Son of Rosemary

  Sheer rudeness. She was surprised at the ACLU.

  The frightening anti-Andy group, the Smith Brothers, were frightening only to her. They had been joke fodder for late-night comedians; the Southerner showed samples.

  Four mountain men more wildly bearded than their cough-drop namesakes, the Smith Brothers had holed up in a Tennessee cabin with the latest in military hardware, bullhorning to the world that Andy was the son of Satan, the Antichrist, and they weren’t giving up without a fight.

  The FBI had waited them out and they were now in a federal hospital, shaven, medicated, and undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

  She meeting was hugely productive and over almost before it began. Seven took part—Andy, Judy (with memo gizmo), Diane, Craig, Sandy, Hank, and Rosemary—in Andy’s office looking out at the buildings of Central Park South and midtown. The coffee table was stocked with veggies and nuts; they sat around it on a black leather sofa and chairs, Hank in his motorized wheelchair.

  “You were right, Rosemary!” Judy had whispered on the way in, radiant in a buttercup sari, I ANDY-ed. “A joyous reunion last night!” Rosemary was joyous for her.

  And for Andy too, the lying weasel. Mom, she doesn’t appeal to me anymore, I can’t help it, I wish I could. She smiled at him, taking a carrot stick from the bowl he offered, smiling at her.

  Everyone agreed about simple being better than elaborate, for both effectiveness and fast production, and from there it was a hop, skip, and jump to a unanimous decision to use the same technique that had produced four of Andy’s top ten commercials—which meant that he and Diane would sit in a couple of easy chairs on the stage of the amphitheater down on the floor below, the ninth floor, and schmooze about the PA’s and their rights for a couple of hours while Muhammed and Kevin worked the hand-held cameras. Diane would then be edited out and the footage pared down. And pared, and pared, and pared.

  Except that this time, Diane suggested, Rosemary should do the schmoozing, her feelings on the subject obviously being stronger than Diane’s. The PA’s could all be shipped to the South Pole as far as she was concerned. Rosemary would also draw richer emotional responses from Andy. “And leave some of her in,” Diane said. “She radiates honesty and openness.”

  Craig said, “What do you say, Rosemary, do you want to give it a shot? The most we can lose is a few hours tomorrow morning. Andy, I assume it’s okay with you?”

  From then on it was a party. Andy opened a bottle of wine, and William and Vanessa came in with another bottle. William, our ambassador to Finland under three presidents, was handsome and white-haired—red tie, white shirt, blue suit. A fun guy though, judging from his hand on Vanessa’s miniskirted rump.

  Yuriko and Polly came in—Rosemary had hardly spoken a word with either of them—and Muhammed and Kevin, fiddling with one of the cameras. Then Jay swooped in and the whole GCNY inner circle was there, all the varied team that was holding the fort or just hanging out during the generous year-end vacation—all thirteen of them.

  Plus Rosemary. Sipping ginger ale, talking with Hank and Sandy about the Broadway season, such as it was, she saw Judy nearby eyeing her sadly but then radiant again, holding onto Andy’s arm and smiling at him as he spoke with Jay—all aflutter about notes coming due in January. Rosemary had to smile too as Andy smoothed Jay’s feathers, giving him his solemn word, right hand raised, that sufficient funds would be in place by the first business day of January to meet all of GC’s legal obligations.

  Diane called downstairs and ordered crab cakes and the little potato pancakes for fourteen.

  Rosemary talked with Vanessa about motivational psychology, with Yuriko about computers, with Sandy and Polly about skin cream.

  When the windows were alight on Central Park South, and the party was winding down, Diane sent Muhammed and Kevin and Polly down to make sure everything was spick-and-span on the ninth floor.

  She talked with Craig a moment, then sent Yuriko and Vanessa down too.

  Dapper in his tux, Joe Maffia talked with the bandleader a moment, then walked back around the rim of the jam-packed dance floor toward the center front table for twelve. The cha-cha ended sooner than was generally expected, and by the time Joe took Rosemary’s hand and Andy stood up and took Judy’s, the musicians had changed books and some of their instruments, and the bandleader was cuing them into an Irving Berlin medley.

