Summer at the Lake

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “I have the feeling that suddenly I’m outnumbered.”

  “And Packy is teaching me to play tennis,” Maggie said.

  “Good. Tomorrow morning?” Jane promptly set about scheduling. “You can come too, Jerry if you don’t think you’re too old to play with us young folk.”

  Jerry was then about twenty-four, a second year law student with two Navy Crosses and Lieutenant Commander’s gold leaf cluster tucked away somewhere.

  “I think I’ll hobble over, just to keep an eye on my wife.” He grinned happily at the thought of keeping an eye on his wife. “I might bring a racket along.”

  So entered our lives one of the most important friends either of us would ever have. When I was supposed to be buried in a nameless grave near the Chosin Reservoir, Maggie and Maggie alone, refused to believe I was dead. She and she alone was not surprised when I turned up, unlisted, among the prisoners who were released in August of 1953.

  “Well,” Jane commented as I walked her home, “thank God she’s married. I wouldn’t want competition with that one.”

  “You look very pretty in that green dress, Jane. It’s sort of half new look.”

  “Why, thank you! I had to dress up, even put on a girdle, nylons, and shoes to welcome the new bride. I’m glad I did. I suppose I’ll have to wear a girdle now, but no corsets, not ever!”

  “You’ll be at the party tonight?”

  “I sure will, wait till you see my dress.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  During the remnants of that summer, Jane and I were much more formal with each other. We both understood intuitively that we were in a new phase of our relationship. Shallow petting and kissing were definitely not appropriate. We would exchange affection less often and more passionately. We never spoke of marriage and rarely of love, but we both knew that we were embarking on a path that by next summer would make those questions too demanding to ignore.

  I was nineteen, she would be nineteen in mid-August, August 15th, Lady Day in Harvest Time. At the end of the next summer, I’d be twenty with only a year left of school. Unless she dumped me I might well ask her to marry me, either after I received my commission the following year or at least to make a commitment for marriage when I was released from active service, probably in the summer of 1951. By then she would have graduated from college and we’d be twenty-three. I’d have enough money from my saving and my G.I. bill benefit to support her as I struggled through graduate school.

  I pondered this schedule as we walked down the road toward her home. It was nice because I could think of her as mine and I would not have to risk myself in a proposal.

  So I viewed our friendship that summer as a possibility for the future. I’m not sure how she viewed it, but she showed no signs of dumping me. Unaccountably she seemed to like being with me.

  “You keep growing up on me, Lee,” she said as we arrived at the gate to the Devlin grounds. “I feel I have to run to catch up.”

  “And I feel that I’ll never catch up with you.”

  We both laughed.

  “See you tonight,” she said.

  “I’m waiting to get a look at you in that promised dress.”

  “I hope you don’t think it’s two extreme.”

  “Not a chance.”

  Leo

  Jane’s dress was indeed worth waiting for. Low cut in both front and back, it hung from her shoulders by the thinnest of straps and ending just above her knees—in total defiance of the “New Look”—its off-white fabric seemed to blend gradually with her alabaster skin and to cling to her by only the most fragile of restraints.

  “My eyes are popping,” I commented.

  “That’s what they are supposed to do, Lunkhead. “Do you like it?”

  “Love it, Milady. It and you.”

  “Humph,” she sniffed, pleased and (was I imagining it?) not troubled by the hint of love. “Will you look at that little witch? Isn’t she too gorgeous?”

  Maggie’s forest green, off-the-shoulder dress—which fell way below her knees and hence honored the M. Dior’s rules—left no doubt about her delectable little figure either.

  “How do you know she’s a witch?”

  “She knows everything. Just look at the way she takes in the room.”

  We were in the massive parlor of the Keenan home, once a small ballroom for formal dances and still capable of serving that function when necessary, at a cocktail party officially welcoming Margaret Mary Ward Keenan to the Lake.

