Rosemarie’s battle for survival was a lot more difficult than either of us had expected that night of our reconciliation after the trip to Germany.
I had lowered the boom once, but despite Peg’s reassurance that Rosemarie’s bark was without bite, her rages still frightened me. It is one thing to have determined irrevocably that you are going to be faithful to your obligation to challenge your spouse and quite another to know when and how to make that challenge.
I still don’t know whether Rosemarie’s insistence that winter that she wanted to have our fifth child and “get it over with” was foolishness. Her psychiatrist had argued vigorously against it. We did talk about it and I did make my points about waiting a little longer till her therapy had progressed. Before I knew it, Moira was on the way.
It was a difficult pregnancy, much worse than any of the others. And it coincided with the most acutely difficult phases of her therapy, about whose details she almost never talked.
Yet there were good times too, times when I felt I had been especially blessed in my choice of a wife.
In early January, the phone rang in my office, the listed phone anyone could call.
“O’Malley,” I said firmly.
“Charles C., how come I don’t see you at the Magic Tap anymore?”
“I don’t hang around there these days,” I said, reaching for the voice.
“I don’t either. Where do you hang out?”
“Timmy …”
“Who else?”
“You’ve come home?”
“Dragged home, Charles C. … by women!”
“Which women?”
“Well this Jenny Collins broad who claims to love me and your good wife Rosemarie H. who put her up to it. I don’t suppose she told you.”
“Home to stay?”
“Yeah, I’ve been talking to your good friend Dr. Berman. He wasn’t surprised when I ambled into his office. Said I’d missed my last appointment and he’d charge me for it!”
Ten long years.
“You’re going to marry Jenny?”
“Don’t have much choice, do I?”
“I guess not.”
“So where do you hang out these days? We should talk.”
“Come over for supper. Rosemarie would love to see you.”
He hesitated. “Yeah, soon. Something more informal first. Catch up, know what I mean?”
“We usually hang out at Petersen’s on Chicago Avenue and Harlem.”
“Yeah, you always were an ice-cream guy, weren’t you? I am too these days.”
“Tomorrow night, seven-thirty?”
“Why not? Bring your bride?”
“Bring yours?”
“No choice,” he chortled. “See you then.”
“Rosemarie,” I said to her the next afternoon, “I have an insatiable craving for a malted milk.”
“I’m the one who’s pregnant.”
“Regardless.”
“Why not?”
Promptly at seven-thirty we were seated at our table. It had been a long time. The teenage waitresses didn’t recognize us. The manager did. He demanded that we sing. So we did “Younger Than Springtime,” our theme song. Jenny and Tim wandered in while we were singing, and joined in. Then came the hugs and the kisses and the squeals of delight.
I hadn’t known Tim very well before he went into the service, so I couldn’t say that he was his old self. He was, however, a relaxed and very funny man. Jenny glowed with happiness. We talked about the old days and old friends. He and Rosemarie compared notes about shrinks like they were people from New York.
“So what are you going to do now?”
“The usual thing … buy a house, have kids, get married, a little later than most people, but what the hell.”
“In the reverse order,” Jenny clarified for him.
“Sure … lemme see, which comes first? Oh, yeah, get married.”
He. hugged Jenny gently and added, “That’s why I came back. No choice in the matter.”
“You’re not planning on working?”
“Hell, no! My family is so happy that I’m back they bought me a seat down at the Exchange. That should be a lot of fun!”
For Timmy Boylan it would be.
“You guys will come to the wedding.”
“We wouldn’t miss it!” Rosemarie said.
“You’ll kind of be friends?” he said tentatively, for a moment so very fragile.
“Couldn’t drive us away.”
“Great! Let’s have some more singing!”
So we went through our usual repertory of songs, much to the delight of the waitresses, who begged us to come back often. Rosemarie promised that we would—and we’d bring the kids.
As we were leaving, Tim hugged Rosemarie with one arm and shook my hand firmly with the other.
“Thanks, Rosie, Chuck, for never losing faith.”
As we walked home, I said to Rosemarie, “Did we never lose faith?”
“I didn’t. That’s why I made Jenny go over to Ireland and bring him home.”
“You didn’t tell me about it.”
“You had enough to worry about.”
On a cold night in February of 1959, after we had returned from a trip to New York to arrange for my first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Rosemarie glanced up from The Last Chronicle of Barset (finishing Trollope was her project for this pregnancy).
“Do you want to tell me about Trudi?”
“What about her?” I put aside my bills from the New York trip, still a careful accountant at heart.
“Nothing, if it makes you angry for me to ask,” she replied mildly.
“I’ll answer whatever I can,” I said, knowing that I would never finish the proofs of my book about the Marshall Plan that night. “Or at least I’ll try to answer.”
