CHRISTINE GRADUATED SEVENTEENTH in her class at Northwestern. She was smart—big ten cum laude smart. She graduated seventeenth in her class out of hundreds. She loved to study all kinds of things. When she put her mind to it, she could achieve anything.
She had gained a reputation for being the go-to gal at work. if someone was sick in hers or almost any other hospital specialty. She was a fast learner and had more on-the-job training for different specialties than I could begin to express. She was beyond dependable. I will never understand how she pulled off doing all the things she did on the job and with our family. We did have a tremendous amount of help with Robert Phillip during his early life. Christine’s parents, Dan and Judy O’Reilly, lived in Hyde Park. Getting from there to Bridgeport only took a few minutes. They were almost always available for babysitting not because we asked them for their help but mainly because they asked us for the joy of spending as much time as possible with their grandson. They were keeping Robert Phillip for a few days while Christine delivered Lena.
Christine’s father was an accountant. That’s where Christine received her acuity with numbers. Dan O’Reilly was smart, made a good living, and was incredible at investing and making money from those investments. He and Christine were very close. He spent hours with her from the time she was nine years old teaching her about the stock market and the value of saving money. On numerous occasions he would tell her, “‘Teenie,’ saved money never sleeps. It works for you around the clock.” He was still telling her that when she was in her early thirties and she was listening.
Because of her love of and near wizardry with money, I gladly let Christine handle all of our financial affairs. She would talk to me about everything and I would listen, but handling the money was her thing. Because we lived modestly and had successful careers, our holdings grew rapidly. Most importantly, Dan O’Reilly was always there to answer questions that Christine might have. They were a playful tag team when it came to sharing options and ideas and solving financial equations. Christine’s father was always a good friend to us on monetary and many other levels.
Christine’s mother was also a nurse. There was no doubt that Judy had taught her daughter how to take care of people tenderly. Judy was pretty like Christine. In her forties when I met her, she was in excellent physical condition, a byproduct of her enjoying running for exercise at every opportunity. She also liked to lift weights. So besides being an excellent example to Christine how to care for people tenderly, she was also an example for Christine how to eat healthy and stay strong. Judy was five feet two inches tall, the same height as Christine. And she was a little dynamo. In her fifties when our children were just born, Judy was in a position to work when she wanted—thanks in part to her husband, Dan, and his skills at making money. Their family was the opposite of Christine and me. Dan was the financial guru, planner, and manager. Whereas in our family, Christine was the financial expert.
I wondered how Judy did all the things she did. She was like three women in one. She especially starred at Thanksgiving and Christmas where year after year she was the gracious hostess for wonderful parties at her home in Hyde Park. Judy was a beautiful woman inside and out, and I often thought how lucky Dan was to have her love, as I was to have Christine’s. Put Judy and Christine side by side and they looked much more like sisters than mother and daughter. Though both women were independent thinkers and late twentieth century contemporary progressives, their religious beliefs were fairly simple and almost identical. Both women had been born Catholics and believed deeply in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and the pope as the leader of the spiritual world and all of the basic tenants their church espoused. Neither of them attended mass every Sunday but the reason for that for each woman was that their work schedules had often prevented them from doing so. But each woman was sure to fulfill the obligations required to be official practicing Catholics. They were two extremely benevolent women who were near real life saints. They gave constantly and profoundly of themselves to countless souls. The only difference between them and canonized saints was that they weren’t performing miracles, and they weren’t dead. What they were performing were endless acts of transformative love for their patients, friends, and families. Neither of them believed in ghosts, except the Holy Ghost.
My wife came from good stock. She was a giving person. Her goodness most times seemed effortless. But right now, when Lena’s future was in question, I observed how difficult it was for her to hold it together. This generally playful woman was having a hard time controlling her weeping. Usually bubbly and effervescent, Christine had become remarkably quiet and instead of being a rock that I could lean on, I found myself often standing silently next to her, holding her hand and weeping along with her. I was still so damaged from the loss of my parents and grandparents that it seemed as though there was nothing of substance within myself to tap into for moral support or encouragement. Of course Judy and Dan O’Reilly were always nearby to help, but I was frustrated with myself for not having a spiritual fountain in reserve that I could drink from to fortify myself so I could be stronger for my wife at this time.
Still, Christine was my greatest role model. Even during this difficult time that knocked me awkwardly from any sense of healing that I had experienced with the passing of the years, I could still feel strength emanating from Christine. And I wondered, shamefully, whether she thought less of me because she could sense my weakness within my silence.
* * * * *
Three times in the next week before Christine came home from the hospital, I brought home a bottle of rum with me. I’d go to work, go to the hospital, see the girls, then stop at a liquor store and buy some rum and Coke. I almost thanked God for the companionship of those bottles because with them, I didn’t feel so alone. I wasn’t thinking about any impending alcoholism. I was wondering how to get through the next hour without fracturing within myself from fear of the unknown.
