“He does look a little bit like you, dear, a very pretty little boy.”
“That her husband?” Dad peered over my shoulder. “Nice-looking guy. My kind of man, I suspect.”
“Probably,” Mom agreed. “Have another sip of port, dear.”
Port glasses in hand, my parents were calmly and dispassionately considering pictures of my sometime mistress and my illegitimate son. Doesn’t one see pictures like that every day?
“I have to say, Chuck”—Dad refilled my glass—“that I really didn’t think you had it in you.”
“She really is quite an attractive young woman.” Mom peered closely with her trifocals. “Perhaps not your type exactly, but still stunning.”
I could not believe my ears. These were my straitlaced, West Side Irish Catholic parents.
“You guys seem proud of me.”
“Well, we don’t completely approve,” Mom said as she put the pictures down, “but she is very attractive.”
“And how could we not like that little boy?” Dad sipped his port, the best you could buy in Chicago now. “Even in your self-deprecating version of the events, you seemed to have acted, well… with courage and resourcefulness.”
“And as I say”—Mom finished her glass of port—“all’s well that ends well. Isn’t that true?”
In this best possible of all best possible worlds.
The redheaded punk may have been a bastard, but he was their grandchild.
They had met me outside of customs at O’Hare. Peg and the others had apparently been warned off. Things were not good on Euclid Avenue. Mrs. Anderson and the maid had been fired. Phone calls from Peg and Mom were not answered. The kids were crying. Mrs. Anderson wouldn’t leave. Peg had crept in every day to make sure that nothing bad was happening. Rosemarie started drinking early in the morning and was drunk by noon. She spent the day locked in her office, drinking, smoking, and playing records. She wouldn’t talk to anyone. Some nights she slept in the office. However, there were some signs that the drinking was tapering off. Last night when Mom had called, she had spoken for the first time. “Leave me alone. I wish I were dead.”
“But, dear, she sounded almost sober.”
And poor Mrs. Anderson reported that she had gone up to her own room.
I was brought to the parental house on East Avenue with advice that I spend the night there. The place was as always awash in blueprints. How did anything ever get built?
“I must say”—Mom was plucking at the harp, adjusting the keys—“that I think Rosemarie has behaved very badly in this matter. Very badly, poor thing.”
“What a man does before he is married,” my father mused, “is his business.”
My mother raised a delicate eyebrow. “And a woman too.”
“Well”—my father laughed genially—“what’s sauce for the gander…”
“The other way around, Vangie darling.”
These two charming strangers were going to tell me exactly what they thought I should do. I’d better listen carefully.
“The child”—Mom tightened a harp string—“has always been a little, uh, delicate.”
I had not told them about Rosemarie and her father. That was a secret to be revealed to no one.
“Small wonder”—Dad picked up a roll of blueprints, looked at them in surprise and then put them at the other side of his big worktable—“with those odd parents she had.”
Mom plucked a string and frowned. “Mind you, there’s nothing seriously wrong with her. She just needs a firm hand now and then, that’s all.”
“Firm hand?”
Dad nodded his agreement. “Firm hand.”
“The poor thing would probably welcome it. She did behave very badly this time, didn’t she?”
“What is the content of this firm hand?” I looked from one to the other of my parents. They had rehearsed the whole scene. How many other scenes … ?
“Content? Oh, you mean what should you tell her? Well, I think it’s really very simple. Isn’t it, Vangie dear?”
“Very simple indeed,” Dad agreed.
“And it is?”
“Why, tell her, very gently but very firmly, that she has to see a doctor or you’ll get a divorce and take the kids with you.”
“I see. You mean a psychiatrist?”
“Well, yes, that’s what they call them, isn’t it? Like Ted?”
“Rosemarie isn’t crazy, Mom.”
My mother, who twenty years earlier would have talked in whispers about putting people away and about “Dunning” (the state mental hospital at the end of the Irving Park streetcar line), was now quite calmly prescribing psychiatric treatment for a daughter-in-law she loved almost as much as she loved her own daughters.