“Well … I promise I won’t lose my temper the silly way I did in Stuttgart last fall. I had no right to object to what happened before we were married. But I am kind of curious … I bet it’s a good story … if you want to tell me.”
“It’s a good story all right, Rosemarie. And I guess I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time. You have to understand what it was like in Germany eleven years ago: most people were cold and hungry and scared. Some were especially scared because there were those who wanted to settle scores with them. It’s hard to appreciate what it was like unless you were there.”
“I’ll try to imagine.” She closed Trollope.
“You also have to realize that I was both very young and very lonely.”
“I know.”
“I did some things you wouldn’t believe possible. I don’t mean sex with Trudi… I mean their escape from the FBI.”
“The FBI!” Her eyes widened in enthusiasm. She snuggled up in her chair, ready for a good yarn. “Trudi didn’t tell me that. This will sure beat Barset.”
“Jeeps instead of carriages.”
So I told her the story, all of it that there was to tell. I’ll admit that nothing of the love or the adventure was lost in the telling. I usually manage to rise to the occasion when I find an appreciative audience, and that night Rosemarie listened with rapt attention.
“My God!” she exclaimed when I told her about the French border guards who almost stopped me. “How did you ever get out of that one, Chucky?”
“I rode off on my great white horse Silver.”
“Come on, the truth.”
So I told her about my bluff.
“That’s more fun than Silver,” she exclaimed. “You always were gutsy. Remember the guy you hit with the beer mug at Jimmy’s before we were married.”
“That was crazy. There was nothing to be gained by it. A couple of lives were at stake on the autobahn.”
“Anyway, get back to Stuttgart.”
So I told her about the hasty farewell in the mists near the Bahnhoff with the big Mercedes sign, and the fog on the trip back to Bamberg, and near collisions on the autobahn. She jumped out of her chair when I described the tank truck looming a few feet ahead of me in the fog.
“Don’t hit it!”
“It’s not a TV film, Rosemarie.”
“Sorry.” She giggled. “Well, it should be.”
“No, the ending is too vague. Anyway, I still had the FBI to worry about back in Bamberg.”
So I ended the story with as much drama as possible, concluding with the General’s words when we filed the case.
“And that was that.”
“And you never heard from her again?”
“Not until you saw the kid in the gallery.”
She nodded, now untroubled by the experience. “Well, thank God, for any number of reasons”—she grinned—“that I recognized him. Not that there was any doubt. A boy just like him kissed me once at Lake Geneva, right after he vomited a chocolate ice-cream bar.”
“Karl.”
“Karl indeed. Why didn’t she get in touch with you ever? Did she say?”
“More or less. I’d say a mixture of fear and pride and wisdom. She didn’t want to take advantage of me. She knew I was too young to marry. She sensed it would never work—all points that I was too inexperienced to understand.”
“Did you know about Karl when you left them in Stuttgart?”
“No. I suppose”—I counted up months—“she might have had her suspicions. She certainly wouldn’t have told me, for the same reasons she disappeared. Later I had sense enough to wonder occasionally. I guess I never took the possibility seriously.”
“No wonder you were reluctant to make the trip to Germany.”
“I wanted to know, and yet I didn’t want to know.”
“Now?”
“I’m glad I know.”
She paused, considering the whole story carefully.
“I think it’s a beautiful story, Chuck. Light opera maybe. Could I play the role? No, not Nordic enough.” She burst into laughter. “Seriously, it’s a story of young love and honor and bravery and wisdom and sacrifice. There is nothing in it of which you should be ashamed or about which I should have been upset.”
“Sin?”
“Such as it was”—she waved her hand—“long since forgiven by God. … And you never told me because you were afraid I would react… well, the way I did?”
“I don’t know. I mean I never really thought of telling anyone because I was ashamed of what had happened. I didn’t think you’d understand.”
“And I didn’t.”
“Regardless.” She waved her hand again, not ready to plead mitigating circumstances. “A beautiful story and a beautiful little boy as the fruit of love. I’m ashamed of myself all over again.”
“Don’t be. You were caught off-guard.”
She opened her mouth, probably to attack herself again. “Well, to give me full credit, which is what the shrink says I should do, now I understand and appreciate your story.”
“I’m not sure I ever will.”
“Funny thing is”—she bit her lip—“one part of me always knew. On our wedding night”—she grinned wickedly—“I mean our wedding morning, you were so gentle I knew that you had made love before. I even thought it might be the blonde in the picture. And in that same little corner in the attic of my head where I knew all those things, I said it’s all right. It’s over now. And it’s none of your business anyway.”
“She lived in that house in Bamberg.”
“In the Obersandstrasse? Maybe I even guessed that. So I really was terrible, wasn’t I, Chucky? I knew and I didn’t mind and then when it turned out to be all true I turned into a bitch.”
