Summer at the Lake

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “I don’t want…”

  “No arguments. Anyway, someone has to take care of Jane.”

  “There’s that,” I agreed.

  So I became a permanent resident at the home of my adopted family that summer.

  During the week I had Jane pretty much to myself. Maggie was, as we might have expected, pregnant, and temporarily withdrawn from athletic competition—though I think she deliberately left the two of us alone so that our still shy and tentative romance might blossom. All of our other friends were busy with summer jobs or, in Phil’s case, a permanent job. Their mothers spent at least half their time in the city.

  So Jane and I were left alone to eat ice cream at the Rose Bowl (where she was now assistant manager), talk about Cry the Beloved Country and The Loved One, watch Laurence Olivier in Hamlet and Orson Wells in Macbeth, and sing together “Buttons and Bows,” her voice as off-key as ever.

  As I remember it—and I know I see the first six weeks through the tinted glass of romantic love—the weather was perfect: warm but not humid, sunny days and cool nights with brief thundershowers towards morning. We played tennis every morning and swam off the Keenan pier every afternoon or evening depending on Jane’s schedule. We hiked through the woods of the State Park and discovered together how alive and beautiful nature is in the summer. We held hands and kissed and cuddled in each other’s arms and caressed each other’s fascinating bodies.

  Our passions were stronger than ever, but our affection continued to be focused by respect or fear or some combination thereof. We knew we were being swept along by powerful energies and we did not want to hurt one another.

  At night we would often lie in each other’s arms on the Keenans’ pier and kiss each other tenderly and gently as if we were the only persons alive on earth and our kisses the only activity that mattered.

  Jane was my whole life. I think I had become her whole life. My pile of books diminished only slowly. Karl Marx and Max Weber, admirable gentlemen that they were, could not compete with Jane.

  We talked endlessly, but most of the words do not come back when I search for them in my memory. Young lovers have much to say, I suppose, and all of it very important to them. However, they can talk all day long and say nothing that would mean much to anyone else.

  Yet we did talk about our hopes and our plans for life.

  “I don’t know what I want to do,” Jane sighed one warm afternoon at the edge of a small meadow in the forest with the smell of honeysuckle on the air and lacy white clouds drifting by overhead. “I suppose I’ll graduate from college. You were right about that, as you’re right about everything, Lunkhead. I do like it, though I don’t see much point in it as far as making money goes. At least I’ll be able to get a job teaching and support my family if my husband should die.”

  “I think you’re hooked on reading, Jane. That may be the only reason to go to college.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Home and family is still your main goal?”

  “I think so. I want to do something great besides. I still think I’d like to write. The nun who teaches creative writing says I have some talent, but I’m not sure. There are so many people who want to write. I don’t know how much I’d earn.”

  “Do you have to earn money?”

  “Of course, I have to earn money when I work. What’s the point of working if it’s not for money?”

  “For the fun of it?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all. What does fun have to do with it?”

  I helped her to her feet and we strolled back to the car, Packy’s battered old Lasalle, which was mine during the week since my Ford had gone to whatever reward waits good Fords when they expire of old age.

  “Isn’t it enough that I want to be a good wife and mother? That’s hard work, isn’t it?”

  “And when your kids are all raised?”

  “I’ll sit on the porch and sip martinis like Mrs. Nicola and Mrs. Clare.”

  “No you won’t.”

  “I know I won’t…Lee, I have big dreams but they’re kind of vague. I want to do something important, something that’s fun and exciting and glamorous. I just don’t have the slightest idea of what it is. Do you think I could do that and still be a good wife and mother?”

  “Not a doubt.” I took her hand in mine.

  “I have time yet.”

  “You certainly do.”

  We walked along in the cool silence of the giant trees on either side of the path.

  “You’re “going to graduate school when you get out of the Marines?”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever serve in the Marines, except in the reserves for a couple of years. The rumors are that next summer they won’t have enough money to do anything but give us our commissions and put us on inactive duty.”

  “They’d pay for all your education and you wouldn’t owe them any time.”

  “The way they look at it, the reserves are time.”

  “That would be wonderful for you.”

  “It sure would. I could go right into graduate school and finish my Ph.D. in a couple of years.”

  “I think you’ll make a wonderful teacher.”

  “I hope so. I want to write books too.”

  “I’m sure you will; and you’ll make money on them too…do you think you’ll have time for a wife and family in all that activity?”

  A seeming casual and innocent question, was it not?

  “They’ll come first, obviously.”

  “How old do you think you will be when you marry?”

  Less innocent and less casual.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think age is the issue. I’ll many when I meet the right girl and she and I think it’s the proper time to marry.”

  “That makes a lot of sense.”

  So it went. The days and nights flew by. We were both supremely happy. We both knew that by the end of the summer, after many cautious explorations, we would reach an understanding about our future. We both also knew what that understanding would be. What else could it have been?

  Our friends appeared on the weekends and kidded us about our dreamy eyes when we were with each other—all except Phil. He continued to invite Jane to dances at the Club and she went with him once or twice when I told her it was all right with me.

