The Importance of Being Kennedy

by Laurie Graham

  I said, “I know. I was there. And so was Fidelma Clery. He gave us all rosaries. He gets them wholesale, I’m sure. But that doesn’t mean he hands out dispensations so a man can have two wives.”

  She got into such a paddy.

  She said, “Why doesn’t anyone understand? Blood married Obby in one of their churches, so as far as our church is concerned he’s never been married. Anyway, the Holy Father can change anything he wants to. Especially if Daddy sends him a big fat check for a new altar or something.”

  There were cablegrams flying back and forth all that week, and then Blood Fitzwilliam turned up, like the bad penny. He was back in town and expecting to take her to lunch. When you’re in service, you notice that the ones who’re too grand to give you a “Good day” are not necessarily the ones with the biggest estates or kings in their family tree. Just a middling rip like Fitzwilliam can be full enough of himself to ignore the help.

  As soon as she heard his voice, Kick was ready to grab her pocketbook and go.

  I said, “Didn’t you tell me Lady Ginny was calling for you?”

  “Oh Lord,” she said. “Well, she’s late. Just tell her something came up, would you? She’ll understand.”

  He’d picked up the telephone without so much as a by-your-leave, putting through a call to his club, tapping a cigarette on his silver case. Kick was watching me watching him.

  She said, “Darling, no smoking in the hall. Nora’s got her fierce face on.”

  “Sweetie,” he said, “who pays Nora’s wages?”

  It was four o’clock when she came home, pink and silly from champagne wine.

  She said, “Blood’s going to take me down to Nice for a vacation, next month. Such bliss. We’re going to stay with his friends at their villa, and then by the time we come back Daddy will be in Paris, so we’ll be able to stop off and see him. It’s all worked out perfectly. We can have a big powwow about asking the Pope and things, without Mother being there to have a fit, and Daddy and Blood can get to know one another.”

  I said, “Angel girl, will you listen to yourself? All this talk about marrying. Is the man divorced from his lawful wedded wife?”

  “He soon will be,” she said. “He just has to see the lawyers. Then it won’t take long. Obby’s going to cooperate. You know they haven’t had a real marriage for years.”

  I said, “And what about his child? Where does she fit into a divorce?”

  She said, “She’ll be fine. I expect we’ll live at Coolatin when we’re not in London, and she’ll be able to come to visit us and keep a pony there and everything. I’m sure she’s an absolute sweetheart, and I’ll bet she’d love to have some little brothers and sisters. I’m going to have dozens of babies for you to look after, Nora, and we’ll all live happily ever after. Blood will charm Mother off her feet, and Pat and Jean’ll come over for the hunting. We might even be able to have poor Rosie to stay.”

  Ah yes. Poor Rosie. Well, there was a name she knew better than to bring up with her Daddy if she wanted to get him on her side. We never mentioned Rosie anymore, except below stairs.

  4

  A Perfect Little Doll

  Rose Marie was born in the September of 1918. It was a darker time even than when Jack arrived. We didn’t only have the war still dragging on and our men far from home, we had the influenza too, and that was on our very doorstep. We hardly left the house. There was such a panic on that Herself didn’t even go to Mass. Cook went out in a gauze mask to do the marketing, and the laundry woman was told not to come, for the duration, because she was in and out of different houses all the time. There was no telling what germs she might carry with her. Mr. K slept on an army cot at the shipyard most nights sooner than risk bringing the infection home. Some people said the docks were where it had started.

  No one we knew in Brookline got sick, but the Ericksons’ gardener reckoned there was a four-week wait for funerals in Boston, there were so many bodies to bury, and after it was over, I heard that Marimichael Donnelly had been one of them, ironing sheets in the afternoon and dead by midnight. Three little ones left without a mammy. To think she left Ballynagore to finish up like that. She was strong as an ox, Marimichael, but that was the thing about that influenza. It carried off the strong and didn’t touch the babies and the old folks.

  Before Rosie was born, Mrs. Kennedy decided she needed an extra nursery maid. She hired Fidelma Clery. Flame-red hair and terrible, crooked little teeth. I was glad of the help. Young Jack caught every cough and cold that was going, and Joseph Patrick had the very devil in him, always climbing into trouble and tormenting Jack and taking his toys.

