Rosemarie’s lips were drawn in a tight angry line—a thin jagged pencil mark scratched across her pale face.
“I won’t listen to that crap, Chuck, it’s simply not true.”
“Rosemarie,” I pleaded. “It is true. If you had not prodded me, I never would have become a photographer. Or finished my doctorate either.”
“I’m not a prodder,” she shouted. “Nor a meddling matriarch. I’m not responsible for anyone else’s mistakes besides my own.”
We were sitting in her office, sipping soda water at the end of a February day on which moist snow had piled up on the streets and walks. The kids, all but Moira, were building a snowman on the lawn, one that looked suspiciously like me.
For all my care and preparation I had bungled badly my attempt to tell Rosemarie that she had been grace for me and all the crazy O’Malleys.
She heard me say that a) she had meddled in our lives, and b) she was responsible for our mistakes.
That was not what I said at all, but she would not abandon her interpretation. Routed, I had to find a way to get off the field of battle to return again with another plan of attack.
“Rosemarie, would you please listen to me carefully?”
“I have listened, damn it, and I’m saying you’re wrong and I don’t want to hear anymore of it.”
“You have not listened. I did not say you were responsible for anyone else’s mistakes and I did not say you were a meddling matriarch.”
“You said I was a matriarch!” she scowled at me.
“Not today.”
“Well, you’ve said it before and you’re thinking it now.”
“I said you were a matriarch like my mother is.”
“That’s silly. I’m as different from her as night is from day.”
You see what happened? The subject became my words instead of her grace. A neurotic response indeed, but a remarkably ingenious one. Today I was not going to win.
“What I’m trying to say is—”
“I KNOW what you’re trying to say and I don’t want to hear it. Now don’t bother me with it anymore. I have to call the kids in and get supper ready.”
“Rosemarie—”
“You invade my privacy”—she jumped out of her chair—“by talking to my shrink. Then you come back and try to play shrink for me yourself. Well, you’re no damn good at it. Don’t ever try it again.”
She sailed triumphantly out of the room.
I had fallen flat on my face.
Or perhaps on another part of my anatomy. Bayonets fixed, the redcoats marched across the broad green field under a clear sky. Their cannons boomed behind them, producing puffs of white smoke. My ragtag peasant battle line had only spades and pikes and an occasional rusty musket. And my 50 caliber machine gun. Tim and Jenny were there, Cordelia and Ed, Peg and Vince, all dressed in Irish peasant clothes. When the advancing battle line was only fifty feet away, I opened fire. They kept coming. My bullets were blanks! They stormed into us! Somehow I changed the scene, reloaded my weapon and opened fire again. The redcoats turned and ran. I continued to mow them down. Then I saw Rosemarie on the ground, a lance protruding from her chest.
“Rosemarie!” I shouted.
I sat up in bed, uncertain as to what was real and what was not.
“Chucky,” she said sleepily, “are you having another one of your nightmares?”
“Are you all right?”
“Sure,” she raised her right hand feebly to wave me away. “Just sleepy. It was only a dream.”
“Sorry,” I said, now wide awake.
“It’s okay. Try to get some sleep. Tomorrow is a big day.”
It sure is, I thought.