Chuck
Dressed in raincoats and carrying umbrellas we lugged our equipment through Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue, and around the corner to the entrance of the West Wing, a driveway protected by National Park Service Police in a guardhouse. These folks were very considerate of those who were on their list and quickly dismissive of those who were not We waited patiently in line for some time, then were quickly dismissed. Our names were not on the list. No one had ever heard of an Ambassador O’Malley who was to take a picture of the president.
“Ambassadors,” the guard sneered at me, “don’t take pictures. I don’t suppose you have any evidence that you are an ambassador?”
I just happened to have the diplomatic passport that the State Department issues me for auld lang syne or some similar reason. I just happened to have it because, as I tell my priestly brother and my soon-to-be priestly son, it confers almost as much clout as does a driver’s license displaying a Roman collar in Chicago.
The redneck cop was not impressed.
“I don’t care who you are. You’re still not getting into the West Wing unless your name is on my list. And it’s not on my list.”
I felt like someone who had made reservations at a restaurant
and then is told by the maître d’ that his name is not on the list I suspected that if I could see the list I would find my name.
“We spoke to Mr. Deming earlier this morning. He said we should come right over. I’m sure if you would call him …”
“We do not call West Wing personnel unless they call us, sir. Would you please give way for those who are next in line.”
“Come on, Chucky,” my wife said, “let’s not argue with this Republican.”
So, we lugged our stuff back across the park as the rain beat down. I wanted to go to the airport and release our story to the Chicago media. Rosemarie insisted I call Mr. Deming. The expression on our daughter’s face suggested our ancestor Grace O’Malley about to launch a raid against the hated O’Flahertys.
“Chuck, where are you?” Tom Deming demanded.
He had been one of my junior staff in Bonn a long time ago.
“In the Hay-Adams.”
“Too much rain to carry your equipment across the park? You should have called me before.”
I had adjusted the tone of my voice to suggest scarcely controlled rage.
“We have carried the equipment over and back. One of your cops would not let us in because our names are not on the list.”
“You are certainly on the list. I’ll get a Secret Service car and pick you up.”
“We’re going back to Chicago,” I said, a sullen little boy.
“Don’t do that. The president will be terribly disappointed. He wants to meet you.”
I was not impressed. I had been in the White House and indeed the Oval Office often enough. It was no big deal.
“I’ll be right over,” Tom Deming said, and hung up.
“Chucky,” my daughter informed me, “you can be a real hard-ass.”
“Only when dealing with one of the same persuasion.”
I had begun the morning in an excellent mood, the reaction of every man to high quality sex, especially since, after thirty years, I had made a little progress in understanding a woman’s perspective on the matter. I was, not to put too fine an edge on
it, proud of myself. The glow in Rosemarie’s eyes was enough to confirm my suspicion that I might be now a somewhat more than adequate lover. I tried to temper my elation with the caution that I had a long way to go.
My wife was so unbearably lovely.
Then the rain and the wind and the mud of Lafayette Park and the falling leaves and the redneck cop had ruined my day. Why, with all the troubles back home, had I come to Washington? To take a picture of a Republican? Charles Cronin O’Malley, you gotta be out of your mind! After every high, there comes a low. Better to avoid the high? Not when the high was my Rosemarie.
We waited in the lobby of the Hay-Adams until a nondescript black Ford with a radio antenna appeared. The doorman saluted, waved the car up to the doorway, and held up his hand to block the cars that might pull in behind us. These nondescript Fords apparently had a certain cachet of their own.
Tom Deming, with more weight and less hair than when we had known him in Bonn fifteen years before, popped out.
“Mr. Ambassador!” He pumped my hand. “You never change! And Mrs. O’Malley, you’re more beautiful than ever! And this young woman must be Moire, the redhead, Germanspeaking tot who won all our hearts at the embassy. We all said that you would grow up to be a stunning woman. We underestimated the truth.”
Mary Margaret was so pleased with his grace that she did not correct him by insisting on her “real” name.
“I assume that our name was on the list and the redneck cop just didn’t like our looks?”
Tom was loading our equipment into the trunk of the Ford. He looked up and smiled again.
“That man has been transferred to other duty.”
“I hope in one of the Park Service’s glaciers.”
“How is the rest of your family, Ms. O’Malley … Or should I say Ms. Clancy.”
“Rosemarie, Tom … Kevin Patrick and April Rosemary both have two children and soon both will have three. Jimmy will be ordained in the spring. Sean is considering his options,
though Mary Margaret here says they have narrowed to one lovely young woman. We also have a five-year-old redhead who is pure delight.”
