Deadline for a Critic

17

Among those things that could be said of Ridley Groendal was that he did not wait around for opportunity to knock. At least he had not since he’d left the Detroit area and entered the University of Minnesota. From that time on, he was the master of his fate, the captain of his soul.

A significant number of men and women dragging their shredded careers behind them could testify to that. Some had befriended him at the university, some there had fought him. It didn’t matter. Groendal had manipulated them all, trusted none of them, and used them indiscriminately as stepping stones to advance his academic life.

Once he had wrung out and discarded them, he scarcely ever thought of them again. They, however, never forgot him.

But while many plotted vengeance, none succeeded. Groendal left nothing to chance. He trusted none of his victims, before or after exploiting them. Ever vigilant, he was prepared for them at all times.

After all, hadn’t Jesus been ever alert? How many times his enemies, the Pharisees, had tried to entrap him, but never successfully. Just one example of so many: when they challenged him on whether it was right to pay a tax to Caesar.

It was a source of constant frustration to the Jews that they were obliged to pay a tax to a foreign power. So, with their question, the enemies had Jesus on the horns of a dilemma. If he approved of the tax, he would needlessly have lost most of his following. Needlessly because it was not a relevant question, since the presence or absence of Caesar had nothing to do with his mission.

On the other hand, to oppose the tax would put him on a collision course with civil authorities—again needlessly. But he was ready for them. He asked to see the coin Caesar claimed as a tax. He demanded to know of his enemies whose image and inscription was on the coin. They could answer nothing but “Caesar’s.” “Then,” he told them, “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. And to God the things that are God’s.”

Magnificent! But hardly something done in the heat of the moment. Jesus consistently outsmarted his enemies because he was prepared for them. He anticipated them. He was ready for them at whatever time, theirs or his.

And so would Ridley Groendal be ready for his enemies. He would anticipate and defeat them. Just as Jesus had.

His enemies might find it hard to believe, but Groendal prayed regularly and frequently. However, his meditations were subconsciously programmed to fit his new lifestyle. In effect, he was not trying to conform his life to that of Jesus. Rather, he was “prayerfully” twisting the life of Christ to fit the new theology of Ridley Groendal.

Thus, Groendal climbed over the torpedoed careers of reporters, columnists, here and there an editor, staff writers, authors, playwrights, actors, musicians, musical directors, and such, across the nation.

The higher he climbed, the more human debris he left in his wake. And the more angry people he left behind, the more he was forced to keep looking over his shoulder. For his newly made enemies, sorely wounded, would not forget. Almost to a person, they sought revenge. While churning ahead toward the pinnacle of success, Groendal also needed to protect his rear.

Constant vigilance took its toll. Groendal began to suffer from high blood pressure. It would get worse. He comforted himself with the thought that Jesus probably had high blood pressure too, what with all the enemies he had.

Eventually, all this skullduggery won him the highest status of all, a place as one of the New York Herald’s fine arts critics. Ostensibly, his responsibility was to review the stage and serious music. But he was also a book reviewer. And though he was not in charge of the book section, due largely to his burgeoning reputation in the other arts, he quickly became the most influential of all critics—theater, music, or literature.

Along the way, he also learned that he was homosexual.

Until he left Detroit for the University of Minnesota, he’d had but two overt sexual experiences, one hetero-, the other homosexual. At that time, he’d been confused as to his own sexual preference.

At the university, it did not take long for him to establish that preference. At first, he had begun to date girls. He had the tentative attitude of sitting back to see what might develop. Some coeds found his gentlemanly passive behavior oddly stimulating. Some sought to fill the sexual void by initiating physical foreplay. He found that repulsive. They found his disgust contagious.

Briefly, Groendal considered the possibility that he might be asexual. That was what the seminary system of his day was programmed to produce. Was it possible his peculiar Catholic upbringing had accomplished in him what it aimed for in its priests—the assembly of a macho asexual?

No. He was gay. He had to conclude that his single episode with Jane Condon was a fluke. He had been passionately overcome by accident exacerbated by some mind-numbing alcohol. Once he gave the homosexual style a chance, it did not take long to know he belonged there.

But it was depressing. Oh, not the sexual expression. No, the impermanence, the ephemeral, little more than one-night stands. Something in him demanded permanence, indissolubility—a quality that was most elusive in the gay community.

