Golden Years Page 23

  “Whit, when I was in Saigon and the Feds were closing in on me one of them said that they would hold me and my pictures in a comfortable safe house—Rosetta House, I think they called it—on the coast above San Francisco. They even said a Mr. Jackson ran it, a perfect host they told me.”

  “Yes?”Whit said evenly.

  “Ah, I suppose they’ve closed it down, haven’t they?”

  “They have not.”

  interesting.”

  “Chucky, don’t …”

  He hesitated.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t try to knock it over. I just need to know that it’s still there.”

  “Be careful …”

  “My middle name.”

  Then I had another brilliant idea. It was eleven o’clock. Too early to make the call. I flipped through the notes in Joe Raftery’s files and found what I was looking for. Splendid! If my guess was right, it would confirm my hunches. I didn’t see yet how I might use the information, but I’d know most of my speculations were right. What would I do for the next hour?

  I rushed upstairs, found my swimming trunks with some difficulty, threw a robe around my shoulders. Only then did I look out the window. It was still gorgeous Indian summer weather.

  “Rosemarie”—I burst into her office—“I think I’ll swim in your pool.”

  She glanced up from her work, frowned to let me know that I had broken her train of thought, took off her glasses, and said, “I suppose I’d better join you, so you don’t drown yourself … Couldn’t you find a better terry-cloth robe than that one?”

  I raced off to the pool and dove in. Clumsily of course. The water was inappropriately cold. I sputtered, thought about climbing out, and concluded that my wife would ridicule me if I did. After I swam a few lengths I adjusted to the temperature. Yet the good Rosemarie’s plan that I do it every morning to wake me up would not work, not unless she notably raised the temperature of the water.

  She arrived at poolside in one of her many two-piece swimsuits and a terry-cloth robe hanging open, of course. She tossed a second one on a chaise.

  “For you,” she said.

  “The water is too cold,” I shouted.

  “You’ll get used to it.” She cast aside the robe and did her usual perfect dive into the water and emerged swimming an equally perfect Australian crawl.

  After showing off for perhaps fifteen minutes while I struggled along in my ungainly backstroke, she tried to dunk me. No, that’s not accurate, she dunked me and held me down. I struggled free and went after her to no avail. We wrestled, shouting and laughing, sputtering and pushing. It was a reprise of an old game we’d played for the last forty years. I always lost, though there was a special sweetness in losing these days.

  She then decided that we had played enough and it was time for lunch.

  “I’ll make a nice fromage and jambon for both of us,” she informed me, as she climbed out of the pool, “and brew some mint iced tea.”

  “I’d like a ham and cheese instead.”

  “Charles Cronin O’Malley, get out of the pool and dry off.”

  “No!”

  “I said yes.”

  So I cautiously ascended the ladder and grabbed for the robe she’d left next to it. I thought that I would shiver till the day before the last judgment. I sat at one of the expensive tables that provided “accent color” (her words) for the pool. “I’m hungry,” I yelled as she ambled into the house to reappear a little while later with a tray of three sandwiches, one for herself and two for me.

  “I made hot chocolate as well as iced tea,” she said, “because I knew you’d be sitting here shivering.”

  “BELGIAN hot chocolate, I hope.”

  “Naturally.”

  In the early days of our marriage, my good wife had determined that she would become a gourmet cook, one cuisine at a time. We had French food every night of the year, then pasta, then Middle Eastern food. I didn’t mind because there was always plenty of it and it always tasted good.

  I gobbled half a sandwich, washed it down with hot chocolate, and sighed contentedly.

  “Country club life in my own backyard.” I sighed.

  “My backyard,” she reminded me.

  “Your backyard.”

  “Now, Chucky Ducky, tell me what mischief you have been cooking up down there in your fantasy cave.”

  So I told her what I had learned.

  She listened attentively and respectfully.

  “Remarkable,” she said. “As always, I’m impressed when you put on your gnome disguise. What do you propose to do?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “You’ll probably go after that secret office on Mass. Avenue. This is the sort of thing they’d do. Your friend Colonel Chandler still works there, doesn’t he?”

  “I think so.”

  “It could be dangerous.”

  “Not really, not when I have all the dominos in place. I’ll check it all out with Vince.”

  “I’m in it,” she said.

  “No way.”

  “We’re not having this argument again, Charles Cronin O’Malley. I let you go off to Vietnam alone and you almost got yourself killed in the South China Sea.”

  This was the literal truth.

  “This is different.”

  “No, it isn’t. We’ve done these things before, too often if you ask me, but it’s part of the package that comes with being your wife. I’m in.”

  “One of us should be around, just in case something goes wrong.”

  “I thought nothing could go wrong.”

  “Accidents always happen, Rosemarie, even on the Congress Expressway.”

  Chicago Democrats never call it the Eisenhower Expressway.

  “Which doesn’t prevent us from driving it together.”

  “We’ll see what Vince says.”

  “No, we won’t. I’m prepared to lose you someday, Chucky Ducky. Maybe when you’re as old as Vangie, but not now.”

  “You’re claiming that you’re my good luck charm?”

