Summer at the Lake Page 19

  “Is she a prize?”

  “Isn’t she?”

  I finished my beer, poured a shot of Jameson’s and retired to the guest bedroom, still robin’s egg blue, in which I had spent so many nights long ago. I speculated as I sipped my drink in the darkness about using my prize money for The Big Change—which I had invested wisely enough to stay ahead of Jimmy Carter’s inflation—to buy a house somewhere around here. Laura would like it.

  On the other hand, it was at least possible that I could marry into a house, the old Devlin house, which might or might not be haunted.

  As I finished my drink, I strained to sense if there were any psychic vibrations in my bedroom, any remnants of the unfortunate Murrays. I heard only the endless popping of the firecrackers.

  Not a hint of psychic vibrations. But then as Maggie Ward Keenan would have said just because I didn’t feel them it didn’t follow that they weren’t there.

  Patrick

  What the hell is wrong with him? He’s obsessed with the mystery of how our friends died and he doesn’t understand how important is the mystery of why he stormed out of here in August of 1948 and never came back, never even called Jane until he had his orders for Korea. That’s completely crazy. He says glibly that he was ashamed that he had acted like an asshole in the Sheriff’s office. Only he had acted like a hero. Maybe a couple of his accusations were off the mark, but no one held that against him. What kind of character defect is it that makes him think those two years don’t require a more serious explanation?

  If I were Jane, I wouldn’t have a thing to do with him until he sees the problem and offers a damn good explanation. All right, she let her mother drag her away that night and still torments herself about it, but that was trivial compared to what he did.

  Of course, she could have called him too. He would have melted as soon as he heard her voice.

  Idiots.

  I’ll never forget that day the following summer. Not as long as I live. How could I?

  So it was late August 1949. I had been working at one of the homes for children of broken homes to which the Seminary sent us in those days to keep us out of trouble in the summer. I drove up here one late Thursday evening when my term was up, put on my trunks, and swam for a half hour in the Lake. There were no cars in the driveway and only one light on in the house, which I assumed was left on from last week, a bad habit my family had acquired in those days before the energy crisis.

  The swim took away the sour taste, which working with those poor kids had created, and I strode briskly up to the third floor and to the shower room across from my bedroom.

  Jane came out of the shower room, a towel held precariously above her breasts—and no other clothes.

  “Jane!”

  “Packy!” She cowered against the wall.

  “I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Your family invited me for the weekend. Our house is closed.” Her head was bowed and her eyes lowered, as modesty required.

  Impulsively I pried the towel out of her fingers. She was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. She did not try to cover herself or flee. She merely stood there, naked and lovely, head still bowed, and permitted me to drink her in.

  I drew her into my arms and held her tightly. She clung to me, a tall, slender, strong woman with wondrous breasts. I felt her diamond hard nipples against my chest.

  Then we realized who and what we were and drew apart. I picked up the towel and gave it to her. She deftly wrapped it around herself.

  “Amazing,” she giggled, “what happens to privacy in a summer home.”

  “I’m sorry, Jane, terribly sorry.”

  “Don’t be, Packy. I’m not. It was only an accident and not a bad one either. Now if you don’t mind I’ll go dress somewhat more decently.”

  “And I’ll take a very cold shower.”

  We both laughed nervously.

  Later, fully clad and chastened by our experience, we drank tea in the ballroom. Her first question showed who was on her mind.

  “Why doesn’t he call, Packy?”

  “Why don’t you call him?”

  “It’s his responsibility.”

  Two stubborn people who thought they had time to get over their foolish anger. Everyone else thought they had time too. I figured Leo would be back next summer—1950.

  But they would soon run out of time.

  I, however, would never lose the memory of that embrace.

  1967

  Patrick

  Nineteen years later the phone rang in my room at the old North American College on Via Umilita, behind the Gregorian University.

  “Keenan.”

  “Hi, Packy,” said that cello-with-dark-chocolate voice, which always made my head spin.

  “Jane!”

  “None other.”

  “Are you in Rome?”

  “At the Hassler. Nothing but the best for a new travel agent. Would you take me to supper at a nice trattoria where there won’t be any American tourists?”

  “Polese’s,” I said, “in the Piazza Sforza-Cesarini, right across from St. Andrew’s in the Valley.”

  “Will Tosca be there? Or Mario?”

  “You’re showing off.”

  “You bet…I suppose you eat at these uncivilized Italian times…eight thirty?”

  “I’ll be there, Madam Travel Agent.”

  My heart, I discovered, was pounding vigorously and I wanted to sing. The memory of that encounter on the third floor of our home exploded in my memory. Morose delectation we would have called it in our moral theology class. Nothing morose about it, I always thought.

  I had moved out of the Chicago House on Via Sardegna, which the new Cardinal was about to sell anyway, so that I would avoid him. He had ordered me back to Chicago. I told him my appointment to the birth control commission was from the “fifth floor” itself and I could not give it up until released by the “highest authority.”

  “Highest authority” is supposed to mean the Pope but everyone knows that it actually means a lot of lesser level bureaucrats who use the term to enhance their power.

