“An accident?” I said to Peg that morning in May when she woke me up. I shook my head, trying to shake sleep out of it, still convinced that I was dreaming.
“Her father is away someplace. The housekeeper never answers the phone at night. Mom and Dad are down at the lake. She’s in Jackson Park Hospital. Where’s that?”
“On Stony Island, I think.”
“Is that a city or something?”
“No, it’s a street, sixteen hundred east. Is she hurt?”
“I don’t know,” Peg wailed. “Can we drive out there and find out?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
The sun was just beginning to peek over the roof of Jackson Park Hospital when we arrived. Peg charged into the lobby and up to the reception desk.
“We’re members of Miss Clancy’s family,” she said smoothly. “She was raised with us. Everyone else is out of town. May we go up to her floor and talk to the nurses?”
A modest enough request, no? And in those days it was much easier to get by a hospital reception desk.
On the third floor, Peg searched out a wispy young intern who might not be immune to her charms.
He was putty in her hands.
“Miss Clancy is all right,” he said. “Lucky to be alive I’d say. A slight concussion. Some stitches on the top of her head which that wonderful black hair will hide. Two spectacular shiners. She’s resting quietly now.”
“May we see her, Doctor?” there was a pathetic plea in the title. “We were raised together and the rest of the family is out of town.”
“Well…,” he hesitated.
“It would reassure her to know that someone cares.”
The young man nodded sagely. “You’re right. It has been a long night for her. She’s in 310. Try to be quiet Other people on the floor are still asleep. I’ll tell the nurses it’s okay.”
“Impressive,” I said when we were alone.
“A snap,” Peg replied.
Rosemarie was sitting up in bed, looking battered and confused. A bandage around her head and two ugly black eyes. Her hair fell in disorder against a white hospital gown. She looked as gorgeous as ever. Not quite indestructible, perhaps, but just then maybe the next best thing to it.
“Rosie!”
“Peg!”
Embraces, hugs, tears.
“Hi, Rosemarie.”
“Hi, Chuck.”
“What happened?”
“I’m ashamed of myself,” she murmured. “I wasn’t even all that drunk.”
“Down on yourself again?” Peg sighed.
“I guess I must have been. I’m glad no one was in the car with me. I could have killed them.”
Tears spilled out of her eyes and down the big black blotches.
“Poor Rosie!”
“I don’t remember what happened. The doctor—cute little blond guy—”
“We saw him.”
“He said I hit a stoplight. Knocked it down. Pretty near totaled the car. Thank God I didn’t hit anyone else.”
“You just can’t get down on yourself that way.”
“I know that, Peg. It was something one of my professors said, I guess… I’m terribly sorry, Chuck. I promise it will never happen again.”
“Sure, Rosemarie.” I patted her hand.
“Are you planning on marrying her, Chuck?” Peg demanded as soon as we began the long ride back to Oak Park.
It was a straight question and deserved a straight answer. So I offered one that for me was pretty straight.
“Probably.”
Silence.
“The two of you are in love?”
“Possibly.”
“I’ve never seen her so happy as she has been since St. Patrick’s Day. She’s put on five of the fifteen pounds her doctor says she needs. Her hard edges have softened. She sings a lot… Then something like this happens.”
“She’s had a hard life.”
“Now you’re making excuses for her instead of my doing it.”
“You don’t think I should marry her?”
That startled Peg.
“That’s a very direct question, Chuck. I’ve never known you to be so direct.”
“Is a direct answer possible?”
“No … yes … I don’t know. Goof that I am, I thought love would straighten her out.”
“No advice, then?”
“I love her very much. But you’re my brother. I love you too. …”
It was sufficient warning.
She was out of the hospital in a couple of days, with only a few headaches and traces of double vision. The white convertible turned out to be repairable. Rosemarie was charged with driving too fast for conditions. Dad told us that there were only small amounts of alcohol in her bloodstream. I suppose her father had the ticket fixed.
Coming home from my Saturday morning efforts at O’Hanlon and O’Halloran later in the day, I told myself that I was cured of Rosemarie Helen Clancy. Permanently and forever.
If I need a powerful reminder of the dark side of her character, I had been given it. Stay away from the girl. She’s pretty, she’s smart, she’s willing.
And she’s poison.
That night there was a card—surface mail—from Tim Boylan.
Charles C.
Conas ta tu!
That’s Irish. It means “How are you?”
I figured you’d find me eventually.
I like it here. It’s poor, but peaceful, and the people are wonderful. They leave me alone. Right now that’s all I want. Thank you for writing. Maybe we’ll see each other again someday. I’m off the sauce. For good.
Slan go foil!
Tim
P.S. Give my best to your Rosemarie. Besides Jenny she’s the most beautiful woman I know. You’ll never get away from her, Charles C.
I reread it, pondered it, and decided that it was a tiny bit more hopeful than not. I’d reply, but not like I was in a rush.
For a little less than two weeks I stuck to my resolution to stay away from Rosemarie. We drove down to the Notre Dame graduation with Peg on a hot and humid June day. By the time we had reached South Bend I was as captivated by Rosemarie as I had ever been. She certainly would, I told myself, stop drinking soon.
College graduations are anticlimactic. Parents, relatives, romantic partners, even the graduates themselves understand that real life still waits. At Notre Dame, under the oppressive sun and surrounded by fresh green grass and bright flowers, with the Golden Dome looming baroque and ponderous above us, happiness seemed to me to be edgy and forced, the cheerfulness and the joyous hugs not quite authentic, bright eyes and quick grins somehow haunted. Perhaps I’m reading back into it what was to happen in Korea before the month was over. Maybe all graduations are that way.
