “I’m going to tell old Mr. Hurley that his prize artist is silly.”
“He knows it already…now, good night, young woman, and don’t wake me till just before mass.”
“You can wake yourself.” She giggled again.
If there was anyone listening they would have been convinced we were both drunk.
Perhaps we were, but not with alcohol.
At the bottom of the steps up to the screened-in porch, hardly realizing what I was doing, I bent over to kiss her. Somehow her face was turned up waiting for the kiss.
I intended only a mild touch of lips. After all, I hardly knew her.
Her response indicated that she intended no more.
But energies more powerful than our intentions were working under the hot, starry skies. In the time it takes an eyelid to flick we were in each other’s arms, our bodies pressed against one another in a desperate lunge toward unity. Our lips seemed frozen together as though they were sealed in a permanent bond. Despite her smell of human sweat and the distant taste of whisky on her lips, she was unbearably sweet to my mouth. Her body fit against mine as though we had been designed to embrace one another.
Her allotted twenty-four ounces of women’s garb was soaked with sweat and hence hardly any barrier to the feel of her pliant woman’s body, solid and soft in just the appropriate places.
We clung together for what seemed an eternity, neither one of us wishing to end the ecstasy.
Which we felt, naturally, was unique to us and experienced by no other couple in human history.
“Oh my,” she whispered when finally, somehow, we parted. “I’ve never been kissed that way before.”
“Me neither.”
She was shivering.
“You’re a swell kisser. A lalapazoo.” She rested her head against my chest. “And if you dare say you’re sorry, I’ll hit you.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No apologies.” Her fingers against my lips silenced my regrets. “It was wonderful. Scary, but wonderful.”
“I agree,” I mumbled, feeling clumsy and awkward.
“One more, very gentle kiss”—she touched my lips with hers and then quickly backed away—“and I’m going to my room and dream the rest of the night away.”
“Pleasant dreams,, April Mae June Cronin.”
“My confirmation name is really Anne. With an e. I’m sure the dreams will be pleasant.”
She ran up the stairs and through the screen door into the darkened porch without ever looking back.
I walked back to my cabin and into the damp cubbyhole that was my room on the third floor—with the only window opening not on the outside but on the porch, humming “Sweet Georgia Brown” exultantly to myself.
I had never before so completely overwhelmed a woman.
And never had I felt myself so completely a man.
I pulled off my clothes in the darkness, and lay on top of the soggy sheet, hands behind my head.
The woman was mine. It might take time and there would be obstacles. But she was mine.
I thought I would be too excited to sleep, but I was wrong. In a few moments, I was in a pleasant dream world filled with compliant women. Guilt lingered on the fringes of this paradise, but made no difference at all.
Then the fire alarms went off and I knew that Jim had arrived and that my exultation of a few hours before was finished.
23
“Did you see the look on their faces when they came tumbling out of the Drake?” Jim was ecstatic. “The old women especially. They thought the world was coming to an end.”
We were milling around on the lawn between the pergola and the statue of Commodore Barry.
“And the young ones, hey, don’t they look great in nightgowns?”
“No one looks great when they’ve just gotten out of bed.”
In fact, I hadn’t seen anyone. As soon as I had heard the alarms, I knew it was another one of Jim’s practical jokes. I rolled over on my bed and cursed Jim, the Kenosha Fire Department, and the rising sun that had poked its way into my room and seemed determined not to leave.
I had begun to worry about Jim’s jokes. When we were younger they seemed to be part of the same innocent fun as his generous giving of gifts—jack-in-the-box high spirits. In his mind gifts and jokes were different sides of the same coin: Peter Pan playing Tinkerbell. But as we grew older the jokes, innocently intended perhaps, became somewhat less innocent in their effects.
I wanted my Peter Pan to grow up, but not to lose his flair for frolic and surprise.
I listened to the rush of people fleeing my building and imagined the same sounds all over the grounds.
