Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  Yes, I thought, and all Peter Keeley had ever wanted.

  Not thinking of his grave so much these days. Too busy praying to keep those I love alive.

  2

  Mike and Mariann left for their honeymoon in Asbury Park, driven by her two priest brothers in the cardinal’s car, lent to them for the weekend. Listening to Father Leonard’s discussion of Irish scholars in the Vatican had sharpened the image I carried in my heart of me placing beautiful flowers—fuchsia, maybe—on Peter’s lonely grave. But civilians did not travel these days, so I had no chance of going to Ireland until after the war. Besides, should a sixty-three-year-old woman really entertain such a fantasy?

  I’d finally lived long enough to be the sensible aunt. Not the family flibbertigibbet of Henrietta’s rants. My big sister had died just months ago and now I realized I’d gotten a great deal of fun from shocking her. And settling down into a conventional role didn’t seem the defeat it would have if she were still alive.

  Henrietta had stayed in Kewanee surrounded by Mame’s china and silver, daring anyone to take them away. Once a year Toots drove her to visit Agnella, who’d been teaching throughout Iowa.

  I’d stayed in touch with Agnella and made sure to see her at least once a year. We also corresponded. Her letters always included a Sacred Heart badge, a scapular, or a miraculous medal. I’d given one of each to Mike. “Keep these in your pocket when you’re flying,” I’d told him. And, of course, Ag would be praying away for his safety. In fact, it was interceding for Mike’s protection that had been at the heart of Agnella’s invitation to me—an invitation that had had such consequences.

  She had called me soon after she received my letter telling her that Mike was training to be a Navy pilot. I’d given her my telephone number, but she’d never used it before. Agnella had just begun teaching first grade at Gesu School in Milwaukee—Pat O’Brien’s alma mater, she’d written me. She was closer to Chicago than she’d ever been, and I’d intended to get up there to see her. But it was February 1942, and I still hadn’t made it.

  “Something wrong?” I’d asked, when I’d picked up the phone. No, she was fine, but the pastor had just decided that this Sunday’s Mass would be said especially for the members of the parish in the armed forces. It was to be quite a ceremony, with two choirs and a procession of military people.

  Gesu Church had been built by the Jesuits, magnificent gothic, she’d said. She was calling because, with Mike and so many other Kelly connections gone off to war, she thought I would want to attend. Even at this short notice. The Mass was tomorrow. “Yes,” I’d said, “of course.” Easy enough to take the Rock Island Railroad to Milwaukee.

  Agnella had asked me to come to the convent beforehand, but I’d missed the early train, and arrived when Mass was well underway. The place was packed. I’d seen black veils concentrated in the four front rows, and found a seat in a pew on the side aisle, not too far from the nuns. I’ll give Ag a wave on my way back from Communion, I’d thought—so she knows I’m here.

  In fact, I hadn’t long to wait because the Consecration was half over. In a few minutes, the priests had begun praying “Pater noster,” and I followed along in English. I swear, it was just as I’d said “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” that I heard a spate of coughing I’d recognize anywhere. There, five rows ahead of me—Henrietta and Toots. Now, I would have gotten up and run right out of the place, except … I’m not saying my beliefs are so primitive that I feared that God might revenge Himself against Mike if I stomped out of the church. But let’s just say I’d stayed put. “Libera nos a malo. Amen,” the priest concluded. “Deliver us from evil.”

  I remembered Milton Goldman telling Ed that Hitler was the Devil. Evil incarnate. Deliver us. Deliver us, please God, I prayed. I looked over at Henrietta, her head bowed. All these years, I’d thought of her as evil, but now this bent old woman hardly registered on any scale of wickedness. I wasn’t entirely without fault, either. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive …

  So. Agnella caught my eye, as I came back from Communion. Amazing how much entreaty she could project from a face almost entirely wrapped up in linen. I nodded.

  Coffee and kringle—a big sweet roll—was served in the basement after Mass. Agnella had snagged me at the church door, and now I was standing with Toots and Henrietta, while Agnella, very much Sister Mary Erigina, introduced us to the parents of her first graders—all of whom had older children in the military.

