He awakened, unsure whether it was his own screams he had heard. He was soaking wet, as he always was after such dreams. They had haunted him now for two years, ever since that terrifying night by Chongun Reservoir. It was the first time he had ever killed anyone, and he must have killed scores that night. His body trembled at the memory.
He sat on the edge of the couch and automatically lit a cigarette, wondering if the nightmares would ever stop.
Makuch knew. He was the only one in the outfit who knew. The look of contempt in his eyes revealed that the Polack from Pittsburgh had seen his platoon commander panic and desert his command. He knew that Paul wasn’t entitled to his Medal of Honor. He had seen him stumble into the machine-gun nest as he was trying to flee.
Paul stubbed out his cigarette and explained to Maggie that it had been an ordinary nightmare. Then he quickly made his excuses, kissed her good night, and left.
* * *
Sean Cronin reached for his journal impatiently. He had made no entries in it since his impetuous decision to leave the seminary, a decision that God had canceled out very quickly. Lightning was dancing across the lake. Sean watched the show with hypnotized fascination.
Your thunderstorms are much better than the human dramas for which you write the scripts, he wrote slowly. Paul is back, as cheerful and carefree as ever, unmarked, it seems, by a year and a half in a prisoner-of-war camp. When he laughs, everybody in the room laughs. When he smiles, everybody feels happy. When he suggests that the crowd do something—like going off to a movie—we all go along.
Paul wants to spend a year wandering around the country—getting to know America better, he said. Dad won’t like it. Before the summer is over, Paul’s going to have to agree to go to law school and marry Nora when she gets out of college in three years. I wonder if she’ll agree, too.
I don’t feel any sadness now over Paul and Nora. They’re made for each other; they just don’t know it yet. They’re both handsome and intelligent. His laughter and her depth will balance each other perfectly.
Six months ago, I was in love with her. I’ve never quite said it that way to myself, but there isn’t any doubt. I was head over heels in love with Nora Riley. I’m over it now, I think, but still I wonder if I would change places with Paul if I could. But you don’t permit things like that, do you?
Ah, YOU, that’s the question! How can anyone want to be a priest as much as I want to, and still doubt you? I want … I want … what do I want?
Mike Cronin sighed in contented satisfaction and looked down at the woman sleeping next to him. Lorna Mahoney was proving herself an apt pupil. It was amazing how quickly these stiff prudish women could discover their own sexuality when he trapped them in a mixture of adoration and fear. Mike delighted in women, especially when he was able to transform them into the kind of responsive instrument of pleasure to which he felt a man such as himself was entitled.
There was no joy in buying a woman. The trick was to pursue them, slowly, lovingly, implacably, until they were eager to give themselves over to you.
Nor did he become disinterested after a successful conquest. Reeducation was as important as victory—MacArthur had proven that in Japan. It was mostly a matter of kindness and attention, with a bit of aloofness thrown in to keep them anxious and docile. When he was finished with his reeducation program, a woman was as good as a Japanese geisha at giving pleasure—which was, after all, what she was there for.
He continued to enjoy a woman until she began to hint at marriage. Then Mike ended the relationship. Some of them complained, but they usually stopped when they saw the size of his farewell check. None of them had any trouble finding husbands, and presumably the lucky man benefited from the skills their wives had learned from Mike. So it all worked out.
He lit a cigarette and puffed on it complacently. You had to control them, of course, keep them under your thumb. That was the only way to deal with women. That was how it was with everyone. Life was a jungle. You controlled the other beasts or they controlled you.
The only serious mistake he had ever made with a woman was his marriage to Mary Eileen. He frowned. That had been a disaster. Thank heavens, he had been able to protect his sons from the knowledge of the possibility of a bad inheritance from that side of the family. Hardly a day passed when he did not worry about the weakness showing up.
He decided that he should stop thinking about his wife and pay more attention to the delectable dessert he had in bed with him. Lorna was still sound asleep, her body spread luxuriously next to him. He eased the sheet away from her so he could savor her body in the bursts of lightning that now seemed to be just outside her bedroom window. She was less spectacularly developed than some of his other companions but made up for it by her intensity. His women were older now, in their early forties instead of their middle thirties. One must maintain a sense of proportion about these things. Lorna had started to talk of marriage sooner than most of the others; one of the problems of companions who were older was that they thought of marriage a lot sooner. For a moment he permitted himself to be tempted with the thought of marriage. No, it was impossible for him.
He would have to see Paul settled down before the summer was over. He would pull strings to get him into Northwestern Law School despite his college grades. Then Paul would marry Nora when she graduated from St. Mary’s. Sean would be a priest by then, and he could officiate at the ceremony.
The marriage would be a great event: Paul safely married and Sean a priest. Both would be well on their way in the careers for which they were so brilliantly fitted by family and training.
Lightning seemed to explode, bathing Lorna in an eerie blue light. Mike put his sons from his mind and pulled the sheet the rest of the way off her body.
