Summer at the Lake Read online

  Instead of boarding the train to Hyde Park I strolled up Michigan Avenue under the hot morning sun like a man in a trance. I phoned my office and told them to reschedule my meeting with a possible recruit for our Biology Department.

  I knew his kind. He would stride in, filled with his own importance as a potential Nobel Prize winner, and lay out the conditions he’d need before he would consider favoring us with his presence. The decision really wouldn’t be mine. If the biologists and the Med School people wanted him badly enough to find the money for him and his colleagues and his laboratory that was their decision. They knew full well that we would not expand their budget, not even for a man who had been rumored for several years to be on the Nobel short list.

  However, if he acted in my office like he had at the cocktail party the Med School had arranged for him at the Faculty Club the night before, I would submit a memo to the president in which I would recommend the appointment but raise (indirectly) the question of whether we wanted to continue to mortgage ourselves for celebrities who had little interest in anything except their own careers.

  “As a devout Irish Catholic, do you think you are qualified,” he had asked me, “to sit in judgment on my work?”

  “I’m not sure I’m devout,” I had replied, “and I know I’m not qualified to judge the details of your work. That’s up to the Department and the Division through the Dean.”

  I believe in God’s love and the survival of the human person after death and of the enormous importance of the Church and the Mass. I go to Mass regularly, but I don’t take the funny little old man in Rome very seriously. I’m also beginning to believe in Catholic summers in which hot air and cool lake water can revive old loves.

  Does this make me devout? I’m not so sure that it does or that it doesn’t.

  “Yet a biologist,” he had sneered, “would be qualified to judge a political scientist.”

  “He might think he was.”

  “Your people can’t explain much variance, can they?”

  “Humans are a little more complicated than laboratory rats,” I had replied.

  “All mammals are fundamentally similar.”

  “Are they? Do your lab rats organize universities? Do they covet Nobel Prizes? Do they lust after young female rats who are their students?”

  Our potential prize winner had a reputation for chasing graduate students.

  As I say, I can be both mean and stubborn when pushed into a corner.

  “That’s your Irish Catholic heritage. You can’t possibly approve of my work on evolution.”

  I had sipped my Irish whiskey, straight up—the waiters at the faculty club had learned about my poison and delighted in putting a glass of it in my hands before I asked for it.

  “Your ignorance of Catholicism astonishes me. We are not biblical fundamentalists. As long ago as St. Augustine, which was a millennium and a half ago, we were already open to the possibility of evolution. We weren’t the ones who are responsible for the monkey trial.”

  I had never read the passage in St. Augustine, but that was beside the point.

  “You mean that you don’t have to believe that God created the earth in seven days? I thought Catholics had to believe that.”

  “I would not tolerate such bigotry if it were racial and I will not tolerate it when it is religious.”

  I turned my back on him and walked away.

  “Do we really want that bastard?” I asked the Dean of the Medical School.

  “I’m beginning to have doubts myself,” he sighed. “There’s an upper limit to what we have to stomach even for a Nobel Prize—and I’m not sure he’ll ever win one. He’s bound to be a disruptive influence in the school. Personally I think we can do without him. I hope before he’s finished here, the Department will agree with me.”

  “He’s the kind of wunderkind who has never taken time to grow up. A full professor at thirty-two and the maturity of a fifteen year old.”

  The Dean grinned crookedly. “I see why they made you Provost, Leo. In a time when we can’t pay for any more bullshit at this University, your bullshit quotient is zero.”

  That wasn’t true. It’s substantially higher than zero, but it is not infinite. Anyway I thanked him for his compliment.

  “He’ll be upset, Mr. Kelly,” my assistant informed me, “that you won’t be able to see him till this afternoon.”

  “He is perpetually upset. Too bad for him.”

  “Yes sir,” she giggled. “You want me to rearrange the rest of your schedule?”

  “Mañana, Mae. We’ll do it all tomorrow.”