  The parlor or ballroom was covered with throw rugs that could be discarded for big events to reveal the parquet floor. A massive crystal chandelier—rarely lighted save for special events—spread misty illumination on the room and its occupants. The declining sun had painted the dark Lake a rich, royal purple and sent rays of colored lights through the stained glass windows (Tiffany windows I now know).

  The guest of honor and her husband, feeling at ease with the “kids” apparently had drifted over to where Jane and I were standing, glasses of champagne expectantly in our hands.

  “You look lovely, Jane,” Maggie said. “Dazzling.”

  “Only one woman in the room outshines me, Maggie.”

  “Already thick as thieves,” I protested to the beaming Jerry. “This bodes ill for the future of all the men in the community.”

  “It will do us no good to fight it.”

  “If I may have your attention,” Tom Keenan’s voice boomed out. “I have been warned by my wife and my two sons that I am not to engage in the lawyer’s propensity for long orations. Therefore I propose a toast to the newest member of the Keenan family. Maggie, we’re happy to have you with us here at the Lake. We are sure that the brightness of your beauty and your wit and your goodness will make all our summers to come even happier than the past ones have been. Your very good health, Margaret Mary…”

  “Hear! Hear!” Packy bellowed.

  We toasted the beaming bride.

  Then, utterly calm, she moved to the center of the room to respond—something that I don’t think had been in the program.

  “Thank you, Tom. As I look out on your beautiful lake and see the sun setting so terribly early and think that this most beautiful summer of my life is ending so quickly, I drink to the Keenans—Tom, Mary Anne, Jerry, Joan, and Packy—whose graciousness to me, this weird little kid from Philadelphia who talks so funny, makes me realize that as long as they are around me with their life and love, it will always be summertime for me.”

  Eyes shining she lifted her glass to her husband and his family.

  Loud applause. Sniffles from many of the women. Including my companion.

  Joan was not there but she was included anyway.

  “She’s too much,” Jane sniffled. “Absolutely too much.”

  As the evening wore on and the crowd mixed I noticed that the guest of honor was shrewdly taking in everything and everyone. Jane didn’t miss it either.

  “What do you think of them, Margaret Mary?”

  “Which ones?”

  “Angie Nicola?”

  “Sweet and very troubled, poor pretty little thing.”

  “Her date, Jimmy Murray?”

  “Haunted. And not by her either, worse luck for him.”

  “Eileen Murray?”

  “Hollow. Ditto for that big guy. Phil, is that his name?”

  “Their parents?”

  She pondered the three couples who were chatting happily.

  “Pretty, brittle, and empty. And their husbands are charming and crass.”

  There was no harshness in her voice, only soft, almost melancholy statements. Long before she had finished even her undergraduate training in psychology, Maggie saw things.

  “And the two of us?”

  “My wonderful new brother and sister? How could I possibly find anything wrong with them?”

  “Brother and sister?” Jane said suspiciously.

  “Well,” Maggie said easily, “perhaps I should say my wonderful adopted brother-in-law
and sister-in-law.”

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “Packy is my real brother-in-law and you’re my adopted brother-in-law and sister-in-law, aren’t you?”

  “The Keenans haven’t adopted us, Maggie,” I said. “We have parents of our own. We’re not really urchins.”

  “Oh, no,” she replied. “I didn’t mean that. I meant you’ve adopted them. They’re your summer mother and father. Of course…Now Jerry why don’t we start dancing. We don’t want to hurt the feelings of those three nice men your father brought to play music.”

  They were playing music from “Blue Skies,” indeed at that very moment, “How Deep is the Ocean.”

  “What the hell!” I led Jane to the newly polished dance floor from which the Keenans had temporarily removed the carpet.

  “She’s right, Lee. I’ve never thought of it that way before but that’s exactly what we have done. We barged in and made ourselves part of their family…shows good taste on our part, doesn’t it?”

  “But how did she pick it up?”

  I was so baffled by Maggie Keenan that I was distracted from the mostly undressed woman who was relaxing so sweetly in my arms.

  “I told you she was a witch…why are you staring at me that way?”

