Meeting

She was little more than twenty when this picture was taken. As to the occasion, I'm sans clues, but I know from the date on the back that in not too many months, she will meet my father and start her transformation ... wife ... mother ... psyche-haunter.

But who is this person, twenty-ish Marie FitzGerald, dark-haired Irish-American standing here in the dead of winter, with her shy smile and deep-set eyes? One thing I can tell you. After high school, she worked first as a cashier at a local movie theater and then as a secretary at the American Hospital Supply Company. Nice jobs perhaps, and I'm sure she was quite proficient, but I don't think they caused those deep-set eyes to burn with anything approaching passion. On the other hand, it was during this period that she found a way to enroll at the Sheil School of Social Studies. Bishop Sheil was a crusading Catholic cleric and his school, patterned after Ruskin's Working Men's College, explored topics that would have shocked the nuns back at Providence: race relations and prejudice, the role of unions, the plight of the working class, Father Coughlin (more on him later). Good juicy stuff that did set those eyes to burning.

But this is not to suggest that her life was all crusades and lost causes. Like countless other eligible girls, she loved to get out on weekends, dancing with her friends or catching the latest Cary Grant movie. She even had a schoolgirl crush on a Hollywood actor, Ronald Coleman. On the more mundane level, she was in one of those on-again, off-again romances with a Coca-Cola driver named Bob. Bob was big and blond - another actor, Ralph Bellamy, comes to mind - but with his steady paycheck and his Coca-Cola aura, Bob was a "catch", or so my grandparents felt (actually, Gramma and Grampa, being from Ireland, were more the "good lad" types, but you get the drift. Bob and parental approval were synonymous).

The Ichabod-ian figure who appeared at the FitzGerald doorstep one summer night in 1941 should hardly have been competition for a go-getter like Bob. This new young man, John by name, was thin to the point of cadaverous and outfitted in a suit so gauche that even my grandfather, no fashion maven, was driven to shake his head.

"It was a sickly green," my mom told me years later. She still seemed offended - viscerally offended - by the sheer grotesqueness of the thing. "We'd met the week before at the Aragon. He seemed nice. He was certainly a good dancer... But that suit ... What was he thinking?"

The young couple went back to the Aragon and to his everlasting credit, the thin cadaverous boy proved again to be a splendid dancer. The suit might be an eyesore, but as soon as the band played a single note from Cole Porter, thin and cadaverous would switch personas, becoming syncopated and spontaneous - Astaire one moment, trademarked John Mc the next.

It was 1941. At the Aragon, the bands were playing Porter and Glen Miller, and the crowds were exuberant because there was no war yet and the Depression was old hat. A typical night might begin with "Anything Goes" and end with "Begin The Beguine". Four or five hours of dancing and music amidst a ballroom of flushed, breathless faces.

There were tables off to the side where these flushed, breathless faces could slip away to rejuvenate. It was here, during an intermission, that Marie casually revealed the fact that her father was a police detective. Like most of her dates, John perked up immediately. "I'm taking science classes at Amundsen night school when I'm not working at the A&P," he blurted, hoping perhaps to make a good impression on the detective side of the family. After a few more such attempts, he mentioned something that made Marie perk up. His father had once owned a clothing store.

"Your father had a clothing store?" she asked, perhaps a little too incredulously.

He smiled as he fingered his lapel. "My mother doesn't know where I get my taste either."

But by now Marie was curious. What was the store like, she wondered, envisioning gangster suits in shades of lilac and almond?

Quite classy, he informed her. It was on Michigan Avenue near the Auditorium. He named some famous customers. The suits were all specially made by Hickey-Freeman. Not a lilac shade in sight, it would seem.

But then came the Depression when everything went kaput, including his father's health. "I was 14," he said. "and I had to get a job at the A&P because he couldn't work any more."

The hardest part was the suddenness of it all. One day, he's a pampered only child living in luxury on Lake Shore Drive. The next day, he's crammed into an apartment the size of a bus stop, existing on oatmeal and wearing rayon suits from the bargain rack at Goldblatt's.

But he didn't seem worried. After all, he was young and healthy. Maybe the classes at Amundsen would lead to something. Besides, he was already a star at the A&P. The year before, he'd won a national award for the quality of his navel oranges. Of course, the idea that there was a "national" award for navel oranges struck them both as preposterous, and they had a good laugh about it. "I even have a trophy," he told her. His mother had it displayed in a kind of shrine near their front door.

Unfortunately a young man could only go so far as a produce manager. He was 21, it was time to move on. With some real college, he might become an accountant or a lawyer. He knew a little French and Spanish. And lest we forget - his pomme de terres had won honorable mention at this year's nationals. Ha, ha.

Sitting across from him, Marie was struck by something entirely different. How his eyelashes fluffed at the edges. She liked this, just as she liked the way his brow curved just so before it met a Ronald Coleman-esque hairline. Based on nothing more than these two quirks and a certain feeling in her heart, she decided he was very sweet. Bob, by comparison, had lash-less little eyes and an ear that stuck out, but not just so.

One date led to another. In no time, they discovered a whole hodgepodge of subjects to agree on. This Father Coughlin character, for instance. John's father, whom John set great store by, was of the opinion that Father Coughlin was a traitor to his class and a bigot. Since this was also the opinion of the School of Social Studies, she chalked one up for John and his father.

Roosevelt was a traitor to his class as well, but this only made him greater in their eyes. Marie had even come to tolerate cigarette holders because Roosevelt used one. The man was majestic. His voice on the radio was the closest thing to God Almighty. And yet - imagine! - John seemed to worship him even more. Roosevelt's policies would have saved his father's business. John couldn't repeat that fact enough.

Of course, back at home, not a day went by without good old Bob being thrown in her face. When were they going to see Bob again? Wasn't this the time of year for Bob's Coca-Cola outing? But how could she be serious about a man when she couldn't even have a serious conversation with him? Bob thought Roosevelt was bad for business. One night he even claimed that between the Germans and the English, there wasn't a whit of difference.

Didn't her parents understand?