  The Cardinal, who I had come to realize was like running water and followed the path of least resistance, backed off and asked how much I was being paid. He promptly doubled my salary (and the money came the first of the following month!).

  Nonetheless, I had realized that Father Häring was right when he said the best thing I could do was to keep out of the Cardinal’s sight.

  Only a few rooms in the House on Humility Street (now a residence for graduate student priests) had phones, but Keenan family clout had accomplished marvels. I even had my own refrigerator and ice maker, which earned me enormous prestige in Rome.

  Jane was gorgeous, an autumn symphony in dark brown—jacket, skirt, blouse, hat—even gloves. The skirt was a miniskirt, indeed mini, mini.

  “You know how to tell whether a woman of my generation went to college?” she demanded.

  And before I could answer, “Because she wears gloves even when it isn’t cold!”

  Jane would be forty next summer—as I would too. She looked ten years younger, slim, trim, fit, vibrant. How much of it was an act, I’ve wondered subsequently. Probably she didn’t even know herself.

  We embraced briefly and kissed lightly.

  “No Roman collar or cassock?”

  “Those things are out of fashion in Rome these days. Turtleneck and sport coat is in.”

  “You look great in it.”

  The table I had reserved was outside in the Piazza, in front of the house that had once been the home of the Borgia clan, unpretentious enough as Roman palazzos go. It was a warm autumn evening, crisp and clear, the eternal city at its most numinous.

  “So what’s this about a travel agency?”

  “I’ve bought my own and am already making money with it. I figured I’d come to Rome and see what kind of a tour I could put together for Country Club Irish who want something special that ordinary tours don’t provide. Wi
ll you make suggestions?”

  “I sure will.”

  Roman women are in my experience the most beautiful in the world and there are always plenty of mini versions of Sophia Loren around Polesi’s. But my West Side Irish date was the loveliest of them all.

  “I guess you know that both of my parents are dead. They left me a lot of money, some of it in a trust fund for the kids’ education and some to me outright. But I want to live as best I can off money that’s my own and save the rest for the kids if they need it. So I used some of my own money to buy the agency. I try to make it an upscale enterprise, travel boutique. So far it’s going fine.”

  “Phil approve?”

  “He doesn’t figure into it,” she said smoothly as she refilled my wine glass.

  “Oh?”

  Was she going to talk to me about her marriage? I found that I hoped she wouldn’t.

  “He’s not very good with money. I’m afraid he’s going to run through everything his father left him. That’s one of the reasons I’m concerned about the kids…but now tell me what you’re doing in this city? How long have you been here? Ten years?”

  We paused while I ordered the dinner, including the Cushinetta della Lucrezia (a pun because it means both a cushion and a session of love-making in bed). I noted that Jane was following every word of Italian very carefully. Trying to learn the language. Not as quick at languages as Leo.

  “Eight actually,” I continued the conversation. “Well, I’m working for the birth control commission. Doing the final report that will provide the Pope with the reasons he’s looking for so he can change the teaching.”

  “There’s really going to be a change! How exciting! And how wonderful for you to be part of it!”

  The wine was making my head spin but not as fast as her wide-eyed admiration.

  “It’s the kind of situation in which you can feel the Holy Spirit working. I’m sure that a majority of the bishops and the theologians on the commission came firmly convinced that change even on the pill was impossible. Then as we discussed the past practices of the Church and our new knowledge about human sexuality you could almost sense the change in the room. The laypeople like Pat and Patty Crowley from Chicago and Mercedes Concepcion, a Filipina demographer, made a tremendous contribution.” I could feel my excitement rising. “Now the plurality for change is overwhelming. Only a few Italian cardinals and a young Polish bishop named Karol Wojtyla are against it. At least we think he’s against it. He’s a very smart man with a great smile and frosty blue eyes. But you can’t tell what’s going on in his mind. Cardinal Heenan of England came over completely opposed and has gone back to England and assured everyone that there would be change.”

  I paused for breath.

  “How marvelous! And you’re writing the final report?”

  “Right.”

  “It says we can use the pill?”

  “We decided early on that the pill wasn’t the issue, contraception was. And if rhythm is all right so too are some of the other methods.”

  “It will make a lot of married people in America happy…is there any chance the Pope won’t approve your report?”

  “Not a chance. He wants change too.”

  “It’s too late for him to turn back, Pack. Everyone my age has made up their mind. So have the women younger than us. It’s over. Does he realize that?”

  I hesitated. “I don’t think he does. People over in the Vatican have no idea what’s going on even in Italy, much less in the United States. But it doesn’t matter on this issue. The Pope would not have convened the commission unless he wanted change.”

  Looking back on that night I realize what a ham I was, a teenager showing off for his girl.

  And what a fool.

  We dug into our vermicelli pasta.

  “It won’t make much difference to me,” she blurted.

  Had she said what I thought she said.

  “Jane…”

  “Phil doesn’t find me interesting any more,” she said easily. “Hardly any sex. He’s been fooling around since our honeymoon. Can’t help himself, poor man.”