When he finally made it to New York, he was determined things were going to change. Either he was going to find a stable relationship, or be continent.

Thanks to his superlative Herald salary, he was able to afford a sumptuous apartment in the heart of Manhattan. He was not far from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Although proximity was not a factor to choosing the Cathedral to be his parish. For Catholics, St. Patrick’s was the prestigious church of New York City. A lot of time could be passed just in counting the deceased Cardinals’ red hats hanging from the high ceiling. (One could count on it: Whoever was Archbishop of New York was pretty sure to be a Cardinal.)

The length of the nave of St. Pat’s was one of those famous-but-smaller churches measured against St. Peter’s in Rome. At one spectacular funeral Francis Cardinal Spellman was celebrant, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen preached, and Jim Farley and Fred Allen were two of the ushers . . . leading a Jewish gentleman present to whisper, “What a cast!”

St. Pat’s always had lots of visitors. As far as tourists were concerned, there was only one Catholic church in all of Manhattan. Anyone could find it right across Fifth Avenue from Rockefeller Center.

One could go on and on . . . but St. Patrick’s Cathedral was the one and only parish for the infinitely upwardly mobile Ridley C. Groendal.

He favored the early Sunday morning Mass—less crowded. Of course he never got the Cardinal at that time, usually just a monsignor or a bishop, but it was sufficient. The routine was early Mass, then one of the attractive, pricey brunches.

Attending the same Mass week after week, one gradually becomes at least casually familiar with the other regulars. There were many couples, a great number of young, middle-aged and elderly unaccompanied women, but not that many single men. Not as regulars.

Something about one solitary regular attracted Groendal’s interest. Not only could he not help studying the man from time to time, occasionally he caught the stranger studying him.

Without words, with no conscious sense of purpose, the two began taking pews closer to each other. Thus, just before Communion, eventually they were able to shake hands during the greeting of peace. Groendal did not know what it was, maybe something in the man’s eyes, that communicated tenderness and interest.

It began one Sunday, months after they had first noticed each other in church. They were leaving after Mass when the stranger dipped his hand in the holy water font and offered some to Groendal.

“I don’t mean to be forward,” Groendal said, “but would you care to join me for brunch?”

A look of extreme relief passed over the other’s face. “I thought you would never ask.”

They brunched at a nearby hotel. It was Groendal’s choice. He sensed the conversation would be more important than the food. It was.

As they settled in and the waiter brought coffee, Groendal began. “I’m—”

“Ridley C. Groendal, fine arts critic of the New York Herald.”

“How—?”

“Your picture is with your column, and I read you faithfully.”

Groendal was pleased. “I regret I can’t return the courtesy. You are . . .?”

“Peter Harison. No reason you should know me. I too used to be a critic—for a chain of papers on the West Coast.”

“And now?”

“Now, I’m vice-president of the Art Guild Book Club.”

“Of course. Peter Harison. I’ve heard of you. I hope none of my reviews have compromised any of your selections.”

“Oh, no, dear boy. We generally select books before they’re published and reviewed. Although there have been times when we’ve taken a book and have gotten burned by your review later. Fortunately we can always find somebody’s favorable review to add to our hype.”

Groendal laughed. “I suppose that’s so true.”

“I think,” Harison continued, “what I like most about your opinions is that they’re so original. Ridley—may I call you Ridley . . .?”

“Rid. And please do.”

“Rid, a case in point is your review last month of the Brigadoon revival.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I can’t remember any other critic that took the musical itself apart. The only thing one ever gets from a presentation of a war horse like Brigadoon or Oklahoma! or Carousel or any of that ilk is that the voices were good or bad, the staging was inventive or inadequate, the sets were imaginative or pedestrian, and so forth. Nobody, but nobody looks at the vehicle itself. That’s what I find exciting about your reviews.”

Groendal beamed. “Well, it’s true. The music is second-rate, sometimes third-rate . . . and has been vastly overrated through the years. Simplistic melodic lines and no development at all. One of those things where if Freddie Loewe hadn’t had his name on it, no one would ever have heard of it. And the story line . . . incredibly unbelievable!

