Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  Is that it? I wondered. “All this maneuvering so that Pat could take over?” I asked Ed. It had been almost a month since Cermak had died. But Ed only smiled.

  “You’re getting a lesson on how to herd cats, Nonie,” he said. “Pat knows what he’s doing.”

  The next day in the Tribune, Pat Nash said that he was honored by the recommendation but that he felt he was too old to take on the job. “The next mayor should be a Democrat, of course, but a man outside of politics, though wholly familiar with politics. Someone who had accomplished things for the city and is able for the challenges ahead,” Pat was quoted as saying.

  And he sent word to the council, “I choose Ed Kelly as the next mayor. Spread the word.”

  Four days later, the city council met in chambers. Jake Arvey, the alderman who was close to Pat, read a statement signed by thirty-seven aldermen proposing Edward J. Kelly for mayor.

  One alderman asked if they could vote by secret ballot. “What are you trying to hide?” Arvey asked. And so a voice vote was taken. Forty-seven votes for Ed, all the Democrats and fifteen Republicans, with three abstentions. Herding cats, no question. In a month, Pat Nash had maneuvered the party to break with all precedent and select a long shot who had never held public office. Edward J. Kelly was mayor.

  * * *

  I came home with Ed after I’d photographed the midnight city council session that made him mayor.

  “I want you to celebrate with Margaret and me,” Ed had said. I wondered if he didn’t want me as a kind of buffer. Margaret would dread the attention she would have to endure as First Lady of Chicago. One thing to put on a white ermine coat and get your picture taken going to the opera with the president of the South Park Board. Still another to attend Democratic Party events at union halls and ward offices, where men talked to each other in knots, while women rotated around them chatting together about children and recipes. Margaret was never great at small talk.

  The press would attack Ed. Big Bill Thompson would be taking pot shots at Ed, too, no question. Probably raising money for his 1935 election campaign right now.

  But Margaret surprised us.

  “Mr. Mayor,” she’d said, throwing the front door open for Ed and me.

  “I heard the news on the radio.”

  One o’clock in the morning, and she was dressed in her forest green suit with perfect makeup, her eyebrows drawn on, and her hair freshly finger-waved. Ed looked at me and smiled.

  “Whew!”

  Never underestimate Margaret, I thought. We had a celebration. Tea and chocolate chip cookies made by Lu, the cook. Ed still taking it easy on the drink.

  “The children will be so proud,” Margaret said. They were old enough now to understand—Pat and Joseph were seven, and Steve three—that their father was an important man.

  “That reminds me, Margaret,” Ed had said. “The Tribune wants to do a feature for their Sunday edition on the family. You and the kids and me. They’ll send a photographer over in the next few days.”

  “Send a photographer, Ed?” Margaret asked. “Why, when we have our own photographer right here? You’ll take the photos, won’t you, Nora?”

  What could I say? Cermak had paid me and I had enough money to leave Chicago and head back to that other life in Paris.

  I thought of Ireland and Peter Keeley in his grave, waiting for me so patiently. But Margaret was asking me to help make her new life bearable. To survive and maybe even enjoy Ed’s brief time as the mayor of Chicago. Pat had assured the other politicians that Ed would fill out the two years left on Cermak’s term, until the party found the right candidate for the 1935 election.

  So I said yes, of course, I’d take their pictures for the Sunday edition and for whatever else was required. Manny Mandel had called me Ed Kelly’s flack. Well why not? And if it meant that I never saw my name on the credit line under a photograph, so what? I wasn’t a glory hound, was I?

  “Good idea, Margaret,” Ed said. “Nora, you’ve got a new job. You are the official photographer of the mayor of Chicago.”

  “With a raise,” Margaret said.

  “Of course,” Ed said, though I wondered if Margaret knew Ed had been giving me bits and pieces himself, not taking my salary from the reduced City Treasury.

  “When the money comes from Roosevelt to pay the teachers and cops, and the rich people end their tax strike, then I’ll accept a raise.”

