by Kathy McKeon
The apartment was quite pretty, with spacious rooms and plenty of light. My quarters were the sole exception. Located just off the kitchen, my bedroom was barely big enough for the single bed and nightstand it held, and the lack of any window added to my suspicions that it was probably originally meant to be a pantry or maybe a utility room. But there was a bedside lamp and a bathroom for me to use with hot running water, so I was already light-years ahead of what I’d left behind in Ireland. I agreed to move in the next day.
Paul and Scotty turned out to be as promised, sweet and well behaved. I walked them to school in the morning then busied myself with chores until it was time to fetch them back home again. I ate dinner at the table with the children and their mother but felt too awkward and self-conscious to appreciate what was supposed to be considered a privilege. I didn’t like Mrs. C seeing how much I ate, or how rough my manners were compared to the Park Avenue etiquette even her little boys so effortlessly carried off. My fork and knife scraped and clattered across the china plates as I devoured every tasty morsel in front of me, occasionally stealing glances at Mrs. C as she soundlessly rested her silver between delicate bites and paused to dab the corners of her mouth now and then at crumbs that were never there. Conversation centered round the children and what they had done that day in school or with their playmates.
Once we were done eating, an automatic dishwasher cleaned and dried the dishes, though I really wouldn’t have minded doing them myself the old-fashioned way by hand, just to kill some time before I had to retire to my nun’s cell of a room, where there was absolutely nothing to do. I was still a teenager, after all. Beatlemania was sweeping America, but I didn’t even have a little radio to listen to. How I missed my afternoons spent laughing and dancing with Rose O’Rourke as we did housework together! I wondered if she and Peter were still managing to sneak off together, or whether the camogie team had replaced Briege and me yet. Back home, I had always been the fun-loving one, and my Park Avenue isolation felt almost physical, a heaviness dragging me down with a swift force, like quicksand. New York was thrilling on the outside, but inside, I was starting to fear that I had made a mistake that couldn’t easily be undone. How was I supposed to make new friends? I didn’t have a clue where or how to even begin. Everyone I knew in Ireland, I had grown up knowing. I couldn’t even connect with my sister. Briege was living in her own cramped servants’ quarters mere blocks away, but I felt too uncertain yet of Manhattan’s screeching maze of streets to try to find her address.
A month after I began working for Mrs. C, I learned that the Beatles were actually going to be in New York—within walking distance, no less! Launching their world tour, the band was coming to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. When they arrived at JFK, girls my age were screaming, swooning, and throwing candy kisses at them as they cleared Customs. I was dying to see them. Ringo was the cutest, I thought. I approached Mrs. C and meekly asked if I might take a couple of hours off to go and try to catch a glimpse of them outside the stage door at the CBS studio. I was so shy and unassertive, it had taken me all the moxie I could muster just to pose the request. Even if she wasn’t part of the younger generation, surely Mrs. C knew how famous the Beatles were, I thought, and would understand that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Even if the boys only appeared for a few seconds—even if I couldn’t see Ringo and had to settle for George!—just to say I was there would be worth it. My mind raced ahead while I waited for Mrs. C’s blessing: What should I wear? Would I have time to fix my hair? Would Briege be able to get off, too?
Mrs. C looked at me with utter disdain.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she said.
My heart sank. I’ve never been a crier, but I felt my cheeks flush with shame, as if I had overstepped some invisible boundary between servant and employer. This was new territory for me, and not knowing for certain where my place was, I generally operated under the assumption that I had none at all, that everything beyond work was a favor. I had no choice but to accept Mrs. C’s callous decision. And not only would I not see the Beatles in person, but I also wouldn’t even get to count myself among the record seventy-three million viewers to watch the group’s American debut on TV: Mrs. C wasn’t about to invite me to come sit on the living room sofa and watch The Ed Sullivan Show with her, assuming she even tuned in herself for the historic performance. Her whole personality had proven to be a far cry from the sweet, welcoming woman who had hired me at first sight.