“I suppose it is possible to want us to imagine, in an excess of fictional credulity, that there could be a little village in Scotland that sleeps away a hundred years between each working day. But to think a modern-day New Yorker would choose to enter that never-never land is just preposterous!

“And it’s not even a matter of being swept up in the emotion of the moment. The hero makes his mature decision to come back to the real world and let Brigadoon sleep away the next century. Then Lerner asks us to believe that after returning to civilization for a while, he would, after plenty of time for mature deliberation, return to Scotland and voluntarily lose himself in the village forever—never to see civilization again! Well, really! Every time I’m subjected to that drivel I feel like yelling out, ‘Don’t do it Tommy Albright! Think it over! It’s not worth it!’”

They laughed.

“You’re right, of course, Rid. But most critics wouldn’t have the nerve to write it. You did!”

“And I paid for it. Peter, you have no idea how many idiots there are out there who are willing to accept something as senseless as Brigadoon. But I heard from them . . . all of them, I think.”

They laughed together and enjoyed their time together. By Groendal’s gourmet standards, several dishes were unforgivable. But in honor of this occasion, he forgave.

Before parting, Harison eagerly accepted Groendal’s invitation to accompany him to the Met’s new staging of La Bohème that week. Groendal would not like it. But then, Groendal did not like La Bohème itself. In honor of Harison’s being with him and sharing his dislike of the opera, Groendal wrote a particularly scathing review. So biting, indeed, was the critique, that it was all the company could do to prevent “Rodolfo” from going down to the Herald and punching Groendal in the nose.

The following Sunday, Groendal and Harison sat next to each other at the Cathedral. It took no time for their mutual discovery that each was gay. And not much more time to be convinced they were in love. Blessedly for both, it was evident from the outset that this was no ephemeral fling. It was the real thing, permanent and indissoluble.

If any law would have recognized their marriage, they would have entered into that solemn contract. Since no law would legitimize their union, they exchanged vows quietly and privately in a side chapel of the Cathedral with no one but God in attendance.

They became conversant with each other’s history. There were no secrets between them.

Unlike Groendal, Peter Harison had learned early on that he was gay, and had suffered accordingly, especially since he was a Catholic. After being humiliated, ostracized, and beaten, Peter opted for the closet approach.

In fear for his very life, he stayed in that closet, venturing out only most infrequently and guardedly. Occasionally, he would try a gay bar. But his experience in that milieu was no different from Ridley’s. One-night stands, brief encounters, guilt, disappointment, and danger.

As a result, he, like Groendal, had virtually retreated from social contact. Peter was quite positive that no one at work was aware of his sexual preference. He had never before had the happiness he now shared with Ridley Groendal.

Groendal, on his part, held nothing back of his life’s experience. As a lad, Peter had thought long and hard about the priesthood. But just about the time he would have entered the seminary high school he discovered his homosexuality. With that knowledge he decided—and correctly so at that time—that a religious vocation was doomed.

Harison got to know the four pivotal characters in Ridley’s life about as well as Groendal himself knew them. Not unlike couples anywhere, Ridley’s friends became Peter’s and vice versa—and the same could be said for enemies.

Together, they decided that Peter could be a help in Ridley’s insatiable drive to square things with Charlie Hogan, just in case Charlie managed to produce a manuscript.

Granted, neither of them could control the various editors at the various publishing companies directly. But it was not difficult to pass the word that Charlie Hogan was an ungrateful wretch, difficult to deal with, a problem to edit, and more trouble than his work was worth. There were even aspersions regarding his honesty, and someone—no one ever knew who—even started the rumor that he was (a) a Marxist, and (b) a pederast, and (c) a wife-beater.

Unfortunately, Harison could be of little more than moral support in the case of Groendal’s vendetta against Mitchell, Palmer, and Condon. But Peter was assured by Ridley that he could handle the stage and musical fronts by himself.

Revenge against Jane Condon was problematical, since Jane had not gone on to any professional platform. Yes, Jane was a problem. But then, she always had been.

If Ridley Groendal had not left Detroit to establish himself in Minnesota during the summer of 1950, he might well have become part of the ugly scene in the Condon house when Jane could no longer hide her pregnancy.

The altercation between Jane and her father was loud, acrimonious, and the subject of subsequent gossip. It was reported to Groendal by Greg Larson, the scribe Ridley had appointed to keep him apprised of Jane and her delicate condition.