  Now, of course, I was excited at the chance of being on the inside of all the maneuverings. Pat Nash certainly could herd cats, but now could he and Ed save Chicago? Because if they stumbled at all, Big Bill was stalking the sidelines ready to take over from the Micks and Bohunks, the sheeneys and lugans, who had somehow captured the city. He’d be bankrolling Wilcox, no question. And there were plenty of Toots-like characters around ready to sell gossip and rumors, and even a few who had the goods on coworkers and were looking for revenge. No, I wouldn’t leave, at least not yet.

  * * *

  The next morning I got up early to find Margaret standing at the front window. “Who are these people?” she asked me. “What do they want?” We were standing in the bay window of the Ellis Avenue house as the sun rose. Twenty people had gathered on the wide sidewalk under the Dutch elms—the trees still meeting in a canopy of green over the street, before a disease would infect these Chicago stalwarts and turn comfortable old neighborhoods like this one as bare as the new housing developments on what was once our prairie.

  As I stood next to Margaret, watching more and more people arriving in front of the house, I wondered if any of us had any idea of what we were getting into.

  “They were here when I got up at first light,” Margaret said.

  “I saw them from the bedroom window,” Ed said, standing beside us, smelling faintly of lavender water. His red hair was still damp, the curls combed into hills and valleys. He wore a new navy blue suit, white shirt, and a tie with narrow green stripes.

  “What the hell is this?” Ed said.

  “Daddy’s swearing,” Pat said. She and her twin brother, Joseph, had followed Ed down the stairs. They were dressed in their school uniforms: plaid skirt and blazer for Pat, and navy pants and blazer for Joseph. First graders at St. Thomas, the local parish school.

  “Are all those people coming into our house?” Joseph asked.

  “They most certainly are not,” Margaret said. But a few of the crowd had seen us standing at the window, and two women were waving. Ed waved back.

  “Don’t,” Margaret said, “don’t encourage them.” But now the crowd was walking up toward the porch, and a few were on the steps.

  “I have to speak to them,” Ed said. “Come on, Nonie, bring your camera.” And so Ed and I spent the early hours of his first morning as mayor taking photographs and requests. Ed wrote each name in a small spiral notebook, while I took pictures of groups with the mayor.

  “I’d invite you in,” Ed said to them, “but the kids are getting ready for school, and Margaret’s in her dressing gown. Why don’t you head down to city hall. We’ll talk there.”

  “City hall?” one said. “That’s miles away. We’re South Siders. You’re our neighbor.”

  “That I am,” Ed said.

  It was nine o’clock when a black Packard and two police cars pulled up in front of the house. A plainclothes detective got out of the lead car. “You better not have called the cops on us,” one man said. The crowd laughed, and so did the detective. White hair, blue eyes. Could only be Irish.

  “We’re here to take the mayor to work,” he said, and gestured toward the Packard and the police escort.

  “Doing alright for yourself in America, Ed,” another man shouted.

  “Let the mayor get some breakfast,” the detective said.

  “I’ve got all your names,” Ed said, “and addresses. Nora will send you the photographs, and I’ll get the boys in city hall to work on your requests.”

  “We have to move from here,” Margaret said, as she poured coffee for the
detective, Ed, and me at the massive table in their big dining room.

  “Not a bad idea,” the detective said. “Though the people will find you, Ed.”

  “I don’t want to hide,” Ed said.

  “But maybe a place with some security,” I said, “where just anybody can’t walk up to the front door or look in the front windows.”

  And, then, I thought of the perfect solution. “What about my building? Where there’s a doorman and a lobby, and—”

  “And it’s on the North Side,” Margaret said. “Harder to get to.”

  “I don’t know,” Ed said. “I’m a South Sider. These are my constituents.”

  “But you’re mayor of the whole city,” I said, “and what could be better than waking up to see the sun rising over the lakeshore that you created.”

  “But an apartment,” Margaret said, “is so much smaller than a house.”

  “Are you worried that there’s no ballroom?” I asked. “Remember you’ve got the Morrison Hotel and the Drake now.”

  “Hmm, that’s right. The Drake. Your building’s right next door isn’t it?” she asked.

