All About Women

by Andrew M. Greeley

  Horse manure, of course, but Joe learned long ago that academics are (a) inclined to view analysts with the same respect for the uncanny that more primitive types reserve for witch doctors, and (b) you can pile the horse manure up to the roof and no one notices, so long as you attribute it to Jung.

  And, having learned a few things in twenty-five years of marriage, I didn’t ask what totem the Patriots represented.

  Brigid had not slept a wink on Super Bowl XX Saturday night. Katie Kane slept over at our house because her parents had to go to New Orleans (her father is a columnist and, like Fitz and Mike Royko, took a dim view of the recent converts to Bear mania: “Like all converts, they should be given collection envelopes and holy water!”). Trish, of course, joined them. They played the shuffle all night.

  The sportswriters were optimistic on Sunday morning. The Tribune’s computer said Bears by three points, which seemed kind of scary. Brigid, who had pored over a chart most of Saturday, emerged at breakfast with her official prediction:

  “Bears by thirty-five!”

  Her brothers and her boy cousins hooted and hollered. She stomped out of the room in furious tears. I almost followed her, torn, as usual, between my mother instincts and my shrink skills. The latter won and I left her alone. Why spoil the fun!

  Besides, despite the Punk’s pessimism (“In our deepest hearts all Bears fans anticipate disaster”), I figured five touchdowns was about right. The Patriots had a very weak pass defense and McMahon would pick them apart. And no one scores much against the Bears!

  The family party started at Dad’s house at three o’clock and dragged on interminably while we all fretted nervously. Biddy and Trish, white-faced and silent, lay on their stomachs as close as they could get to the TV, as though their presence would reassure the team in far-off New Orleans.

  They didn’t listen even to my stanza of the Ryan Family Shuffle:

  “I’m Mary Kate, the lady shrink,

  I read the unconscious, know what you think,

  Sure you all want the Bears to win,

  Even this hunk with the Boston grin,

  We haven’t had a champ in a long, long time,

  And we’re not gonna wait to eighty-nine.

  No Foxboro team can burst our bubble,

  We’re just gonna claim the Super Bowl Shuffle!”

  “Really, Mo-THER!” Brigid sighed, sounding much like her monsignorial uncle.

  Finally the game started. On the second play, disaster: Payton fumbled. I was certain Biddy would go into hyperventilation.

  Instead she was as cool as Mike Ditka.

  “They’re a little tense. Give them a play or two to settle down.”

  She proclaimed that the New England field goal was decisive. “They couldn’t gain a single yard from scrimmage! They’re finished. Like totally.”

  Well, I won’t bore you with the game, which for anyone not from Chicago was a bore after Matt Suhey’s first touchdown. We blew them out.

  I began to relax. In another few hours it would all be history. There’d be a big celebration in the Bear Plaza, a lot of Bears souvenirs would be purchased, and our family would have survived a major crisis. No revelations about the Big Red.

  The family secret blew up at halftime.

  “Poor Walter Payton,” I said sympathetically. “They’re all keying on him. No records today.”

  “Who holds the record for NFL championship game running?” Dad wondered, a little grin playing on his lips.

  Blackie rolled his eyes in horror. I didn’t know why, because I wasn’t that much of a historian of the NFL. Yet.

  “Do you mean the most yards per carry?” Brigid cocked her eye at her grandfather. “Everyone knows that, Grandpa Ned.”

  “Well, who?”

  “Elmer Angsman in 1947 when the Chicago Cardinals won the championship from the Philadelphia Eagles, twenty-eight to twenty-one. I don’t know why they’re not mentioned when people talk about the other Chicago champs. Their title is more recent than either the Cubs or the Sox.”

  If I had false teeth to swallow, I would have swallowed them. The Punk looked like he was going to choke on his Perrier. The rest of the room lapsed into dead silence.

  “Called them the Big Red.” Dad was grinning broadly.

  “They had a wonderful backfield,” Biddy continued, as though she had been in Comiskey Park in 1947 to watch them. “Pat Harder, Charles Trippi and…” She hesitated.

