The volcano smoldering under Vince and Peg finally blew up.
At our house at supper.
They probably should have called and canceled the evening. But it was only two weeks since the death of Jim Clancy and they doubtless felt that they owed it to Rosemarie to come to the Syrian meal she had promised them.
The strain between them was so strong when they came into the house that even I noticed it.
We chatted about the Vogue shoot. They both admired my proofs and were properly impressed with my wife in the blue “foundation garment.”
“I always said you should be a model, Rose.” Peg beamed approvingly.
“If I ever have a career, which I doubt”—Rosemarie began to distribute the spicy meat dish that, at the risk of my life, I had earlier called Irish stew—“it would be doing something, not just posing for a camera.”
“Gourmet cook,” I suggested, shoveling the tasty meat into my mouth.
“Human garbage scow”—Peg smiled indulgently—“you don’t count.”
“As long as it isn’t moving,” Rosemarie agreed, “Chuck will eat it.”
Vinny was tense and silent, his eyes dark, his lips thin.
“Do you like it, Vince?” I asked tentatively.
“Great.” He smiled like the Vince of old. “Rosie’s a wonderful cook.”
“Thank you.” She bowed in gratitude.
“Peg’s a wonderful cook too.” Vince relaxed and smiled. “Not a gourmet chef like you, Rosie. Not everyone has time for that.”
Peg turned white. Somehow her anger jumped across the table. Vince, who had meant a sincere compliment—well, eighty-five percent sincere anyway—turned dark again. “I mean”—he tried to recapture his composure—“you’re not busy with a musical career like Peg, are you?”
“She’s my agent,” I said, ineptly trying to smooth things over.
“That doesn’t take her out of the house all the time, does it?”
“She’s home more than a lot of women.” Rosemarie was about to join the brawl. I wished I could find that plane which was leaving for Katmandu.
“Women that have to work for a living”—his voice rose—“women whose husbands are not able to support them.”
Oh boy.
“There is nothing wrong with a woman having a career,” Rosemarie fought back. “Just because I stay home, it doesn’t mean—”
“Why don’t YOU become a professional singer?” Vince yelled. “Then you can leave your kids alone as Peg does.”
“I’m with them more than you are.” Peg’s fingers gripped her Waterford claret glass.
“It’s my job to earn the money, yours to raise the kids.” He pushed away from the table. “A woman belongs at home.”
“Bullshit,” said my wife, pouring oil on the flames.
“Your children are never neglected, Vinny,” Peg said wearily. “You know that.”
“They need a full-time mother.”
“And a father,” she fired back, “who keeps his agreements.”
“What do you mean by that?” He leaped out of the chair.
“I mean”—her voice was icy—“that you agreed before we were married that it was all right if I continued with the violin. You urged me not to give it up when I was willing to do so. Now you’ve changed the rules.”
“All those months in hell in Korea”—he was sobbing now—“I dreamed of peace and happiness at home. I should have let myself die that night they soaked me and left me out in the cold. If I thought I’d return to a wife who loved her fiddle more than she loves me and our children, I would have died.”
“Always Korea, Vinny,” she stared at him coldly. “Always Korea, when you want to intimidate me.”
“You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like.”
“If I’d thought it would be held over my head throughout my marriage, I would have volunteered as a Red Cross worker.”
“Bitch!” he screamed.
“Not in my house!” Rosemarie screamed too. “You don’t call your wife that in my house.”
“Calm down, Rosie.” Peg did not take her eyes off her husband, who was rampaging back and forth on the other side of the table from her. “It’s been coming a long time. I’m only sorry that it had to happen in front of you.”
“You’ve all looked down on me because I’m Italian.” Vince pounded the wall. “Not good enough for a shanty Irish wife.”
“Venetian-blind Irish,” I murmured.
“That’s the last cliché, Chucky. First it’s neglecting the kids; second it’s Korea; third it’s the despised Italian people.”
“Bitch!” Vince screamed again.
“You can think of better words than that, Vince.” She glared at him. “All right, it’s been building up. I might as well say it in front of witnesses: This has to stop. Either we find help to put our marriage back together or you get out. I will not have my children subjected to these foolish rages of yours. I love you and I always will love you. I’ll fight with you as often as I need to, I’ll ask for forgiveness whenever I’m wrong, which is often, but I will not, Vinny, not, tolerate this rage of yours anymore.”
“You’ll have to tolerate it,” he sneered. “I bring home the money. I’m the breadwinner.”
“Go home, Vinny,” she replied composedly, “and calm down. Or don’t go home. Spend the night at your mother’s. She won’t put up with it for long either. And don’t come back until you agree that we both need help.”
“Fuck you!” he roared and bolted from the house.
“Sorry, Chuck.” She glanced at me. “I know how much you respect him.”
“I could tell there were some troubles,” I said lamely.
“It’s Korea, as I’m sure you’ve guessed. He’s never quite recovered his confidence since they tried to break him. Law school was supposed to help and it made things worse.”
“He’s always this way?”
“Dear God, no, Chuck. Most of the time, he’s the sweet wonderful man who took me to his senior prom. But it’s getting worse. I had to lay down the law. I’m not sure it will work.”
“I’ll drive you home, Peg.” Rosemarie laid aside her napkin and stood up. “You don’t mind, Chuck?”
“Huh? Oh, no.”
The two of them needed to cry together.
I finished the rest of the “Irish stew.”
That night, Rosemarie and I lay silently next to each other in bed, the lights still on.
“Has it been going on long?” I asked, sure that Peg had told her everything through the years.
“Up and down. Never this bad. I didn’t tell you because you’d feel you had to do something, like you always do, and there’s nothing that can be done until poor Vinny is ready.”
“Do you think they’ll separate?”
“I hope not. Peg has to mean it, though, or it won’t work. If she bluffs and he calls her bluff it’s curtains.”
More silence.
“Am I ever that way?”
“You! Oh, Chucky, how funny!”
“Well…”
“No, no, no.” She punched my arm. “You’re the one who puts up with the nut in the family.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing at all again.
“Thanks,” she continued “for taking care of the dishes.”
“I figured I should, since I ate all the food. … What can I do to help them?”
“Nothing!” she gripped my arm fiercely. “And please, please, don’t even try. You’ll only make matters worse.”
“You’re going to intervene?”
“Certainly.”
“With Vince?”
“Naturally.”
“Poor man.”
“He has it coming.”
“All right.” I felt rebuked. “Will they make it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Bet?”
Her outrageous leprechaun grin cracked her solemn face. “Never, husband mine, bet against Clancy when she’s about to lower the boom.”