A Christmas Wedding Read online

  PRAISE FOR ANDREW M. GREELEY

  “Greeley is his usual skillful self at handling words.”

  —Arizona Daily Star on Younger Than Springtime

  “The immensely prolific Father Greeley brings back the crazy O’Malley family for a post-WWII romance about the perils of coming of age.… Greeley clearly likes to jump into a plot and row steadily, just to see what’s up for a whole bunch of characters.”

  —Kirkus Reviews on Younger Than Springtime

  “In this deft addition to his shelf of novels, Greeley once again shows his knack for combining solid characterizations, folksy prose, a bantamweight sense of history and understated Catholic morality to make highly entertaining fiction.” —Publishers Weekly on A Midwinter’s Tale

  “A richly plotted, entertaining… tale.”

  Kirkus Reviews on A Midwinter’s Tale

  “Sentimentality and nostalgia for bygone days underlie this coming-of-age story from Greeley… Fans will love it.”

  —Library Journal on A Midwinter’s Tale

  “Fans of Greeley’s trademarked light touch will enjoy yet another tale of the trials and turmoils of Chicago’s own.”

  —The Irish American Post on A Midwinter’s Tale

  “A witty and delightful inside-out Faust with angelic choirs, a variety of loving, and an ending with a special twist Greeley has fashioned a novel about learning to love and doing it well.”

  —San Antonio Express-News on Contract With An Angel

  “Sit back and enjoy novel-writing Catholic priest Andrew M. Greeley’s little fantasy about a wealthy and powerful businessman who turns his life around—none too soon—after a visit from a Seraph.”

  —Dallas Morning News on Contract With An Angel

  BY ANDREW M. GREELEY

  from Tom Doherty Associates

  All About Women

  Angel Fire

  Angel Light

  Contract with an Angel

  Faithful Attraction

  The Final Planet

  Furthermore! Memories of a Parish Priest

  God Game

  Irish Eyes

  Irish Gold

  Irish Lace

  Irish Mist

  Irish Whiskey

  Irish Stew*

  A Midwinter’s Tale

  Sacred Visions (editor with Michael Cassutt)

  Star Bright!

  Summer at the Lake

  White Smoke

  Younger than Springtime

  *forthcoming

  ANDREW M. GREELEY

  A

  Christmas Wedding

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

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  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware

  that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed”

  to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any

  payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book

  are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CHRISTMAS WEDDING

  Copyright © 2000 by Andrew M. Greeley Enterprises, Ltd.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions

  thereof, in any form.

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN: 0-812-56667-X

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-031652

  First edition: October 2000

  First mass market edition: November 2001

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For those who grew up in St. Angela

  during the Depression and the War

  CLANCY (Powers), Clarice Marie. Beloved wife of James Patrick, mother of Rosemarie, daughter of the late Helen (McArdle) and Joseph Powers, M.D. Suddenly. Visitation Wednesday and Thursday at Conroy’s Funeral Home 420 North Austin. Funeral Mass at 9:30 Friday to St. Ursula’s. Internment at Mount Carmel Cemetery. Please omit flowers.

  WOMAN’S DEATH

  RULED AN ACCIDENT

  The Cook County Coroner’s office ruled late yesterday that the death of Clarice Powers Clancy, 40, last Tuesday was an accident. Mrs. Clancy, wife of investor James P. Clancy, died as a result of injuries incurred in a fall at her home at 1105 North Menard. Assistant Coroner Joel Starr said that Mrs. Clancy apparently tripped on the hem of her dressing gown and fell down the steps, hitting her head on the concrete floor of the basement. Death resulted from a fractured skull and brain injuries. “There is no evidence of any foul play,” Mr. Starr said.

  Police are known to have questioned Mr. Clancy and the couple’s daughter, Rosemarie Helen Clancy. Rosemarie, a student at Trinity High School in River Forest, and a friend discovered Mrs. Clancy’s body.

  “It was a tragic and unnecessary accident,” Mr. Starr told the Tribune.

  Prologue

  “This marriage is a mistake,” the shivering woman said to me. “You should cancel it while you still have a chance.”

  Surrounded by banks of newly shoveled snow, we were huddled in the dark at the entrance of the new white stone St. Ursula Church, which loomed above us like a doubtfully brooding angel. The rest of the wedding party had left with cheerful promises that the warmth of Nuptial Mass and the banquet at Butterfield Country Club and the subsequent marriage bed would exorcise the subzero cold.

  The rehearsal itself had been a giddy slapstick comedy, with bride and groom both—the groom more than the bride—nervous about the change that was about to occur in our lives. I assumed responsibility for making everyone laugh, a familiar enough task.

  “Father Raven,” I had said at the beginning of the rehearsal to our wise and handsome assistant pastor, “weren’t you the one that said that it would be a cold day in hell when I married this woman?”