  “Why is he still a baby?” he used to ask. “When will he be big enough to fight me?”

  His Honor was the one who encouraged fighting, play-boxing with him, showing him how to put up his little dukes.

  Mrs. K gave Fidelma the gospel on nursery routines to read, but I know she never opened it. Fidelma was a bit hazy when it came to reading. Every time she told the story of the Gingerbread Man, it ended different. But she had enough common sense to get by, and the first time Joseph Patrick gave her any trouble, she picked him up, hollering and kicking, and carried him to his room like a roll of linoleum.

  The weekly nurse came a few days before the baby was due, and Mrs. K started her pains right on time, same as she did everything else. Everything was going along nicely and I quite thought we’d be cleared away by teatime with the baby safe in her crib, but when it came time to send for the doctor, he couldn’t be reached. He’d been called away to somebody with complications, and you couldn’t send for any other doctor. They were all run off their feet with influenza cases.

  I said, “It hardly matters. It’s her third child. She knows what to do.”

  The nurse said, “It does matter. If the doctor isn’t here when it’s born he won’t get his fee and then I’ll be for it.”

  It seemed to me you couldn’t do much to stop a baby if it was ready to come, but she was the nurse and I was only there to help. So we tied Mrs. K’s knees together with a scarf and the nurse instructed her that whatever she did she mustn’t bear down when she got one of her urges. She was a model patient. I never heard her cry out once. And that’s how we kept Rose Marie from being born until Dr. Good arrived, bounding up the stairs with his ether mask.

  I loved all my Kennedy babies for their different funny little ways, but Rosie was the real beauty among them. She’d a mop of black hair and big green eyes and she was so contented. She’d lie in her crib for hours, smiling at the world and playing with any little toy you gave her. Not like Jack, always crying. Not like Joe, always looking for trouble.

  If I’d been Mrs. K I’d have been up in the nursery gazing at Rosie all day long. She was like a perfect little doll and Herself loves dolls. Sure she has a whole room full of them at Hyannis, all in their glass cases. But she didn’t trouble us much in the nursery. She preferred to be down at her bureau, clipping out articles on how children should be raised and making lists of things that had to be seen to. Timetables, charts for their weight, charts for their teeth.

  Joseph Patrick was forever asking why did I live with them.

  “Don’t you have a mother and a daddy?” he used to say. “This is my house. But when I go to school you can still stay here. You can look after Rosie.”

  I wasn’t sure I would be staying, because me and Jimmy Swords were sort of engaged. Frankie Mulcahy was back from Pennsylvania and Margaret wanted us to name the day as soon as Jimmy came home. A double wedding at Most Holy Redeemer and then to Mazzucca for ice-cream sundaes. She had it all planned. But Jimmy didn’t come back from Flanders in a marrying frame of mind.

  He said, “What’s the point? Bringing more kids into the world. Cannon fodder for another war. Factory fodder for the bosses. It’s all shite.”

  He’d got in with a lot of socialists in his battalion, putting the world to rights while they were waiting to be sent up the line to fight the Bosch.

 
I said, “I thought we’d won this war so there won’t ever be another one. And what’d happen if everybody had your attitude? There’d be no more babies. Nobody to look after you when you’re in your bath chair.”

  He said, “I’m not going to be in a bath chair. I’ll put a bullet in my brain sooner. And I’m not getting married. It’s nothing personal, Nora. You can keep the ring.”

  Silly beggar. He’d never given me a ring.

  I did wonder, had he met someone else, somebody prettier. One of those French mam’zelles. Mammy always said it was a good thing I had my health and strength, because my face would never make my fortune. I wasn’t exactly heartbroken over Jimmy but I did stop looking in the mirror. Looking in the mirror could make a girl dissatisfied.

