by Kathy McKeon
The Friday-night movies in Rose’s basement were a highlight of the week for everyone, staff included. The theater was down a long hallway filled with Rose’s collection of dolls from around the world, all in glass display cases. I never saw any of the granddaughters playing with any of them, and the untouchable collection reminded me of the Christmas doll that Briege and I had once gotten from America.
Wilmer was in charge of running the movie projector, but the gardener’s glasses always slipped off and the film would get jammed up. All the help were invited, but the unwritten rule was to wait until the Kennedys had taken their prime seats in the back rows first. Our seats were down in the front, close to the screen. The film started promptly at eight o’clock—Grandma’s rule—and if you came in a minute late, you had to crawl on the floor to get to your seat so you didn’t block anyone’s view. The movies would always start and stop, start and stop, with long pauses while Wilmer tried to figure out how to rethread the film. Usually one of Bobby and Ethel’s boys got up to go help him and get it running again. The wait was well worth the chance to see big box-office hits that were playing in the theaters at the same time, like Georgy Girl and Midnight Cowboy.
The real fun for the staff came on Thursdays, though, when most everyone had the day off. All the waitresses, cooks, governesses, and the girls Ethel would import from Ireland as summer help (“the Irish bunnies,” Senator Kennedy would call them) would gather at the beach to clamber aboard Joseph P. Kennedy’s yacht, the Marlin, which became our party boat for the day. A local charter captain and his handsome teenaged son, Dicky, would take us to nearby Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, or Provincetown. We’d leave at ten in the morning, lugging coolers full of sandwiches and whatever leftovers the kitchen staffs had scored. Some of the older help would also bring thermoses of cocktails they’d made themselves by raiding the liquor cabinets of their respective employers. I was a teetotaler myself back then. I didn’t even like the smell of beer or alcohol, and I wasn’t of legal age anyway. We had a portable radio to play Top Forty hits off the AM radio stations when we got reception, and we’d sunbathe on deck to the Righteous Brothers and Herman’s Hermits and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. We’d spend the afternoon wandering around one of the quaint, pretty tourist towns, eating ice-cream cones and shopping for souvenirs. Everything was pricey at the height of the season, but we could always find some little thing to spend a few dollars on, like the nautical rope bracelets that were so popular. We’d soak and soften them in water, then bleach them with Clorox so they’d fade and look worn. John and Caroline used to wear them all the time, too. They never did seem to go out of style. We’d head back as the sun washed the horizon in watercolor shades of pink and violet, docking in time to spend a glorious summer evening on the boardwalk, eating burgers and fries or fresh boiled shrimp and corn on the cob. When we really wanted to make a night of it, we would head to one of the local clubs to go dancing.
I was still underage my first summer at the Cape—I wouldn’t turn twenty-one until December—but one night when we were all going out to listen to music, one of the Irish bunnies had her sister’s ID that she offered to let me use to get inside the club. We figured the Irish all looked alike, or close enough, anyway, in American eyes. We wriggled into our cutest miniskirts and swiped on pale frosted lipstick that made us look like we’d been frozen. Provi always took the longest to get ready, wanting her hair to be perfect and her pretty face flawless. She was always borrowing my Cover Girl foundation—trying, I figured, to hide the twenty extra years she had on most of us. As we stood in line outside the club that night, I grew more and more nervous the closer we got to the bouncer. I could see him carding people. When it was my turn, he studied the Irish bunny’s sister’s ID for a moment, then shook his head.
“She can’t come in,” he said in a voice too low for the others to hear, gesturing behind me with a tilt of his chin.
I didn’t understand what he meant. I glanced over my shoulder, trying to see whatever it was he had seen that had led to this decision, but all I saw was Provi, waiting impatiently with the others.
“Sorry, the ID didn’t work,” I lied to everyone. “They won’t let me in.” We all left.
I never told Provi she was the one being turned away, that my foundation hadn’t lightened her skin enough to fool the bouncer charged with making sure only white people were let in to dance.
I came to the United States the year the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, but segregation wasn’t a word I even knew. I had no clue at all what it was about. I brought the newspapers to Madam each morning but never read them myself. I always hated reading in school and wasn’t much good at it. Whatever I learned, I picked up listening to the conversations of the more educated people around me.
I spent my summers in the privileged world of yacht clubs and private beaches, never knowing that race riots were erupting in major cities across the country at the same time, worse with each passing year. I wasn’t in college, signing petitions, or rallying for a protest march, nor was I spending my day in an office building then going to happy hour with my coworkers come five o’clock to talk about what was going on in America. My days revolved around Madam’s wants and needs, never mine. I didn’t have a life that was wholly my own.
I lived instead inside Camelot’s last bubble, too blind to see that this was a far different Kennedy era.
It was Bobby’s time now.
SIX
Queen of the Land
Settling back into the rhythms and routines of 1040 took some effort after the summer-camp atmosphere of the Cape, and doubling as governess on top of serving as Madam’s personal assistant became more demanding once school and all of the kids’ activities in the city got under way. Madam kept offering me the permanent job as Maud’s successor, and I kept turning it down. If you were assigned to the kids full-time, you couldn’t leave in the evening if Madam was going out, and your schedule was too unpredictable to make plans of your own. Sticking with my original job gave me a better chance of at least occasionally getting the evenings or monthly weekends off that I had been promised when I was hired.