  “The kids are old enough to take care of themselves. Peg would love to have Shovie as her own. If you’re not afraid, then why should I be afraid?”

  I gave up because I knew I was going to lose the argument. In truth, she was my good luck charm. After all I hadn’t died in the South China Sea. God had sent the Marines to rescue me from it at the very last minute because of her prayers. Or so she claimed.

  “I have to make a phone call,” I said.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  We went to her office.

  First I called Vince. He wasn’t in the office but Charley, my namesake, was.

  “Student Affairs Offices usually handle that sort of thing, Uncle Chuck. If they don’t have one, they’ll direct you.”

  “How’re you feeling, Charlotte?” as my namesake she deserved her real name.

  “Wonderful! Very happy! Can hardly wait. Neither can Mom. She wants to be a grandmother the worst way.”

  “God bless all of you,” I said.

  At ten-thirty West Coast time, I called the University of California at Berkeley and asked for Student Affairs. I told them that I was Thomas Jackson of the Immigration and Naturalization Services and I wanted to ask about one of their students. A very polite woman of Asian persuasion answered a phone.

  “We are very private about our students, Mr. Jackson.”

  “I understand that and applaud it. A question has arisen about one of your students. Some of our records show that she has a student visa, but others claim that she has a green card. I’m convinced it’s a green card, which is much better for her.”

  “I cannot tell you that, sir. But I can tell you whether she is enrolled here at the university under approved rules.”

  “Very well. Her name is Kathleen N. Houlihan.”

  I had to spell the name for her. I didn’t bother to tell her that she was the symbol of Ireland.

  “We have no name like that in our files,” she
said. “Has she married, do you know?”

  “Possibly … We believe that she is in the Comparative Literature Department.”

  Another pause while the computer in the bowels of Berkeley whirled through its subbasements.

  “We do have a woman student named Kathleen N. H. O’Shea. Her husband is a certain Sean O’Shea. She is in the university legally. She has been a student here for many years. Indeed her dissertation is scheduled for this semester … In fact, she is on the faculty of the College of the Holy Names in Oakland.”

  “Then they both have green cards,” I said. “I’m delighted to hear that. We need those kinds of people in America.”

  No one from Immigration would ever say that.

  “Up Kerry!”I shouted after I had hung up. Half the men in Kerry are called Sean O’Shea.

  I called the public relations office at the College of the Holy Names.

  “I’m Cronin O’Malley, a freelance journalist. I’m writing a piece about an article your Kathleen Houlihan has written. Is her proper title ‘instructor’?”

  “Actually she usually goes by her married name—Kathleen O’Shea. She’s an associate professor.”

  “Thank you!”

  Doing well in her academic career. When her dissertation is approved she’ll become a tenured full professor. She must be good. A long way from Ballinasloe.

  Did her Kerry husband realize that her name was a pseudonym she used when she wrote an article in Galway? He didn’t need to know.

  “She’s still alive then! … Are you going to talk to her?”

  “I don’t think so. The poor woman is still alive, thanks be to God. Her existence is a card to be played with our friends on Mass. Avenue.”

  “Why the switch?”

  “I’ve wondered about that … Probably they wanted an actual background for their agent in case anyone would be looking for her. They made a deal with the real Bride Mary. They would give her a new identity and a green card. Maybe they picked her up for some kind of disorderly conduct and threatened to send her back to Ballinasloe.”

  “The caper sounds like fun. Another Crazy O‘Malley trick.”

  It was, I reflected, a little more dangerous than driving downtown of a Friday evening on the Congress Expressway, though perhaps a little less dangerous than the same ride with me at the wheel. So I would tell Vince tonight. He would suggest that someday my luck would run out.

  “I believe, young woman,” I said to my wife, “that you have removed your swimsuit.”

  “You have a very dirty mind … Any civilized person would do that before gamboling around my office.”

  I touched the knot on her robe. She stiffened, as she always does at the beginning of our romps.

  “Don’t you ever have enough of me?” she protested.

  “Nope!” I loosened the knot.

  “I suppose you think that you can pull off this caper and still play around with me on every possible occasion.”

  “Yep.”

  “I really don’t know what we can do about you. You’re impossible.”

  “I know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Mary Margaret

  I don’t know why people create problems for themselves. I don’t know either why they have to turn these phony problems into challenges for me. Poor Erin has dug in her heels on the subject of Sean Seamus.

  “The poor boy,” she says, “has been dumped by that terrible Oriental person …”

  “Asian,” I said, “or East Asian to be precise.”

  “He’s innocent and vulnerable. I don’t want to seduce him, which is exactly what you’re trying to make me do.”

  “You don’t like him?” I said.

  “He’s very sweet. I don’t want to take advantage of him. And I won’t.”

  “That’s how women speak when they’re afraid—afraid of a man, afraid of marriage, afraid of a decision that could shape the rest of their lives. I know the feeling from experience, but at least I acknowledge it.”

  “Well, I’m not going to tell him to buzz off.”

  “I can take care of it myself!”

  “Are you sure?”

  She breaks into tears and cries on my shoulder.