  The last one I feared was Phil Clare.

  I didn’t have much time to consider the changes that were occurring in our group. Jim Murray seemed more morose than ever. Phil Clare was proud of his baby sister. Angie Nicola continued to brood over Jim. Eileen was as flighty and fidgety as she always was. I’m sure I engaged in deep and serious conversations with each of them, but I have no recollection of what they said. I had other things on my mind.

  I don’t think poor Jimmy ever mentioned his affair with Iris. Nor, as best as I can remember, did he seem particularly interested in pretty little Norine Clare.

  When Phil and Jane went to the dances, Angie would invite me, I suppose so Jane could keep an eye on me with a date she considered as safe as her own.

  Angie and I would kiss and hug at the end of the evening fully aware that we were only exchanging pleasantries and that both our interests were elsewhere.

  “Are you going to marry Jane?” she asked me one night as I was driving her home in the clunky, noisy Lasalle.

  “Blunt question.”

  “I’m sorry if it is, but I want to know anyway.”

  “Should I?”

  “You certainly should.”

  “If you say so, Angie, I guess I might.”

  She pounded my arm. “Admit it, you’re both in love.”

  “Could be.”

  “I think it’s wonderful.”

  “We’ll have to see what happens.”

  “I know what will happen.”

  I thought then that I could be happy with Angie too, but not as happy as with Jane.

  When Maggie was at the house, she would always raise an eyebrow or even two when I came in after a session with Jan
e, but she never asked any questions. I guess she didn’t have to.

  The older generation continued to seem to have troubles of its own. Iris was drinking again. Doctor Clare, James Murray, and Tino Nicola huddled constantly on the weekends, though I thought that as the summer wore on their worries seemed to fade away and they were enjoying themselves as they had done before that train ride which had so shocked me.

  Their wives were now five years older than when I had first seen them, but if they were fading at all it was hard to notice the change. Despite my obsession with Jane, I was still very much aware of their mature appeal. They continued to be restless and odd.

  All of these people and events I observed out of the corner of my eye. Most of my attention was focused on Jane—her wit, her laughter, her lovely face, her intelligence, her flawless body, her sense of fun and the funny. I thought about her when I woke in the morning and even more when I was slipping into pleasant dreams at night.

  She became more passive and submissive to me. She was still a very tough and strong-willed young woman. Now her strength was focused on me and what I wanted. I had no illusions that she would ever be a pushover.

  Even on weekends her role as mistress of the revels seemed to diminish, until I told her that everyone expected her to organize our activities.

  “You think I like that?”

  I pondered. “You seemed to.”

  “Someone had to do it.”

  “It’s up to you, Jane.”

  She kissed me. “You’re right as usual, Leo. I should take charge. But not with you. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “Half the time,” I insisted.

  “A little less than that,” she grinned impishly. “It’s all right if you think it’s half.”

  She was, in retrospect, too absorbed in me to pay much attention to anything else. As I was absorbed in her.

  It was your classic summer idyll for young lovers, pleasure, fun, obsession, hope.

  Finally we had to talk about marriage.

  On a night in early August we were lying on the Keenans’ pier under the starlight, bundled up in towels against the cool night air after we had climbed out of the water, her head on my thigh, my hand under her swimsuit touching her breast and the hard nipple that had risen to meet my fingers.

  “Should we talk about marriage, Jane?”

  “Why not?” she said airily. “It’s an interesting subject. What aspect of it do you want to discuss?”

  “Our marriage.”

  “Really? Are we going to be married? I didn’t know that.”

  “I think it’s a possibility.”

  “Oh, well that’s an interesting notion. You haven’t mentioned it before.”

  “I’m mentioning it now.”

  “Is this a proposal, Lee?”

  I should have said “yes” and that would have been that. Life would have been very different. Instead I said, “It’s a proposal that we discuss the prospect like sensible people who won’t rush into something precipitously.”

  Still a long way from my doctorate, I was already talking like an intellectual.

  “That seems reasonable,” she sighed. “Well, I think you’re nice enough to spend a lifetime with, if that’s what you mean. You’ll require some shaping up, but you’ll probably do. It’s not that we’ve just met each other, you know. The only problems I see are our families who won’t like it at all.”

  No time wasted beating around the bush, not a second.

  “I worry about them too.”

  “Your mother thinks I’m worthless Shanty Irish. She’ll never like me. I’m not and never will be good enough for you.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Megan tells me about your mother.”

  “She shouldn’t.”

  “Sure she should. The poor kid has to tell someone.”

  “My mother doesn’t run my life, Jane. I’ve moved out on them.”

  “But you still love your family. It will be hard to have her against us and your father and your brothers and sisters caught in between. She’ll be a great one for creating scenes, I imagine. We’ll have scenes as long as she’s alive and that’s likely to be a long time.”

  “I don’t think it will be that bad.”

  “Yes it will. You’re the one that wanted us to be sensible,” she shifted her position and rested her face on my thigh, depriving me of her breast. “I’m not saying that she would control our lives but she will be a problem and we ought not to deceive ourselves about that.”

