Mary Margaret
Rosie and I had a great time shopping in DC. Chucky was back in the hotel sleeping and we didn’t have to worry about him getting lost. So we relaxed and enjoyed ourselves, even if we didn’t buy much—and only some things that were on sale. We decided that we didn’t much like the new president. He was a nice man with a lot of charm, but he wasn’t very bright and didn’t seem like he’d work very hard at being a president. Jack Kennedy, Rosie said, would have listened very carefully to what Chuck had to say about the Soviet Union, because he knew Chuck was very smart and almost always right about political things. Lyndon Johnson, when he was looking for solid advice before he withdrew from the presidential race, called Chucky in with a bunch of much older men. He also wanted Chuck to go to the UN, as did Jimmy Carter. Bonzo over there wasn’t curious enough to pursue Chuck’s notion that the Soviet Union would implode in between five and ten years.
“What’s more, when it happens he won’t even remember that Chuck predicted it.”
“You think he’s getting senile, Rosie?”
“Not yet, but I don’t think he bothers to listen to things that don’t fit his impressions about the world.”
“Scary!”
“Maybe not. The United States has been lucky so far in our history. Maybe our luck will hold out.”
“It’s a shame that no one will pay attention to Chuck.”
“Don’t count your father out, Mary Margaret. We’re going to make the argument pretty loudly in our book and in the article I’m doing for The New Yorker.”
Then we arrived at the hotel, a totally neat place, and Rosie went upstairs to wake up Chuck. Then she came back to my room to tell me about Grams.
“Damn crazy Aunt Jane!”
“My very thoughts, hon.”
Dad called again from National Airport. Aunt Peg said that Grams had had a second attack and was in intensive care. We tried to work on the flight back to Chicago, which seemed to go on forever. He called again as soon as we landed at O’Hare. Aunt Peg said things did not look good. We should come right to the hospital. Shovie was sleeping soundly at their house and Rita was keeping a close eye on her.
Rosie drove us to the hospital, of course. Aunt Peg and Uncle Vince and Father Ed were waiting for us in the intensive care room. Grams was breathing on a ventilator. A monitor was beeping above her. Aunt Peg had been crying. Her eyes were red and her pretty face was lined with sadness.
“They say touch-and-go,” Father Ed murmured. “At least another day or two before she’ll be out of the woods.”
“Peg,” Rosie said, “why don’t you and Vince go home and get some sleep. If there’s any turn for the worse, we’ll call you right away.”
“Damn Crazy Jane,” Peg whispered.
“I know how you feel, Peg,” Father Ed said. “I feel the same way, but it won’t do us any good to blame anyone, especially since poor Janey is out of her mind.”
“It’s not easy being a Catholic, Aunt Peg,” I said, not having enough sense to mind my own business, especially since I wanted to kill crazy Aunt Jane too.
Aunt Peg hugged me and said, “You and Rita are the only ones in the family with any Catholic sense left.”
“Maybe,” Chucky said, “we can say the Rosary, then Peg and Vince can go home … Maybe, Mary Margaret, you can lead us since your aunt thinks you have some Catholic sense left.”
This was Chucky at his deft best. He gave us something to do
and he put a time limit after which Aunt Peg had to go home. I am as capable of leading the Rosary as anyone else. Halfway through, Grams lips seemed to move. Maybe it was a turning point. I thought I smelled roses, which wasn’t possible because there weren’t any flowers in the room.
Chuck and Rosie were a mess all weekend. They didn’t sleep much and were back and forth to the hospital every couple of hours. I told them not to worry about Shovie. I’d take care of her and make sure her homework was done and take her to Mass on Sunday. Poor little kid needed to have someone around from her family, though Erin, our probably illegal babysitter, was now almost a member of the family.
Seano was hanging around the house when I arrived to pick up Shovie for Mass on Saturday afternoon.
“You look terrible, Seano,” I said. “What’s the matter? Maria Anastasia drop you?”
“Yeah,” he said sadly. “She decided to marry a boy who is Luong like she is. Her parents talked her into it. He seems to be a good guy. I haven’t had much luck with my romances, have I, sis?”
“Bitch!” I shouted.
“Sis!”
“Too much pent-up anger,” I said. “And too many geeky people picking on my family!”
“It’s for the best,” he said. “Esther is happier with her Israeli pilot, and Maria Anastasia is better off with her Luong prince. Neither one of them ever made any promises to me.”
“Everything but …”
“That doesn’t count, sis … I’m pretty low now, but I’ll pull out of it … Maybe start looking for someone Irish … Just like you.”
“I’m NOT, totally NOT, looking for anyone from any ethnic group!”
We both laughed.
Sean Seamus would be all right. I just hoped that whoever his next love would be, and of whatever ethnic group, would appreciate what a wonderful young man he is.
By Sunday night Grams was off the ventilator and talking.
“Well, I’m just so sorry to have caused so much worry. I’m fine now … . I started to feel better when I heard poor dear Mary Margaret leading the Rosary. Wouldn’t she make a wonderful priest!”