  In the summer our faculty disappears to the various watering places it has found for itself, leaving summer school to poorly paid graduate students. The administrators, however, have to keep working. But you can always put almost anything and everything off till tomorrow or next week or even till the departments reassemble in the fall. My job, I tell people, requires little more than some skill at intelligent delays.

  If you put off some decisions long enough, you don’t have to make them.

  “Are you all right, Doctor Kelly?” she asked me. “You sound kind of strange.”

  “I’m fine, Mae. It’s the phase of the moon. Full moon last night.”

  “Half moon, Doctor Kelly.”

  “Just goes to show you.”

  Still in a daze I walked up the Magnificent Mile, beyond Oak Street Beach, which was teeming with people even in mid morning on this scorching summer day, and then on up Lake Shore Drive and into Lincoln Park, which was swarming with lightly clad humans of all ages and sexes. The mighty Lake, flat as a sheet of ice, was crisscrossed with motorboat wakes and weaving water ski wakes. An occasional yacht drifted by, its sails drooping disconsolately in windless air. I marveled at the incredible beauty of the city. Dick Daley had done his job well. I was less happy about the prospects under Jane Byrne, who seemed to me to be a woman driven by hate. Still it was an incredible city, the best in America for all its problems.

  I turned back at the zoo and, hardly aware of the heat, ambled back down North State Parkway, by the house of the Crazy Cardinal, as Packy always called him, at State and North Avenue.

  I can’t recall the confused jumble of emotions and ideas that raced through my head. I was milling, as the collective behavior people call crowds, just before they become violent.

  I found myself at eleven thirty on Oak Street and in front of a small but elegant shop—“Clare Travel Tours for Intelligent Tourists.”

  Just the kind of snobbery my colleagues at the University would love—any university for that matter.

  I strolled in. What the hell!

  Leo

  Clare Travel was decorated more like a prestigious law office than a tourist bureau, oak furniture, plush carpet, comfortable leather chairs. Two young women were sitting at desks talking to customers sitting across from them. I bet the customers were called clients.

  “Good morning, sir,” one of them glanced up from her computer terminal as her clients rose from their chairs, the couple, maybe a few years older than I was, smiling happily. “Can I help you?”

  “Doctor Kelly to see Ms. Clare.”

  “Do you have an appointment, Doctor Kelly?”

  The emphasis of Clare Travel was surely on Ireland. The black-haired young woman spoke with a clear West of Ireland brogue, probably Kerry.

  “No, not really.”

  Her lips tightened in mild disapproval. “I’ll tell her you’re here Doctor Kelly…good-bye now,” to the departing clients, “hope you’ll have a wonderful trip to Ireland.”

  “We thought we will,” the woman enthused.

  “Can’t miss,” I agreed. “Especially west of the Shannon. The real Ireland begins at Athlone.”

  They beamed happily. The “travel counselor,” as the plaque on her desk entitled her, smiled at me.

  “Of course, you gotta watch them Kerry Folk. There’s a little bit of larceny in all them and you can only believe half of what the
y say, the trouble is finding out which half.”

  The couple and the two travel counselors guffawed.

  “I suppose, Doctor Kelly,” the one who was about to tell Jane I was here said, “that like most of these Chicago people, you’d be a Mayo person?”

  “God help us.”

  “God help the rest of us you mean.” She sailed out of the office to seek out Ms. Clare, under the full sail that Irishwomen break out when they have just definitively put down an obstreperous male.

  She returned in a moment, still triumphant. “Ms. Clare says you’re not the kind of doctor that takes care of sick people, so she’s not going to interrupt her conference call to talk to you, but if you want to take her to lunch I should make a reservation at the Cape Cod Room of the Drake.”

  “All right.”

  “She also said that you could read our brochures while you’re waiting.”

  “I’m sure that will be good for me.”

