“Great view of the lake,” he said. He felt like a tongue-tied sixteen-year-old.
“Then perhaps we ought to go there and make love.” She picked up her purse. “Find out whether we like each other in bed and get that out of the way.”
Mike’s expression never changed, although he was startled by her candor.
They held hands as they walked against the stinging lake wind and the thick blanket of snow. “Do you belong to the health club?” She pointed toward the bubble-top swimming pool at the base of the tall fog-shrouded skyscraper. “I’ll bring my swimming suit the next time.”
“Are you so certain there will be a next time?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said confidently.
She was right.
* * *
Michael Cronin was admitted to the Mayor’s office promptly at the scheduled time of his appointment. There was the usual preliminary small talk. Then they got down to business. Mike was smooth and relaxed, confident that Richard Daley was no different from the Chicago politicians he had known before the war.
“I’ve lost touch with Chicago politics over the years,” he said. “I’ve been out of town so much that things kind of slipped away from me until Paul came home from Washington.”
“You’re doing an important job in the international economic community, Mike.” The Mayor spoke like a defense attorney.
“I suppose some people would think it’s just selfishness that I’ve become interested again, now that Paul is seeking public office.”
“If a man doesn’t support his own son, who will he support?” The Mayor’s round face was bright with admiration.
“Of course, we’ll provide most of the money for Paul’s campaign.…” He hesitated, trying to make his offer as indirect as possible. “And after that, Dick, you can be sure that my contributions to anything the party thinks important will be substantial.”
The Mayor stared at Mike, his face unreadable. Mike felt his own smile fade.
“Election contributions are funny things, Mike.” Daley’s tone turned nostalgic. “I remember when I was running for sheriff, a man came from our friends on the West Side and offered me two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That was a lot of money in those days. I told him I didn’t want his money, and he turned around and went down the street and gave it to my opponent, Elmer Walsh, and Elmer won. So the next time when I was running for county clerk he came again and offered me fifty thousand and I took it. Then, on Election Day, I called him and gave it back. He said, ‘Why did you take it if you weren’t going to use it?’ and I said, ‘That way, you can’t give it to my opponent.’”
Mike wondered if he should laugh or be angry. So he laughed and Daley laughed with him. Then the Mayor heaved himself out of his massive chair briskly, shook hands with him, and told Mike that he was sure the slating committee would listen “with deep emphasis to what Paul has to say to us.”
As he walked out into the subzero gloom of Washington Boulevard, Mike decided that Richard Daley was considerably different from the politicians he had known in the 1930s.
* * *
That afternoon Elizabeth made him forget about politics. She was a firm believer in love in the afternoon, especially after a swim in the pool.
She stood above him, hands complacently on her bare hips. “You know, Michael, I can’t imagine anyone more different from me in background or taste, but I’m quite besotted with you. I think I’ll keep you for a while.” She grinned in amusement.
Under her urging he had given up smoking, swam in the pool every day, was losing weight under a doctor’s guidance, and felt twenty years younger. “I hope you do.” He laughed. “You’ve taken all the joys out of my life. All but one.”
She cocked her head. “And that one?”
“Makes everything else shine as brightly as that blue sky out there.”
“Oh, Michael, you are a dear.” She bent over him and teased his lips with hers, her breasts brushing against his chest. “I’m going to keep you around for a long, long time.”
No woman ever had such power over him. Yet he loved it. If only Jane were not in the way.
* * *
Paul was sure to win the election. Tony Swartz had designed a superlative campaign. There was plenty of money for television advertising, Paul had routed the incumbent, Roy Flanagan, in their television debate, and the two Chicago papers had endorsed him, one dismissing Flanagan as one of the worst of the hacks. Paul had crossed and recrossed the district while Flanagan had made almost no public appearances, silenced by campaign managers who suspected that Flanagan lost votes every time he opened his mouth.