  When Andy and Judy and Rosemary and Joe walked onto the floor, everyone else backed off, clapping warmly but not excessively, forming an admiring circle within which the two couples orbited to “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.” Like in a movie.

  Smiling at Joe, Rosemary said through her teeth, “Oh God look at them! They’re looking! I can’t stand this!”

  “Just relax,” Joe said, dipping her low, “I do all the work.” He lifted her. “You got a real winner in this dress, Rosemary. It’s perfect for ballroom. I only wish I’d worn my tails.”

  She relaxed, what choice? The glass of champagne she’d had helped, and Joe’s arm and hand were surprisingly light.

  “See what I mean?”

  “Hey, Joe, you are great...”

  “Ronnie and I went to Roseland twice a week,” he said, easing up on the flash. “You want to go sometime? You could wear shades, plenty of people do.”

  “Let me work up to it.”

  “You’re there.”

  Andy was a good dancer too, whirling white-saried Judy around with elegance and style—and what man doesn’t look his absolute best in black tie? “I give him lessons now and then,” Joe said, looking with her. “He had two left feet when we started.”

  “Last one in is a rotten egg!” Andy shouted over Judy’s shoulder. The onlookers laughed—and hustled back onto the floor, jamming it again as the lights dimmed a point or two and the band segued into “Change Partners.”

  Rosemary breathed a sigh. “Sometimes I’m glad I had him,” she said.

  Joe, smiling, said, “He sure has a knack for saying the right thing at the right time, doesn’t he? You think it’s because he’s the son of an actor?”

  She drew a breath. “Who knows?”

  “I didn’t mean you didn’t contribute too,” he said. “You know, I’m surprised they haven’t turned up anything on your ex since whatever year it was. It’s like he—”

  Andy tapped Joe’s shoulder. “Change partners,” he said. “Orders from Irving Berlin.”

  Rosemary and Judy smiled at each other as the four obeyed.

  Andy favored a tighter hold and the lyrics in the ear: “Can’t you see, I’m longing to be in his place! Won’t you change partners, and dance with me!”

  “Crooning?”

  “It comes under the heading of Great Communication. So does the dress.” “Back off, are you nuts?”

  He backed off, danced her angelically, devilishly grinning at her. Nodded at dancers alongside, said, “Love ya.”

  She caught her breath, gave him a look as he turned her.

  He said, “Craig’s going crazy trying to decide what to cut. Of you. He’s already edited out all of me. Really, just about. We’re going to call it the Andy’s Mom commercial.”

  “Love you both!” a girl of eight or nine called to them, dancing by on Dad’s shoes. “We’re lighting our candles at Colonial Williamsburg!”

  “Love you, darling!” Rosemary called after her.

  “Love ya, sweetheart!” Andy called. He smiled at Rosemary. “You want to do another one?” He dipped her low. “About when to light the candle in which time zone?” Lifted her.

  “I’d love to,” she said. “In fact, I’m thinking about starting a whole career.”

  “Don’t,” he said. Smiled at her.

  “Why not?” she asked him. “I’m the Great Radiator, aren’t I? Wasn’t I radiating yesterday? My New Year’s resolution is to start radiating independent income, with some kind of interview program. Every network has invited me to lunch; I’m going to start accepting.”

  Looking at her, t
urning with her, he said, “You don’t want to give too much weight to those guys. One day they’re hot, the next day they’re cold.”

  She drew back and squinted at him.

  His shoulder shrugged under her hand. He said, “I just don’t want you getting your hopes up too high, that’s all.” He looked away.

  “Oh come on,” she said. “Get real, Andrew. They’ll be panting the minute I say I’m interested and they won’t cool down either. You know that’s the truth.”

  He looked back at her. Nodded. “I guess,” he said.

  “ ‘Guess’?”

  “We’re naming our twins Andrew and Rosemary!” a woman sang out alongside them, her green-gowned belly immense; her man chimed in with, “Love you both!” The band launched into “Blue Skies.”

  “Oh bless you,” Rosemary said, swaying with Andy. “Bless them! Love you!” She tugged the hair at Andy’s nape; he looked at the couple. Said “Love ya”—and watched them as they were borne away among other dancers.