  The brochures, little pamphlets really, were well done—good copy and superb pictures, though the latter gave the impression that it never rained in Ireland. The tours were “educational”—Irish History, Irish Castles, Treasures of Ancient Ireland, Irish Literature, Irish Music, Ancient and Modern, most of them presided over by faculty members of one of the Irish universities. Jane’s travelers would work hard and come back feeling that they had learned something, experiencing a contentment like the pious satisfaction of religious pilgrims returning from Lourdes.

  My faculty colleagues would like this kind of travel. Visiting Erin would be not unlike an “educational” trip to New Guinea!

  “Ms. Clare will see you now, Doctor Kelly.”

  I thanked her politely in the Irish language, a bit of which I can manage, especially when it will make a pretty woman blush and smile.

  “Talking dirty to my colleagues?” Jane rose and extended her hand professionally.

  I shook hands with her, just as solemnly. “In a language that is so short on vulgar and obscene words that it must import them from English, which it does with considerable skill…and I note you’ve discovered that education does help one to make money.”

  She grinned at me. “Knowledge can be an end in itself even if it has other ends.”

  She was wearing a blue skirt and a white blouse with long sleeves, light weight, but still business-like, a silver Brigid cross around her neck, and small pearl earrings. No rings. Certainly no wedding rings.

  “You look lovely in professional clothes,” I said. “I’m so used to seeing you only at the Lake that I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  “It was a resort relationship, wasn’t it?” she said calmly and we both sat down.

  I thought about trying to explain why and realized that I didn’t know. So I postponed the hunt for an explanation to another time.

  “You look so lovely,” I went on, “as a professional woman, that I’d much rather have you for lunch than bookbinder soup.”

  “Leo!” Her face flamed. “What a terrible thing to say!”

  “Tis true,” I sighed a phony Irish sigh.

  “I heard you out there,” she tried to sound like she was exasperated with me, “disrupting my staff with your phony Irish charm.”

  “It’s only partially phony.”

  “You must have swallowed the Blarney stone instead of kissing it.”

  “Might have.” I picked up a copy of Ulysses from her desk.” You really are serious about this stuff, aren’t you?”

  “We’re doing a Bloomsday tour next year. The Irish will make fun of us but that’s their problem. I want to know what it’s all about.”

  “Like it?”

  “Harder to read than Portrait but,” her eyes widened, “a wonderful book. I am having a tough time with ‘Night Town.’ It’s supposed to be erotic, but even with a commentary it doesn’t seem very sexy to me.”

  “Wait till you get to the end.”

  “I read that first,” she smiled, “and I don’t want to talk about it.”

  We chatted for a few moments. She had moved down in from Lake Forest to a co-op a couple of blocks north on the Drive, she was near to work, Lucy was close to school, Charley and Linda were only a few blocks away on Webster Avenue, the memories of the suburban home she did not want to keep. She went on the first of each of her Irish tours, to make sure that everything went off smoothly. People paid enough for them and were entitled to good service. Irish faculty were by and large wonderful, charming, intelligent and responsible. At least as long as they were sober. On the whole, they did not make passes at the women tourists, even the attractive ones.

  “Not even at the gorgeous tour managers?”

  That, she told me primly, was none of my business.

  I did not observe that a striking woman like herself—long legs, thin waist, flat belly, shapely breasts, unbearably lovely face—without a wedding ring would be fair game for faculty members in Ireland or this country or any other kind of male too as far as that goes. I presumed she knew this. And thought she could take care of it.

  “Shall we have lunch?” she asked, reaching for the jacket of her suit.

  “That seems like a good idea.”

  “Take good care of the place while I’m gone, Nessa.”

  “I sure will Ms. Clare.”

  “You can call me by my real name when Doctor Kelly is around,” she laughed. “He’s really quite harmless.”

  “Yes, Jane.”

  “God keep all who work in this place,” I said in Irish as we left the shop.

  “And Jesus and Mary and Patrick go with all who visit this place,” the lass from Kerry said solemnly as we departed.

  “What did she say?” Jane demanded when we were outside.

