Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  “Are they safe down there?” asked Margaret. “If Joe ran into the traffic Steve would follow right behind him.”

  “Mike will take care of them,” Ed said. “Don’t worry.”

  “That was a good catch for an eleven-year-old,” I said. “He’ll be one of the Fighting Irish one day.”

  Ed smiled. I wondered if he was remembering, as I was, the day he’d received his honorary degree from Notre Dame in 1925. A doctor of law complete with a cap and gown. Not bad for a fellow who left school in fourth grade. We had all driven down for the ceremony—Margaret, Ed Junior and me, Michael and all his kids. Ed and Margaret had not adopted their children yet, but Mike’s friend Bobby Lambert had come along so we had a load of kids. After the ceremony we’d walked around the campus and Ed had arranged for the boys to go on the football field. I remember how they’d stood there looking at the stands. The green field. The lines marking off the yards. Then Ed Junior gave a yell and ran toward the goalposts. Michael and Bobby took after him, and for a good fifteen minutes we watched an imaginary game of football. I started singing, “Cheer, Cheer for Old Notre Dame / Wake up the echoes cheering her on.” Michael and Rose laughed at me but then joined in, and Ed sang along. Margaret shook her head but smiled at us. Only eight years ago and yet so much had changed. Hard to believe we’d all been together on that golden autumn day. I wondered if Ed was watching his two sons and thinking of the one he’d lost. And now Henrietta had gone completely crazy.

  The doorbell rang. Ed’s driver had gone to fill the car with gas, but now he was back. “Sorry, Mr. Mayor,” he said as he came in. “I was cleaning out the car and found this note on the back seat.” He handed it to Ed.

  Rose and Margaret came out of the kitchen.

  “It seems as if Henrietta has moved permanently to Kewanee,” I said to Rose. “And has helped herself to anything valuable in the Argo house.”

  I turned to Ed, who was reading the note. “What does it say, Ed?” I asked.

  “A lot of it is just palaver,” he said, “but here’s the important part. ‘My brother Michael intended to compensate me for my caretaking,’” Ed read. “‘After all, I gave up my own home to help his children.’”

  I couldn’t let that go by. “She begged to go live with them. Michael’s been supporting her and Toots for years.”

  “Go on, Ed, read the rest,” Rose said.

  “She writes, ‘Michael seems to have squandered his money so I am taking what he would have wanted me to have. I am not returning. I have kept the house my husband built for me as a refuge for my old age. I did not expect anyone in the family to care for me and, thank God, I have my faithful son with me. Michael’s two oldest girls are very able housekeepers. I have trained them. There’s no reason for them to continue with all that college nonsense. They can get jobs and keep house for their brother and sisters. Since the Argo property is worthless they probably should rent some place in Chicago, as their own house is another victim of Michael’s poor judgment.’” Ed lowered the paper. Rose was crying.

  “I just don’t understand,” Rose said.

  “Don’t cry, Rose. Get angry,” I said to her. “How dare Henrietta steal from the Kelly kids. Michael fed her and that lazy son three meals a day for years. Gave them a roof over their heads and most of what she took belonged to your sister.”

  “Henrietta is a troubled woman,” Margaret said.

  “She is,” I said. “No question. I still think Manteno is the best place for her.”

  “Please, Nonie. Keep your voice down,” Ed said. “We have to figure this out before the Kelly girls come in here.”

  “They’re too young to be on their own,” Rose said. “Frances and Marguerite are just starting high school and Mike’s only a junior. Ann and Rosemary must finish. Listen, I know what to do. I’ll live with them.”

  I knew Rose enjoyed her life with Ed’s mother, Aunt Nelly, and her sister, Rose’s mother-in-law. A pleasant house, and Ed paying their expenses. Rose took good care of the two women but Ed’s widowed sister Ella could probably take over for her.

  “We can find some place in South Shore,” Rose said. “Close to St. Rita’s for Michael and Aquinas for Marguerite and Frances.”

  “I can find you an apartment and help you with the rent,” Ed said.

  “And I’ll get a job,” Rose said.