“Well, I know that, dear. She’s probably not even an alcoholic, that’s what they call them isn’t it? She should really see a doctor, shouldn’t she? I mean don’t you think she ought to have a long time ago?”
“With parents like those two”—Dad nodded wisely—“it’s a miracle she’s survived as well as she has.”
“Poor sweet thing.” Mom began to play something pure and sweet.
I said that it was time for me to get some sleep. It looked like I had a long day tomorrow.
I woke up at three o’clock, as one usually does on the east-west jet lag, and tossed and turned for a couple of hours. Finally I got up, made breakfast for myself in the kitchen, read the papers, and made a few phone calls.
Promptly at ten o’clock, I asked my parents to wish me luck and walked down Greenwood to Euclid. It was a glorious Indian summer day, a promise that spring will come once again.
After a long hard winter.
A day just like the one on which I took her to dinner in the Chinese place on Fifty-fifth Street. Or like the day I had won my first tennis set from her.
I let myself into the house. April Rosemary, the complete oldest-child-fussbudget, embraced me and poured out the whole story.
In sum, “Mommy is real sick,” and April Rosemary had to stay home from school to help Mrs. Anderson with the kids. And she had made Kevin go to school because he was no help at all.
“Fine,” I said judiciously. “But now that I’m home you can go to school at lunchtime, can’t you?”
“Yes, Daddy, if you write me a note for S’ter.”
They were still S’ter, were they? “Sure I’ll write a note. I better talk to Mommy first.”
Actually, I went upstairs first to see Jimmy Mike and Sean, who were raising hell with Mrs. Anderson.
“She sure is sick, Mr. O’Malley, real sick.”
“We’ll take care of her, Mrs. Anderson, don’t worry. And thank you for staying.”
“She was so sick, I just couldn’t leave.”
Sick, huh? Drunk, that’s what.
I knocked on the door of her study.
“Who’s there?”
“Chuck.”
“Go ‘way, I never want to see you again.”
“It’s your house and your door. You’re the one who will have to pay for it if I break it down.”
Tough beginning, huh?
What if she says go ahead and try? You’re in front of the house in the Bohemian Alps once again.
I was at least as scared as I had been in the hotel in Stuttgart. My throat was dry, my hands were wet, my chest hurt. The ugly vision of our marriage was now visible all the time, not focused yet, but looming there in grim and silent accusation, like the stone statue in Don Giovanni.
I scarcely recognized my wife. Her face was bloated and puffy, her hair snarled, her blue bathrobe dirty, her makeup heavy and smudged, her eyes bloodshot—a chronic alcoholic who looked as if she had been in a mental institution for a month. The room smelled of cigarette smoke, urine, and vomit.
Elvis was singing on the phonograph; appropriately enough, the song was “Don’t Be Cruel.”
“I want to talk to you, Rosemarie.” I turned off the power on the stereo system, causing poor Elvis to screech to a halt.
I never did like the so-and-so.
“I don’t want to talk to you. Go ‘way.” She tried to push me out the door.
I refused to budge. “Nonetheless you are going to talk to me, understand?”
“Big fucking deal.” Still, she backed off.
There was a lighted cigarette on one of her precious Ming dishes. She was aware of a foul aroma.
“Sit down, Rosemarie.” I gestured toward the judge’s chair behind her Sheraton desk.
“I don’t have to.”
“I said SIT DOWN.”
Was that my voice? I wondered. What if she won’t? “Big fucking deal.” She sat down.
Trying to maintain my appearance of calm, confident self-control, I walked to my appointed easy chair, removed an empty gin bottle from it, and deposited the bottle in the wastebasket.
“You have two choices, Rosemarie.” I kept my voice firm and controlled as I recited my carefully prepared lines.
“Yeah?” she sneered at me. “I’m impressed.”
She picked up the cigarette, inhaled, and blew smoke in my direction.