  Toots managed to tell each one about his top-secret employment in the defense plant. Thank God, he was too old to be drafted, I thought. Henrietta could never have borne being separated from her son.

  She was very frail and gray. After about twenty minutes, she whispered to me, “Please, could we sit?” I’d seen two empty folding chairs on the side, and led her over there. I’d helped her down and settled myself beside her. “Did Agnella tell you I’d be here?” she had asked me.

  “No,” I’d said.

  “Would you have come?” she’d asked.

  “No,” I’d said.

  “Neither would I, if I’d known you were coming.” We’d just looked at each other. So much for “forgive us our trespasses,” I’d thought.

  And, then, I’d seen Agnella coming toward us. “Sister Mary Erigina,” I’d heard someone call. But she hadn’t stopped. She’d stood over the two of us, looking down. She’d taken her mother’s hand and mine, and joined them together in hers. “Enough,” she’d said. “This is what I do with my first graders when they fight with each other. I let them feel the warmth of each other’s hands and…” Oh, why not? I thought. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. We clasped hands.

  “I’m sorry, Nonie,” Henrietta had said.

  “I am, too,” I’d said.

  And it was a relief to lay that burden down. Not to feel any guilt at her funeral a few weeks later. Or now, as I climbed the stairs of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I hadn’t gotten a chance to really look at it that morning. Midafternoon now, no Masses, but still a good number of people inside. There were pairs clustered in the pews, often a young man in uniform and a girl in a summer dress scattered through the huge expanse of the church. I walked along the side aisle where there were altars to various saints. I nodded at St. Bridget, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Therese the Little Flower. Each had a stand of little vigil lights in front of them so you could light a candle to get the attention of your favorite saint.

  Jude had a raging fire of candles at his feet. The saint of hopeless cases. It made sense that he was popular. I was surprised to see an altar dedicated to St. Elizabeth. One of the few women in the cathedral and not a very well-known saint. She wasn’t even a martyr, just the Blessed Mother’s cousin who had gotten pregnant at an advanced age. But I suppose there were plenty of women who would come to pray at this altar hoping against hope for a child themselves. I wondered whether Elizabeth had still been alive when her son John the Baptist died, beheaded by Herod. And had she consoled Mary after the Crucifixion, sharing their sorrow as they had their joy? So many images from Renaissance painters of Jesus and his cousin John the Baptist as toddlers.

  Now I’m not any kind of an art connoisseur, but I did spend a fair amount of time in the Louvre when I lived in Paris. I’d stumbled into the museum to get out of the rain one day and discovered a great gimmick for Madame Simone, my employer who copied couturier dresses to sell at a discount to American tourists. Why not steal from the masters? I’d thought, and had sketched some of the gorgeous clothing on the ladies who had their portraits painted, even lifting a bit of the Mona Lisa’s costume. Madame Simone created a very popular Great Masters’ collection, and I even stole, very subtly of course, details from the saints. There was a painting of St. Joan of Arc by Ingres that had some fabulous pleats around her armor. I didn’t neglect the Madonnas. After all, these painters were dressing Our Lady in the clothes women of their day wore, so why not lift a skirt or a slee
ve. And one of my favorite paintings was Raphael’s La Belle Jardinière, where a very relaxed Mary is playing with a naked Jesus and John the Baptist. Lovely. Two toddlers with not a notion of what lies ahead.

  We’d had a print of another Raphael, Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, in our classroom at St. Xavier’s. Madonna Della Seggiola, Sister Ruth Eileen called it. Mary leaned back in a chair, holding Jesus with the slightly older St. John standing next to them. Nothing austere or removed about Mary in this picture or in another print I remembered Sister Ruth Eileen had liked, Ruben’s painting of the Holy Family.

  “Here’s Elizabeth finally,” she’d said. “How many of you have an aunt you’re close to?” And of course we’d all raised our hands. I was thinking of Aunt Máire and how I could confide in her in a way I couldn’t in Mam. “Well Elizabeth was like an aunt to the Blessed Mother. After all Mary went to Elizabeth when she found out she was pregnant. And their children played together. Cousins.”

  Now I looked up at Elizabeth’s statue and thought of how Ed and Michael had grown up together, and of Rose and me, the aunts.