  “I was wondering whether your dress is a modified nightgown.”

  “That is a terrible thing to say,” she blushed. “I don’t deny that the designer probably had that in mind, but it’s not gallant of you to say it.”

  “I can notice it but not say it.”

  “Well, you can say it so long as I have a chance to pretend that I’m shocked and displeased.”

  “You dressed up like that to please me?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Certainly not. I didn’t want to be outshone by the bride. Or Angie either as far as that goes.”

  “I see.”

  “Please you, just because you’d been away on your silly old destroyer all summer? Certainly not! What would ever give you that idea?”

  “Well, I’m pleased anyway.”

  She leaned her head against my shoulder, briefly. Very briefly.

  “I’m so glad you are, Lee. Thank you.”

  “Can I dance with your date during the next dance?” Packy asked.

  “I don’t have a date, Pack. This is just Jane.”

  “Just Jane doesn’t mind,” she said.

  “I don’t think seminarians should dance with anyone this beautiful.”

  “They shouldn’t,” Packy said. “But I’m going to just the same.”

  On the train ride that afternoon I had heard Mr. Murray and Mr. Nicola and Dr. Clare, unaware that they were not the only ones in the car, talk about their conquests, how they cheated on their wives, bilked prostitutes, and exploited the women who worked for them. Doctor Clare—who was, I strongly suspected, impotent—went into rich detail about what he and his colleagues did to nurses. Tino Nicola told with glee how he would trap women guests at his restaurant into one of the private dining rooms and then, after they had drunk too much, turn them over to his friends. They would never dare complain, he chortled, because their husbands wouldn’t believe that they had not “wanted it.”

  “Hell,” he laughed loudly, “they usually love it.”

  I thought then that it was mostly locker room talk and I’m even more certain today of that about the Doctor and Mr. Murray. Tino Nicola, genial charmer that he was, might do almost anything.

  While Packy and Jane danced—and I thanked God for Packy’s vocation—I watched the male guests, and not merely Larry, Curly, and Moe of the afternoon train, ogle my alleged date who was really just Jane.

  They had no right to look at her that way; she was mine. It was all right for me to ogle her, but no one else could. My hand knotted into a fist when I saw Tino Nicola’s hard little eyes examining her from head to foot. Hands off buster. I’ve learned a little bit about hand-to-hand and the instructor says I’m a natural and you so much as lay a hand on her, I’ll break your wrist.

  I was good at hand-to-hand because I was—and am—mean and stubborn.

  After Packy, Phil danced with her and then Mr. Keenan, and then Jerry, and then Mr. Nicola. He seemed perfectly proper and respectful, but I didn’t like the sight of his big paw on her naked back.

  “Mind if I cut in,” I said, “I’d like to have one more dance with my date.”

  He frowned at me. “Can’t you wait till the next dance?”

  “I was thinking of how much this parlor reminds me of the private rooms in your restaurants with all the couches around.”

  He recoiled as if I had stabbed him and retreated quickly to his wife.

  Bastard.

  “What was that about?”

  “I’ll tell you some other time.”

  “Thanks anyway. I didn’t like him holding me. There was something a little strange about it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s an odd man, Lee. Sometimes so charming and sweet and other times, we’ll, kind of brutal. Angie says he’s terribly moody.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  As I walked home with her that night, I sensed that there was no need to wait two or three years. I could propose marriage to Jane this summer and she would accept me enthusiastically. We could be married next summer. Twenty was perhaps too young, though there were lots of people who had married at that age during the war. Including Maggie.

  Moreover, Jane and I were not total strangers. We’d grown up together. We’d known each other all our lives. Why not?

  I didn’t have to decide that night. I had two weeks, but why wait when you know you love and suspect that you are loved in return. The girl holding my hand so firmly in her own certainly loved me.

  What would have happened if I had followed up on that impulse?

  Both our lives would have been different. Better beyond any doubt.

  Well, maybe not.

  Who knows?