Cheery as Mrs. C had seemed at first, I quickly learned that her divorce was still fresh, and beneath her carefully shellacked surface, there simmered a tightly contained fury. My inexperience soon tested her boiling point. True, I had worked for the O’Rourkes for a good five years back home, but the way things were done there was familiar to me, and while considered well-off by Inniskeen standards, an Irish mill owner’s home was a far cry from the class of Park Avenue. Even the cocktails Mrs. C fixed herself each evening demanded my attention and respect. Mrs. C displayed her liquor on the bar in heavy crystal decanters that required regular dusting. The decanters all had little chain collars that attached to the stoppers with tiny chain leashes.
“Kathleen, these chains are looking tarnished,” Mrs. C observed one evening as she poured her gin. “Could you please polish them when you have a chance?”
While she was out the next day, I found the silver polish and started in on the absurd task, choosing a large bourbon decanter first. I hooked my fingers under the collar and dangled the bottle as I carried it to the pantry. Of course, the decanter slipped its leash and crashed to the ceramic floor, shattering into a million sparkling pieces. Guiltily, I quickly swept up the incriminating evidence and threw the shards in the trash bin outside, then sopped up the 100-proof puddle with a rag and got rid of that as well. It was a couple of days before Mrs. C noticed anything amiss.
“Kathleen, where is that big decanter?” she asked.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” I answered, willing my face into what I hoped was a blank expression.
“You’re telling me you don’t know about it, that you didn’t see it.” It was more a statement than a question, and her pursed lips told me Mrs. C wasn’t buying my story. I walked away without answering, but thirty dollars was docked from my next paycheck.
I had discovered the first time I was asked to help her with the grocery shopping that Mrs. C kept a running ledger in her mind that was every bit as detailed and thorough as Sam Paugh’s annual accounting had been with the farmers of Inniskeen: Trotting alongside her as she made her way down one aisle and up the next at Gristedes, my eyes had nearly popped out of my head over the selection of items to be had in an American supermarket. The deli counter alone was as close to a miracle as I’d ever seen. Mrs. C had casually filled her basket with meats sliced by the pound, then tossed in a fat jar of what looked like thick white custard, then a slim loaf of bread wrapped up like a birthday present in cellophane with bright red, yellow, and blue polka dots. “If you need anything, just put it in the cart,” Mrs. C generously offered. I backtracked to the aisle where I’d spotted beauty products and scooped up some nice shampoo and hair conditioner, plus some deodorant that promised to make me daisy fresh.
Shopping done, Mrs. C pointed her cart to the checkout lanes and I began unloading everything on the moving belt. As my toiletries got closer to the register, Mrs. C briskly moved them to the end of the line, putting a plastic divider between her items and mine.
“That’s yours,” she had announced. It was a costly misunderstanding: silky American hair and perspiration that smelled like a spring meadow took a painful bite out of my modest paycheck.
Back home, we fixed sandwiches for lunch. I watched Mrs. C slather some of the white custard—a spread called mayonnaise, I learned—onto slices of the polka-dot-packaged bread, along with a perfect circle of pressed pink meat she had bought at the store’s deli counter. I had no idea what animal baloney came from, but I loved it and it immediately became my staple
—much better than the peanut butter and jelly that seemed to be America’s most beloved national dish. I hated the thick stickiness of the peanut butter, and the smooth wet blob of jelly bore no resemblance at all to the farmhouse preserves of my childhood. Oh, but that bread! Even better than the baloney and the delicious mayonnaise. Wonder Bread. I could see how it got that name. Soft as a cloud. I wanted to cram the entire loaf in my mouth at once, which, given how airy the bread was, would have been easy enough to accomplish. “Put it away in the bread box, not the fridge,” Mrs. C instructed me when we finished lunch.