  “A job,” Ed repeated. “I could find you something at the Board of Education.”

  Which was how Rose, the kindest, gentlest woman in the world, became a truant officer, though most of the time when she found a child who’d been staying out of school she ended up taking them for a malted milk instead of imposing any kind of punishment.

  “And I have my salary,” I said. “We’ll need help the first year, but after Rose and Ann graduate and get teaching jobs we’ll be away in a hack, as Mam used to say.” I should have known something was wrong. I expected Rose to hug me, or at least squeeze my hand, but she didn’t move, didn’t look at me. Ed didn’t say anything. It was Margaret who leaned over and patted my arm.

  “You don’t want to give up your place, Nora. You’d never find anything like it,” she said.

  “I know, but this is an emergency. These are Michael’s kids. My own flesh and blood.”

  “Michael and Mame’s,” Rose said.

  “Yes of course,” I said. Rose still wasn’t looking at me.

  “It’s just, Nonie, well, the most we could afford would be a three-bedroom apartment, and, well, you could of course be a part of the children’s lives, but…”

  “Rose, what are you saying?” I asked.

  “Nora,” Margaret said, “you do have a certain reputation.”

  “Oh God here we go again.” Tim McShane and the trouser suit.

  “You made your own life, Nonie, and we respect you for it,” Ed said. “It’s just that you’re unconventional and the Kelly kids have enough to face without having to explain you.”

  “You’ve always been the brave one, Nonie,” Rose said. “But children like things normal and, well, Nonie, be honest you’ve never been suited to the kind of daily tasks of cooking and cleaning. And I don’t think the women at the Aquinas Mothers’ Club would understand your life and…”

  “Oh, Mother.” We all turned to see Pat walking hand in hand with Marguerite and Frances, each of them carrying a very fancy doll. “They like my Madame Alexanders much more than I do. So I’ve given the dolls to them.”

  “We just said that they were gorgeous,” Marguerite said. “Not that we wanted them. We’re too old for dolls.”

  “But you told me you’d put them on a shelf in your room,” Pat said. “And I hate dolls.” She walked over to her mother, and Margaret started winding Pat’s thick hair around her fingers. Margaret usually made sure her daughter had a headful of perfect sausage curls, but now Pat’s hair was sticking out all over her head, straight as a stick, but thick. So different from Margaret’s. Somewhere, I thought, there’s a woman with that same hair. I wonder if Margaret knows who Pat’s birth mother is. Irish I’d say from those blue eyes and the freckles across her nose.

  Rosemary and Ann walked into the living room.

  “I want to go home,” Rosemary said.

  “Me too,” Ann said. “I want to sit in Dad’s chair.”

  I remembered Ann at Mame’s wake, appalled at the talk and laughter. She’d been sitting next to me when Tim McShane had pulled me away and out into the street. Does she look at me and think Aunt Nonie the harlot? Is Rose right? Do I frighten these young women? Margaret stood up and walked over to them.

  “Before you go you could do me a great favor, girls. I have some dresses and coats that I’ve decided are just too young for me. Would you look at them and see if there’s anything you could wear and take them away for me?”

  “Do you have any hats?” Rosemary asked. Margaret laughed.

  “A good few,” she said, and the three walked toward Margaret and Ed’s room with its huge closet. I looked at Rose. Would sh
e resent Margaret acting Lady Bountiful? But Marguerite and Frances were standing next to her, showing her the dolls.

  “I think you should accept Pat’s gift,” Rose said. “These dolls would make lovely decorations in your room.”

  “But Aunt Henrietta doesn’t like us to clutter up our room. She took down the poster I got of Lake Michigan from the IC Railroad.”

  Who’s going to tell them? I wondered. Rose or me? But it was Ed who spoke up.

  “Your aunt Henrietta has decided to retire and live in the country with Toots.”

  “Toots? In the country?” Marguerite asked and she and Frances started laughing. But Ed went right on. “So your aunt Rose will be living with you.”

  “And Aunt Nonie too?” Marguerite said.

  Bless her, I thought.