The problem was, there was no such thing as a time clock to punch. I was on duty until Madam decided I wasn’t.
“Kath, could you come here for a minute?”
The request always came after dinner, just when I thought my long day was done and it might be safe to slip out the door to enjoy the rest of my evening, maybe see if Bridey Sullivan or my sister Briege were free, too. Instead, I would end up shrugging off my coat to go find Madam in whichever room she was no doubt about to redecorate. Hanging and rehanging pictures was her favorite thing to do when the house was quiet and still. Her art collection was huge and ever changing, and she loved to rearrange it. If it wasn’t the paintings, it was clothes she wanted to move around from one closet to another, or shoes that needed reorganizing in the middle of the night. She was often restless in those hours between the children’s bedtime and her own, and it wasn’t until I became a wife myself that I understood how lonely nine o’clock can be. There’s a world of difference between talking about life over a glass of wine with your spouse and thinking about life over a glass alone.
It couldn’t have been so urgent at that hour for Madam to have me hold some heavy painting of a huntsman on horseback and move it higher, no, lower, while she made a pencil mark on the wall and hammered in a nail, but I felt I had no choice but to indulge her. I had even missed out on celebrating my twenty-first birthday with friends when she decided with no advance notice that she was going to her country home in Peapack to spend a few days horseback riding and that I had to come along to watch the children. Once we were there, she caught wind of my birthday from one of the other girls on staff I’d been planning to celebrate with. I was touched when Madam went out of her way to make me feel special, surprising me with a strawberry and whipped cream cake and some lovely gifts—two turtleneck sweaters, a suede purse from Caroline, and a silver cigarette
holder from John—but I also resented living my life almost entirely on her terms. I was a full-fledged adult now, and it was only natural to want to start spreading my wings.
What I really needed to do was to take a page from Mugsy’s book and learn how to stand up for myself when Madam took advantage. The first time I saw Mugsy push back was one afternoon when the crusty old Secret Service man had returned weighed down like a pack mule with fancy shopping bags after Madam went on a spree. She hadn’t been home but a few minutes before she asked me to summon Mugsy back upstairs. She had one of her heavy horse pictures in hand, and I knew what was coming next. Mugsy reappeared with blood in his eye.
“How did you like your lunch today, Madam?” he asked evenly.
“I didn’t have lunch,” she breezily replied.
“And neither did I! We were out all day and you didn’t give me a break to get something to eat,” Mugsy complained. “I’m going to get my lunch first, and you’ll have to wait about your picture!”
“You probably had your lunch, Mugsy, but go ahead. Go and have your lunch!” she snapped back, the sarcasm turning her breathy voice into pure acid. Mugsy stormed out of the room. I stood there shocked. That’s the last we’ll be seeing of him, I thought, certain that Mrs. Tuckerman would be waiting down in the lobby with his walking papers the second Mugsy stepped out of the elevator. Instead, he was back the next day.
“Good morning, Mugsy!” Madam greeted him sweetly. Mugsy was all smiles, too. Everything was forgotten, and they just carried on until their next fight, when the pattern would repeat itself. They both seemed to enjoy the bickering.
The closest I’d ever come to defiance was unintentional, and had more to do with manners than moxie. I’d put my hair up in pink rollers and tied a scarf over them while doing some chores back in the servants’ wing one morning, thinking it didn’t matter, since no one but the staff or kids would see me. But Madam did, and I was swiftly brought to heel:
“Kath, I don’t need to be seeing you in those rollers ever again,” she reprimanded me. I apologized and went to take them out. I had rolled her thick, jet hair in curlers many a time and set her up with magazines and refreshments while she baked under her hooded dryer in the guest room when she was between appointments with her celebrity hairdresser, Mr. Kenneth. (If her roots were showing, she touched them up herself with a bottle of tint Mr. Kenneth mixed up for her to keep at home.)
It stung to be put back in my place, but I accepted she had every right to do so. I just couldn’t muster the nerve or heart to do the same when the tables were turned and she was reeling me back in after I’d already said good night and changed out of my uniform. Exasperated as I was by her last-minute tasks and the way it was never “just for a minute,” I sensed it wasn’t my talent for hammering in a picture hook she wanted in those empty hours so much as my simple presence. I was helping keep vigil. Over what was never talked about.