  “It is, and Saks Fifth Avenue is a three-minute walk away. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris.”

  The doorbell was ringing. A voice called, “Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor, I need a job.”

  Ed started to get up. Margaret put a hand on his shoulder. She looked at me. “Let’s see what’s available in your building, Nora. Today.”

  6

  APRIL 1933

  Chicago City Hall was a square squat building, opened in 1911, that took up a whole city block and had thick columns holding up every doorway. Plain. There were a few doodads, but nothing like the Hotel de Ville, seat of Paris’s city government that I had passed every day on my way from Le Marais to Madame Simone’s studio on Rue St. Honoré. Chicago people would not have felt comfortable going into a place like that, with statues stuck all over the façade and soaring towers. Intimidating. While the Hall was the people’s house, no question. The lobby was always full of citizens looking for jobs or a stop sign on their block.

  And Ed was head of the whole shebang.

  I’d been surprised when Margaret had suggested that we stop at City Hall on our way to the North Side. “Let’s take a quick peek at Ed’s office.” Which is what we did—though Ed’s secretary, Bessie O’Neill made sure that the First Lady of Chicago would at least have a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.

  Ed was in a meeting behind the closed door of the inner office of the suite. Margaret didn’t want him disturbed, she said. So we drank our coffee and left.

  “It looks like a dentist’s waiting room,” Margaret said as we walked down the wide stone stairs. “But I can fix that. We wouldn’t need all the Ellis Avenue furniture when we move.”

  “When”—not “if.”

  We turned right off Michigan Avenue at the Drake and found a parking space as close to my apartment at 209 East Lake Shore as possible.

  Margaret smiled as the doorman opened the solid brass door to us.

  “Secure,” she whispered. She looked around the lobby with its gilded ceiling and marble floor, and then walked over to the desk with its uniformed attendant.

  “Hello, Dino,” I said to the man, a nice fellow from the Balkans, of all places.

  “How are you, Nora?” he replied. Margaret looked a question at me: Is the help this familiar to the tenants? But, of course, I was the help, too.

  “This is Mrs. Edward J. Kelly, Dino. The wife of our brand-new mayor.”

  “An honor to meet you, Mrs. Kelly. I recognized you from your pictures in the paper.”

  “Listen, Dino. I know there’s a vacant apartment on the seventh floor.”

  “There is indeed. Five bedrooms, four baths, a library, and a completely modern kitchen. Not one refrigerator, but two. And the gas stove is self-lighting.”

  “Very nice, Dino. Mrs. Kelly would like to take a look.”

  “Sure thing,” Dino said. “I’ve got a key right here. Do you want to take her up, Nora? You know the place, don’t you? You used to babysit old Mrs. Lawrence’s cats when she was up in Lake Forest.”

  “I did,” I said, and hoped that the cat smell was gone, or else Margaret would not be interested in the place, no matter how spectacular the view.

  But there was not a whiff of cat in the apartment, and Margaret said, “Oh,” right out loud when she saw Lake Michigan stretched out under the wall of windows.

  “If you stand in the right place, you can’t even see Lake Shore Drive. Everything disappears but the lake,” I said.

  “Gorgeous,” she said.

  Mrs. Lawrence had had a stroke last month and died after a week in Passavant Hospital. Some cousin who’d inherited money in the will came, cleared out the apartment, and took the cats. Probably dropped them right off at the pound. But now, here was this space, open, full of sunshine and the scent of the lake after I cranked open a window.

  “Art deco,” Margaret said, as she pointed to the fancy grille work over the door that led to a paneled library. And the kitchen was as Dino at the desk had described it. Gadgets galore, black and white tile everywhere. The stove took up an entire wall. Ten burners and a griddle.

  “Lu will love this,” I said.

  “Lu won’t be moving with us,” Margaret said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “She’s ready to retire. I’m hiring a French cook. The mayor’s dinner parties should have certain elegance,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said again. This was the Margaret who had sent Ed Junior to boarding school. The woman who had survived two disastrous marriages and had never flinched when she cleaned the pus off the wound in an amputee’s stub of a leg. My admired friend, but a formidable woman.