  She continued calmly to eat her pasta and drink her Frascati.

  “There are some new norms for annulments coming along,” I stumbled over the words.

  “I knew what I was doing, Packy. I’m an old-fashioned Catholic and I believe that if you make mistakes you live with them. We were married. I have four kids to show for that. I don’t want them to become bastards in the eyes of the Church.”

  How many times since then I’ve tried to argue that objection with laity who seem to want to remain in the prison of their mistake, unwilling to forgive themselves even if God and the Church were willing to forgive them.

  “They explicitly would not be illegitimate, Jane. The new norms are based on what they call psychic incapacity—one or both parties lack the emotional maturity to contract a marriage that is a sacrament, that is an image of the love between Christ and the Church. It’s a valid marriage but not a sacrament, so the Church declares them free to marry again.”

  She shook her head slowly, “Rationalization, Monsignor.”

  “No, Jane, sophisticated psychology.”

  She thought about it—and went on eating her pasta.

  “Maybe…finish your vermicelli.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “What if someone doesn’t want to marry again? What if someone assumes that she tried marriage once and doesn’t want to try it again? What if someone figures her first obligation is to take care of her children, to protect them from their father?”

  “An annulment is a possibility, not an obligation.”

  “Exactly…I’m sorry I ruined our dinner by even mentioning my own problems.”

  “I don’t think you did, Jane. You wanted to be able to talk to someone about them.”

  She grinned. “Someone besides that cute little witch from Philly.”

  We both laughed.

  “All right.” She refilled our glasses. “I did want to talk to you about it. I guess I needed a priest and you’re the only one I know well enough to trust.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “He’s not around the house much and when he is, he’s usually harmless,” she went on. “He’s messed up young Philly, the only one he’s ever cared about. Can’t endure Brigie because she stands up to him. Philly adores his father and wants to live up to his father’s standards so as to earn his love. He breaks down every time Phil criticizes him.”

  “My God!”

  “He’s sophomore at New Trier…Phil talked him out of a Catholic high school…and he wants to volunteer for Vietnam as soon as he graduates so his father will be proud of him and he can keep up the family tradition of military service during war time.”

  “At a supply base in Wisconsin?”

  “That isn’t the way Phil tells it. I think he really believes that he was a combat hero. I can talk Philly out of it. A lot of the kids at New Trier are anti-war, kids he admires because they’re good at all the things he’s not good at, poor boy.”

  My triumph on the birth control commission didn’t seem all that important any more.

  Jane saved the night of course. We laughed a lot, aided by the second bottle of Frascati, and talked about the old times at the Lake and our friends—avoiding all memories of the awful tragedy of 1948. Then we turned to music and literature and Rome and the travel business. My first sweetheart at almost forty was a superb dinner companion without a trace of self-pity.

  An amazing woman.

  Would she be as beautiful naked now as she had been nineteen years before?

  Maybe even more beautiful, not that I’d ever be able to make the comparison.

  By the time I took her back to the Hassler, Jane and I were friends again and I was her priest confidant, a flattering and satisfying role.

  The lobby of the Hassler was empty. We kissed each other good night. A very modest kiss.

  “Ever hear from Lee?” she asked lightly.<
br />
  “Christmas card.”

  “Is he happy?”

  “I doubt it. He has a daughter about Lucy’s age. Laura, I think is her name.”

  Jane nodded. “No one ever promised happiness in this life, did they Packy?”

  “I guess not.”

  We kissed again, a little more intensely. For a brief moment there were other possibilities, like a scene caught in a blink of an eye as a train races by. Her eyes were soft and vulnerable, her body limp. She was lonely and needed love.

  Why not?

  Then the blink of the eye ended and I was a priest and she a woman who trusted me.

  Yet I walked back to Humility Street happier than I had been in a long time. I saw her twice more before she left Rome and each time returned to my room with laughter in my heart, a stupid grin on my face, and erotic love images in my fantasy.

  The day after my last dinner with Jane at Polese’s I was sitting at the same table with Professor Leo T. Kelly of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Same old Leo, funny, bright, enthusiastic, red hair as thick as ever and now matched with a piratical red beard. Apparently he had shaken off the effects of the POW camp. When I heard his voice on the phone I thought for a couple of crazy seconds that somehow he and Jane had met each other in Rome.

  But his presence in Rome at the same time as Jane was a coincidence. I thought about inviting both of them to dinner and then decided that it wouldn’t be such a good idea.

  Leo was in Rome for some kind of international meeting on trade at which he was presenting a paper. He listened attentively to my description of the work of the birth control commission and nodded at all the right times.

  “It’s time and past time, Packy. They’ve got to get out of the box that their Aristotelian science has got them into. Nothing wrong with Aristotle for his own time. He tried to study human nature from the scientific perspective. But we know a lot more about science these days than he did. Your friends over at the Vatican,” he inclined his head in a classic West Side Irish political gesture in the general direction of St. Peter’s, “have got a lot of catching up to do.”