  Ursie said, “Never mind. You’re better off staying single. You’ve a nice little job and a roof over your head and that’s more than Margaret’ll ever have. Frankie Mulcahy isn’t fit to mind a canary, never mind a wife and family. There’ll be a baby every year and never enough money to pay the electric. You’ll see. She’ll be broken down and worn out. So don’t break your heart over Jimmy Swords. You’ve had a lucky escape.”

  Margaret didn’t have a baby every year though. Nothing happened on that front for a long time. And as for Jimmy, I don’t know that Ursie was right. He was a good man. It was just that the war had chewed him up and spat him out, bitter and twisted. When Ursie said these things, you always had to keep in mind that she was probably a disappointed woman, on the quiet. She worshipped her Mr. Jauncey and yet all he ever did was say, “Take a letter, Miss Brennan.”

  Poor Ursie and her little two-cup teapot.

  Rosie sat up at six months, same as Jack did, but she wasn’t interested in walking or talking. She was happy just to sit and watch the world go by. Mrs. K said we were to stimulate her more, talk to her, and pull her up onto her feet to give her the idea of walking.

  Fidelma said, “There’s not a thing wrong with her. She only seems quiet because you’re used to the boys racketing about. If you ask me we should be thankful. She never gives us a minute’s trouble.”

  Mrs. K said, “I didn’t ask you, Fidelma. And I want particular attention paid to Rose Marie’s activities. We can’t have her falling behind.”

  Well, Rosie got up and walked when she was good and ready, and she talked too. She just didn’t put herself out. If you threw her a ball she’d pick it up and look at it, but it never occurred to her to throw it back. And when Mr. K came up to the nursery he didn’t seem to know what to do with her. The boys would clamber all over him begging to be tickled to death. Rosie would just sit smiling at him, holding back.

  Later on, Mrs. K made quite a project of Rosie, tutoring her for hours on end to try and get her up to the mark with her reading and writing, but in those early days Joseph Patrick was her big project.

  “He’s the foundation stone,” she said. “If the oldest child is brought along correctly, the others will follow suit.”

  Everything she did was in aid of Joseph Patrick growing up the brightest scholar and a champion sportsman and a Light of Christ altar boy. She took him to the Franklin Park Zoo one afternoon to set the scene and tell him about the poor Christian martyrs, but when he came home all he did was keep springing out at Jack and Rosie, playing at killer lions. Well, he was only four.

  She kept up with all the new books that were brought out, too, and fetched them from the lending library to read to them, but when I was left to read them a story they always wanted their old favorite, about Billy Whiskers the Goat. It had been given them by their aunt Loretta Kennedy and they loved that book, but Herself thought it was a dreadful story for children. She said it encouraged naughtiness instead of obedience and she threw it in the trash can. Fidelma slipped out the back and rescued it. It had a wee bit of bacon grease on the cover but we kept it for a special secret treat when Mother was out shopping.

  After the Armistice, Mr. K had gone back to his own business. Import and export, according to Mrs. Kennedy, and finance. He was always up early. He’d do his morning exercises and then look in on the nursery on his way down to breakfast, showered and suited and ready for the off. Sometimes we’d only see him on Monday morning and then he’d be gone all week, busy with meetings in the city.

  Herself used to say, “I sleep so lightly. My husband doesn’t like to come in late and disturb the whole house. When you’re in business, you see, you have to be prepared to put in long hours.”

  Fidelma reckoned it was showgirls he was busy with, though at the time he didn’t seem the type to me. He didn’t smoke and he never took drink.

  She’d say, “Sure, the clean-living ones are the worst. There’s one thing none of them will go without and I don’t think Your Man gets much of that at home, do you? Only when she’s ready to get knocked up again. Do you think she puts him on her schedule? Joe’s yearly treat? The poor bugger. No wonder he works late.”

  She liked him back then. We all did. He was fair and friendly and you could see his children were the light of his life.

  Whatever it was that kept him in town so much, he was certainly making money. Anything that took Mrs. K’s fancy she could have. We were the first house on Beals Street to get an electric carpet-beater and a phonograph. I don’t know that Mrs. K got much joy from it though. She reckoned she was the musical one in her family, and Mr. Kennedy bought her a grand piano, but you hardly ever saw her sit and pick out a tune. Fidelma was the one who sang to the babies. Mrs. K never had friends around for tea or went visiting with the neighbors. If she saw them in the street, a crisp “Good day” was all she ever gave them. I suppose she knew they looked down their noses at her. Brookline people didn’t like flash. When they saw a big new icebox being carried up the steps, they thought it was a sign you had more money than sense.