Tom and the Secret Service driver loaded our stuff into the trunk. I ensconced myself in the middle of the backseat between my wife and daughter.
“And you write stories and the ambassador takes pictures,” he continued. “ … The delay is fortunate because the first lady has an appointment this afternoon and she won’t be able to be present.”
“Oh?” I said. “She involves herself in such matters?”
“She does indeed.”
“She would attempt to tell me which poses to take?”
“She would indeed.”
“So.”
Should that happen, we would pack our things and decamp. No one tells Chuck O’Malley which shots he can take, not twice. My Rosemarie was smiling her “such-a-cute-little-boy” smile. Witch.
Beautiful though.
The Secret Service car went around the East Wing and pulled up to the back gate.
“Car seven with Ambassador O’Malley and family,” the driver said into his mike.
The gate opened. We drove through it and stopped. An officer peered in the backseat and smiled at the two lovely ladies, more than the idiot at the gate to the West Wing had done.
“They’re the family,” I said, pointing cross-armed at my wife and daughter.
“Welcome, Mr. Ambassador, it’s good to have you back.”
That’s better. We pulled up under the steps to the low-slung diplomat’s door which would bring us to the ground floor. A flock of White House ushers swarmed out of the door, some with umbrellas, some to carry our bags. We were whisked through the rooms to an elevator.
“We’ll take a closer look when we leave, hon,” Rosemarie assured our daughter.
They led us along the portico to the West Wing, into a waiting room outside the Oval Office.
“You can go right in, Mr. Ambassador,” said the woman at the desk next to the door of the Oval Office. “The president is waiting for you.”
We walked right into Ronald Reagan’s tidal wave of geniality.
“Chuck O’Malley, I’m glad to meet you! What wonderful photos.” He held up a copy of my portrait book. “You have to make an old actor look as good as these people do … I don’t think the Oval Office has ever had two such beautiful Irishwomen in it at the same time. I recognize you both from your pictures. Wonderful! Come in! Let’s relax and have a cup of tea before we go to work!”
My first reaction was that “the Gipper” and “Bonzo” had aged, as we all do. He didn’t look his seventy years but he was not nearly as young as he seemed on television. His hair could not possibly be as black as it was unless it had been touched up. Everywhere.
He was wearing a dark blue business suit, white shirt, and red-and-blue tie—actor and athlete as CEO.
“They tell me you’re just back from Russia. What was it like? Did you bring any of your photos along?” he asked as an usher poured our tea. There were exactly three cookies on the White House china plate, something like the ration you’d receive at St. Ursula’s convent in the old days when the Good April and I went over to do battle with Sister Mary Admirabilis, AKA Sister War Admiral.
“As a matter of fact, I did. Would you like to see them?”
I reached in my film bag and pulled out half a dozen pictures that I had secretly printed up the night before. My wife and my daughter gasped. Good! I’d fooled them.
“I’d love to see them.”
His geniality and charm were authentic, not just an act for television. He was not a mean man hiding behind a smile as Ike had been.
I spread the pictures on his desk, images of peasants in front of log houses, workers coming out of factories, kids playing in the mud, an orthodox priest.
The president became serious.
“Good people,” he said. “You can tell by looking at them, but so poor.”
“Only a step above a third world country. In Moscow you see better clothes but still they’re poor … I hardly need tell you, Mr. President. Socialism doesn’t work. The man who said he’d seen the future and it worked was dead wrong. Nothing works—airplanes, rockets, steel mills, health care, collective farms. They’re spending their gold reserves to buy grain to feed their people.”
“As I have said, it’s an evil empire. Very dangerous.”
I gathered up the pictures.
“It will implode within the decade,” I said. “The middle-level apparatchiks who are going to replace the present gerontocracy will cancel out the Bolshevik revolution, the non-Russian republics will break away, and the occupied countries in Eastern Europe will free themselves.”
I gathered up the pictures, surreptitiously confiscated one of the three cookies, and began to unpack my equipment.
The president sat at his desk, his face furrowed.
“That’s an original perspective, Chuck. No one has suggested it to me.”
“Not so original, Mr. President Willard Mathias of the Office of National Estimates wrote in 1954 that Communism’s inability to produce sufficient consumer goods and resistance to sharing power with a growing class of professionals and technocrats will ultimately destroy the party’s power.”
“1954! That was twenty years ago!”
“Almost thirty.”
My wife and daughter, dutiful and uncomplaining members of the team (for the moment) began to unpack the lights and the screens for the picture taking. I didn’t normally use such paraphernalia, but for a president of the United States you had to create the impression of a real professional photographer.
“I’ve never heard that from any of our people. They think the empire will endure for decades, perhaps even centuries.”
