she appreciated the monsignor’s candor. He never offered easy answers. He sometimes implied that righting a wrong might take years, and even then it might not be righted. But somehow the realism of his words was more comforting than the homilies of the younger clerics.
“You have to stand by your husband because he’s innocent,” the old monsignor had concluded, “and he has to stand by you because you’re innocent. That’s the strength you have to rely on, Callie. That no matter what they say about you or try to do with you, you’re innocent. You know the real truth. That’s the only weapon you have. And it’ll help you survive this. You’ll see.”
***
She went for a long ride afterward. She pretended that she would be teaching again soon. She rode along the river, making note of the various trees and undergrowth and how it had all changed over the course of this lingering Indian summer. She would take her class on a trip. Yes, a morning trip, when the light and the air were at their freshest, and she would identify various botanical splendors for them-
But the fantasy was short-lived. It all came crowding in on her again. She relived her time in the Irish ghetto in Chicago where she’d been raised. Her parents had been loving but frail. She’d watched two of her brothers and one of her sisters die of influenza. Early on she realized that life was a fragile business. She worked in a sweatshop crowded with other immigrant girls, chiefly Jewish. She sewed garments. Though Jews and Catholics didn’t especially get along, she made good friends with several of the Jewish girls. For all their seeming differences, both ethnic experiences had been pretty much alike.
On Saturday afternoons, they went to plays together. These tended to be musicales aimed at working girls. They invariably dealt with poor girls being swept away by poor boys who were secretly royalty in disguise-dashing young men who just wanted to see if the girls loved them for themselves and not for their money or status.
The girls, certainly not Callie, never tired of this particular plot. A prince would come into her life someday. She was sure of it. She just hoped it was before she turned eighteen. That was the age when decline began to set in among the girls at the sweatshops. They came in at eleven or twelve, fresh and pretty as morning-cut flowers. But five, six, seven years of working for a dime an hour, sometimes seven days a week, sometimes twelve hours a day… well, after a few years of that, who could look fresh and pretty?
So she was all primed to meet somebody like David Stanton that sunny Sunday afternoon when she was strolling in the park with her friend Dorothy Steiner. Dorothy was every bit as pretty as Callie, but she’d fallen in love with a young soldier a few weeks earlier and was waiting for him to get back to Chicago following a brief bivouac for new recruits.
And that’s how it happened. Stanton took her to plays, baseball games, operettas in the park. He brought her flowers, candy, even wrote her sweet, corny little poems. He took her to places where she had her first real glimpse of urban society. She didn’t know if his friends were really as important as they tried to pretend-but they were certainly more important, and interesting and entertaining, than anybody she’d ever met in the ghetto.
He was wise enough not to even try and seduce her for some time. She was a good Catholic. Her virginity was a very basic part of her entire personality.
But he was sly and he was stealthy and so, two weeks after he’d convinced her to give up her job at the sweatshop, two weeks after he’d convinced her that through his various business enterprises he could support them both, he took her one rainy midnight to his apartment. She’d felt curiously tired and worn that night, sorry that she couldn’t be more sensitive and alive to
“You have to stand by your husband because he’s innocent,” the old monsignor had concluded, “and he has to stand by you because you’re innocent. That’s the strength you have to rely on, Callie. That no matter what they say about you or try to do with you, you’re innocent. You know the real truth. That’s the only weapon you have. And it’ll help you survive this. You’ll see.”
***
She went for a long ride afterward. She pretended that she would be teaching again soon. She rode along the river, making note of the various trees and undergrowth and how it had all changed over the course of this lingering Indian summer. She would take her class on a trip. Yes, a morning trip, when the light and the air were at their freshest, and she would identify various botanical splendors for them-
But the fantasy was short-lived. It all came crowding in on her again. She relived her time in the Irish ghetto in Chicago where she’d been raised. Her parents had been loving but frail. She’d watched two of her brothers and one of her sisters die of influenza. Early on she realized that life was a fragile business. She worked in a sweatshop crowded with other immigrant girls, chiefly Jewish. She sewed garments. Though Jews and Catholics didn’t especially get along, she made good friends with several of the Jewish girls. For all their seeming differences, both ethnic experiences had been pretty much alike.
On Saturday afternoons, they went to plays together. These tended to be musicales aimed at working girls. They invariably dealt with poor girls being swept away by poor boys who were secretly royalty in disguise-dashing young men who just wanted to see if the girls loved them for themselves and not for their money or status.
The girls, certainly not Callie, never tired of this particular plot. A prince would come into her life someday. She was sure of it. She just hoped it was before she turned eighteen. That was the age when decline began to set in among the girls at the sweatshops. They came in at eleven or twelve, fresh and pretty as morning-cut flowers. But five, six, seven years of working for a dime an hour, sometimes seven days a week, sometimes twelve hours a day… well, after a few years of that, who could look fresh and pretty?
So she was all primed to meet somebody like David Stanton that sunny Sunday afternoon when she was strolling in the park with her friend Dorothy Steiner. Dorothy was every bit as pretty as Callie, but she’d fallen in love with a young soldier a few weeks earlier and was waiting for him to get back to Chicago following a brief bivouac for new recruits.
And that’s how it happened. Stanton took her to plays, baseball games, operettas in the park. He brought her flowers, candy, even wrote her sweet, corny little poems. He took her to places where she had her first real glimpse of urban society. She didn’t know if his friends were really as important as they tried to pretend-but they were certainly more important, and interesting and entertaining, than anybody she’d ever met in the ghetto.
He was wise enough not to even try and seduce her for some time. She was a good Catholic. Her virginity was a very basic part of her entire personality.
But he was sly and he was stealthy and so, two weeks after he’d convinced her to give up her job at the sweatshop, two weeks after he’d convinced her that through his various business enterprises he could support them both, he took her one rainy midnight to his apartment. She’d felt curiously tired and worn that night, sorry that she couldn’t be more sensitive and alive to
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