Then, knowing I would not go back to sleep, I struggled out of my bed, shaved as best I could, put on my seersucker blue suit, blue tie, and boater hat, and ventured out as though I were prepared for mass.
Looking back on it, I suppose I was foolish. A suspicious person would have wondered how I knew it was a false alarm.
“You shouldn’t do things like that,” I said to Jim when he rushed up to me, brimming over with excitement at his coup. “What if one of the firemen was hurt or what if an elderly person had a heart attack?”
His face fell, as I knew it would. When I didn’t rejoice with him over one of his successful practical jokes, Jim was heartbroken.
“But no one was hurt and no one had a heart attack. You sound like my mother.”
I sounded like my own mother too.
“That’s not the point,” I said wearily. “Turning in a false alarm is against the law. What if there’s a real fire emergency here next week and the clubhouse phones Kenosha for help and they won’t come?”
“Ah, heck, Johnny, that won’t happen.” He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and hung his head, as he usually did when I reprimanded him. “No one was hurt. And it will give them something to talk about all day. You know how dull it is up here. And the firemen will moan about it all during their picnic this afternoon. I’ll send them an anonymous contribution. Everything is all right.”
“All right, but promise me that you won’t do it again?”
“Sure, Johnny, sure. Anything you want. I didn’t mean any harm.”
In fact, he didn’t mean any harm. He turned to practical jokes only when he was discouraged about something or unhappy, usually unhappy with himself.
“He does silly things,” my mother had often said, “just to get attention.”
“Seems to me that he gets more than enough attention from that doting mother of his,” Dad would respond.
“I mean real attention.” Mom would end the discussion.
She meant, I think, attention that didn’t involve domination and control, but she didn’t have the vocabulary to express her astute insight.
At St. Ignatius I would defend poor Jim against those who did not like his practical jokes.
“He’s a mean boy, Jack,” one of the young Jesuit Scholastics said with a harsh frown. “His jokes aren’t funny. They’re cruel.”
“It’s not cruel to pain
t a mustache on a statue of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga,” I argued.
“You think it’s funny?”
“No, I don’t; but I think it’s harmless.”
When I went off to the Army and he took the seat his mother had bought for him on the Board of Trade, he seemed to quiet down. The excitement of the grain pits apparently replaced the fun of sending hearses to people’s homes, pulling fire alarm boxes, or phoning emergency calls to police stations.
While I was in Armour, there were rumors in the neighborhood that he had tipped off federal agents about speakeasies and then complained to their superiors when no raids occurred.
I didn’t want to believe that he’d take such foolish chances. The bootleggers did not like interference in their business.
I didn’t ask him about it, however.
“I know you don’t mean to hurt anyone, Jim”—I repeated my warning that morning at Twin Lakes—“but promise me you won’t do anything like that again.”
“All right,” he sighed. “I promise…. Hey, what do you think of my girl? Isn’t she a swell kiddo? Do you like her?”
“She’s very impressive, Jim, very impressive.”
“Do you think I ought to marry her?” He tugged on my coat. “I haven’t introduced her to Momma yet, but she’ll like her, won’t she?”
His momma would hate any girl who seemed likely to marry him.
“You have to make up your own mind about choosing a wife, Jim,” I said piously.
“Isn’t Clarice swell?” He continued to tug on my coat. “She’s quiet but she’s real smart.”
“She certainly is.”
“We can have lots of fun this summer, can’t we? You with Clarice and me with April. They’re swell girls, aren’t they?”
“You forget I’m sailing to Italy next week.”
“Aw, heck,” he whined, “can’t you change your plans? I’m going to need help to ask her to marry me.”
“I can’t, Jim, I just can’t. You have to do that yourself.”
“If I ask for advice,” he begged, grabbing my coat again, “will you give it to me?”
“Sure, for whatever it’s worth. Now why don’t you duck into our room and shave and get dressed for mass.”
“Yeah, sure. I can’t let April see me looking like a pig. She sure is swell, isn’t she?”
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