The enthusiastic cheers of the audiences were strong wine for Paul. He understood how Jack Kennedy must have felt when he set an audience on fire. Even if Paul had only the vaguest idea of how the problems of Chicago could be solved, and even if he could actually do little toward solving them, he really believed that he was the better candidate. One paper spoke enthusiastically of his “patent sincerity,” a line that Nora had read aloud with some amusement in almost the same tone of voice with which Chris Waverly read it over the telephone when she had seen the endorsement on the AP wire.
The polls the day before the election showed a close race; Paul lagged a few points behind Flanagan, but there was a large undecided vote. If the weather was favorable on Election Day and the turnout in the black wards was heavy, Tony predicted they would win 58 percent of the vote.
Paul sat in their suite and watched the early returns on television, preparing his acceptance speech.
Tony came into the room, his hand clutching tally sheets. “We’ve cracked the black wards, Paul. We’re going to beat them. Not by much, but we’re going to win!”
Nora’s arms were instantly around him. Paul kissed her then, and slipped away from her. He strode to the window. Outside, the El train creaked slowly down Wabash Avenue. This was it. This was the start of what he had been working toward his entire life.
Flanagan’s phone call conceding the election was almost anticlimactic. It was the challenge, playing the odds, that excited Paul.
Then Richard Daley was on the television screen. “I want to congratulate young Paul Cronin for the fine race he ran. We need more men like him in Cook County politics. He’ll do the Democratic Party proud in Springfield.”
* * *
“I’m coming home with you,” Elizabeth said as they left the ballroom of the Palmer House and walked out into the clear Chicago evening.
“I don’t know that I’m up to it tonight, Elizabeth,” Mike Cronin said. “This campaign’s damn near drained me.”
“At our age, Michael, there ought to be times when it’s enough for two people just to huddle in each other’s arms.”
So they held each other in his king-size bed and watched the full moon turn the buildings on Michigan Avenue silver.
“I’ll give it to you straight, Michael,” she said, her fingers cool and soothing on his face.
“When haven’t you?” He searched for a laugh and couldn’t find one.
“I want to marry you. I’m not saying I’ll dump you if you don’t marry me. I’ll come around as long as you want. Yet I think you’d better marry me. I’ll keep you alive for a long time and make every day of it worth while.” She snuggled closer to him. “Without me I don’t think you’re going to make it for long.”
A deep groan welled up within him. She was right. Yet there was no way.
“And you’ve got to stop worrying about those sons of yours. Leave them alone. Let them live their own lives. Forget about Paul’s political career. He’s a sure success, even though he’s not half the man you are. I don’t know Sean, but I’m sure he can take care of himself. Forget them.”
“I live for them,” he pleaded.
“Live for me.”
She was right. “You make it sound tempting, Elizabeth. I’ll have to think.”
“I’ll be waiting.” She sounded disappointed but by no means defeated.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1964
The first committee meeting of the Birth Control Commission, established by Pope John and expanded by Pope Paul, was in May of 1964. Among the new members added for this session were Thomas Shields, a Chicago gynecologist and a specialist in fertility, and Father Sean Cronin, who was finishing his doctoral work on the history of marriage at Pontifical Gregorian University. It was a bizarre crowd of people gathered in the plain, high-ceilinged room. Sunlight streamed through the large window, turning the slightly dull plaster that seemed to mark all Vatican buildings into a glowing yellow. Seated around the brown conference table were bishops from Africa, theologians from Western Europe, a demographer from the Philippines, an English cardinal, and some frankly bored curial staff members, including the Alessandrinis’ friend, Umberto Menelli.
Everyone spoke in his own language, and there was no simultaneous translation. Sean could get along passably well in Italian and was struggling with French, but German was completely beyond him. The meeting which should have been exciting was ponderous and dull. Moreover, much to Sean’s astonishment, the committee seemed to have decided that the entire birth-control doctrine was now under question. And even more to his astonishment and dismay, the weight of opinion around the table seemed to favor the possibility of change.