“They’d have to ordain her a monsignora!” Chuck, always the wise guy, had to say.
So that was the end of that. Now all we had to do was finish the proof sheets for the Russian book, work on the portrait of President Bonzo, and write thank-you notes to all the mourners. The family was not ready for another death, though we wouldn’t have much choice about it. Grams was back in her flapper mode, but she didn’t look like she’d last too long. Everyone dies someday.
On Monday afternoon I walked from school to my appointment with Dr. Ward, so I could think over what I would say. Her office was at Lake and Harlem in an old building in which every doctor in Oak Park seemed to have an office. I wore the fawn suit I had worn to the White House. You go see a shrink for the first time, Rosie had told me, you look your best. I figured she knew what she was talking about.
Maggie Ward was a gray woman—gray hair, gray eyes, and a gray dress. But it was a happy kind of gray, a gray that made you want to relax and maybe smile a little. She had to be really good to deal with Rosie.
“I must ask you one question at the beginning, Mary Margaret,” she began. “Is it your mother’s idea that you should come to see me?”
“You must know Rosie better than that, Dr. Ward. Dr. Kennedy said I might need some counseling. It seemed to me that he might be right. Rosie is sky-high on you, so I knew you’d be good. I asked her whether she thought you would see me and she said I should call and ask. Which I did.”
She smiled and I knew we’d be friends.
“You have not been entirely absent from our conversations. I’m happy to meet you in person.”
“I know Rosie would say only good things about me,” I said, “so I’m not worried … The thing is I totally want to kill my Crazy Aunt Jane. She hit me over the head with a lamp and
might have killed me. They thought I might have a fractured skull, but it was only a brain concussion, which is bad enough, and she beat up on my poor grandma and probably caused her heart attack. I hate her so much that if I were a vampire, I could already taste her blood.”
“You would not actually kill her, would you Mary Margaret—even if you could get away with it and not be caught?”
“No, of course not. I’m a Catholic. We don’t kill people. I even believe that the Pope is right: we don’t kill people in wars either.”
“But, if the Pope gave you permission, would you kill Crazy Aunt Jane?”
“She’s a sick lady. Bipolar. She won’t take her medications when she’s on her high, which she was when she hit me … I hope I will take my meds when I go bipolar.”
“May I make a small prediction about you, Mary Margaret O’Malley?”
“Be my guest!”
“Whatever else you may do in your life, you will never, I repeat, never go bipolar.”
We both laughed at that.
“The problem is that I’d like to be able to kill her. I bash her brains out in my dreams.”
“Your grandmother is recovering this morning.”
“Out of danger, they say. Still I don’t think she’ll be with us very long.”
“You’re probably right … We all die sometime.”
“I won’t. I’m young and convinced that I am immortal!”
“No, you’re not! … Let me see if I understand you. You won’t kill Crazy Aunt Jane although she richly deserves it Yet you worry because you have homicidal dreams.”
“And daydreams too … If somehow she turned up at Oak Park Hospital last night, I would have wanted to push her down the stairs, then kick her in her fat stomach at the bottom of the stairs.”
“Your daydreams are vivid.”
“Day and night dreams both.”
“You think they’re sinful?”
“No, but I shouldn’t have such thoughts, should I? I mean when I’m awake isn’t that anger wrong?”
“Do you have a boyfriend Mary Margaret?”
“Not exactly a boyfriend. There’s this boy who you could call a friend who kind of hangs around. Chucky says that he looks amused and bemused.”
“Nice boy?”
“So nice that if my parents had to choose between him and me, they’d choose him.”
“Do you think you might marry him someday?”
“I don’t know … Maybe … If someone better doesn’t come along.”
“Which I interpret to mean ‘yes.’”
“For the sake of the argument.”
“You have daydreams and night dreams about going to bed with him?”
I could see why Rosie says she’s a witch. She was backing me into a corner.
“Sure … Like Chuck says, if we didn’t think that way, the species would have stopped existing long ago.”
“I see … Now do you consider those thoughts to be wrong?”
“Maybe if I waste my time on them all day long.”
“You’re not about to hop into bed with him?”
“Not for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Deponeth sayeth not.”
“You see where I’m going?”
“Sure, I see where you’re going.”
“Tell me.”
“You’re saying that the species wouldn’t survive unless we became angry when someone beats up on us or some of our family. It’s only wrong when it turns into the desire for revenge.”
“Can you give me an example of that?”
“What about the people who want to go to the execution room to watch someone die because of what the person has done to their family?”
“Why do they want to do that?”
“They say because they want closure … But they’ll never get it, will they Dr. Ward?”
“No, Mary Margaret, they never will. They should learn to transcend their anger, which is not only good Christianity, it’s good mental health. Now tell me about what happened when your crazy Aunt Jane bopped you over the head.”
So I did. And felt a lot better. We agreed that I would come back once more in two weeks to talk about it all again.
I felt fine when I left to walk back home.
Except that I had admitted that I actually might just marry Joey Moran.