  “Paul Chrissman at quarterback.”

  “Right.”

  “God be good to him, he was the best announcer till John Madden.”

  “Before my time.” Brigid returned her attention to the screen, where the teams were forming up for the second half.

  “I think they’ve won, dear,” I said, changing from shrink to mother.

  “The game isn’t over,” Dad began, his pale blue eyes glinting.

  “Till the fat lady sings,” Brigid finished for him.

  What can I tell you?

  That night I woke up in the small hours.

  “Did they really win?” I asked the pirate.

  “Who? The Patriots?”

  “Silly. No, I mean it really happened?”

  “Yep, the Bears really won.… Hey,” he said, remembering an unsolved puzzle like you do in the small hours. “How did Biddy know about the 1947 Cardinals?”

  “She’s been devouring books about pro football for the last six weeks. I wish she’d pay as much attention to her schoolwork.”

  “You don’t think the old fella put her up to it?”

  “Of course he did. He’s been laughing at us all along.”

  “Oh.” Yawn. Puzzle solved.

  “You know what worries me?”

  “What?” He was almost back to sleep.

  “Suppose the Bears play the Cardinals in the NFC championship next year.”

  “I think I might move back to Boston.”

  He wouldn’t dare.

  Caitlin

  You don’t expect your family to be denounced at Mass the Sunday before Christmas. Not even if your family is like mine. I mean, if you and your husband are both psychiatrists, the family is bound to be a bit odd. Right?

  But still, the week before Christmas?

  Father Rick Neenan was the celebrant—oops, president of the Eucharistic Community. Rick is tall, blond, lean, a sort of underweight ecclesiastical Nick Nolte, till you see the harsh light in his eye and the thin line of his lips. Then you think of Dominican friars with thumbscrews.

  “We cannot be Christians in the modern world,” Rick informed us, “unless we identify with the poor and the oppressed. Those who seek revolutionary justice in the third world are the true followers of Jesus, the greatest of all revolutionaries. If we do not make common cause with them, we have no right to claim to be Christian.”

  On one side of me my husband, Joe Murphy, sighed. On the other side my oldest, Caitlin, giggled. Joe is one of the few Catholic laity left who actually listen to sermons. Rick could have suggested the sacrifice of twenty maidens to Astarte and Joe would have been practically the only one in the church to have noticed. Your typical parishioner goes into such a profound trance at the beginning of the sermon—oops, homily—that even if something worthwhile is being said s/he doesn’t hear it.

  Caitlin, well, let’s just say that she has a highly developed sense of the ludicrous.

  “Christianity is a harsh, demanding challenge, particularly to those who live in a neighborhood like this and are therefore guilty of the terrible sin of exploitation. You are able to gorge yourself with food and drink and presents at Christmas because your feet are on the necks of the oppressed of the earth.”

  Rick is not all that bad, actually. He’s from the neighborhood, of course; home for Christmas with his mother and father before they leave for the family condo on Maui. (“Should go to Molokai,” Caitlin whispered into my ear. “I didn’t know your generation learned about Damian,” I whispered back, a little snidely perhaps.) There�
�s nothing wrong with him that getting out of school into the world wouldn’t cure. Twelve years in the seminary, another four years studying theology in Holland, two years of postdoctoral work at Union Theological—before you know it, a priest is in his thirties and never done a wedding rehearsal or policed a High Club dance.

  “Poor Rick,” my brother Blackie said recently, and sighed, “is infected with a bad case of German idealism. The prognosis in such cases is guarded.” Blackie is a priest, too. A monsignor even. Though, as Caitlin says, we do not hold it against him. “In any confrontation between American empiricism and German idealism, the American loses because he is required to listen.”

  Our pastor is a dear sweet man who has not taken a stand on anything since 1970. The week before, a priest from some right wing group had ranted in the parish hall against the Marxist danger. Now we had Marxism from the altar the week before Christmas. A few people write the chancery every Sunday afternoon to complain. The rest just go into a self-induced hypnotic trance.