  General laughter, despite a gentle reproof from my mother.

  “You will sleep in a warm bed tomorrow night,” my younger sister had whispered, a suggestive comment that was most unlike her. Never one to miss a chance to reply, I had observed that a couple of extra blankets would serve just as well.

  Now the woman wanted to call it off. Or rather she wanted me to call it off. I might have to resort to those extra blankets. On the whole, I preferred a woman to blankets—though not necessarily tomorrow night.

  “What do you mean, I should cancel the wedding?” I demanded through chattering teeth. “If you want to call it off, go ahead.”

  One part of me did want to call it off. I was much too young to marry. We both were too young, weren’t we? I would wake up in that warm bed the next morning a husband, with a wife in bed next to me. Wasn’t I too young to have a wife?

  I had some small knowledge of the physiology of a woman, much less of the psychology. I was no more ignorant than other men my age who were rushing into youthful marriages. Unfortunately for me, perhaps, I was aware of my ignorance. I had enough probl
ems in life without adding a wife to my list of worries. Why couldn’t I just settle down and be an Irish bachelor, a crotchety old Irish bachelor?

  Across Massasoit Avenue, Christmas tree lights glowed faintly in several of the bungalow windows, a reassurance that goodness flourished somewhere in our neighborhood, if I wanted such reassurance.

  “I’ll be nothing but trouble,” the woman insisted. “You know that. My father is a monster, my mother died in dubious circumstances. I drink too much. You’re marrying into sickness.”

  That was a vivid way of putting it. I was about to marry into a stench of vomit and alcohol, a cacophony of curses and sobbing, a sloppy emotional mess like a women’s washroom in a madhouse.

  She had also finally admitted that there was a mystery about her mother’s death. Did I want to marry into a police investigation, a ticking bomb that might explode when I least expected it?

  Nonetheless I said, lamely, I admit, “That overstates the problem.”

  Her head averted, her body wracked with shuddering, she continued her argument. “You go around saving people in trouble. You’re very good at it. Don’t waste your time on me. I’m doomed. I’m not worth saving.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, with an attempt at manliness.

  “I don’t want your help,” she said bitterly. “Anyway, I seduced you into this marriage. You should get out of it while you still can.”

  Had I been seduced? If I had, I had been a willing victim.

  She was not weeping yet. Rather she spoke with the icy detachment of a woman who thought she was damned.

  My family would be embarrassed. Or would they? During the weeks of wedding preparation they had seemed uneasy, as if a stealthy germ had infected their joy over a marriage they had long anticipated. Besides, my mother was convinced that anything her firstborn son did was wise and good. Well, almost anything. Would they sigh with relief if I went home and told them that my bride-to-be and I had decided to cancel the whole thing?

  We were much too young to marry, were we not?

  Yes, we certainly were.

  “I appreciate what you’re doing,” she continued, her face a dim blur in the faint street light. “It just won’t work. Besides, we’re too young to marry.”

  “If you don’t want to marry me,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, “then just tell me that and we’ll call it all off.”

  “But I do want to marry you!” she cried. “I just don’t want to ruin your life!”

  Life was a long time.

  “You know me,” she continued, “I have a vile temper and I cling to my rages and I have a terrible tongue.”

  “Vile,” I corrected her. “Terrible’ is too generic.”

  We laughed together. Some of our friends said that we were at ease with each other like a man and a woman who had lived together for years. “One of the advantages of incest,” I had replied brightly, “is that you know the bride pretty well before you bed her.”

  She had been a kind of foster sister for as long as I could remember. We knew a lot about each other—enough to understand how little we actually knew. Still, we could put on a good act, harmonizing our dialogue as we did our duets, she the soprano and I the Irish whiskey tenor who didn’t drink whiskey.

  “I love you too much to marry you,” she said, sniffling. “But if you are dumb enough to want me, then you can have me. Only please don’t.”

  The argument was typical of her. Did she really want to cancel our wedding or was she trying to calm her conscience? Or both?

  “Please don’t do what I want? Many a husband would love to hear those words!”

  She didn’t laugh this time, harmony off-key.

  “I’m serious!” she snapped.

  She was certainly afraid of hurting me. That was typical too. Beneath her rage was a paralyzing tenderness, so sweet as to break your heart with pleasure if you were fortunate enough to be its target.

  All I had to say was, “Let’s postpone it for a while. Give ourselves time to mature and understand a little bit more about life.”

  How much time? Twenty years maybe?

  “More time,” would have been the perfect answer. We would go back to the house on East Avenue in Oak Park and tell my family that we had made a sensible, rational, adult decision.

  The only problem was lust. Or desire. Or maybe love. Maybe. At twenty-two, do you know the difference?