  “There’s plenty of room in the house,” she said.

  “We’ve decided it would be better if you lived in the city where you’d be closer to your schools and nearer to all the family,” Ed said.

  “But our friends are in Argo,” Frances said.

  However, Marguerite was nodding. “We can make new friends, Fran,” she said. “And if we didn’t have to travel so far we could sign up to be in the chorus or the school play.”

  “That’s true,” Frances said. “Sister Hilda asked me to join the debate club and I said no because I had to catch the Archer Avenue streetcar. My best friend in school, Sheila McGuire, lives in South Shore. I’ve been to their apartment. It’s lovely. Could we live near there?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Rose said.

  “And Aunt Henrietta won’t be with us?” Marguerite said.

  “She won’t,” Ed said.

  “And we can visit Aunt Nonie here? And play with Pat and Steve and Joe?” Frances asked.

  “You can, of course,” Ed said.

  What could I do? Imitate Henrietta and throw a fit? I did like my privacy and in a few months maybe I could think of Ireland again. Take the high road, Nonie, I told myself.

  * * *

  “Ta dah!” Margaret stood in the arch that connected the back hall with the living room. “May I present Miss Ann Kelly.”

  Ann stepped into the living room. She wore a gray wool suit that belonged to Margaret. I hadn’t realized how tall Ann had grown. The jacket with its padded shoulders and nipped waist emphasized her height. She wore an emerald green blouse with ruffles around the neck. Margaret had tucked a green silk handkerchief into the jacket breast pocket. The skirt was slim and hit just below the knee.

  Frances clapped her hands. “You look beautiful, Ann.”

  “And look at those shoes,” Marguerite said. The dark green pumps had very high heels. This year’s, I’d say and the suit looked new too. Good on you, Margaret, I thought. These weren’t discards but new purchases.

  “Lovely, Ann,” Rose said. “You can wear the suit to Mass on Sunday. With a white blouse of course.”

  “And on your first day teaching,” I said.

  “Well,” Rose said, “it’s a little glamorous for the classroom.”

  “Who knows,” I said. “Ann may change her mind. She might decide to become a career girl. More jobs for young women all the time. In that suit she looks like a woman who could run a company.”

  Now Marguerite and Frances shouted, “Oh, look!” And here came Rosemary. I’d been a bit worried about her. She was the only one of the girls who could not be called pretty. A nose just that bit too pronounced and very prominent cheekbones. With her white skin and black black hair there was something almost threatening about her. But this woman standing in front of all of us was a knockout.

  Rosemary wore a very slinky evening dress covered with black sequins. Much too sophisticated for a twenty-one-year-old girl, but it transformed her. She stood very straight, her shoulders back. She’d been into Margaret’s makeup too; her lashes seemed longer. Some kind of shadow on her lids brought out the green in her eyes. Her lips were ruby red and she’d piled her hair on top of her head.

  “You look like a movie star, Rosemary,” Marguerite said.

  “Good,” Rosemary replied, “because I’ve decided that when I graduate in June I’m not going to be a teacher after all. I’m going to be an actress.”

  “Now, Rosemary,” Ed said, “there’s nothing wrong with dressing up when the occasion calls for it. You look very nice and you’re most welcome to join Margaret and me at the opera some evening and that getup would be perfectly acceptable, but as for becoming an actress … You know how proud your father was that you were going to be a teacher. He’d already spoken to the principal at the Holden School in Bridgeport who said she’d be delighted to have a Kelly teaching there.”

  But Rosemary was shaking her head. “Uncle Ed,” she said, and her voice seemed pitched lower. “Daddy is dead. Our house is gone and don’t movie stars make a lot more money than teachers?”

  “Rosemary,” Rose said, “don’t be rude.”

  “I’m not,” Rosemary said. “I’ve been in all the college plays and the drama teacher told me I was one of the most talented students he’d ever taught.”

  Rose turned to Margaret. “It’s very kind of you to offer the girls your clothes but I’m afraid it’s giving them ideas. I think it would be better if—”

  I cut her off. “Don’t move, girls. I’m off to get my camera.”