  Rosemary sighed, smoothed his hair down, rested her cheek on his shoulder. Sang softly as they turned together, “Nothing but blue skies, from now on. Never saw the sun shining so bright...”

  Andy looked out over her head. Shook his own head as if to clear it. Smiled at the people dancing around them.

  Outside the door of Rosemary’s suite, Joe’s palms hovered this close to her bare shoulders. “Andy’s Mom,” he said. “I can hardly believe it.”

  The concierge was absent from his desk down the hall. Perhaps he had been clued in that it was a good time to go take a leak.

  “Joe,” Rosemary said, “sometimes I lose sight of it myself, but Andy’s not Jesus and I’m not Mary. I’m Rosemary Reilly, from Omaha. The men in the family work for Hormel. Or used to.”

  He took a breath. “Gotcha,” he said, and grabbed her shoulders and kissed her mouth. She kissed him back, holding him.

  They smiled at each other, and she got the card from her bag and unlocked the door. They went in.

  She let him go ahead of her, bolted the door behind her.

  Why bandy? She was randy. He was handy.

  They got snifters and two miniatures of Remy Martin from the bar and sat on the sofa with the lights down low. Hugged and kissed each other.

  A lot.

  “I have to tell you something,” Joe said, caressing her cheek. “I haven’t exactly been celibate since Ronnie and I split, so considering all the crap around, I think I’d better get myself checked out before we get into—you know, anything risky. But I’ve got a suggestion I’d like to make.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m thinking about New Year’s Eve,” he said. “I know we’re all going to light our candles together, either at the ceremony in the park or at Gracie Mansion or someplace, but I thought that maybe later, at midnight, you and I could light candles, just the two of us. I’ve got extras.”

  She smiled at him, and said, “That’s a great idea, Joe.” They kissed each other.

  He took the snifters from the coffee table and gave her hers. “I figure we can start the year off with a bang,” he said, smiling. “That’s a pun that’s intended.” He sipped his brandy, watching her.

  She smiled, sipped hers. Said, “If not at the beginning of the year 2000, when?”

  He smiled at her. Nodded. “When you stop to think about it,” he said, “I’ll bet you a higher percentage of people are going to be screwing around right after the Lighting than at any other time in all human history.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “The year 1000, forget it.” They chuckled.

  “Dullsville!” he said. They pecked each other’s lips. “Jeez,” he said, shaking his head, “this is something I really didn’t anticipate!”

  “I did,” she said. “The first good look I got at you, I thought, ‘old but sexy.’ ”

  “Thanks a heap, Rosemary.”

  “I was thirty-one in my head,” she said. “I still am sometimes.”

  He said, “You’re about eighteen in your mouth.”

  They got rid of the snifters.

  10

  SHE WOKE up bright and early, feeling fully recharged despite the smooching till midnight.

  Or because of it, more likely. She’d damn near forgotten how exciting two-party sex could be, even with Joe’s sensible and admirable limitations. Her first real contact with a man in . . . almost seven years her time, add twenty-seven for reality. Ye gods.

  The Kiss didn’t count, of course.

  She looked forward to New Year’s Eve with Joe.

  Today was what—Thursday, the ninth? She’d have to speak to him. How long did it take to get checked out? And exactly how romantic did they have to be, time-wise?

  Her New Year’s resolution would have to wait for its proper season; more important things came first, like helping make sure everyone got the Lighting right, time-wise.

  Again, as whenever she gave more than passing thought to the event, the happening, its beauty and symbolic power thrilled her. She had only learned on Tuesday, during the schmoozing and taping, about the high-resolution satellite images that would be coming back to Earth as the candles were lighted, about the concert—the Boston Pops, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir—that would be broadcast live in worldwide stereo. Maybe Andy was no angel but he was certainly an artist, because that’s what his Lighting was: a major work of conceptual art, accessible and meaningful to all humanity.

  He was nuts, of course—weren’t so many of them?— rubbing against her like that right out there among the dancers; a dozen people must have— Anywhere! He shouldn’t have done it anywhere! She really had to have another talk with him.

  Opening the draperies, she got a golden sun smack in the eye; raised an arm against its brilliance above the Fifth Avenue cliff. Never saw the sun shining so bright!