  She had used the magic word—“want.” Did I want her? When had I not wanted her? Even when we both were too young to know what wanting another human being meant I had wanted her, though I did my best to pretend that she was just an obnoxious pest, which she often was. I hadn’t known in those days what wanting was, save that it was a need to possess. Now I would add “the need to be possessed,” as an elderly Jesuit had put it at a dinner party up in Lake Forest. That night in the passionless ivory shadow of the new St. Ursula’s, I wanted desperately to possess this woman for whom I had yearned so long. I was uneasy about the need to perform in the marriage bed the following night, but I wanted with more hunger than I had ever known to make that lovely body my own.

  Love?

  Did that enter into the calculation at all?

  Maybe it did. In the frigid wind that attacked the gothic pile of St. Ursula’s and then bounced back to hit us a second time, fear dominated the equation.

  I was a careful and circumspect young man, a prudent accountant in the making. My prospective bride was perhaps correct. Beautiful young woman that she was, she could easily ruin my life. That was the long run. In the short run she would be a luscious bedmate.

  No insurance for long-run failure? Was I going long, as they said at the Board of Trade, in what might be a buyer’s market?

  There was not the slightest doubt what a careful investor ought to do.

  1950

  1

  “What about the Buddhists, Father Danielou?” Rosemarie asked.

  The short French Jesuit in the black turtleneck sweater blinked through his thick glasses like a cheerful rabbit and then sped off in a whirlwind of barely intelligible English.

  I was in my final year at the University of Chicago. Rosemarie Helen Clancy, my quasi-foster sister, was in her second year. She expected me to listen to a lecture by this intense and slightly mysterious young priest. My attention wavered. I stole another look at our hostess, attentive and professional in her light gray sweater and dark blue skirt. Looking at Rosemarie, as I had told John Raven, was a proximate occasion of sin. He had dismissed this observation with a laugh. I thereupon added that I had reached such an advanced stage of carnality that I could not prevent my imagination from taking off her clothes.

  “Good for you,” he had said, “so long as you do it respectfully.”

  “My life would be in danger if I did it any other way.”

  So, more than a little bored by the French Jesuit, I permitted myself to undress her mentally, albeit respectfully—whatever that meant. To honor respect I forced my lascivious imagination to appreciate her fully clothed before it embarked on its exploration.

  “She has the look of the little people about her, poor sweet little thing,” my mother had once said. “Even if there are no little people. She’s the sort of faerie sprite you might see dancing over the bog of a spring night under a quarter moon.”

  “She is indeed,” my father had agreed, as he usually did.

  “When has either of you been out dancing on the bog of a spring night under a quarter moon?” I had demanded.

  “Why must you always be so literal, Chucky darling?” my mom asked, exasperated as she always was when the issue was my (feigned) indifference to Rosemarie.

  The image was apt, however. Rosemarie combined fragility, delicacy, and beauty in a fashion that might be appropriate for a faerie sprite—so long as that sprite was tough enough to play a mean and wicked game of tennis.

  “Maybe what you mean,” I said, with the sigh of one much put-upon, “is that, in her better moments, Rosemarie appear
s light and graceful, delicate and strong, not unlike Peter Pan’s Wendy perhaps.”

  “Isn’t that what I said, dear?”

  She was slim and slender, maybe five feet six inches tall (dangerously close to my generously estimated five eight), with trim and elegant breasts that caught every male eye (my own obviously included) and shapely legs that the said male eye noticed immediately after her breasts. Her long black hair framed a pale face that tended to flush red in moments of excitement or enthusiasm or anger. That face compelled your attention if your hormones let you get that far; it was the kind of face that might have emerged from the Pre-Raphaelites if any of them had painted from an Irish model. The flush was usually accompanied by the flashing of her blue eyes that signaled danger. A sprite surely, but one with a fierce temper and deep passions and also one whose fragility could break your heart. You wanted to kiss and caress her and at the same time protect her.

  As the Jesuit droned on I pursued my exploration of the faerie sprite, slowly and with appreciation and, I hope in retrospect, some measure of reverence. First the sweater, then the blouse under it, button by button, then the skirt, zipped down in the back, then the slip, and then, with infinite gentleness, the bra. I paused at the girdle and its attached nylons. It would not be respectful, I told myself, to go any farther in a Catholic student meeting. Maybe tonight in my dreams.

  Nonetheless, I paused to admire my work and then noticed that she was frowning at me. My glazed eyes might have suggested that I was not paying any attention to the speaker. Did she know what my imagination had been doing? Since she never protested my wantonness, she either did not know or did not mind.

  I tried once again to focus on Père Danielou.

  There were lines of fatigue around Rosemarie’s eyes, the result of a hangover, which in turn had been the result of another one of her wild drinking bouts the night before. The second one that I knew about since she’d been a student at the University.