  I wondered about the women who lit candles at this altar and never had children. Was there any saint for women who had miscarriages? Who stood outside the mother and child chain of life? Now, Nonie, I told myself, don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. You have the Kelly kids, and didn’t Mike invite you and Rose to attend his wedding, putting us in his mother’s place. He and Mariann will have children and you’ll be Aunt Nonie to them too.

  A more than life-sized statue of St. Patrick himself was carved just in front of the sanctuary. An old man with a beard, looking as he did in the gigantic stained glass window where he wore red bishop’s robes and was lecturing a very attentive group of Irish women. Why was Patrick never portrayed as the young man who’d been taken from Britain to Ireland as a slave? Who’d escaped but then come back to convert the whole place and really become the most famous Irishman of them all? There was an “I shall return” tale that would inspire even Douglas MacArthur. Denis Barnes had shown me one of the matchbooks MacArthur had printed with that slogan and passed out by the tens of thousands. Denis had shaken his head.

  I was going to the Lady Chapel to make sure the Blessed Mother understood that she was responsible for Mike’s safety. Father Leonard had told me to make sure to visit the altar just to the side of the Lady Chapel. The Archangel Michael—a favorite of all us Kellys since half our fellows were named for him—stood next to a statue of St. Louis, King of France. Father Leonard had told me to be sure to read the plaque to the side that explained that the altar and statues had been built by Tiffany & Co. and were a gift of the Bouvier family. In very ornate letters, Michel Bouvier said that he was dedicating this altar to his grandfather, also Michel (so that was why the Archangel was here) and to his father Jean Vernou Bouvier. His grandfather had been born in Pont St. Esprit, France, and died in Philadelphia where his father was born. In the center of the plaque was a rampant lion. Aristocrats, I would have thought, except Father Leonard had told me that the Bouviers were furniture makers friendly with Louis Napoleon and hadn’t made any real money until they came to America. The name, he said, meant herdsman, probably the same root as Bo in Irish, the River Boyne and the cow goddess. Father Leonard was Father Kevin come again, I’d thought. He enjoyed a bit of gossip also.

  “The Michel Bouvier who endowed the altar left all his money to his brother’s son, John Vernou Bouvier III,” he’d told me, “and the fellow turned into a bit of a playboy. A shame really because he married a girl from a good Irish family, Janet Lee. He brought his two daughters by not too long ago, and I took them to see the altar and told them some things about the stained glass windows. He said that he was called ‘Black Jack’ and his younger daughter was named for him. Jacqueline. Nice girls and very impressed with the beautiful altar that commemorated their family.”

  Now I moved to the stand of vigil lights at the entrance to the Lady Chapel. Granny Honora had lit a candle every day for each of her sons and nephews who were fighting in the Civil War, and now I took the wooden stick, put it into a flame and started touching it to the wicks. One for Mike, then Ed’s son Joe Kelly, Marge’s Tom McGuire, our cousin Father Steve O’Donnell who was a chaplain with Patton’s army, Mariann’s brothers Ralph and Wally, and then a few all-purpose candles for all the friends and neighbors who were in harm’s way. There must be acres and acres of flickering candles all over the world, mile after mile after mile, aimed at Heaven. Did I really think God and the saints were up there peering down saying ah there’s one burning for Mike Kelly, best keep an eye on him? I don’t know but I lit the whole line anyway and settled down for a bit of serious praying. Such silence calmed the noise and bustle of New York City. Then I heard a muted sound, gasps and sobs, coming from a pew farther up front. I looked up and saw Denis Barnes sitting next to a young woman. She was kneeling, crying, her face in her hands. He sat staring at the altar. I got up and slipped into the pew, sat next to him.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “The orders came. The whole squadron’s headed west. A month of training in Hawaii and then to the Pacific,” he said.

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Just found out. Jerry Boucher telephoned the squadron from the bar we’d all gone to after the wedding breakfast and got the news,” he said.

  “So Mike doesn’t know,” I said.

  “We decided to let him enjoy his honeymoon.” The girl looked up, turned toward me. “This is my friend, Chrissie. She lives in New Jersey and couldn’t get in for the wedding but we agreed to meet afterwards. She dragged me in here from the bar.” Chrissie nodded at me. “I’m not even a Catholic,” Denis said. “But Chrissie’s Italian and…” He shrugged. “We’ve been lighting candles all over this place.”