* * *
Nora put a candle in front of her Madonna and ignited the tiny lump of incense in the blue glass dish in front of the statue. Her piety was a jealously preserved secret, unknown even to her closest friend at school, where Nora was thought of as both an athlete and an exceptional student. In the privacy of her room, Nora would kneel on bare knees, entranced by the smell of incense, the glow of the candle, and an awareness of a Presence that pervaded the atmosphere.
Ever since she had escaped from the fire that had killed her mother and her baby brother, Nora Riley knew with absolute certainty that she was supposed to do something special in life. It appeared that the something “special” was Paul Cronin, with whom she had fallen in love, even though the two of them kept a wary distance from each other. Life with Paul would be exciting. She would be the wife and mother, working in the background, guiding his life and soothing his hurts, as he walked the road to the White House.
Paul would be the first Catholic president of the United States and she would be his first lady. That was important enough, wasn’t it?
The Presence, enveloping her as gently as the faint aroma of incense, did not disagree. Yet Nora realized with vague unease, as she drifted off to the hills and meadows of this special love, that it didn’t agree either.
* * *
“It’s time we had a serious talk.” Mike Cronin stared at the neat rows of Chicago streets that extended westward from the Field Building toward the burgeoning suburbs springing up beyond the west side of the city.
“Okay, if you say so,” Paul agreed. “I’ve only been back for a couple of months, though. I think I’m entitled—”
“You’re goddamned not entitled to anything,” his father barked. “Your Medal of Honor doesn’t entitle you to be thrown out of every tavern of northern Indiana and to screw everything that moves in Oakland Beach. I saw more combat than you did, and I came home and settled down to business.”
“You weren’t in a Korean prison camp; it’s different,” Paul sputtered.
“If you think I’m going to support you for the rest of your life, you’re wrong.” The top of Mike’s bald head was flaming red, a very bad sign indeed.
“Okay, okay,” Paul said nervously. “I
’ll go up to Northwestern tomorrow and see if they’ll take me.”
“You’ll go up there today,” Mike corrected him. “And, officer in the Marine Corps or not, you’ll stay away from Maggie Martin. Her parents are too powerful to offend. Find your women somewhere else besides Oakland Beach and the neighborhood. And remember—after Nora’s graduation you’re going to marry her, just as everyone’s agreed.” His father hovered over him like an angry red-faced avenging angel.
“I don’t object to that,” Paul said, trying to placate his father. “But I’m not sure she’ll go along.” He reached for his cigarettes.
“She’s got no choice but to go along. You’re going to be the first Catholic president of this country, and Nora’s going to be the first lady—whether she wants to or not.”
“I think I may be able to win her over,” Paul said. He sensed that a display of confidence would soothe his father’s ruffled feathers. Then, in a burst of candor, he added, “You don’t have to worry about me, Dad. I found out in the Marines that if you smile at people the right way they’ll do almost anything for you.”
“Well, that’s settled then.” Mike’s mind was obviously turning to something else. It was time for Paul to get out of his office. Paul was suddenly aware that life could get very difficult in the years ahead if he weren’t careful. And maybe even if he were.
CHAPTER FIVE
1954
“Two more years,” Roger Fitzgibbon said as he and Sean Cronin labored on the weeds in the tennis court behind the theology hall at the seminary. “Just watch. When we’re ordained, they’ll black-top this court.”
“I suppose so,” Sean replied. He was barely listening to his friend. He knew he was in trouble with the seminary authorities. His conference with the Rector in preparation for minor orders had been postponed, a sure sign that there was a debate raging behind the scenes about whether to ordain him. At best the outcome could be a “clip”: he would not be ordained to the lesser orders of acolyte and reader but rather would be kept in limbo until the following year. Not expelled exactly—although no one would be unhappy if he solved their problem for them by leaving—but not approved either. To make matters worse, Sean had no idea why he was under a cloud.
“Thinking about Motherwell?” Roger asked sympathetically as he tossed a handful of weeds into the battered bushel basket next to the net. “Are you sure you passed your STB exam?”
“Joey Jim told me that I’d passed the exam, and he wanted to see me about something else.” Sean wiped the perspiration off his face. “Have you ever heard of him talking about anything besides exams?”
Roger shook his head. “Nope, not once. I thought all this business about a clip was silly talk until I heard that he wanted to see you. No matter how you look at it, it can’t be good.”
“That’s what I think too,” Sean agreed.
The seminary held one principle of priestly training absolutely sacred: no one ought to be too good at anything, much less successful at a number of things. Athletic ability was tolerated, so long as it did not include every sport or accompany “too much” intellectual curiosity. High grades were viewed with suspicion, especially when combined with a propensity to read too many books. Intellectualism was taken to be almost a sure sign of pride. Affluence, especially the rumored great wealth of the Cronin family, was also a grave danger to a priestly vocation, because it made a young man think he might be independent of Church authority.
Sean accepted the basic theory. Seminarians were in training to be curates for most of their lives, cogs in the ecclesiastical machine, neat pieces of salami, sliced off with precision by a machine that made each slice almost identical to the previous one. Pastors in the archdiocese did not need or want curates who did not fit the mold. Too much “singularity” interfered with service to the Church.