  Never saw so many joggers either. She squinted down under her forearm at two lanes of shorts and sweatsuits, jogging in both directions beyond the southbound taxis and cars on the Park Drive. Who’d have imagined there were so many health nuts crazy enough to be out running early on a cold December morning, under a blue sky, then going on to put in a full day’s work . . .

  Never saw things going so right! In leotards and a sweatsuit, Garboed up in a muffler, a floppy-brimmed hat, and a big pair of shades—sunglasses till that very morning—she jogged with the health nuts, an incredibly attractive assortment of determined-looking New Yorkers, most of them sporting I ANDY buttons, a few in I ANDY sweatshirts, others declaring their [heart] for MOZART, CHOCOLATE, and FIRE ISLAND.

  Noticing the days hurrying by! When you’re in love— she segued into humming.

  And saw, to her surprise—across the drive and beyond the park, on Central Park West—the Bram. Its peaked roof and upper turrets anyway, screened by tree branches. Or was it the Bram? The little she could see looked different somehow. Lighter.

  She waited till the taxis and cars were checked by a traffic light farther north, and crossed the drive.

  She followed a road that sloped up, curving rightward; walked its verge, cars passing close on her left. Nearing Central Park West, the road curved leftward and the whole of the Gothic brick building came into view. The Bramford, all right.

  It had been cleaned up—sandblasted, or steamed, or whatever they were doing nowadays. Black Bramford had become Pale Peach Bramford. The gargoyles were gone; the stars and stripes waved atop the roof’s pinnacle.

  Andy’s Boyhood Home.

  Smiling, she shook her head. T-shirts were probably on sale in the courtyard—an assortment of Andy and one each of Theodore Dreiser and Isadora Duncan. Did they have any shirts with pictures of Adrian Marcato and his mementos of Satan? Of the Trench sisters sautéing sweet Daphne? Of Pearl Ames and her pets?

  A woman sobbed behind her.

  She turned, and saw, beyond a slatted snow fence and a span of shrubbery, a clearing lower down where a few people stood in a circle. The sobbing woman, young, in
black, was being led away from the gathering by an older woman.

  Rosemary shut her eyes. Sliding her fingertips in under her glasses, she pressed tight at her eyeballs, swaying.

  The Unthinkable, the one thought she had stopped herself from even thinking of thinking about from the very first moment she’d seen Andy on TV exactly a month ago today—the Unthinkable tapped her on the shoulder.

  She lifted her head, lowered her shades, brushed the Unthinkable’s hand away. Tugged her hat down snug, wound her muffler over her mouth, and went looking for a path to the clearing.

  She found one bending back from the road she’d been on, an asphalt lane curving down past a sign, Strawberry Fields, to where six or seven people stood around a wide black-and-white-patterned disc set in the ground, a few flowers and folds of paper on it. Some of the men and women looked down, as if praying; others gazed mournfully ahead. Other people, farther away, aimed cameras at the gathering, came closer aiming their cameras at the disc, clicking at it.

  A stately Mediterranean-looking woman spilled an armful of red roses onto the disc, her eyes closed, her red lips moving. She was all in black like the younger woman, who sat, still sobbing, with her mother or whoever, on one of the surrounding benches.

  Rosemary tried to stay calm, sure she was having some kind of vision, as the Unthinkable chiseled itself into her head: ANDY IS 33—THE SAME AGE AS JESUS WHEN HE WAS NAILED TO THE CROSS.

  These people across from Andy’s boyhood home were gathered around a shrine that didn’t exist yet. But would someday.

  She drew a deep breath and walked closer to it, hands clenching at her sides.

  The disc was a mosaic of black and white tiles, its pattern a wheel with curiously jagged spokes. At its center a four-letter word lay inset in black capitals amid the mass of red roses; she raised the glasses to be sure of it—MAGI.

  What it signified she couldn’t imagine, what wise men were being invoked or heralded and why. But did it matter? She lowered the glasses and walked on past the mourners, fixing her hat and muffler; walked faster down another path leading toward the drive, jogged down it seeing the top of the gold-glass tower half a mile away, bumping into someone, jogging on. She called back over her shoulder, “I’m sorry, excuse me!”