Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  “Revolutionaries!” I said. “Like Maud Gonne and her Daughters of Erin.”

  “Oh, nothing as spectacular as that, Nonie. We fool them with our humility. Take my name, for example. The priest chaplain, a very educated man, gave me Sister Mary Erigina as a kind of joke, I think. What would a seventeen-year-old girl from Bridgeport make of a ninth-century philosopher monk who traveled from Ireland to the courts of the French kings and debated all the scholars of Europe? What kind of patron would that be for a first-grade teacher? But I read up on him in the novitiate. He was a great fellow, Nonie. He signed himself Johannes Erigina—John the Irishman—and got his theology from St. John. God is love. No divisions. He wrote that we were all one in Nature.” Ag lowered her voice. “He didn’t believe in Hell. God was all good, beyond small-minded judgment.”

  “Oh, Ag,” I said. “If only you had known Peter Keeley, my professor at the Irish College. He probably had manuscripts written by your fellow Erigina.” And so I told her about how I had loved Peter, and that brief ceremony in the chapel. “We were united in the eyes of God, and still are, Ag. Death didn’t change that.”

  “Of course not,” she said.

  “A part of me doesn’t believe he’s really gone. It was hard enough for me to accept Mam’s death. For a year, I woke up expecting to see her in the kitchen, putting on the kettle. And I was at her wake and funeral. I never saw Peter’s body, or visited his grave. Part of me hopes…”

  “But he is still with you, Nonie. Erigina wrote that the souls of the dead and the living share one reality, beyond time and space,” she said.

  “I guess I meant something more material.”

  “Denying pain won’t make it go away. That was the mistake my mother made. It leads to bitterness and … I really wish my mother had found a husband. Only twenty-two when she was widowed. Now I realize how young that was, and with three children.”

  “Who would ever want…?” I started.

  “Oh, Nonie. I wish you could see beyond my mother’s bluster. She’s a lonely woman who feels hard done by.”

  “Let’s be honest, Ag, your mother is sick.”

  I thought I’d gone too far. But Ag nodded. “Sick and suffering. I pray for her every day. And I thank God she has Michael’s children to love.”

  “Love?” I said.

  Ag said, “She does care for them. Give her a chance, Nonie.”

  “But Ag, I feel like she just can’t stand me.”

  “I blame myself for that. Think of it, Nonie. She was only fifteen when I was born. My mother thinks I preferred you to her. It was just that we were having such a hard time out in the country after my father died. And Granny Honora was so welcoming to us. You were so much fun, Nonie. You inspire me even now.”

  “I do?” I asked.

  “I try to make every day in the classroom joyful for my dolls and buttons. I am so lucky to be teaching them. It’s the delight of my heart. Only five or six years old when they come to me, those little faces shining. Every one is so different with the beauty of God in each. I thank Him for the joy that teaching them gives me.”

  She’s really happy, I thought. How can I tell her that her mother makes me miserable? Must be some good in Henrietta to produce a daughter like this.

  Dammit, maybe I always have assumed the worst about Henrietta. Maybe I have to try harder to see my part in our feud. A mother at fifteen. No wonder she resents me.

  “You will try, Nonie,” Agnella said to me as I was leaving, “and be good to Ed. He gives so much to everybody. He needs some support. And you and he have special bonds as ‘the redheads.’”

  At least after talking to Ag I was able to be civil to Henrietta.

  “Sister Mary Erigina wrote to me about your visit. She said she’ll be praying for you,” Henrietta said to me at the next Sunday dinner.

  “For us both,” I corrected her.

  5

  CHRISTMAS 1923

  I’d hoped Ed would help my brother to look beyond his suffering, but I actually heard Ed tell Michael, “It’s not true that time heals. It only pushes the hurt further down, and it can flame up at any time. Like now at Christmas.”

  Only a few months after Mame had died. Rose and John, Michael and his children, Henrietta and Toots joined my sister Ann and brother Mart, who still lived together in the flat on Hillock where we’d all grown up, at Ed’s. Our aunt Nelly, Ed’s mother, had decorated a big Christmas tree with the ornaments her German father had used during our childhood when the whole Kelly clan gathered to dance and to tell stories at the Lang house.