  “St. Anthony,” Chrissie said.

  “Can you ask for something different?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said. “I’m powerless. I could desert, I suppose,” Denis said. “Chrissie said she’d hide me with her family.”

  “Oh,” I said. Desert. If he got caught he’d go to jail, and he would get caught. Every day there were articles in the paper about fellows who’d gone AWOL and were turned in by neighbors or relatives even. Too many brothers and sons and husbands had died while serving, for people to have much sympathy for fellows who ran away. The words of an Irish song went through my head. Mrs. McGrath’s son had lost his legs fighting in the British Army: “Have you no sense at all? Why didn’t you run from the cannonball?” she’d asked him. Why didn’t more men run? Patriotism? Honor? Conditioning? Fear? Denis patted Chrissie’s shoulder.

  “But I won’t desert,” he said. “I’ll go to the Pacific and fly the Beast off carriers until … You’d better keep up the prayers, Chrissie.”

  “When?” I said.

  “At the end of June,” he said.

  “And could someone, well, intervene?” I was thinking of Ed, of course. “Suggest you boys for another assignment?”

  “Just now in the bar Jerry’s wife, Joan, said her father knew a lot of people and could call his friends and Jerry went ballistic. He said that we were officers and gentlemen and that we didn’t sink to using influence like that.”

  “Very noble but plenty do.”

  Eleanor Roosevelt, I thought. Eleanor Roosevelt.

  I’d become Ed’s unofficial liaison with the First Lady, following up on the requests she sent to him on a weekly basis. Jobs were needed for worthy young women—often Negroes—and I’d been able to place most of them. I had briefly met Eleanor Roosevelt at the convention three years ago, when she had accepted the nomination for her husband. I’d taken her photograph with Ed, and sent it to Missy LeHand for her. Eleanor Roosevelt had written a thank-you note, and recently I’d received another. She was grateful for my help in obtaining jobs for her protégés.

  I’d also gotten to know Missy LeHand and Grace Tully, who’d been with the president on his Chicago visits. Two smart Irish
Catholic women devoting themselves to a cause and the man who embodied it. And, though Bessie O’Neill was Ed’s official secretary, when the president wanted to get in touch with Ed on a weekend or late at night, Missy would often call me at home because she knew Ed and I lived in the same building.

  Now I was prepared to go to Washington or Hyde Park or wherever Mrs. Roosevelt was to ask for her help, but I only had to walk a few blocks to Sixty-Seventh Street right off Fifth Avenue.

  “She’s clearing the place out,” Grace Tully told me when I called the White House trying to get in touch with Eleanor Roosevelt. Poor Missy LeHand had worked herself into a stroke. She had suffered from rheumatic fever as a child and I think if it’s possible for someone to spend her heart for someone else, she did, giving hers to FDR. Grace told me that Missy had come back to her old room in the White House for a bit when she was recovering from the stroke but she’d started a fire there and had to leave. She was living with her sister in Boston. FDR hadn’t seen her. At least he’d been there when Missy received the honorary degree Ed had arranged for Rosary College to confer on her. We’d hoped she’d be able to travel to Chicago, but instead two Dominican nuns from the college came to Washington and gave her the degree. Ed told me that FDR had left Missy half his estate in his will, but it didn’t look like she’d outlive him. Grace was in charge now.

  “Finally sold those two New York houses,” Grace told me. She said that Sara Roosevelt had given the twin town houses to Franklin and Eleanor as a wedding gift in 1908 and they’d lived there since. But the Roosevelts had been trying to sell them since Sara died in 1941. Hunter College finally bought them, she said.

  “Eleanor is pleased that a woman’s college will have the houses. Take the curse off them,” she said. “She’s never out and out complained but can you imagine if your mother-in-law gave you a house that was connected on every floor with hers? There are doors leading from one to the other and Sara walked through them whenever she pleased. Anna Roosevelt told me that her grandmother once explained to her that though Eleanor had borne her she, Sara, was Anna’s real mother.”