I held her close. “It was a turning point, Rosemarie, a blessing in disguise.”
“Better late than never.” She leaned against me, drained of strength.
“Not all that late.”
She regarded me carefully. “Right, Chuck, late, but not all that late and not, as it turns out, too late. … You would have been happy with her, wouldn’t you?”
What do you say to that? Think quickly. Come up with a good answer.
“But”—she glanced up at my face, pondering the data judiciously—“not as happy as with me. With Clancy you get a lot more lows, but a lot more highs, and you really dig the highs, don’t you?”
“You said it for me.”
“Can I write her?”
“Trudi? Why?”
“To apologize. I really should, you know.”
A kooky idea, maybe; but perhaps good therapy. I had learned a couple of months before never to suggest that she talk about something with her therapist.
“If you want to write, by all means do so. I can’t object and even if I could I wouldn’t.”
“Great.” She picked up The Last Chronicle of Barset again. “Did you really cuss out that Frenchman the way you said?”
“Cross my heart.”
She embraced me enthusiastically. “Definitely you’ll sing the tenor role.” Her maroon robe fell open to reveal luscious breasts swelling in preparation for the coming child. We cuddled together. Then she bounced back to her chair. “I’ll finish this chapter and then we’ll make really sweet love. Me on top because of our friend here.”
I stood up and removed the book from her hands. “Finish it tomorrow, woman.”
Even though I had been married to her for almost nine years and ought to have known better, I did not think she would really write to Trudi.
She strode into my study on a bitter cold March day a few weeks later, and threw a letter on my desk, “Well, there it is. I hope you like it.”
“It” was a letter.
I am writing to you, long after I should have, to apologize for my coldness when we met in Stuttgart last year. I was surprised to see you and Karl at the gallery, but surprise is no excuse for being rude.
I also want to tell you that things are fine again with me and Charles. Our crisis in Stuttgart was a turning point.
I am expecting our fifth (and last!) child in August. She will seal our reconciliation.
I know that your love for Charles is not a barrier to my love for him. I also hope that my love for him is not a barrier to your happy memories of what he did for you and who he was for you.
I don’t suppose that it is possible, but I would like it very much if we could all three of us be friends.
I trust that you and Herr Weiss and your children are all well.
Rosemarie Clancy O’Malley
“That’s very lovely, Rosemarie.” I gave the letter back to her. “It hits just the right note. I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary.”
“The hell it isn’t.” She stormed out of the room.
A week later Trudi’s reply arrived.
Lieb Rosemarie,
My most sincere congratulations on your pregnancy. I hope you and your daughter will be healthy and happy.
What name will you give to her?
I find that I too am expecting another child. Herr Weiss and I are both very happy. We have waited so long. Karl is exulting too. He thinks it will be a little sister, but I am not sure.
I am prepared to believe that your child will be a daughter if you say so.
I am also most happy that it is well again with you and Charles. He is a most wonderful man, as we both know.
I do not know whether it is possible for all three of us to be friends, but I should think it would be possible for you and me to be friends. We have much in common.
We were, after all, saved by the same man, were we not?
Herr Weiss joins me in greeting you and all your family.
With affection,
Trudi
“‘Leib Rosemarie.’ How about that for putting me in my place!”
“Will you write back?”
“Certainly!”
I fingered the letter gingerly. “I’m not sure I’d feel at ease if you and she joined forces.
“The monster battalion again?”
“Monstrous regiment.”
“Whatever.”
There were occasional airmail letters from Germany after that. I was no more informed of their contents than I was of the contents of the phone conversations with the good April and with Peg.
I was informed, however, that Trudi’s second child was a daughter and that her name was Maria.
One afternoon, a few weeks before the coming of Moira the Red, I found a photo of Karl, black-and-white in a silver frame, on my bookcase.
“Thank you for the picture of Karl,” I said after supper when we were watching Sid Caesar on TV.
“I know he’s on your mind a lot,” she looked up from Phineas Finn. “In black-and-white he doesn’t look much like you, so no curious daughter will notice. It’s the red hair.”
Indeed this son of mine that I would never know well and whose destiny was, as I thought then, out of my control, was on my mind a lot. I loved him and worried about him and wondered about him.
“You don’t miss much, good wife.”
“Naturally, husband mine”—she continued to read Trollope—“what else?”
Most of the incidents during and after the coming of Moira were not that simple. Rosemarie’s delivery was complicated and painful. And Moira—unlike James, whose survival was never really in doubt—almost didn’t make it.
Rosemarie came home from the hospital severely depressed. Nor did the depression ease after a couple of weeks. She was morose, grim, and not interested, for the first time, in recovering her figure.
“What difference does it make?”