  I remember Mam telling me Aunt Nelly and her sister Kate looked like their Irish mother, whose brother had worked digging the I & M Canal with my great-uncle Patrick. The family had lived in Lockport before they came to Chicago. Both sisters married Irish men—Nelly to Uncle Steve, Ed’s father, and Kate to James Larney. Both sons wed Irish girls—Ed to Mary Roche and John Larney to Rose. Funny how the Irish find each other, down through the generations.

  A sad occasion, that Christmas. The girls were very quiet. Even Mike and Ed Junior barely spoke to each other as they sent the Lionel Train, a present from Ed Junior’s father, circling around the track in the living room.

  I had to borrow money from Ed to buy the book I gave each child, and for the film I loaded into my Seneca to take photographs, acting the fool to get a smile from the children.

  I had been visiting the kids in Argo almost every Sunday and taking them out for a spin. Rose and John joined us for dinner most weeks, and sometimes Ed and Ed Junior came. Henrietta had won, and whatever Ag had written to her, she was at least pleasant. Though, last Sunday, she asked me how did I feel being waited on hand and foot in a big mansion, with poor Aunt Kate run ragged and Ed doling out pocket money to me as if I were a child.

  Believe me, many a time I had wanted to ask him for the price of a boat ticket back to France. But Ed seemed to enjoy talking about the projects he was working on, and I’d been back to the stadium site a few times to photograph the progress of the construction.

  Rose told me over and over I brought some enjoyment to all the kids. Forty-four years old and in charge of fun. My trouser suit hung in the cedar closet as a kind of challenge. A few more months, and I’d put my true self on again, I thought at the end of that Christmas night.

  I needed a job. I had to earn my own money.

  Ann came up and touched my camera. “It was a lady took our picture, too.”

  “That’s right, it was.” Mabel Sykes. Maybe she could use a helper.

  * * *

  “I keep copies of all my photographs,” Mabel Sykes said, as she went through a file drawer looking for the portrait she did of Michael and Mame and the kids. I’d mentioned it when I introduced myself, and Mabel wanted to see it.

  “Never know when somebody wants another print. Of course, it’s the movie stars that really sell. I make about five thousand dollars a year with my Rudolph Valentino collection. He told a newspaper I was his favorite photographer, and that’s what stirred up the market. I wish that Gloria Swanson would do the same. Talk about difficult. She’d like everyone to forget that she was just another Chicago kid, working as an extra at Essanay, when I took those pictures of her that got Hollywood interested. In town just last month. She was promoting a movie she did with Valentino, and he managed to get her into my studio. But Geez Louise, what an ordeal. Gloria’s only five foot nothing, and she wanted me to make her look tall and regal. In her movies, they shoot her stretched out on pillows, dressed like a hoochie-coochie girl in the desert, but I wanted something classier. Finally did that close-up.”

  She pointed to an enlarged portrait over her head.

  “Look into those eyes. There’s the woman who fought her first husband, Wallace Beery, to a standstill. I just heard she’s divorcing number two. Why do we smart dames clutter our lives up with jerks?”

  She stopped and looked at me. Does she know about Tim McShane? Keep your mouth shut, Nonie, I told myself.
/>   “My first, Melvin Sykes, was a disaster,” Mabel said. “I was only nineteen when I married him, and he was close to forty. Sold me a bill of goods. Said that I was so beautiful that I owed it to the world to be photographed.”

  She stopped going through her files. “I found out soon enough that that was the line he used on every woman he fancied. Girls, really. Went for the young ones. A month after I divorced him, he got himself engaged to a seventeen-year-old—and he was forty-eight. Can you believe it? Then he had the nerve to send me a bill from a beauty shop, where he’d gone for the full ‘Restorative Treatment.’ Hair dyed. Facials. Manicures. And injections with some kind of youth serum. And I had to pay. At least the girl’s mother stopped the marriage, but Melvin just went on and found another dumb young woman. Number four. Living in California now, though. Far away, thank God.”

  Again she looked at me. I wondered, Does she just assume I have some rat in my past?