  The only company she had was Father Creagh from St. Aidan’s, and Mr. and Mrs. Moore, an older couple who sometimes came for bridge on a weekend. Eddie Moore worked for Mr. K, as his right-hand man, and a sort of friend too. If Mr. K trusted anyone to know about his business affairs, it was Eddie Moore. And Mrs. Moore was a kind, motherly sort, quite happy to chat to Herself about the baby’s new tooth.

  Fidelma said to Mrs. K once, “You know, Mrs. Erickson gives tea parties and the nursemaids are all invited too, with the babies, so the children can mix and have company. Shouldn’t you like to do that, Mrs. Kennedy?”

  “No,” she said, “I would not. My children have each other for company and I’m far too busy for tea parties.”

  But the busyness was all created out of nothing. She set herself a schedule the same as she did for the babies. She had a time for reading the newspapers, clipping out stories and underlining things with her fountain pen. “Conversational topics” she called them. Then she had a regular time for doing her exercises, to get her waistline back in trim if she’d just had a baby, or a brisk walk to post her letters, if she was expecting again.

  She wrote a lot of letters, though I don’t know who to, and she read French literature too, to improve her mind. And there was her hour in the nursery every day, bending my ear. She loved to talk about when she’d been her Daddy’s First Lady, the places she’d been, the people she’d met.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time His Honor and I had luncheon with President Taft?” she’d say. “The President said I was the prettiest face he’d seen since he entered the White House. He had me sit right next to him.”

  And if she heard Fidelma humming a waltz, “Oh Fidelma, dear heart,” she’d say. “You quite take me back to Vienna. Did I ever tell you about my trip to Europe with His Honor? We were treated like royalty. Receptions, balls. I had so many beaux. I could have married a Count or a Lord. I could have had my pick.”

  Well, those days were over. She’d taken her pick and she had a model house and a nursery full of bonny babies to show for it, but I don’t know how much pleasure it brought her. She never sat by the fire with a little one on her lap, just to enjoy the lis
ping and the softness of them.

  Fidelma used to say, “She’s a sad creature. I could feel sorry for her if only I didn’t.”

  By the time Rosie had her first birthday, Herself was expecting again, due in February, but then just after Christmas something happened.

  Mr. K was gone ten days straight, not even home for Sunday dinner he had so much business to attend to, and Herself was getting more and more quarrelsome, coming up to the nursery, wanting everything in the hot press refolded, picking over the layette and finding fault. Then two suitcases appeared in the downstairs hall and His Honor’s car came to fetch her.

  She said, “I’m going to visit with my family. The babies will have to stay here though. My sister’s very sick so we mustn’t take any risks.”

  And off she went. Mrs. Moore came round that evening and every other evening, checking that we hadn’t burned the place to the ground.

  I said, “When will she be back?”

  She said, “Mrs. Kennedy’s gone for a little vacation but you can call me at any hour. My husband is in contact with Mr. Kennedy.”

  Fidelma said, “This is some family. He’s left her, and now she’s left us. Let’s go down and see what’s in the liquor cabinet.”

  The Ericksons’ cook said it was the talk of the neighborhood that Mr. K was probably in jail or on the run from somebody he’d scalped, but Fidelma was likely nearer the mark. She said, “There’ll be a chorus girl at the bottom of this. And can you blame the man? Herself and her card files, they’d take the shine off anybody’s day.”

  Whether there was a girl in the picture that time I never knew, but he’d certainly been in Florida and come back with a spring in his step and two sets of tropical whites to be taken to the dry cleaner.

  “Palm Beach is quite a place,” he said. “The weather’s perfect and if you stand in the lobby of the Royal Poinciana, sooner or later everybody who’s anybody’ll walk by.”

  He didn’t seem fazed to have come home to an empty house.