How hard does a husband push when his wife seems to be a victim of postpartum melancholy.
I telephoned Dr. Stone.
“I am responsible for the treatment of her problems, Mr. O’Malley. You are responsible for insisting on the realities of your marriage and family life. Is that not so?”
“I don’t want to aggravate her condition.”
“Rarely do we aggravate conditions with those we love when we insist on reality, Mr. O’Malley. If this were one of those rare situations, I would surely tell you.”
“What should I say to her?”
“Really, Mr. O’Malley, wouldn’t you know that better than I?”
“Just a little hint?”
“And you call her a Maxwell Street merchant? Very well. One hint. You say to her, kindly but firmly, ‘Rosemarie, cut it out.’”
“I’ve said it many times before.”
“Does it work?”
“Always.”
“Well?”
There were benefits to that fifth child.
Moira the Red was a special prize.
“Well,” April Rosemary said, sighing just like her mother when she looked at the tiny, tiny girl-child with the bright red hair, “she is so beautiful that I suppose we’ll have to spoil her.”
“Love her a lot,” I corrected.
“That’s what I mean, DADDY.”
The transformation in our firstborn was remarkable. With another little girl in the house, finally, she dropped her fussbudget persona and became the serene child that we had known early in her life. And a little mother modeled in the image of her own mother.
I was holding Moira up in the air one day and she was making happy “ga-ga” sounds at me.
“Daddy loves Moira,” April Rosemary told her wide-eyed brothers, “because she has red hair just like he does.”
“Daddy,” I said, trying to sweep them all into a single embrace, “loves all his children.”
“But,” my eldest insisted, “he has to love us all differently because we’re all different. Mommy said so.”
That was that. I was outnumbered again.
At long last I worked up enough nerve to say, “Rosemarie, cut it out.”
“What did you say?” She threw away the volume of Toynbee’s A Study of History she was reading and rose from her chair, eyes dilated, face white, lips a thin angry line.
She missed, just as Peg had predicted she would.
I remembered the ten-year-old tyke about to have another one of her frequent tantrums. That image melted me into tenderness, not the emotion I needed.
“Well,” she thundered, “are you going to answer my question?”
She hadn’t thrown the book at me. The rage was in her eyes, however. What I had once thought was killing rage. It was not, I now tried to persuade myself, dangerous.
Rather it was a sign of fear—a fragile and terrified woman trying to defend herself.
“You heard me.”
“Cut out WHAT?”
“You know very well what I mean.”
“A hell of a husband you are.” She stormed out of the room. I heard doors slamming in the distance.
My stomach turned over slowly a number of times. I had been less frightened in the Bohemian Alps and when hiding in her father’s home at Lake Geneva.
I drew a deep breath and forced myself to walk, with infinite slowness, up the steps to our room.
She wasn’t there.
I pondered for a moment and walked back down to the first floor and then to the basement.
The Second Brandenburg was blaring with loud enough trumpets to serve on judgment day.
In maroon sweat suit she was pumping away on her exercycle.
“Don’t overdo it the first time,” I said, sounding like a bored confessor with an uninteresting penitent.
“Fuck you!” Her face was still twisted with rage.
“Don’t blame your sore muscles on me.” I walked to the machine and pushed hard on her thigh.
She stopped pedaling. “Asshole,” she muttered, the fight going out of her.
“Are you angry because I stopped you or because it took me so long to try to stop you?”
“Both.” The ends of her lips flicked up and down as though she might just smile sometime soon.
“I’m sorry for the second, not for the first.”
“Well, you should be.” The thigh muscles became docile under my hand and the blessed crazy imp expression appeared on her face. “Besides, if my muscles are sore, maybe someone will massage them with ointment.”
“That could be arranged anyway.”
“Sure?”—her voice choked—“even when they’re still so flabby?”
“Sure.” I began to knead the muscle under my control. Then its partner on her other leg.
Sobbing, she threw her arms around me. “I’m so sorry, Chuck, so very, very sorry.”
We must have clung to each other for an hour.
“You probably need a nice hot bath before the anointing with oils.”
“That”—her eyes widened in surrender—“sounds like a very wise idea. A long leisurely bath, huh?”
“You bet.” Then I said the word that first came to my lips at the airport in Mexico City. “You’re a very gallant woman, Rosemarie.”
“Gallant?” Her tears were replaced by laughter. “Me?”
“You. Now, about that hot bath.” I unzipped her jacket.
We progressed in the next several months, though there were terrible setbacks too.
For Rosemarie every new day was an occasion to begin again at the starting blocks. She was skilled at the race now, but the need to run it would never leave her life.
And I had to run it with her, with less skill and less courage than she, truth to tell.
I continued to worry, not every day but at least once a week, about the ice-cream bar.