That night, bored and lonely in my room, I waited until the house was deep in slumber, then crept out to the kitchen and took the Wonder Bread from the pantry. Opening the fridge as slowly and quietly as possible, I retrieved the jar of mayonnaise, then pulled a butter knife from the drawer of cutlery and stole back to my room. I sat on my bed and pulled out a slice of snowy white bread, then liberally smeared it with mayo and took a delicious bite. I loved the way the Wonder Bread collapsed between my teeth like an airy meringue, and the cold tangy-sweetness of the mayonnaise was like nothing I’d ever tasted before. One sandwich soon gave way to another, then another, until the whole loaf was gone. I tiptoed back out to the kitchen to return the seriously depleted mayonnaise jar to the fridge, and buried the empty polka-dot wrapper at the bottom of the kitchen trash bin.
The next morning, Mrs. C went to make her sons their sandwiches to take to school.
“Kathleen, where did you put the bread?”
“What bread?” I asked.
“The bread we got yesterday,” Mrs. C snapped. What kind of stupid cow was I?
“I don’t remember us buying any bread.” I didn’t lie unless I was scared or ashamed, but once I did, I was fully committed, figuring the penance was going to be the same at confession anyway. Besides, the church promised God’s forgiveness but carried no similar guarantee covering Mrs. C.
“I know we bought a loaf,” she pressed. “I told you to put it in the bread box instead of the fridge, remember?”
By then I had scurried out of the room while her back was turned, so my lack of an answer couldn’t be taken as an admission of guilt. Mrs. C gave up and went out to run her errands, bearing a whole new loaf of Wonder Bread when she returned. That day as I went about my duties, all I could think about was when I could get my hands on it. I figured I’d best wait a little while to deflect suspicion, maybe make the boys a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so a few pilfered slices of bread wouldn’t be missed from the fresh loaf. The amount of time and energy I spent plotting my next raid only heightened my anticipation. I didn’t just fancy this new midnight snack: I was craving it in the worst way.
At last I understood old Aunt Bridge’s secret desperation when she used to send me to the shop to buy an ounce of pipe tobacco, claiming it was for my father to thank him for some chores, only Dad never saw it. I didn’t discover what was really happening to the tobacco until I popped in unexpectedly one evening to borrow a bit of sugar my mother needed. Aunt Bridge was sitting with Uncle Teddy by the fire, and was curiously flustered when I walked in. I noticed a thin wisp of smoke curling up from her pocket.
“Aunt Bridge, I think your skirt is on fire!” I cried.
“No it’s not, you cheeky little brat, now get out of here and go back home!” she hollered back at me.
Years later when I was grown and Aunt Bridge was old and sick in the hospital, I went to visit her and she gasped out a request for me to go to the gift shop and buy some cigarettes. My sister turned and looked at me with concern. Was Aunt Bridge’s mind slipping?
“But she doesn’t smoke,” my sister protested when I headed for the door.
“It’s for the nurses who’ve been so nice to me,” Aunt Bridge quickly interjected.
I brought her the cigarettes and handed them over without an interrogation or lecture. In terms of guilty indulgences, I now reasoned, Wonder Bread with mayo was harmless by comparison. As soon as the house was sleeping that night, I snuck into the pantry. I did it again the next night and the next, too. It became an almost daily ritual. Mrs. C didn’t say anything about her mounting Wonder Bread bill or my thickening waistline. She had bigger things to blame me for anyway, like what happened to the children’s new snowsuits. The outfits looked like something an Olympic skier might wear, only in miniature: poufy jumpsuits in a deep navy blue, the attached hoods lined with fur. As I plopped them in the washing machine and poured in the detergent, I imagined how warm and cozy Scotty and Paul would be in them when we went sledding in Central Park, or maybe ice-skating on the big public rink there. When I pulled the snowsuits out of the wash, the dark navy blue was covered with big, mottled white splotches. The fur hood looked like a small, drowned hyena.
“What on earth did you do now?” Mrs. C demanded. “Good God, don’t tell me you washed these in bleach? These were very expensive!” There went another big chunk of my paycheck . . . and another midnight loaf of Wonder Bread.
Wrath wasn’t the only thing Mrs. C put on regular display, though.
