“Your father is all excited about St. Hilary's school,” Jane said. The kids were in bed, Tim and Jane were having hot chocolate in the den, catching up on one another's day. She sat on a couch, her legs drawn up beside her, wearing a shawl, the fire making her face a pattern of shadows. How beautiful she is, Tim told himself, as if he were surprised.
“He already graduated from there.”
“Ha ha. The place has been turned into a center for seniors.”
“He wouldn't admit that he is one.”
“You're wrong. There's going to be a dance and he will be emcee or something and he really is excited.”
“It's time he came out of his shell.”
When his father had left the station, he had been given boxes of tapes, music, mainly recordings of his own programs, and Tim had the awful feeling that his father spent all day listening to himself in that lonely condo. For all his popularity, Jack Gallagher had retired with not a lot more than Social Security. But the sale of the house, and a little help from Tim, had enabled him to move into a very comfortable apartment in Western Sun Community. The idea was that he would be near things, able to walk or take public transportation, and not have to bother with driving. He was a terrible driver. But he had become almost a recluse. It was a major event when they got him to the house, despite
the fact that they picked him up and returned him. Of course his father had never really been at ease with Tim since the great accusation.
One summer his father got Tim a job at the station, on the television side. It was then that Tim first realized that his father was obsolescent, a man who did radio and not television. On that station, there was no room for such specialization now. For a time it had even been thought that radio itself was obsolete. No one then could have imagined the plague of talk shows that lay ahead. When Tim heard gossip about his father's pursuit of the girl who did the weather, he broke out into a little sweat of embarrassment. It was one thing to learn that his father's status at the station was sinking, it was another to hear him mockedâand about such a subject. That night at home, he confronted his father with the accusation. His father almost sprang from his chair, took Tim by the arm and steered him out of the house.
“Do you want your mother to hear such nonsense?”
“They're all talking about it at the station.”
“And you believed them?” His father was capable of theatrical tones at home but this was as unmodulated as he could make his voice. The words penetrated Tim and made him feel the deeper shame of doubting his father. Then he was in his father's arms, his back being patted, friends again.
“Actually, Tim, she's in pursuit of me.”
Thus in a joke had it been passed over. Why did he remember that now? Because it conveyed more surely than any other consideration how a child reacts to anything that threatens the home. Husbands and wives might have formed their union voluntarily, but the child is born into it as his only world. When Tim heard his father spoken of in that way, in pursuit of a weather girl, it was like his first travel by plane when he realized there was literally nothing but miles of air beneath the floor on which his feet rested.
As that summer wore on, Anita, who did the weather, seemed to be flirting with everyone. She even stopped at Tim's table in the commissary, gave him a look of appraisal and chucked him under the chin.
“Be careful, Anita. That's Jack Gallagher's son.”
Her eyes widened and she stepped back. “Then I better be careful.”
By then Tim had learned that many meaningless things were said at the station. But what an odd memory to have when Jane mentioned his father and St. Hilary's school.
“He went there as a kid, Jane.”
“And now he's back. He's seeing friends he hadn't seen in years. Your uncle Austin hangs out there too. And there's going to be a dance.”
Much of Jane's enthusiasm was relief that his father had any news at all to tell, let alone all this. He realized how the old man's loneliness had weighed upon them. Maybe the fact that Colleen was getting married at last had snapped him out of it.
Jane was a little disappointed when Colleen suggested they have dinner in a restaurant in order to meet Mario.
“She's thinking of you having to prepare the meal.”
“I know, but still.”
“Maybe she thinks the reality of domestic life would scare him off.”
“Tim, he's Italian. Colleen is going to have to learn how to cook
modo Italiano
.”
“You make him sound like an immigrant. He is the shining light at Mallard and Bill. They've already made him a partner so he can't be lured away. All the youngsters there are jealous and angry.” Of course he was thinking of Aggie and she was probably not a good example. She had called Mario “the cardinal,” making an unintelligible reference to Cesare Borgia.
Mario Liberati probably would have been created a cardinal if he had gone into the priesthood. Tim liked him immediately.
“I never go to court, so it's not surprising we haven't met before. Colleen has given me an underling's view of things.”
“âAn underling's'? Most of us get credit for the work she does. I know I do.”
Every effort to get him to talk of the firm was similarly deflected.
Tim liked that. Mallard and Bill would have liked him less if they thought he discussed the firm with outsiders, even with a prospective brother-in-law. He was not a lot more forthcoming about his family.