The explosion came in July. Jane, who had passed off her weight gain as being caused by compulsive eating because of the school load, confessed to her mother what she already fearfully suspected. Jane had counted on her mother’s discretion. It was a misplaced trust.

When informed of the situation, Mr. Condon cursed and yelled and threw things, as Jane cowered.

“I ask you, Martha,” Condon ranted at his wife, “what the hell good did it do to send this girl to a parochial school? Did it do any good? Well?”

“Now, John, don’t be too hard on Jane.” Mrs. Condon immediately regretted having told her husband, though even in hindsight she could think of no alternative. “She’s had to carry this secret by herself all these months.”

“She’s not only been carrying a secret all these months. She’s also been carrying somebody’s bastard kid! You were the one who insisted we send her to Holy Redeemer. I wanted to send her to McKinstry . . . pay for it already with my taxes; why not use the goddam school? But no; she’s gotta have a Catholic education! Paid for her goddam education twice and look what it got me: A goddam bastard kid!”

“John, watch your language. The neighbors can hear.”

“Watch my language? Watch my language! Your slut of a daughter is the whore of the block, and now everybody will know it, and you tell me to watch my language! Ha!”

“John, we’ve got to be sensible about this. We’ve got to be rational. We’ve got to decide what we’re going to do. No, please be calm.”

“Calm, is it! When did you do it, whore?” Condon addressed his daughter. “When did it happen?”

Jane did not answer. She curled up more tightly on the sofa where she had retreated at the beginning of the tirade.

“No answer! I’ll tell you when it happened: It happened New Year’s Eve. It’s the only time we left you alone in the house. And you said you were gonna have someone over. Boy, you sure had someone over! Remember, Martha, I pointed out some stains right there on the carpet New Year’s Day. But you passed them off as nothing. Nothing! That’s the spot right there where our bastard grandchild was conceived.”

He waited, but neither his wife nor his daughter said a word.

“You wanta know what we’re gonna do about it, Martha? I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do about it: We’re gonna find out just who the father of this bastard is. We’re gonna find him and we’re gonna make him pay! That’s what we’re gonna do!”

At this point, Jane was grateful for any small favor. She had gone numb when her father pinpointed New Year’s Eve as the time of conception. He was correct, of course. She couldn’t believe her luck that he didn’t know who the father was.

She had expected Ridley to do the honorable thing. But when he baldly refused and then, on top of everything else, had that nervous breakdown . . . well, she had determined that as messy as this situation was, she was not going to further roil it. She had no intention of dragging Ridley into a knockdown battle. That would be a confrontation doomed to failure.

She had absolutely no intention whatsoever of telling her parents who had fathered her baby.

However, as determined as Jane was not to tell, so resolute was her father to find out.

“Who was it?” he shouted.

“I won’t tell you! I can’t tell you!”

“You can tell me as long as you can talk. Which is not gonna be much longer if you don’t tell me! Who was it?”

“No!”

“Goddamit, yes! Who was it?”

Jane clutched herself tighter and said nothing. If she could have, she would have become a small ball of fluff and blown away.

“Who?” Condon grabbed a table lamp, yanking the plug out of its socket. He threw the lamp. It glanced off Jane’s shoulder and pitched over, shattering on the floor behind the couch.

“John!” Mrs. Condon shrieked.

But John was quite beside himself. Mouth foaming, he hovered over his daughter. “Who was it? Answer me, whore! Who was it? Who? Who? Who?” He began striking Jane about the shoulders and back, the only areas she’d left exposed.

Martha Condon leaped on her husband’s back in an attempt to wrestle him away. The two fell in a heap to the floor. She used all her strength to hold him down.

“Then get out!” he shouted from his prone position. “Get out! Take your bastard baby and get out! I paid my good money so you could go to a Catholic school. And what did you learn there? How to make a bastard baby! If you think I’m gonna spend a nickel so you can give birth to that thing while the father gets off scot-free, you got another thing coming! Get out! Get out! Get out! You got an hour, and then I don’t ever want to see you again!”

Condon struggled to his feet and stormed out of the house.