  “And then, don’t I go out and marry again. Barsanti thinks he’s a duke or something. At least Melvin taught me photography. Men. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. I hope you’re not entangled.”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “Oh, here it is,” Mabel said. “The Michael J. Kelly family.” She held up the photograph to me. “I remember them. A nice family. How are they doing?”

  “Ah, well, Mabel, it’s a sad story.” I pointed to Mame in the portrait. “She’s dead.”

  “Did her husband kill her?”

  “What? Of course not. How can you say such a thing?”

  “Sorry. Sorry. I’ve got murder on the brain. Maurine Watkins, you know the gal who reports for the Trib, wants me to go to Cook County Jail and photograph two accused murderesses. They’re going on trial one after another. But how the hell could I get my lights and equipment into the jail? Plus, the Tribune doesn’t pay much, and I can’t see there being a market for pictures of women who murdered their husbands.”

  “I could do it. I could take the photographs.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, look.” I held up my Seneca. “I don’t need lots of equipment. Only this and a light pack. I could get candid shots.”

  “Candids?” She spit the word back at me. “A fancy name for snapshots taken with a Brownie camera. Do you know how much money my lights, my backdrops cost?”

  She shut the file cabinet and led me to the main section of the studio, where four lights were mounted on tall stands, aimed at a kind of stage.

  “I pose my subjects against carefully chosen scenes,” she said, and took me to a section behind the stage where dozens of painted theatrical flats leaned against a wall. She pulled one out. “See? This is an English garden.”

  Pushed it back and took out a painted forest and, then—would you believe it?—Paris. With the Eiffel Tower front and center. I laughed.

  “I used to take pictures of people standing in front of the real thing,” I said.

  “Mmmm.”

  “Sometimes I’d print the photos at odd angles, or play around with the light.…”

  “Oh no. You’re not an artist are you?” she asked, as if repeating a bad word.

  And I said, “No. No.” All the time apologizing in my mind to Eddie Steichen, who had given me the Seneca that afternoon in Paris, and who definitely believed that photographers should be artists.

  “Anyone who comes here looking for a job, telling me they’re an artist, gets thrown out. They can’t focus the damn camera, and call fuzziness art.”

  “Terrible,” I said.

  “Okay, Nora, it’s nearly noon. I’m supposed to meet Maurine for lunch. Come with me, and see if you can convince her to hire you. All I want is ten percent of the fee and the photographs.”

  “But, Mabel, I thought you said you couldn’t resell pictures of women who kill their husbands.”

  “Well, you never know. Come on.”

  * * *

  Maurine Dallas Watkins wore a rope of pearls, looped three times around her neck and a knee-length skirt with a tailored jacket that hung just so from her narrow shoulders. Mabel Sykes and I watched as she made her way through Henrici’s.

  The head waiter had bowed to us when he led us to a table in the corner, facing the door. Reserved for Maurine every lunchtime.

  I recognized three aldermen, the chief of police, and Spike O’Donnell with two of his fellows in the restaurant. Spike winked at me, but said nothing.

  Maurine had been a half hour late, and was in no hurry to reach us. She stopped at every table. Saying something that made the men laugh. Though, after she’d passed, I saw them look at each other. They’re afraid of her, I thought.

  “Sorry,” she said, sitting in the seat facing the room the waiter had told us to save for her.

  “In court all morning.”

  “The murder case?” Mabel asked.

  She nodded.

  “Beulah Annan killed her lover, but the fellow was a louse. She’s guilty as sin, I’d say. But William Scott’s putting on quite a show. Self-defense, he says, though Annan’s lover was unarmed. I think the fix might be in. The judge accepts all Billy’s evidence and sustains every objection he makes to the prosecution.”

  “Did Billy bribe the judge?” Mabel asked.

  “I don’t know,” Maurine said. “Billy Scott’s mother is a daily communicant at Our Lady of Sorrows, and the head usher at the church is the judge’s brother. The judge will probably instruct the jury to issue Beulah a medal. Justice, Chicago style.” She shrugged and turned to Mabel.