“Only if they can make it work. The new leadership, which will certainly emerge during your term of office, will try to make it work, but they won’t succeed.”
He shook his head dubiously.
“I hope you’re right. I’d like to believe you’re right. But it all seems too easy … The Cold War has gone on for a long time …”
“By 1990 it will be over. You can claim victory.”
“Have you told this theory to any of our people?”
“As you said, Mr. President, the Cold War has gone on for a long time. A lot of folks wouldn’t know what to do if it ends.”
We proceeded with the picture taking. He was an easy shot. There was not much difference between his public persona and his private self. He was the Gipper. His philosophy of administration was that he figured out what needed to be done, selected the-men to do it, then did not interfere with them. It made for a relaxed presidency and a relaxed president, one who could watch movies every night.
My wife and daughter shuttled back and forth with the color and black-and-white cameras, reloading the one as I shot with the other. They were charming assistants and quiet and self-effacing—rare behavior for both of them.
In the lens of my Hasselblads he emerged as a handsome, genial, elderly Irishman who did not like to worry about the small print. I wondered as I snapped away how much there was there. He was mildly interested in my scenario about the Soviet Union but would never question the CIA or the State Department to determine if there were men in either agency who agreed with me. Maybe our most genial president, perhaps even the most likeable, but far from the brightest. I wondered whether John Hinckley Jr.’s assassination attempt the previous March had slowed him down or whether he was at that age in life where we all want to slow down, if only just a little.
After the shoot was over, his secretary brought in a large box of White House souvenirs for our family. We thanked him for his thoughtfulness. None of us hinted that some of the family—especially Father Ed—would not want a remembrance from this particular White House.
“We’ll send them off to you in Chicago,” he said. “No point in burdening you with more luggage … You must come back
sometime for dinner … Mrs. Reagan would love to meet you … Have you ever been here for dinner, Mrs. O’Malley?”
“Only once, Mr. President. On the night John Kennedy said to a bunch of artists and writers that the only night there was more talent, in the room was when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
“Then you must certainly come again.”
None of us were about to hold our breath waiting for an invitation, yet no doubt his offer was sincere. At the moment.
On our way back to the hotel, Tom Deming said, “You won’t find many people in the government who believe that the Soviet Union is about to implode.”
“None at the embassy in Moscow,” I replied.
“You said in effect that thirty years of Cold War has blinded us to the weakness of our enemy?”
“I don’t doubt that the facts are reported accurately,” I replied. “I doubt that the dots are connected.”
“This administration will never believe it, even if all your predictions turn out to be right.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
At the Hay-Adams, my wife informed me that I needed a nap, a “nap nap. You’re always exhausted after a shoot … Mary Margaret and I will do a little shopping. We’ll call Peg and talk to Shovie.”
A limo would pick us up at seven. We’d fly out of National at eight-thirty and arrive in Chicago a little before ten.
I did need a real nap. My hormones were quiescent.
The United States, I realized, was slipping into another era of peace and prosperity, both deceptive. However, the public wanted to be tranquilized. Our new president was the perfect leader of the time.
The JFK dinner that Rosemarie had mentioned to the president belonged to a different world. We were fortunate to be part of it. Then I glided away to the land of Nod, wondering how come a punk kid from a two flat on the West Side could become as familiar with the White House as I was.
I solved a lot of international problems before I was wakened
by a demanding telephone. I couldn’t quite figure out where I was or what time it was as I reached for the phone.
“Chuck O’Malley.”
“Peg, brother. Mom’s in the hospital. They think she’s had a heart attack.”
Was this message nightmare or reality?
“what happened … ?”
“She had pains in her chest and trouble breathing. I called for the ambulance. Friday afternoon, not too many doctors around. She’s resting comfortably. They’re controlling the pain with medication and watching her closely. Mike Kennedy was playing golf at Butterfield but he’s on his way in.”
“Are you at the hospital?”
“Sure. Father Ed is here too. Rita is taking care of Shovie. When do you get home?”
“Peg, where am I?”
“You’re at the Hay-Adams hotel in DC. You photographed the president this afternoon.”
“Indeed we did,” I admitted, not at all sure the charge was true.
“Is Rosie there?”
I looked around the bed.
“No, I think she and Mary Margaret went shopping.”
“Have her call when she returns. We’re in Room 414.”
Naturally. I hoped the smell of roses was still there.
“Our flight is at eight-thirty,” I said. “Maybe we can get an earlier flight.”
“They say there’s no immediate danger.”
I struggled out of bed and took a shower to wake up. It didn’t do much good.