Jane and Mrs. Condon spent some time sobbing in each other’s arms. At last there was no alternative. They packed as many necessaries as Jane could carry, and she left. But not before her mother made her promise to keep in touch. Mrs. Condon in her turn promised that she would try to help in every way she could. In tears, they parted.

From that point, it would have been difficult for Greg Larson to follow Jane Condon’s story. However, as luck would have it, Jane’s mother, in dire need of a confidante, unburdened herself to a sympathetic neighbor, who, though close, was not close-mouthed. The news, having reached one ear, soon reached many—including that of Ridley Groendal’s faithful correspondent.

Jane thought it would be a good idea to leave town. The priest she consulted agreed. He put her in touch with the Department of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Chicago. They arranged for her to stay with a family there until birth. It was not a pleasant experience, but then, nothing in this entire affair had been.

At about the time school started for Ridley Groendal in September, Jane delivered a baby boy. She would never forget the shock when first she saw and held him. He had slanting eyes, a short broad skull, and broad fingers. He was a Mongoloid . . . a Down’s Syndrome baby.

That was enough for Ridley Groendal. It couldn’t have been his child. If there had been any doubt, and there certainly wasn’t in Ridley’s mind, all uncertainty was dispelled when Jane produced a defective child. Groendal, without the need for corroborating evidence, knew he never would have fathered a deformed child.

That could well have been the end of his vendetta against Jane. There was no question that she had suffered and that she continued to hurt.

She was cut off from her parents. Her father would have nothing to do with her. When he learned of the condition of her child, he drew a strange satisfaction from the tragedy. It was God’s punishment. John Condon was not a religious man. But he could tell divine retribution when he saw it, by God!

Mrs. Condon was distraught. But she was helpless. Her husband forbade her to help her daughter or her grandchild. And so, in a show of obedience, she did nothing overtly. Secretly, she sent as much money as she could scrape up to Jane as the girl moved from place to place trying to survive.

Even for one bent on vengeance, this suffering surely should have been enough.

It wasn’t enough for Groendal. That the child was Mongoloid was God’s hand. He had punished her for having a child out of wedlock. That was clear enough. Groendal had no idea whether the child’s father was likewise punished. He of course had no idea who the father was. But if Jane had set her trap for the unlucky fellow as she had for Groendal, it probably wasn’t the real father’s fault.

The point was that whether or not the father of the child had been punished, the mother—Jane—had been chastised by God, but not by Groendal. And since Jane had done her part to ruin Groendal’s life, he owed her. And he would repay.

But how?

He was at a loss to invent a retribution that would reach Jane. She seemed to be at the bottom of a barrel. In disgrace, in poverty, with no employment, nowhere to turn, and a Mongoloid infant to care for.

It seemed that fate had foiled Groendal. Even if Jane were able somehow to reach a level of survival, she still would not fall under his sphere of influence. She was not a professional and showed no promise of ever becoming one. She was no actress. She was no playwright. She would never be on the stage or contribute to it. She was not literary. She would write nothing that he might be able to destroy. And if she did come up with some story, it would have to be an “as-told-to” book. And to whom would she tell her story? No one would be interested.

Finally, she was no musician. So there would be no musical career for him to shoot down.

Beyond these boundaries, what could he do? Supposing she got a job as a clerk in a department store. What could he do—complain to her supervisor that when they had been considerably younger, she had seduced him? So what?

Frustrating.

But among Ridley’s strong points were patience and perseverance.

Actually, his most difficult task at this time was to keep Greg Larson on the case. There just wasn’t much to report. And what news there was was so depressing that Larson was tempted to write only happy news to Groendal.

Ridley was in no position to argue against whatever Larson chose to write. The idea was to keep him going until something broke, as Groendal hoped, prayed, and knew it would.

As it turned out, Jane did exactly what Groendal supposed she might. She returned to Detroit and got a job as a salesclerk in Hudson’s department store. With this and the little her mother was able to pass on surreptitiously, Jane made ends meet. There was almost nothing else in her life. She rarely splurged on entertainment of any sort. She couldn’t afford it.

She was still attractive, but she never dated. Her life revolved around her son. Outstandingly lovable and sweet, as many Down’s Syndrome children are, he needed Jane constantly. And so, outside of the times she had to leave him with a sitter while she worked, Jane spent nearly every free moment with him.