  “And will you keep Bridie?” I meant to sound sarcastic. After all, hadn’t this County Cork girl been nurse then nanny to the children since they came to Ed and Margaret from St. Vincent de Paul? Recommended by the nuns, and loved by the kids.

  “She’ll have to stay, I suppose. Though an English nanny—”

  At this, I interrupted her. “Don’t,” I said.

  “The problem is there’s only one maid’s room here, and the cook may want it. Too bad the building doesn’t have adequate servants’ quarters,” she said.

  Now Margaret knew good and well that I’d taken over the attic for my own flat. She looked at me. Does she expect me to offer to share my place with Bridie? Not a good arrangement for either one of us.

  The kitchen had a door that led to a back porch and outside stairs. Now the door opened and a woman and young girl stood there.

  “Hello. Hello,” the woman said. “I’m your neighbor, Edith Davis. Though everyone calls me Lucky, and this is my daughter Nancy. We’ve only just moved in ourselves, and when Dino told me someone was looking at the apartment—well, I just had to pop up and urge you to take it. This is a wonderful building, but half the tenants are here only sporadically. Needs some livening up.”

  I had heard from Dino that Dr. Loyal Davis, who was well known in Chicago, and his relatively new wife were now living at 209.

  “She was an actress. Did well for herself,” Dino had said. “Acted with George M. Cohan, and Spencer Tracy, she told me.” He lowered his voice, “Divorced. Met Dr. Davis on a cruise. He was smitten, and here they are. The daughter’s from the first marriage, of course. Cute, but shy. Not like the mother. She’s a talker.”

  I expected Margaret to draw back from this blast of conversation, but no, she was smiling at Lucky. “I certainly hope we’ll be living here. I’m Margaret Kelly. Mrs. Edward J. Kelly.”

  “I know. I know. Dino told me, and your husband was just made mayor. Exciting. And you have family? Playmates for Nancy maybe.”

  “Mine are a bit younger. Seven-year-old twins and a three-year-old boy.”

  “Wonderful. Nancy loves little children. She’ll be their honorary big sister, while I’m their doting aunt.”
<
br />   Wait a minute, I thought. I’m their doting aunt. Though I had spent less time with the twins and Steve than I had with Michael’s children. But, after all, Ed’s kids had two parents and Bridie. Still I spoke up.

  “They’re lovely kids,” I said. “I remember last Christmas when—”

  Lucky interrupted me. “Wait,” she said, “I know you. You’re the concierge. Dino pointed you out to me one day.”

  “I am,” I said. Come on, Margaret, I thought, say something. And then, thank God, she did. I really didn’t want to fall out with Margaret.

  “This is Nora Kelly. My very good friend and my husband’s cousin, and also a talented photographer.”

  Thank you, Margaret.

  “Delighted to meet you,” Lucky said. “We can be friends together. Loyal’s been urging me to have a portrait done of Nancy and me. Perhaps you can do it.”

  “Very glad to. Thank you.”

  Nancy still had a child’s face. Chubby cheeks, but good eyes under those very straight bangs. The mother’s the glamour girl, I thought, not very easy for her daughter. I’d like to see what’s behind Nancy’s shuttered face.

  “Wouldn’t that be nice, Nancy?” Lucky asked.

  “Yes,” the girl answered.

  “Now,” Lucky said to Margaret, “would you like to see my place? It’s the same apartment one floor below. You might want to look at the layout. I used an art deco theme. There’s a shop on Michigan that imports French and Italian furniture. The owner advised me on my purchases and even helped me decorate Loyal’s office. You might want to talk to him about city hall. I’m sure it could use a bit of élan.”

  Jesus, better not say “élan” in front of the aldermen, I thought, as Nancy and I followed Lucky and Margaret down the back steps.

  “And what grade are you in, Nancy?” I asked her.

  “Eighth,” she said.

  “I have nieces about your age,” I said. “I could invite them over one day to meet you.”

  She didn’t answer me. “Would you like that?” I asked.