What I preferred to be doing when the day was done was exactly what every other single young New Yorker was doing: going out to unwind with friends. I was madly in love with the city, and it hadn’t taken long for me and Briege to discover its lively immigrant scene. All the doormen and domestics and other young working-class Irish came out to play in social clubs that sprang up like Brigadoon for a few merry hours every night in space rented from some dive bar or union hall. Our favorite was the Jaeger Haus, which was as Irish as a Wiener schnitzel, but the Germans retreated when it was our turn to cut loose, and it felt like I was back at the Friday-night dances in Inniskeen, doing the twist until my knees ached. Call it the twist, the chicken, the swim, or whatever you like, it was all basically one big Irish mating dance. The courting ritual was much more brutal and the competition more fierce than it had been on Inniskeen’s dance floor, though, especially when the handsome, smooth-talking Italians would show up. The Irish girls lapped up their Casanova charm and swagger. The Irish lads didn’t appreciate the competition, though, and after exchanging some choice insults about national soccer leagues, fists would fly while Motown played in the background. The Irish always won. And the Italians always came back another night.
The cloakroom at the Jaeger Haus was where you really figured out the lay of the land. You had to squeeze past all the coats to get to the ladies’ room, and there was no slipping by Maryann, the nosy coat check girl, without getting interrogated.
“Oh, Kathleen, what happened?” she’d ask with syrupy fake concern. “No one asked you to dance?”
Maryann knew the bathroom was where the wallflowers and rejects hid, applying lipstick until another song started up so they could go back out without the humiliation of being on public display while standing around waiting to be picked. The loo was also where romances were analyzed like soap operas, dramatic midwaltz breakups were plotted, and other interesting secrets occasionally spilled. The only girls who never hid out in the bathroom were the ones who looked like Jean Shrimpton or danced like Ginger Rogers. I didn’t check either of those boxes. I was terrific with hair and makeup, though, and once I got the hang of copying Madam’s style on a budget (long ribbed turtlenecks belted over a hip-hugger miniskirt with boots was the easiest to pull off), I may not have made the Most Beautiful list, but I could always pull off cute.
There was no denying I was a terrible dancer, though. At five foot seven, I always ended up having to be the man when practicing with my shorter sister or friends. Problem was, I had gotten too good at it. “I’m the leader, you’re not!” I was constantly being scolded by the frustrated guys who asked me to dance. I wasn’t schooled in the art of playing the helpless female, either: The first time a gentleman tried to hold my coat for me back in the cloakroom, I grabbed it back, startled by some stranger touching me, my adrenaline surging at the muscle memory of old Putty groping me when I was twelve.
“Give me my coat!” I cried in alarm.
“I’m only helping you so you can get your arm in the sleeve!” the poor guy protested.
Needless to say, I spent my fair share of time in that ladies’ room pretending my lipstick needed fixing.
Thanks to an intervention by Madam, though, my self-confidence was starting to build.
After a brisk, steady parade of ill-tempered and uninspired cooks, Madam had finally landed a gem: Annemarie was a vivacious young German who was just a year older than I was. We hit it off right away. I could tell Madam liked her, too, sometimes even sitting to have a cup of coffee and chat while we were all in the kitchen. As much as I liked Annemarie, though, I also felt a pang of envy: She always looked so fresh and pretty, with the kind of figure that could carry off the bold colors, short hemlines, and geometric prints that were all the rage. She showed me the Upper East Side thrift shop she had discovered where all the rich women donated their clothes. Annemarie even knew how to dress in satin and fur for a pittance. Fashion was fun and daring in the mid-1960s, but I felt too frumpy and depressed to join the revolution. I had ballooned to 185 pounds in America, and I wasn’t even twenty-three years old. It had been easy to forget how big I’d gotten when the other females on Madam’s staff were twice my age and just as heavy, but Annemarie was a daily reminder of how I should be, and what I longed to be.
I was disgusted with myself, and my spiraling self-esteem put me in a funk that Madam quickly noticed.
“Kath, is something wrong?” she asked me one morning as I was laying out whatever stylish outfit she had requested from her closet that day. Without warning, I found myself fighting tears, and I blurted out the truth.
“I hate the way I look! I wish I could have a figure like yours, Madam,” I said. “You always look so beautiful, whatever you put on! I wish I could lose some weight.”
“Oh, Kath,” Madam sympathized, “I can help you with that, if you want. Come with me.” Hopeful and curious, I followed her as she led me into the kitchen.
“Annemarie,” she said, “Kathy wants to lose some weight, and you and I are going to help her. Can you fix some special meals for her?”
Annemarie readily agreed, and the two of them quickly mapped out a new eating regimen for me: a boiled egg and tea in the morning, cottage cheese with an apple or other fresh fruit at lunch, and a poached chicken breast or piece of fish with a salad or steamed vegetables for dinner. Plain yogurt when I wanted a snack. Annemarie also kept a large jug filled with water in the fridge, and insisted I drink eight large glasses a day. The diet was almost exactly what Madam herself ate at home when she wasn’t entertaining.
No wonder she stayed so slim despite the rich food served at the fancy restaurants and lavish parties scattered across her social calendar!
The diet began that day at lunchtime, and with Annemarie’s encouragement, I stuck to it (minus a few Yodels pilfered from the box in the pantry meant for John and Caroline). I even figured out how to make the plain yogurt not taste like wet chalk by mixing in a spoonful of instant coffee powder.
The pounds steadily melted away, and after six months, I was forty pounds lighter and actually eager to try on clothes and show off my reclaimed figure!