Down’s Syndrome children frequently have health problems that reduce the normal life span. Jane’s little boy, Billy, lived ten years. And then he broke her heart once more and died.

Billy’s death did not move Groendal one way or the other. He was interested only in what might happen next.

According to Greg Larson’s infrequent but faithful letters, nothing much happened next. Jane kept her sales position at Hudson’s. Her social life remained a cipher. She went out infrequently, as far as Larson could tell, usually with “the girls.”

Groendal found maintaining the correspondence with Larson more and more taxing. Jane’s life—Ridley’s sole genuine interest in this communication—seemed to be going nowhere.

It happened in March of 1964. Jane was thirty-three. She got married. In old St. Mary’s downtown, near the apartment complex where she lived. Somehow the courtship had escaped Larson’s notice.

The event piqued Ridley’s curiosity. At first blush, the marriage did not appear to lend itself to any purpose Groendal had in mind. Jane’s husband, William Cahill, was a skilled worker at a Ford automotive plant. Groendal could not wreak revenge on Jane through her husband. Jane as a sales clerk, and William, as an automotive worker, were outside the sphere of Ridley’s influence.

But once more Groendal’s patience and perseverance paid off. A little more than a year after their marriage, a daughter was born to Mr. and Mrs. William Cahill. She was to be their only child.

Here was a distinct prospect. How better to get revenge against Jane than through her daughter, her only child. The potential increased when Larson was finally able to send a photo of Valerie Cahill, age seven, on the occasion of her First Holy Communion.

She was, by anyone’s standards, an outstandingly beautiful girl. With her childish yet evident comeliness and charm, there was a possibility that she might choose to be an actress.

Ridley’s prayers paid off. Through her high school years, Valerie was not only the most desirable girl on the Redford High campus, she was the staple star of virtually all the plays staged by the school. In three out of four major stage presentations—Arsenic and Old Lace, Meet Me in St Louis, and Annie, Get Your Gun!—Valerie played a female lead.

Annie, Get Your Gun! was the annual school play during Valerie’s senior year. For that, Ridley Groendal actually returned to Detroit. He attended one performance of the musical, taking care not to be noticed or recognized.

From far back in the crowd, Groendal was able to spot Jane. Her hair was now entirely gray. But she’d kept her figure. Groendal had not seen her since that Sunday afternoon in the park those many years ago. From the distance that separated them, he could see no great change in her. A more mature way of walking and moving, perhaps, but he would have recognized her anywhere. And, my God, he thought, it had been more than thirty years!

If he had seen her at close range, which he would never again do, he would have seen the difference. It was in her eyes. They reflected the suffering, sorrow, and hard times she had undergone.

The man with her had to be her husband. They took each other for granted after the fashion of long-married couples. He certainly was nondescript.

Groendal had no fear of being recognized. Though his photo appeared frequently enough in New York and national publications, who would expect him to be attending a high school presentation in Michigan? And even if any present thought they might know him, they would dismiss the idea out of hand. What would a nationally famous critic be doing there?

The only one who could undoubtedly recognize him—and perhaps even guess why he was there—was Jane. But she and her husband were occupied greeting friends and acquaintances.

The lights dimmed; those still in the aisles scrambled for their seats.

The “orchestra”—piano, drums, and bass—struck up an abbreviated version of the overture. Groendal sighed and slumped in his seat. He was going to have to endure the tortures of purgatory. But he had already determined that it was worth the discomfort to see and hear his next victim. And there was always the chance that it might be a better than average performance.

Alas, it was what one would expect based on the age of the actors. Blown cues, misread lines, vibratoless voices, awkward interaction. Scenery and costumes obviously made by the loving and unprofessional hands of proud parents, relatives, and classmates.

With one glowing exception: the lead—Annie Oakley—Valerie Cahill. She was good. Not just the promise of developing into an adequate actress. She was good right now. If she had been Jane’s first child, Groendal might have considered himself the girl’s father. But that little mistake of nature? Forget it.

At intermission, Groendal buried himself in the program. Carefully, he studied the brief biography of Valerie Cahill. Unlike classmates headed toward college, Valerie intended to get right into show business while working on a college degree in her spare time.

Right into show business, eh? Delightful. We’ll see about that!