Sometimes as he drifted off to sleep, he would imagine himself in that church again on Christmas Eve when it had been packed for Midnight Mass. Candles blazed on the altars. He would hear the euphoric hymn “Adeste Fideles.” Christmas Eve, with the rain gusting in the doors, and at home after, the little tree glowing in the corner and the gas heater blazing on the grate. How beautiful those tiny blue flames had been. How beautiful that little tree, with its lights which meant the Light of the World, and its ornaments which meant the gifts of the Wise Men, and its green-smelling branches which meant the promise of the summer to come even in the depth of the winter’s cold.
There came to him a memory of a Midnight Mass procession in which the little girls of the first grade had been dressed as angels as they came through the sanctuary and down the main aisle of the church. He could smell the Christmas greens, mingling with the sweetness of the flowers and the burning wax. The little girls had been singing of the Christ Child. He had seen Rita Mae Dwyer and Marie Louise Guidry and his cousin, Patricia Anne Becker, and all the other pesty little girls he knew, but how beautiful they had looked in their little white gowns with stiff cloth wings. Not just little monsters anymore but real angels. That was the magic of Christmas. And when he got home after, all his presents were under the lighted tree.
Processions. There were so many. But the ones to the Virgin Mary he never really loved. She was too confused in his mind with the mean nuns who hurt the boys so much, and he could not feel a great devotion to her, which had saddened him until he was old enough not to care.
But Christmas he never forgot. It was the one remnant of his religion which never left him, for he sensed behind it a great, shimmering history that went back and back through the millennia to dark forests where fires blazed and pagans danced. He loved to remember the crib with the smiling infant, and the solemn moment at midnight when Christ was born into the world again.
In fact, ever after in California, Christmas Eve was the one day Michael held sacred. He always celebrated it as others celebrated New Year’s-for it was for him the symbol of a new beginning: of time redeeming you and all your failings so that you might start again. Even when he was alone he sat up with his glass of wine until midnight, the light of the little tree the only illumination in his room. And that last Christmas, there had been snow-of all things, snow-snow falling softly and soundlessly in the wind at the very moment perhaps when his father had gone through the burning warehouse roof on Tchoupitoulas Street.
Somehow or other, Michael never did go home.
He just never got around to it. He was always struggling to complete a job already over deadline. And what little vacation time he had he spent in Europe, or in New York roaming the great monuments and museums. His various lovers wanted it that way over the years. Who wanted to see Mardi Gras in New Orleans when they could go to Rio? Why go to the South of the United States when they could go to the South of France?
But often Michael reflected that he had acquired everything he had ever longed for on those old Garden District walks, and he ought to go back there to take stock, to see whether or not he was deceiving himself. Were there not moments when he felt empty? When he felt as if he were waiting for something, something of extreme importance, and he did not know what that was?
The one thing he had not found was a great and enduring love, but he knew this would come in time, and maybe then he would take his bride with him to visit his home, and he wouldn’t be alone as he walked the cemetery paths or the old sidewalks. Who knows? Maybe he could even stay for a while, wandering the old streets.
Michael did have several affairs over the years, and at least two of these were like marriages. Both women were Jewish, of Russian descent, passionate, spiritual, brilliant and independent. And Michael was always painfully proud of these polished and clever ladies. These affairs were born in talk as much as in sensuality. Talk the night long after making love, talk over pizza and beer, talk as the sun came up, that’s what Michael had always done with his lovers.
He learned much from these relationships. His egoless openness was highly seductive to these women, and he soaked up whatever they had to teach, rather effortlessly. They loved traveling with him to New York or the Riviera or Greece and seeing his charming enthusiasm and deep feeling for what he beheld. They shared their favorite music with him, their favorite painters, their favorite foods, their ideas about furniture, clothes. Elizabeth instructed him in how to buy a proper Brooks Brothers suit and Paul Stewart shirts. Judith took him to Bullock and Jones for his first Burberry and to fancy salons for proper haircuts, and taught him how to order European wines and how to cook pasta and why baroque music was just as good as the classical music he loved.
He laughed at all this, but he learned it. Both women teased him about his freckles and his heavyweight build, and the way his hair hung in his big blue eyes, and how visiting parents loved him, and about his bad little boy charm, and how splendid he looked in black tie. Elizabeth called him her “tough guy with the heart of gold,” and Judith nicknamed him Sluggo. He took them to Golden Glove boxing matches and basketball games and to good bars for drinking beer, and taught them how to appreciate soccer and rugby games in Golden Gate Park on Sundays if they didn’t already know it, and even how to street-fight if they wanted to learn. But that was more of a joke than anything serious. He also took them to the opera and to the symphony, which he attended with religious fervor. And they introduced him to Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, and the Kronos Quartet.
Michael’s receptiveness, and his passion, tended to seduce everybody.
But his meanness charmed his girlfriends too, almost always. He could, when angry, or even slightly threatened, revert to the grim-faced Irish Channel kid in a moment, and when he did this, he did it with great conviction and confidence and a certain unconscious sexuality. Women were impressed by his mechanical skills as well, his talent with the hammer and nails, and by his fearlessness.
Fear of humiliation, yes, that he secretly understood, and there were a few irrational childhood fears which still haunted him. But fear of anything real? As an adult, he did not know the meaning of it. When there was a cry in the night, Michael was the first one down the steps to investigate.
This was not so common among highly educated men. Neither was Michael’s characteristically direct and lusting and enthusiastic approach to physical sex. He liked it plain and simple, or fancier if that’s what they wanted; and he liked it in the morning when he first woke up as well as at night. This stole hearts for him.
The first breakup-with Elizabeth-was Michael’s fault, he felt, because he was just too young and had not remained faithful. Elizabeth got fed up with his other “adventures,” though he swore they “didn’t mean a thing,” and finally packed her bags and left him. He was heartbroken and contrite. He followed her to New York, but it was no good. He came back home to his empty flat and got drunk off and on for six months of mourning. He could not believe it when Elizabeth married a professor at Harvard, and he was jubilant when a year later she got divorced.
He flew to New York to console her, they had a fight in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he cried for hours on the flight back. In fact, he looked so sad that the stewardess took him home with her when they landed and took care of him for three whole days.