  Then last night, Joe Moran takes me to the Lake to see Kramer vs. Kramer. We hold hands as we usually do. I thought it was a stupid movie about stupid people. Joey said that they were about to get together at the end and would eventually. I said they deserved each other.

  When he kisses me good night it’s like the last time because I can’t resist the temptation to be passionate, even when I’m sober. I don’t protest, though I know I should.

  At our age in life we will get more serious. Our bloodstreams are drenched with hormones. Joe Moran and I are drifting down the path, without giving much thought to it. Either we stop now, put a lid on our passions, or we’ll both be in trouble, serious trouble. Which might not be all that bad.

  I visited Grams in the hospital after my last class. She seems only pretty good. Insists that she simply has to go home and clean up the mess because she’s sure Madge and Theresa will have made a mess of things. The two of them are dust chasers, much more obsessed with neatness than poor Grams.

  I don’t know what Chuck and Rosie are up to either. They’re scheming on one of their plots and loving it. I am offended that they didn’t invite me in and also happy because I have enough things on my mind. They also are very satisfied with themselves, which means they’re fucking a lot. I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong with that. I wonder how often a week is healthy at their age.

  And I wonder whether I’ll be doing the same thing thirty years from now.

  I don’t know. I kind of hope so.

  Joey Moran is a lot better kisser than I thought he’d be.

  The next morning I ask Rosie a question I’ve wanted to ask her for a long time.

  “Were you an alcoholic once, Rosie?”

  “I still am, hon,” she says calmly. “Once an alcoholic always an alcoholic. I’m a recovering alcoholic. I haven’t had a drink since before you were conceived.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did I stop drinking or why did I become one?”

  “Both.”

  “My mom drank herself into an early death. I would go along for months, even years as a very moderate social drinker, never more than one martini or one glass of wine. Then I’d become very angry and disgusted with myself and do a binge thing.”

  “You were that angry at yourself? You aren’t disgusted with yourself anymore, are you?”

  “Only occasionally and, thanks to my sessions with Maggie Ward, I know how to handle it.”

  “Bitchin’ … Why did you stop?”

  “Your father said he’d dump me if I didn’t stop.”

  “NO WAY!”

  “So I stopped, of course … He should have given the order years before, but it saved my life and our marriage.”

  “Cool,” I said for want of something else to say.

  “I don’t think I’m an addictive personality. I don’t overeat. I don’t gamble. I’m not a pathological shopper. The only addiction I have is to your father.

  “Father Packy says a marriage only really becomes a sacrament when it survives a big crisis. Our marriage was a sacrament after that and you, young woman, were the first fruit of that sacrament.”

  We hugged each other and cried a little.

  She didn’t ask why I wondered about it. Maybe she figured I was really wondering about marriage. Which I was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Rosemarie

  Vince and Chuck and I went through the plans for our coup against the government of the United States of America. We had made our appointment to see our “friend” Colonel Chandler on Mass. Avenue and I Street on Monday morning at 9:30. If we ran into trouble, the press releases would be sent to the Globe, the Times, the Post, the Trib, and the Sun-Times and all the networks that night at 7:00 so as to make the next morning paper. There would be
two versions of it. The second would say, “Ambassador and Mrs. O’Malley have disappeared and are believed to be in the custody of the government, if they are still alive.”

  “This is a crazy project, Chuck,” Vince said. “Off the wall. But those guys aren’t dumb enough to take you two into custody, much less try to get rid of you.”

  “The threat of this extra sentence will give them pause,” Chuck agreed. “But we’re taking no chances.”

  “You’re taking a lot of chances,” Vince replied. “I’m simply saying they’re too smart to do anything to you.”

  “The plane we’ve borrowed is lined up at Palwaukee. Gulfstream III. It can cross the country in five and a half hours, maybe six against the wind. You get out of DC before noon and you’ll be in the Bay Area by 3:00 in the afternoon their time. Is it absolutely necessary that you be there?”

  “If we can,” I said. “We want to make sure that the deliverables are safe. If you don’t hear from us by 8:00, let the faxes roll.”

  “Both of you love this, you’re like a pair of crazy kids … I don’t get it.”

  “Crazy O’Malleys … speaking of which,” Chucky said, “you don’t tell anything to your wife. No point in her worrying.”

  “She’ll be furious when she finds out.”

  “She doesn’t have to find out. No one does,” I said. “She’ll only worry that we’ll do it again. Besides, if the Feds want to grant our demands, we must for our part honor the bargain.”

  “And the deliverables?”

  “You forget that she’s an American patriot,” I said.

  “Was,” Vince argued.

  “They’re all alike,” Chuck replied. “I’ve seen the embedded agents in Germany and ’Nam. Not merely good citizens but almost fanatics … anyway, all we can promise the Feds is that we’ll urge them to keep the bargain. I wouldn’t blame them if they don’t.”

  “And the real Bride Mary O’Brien?”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Chuck said, “she will continue to be Ms. Kathleen N. Houlihan O’Shea. It is to no one’s interest that she be troubled.”

  “Nice touch to choose that name,” I observed. “The Feds would be too dumb to catch it … I’d like to meet her someday.”

  “And you’re not going to inquire into Rosetta House?” he asked Chuck.