I had expected I would be angry and bitter. I still hated the Holy Cross priests for what they had done to me, but I realized that I had not belonged there and they had unintentionally done me a favor.
“What are you doing now, O’Malley?” one of them asked me as we were milling around outside after the ceremony.
“I’m surprised that you recognized me, Father.”
“You’re the kind of person that’s hard to forget. I hope you’re planning to go back to college.”
Rosemarie cheated me of my line.
“Charles is graduating from the University of Chicago in two weeks, Father. Then he has a fellowship at the University to go on for his doctorate in economics.”
“Well, don’t lose your faith there, O’Malley.”
“If he didn’t lose it here, Father, he won’t lose it anywhere.”
The priest drifted away.
“My lines.”
“More effective from me, Chucky.”
We went through the same little act with many of my former classmates, especially those who thought that the University of Chicago was a hotbed of Marxist paganism. Then we came upon Christopher, splendid in his Marines uniform with its shiny gold second lieutenant’s bars. Cordelia was chatting with him.
“Been telling everyone about your own graduation?” Christopher asked with a wicked grin, before I could congratulate him.
“Rosemarie is saving me the trouble.”
“And I’m telling everyone that he has a fellowship to study for a Ph.D. in economics at the University,” she added.
It was not quite the truth, but it was adequate as a shorthand.
We all congratulated one another. Rosemarie, with a winner’s good sportsmanship, was especially nice to Cordelia.
Actually she wasn’t the winner. I was kind of a recovered fumble.
“I’m leaving for Paris next week,” Cordelia told us joyously. “Two years at the Conservatory.”
We congratulated her again. Rosemarie hugged her. She slipped away to talk to others.
“Nice girl,” said Rosemarie.
“You’re kind to your rivals,” Christopher said with a wink.
“She never was a rival, not really. Are you still convinced that she has no talent, Chuck?”
“Lots of skills, no talent.”
“Poor kid. Someone will have to pick up the pieces someday.”
I had yet to learn that when my foster sister said that sort of thing she meant that she would eventually pick up the pieces if no one else did.
“Maybe she’ll meet a nice Frenchman,” Christopher said.
“There are no nice Frenchmen,” I informed him.
We all laughed. Chucky was reformed but still outrageous.
Christopher had his orders to leave for the Western Pacific the following week. We wished him well.
“You two are being civilized to each other,” he said, his brown eyes darting back and forth between Rosemarie and myself.
“I’ve always been civilized,” she replied. “Chucky Ducky is learning.”
We found Vince and Peggy and Ed Murray and his current date, whose name I don’t remember, and their friends. We congratulated them all, Rosemarie hugged everyone in sight. Peg raised an eyebrow in approval.
“She seems fine.”
“Why wouldn’t she?” Vince asked.
We didn’t answer.
Peg would stay with the crowd and join us later at Long Beach. Rosemarie and I slipped away.
“Odd experience for you, wasn’t it Chucky?” Rosemarie asked as she drove her convertible down U.S. 20 toward La Porte.
“Not as odd as I thought it would be.”
“They’re all nice boys, but you’re not like them, are you?”
“Old man.”
“The years in Germany?”
“Probably.”
“And a feeling that you’re going in a different direction?”
“Maybe.”
She chuckled to herself.
I was still planning on being an accountant, right? Okay, an accountant with a Ph.D., but still an accountant. How was that any different from the plans for law and medicine and business of my Golden Dome contemporaries?
Yet I did sense that I was different from them, even from Christopher with his plans for Republican politics on the North Side of Chicago. Did I have other, as yet unspecified, games to play? Had my years at the University made me different, perhaps given me illusions? Or was it Rosemarie who had filled my head with nonsense? If it was nonsense.
I banished such foolish thoughts.
On that warm Saturday evening of the Memorial Day weekend, Rosemarie and I, in our swimsuits, lay in each other’s arms on the dark beach, content that night merely to embrace.
“I absolutely promise that I’ll never do it again,” she said, for perhaps the tenth time.
If it had required only willpower, I’m sure she would have kept that promise.
I nibbled at her bare breasts. She moaned with pleasure.
Either I had to end our relationship, or we were headed toward the altar and the marriage bed.
Later I paused at the top of the stairs leading from our house to the beach, took one step down, and then made the rest of them in a flying leap. Pleased with this accomplishment, I trotted down the beach and took the one leap to the top of the house next door. I turned at the top and floated back to the beach and soared briefly over the lake. Then I raced down the stairs to the cafeteria at Fenwick High School and made the last half of the trip in another quick soar. The white-robed Dominican priest at the bottom of the stairs whirled on me and pointed a warning finger. Only it was Rosemarie, naked underneath the robes, who was screaming at me. I discovered that I had lost my clothes.
Then I experienced a terrible agony of pleasure.
I woke up with a jump. It took me several moments to realize that it had been only a dream. I had flown at Fenwick, hadn’t I? After thinking about it for a couple of minutes, I realized I hadn’t done that either.
What was that all about? I asked God. Never mind, I don’t want to know.
Mostly because Rosemarie insisted, I continued to work at O’H and O’H during June and began my graduate work at the University. I told Palmer Tennant that it was an experiment and I could make no promises. He must have decided that it was a rational economic choice to settle for that.
I was distracted at both the lectures and at my job downtown by obsessive and delectable fantasies about Rosemarie. I would like to be able to say that I tried to think out, clearly and sensibly, what I ought to do. I didn’t do that, however. I’m not sure that any young male would have. I drifted, postponing both thought and decision.