The very first day I was there, I was lost in my own thoughts, picking up the children’s toys or dusting or doing some other mindless task, when Mrs. C strolled into the room, casual as you please, stark naked. Not a stitch of clothing, and not a hint of embarrassment. She wasn’t surprised to see me and just carried about doing whatever she was doing—she could’ve been sorting the mail or juggling tangerines, I was too shocked to take note—while I stood there horrified. I couldn’t help but stare: I had never seen a naked person before, save for myself. Not even my own mother or sister. And Mrs. C was an alarming sight to behold, believe you me. The musical Hair may have still been four years away from hitting Broadway, but that woman was a walking billboard already. And this was no accidental flashing, either: Every single day she would go strutting through the house in the nude, even around her boys, who, at ages six and eight, didn’t need that eyeful any more than I did. I felt sorry for them—no wonder they never brought playmates home after school for cookies and milk.
In the evening, Mrs. C often went out on dates, but there didn’t seem to be any regular suitor, and the man she seemed most keenly interested in was her ex-husband. The first time he came around to pick up the boys for a visit, she insisted that I go with them.
“You don’t have to come,” Mr. C protested as I followed the boys out the door.
“She said I have to,” I explained sheepishly. I was embarrassed and prayed he wouldn’t put up a fuss. Mr. C furrowed his brow and shrugged with resignation.
“All right,” he agreed. He would never be mistaken for handsome—he was short and balding, and wore big black orthopedic shoes that did little to correct his outturned feet. The poor man duckwalked like Groucho Marx. But Mr. C was a gentleman, and instead of resenting my intrusion on the limited time he got with his children, he gallantly included me. When he took Scotty and Paul out to eat, I was invited to come, too, and order whatever I liked—Mr. C’s treat, and it wouldn’t be coming out of my paycheck. I felt very out of place, and he had every right to feel annoyed, but he never let it show to me or the boys. When we came home, though, Mrs. C fell on me like a hawk, talons first.
“Where did he take you?” she wanted to know. Did I go to his house, was anyone else there? I gave vague nonanswers. “We went out to eat,” I answered dutifully.
“What restaurant did you go to?” she demanded.
I told her we’d grabbed some burgers at a fast-food place.
“That cheap bastard,” Mrs. C snorted. Her little boys traded anxious looks, and I knew they were desperately hoping I might speak up to defend their beleaguered dad.
“It’s where the boys wanted to go,” I said meekly, hoping the dirty look she shot me was the worst I’d get of Mrs. C’s ire. Exasperation was her general response to my sorry existence, and now my shortcomings as a spy were about to send her straight over the edge. I was responsible for the boys, she tartly remin
ded me, and I needed to pay better attention.
Sure enough, I was foisted on Mr. C every time he came for the kids. Divorce was illegal in Ireland, the mere word taboo, and I was both curious and uneasy about being swept into such modern sacrilege. If my own parents had a grand love story, it was never one that was shared with or even glimpsed by us kids, but we understood that their partnership was unbreakable. We had seen it endure the kind of test no family should ever have to face. I wondered if Mr. and Mrs. C had ever actually loved each other, or just convinced themselves that they had until the fabric of their lie frayed and faded to the point that it became too weak to hold them and too thin to hide them.
Awkward as Mr. C’s visits were, I began looking forward to them almost as eagerly as his boys did—it was like getting a little holiday, a chance to breathe easily and replace some of the oxygen Mrs. C sucked out of me. When the weather grew warm enough, Mr. C would take us out for weekends on his yacht in Long Island. Such a beautiful boat that was, so gleaming and clean; Mr. C let us have food aboard and never complained about the boys making a mess. I had my own cabin downstairs. Mrs. C always wanted to know after a yachting weekend whether any other woman had been on the boat, or went out to eat at a restaurant with us. But there never was. If Mr. C had a romantic life, he kept it private, and the time he had with his sons belonged solely to them—and the tagalong nanny, of course. He figured out early on that I wasn’t in cahoots with his shrewish ex-wife, and Mr. C and I actually became friends, or at least formed the kind of unspoken bond hostages do when they share a common oppressor. My role when I was with him was exactly the same as it was when I was with Mrs. C—the governess—yet Mr. C never made me feel stupid, or like a dull child who needed constant correction.