Had I been a stronger man, not such a moral coward, I would not have needed the rum. I could have turned to prayer, worked out more, read a self-help book, gone to church, confessed my sins, received Communion. But I didn’t believe in the religious stuff anymore. And there wasn’t much time to work out because I was spending nearly sixteen hours a day between the office and the hospital.
It was Christine who was the strong one—always. I don’t want to give the impression that I am not a good person. I am. I always was and I always will be, but it’s the truth. I love my wife, my kids, my family, people in crisis, people in general. I am not a racist. I hate war of any kind, and I’d do anything I could for my family not only when they were in trouble, but I like to create fun things to do with them too. But Christine was the stronger one. And Christine was more creative too. She planned our dinners when our schedules permitted. They were always tastier and more balanced than what I threw together when I was in charge. She would conceive of our vacations, plan routes if we drove, take care of flight schedules, and picked hotels when we flew. She did all of the shopping for the kids’ clothes the first few years of their lives. As I’ve said before, and I will probably say it again, she was a human dynamo. Finally at the end of the day one might think she would drop in bed like a brick. But she rarely did. Her dynamism didn’t end at the bed. She came into it wearing something adorable and began doing everything she could to please me prompting me to do everything I could to please her. And when the sharing of love ended, only then did my wonderful wife collapse into sleep. When she slept, it was deep, so deep that she only needed five hours or so of it. Then she’d pop up refreshed, shower, make us coffee and toast or eggs or bacon or all of the above, then proceed again with one of her usual days of unceasing goodness. No person I knew in my life deserved more love than Christine O’Reilly McKenzie.
To the utter and complete joy of each of us, Lena’s surgery on her tiny heart went perfectly well. She was okay, and she would be okay forever. There was nothing to worry about, but I didn’t stop worrying. I especially worried about her size. She was so small. And during the nine weeks between when I found out about the hole in Lena’s heart and the surgery to repair it, I became used to having a bottle of rum in the house. Before Christine returned from the hospital, I kept the bottle on the night stand or the right side of the bed near where I slept. A few hours before Christine came home I moved the bottle to a food cabinet in the kitchen. Christine asked me about it one day very matter-of-factly “no big deal.” I told her I was back to enjoying a drink now and then and she accepted it rather easily, no further questions. I purposely refrained from telling her that the bottle of rum in the cabinet was the fifth bottle I had bought since the morning the doctor had called me the first time about Lena.
* * * * *
Life settled back to our normal routines after Lena came home. Christine continued on her trek of being a human dynamo, and I continued as a productive worrier. Judy and Dan continued to love their grandchildren, babysit for them as much as possible and always without complaint. Even Lena had a bit of a growth spurt between nine months and a year old. But the biggest surprise came in August of 1977. Christine told me one night while the kids were staying with Grandma and Grandpa that she was pregnant again. It was bedtime and she had come into bed wearing an adorable blue teddy. She had spent our entire evening together acting as a happy little butterfly flitting around the house looking as if she was planning to tell me something interesting. In this situation I had no way of knowing what she was going to share with me. After all, she was so successful at work and seemed to be always getting raises and promotions or switching departments or going back to school to learn a new skill that it could have easily been one of those types of things. Besides promotions and raises, she loved to share things with her parents. I especially liked the tales she would recount when she worked in the emergency room. They were of limb or life-saving details, that if I were a writer, I could have written marvelous short stories about.
Tonight though, there was something different about her. The butterfly was glowing. She made me my favorite dinner of stripped steak and green bean casserole and added our favorite touch by lighting the candles on the dining room table. I didn’t rush her by asking her what it was that she had to tell me. I never did. I just let her plan unfold at her pace, which I had become used to, after over a decade of marriage. She loved to share her stories. And I loved to listen to them. They came all the time. I’ve read many novels in my lifetime, but none of them delighted me, or held my interest, the way listening to Christine’s stories did.
At the table our conversation was extremely casual. We talked about the Cubs, the White Sox, national politics, Chicago news, world news, etc. I had a glass of rum and Coke with my dinner to take the nagging edge off worry.
After dinner, I helped her clear the dishes. Then I washed them and the broiler pan and the casserole dish. She dried them and put them away. Then we retired to our bedroom. I brushed my teeth and gargled some mouthwash, then jumped into bed to work on some notes from work. Thirteen minutes later, Christine emerged from the bathroom wearing her blue teddy, hair down and brushed out to incredible luxuriousness. I only had one lamp turned on, located on the nightstand to the right of our bed. It didn’t give off much light, just enough to work by. But when Christine emerged from the bathroom with that remarkable glow about her, the room became unmistakably brighter as did I, as I had on so many other nights, as she approached our sacred coziness. She pulled down her side of the covers, slid underneath them, pulled them up over her body and slithered right over to me. She hugged me before I could finish writing my last sentence of notes and put my clipboard on the nightstand. But I stopped immediately, got rid of the clipboard, and turned to snuggle with Christine. She sure knew how to celebrate making an announcement.