“I was raised in Milwaukee, but got my first job here in Chicago after graduation.”
“Isn't Mallard and Bill your first job?”
“This was before law school. I was a financial adviser for several years.”
This opened up a vast area of conversation, at least for Tim and Mario. Colleen must have known about it already but Jane was simply bored with money. They had enough, more than enough, and that gave her the right to ignore it. Except, of course, for a careful keeping of the household accounts, but this was an exercise in mathematics rather than economics. Jane tuned back in when Mario's family came up.
“My parents married late and I am one of two children, almost an only child. Not many Italians can say either. They've retired to Sicily.”
“We'll see them on our honeymoon,” Colleen said.
“Of course Americans think of Sicily as Italians think of Chicago. It's one of the most beautiful places on earth, all of it, but on the southern coast, it is breathtaking. There's the sense that you're in touch with the roots of civilization. Syracuse was a Greek city. Plato visited there.”
“You sound like you want to move there yourself.”
“No, but I'm gratified they are in such a place.”
Colleen said, “Tim met Aggie at a conference, Mario.”
“Who's Aggie?” Jane asked.
“A femme fatale,” Colleen confided, leaning toward Jane. “Skirts up to here, neckline down to here, all slinky and predatory. She tried to steal Mario away from me.”
“Definitely not my type.”
“What did you think of her, Tim?” Jane asked.
“As little as possible,” he lied.
“I don't want any femme fatale stealing you away from me.”
Later she and Tim talked about Mario and agreed that he was a good match for Colleen, who had been her old self again.
“I suppose she must have wondered who she'd meet in an office, and what other chances were there?”
“He was worth waiting for.”
“What a gallant guy you are,” Jane said, lifting her face to be kissed.
Desmond O'Toole regarded the arrival of Jack Gallagher at the Center as providential. Maud might be awed by the fact that Austin had been a professor of literature, but she would remember Jack from his radio days. Just about everyone did. They crowded around Jack, who responded in a way that made the women want to get closer and just touch him, but didn't make the men resentful; they were as impressed as the women by the presence among them of someone who had been an undoubted local celebrity. And his voice! On radio it had been seductively gentle but it was even more so in person. He might have been inviting the ladies to get closer so they could hear his every word.
“You sing a little too, if I remember, Jack,” Desmond said, establishing himself as Jack's right-hand man.
Jack put on a shamefaced look. “I used to sing along with the records sometimes.”
“Oh, I remember,” Maud said. She had finally gotten right next to Jack.
“The reason I mention it, Jack,” Desmond said, “I was going to do a few vocals at the dance, and if you would spell me ⦔
The squeals from the women brought back memories of the Sinatra phenomenon. Jack raised his hands, as if in self-defense.
“All right. But I'll count on your being hard of hearing.”
“What?” said Desmond, cupping his ear. It got a big laugh.
“You'll have to dance too,” Maud cried.
“Of course he'll dance,” Desmond assured her. It no longer hurt so much that Maud's interest in him was fading. He would be sending Jack in as the second team and routing Rooney from the field.
Rooney was nowhere in sight during this triumph, which dimmed it only a little. Austin had made a point of saying to Desmond how much he looked forward to the dance, speaking with Maud on his arm, so he could scarcely back out. The night of the dance Austin Rooney would be replaced by Jack Gallagher.
Austin Rooney was with his niece Colleen, who had a strange story to tell.
“There isn't anyone else I can tell, Uncle Austin. I can't tell Father, and of course Jane must never know.”
“What on earth is wrong?”
And then she told him the story of Aggie, the office vamp, who, having lost out to Colleen with her now fiance, had decided to get revenge by seducing Tim.
“âSeducing'?” Austin said with a little laugh. “That is an activity that usually goes in the opposite direction.”
“You don't know Aggie.”
“I don't think I want to.”
“She has to be stopped.”
“Have you talked with her?”
“I wouldn't give her the satisfaction. That's what she's after, to avenge herself on me.”