  “I can get you into the jail to get a picture of Beulah, and her cellmate, another dame who rubbed out her lover. Two in one. I think it makes a better story. The revenge of the flappers.”

  “Here’s the problem, Maurine,” Mabel said. “I’m booked solid for the next month. Wedding photos, big shows at the McVickers and the Schubert, and—”

  “What’s wrong with you, Mabel? Don’t you want to help free our suffering sisters?”

  “Are you going to add something to the Trib’s chintzy payment?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Well then, I offer you Nora Kelly.” She pointed at me. “Trained in Paris. She’ll do it. She’ll work cheap.”

  Maurine didn’t say anything.

  “And she’s connected. Ed Kelly’s cousin.”

  “Ed Kelly,” Maurine said. “The fellow who became the city’s chief engineer because he can land a punch. Interesting. Did you know that’s the story Colonel McCormick tells at dinner parties?” Maurine asked me. “McCormick goes on about how, when he was president of the Sanitary District, Ed came before him, thinking he’d be fired for socking the evil foreman who favored Republicans. Instead McCormick gave him a raise. The grand gesture. That’s my boss’s way. Of course, when I asked for more money, he told me I was being ungrateful, and should be satisfied at what I was being given, and how many women were reporters on a big city daily? I suppose your cousin was a boxer.”

  “As a matter of fact, he was.”

  “Figures. The Tribune’s about to sponsor a program for young men. ‘What is it?’ you may ask. A course to teach them how to be auto mechanics, carpenters, or even how to play the fiddle? Oh no. We’re going to be putting on the Golden Gloves—a citywide contest with boxing matches in every division, from feather to heavyweight. Young lads will be rewarded for beating each other to a pulp. Caesar and his gladiators, I guess.”

  I tried to explain to Maurine that clubs, like the Brighton Park Athletic Association, really provided a place for young men to gather, and that boxing was only part of it.

  “Oh, I know that,” she said. “Politics is the main bout. That’s where the aldermen organize the army that gets out the vote, and guards the ballots. Democracy’s young warriors.”

  The waiter arrived to take our order. “The usual,” Maurine told him. “Try it,” she said to Mabel and me. “Smothered pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy.” She held up three fingers.

  “What
ever about Colonel McCormick, you can’t deny that Ed worked hard to learn engineering. And he has wonderful plans for Chicago,” I said.

  “Good luck to him. Nothing’s going to happen until Thompson gets back in. The powers that be in this city, in this country, still see you people as the alien invaders. Oh, you’re entertaining. We like to watch you Irish box, play baseball, sing and dance, and, no question, you’ve got a flair for politics. But you’re not us, and us are the ones in charge.”

  The waiter set our plates down, and I must say, the pork chops were good. No talking while we ate. When Maurine finished, she put down her fork and said to me, “Now about those murder cases I’m covering. I’m calling Beulah Annan the beauty of the cell block, and Belva Gaertner, who was a cabaret singer, the most stylish babe on Murderess Row. You wouldn’t believe these two. They give each other permanents and manicures. Treat the trial like some kind of fashion show, and Annan’s husband is footing the bill. I need your pictures for my big article in the Sunday edition. But I’m also writing a play about the cases. Beulah’s going to be Roxie Hart, and Belva, Velma Kelly.”

  “But you’re making them both Irish, and they aren’t. Are they?”

  “No, Beulah is a Bible belter from Kentucky, and Belva was born in some little Protestant town downstate. But Broadway audiences expect immoral babes to be Irish. They like to be confirmed in their prejudices. Besides, it gives them a chance to laugh at what they fear—a Mick with a gun.”

  “But, Maurine, that’s not really fair,” I said.

  “I’m not asking your opinion. I just want to know if you can take the photographs.”

  “I can,” I said.

  “When?”

  “How about right now?”

  Maurine laughed. “Thank you, Mabel,” she said. “You brought me my kind of dame. Come on, Nora. You and I are going to Cook County Jail.”

  * * *

  “Ten newspapers competing and all determined to give the people what they wanted, which was murder and mayhem, with a good-looking dame in the middle of it,” Maurine explained to me in the cab on the way to Cook County Jail. “Hire women to get the sob sister stuff.”