  I wanted to be sensible, but I wanted the sensibility to be romantic. My woman was an incorrigible realist.

  “Now my mother will be even more of a problem. She pays almost no attention to me. She spends a lot of time conniving about my brothers but, being a girl, I’m not worth that much effort. Thank God. She sits at her desk overlooking the Lake all day long and pores over the family books and receipts. She’ll call Daddy in Chicago because of a two dollar and a quarter difference in the books. She runs everything they do from up here by phone. She was a sweet and pretty young woman once, lots of laughter and singing, and fun. But now she’s, well, I guess the word is avaricious. She’s addicted to money the way poor Mrs. Clare is addicted to gin. It’s her whole life, nothing else matters. My daddy and my brothers are terrified of her. She pushes them ail the time. They’ll do anything she wants. Anything. They’d like to relax and settle down and enjoy their success. She won’t let them. She tells them what to buy and what to sell and who to order supplies from, even where they can buy the cheapest towels for the washrooms in their gasoline stations.”

  My love’s wonderful body was stiff with rage.

  “Jane…”

  “I’m trying to be sensible. My three brothers are married, as you probably haven’t noticed because as far as anyone up here knows, I don’t have a family. They never see me with a family unless it’s at the seven o’clock Mass on Sunday and then they say what horrible people the Devlins are. Anyway, she picked out the women for each of them and made them pursue the women, all respectable women who will bring respectability to our family. They’re nice girls, I suppose, certainly sensible and loyal. They’ve learned to do what she tells them to do and probably hope that she’ll die soon of meanness and greed—and gin because as everyone in the village knows she’s a drunk in addition to everything else.”

  “Jane…”

  “Money and marriage, that’s how the Shanty Irish are supposed to become respectable.”

  “I don’t think you’re Shanty Irish, Jane.”

  “You think my family is. Everyone does. What I’m telling you now shows just how Shanty they are.”

  “Jane…”

  “Be quiet until I’m finished being sensible. She is determined, absolutely determined that I should many Phil Clare. That would crown her search for respectability. No one is more respectable than Doctor Clare.”

  “That’s a very narrow picture of the world.”

  “I am well aware of it.” She pulled away from me and wrapped her towel around herself more tightly. “Nonetheless it is her view. She lets me live up here and work at the soda fountain only because I’m in contact with Phil here. She’s too busy to notice what I do with my time and doesn’t care enough about me as a person to ask questions. I’m just a piece of goods to trade for respectability.”

  “How horrible!”

  “Oh, I get along. She leaves me alone because she thinks that like the rest of the family I am obedient and therefore I am doing exactly what I’m told. She rarely asks about Phil, only once or twice a month…have you wondered why I don’t let you pick me up at the door of the house and I let Phil do it when he takes me to dances and the Club?”

  “Yes.”

  “If she sees Phil dressed up in his white flannels and blazer a couple of times a summer, it’s enough to keep her happy. She thinks I’ve about sewed him up and I let her think it. When she finds out I’ve been deceiving her all these years, she’ll hit the ceiling
.”

  “I don’t think…”

  “I’m still being sensible, Lee dear. My brothers do exactly what she tells them to do. So does Daddy most of the time. I deceive her and get away with it. So does he up to a point. He has a woman in Chicago. Nice lady. Polish. If Mom dies first I’m sure he’ll many her. I don’t think Mom knows or, if she does know, would care. But she’ll care when she finds out that I wouldn’t many Phil if he were the last man in the world.”

  I drew her into my arms. “My poor Jane.”

  She pulled away. “I’m all right. I’m just being sensible, that’s all. Maybe we can work it out. Maybe not. There are two terrible mothers who will make our lives hell from the day we tell them that we’re thinking about marriage until the day both of them are dead. They’ll never give up, they won’t quit, they’ll keep coming after us, and they won’t be content until they tear us apart. And there’s so much of them in our souls that they’ll be trying to tear us apart after they’re dead.”

  “It wouldn’t be that bad.”

  “Yes it would. Worse maybe. Can you imagine a baptism when both of them have given us the respectable name for the new baby and one loses or the other loses. Or maybe, because we’re both crazy, the two of them lose?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Romantic dummy that I was, naturally I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Well, I have…I don’t know, Lee. Maybe I should have said these things before. Maybe it would work out. Maybe we can move to South America, though Mom would pursue us wherever we go. I’m glad you wanted to be sensible. We ought to talk about these things. Only I don’t think this blissful summer romance will have a happy ending.”

  “God damn it, Jane. Those two women can’t run our lives.”

  She stood up. “They’ll try, Lee. Oh they’ll try while there’s still a breath of life in them. We’ll have to fight them off all the time. If we get tired of the fight, we may get tired of one another…take me home now I want to cry myself to sleep.”

  “I’ll never be tired of you, Jane.”

  “That’s what you say now. But it won’t take you long to be tired of her. I hate her, Leo, oh, how I hate her, but she has a lot of power over me. I still love her too and feel sorry for her. I’m not sure how long I can fight her off. Otherwise why would I have deceived her about Phil and you for so long.”