I sat in an easy chair in the parlor of our suite. We had a suite because Rosemarie had arranged the travel plans. I had long since given up arguing about the cost of such luxury. I began to leaf through another file in Joe Raftery’s story about Bride Mary O’Brien.
I couldn’t concentrate on the story. The image of the vibrant young flapper who had snatched Dad out of his Irish bachelor’s life would not leave me. Why did any of us have to die?
Rosemary charged into our suite, filled with vitality and descriptions of the brilliant shopping coups she and Mary Margaret had accomplished. She was, I knew, ready for more love.
“Call Peg at Room 414 at Oak Park Hospital,” I said. “Mom’s apparently had a heart attack.”
Rosemarie slumped into the chair next to the telephone.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, ma’am. Rita’s taking care of Shovie.”
She punched in the number with which we were all too familiar. Her conversation was brief and whispered.
“She’s had another attack,” Rosemarie murmured. “Serious. Dr. Kennedy is with her.”
“Can we get on an earlier plane?” I asked.
“Too late for that, Chuck. We’d better start to pack. I’ll tell Mary Margaret.”
She picked up the phone.
“Better tell her face-to-face.”
She put down the phone and smiled.
“Right as always, Chucky Ducky.”
It seems likely that Bride Mary O’Brien entered the United States illegally. She had somehow obtained a student visa on the grounds that she had a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley. In fact, she had earned no such scholarship. All she had was an admission to the comparative literature department at the university with no promise of aid. In those days there was a steady stream of young Irish university graduates who outsmarted the consular bureaucrats of the State Department, who were probably not too interested in barring such bright and charming young people from the United States.
She seems to have predecessors already in Berkeley because she easily found a job in a bookstore and a bed in an Irish commune. Apparently the “commune” was not ideological and did not encourage sexual relationships. She matriculated at the University of California at Berkeley in a literature department which, even at that time, was more interested in radical political action than in academic matters. The Free Speech Movement, it will be remembered, began in Berkeley in 1963, long before
campus demonstrations spread to most other campuses in the country. Already an Irish radical, Bride Mary fit in with the spirit of the time at the university and in her department. She seems to have marched in demonstrations, blocked cars, shouted obscene epithets at police. We know this from testimony of a young woman, also an illegal Irish immigrant who shared a room with Bride Mary after they both had earned enough money to move out of the commune. Our investigations were unable to uncover other members of the commune. Like so many radicals of the day, they quickly melted into the mainstream of American life.
Bride Mary was arrested for disorderly conduct on at least one occasion. She almost certainly would have been deported if she had not persuaded the Irish-American cop who had arrested her to give her a second chance. After that, her friend tells us, she avoided all demonstrations where there might be arrests. Yet in those turbulent days on the east side of the Bay she had some close calls.
She dropped out of school and out of the radical movement at the same time. She began working full-time at the bookstore, then sometime in 1965 went to work part-time for a real estate company that catered to people who wanted to move into the East Bay area. She must have been very good even at the beginning because she was able to buy a condo in the Berkeley Hills, some distance away from the university.
Her roommate had no explanation for this sudden change in lifestyle and profession. She said she wanted to make some money so she wouldn’t be just an impoverished Irish immigrant. The roommate thought there was a possibility that one of her faculty mentors promised her a job in the department if she would sleep with him. Shortly after she left the university she told the roommate that the radical faculty members were not interested in principles or ideals, only in exploiting as many women as they could collect. All this radical shite, she said, is about using women who think they’re rebels. They’re a bunch of frigging hypocrites.
After this it becomes more difficult to trace Bride Mary O’Brien. She worked for several different firms. Her colleagues said that she was friendly enough, but reserved. Her brogue indicated
she was from Ireland, but she refused to say where she came from or when. She was scrupulously fair to her customers, warning them away from properties that were overpriced or had hidden problems. In fact, an employer said that she went beyond the ethical requirements of the profession in protection of her customers. Yet no one wanted to fire her because she was so successful. Her charm and integrity were transparent. All her clients liked her. About her private life, she said almost nothing. They thought she lived with a man for a while but ended the relationship quickly. She did not socialize with her professional colleagues. She did take classes at a local community college in accounting and finance and also in wine making. When she moved on to another company, they were all sorry to see her go. Characteristically she took none of her clients with her.
Then they heard that she had married Joseph T. Raftery, an extremely successful developer in Marin County, in a small church wedding, though she had never seemed all that much interested in religion. He was ten years older than she was. Later they set themselves up in the wine-making business and had a child.
To a person they were sad when they heard of the probable death of her and her child. They couldn’t imagine who would want to kill Bride Mary O’Brien unless it were some drug-crazy hippies.