Yet, try as he might, Sean could not quite conform. He kept all the rules, he did his work, he asked few difficult questions in the classroom, he fit in smoothly with his classmates. Yet lurking in the background always was the flamboyant image of his father. The Rector and many of the faculty were terrified at the possibility that after ordination Sean might turn into a clerical Mike Cronin. Almost any excuse to “cut him down to size” would be eagerly seized as a pretext, not for expelling him, but for making his life so unpleasant that he would leave—quite possibly, as the rector once suggested to him, for another diocese. “We’ll give you a strong recommendation, son,” the old man had said in a conspiratorial tone.
Sean wondered what his father’s reaction would be to a postponement of ordination. Probably try to buy the minor orders for him. Sean grimaced. That would only make matters worse.
* * *
Roy Shields carefully packed his stethoscope into the jacket of his white suit. “Are you ever going to slow down, Mike?” he asked. There was reproach in his voice.
“Not if I can help it.” Mike Cronin buttoned his tailor-made white shirt. “Why rust out when you can burn out?”
“I’d like you to come into Little Company of Mary for a couple of days. For a full range of tests.”
“There’s nothing wrong?” Mike tried to sound confident.
“Nothing specific,” Roy assured him. “I’d just feel better if I could run some tests.”
“Your job, Major”—Mike was talking to one of his staff surgeons again—“is to make me feel better, not to make yourself feel better.”
“You drink too much, you smoke too much, you’re carrying ten pounds more than you should, you never relax, you drive yourself from one end of the year to the other, there’s no peace or stability in your life.” The normally placid Dr. Shields ticked off his litany of charges almost as though he were angry. “What’s the point in it, Mike? You don’t need the money. Why don’t you take time off and enjoy life?”
“Goddamn it, Roy, I do enjoy life.” Mike knotted his tie. “And I intend to continue to enjoy it until my sons are established in their careers.”
The doctor sighed. “Take it just a little slower.”
Mike laughed. “Okay, Roy, if it will make you happy, I’ll cut down on everything.” He winked. “Well, almost everything.”
In his limousine, Mike admitted to himself that Roy had scared him. Maybe he ought to cut down on the drinking and smoking … go to Glendore for a week and enjoy the coming of spring. There was no point in burning himself out. Give up smoking and drinking altogether. He had the willpower to do it if he wanted to. Maybe even settle down with Jenny Warren. He frowned. Jane wouldn’t like that, would she?
He turned that unpleasant thought off and virtuously rubbed out his cigar. Give up smoking and drinking, but not Jenny. That seemed a fair enough trade. Roy hadn’t said there was anything wrong with sex. And with Jenny, sex was something special indeed. He smiled in self-satisfaction. A cool, elegant New England aristocrat, reserved to the point of iciness until she took off her clothes, Jenny Warren was the best woman he had bedded in a long time, a challenge to his ingenuity.
He thought of the things she could do with her prim and proper Bostonian mouth. “Jeremy, I want to make a call,” he told his chauffeur as he reached for the phone. He dialed Jenny’s number.
When she picked up the phone in her apartment, he said, “There’s a flight from Midway to Frankfurt on Thursday afternoon. Let’s find a castle on the Rhine and drink wine all weekend.”
She agreed enthusiastically. Mike relaxed on the soft cushions of his limousine, his imagination playing with a slightly tipsy Jenny, spread-eagled beneath him on a castle bed. That was the way to stay young.
He opened the door to the bar and mixed himself a stiff Scotch as Jeremy turned the Caddy down 55th Street.
He lit a cigar and puffed on it complacently. Better to burn out than rust out. He drained the Scotch and poured himself another drink.
* * *
Paul Cronin sipped his beer thoughtfully. The Dive was a crumby, dank Rush Street bar, but it was the place where most of the law school students g
athered. It was therefore also the place for Paul to be with his unlimited money and his ready laugh, doing favors, collecting friends, amassing influence. It was all pathetically easy, and a great deal more fun than studying for tests.
He had discovered that law school was like everything else in his life. He could succeed with very little effort. As an experiment, he had barely studied for the midyear exams—there was a cool delicious joy in the defiance of such a gesture, a bold toss of the dice. He had not led his class, but he had been in the middle, enough to please his father and earn him a new sports car that Nora loved to drive.
Nora … he paused to consider that problem. She was a knockout. Not his kind of woman, like Maggie Martin, whom he still occasionally saw for the hell of it, but the kind of girl who would make a very presentable wife. The old man was often right: Nora probably was a good idea, or at least, all things considered, not a bad one.
“You been studying hard?” Jack Coles asked him.
Paul didn’t particularly like Jack, who was handsome in a dark, white-teeth-grin sort of way. But Paul was friendly toward him, as he was toward everyone.
“Not too hard,” Paul said cheerfully. “Have a beer.”
“Thanks.… Say, wouldn’t it be nice to know what the questions for the finals are going to be?”
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