  “In the years to come,” Rick droned on, looking, if I do say so, incredibly handsome, “the Church will undoubtedly respond to the pleas of the poor and the oppressed of the world and abolish Christmas, because it has become a culture feast which only confirms people like us in our slothful complacency. Christmas has deteriorated into corrupt, cuddly, commercial capitalistic complacency. It cannot be saved.”

  “Alliteration,” Dr. Murphy murmured in despair next to me.

  “Definitely cute.” Caitlin giggled on the other side. “I think I’m going to be a target.”

  “Shush,” I said to both of them.

  The pastor would no more notice Rick’s diatribe than would any of his parishioners. “I enable and affirm,” he says. “I don’t take stands.” Which led my brother the monsignor to remark that the pastor would make a wonderful archbishop.

  “We must take Christ out of Christmas,” Rick continued, “and free Him from the comforting, sticky, saccharine sentimentality which has dechristianized the holiday season. We must return to the early-Christian custom of celebrating His Coming on the Feast of the Epiphany and experience that Day as an occasion for rededication to the cause of the liberation of the third world from capitalist and imperialist oppression.”

  People around us were beginning to glance at their watches. Your Catholic laity will sit through total nonsense in sermons—oops—homilies, if the nonsense doesn’t take more than ten minutes. After that they go into prerevolutionary agitation.

  “Moreover, women will come to understand that the Madonna as we see her in Christmas cards and department-store displays is a symbol of male chauvinism, totally unrelated to the oppressed woman in the cave at Bethlehem. The woman in the typical crib scene is a symptom of false consciousness.”

  “My God,” I said.

  “Shush,” my spouse and oldest replied in unison.

  Hey, I’m the vice-president of the Women’s Caucus in the American Psychiatric. I know chauvinism and false consciousness when I see them; and I get plenty of chance to see them. Moreover, I’m a liberal Democrat like my mother before me. I’m for justice to the poor and oppressed, too. But Christmas …

  “The Madonna has become a figure of sentimentality, a symbol of exploitation and oppression. She reassures us that Jesus is on our side when in fact He is on the side of those we oppress.”

  “Here it comes.” Caitlin leaned forward expectantly.

  He wouldn’t dare, I thought without much conviction.

  What can I tell you about Caitlin?

  There’s no point in being a mother unless you can worry about your kids. Right? Try as I might, I’ve never been able to worry much about Caitlin, which is enormously frustrating. I think she worries about me more than I worry about her. When I’m worn and battered but not enough to go to my training analyst, I talk to her. I’m the only mother in the country who calls her daughter at college because she needs a shoulder to cry on.

  Even when Caitlin was a teenager, which she stopped being two years ago, her principal form of adolescent revolt was laughing at me. She’s a tall, strikingly beautiful honey blonde with impish blue eyes in a delicate face that is a photographer’s delight. If Bo Derek is a “10,” my Caitlin is an “11,” at least.

  She’s in her last year at Notre Dame and, instead of being a model for photographers, plans to be a photographer herself and has been taking courses in photography at the Art Institute for the last couple of summers. She is also into gymnastics, body-building, and karate. A sweet, loving, thoughtful, party-saving girl. Until you push her too hard. Like the boy did at the Gamekeeper’s (a bistro on Fullerton) last summer. He pawed her once and she told him to stop. He pawed her a second time and she told him that if he did it again, she’d break his arm.

  He did and she did.

  That’s my Caitlin.

  “You admired those pictures in the vestibule of the church when you came in for the Eucharist, did you not? You told yourselves how cute the little babies were and how pretty all the colors were. You told one another how nice it was to have such a sweet display at Christmas.” Rick was rising to his peroration. “If Jesus of Nazareth were here today, he would tear them from the wall just as he overturned the moneychangers’ tables in the temple. The women and children in those pictures are false symbols. They hide misery and injustice. They confirm you in your sick, sentimental complacency. They should be torn out of this church just as this phony season should be torn out of your lives.”

  “Mary Kate!” Joe pulled me down. “Not during Mass!”

  “Mo-THER!” Caitlin whispered in mock horror. “Everyone is looking at us.”