“I have an interesting story to tell you,” she said.
“You do?” I answered. I couldn’t have possibly guessed.
“You silly.” She giggled, knowing full well I knew something was coming.
“An amazing thing happened at work today.”
“It did?” And I readied myself for another of her real life hospital thrillers.
“I found out something fascinating about one of the patients there.”
“You did? What is it?”
“She’s going to have a baby.”
“Who is it?” I asked, thinking it might be a local TV anchor, a famous lawyer, or some city councilwoman.
“Well,” she said coyly, “the real irony of this story is that she lives in Bridgeport.”
Now, my curiosity soared. In a split second, I recalled all the even remotely famous women who lived in Bridgeport that I had seen while shopping at Dominick’s or eating at the Governor’s Table or David’s. There were quite a few actually.
“Can I give you a clue or two?” Then she kissed me playfully on my right cheek.
“Sure,” I said. “Shoot.”
She had my undivided attention. She was lying on her left side, her right leg draped over my thighs and the fingers of her right hand were tugging on my twelve or so chest hairs.
“She goes to church at Saint Anthony’s.” That was the Catholic church located on Twenty-Seventh and Wallace. Ironically, Christine preferred attending Saint Anthony’s because she liked the sermons there better than those at Saint David’s on Thirty-Second and Emerald.
“Can I ask a question?” I asked, so happy to be participating in her little game.
“Go ahead.” She giggled.
“Do you ever see her there or talk to her there?”
“Not really, no.”
That answer threw me. “Now you’ve gotten me completely off track.”
“Want another clue?”
“Please.”
“She likes the same clothes as me.”
I was thinking, what? But I didn’t say anything because I wanted to run the clues back in my mind. Here’s what I had so far. An amazing thing happened at work, something fascinating with one of the patients there, going to have a baby, lives in Bridgeport, attends Saint Anthony’s, but doesn’t ever really see her there or talk with her.
Now Christine wasn’t shy. After all, you do remember she picked me up, literally, in the snow in Evanston one morning at 1:00 a.m. And she had enough self-confidence that she could speak openly and at ease with anyone. But why hadn’t she ever spoken with this woman at church which could so often be a relaxed environment? And what was really baffling me was that if this mystery woman was a patient at Saint Joe’s, why didn’t Christine know her? I dispelled that thought quickly when I reasoned that Saint Joe’s was a big place. Certainly a nurse—even one that moved from department to department as much as Christine did—could not know every woman who found out there that she was pregnant. My mind was ping-ponging associations seeing if I could trigger any better guesses as to who it might be or at least better questions to ask Christine.
I continued to ponder while Christine tugged at my chest hairs. I was sure I had one or two less by now. Christine was patiently quiet. Slowly, a connection was forged. It started with my remembering something I had briefly forgotten. Christine had stated that the woman liked the same clothes as she. But if she never really spoke to the woman or even saw her in church, how could Christine possibly know that they both wore the same kind of clothes?
Before that instant, it was as if Christine’s clues were being transported on the cars of a long freight train through a pitch black tunnel. Click, click, click, click. It wasn’t the sounds of the train wheels going over the railroad ties. It was my metamorphical mind sounds, moving in rapid-fire succession attempting to glean truth from darkness.
Suddenly my heart almost leapt out of my chest.
“Christine, you’re pregnant!”
“I am!” she said, as if I’d just given the winning answer on a TV game show.
I reached my arms around her and pulled my glowing bride on top of me, squeezed her somewhat tightly and kissed her with the perfect blend of passion and tenderness. When our lips parted, she combed the fingers of her right hand through my hair.
“How far along are you?” I asked.
“Seven weeks.”
She continued, combing my hair while I kissed her again—this time with more congratulatory passion, if there is such a thing. I could feel her happiness transferring itself from her body simultaneously into my flesh and my soul. We were both so happy that we became one within minutes. Afterward, Christine fell asleep before I did, still lying on top of my body.
Although I was exhausted, I forced myself to remain awake for a few precious minutes. Having always been a worrier, I wanted to blot out all negative thoughts and live utterly thrilled in the instant that was upon me. I didn’t have to do any work at all to achieve it. There was simply an energy of true blissful joy passing between Christine and me. Even though she was soundly asleep, I could feel her love of me and her happiness for carrying a new life inside her. As sleep approached, I clung to my ebbing wakefulness, knowing beyond a doubt that I was experiencing the greatest moment of my life.