“The first choice”—I spoke very carefully—“is divorce. I spoke to Ed Murray this morning. He assures me that I will have little difficulty in obtaining custody of the children. I have every intention of doing so. I don’t know what will happen to you after a divorce, but then you will be your problem and not mine.”
Had I gone too far? Did I sound too harsh?
She drew on the cigarette again and then, impatiently, snuffed it out. “And?”
“And what?”
“The second choice, asshole.”
“The second choice is that you phone a psychiatrist and make an appointment for treatment. Today.”
She slumped back in her chair and bowed her head. Would there be an explosion? What would I do if she refused to choose?
“Which do you want?”
“The choice is yours, not mine.”
She was silent for a few moments.
“Yeah, I understand, but I have to have some idea of which you prefer.”
“The second, of course.”
“Why?” she lifted her head and stared defiantly at me. Would there be more about whether I wanted to marry Trudi? “Wouldn’t you be better off without me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I love you, as much as ever.”
She looked down again.
I walked over to the window and opened the drapes so that the autumn sunlight could pour in. Such a beautiful day, not appropriate for ending a marriage.
And when she did, what would she say?
I turned around, impatient to end the scene. “Well?” Her answer was one I could never have anticipated in all the scenarios that had run through my brain earlier in the morning. Yet the response was pure Rosemarie.
“I don’t know any psychiatrists.”
“What?”
“I said”—she glanced up at me and then looked away—“I don’t know any psychiatrists. I mean, I can’t talk to Ted, can I? My sister-in-law’s husband and all…”
Such an easy surrender? Even at her worst the woman was a magical mystery. And the ugly vision in the back of my brain loomed larger, as temporarily the lights went up on the stage and then flickered out.
“Here are three names.” I removed a sheet of paper from my notebook and put it on her desk.
“Ted’s suggestions?”
“No.”
She considered me suspiciously. “Whose?”
“Dr. Berman’s.”
“Oh. … He’s a good man, isn’t he?”
“The best.”
“Fixed up that cute Kurt man, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
She ran her finger down the list. “One’s a woman. Martha Stone. She’ll probably be best.”
“Ted gave her the highest marks.”
“All right, call her for me.”
“No.”
“No?”
If only I could stick it out for a few more seconds, I might just win for both of us. “You call her yourself.”
“You want me”—she smiled crookedly—“to make it my commitment, not yours?”
“Precisely.”
She reached for the phone, then hesitated.
Dear God, don’t let her change her mind.
She ground out her cigarette (with a gesture that signaled the end), straightened her robe, flipped her hair off her shoulders, and sat up straight, like a seventh-grader right in front of S’ter’s desk.
You look your best when you call a shrink for an appointment.
“Dr. Stone? May I talk to her please?” She turned away from me so I wouldn’t see her face. “Yes, Doctor, I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Rosemarie O’Malley.” Smooth as Irish linen, the president of an affluent parish women’s society talking to Monsignor. “I’d like very much to talk to you. … That long a wait?” She turned to me, terror in her eyes. “Yes, I think you could say it’s very definitely an emergency.
“Tomorrow? At two? Thank you very much, Doctor. I’ll be looking forward to it.”
Very softly she replaced the receiver.
Neither of us said anything for a long minute or two.
“Okay?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Okay,” I said, and then realized that I still had to hang tough. “For the present.”
“One step at a time.”
I nodded. “One step at a time.”
Too incredibly easy. Why had I been such a coward? What else could she possibly have said?
“Chuck, I think I’ll go upstairs and sleep for the next twenty-four hours. I’ll look bad enough when I meet the doctor. I don’t want to look as bad as I do now.”
“All right, I’ll ask Mrs. Anderson to clean up in here.”
“No, don’t do that; poor thing has had to put up with too much of my shit this last week.” She rose shakily. “I’ll do it first thing in the morning.”
She left the office on unsteady feet, but with a faint hint of determination in her shoulders.
I’ve done it, I thought with enormous relief. I’ve done it! I began to straighten up the room.
And, God help me, it was easy—the easiest thing in the world.