  Which they were.

  Rick strode back to the altar like he was Jim McMahon going into a huddle after completing a thirty-five-yard pass to Willie Gault. The congregation rose to its feet, engaged in the ancient Christian ritual of looking at the watch, and struggled heavily through the Nicene Creed. We then sang “O Come Emmanuel” while I told myself that the child was old enough to take care of herself. If she wasn’t humiliated, why should I be?

  Break the so-and-so’s arm, Caitlin.

  Besides, hadn’t her exhibition of “Ethnic Madonnas” won the Art Institute prize for students last summer? Hadn’t there been an article in the Sun Times about the show? Didn’t Caitlin explain to the reporter, tongue in cheek, I fear, how she had sought out the young mothers who best portrayed the experiences of the black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, Appalachian, Italian, German, Polish, Hungarian, Croatian, and oh yes, Irish heritages?

  What did I care what some smartmouth young priest with a Ph.D. said?

  Actually Caitlin had searched for the cutest mothers and the cutest babies she could find. “What else do you think Raffaello did?” she demanded.

  No, I didn’t care what Rick Neenan, the spoiled only child of rich parents, said about my daughter’s prizewinning exhibition.

  Still, break his arm anyway.

  “Calm down before Communion,” my Joe insisted. It was typical of the Boston Irish Jungian that he is. From him, my Caitlin gets her sweetness. Not from me, as you’ve probably guessed.

  So I calmed down. More or less.

  More less than more.

  My husband and my oldest steered me toward the door of the church at the opposite end of the vestibule from Father Neenan, who was smiling broadly and accepting the praise of the older women of the parish. He nodded gracefully, as if he had just won his fourth Olympic gold.

  Poor dear man, he didn’t realize that he could have preached in Ugaritic (a language to which Blackie refers frequently, though he doesn’t know any more about it than I do) and the same women would have showered on him the same praise.

  If the empty niches in the vestibule of our church (emptied by an earlier and highly ecumenical pastor who felt that they would offend the Protestants who occasionally dropped by to see what was new in popery) were filled with rotund nudes, the place would remind you of the curved lobbies of the old B
alaban and Katz theaters in Chicago. While Rick was receiving the adulation of his court, Caitlin set up shop at the other end of the vestibule and played archduchess to those who admired her exhibit.

  Our receiving line was a lot bigger.

  “None of them have mentioned the sermon,” Joe said, his arm firmly around me.

  I don’t mind Joe’s arm, even when it’s there for purposes of restraint. Mostly.

  “None of them heard it,” I replied, not exaggerating all that much.

  Then Rick, towering over the heads of his fans, saw us. Slowly he comprehended that the crowd around us was related to the color prints which decorated the marble walls. At first he seemed hurt; the women who had praised his homily (got it right finally) were now in line to praise the very sticky sentimentality he had condemned.

  They had not heard a word. He had preached in vain. Jesus ignored by those who came down from the Mount of the Beatitudes with Him.

  Then he recognized who the central figures were at our end, and he began to look faintly sick. He was, after all, a well-brought-up young man; the Ryans and the Neenans had been neighbors since he was a baby. If you’re a Neenan, even a Neenan revolutionary, you don’t insult a Ryan granddaughter. If she’s young and radiantly lovely, you look like an even bigger fool.

  When the congregation had left the vestibule to fight the parking lot and Sunday-morning papers, he sheepishly walked over to the three of us, his face about to turn the same color purple as his Advent scapular.

  I didn’t want to break his arm any more, poor embarrassed boy.

  “I didn’t realize…” he stumbled, groping for words.

  “Hi, Father Rick.” Caitlin brushed her lips lightly against his cheek. “Don’t they feed you anything in New York? My mother will give you some of her fruitcake. Instant calories!”

  “I … uh, the technique is excellent, Caitlin.…” A crimson wave rose above his Roman collar and swept up his face to the roots of his curly blond hair.

  “Oh, these? Nothing really, just a project I did for the AI last summer.”

  “First prize,” I said fiercely.