  “It was a chaste Irish blessing, nothing more.”

  “I’m not sure that the Irish are capable of chastity,” she sniffed, “except maybe their clergy.”

  “You’re probably right. And I wouldn’t bet all that much on the clergy either.”

  “It might be argued that their ancient culture is the most obscene in Europe.”

  “Most erotic anyway.”

  “Dirty jokes and breast fixation,” she said primly.

  “So I’m told…I note that the two young women in your office would appeal to that latter cultural trait.”

  “You would note that.”

  “Yes ma’am, I would…Dickie and Mickie have been meeting with our lawyers about the Devlin chair,” I said, my heart pounding rapidly, as we walked down Oak Street toward the good, gray Drake.

  “And you are astonished still?”

  “Maybe because I have been away so long—thirty years.”

  “You were here in the late fifties working on your doctorate.”

  “Not at the Lake, not till this summer.”

  “No,” she said softly, “not till this summer.”

  Jane attracted attention on Oak Street—a striking woman with long legs, slim hips, and a slender waist, she did not try to hide her height. Instead she defiantly wore high heels. She wasn’t quite up to my height, but still seemed tall enough to be a power forward. Either she did not notice the turning heads and the delighted eyes or she took them for granted.

  A man might feel proud that she permitted him to be seen in public with her. I suspect that was the general idea.

  Naturally the maître d’ and the headwaiter, and the table waiter at the Cape Cod Room, resplendent in their oldfashioned naval officer suits—blue jackets with gold stripes and white trousers—knew her by name.

  As we were escorted through the dark room and up a staircase with brass ship rails to an even darker corner, she was greeted by a chorus of respect.

  “Good morning, Ms. Clare.”

  “Nice to have you with us again, Ms. Clare.”

  “Your usual booth, Ms. Clare?”

  “Royalty,” I sniffed. “For a Kerry person too.”

  “Just goes to show you,” she chuckled. “The Big Change at work!”

  Her b
ooth, black leather against a straight back and overlooking the Lake Michigan and Oak Street Beach (through a tiny window) was in a corner of the Cape Cod room, almost a private alcove.

  “Nice for assignations,” I said as we sat down.

  “That’s not what we’re having.”

  “Maybe not today.”

  She sniffed. “Maybe not ever.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I notice,” she tried to change the subject, “that you’re wearing your blue ribbon.”

  “Huh?” I pretended to glance at the little blue pin with the white stars. “Oh yeah, it intimidates faculty.”

  “You’re ready to acknowledge that you are a hero?”

  “A sort of hero, Jane. An accidental hero maybe. It’s part of my life, I guess.”

  “I’m glad you finally see that…must you continue to look at me that way?” she demanded after we had ordered our iced tea, bookbinder soup, and Crab Maryland.

  “What way?”

  “You know what way.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Like you’re taking off my clothes. It embarrasses me.”

  “That’s the way men tend to look at women like you. It’s programmed into the species.”

  “I understand that. But you make it too obvious,” she was talking herself into discomfiture, though of a mild variety.

  “I told you that I would rather have you for lunch than bookbinder soup. I now amend that to read I would rather have you for lunch than bookbinder soup and Crab Maryland.”

  “Well, you’d better be content with your soup and your crab.”

  “I will. For today.”

  “Forever.”

  “I intend to have you, Jane my dear, before the summer is over.”

  She stiffened as though she were angry. “Is that a warning or a threat?”

  “I would never dare threaten you, it’s a statement of fact.”

  “I told you that I didn’t want a man in my life.”

  Now she was no longer half fun and full earnest as the Irish would say. She was all earnest.

  “I know.” I paused while the waiter delivered our iced tea—with the lemon in a net bag—this was, after all, the Drake. “But because you’re so desirable and so smart and so much fun, men will pursue you and eventually out of loneliness and maybe a little desire of your own, you’ll select someone. I lost out last time through no fault of my own. I don’t intend to lose this time.”