After the meeting, at which little was accomplished, Tom Shields and Sean shook hands warmly. Tom had arrived a few days before, but there had been no chance to meet and talk.
“Everyone’s fine.” Tom’s face wrinkled in a broad grin. “Nora’s already hitting golf balls around the country club. Noreen’s trying to walk—a little dynamo if I ever saw one. Everyone is still thrilled by Paul’s victory, especially Maggie. She worked her tail off for Paul during the campaign.”
Poor Maggie, Sean thought to himself, the moth flying too closely to the Cronin flame.
“My father is satisfied, I suppose?”
“You know your father. Absolutely jubilant about Paul’s winning the nomination one night, and calm and serene at a board meeting the next day.”
They were interrupted by a French theologian who had been hostile to Sean throughout the meeting. He was a bald-headed mean-looking man with sunken dark eyes. After a few minutes of polite conversation, the theologian said to Sean, “Monsignor wishes promotion in the Church. No?”
“Not in particular,” Sean said.
“But Monsignor wears a cassock as only the curialists do, and he supports their position, does he not?” In addition to a sneer, the Frenchman had bad teeth.
“I am not a monsignor.” Sean’s tone was icy. “I wore a cassock today because this is my first meeting and I did not know what the proper attire would be. I support no one’s position but my own.” He turned his back on the Frenchman, who shrugged his shoulders and glided away.
“Pleasant cuss,” Tom said.
“At the risk of sounding like my father, how the hell was I supposed to know that even the goddamned English Cardinal would wear a sport shirt?”
* * *
A continent away, Paul Cronin ambled down the street toward the Shields’ Oakland Beach house. Tom Shields was in Rome, the children were at play school, and Nora was on the golf course. When he wanted to see Maggie, as he did now, he merely had to walk down Lake Shore Drive to the Shields’ Dutch colonial house. It was a beautiful replica of the past, protected by a huge concrete seawall, against which the silver waves were beating on this windy Thursday of the Fourth of July weekend.
He slipped around to the side entrance of the house. No point in letting anyone see him go in. Maggie was a useful sexual resource. Nora was recovered now and they had resumed their uneventful sex life, but Paul needed other women.
Maggie was waiting for him in her frilly fourposter bed. She had been notified fifteen minutes earlier to prepare for his arrival. She held a wineglass to her mouth, although it was only ten o’clock in the morning. The Beatles were playing on the phonograph, and she wore only lace panties as a token of her residual modesty.
She kissed him, a hungry, longing kiss. “Am I better than Nora?” she asked. It was the first time she had ever mentioned Nora in these circumstances.
Paul was startled. “God, yes,” he said.
“I knew I was!” She said it triumphantly and took a long sip of her wine. “Why don’t you divorce her and marry me?”
Paul started to undress. “You know that kind of talk is off limits,” he said cautiously. “It would be the end of my career, Nora and Tom would be destroyed, the children…” He sat down and drew her into his arms.
His kisses became demanding. He could sense that her sexual need had driven all other thoughts from her mind. A pleasant way to put an end to a dangerous conversation.
They were too involved in their lovemaking to hear the doorbell ring, but not so much so to miss Nora’s voice at the foot of the stairs.
“Hey, Maggie. Are you up there?”
There was a rattle of golf clubs as Nora, who disdained a caddy cart, dropped her clubs somewhere in the Shields’ parlor.
“Oh, my God,” gasped Maggie. She slipped out from under Paul, pulled on a robe, brushed a few unruly strands of her curly blond hair away from her ashen face, and raced down the stairs.
“I went back to bed after the kids ate their breakfast.…” Maggie was stammering.
Oh, good God, woman, Paul pleaded mentally. Cool it. Don’t let her think you’ve got something to hide.
“I stopped by to see if you want to come to the club with me and then have lunch—”
“Oh, no … no, no,” Maggie said.
“Suit yourself.” Nora sounded puzzled but not upset.
When Maggie returned to the bedroom, Paul was hungry for her. The danger had turned him on like a powerful aphrodisiac.