Austin had lived his life in the hothouse of faculty life and was not disposed to dismiss his niece's fears. He supposed an office could be like a campus, a place where petty quarrels sometimes blew into major storms. Male professors often acted as if they had droit du seigneur with their female students, and women faculty, wed and unwed, often
entered the competition on the excuse that they were protecting students. When Austin had begun teaching, the profession was highminded, moral and responsible. The notion that female students were legitimate prey would have shocked and horrified both male and female faculty. But now seminars were sponsored by national organizations decrying the alleged McCarthyism of monitoring the misbehavior of faculty with students. What a professor did behind the closed door of his office was nobody's business. No matter that the student was vulnerable, flattered by an attention which was at first equivocal and then unmistakable. And they were dependent on the professor for their grade. Something akin to the Hollywood director's couch was now operating in too many faculty offices. On this analogy, however limping, Austin was disposed to take Colleen's concern seriously.
“Surely you don't doubt your brother.”
“He won't know what hit him. Already they're meeting regularly for drinks. People have noticed.”
“Colleen, I am trying to think what I can possibly do.”
“In part, you've already done it. I had to talk to someone.”
“Sweetheart, you can always talk to me.”
What he could not tell her was that his receptivity to her fears was strengthened by memories of her father's misbehavior. Jack had been a notorious womanizer during his golden years. When Austin had learned of this, he had gone to his brother-in-law, told him what he had heard, and asked for a denial. Jack's brows had lifted in humorous disbelief.
“Do you have your stole with you?”
“Is it true?”
“âIt'?”
“Are you running around with other women?”
“That is an interesting figure of speech, since the point is to get them stopped and horizontal.”
Austin hit him in the mouth, with his open hand, then drove his fist into his stomach. Jack staggered backward across the room into a rack
of records which continued to cascade down on him when he was prostrate on the floor. Austin left Jack's office and the two men had not exchanged a civil word since. Was Jack's son now to go the same route as his father?
Austin had gotten out of the studio before anyone came running in response to the crashing records. Jack must have told some lie about what had happened, since the charge of assault Austin half feared his brother-in-law would bring against him did not materialize. But the rumors about Jack's behavior continued.
This precedent did not make the thought of speaking to Tim attractive, but he resolved to do something.
“Where have they been having drinks together?”
Colleen gave him the name of a bar near Water Tower Place, the Willard.
“And that's all it has been so far, a tête-à -tête in a bar?”
“I hope so.”
One afternoon at four-thirty, Austin took up his station in the bar, off in a corner, sipping a martini. The Loop was being swept by November winds and he had felt carried along by them when he walked from his car to the bar. What he had really wanted was a cup of coffee, but this was not the kind of bar that expected such an order, certainly not at this time of day. It was ready for an invasion of tense and ambitious professional people wanting the supposed relaxation of a couple of quick drinks before they headed home. In the event, he ordered a second martini, finding a species of warmth in the icy drink. The place eventually became so crowded he began to fear his nephew could be there and he wouldn't know it. So with his drink in hand he waded into the crowd. From its center he caught a glimpse of Tim and a young woman who lived up to Colleen's description.
What to do now? He had imagined a less hectic setting in which he
could pretend to happen upon Tim and by his presence set the stage for any further talking to that might be needed. In this noise, it was doubtful anything he said could even be heard. He was reassessing his plan when Tim turned and their eyes met. It was all there on his nephew's face; no need to wonder if this were an innocent rendezvous. Whatever it was, Tim was ashamed of himself. People crowded between them and Austin lost sight of Tim and the young woman, but he had the sense that, in a way quite unplanned, he had fulfilled his mission.
The following day, Colleen phoned to tell him that the ineffable Aggie had let it be known in the ladies' room that she was involved with Colleen's brother.
“She told you that?”
“Oh, no. Not directly. Of course, she counted on the story being told to me.”
“Is she
capable
of shame?”
Colleen laughed. “She is proud of what she is doing.”
“Your brother isn't.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“Our eyes met in that bar when he was with her.”
“You went there?”
“With a grandiose and impractical plan. Fortunately, it proved unnecessary. When our eyes met, it was plain as could be what he was up to and how he felt about my seeing him.”
“How long ago was that?”
“This is Friday? It was Wednesday night.”
“But Aggie claims the big event took place at her apartment Thursday.”
This was bad. When he had hung up, he called Tim at his office and was told that he was away for several days. And then he called Jane.
“Tim's out of town, Austin. Is there anything I can do?”
“It's nothing important. Just tell him I called. Have you heard about the dance we oldsters are having at St. Hilary's tomorrow night?”
He entertained her with the story of it, leaving out the fact that her father-in-law was now regarded as the main attraction of the evening. If he could have thought of anything else to make his call seem less abrupt, he would have been delighted, but only that idiotic dance came to mind as diverting small talk.