  “Oh, yes,” Margaret said. “Do.”

  Rose put out her hand as if to stop me but I pretended I didn’t see it.

  “There,” I said when I’d taken the last of a series of photographs. The warm light from the setting sun had created a kind of halo around Rosemary and Ann.

  “I have a friend who did all the photos for Essanay Studios when they were based here in Chicago. The company moved to Hollywood but she still has contacts. I’ll pass these pictures on to her, Rosemary, and then who knows?” I said.

  “Nonie,” Rose said, but again I ignored her. If I was going to be the disreputable aunt then I was going to play the role all the way. Encourage the girls and who cares what the Aquinas Mothers’ Club thinks.

  “You met her, Rosemary. She was the one who took your family picture with your mother,” I said.

  “Oh yes,” Rosemary said. “That strange woman.”

  “Strange, maybe. A very successful businesswoman and an artist.”

  “Like you, Aunt Nonie?” Marguerite asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Like me.”

  * * *

  So. Looking back I think dressing up changed both those girls’ lives. Rosemary went to Hollywood after she graduated and did very well for herself. Never a movie star but she found success in radio, acting opposite, of all people, Vincent Price and Boris Karloff in a series of plays that came on every Sunday evening for years. When the series went off the air she came back to Chicago and was a regular with the Drury Lane company. And Ann became the first woman executive at Braniff Airways before she left to marry at forty. It was Marguerite who became the teacher. Frances married young an older fellow who was considered the catch of South Shore. Their future started that day and I decided to take my work more seriously. Why not collect my photographs in a book, as Ed said, even if the City had to publish it?

  I’m sorry, Peter, I thought—you’ll have to wait a bit longer. But then there’s no time when you’re dead, is there?

  11

  SEPTEMBER 1933

  Ed and I were in his office the month after Michael’s funeral and Henrietta’s theft, though I was the only one saying out and out that she’d stolen from the Kelly kids.

  “We should go down there and take the stuff back,” I’d said to Rose.

  “She’s gone. Don’t rile her,” Rose had said and Ed had agreed.

  “An ugly incident that we don’t want to read about in the newspapers,” he’d said.

  “So we’re just going to let her keep what was Mame’s property … really?” I’d said. “It’s not as if Henrietta is going to be giving dinner parties in Kewanee.”

 
Though it turned out I was wrong about that. She was entertaining to beat the band. Bits of gossip had already floated up the Illinois River to Bridgeport. Henrietta had offered her house as a meeting place for the St. Charles Altar and Rosary Society, according to Rose’s friend’s sister-in-law who said that the farmers’ wives in the parish were very impressed by Henrietta’s beautiful things and her exquisite taste. Geeze Louise, Henrietta had been awful to Mame in life, nasty to her children, and now she was swanning around with her things. But Henrietta was gone, thank God, and so I held my tongue.

  The bank had wasted no time serving papers on, of all people, young Mike. “The man in the family,” the loan officer had said. Ridiculous. Rose told me she’d seen Mike sniffing back tears as he read the documents that took his family’s home away. True to his word, Ed had found an apartment for Rose and the kids on Yates Avenue—three bedrooms and a sleeping porch, which young Mike claimed for himself. A cold enough place in the winter but at least he’d have some privacy. Man of the family? Kiss-my-foot-how-are-you. He was only sixteen but then plenty of fellows had come out of Ireland and worked themselves to death at that age or younger. Many families had been kept from starving to death because of the money those boys sent home. Without our uncle Patrick digging the I & M Canal, Granny Honora would not have had the money to escape with her children.

  Just enough things left from the Argo house to furnish the apartment, and really when I saw how close the quarters were I was glad I wasn’t considered respectable enough to live with my nieces and nephew. I’d gotten used to the luxury of having a place of my own, and yet as I sat in Ed’s office at the end of the month I wondered if I’d ever really escape the web of family obligations and get to Ireland.

  “Now look, Nonie, I appreciate your talents, I do, after all it was your camera launched me, right?”

  “Mmmmmm,” I said. “I wondered if you even remembered.”