Yet he told himself, as she responded to his fervor, that something had to be done about Maggie. She was becoming too demanding.
* * *
On the morning of Noreen Marie Cronin’s first birthday party, her mother opened a letter from the Collegio Santa Maria dell’Lago, Via Sardegna 44, Roma. Sean’s infrequent letters were eagerly awaited, and Paul did not mind if she opened them before he came home. Her one-year-old, a vigorous, even-tempered little comedian, clung to her mother’s legs as she collected the morning mail and resolutely resisted her progress back to the parlor. “Let go, Noreen,” her mother pleaded absentmindedly. “I have a letter from Uncle Sean.”
Noreen did not let go; mommies, after all, were for hugging. So Nora dragged her to the chair and began to read Sean’s letter.
Dear Paul and Nora,
The third session of the Vatican Council is almost over, and I’m even more confused than before about the state of the Church. I’ve slowly come around to the view that we need profound and systematic changes. As Nora says, the Church has lost touch with the problems and needs of contemporary human beings. Yet I don’t like the change that’s going on here. It’s too abrupt, too European, and, if you want to know what I really think, too intellectual. There is no serious attempt to maintain continuity with the traditions of the past. Paul VI makes matters worse by his nervous hand-wringing. I find that I’m against everything. I don’t like the Pope. I don’t like the Roman Curia, who are a bunch of cheap political fixers. I don’t like the European theologians, who are arrogant, and I don’t like many of the bishops, who pretend to know everything when they don’t know anything.
The Cardinal is a shining light among them, a man with taste, respect for the past, and a strong sense of the problems of the present. He’s right when he says that the Church has to change, and he also has the pragmatic sense to realize that if the change gets out of hand we’re going to have chaos. But the change is already out of hand. The melancholy complaints of the Pope, the wild ideas on the theologians, the endless maneuvering of the Curia, and the stupidity of the bishops are all creating one monumental catastrophe. And the parish priests are going to have to be the ones to pick up the
pieces.
I’m appalled at the grimness and depression of what I have written. I’ve been here too long. Some days I almost think St. Jadwiga’s was better. I’ll be eager to get home after Christmas and begin my new work.
And that brings me to something I don’t quite know how to tell you. Archbishop McCarthy has made me a vice-chancellor. Jimmy McGuire also. He is to be responsible for administration and I for personnel. It will probably be announced a few days after you get this letter. I told the Cardinal that I was far more conservative than he and therefore unqualified for the position.
He paid no attention. He said it was good to balance his liberalism with my conservatism and then smiled that quick smile of his. I’m never quite sure what it means.
Anyway, I’ll be back soon to a job that may make St. Jadwiga’s look easy. And Happy Birthday, of course, to Noreen.
God bless.
Sean.
Nora put the letter on the coffee table in front of her, tears in her eyes. “Noreen, your Uncle Sean is a stupid sonofabitch. Unqualified, indeed.”
Noreen responded with a bright one-year-old giggle.
* * *
The night before he was to return to the United States, Sean had supper with the Alessandrinis, or rather with the Principessa, since Francésco was unaccountably absent. No particular explanation for his absence was offered. The Principessa received him in a black minidress with a deep V-neck and a tightly fitting bodice. Warning bells clanged in Sean’s head as soon as she opened the door. He ought to run.
He did not run, however.
The meal was a long, leisurely affair. The Principessa flirted outrageously with Sean as she always did. It was eleven o’clock before the espresso was served in the parlor. The lights were dim and Sean’s head was reeling from the excellent wine.
“So,” she said, “you go home tomorrow to America to be ‘Vice-Chancellor for Personnel,’ whatever that means in your foolish, capitalistic Church. You have no concern for leaving Angèlica brokenhearted in Rome.”
“I doubt that you will be brokenhearted for long,” he said, trying to clear his head. “Anyway, I’ll be back for meetings of the Birth Control Commission, and I suspect the Cardinal is going to use me as an envoy.”
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