  For the last quarter century, those thoughts have lingered in the back of my head for a moment or two every day.

  Like Packy says, it didn’t work out that way; so why fight the Holy Spirit?

  Is it fair, however, to blame the Holy Spirit for the night we went to see Oliver Twist? During the two weeks Maggie and Jane could talk us into only two films. The Red Shoes was the other.

  Anyway whatever the night was that we saw Oliver Twist I did a shameless act at the Rose Bowl, holding up my dish as Oliver had done in the movie and pleading for more ice cream.

  “The boy asked for more?” Packy exclaimed his disbelief.

  “The boy asked for more,” the rest replied in chorus.

  Then Jane, who still worked some of the time at the soda fountain and had loads of clout, picked up my chocolate sundae bowl, strode behind the counter, and, in high dudgeon, whipped up what was quite possibly the biggest hot fudge sundae in human history.

  “More,” she said planting it in front of me with an impatient frown as the jukebox played “I’ll Dance at Your Wedding.”

  Vigorous applause from omnibus.

  “Is that all?”

  She threw up her hands in dismay.

  That’s the night I should have proposed to her. Made it a joke.

  I decided I’d put it off till next summer.

  We went back to Chicago on the Tuesday after Labor Day and Jane and I had almost no contact. We exchanged Christmas cards, but not Christmas presents. I called her twice; both times she seemed uneasy. I continued to study languages and military science and politics and collect my A grades. I had a knack for languages my C.O. told me. The Marines really needed someone who could get along in French, Italian, Spanish, and German.

  Later I would learn enough Korean and enough Chinese to understand our guards, though they didn’t know that I could figure out what they were saying. I suppose that helped me to survive.

  I occasionally surprised a Korean colleague by digging up some phrases out of the past.

  “That is very good, Professor K
elly, but a strange dialect. Where did you learn it?”

  “A long story, Dr. Kim.”

  I had no idea what Jane was doing during the school year, certainly not home pining for me, I figured.

  I was relieved that I had not proposed that night. If we did not care enough about each other to stay in touch during the winter months, why should we think of marriage?

  I knew all along, however, that it wasn’t a very good argument. We had good reasons, our respective mothers, for staying apart for the time being.

  But there was more than that. I was afraid of marriage and its responsibilities, not sure that I would be very skillful in bed with a woman (and if you’re a man you have to be a superb performer even the first time, don’t you!), and uneasy about sharing my private fife with anyone. Even Jane.

  Without knowing what one was exactly, I was drifting toward being a typical Irish bachelor. When Jane was around I wanted to be married. When she wasn’t around, I thought about her, analyzed the possibilities and dithered. Already on the way to being a professor.

  Now I look back on those few weeks at the end of 1947 and wonder what I can find in them that will help me understand not only the terrible mistakes I made, but what other forces were at work, capitalizing on my mistakes.

  I know I shouldn’t have picked a fight with Tino Nicola. That was stupid Marine exhibitionism on my part. How much of what happened later, I wondered, was the result of my mean and stubborn remark that night.

  1978

  Leo

  “Doctor Keenan speaking,” said the soft, smooth professional voice.

  “Dr. Kelly calling, Doctor Keenan.”

  “Ah, Doctor Kelly, how are you?”

  “Breathing in and out, Doctor Keenan, breathing in and out.”

  I put aside the New York Times. Speculations about the upcoming Papal Conclave could wait.

  I had called her earlier and was informed by her answering machine that Doctor Keenan was with a patient and that I could call back at eleven. It was only fifteen minutes, so I glanced over the arrangements for the signing of the deed of gift for the Devlin Chair of Irish Studies. It would be a remarkably generous gift. The press release was the usual undistinguished stuff that our P.R. people could grind out in their sleep and probably did. The facts were there, if not the sense of the Big Change, which the chair represented. Well, that was all right. We could hardly tell the world that the late Herbert Devlin and his two brothers were thugs who had been civilized by success, affluence, and wise marriages.