by Kathy McKeon
“It’s me! Senator Kennedy!”
That, at least, explained the rat’s Boston accent. The cook opened the pantry door and there stood Bobby.
“Is everyone all right up here?” he asked.
He had walked up the fifteen flights of stairs in his suit, with just a flashlight beam lighting his way. Madam’s apartment took up the entire floor, and it was a weird quirk of 1040’s layout that the service door in the hallway led to the inside of the pantry. Bobby had gotten himself locked inside with the Yodels and boxes of Cheerios. That he would go to such lengths to make sure his brother’s widow and children were safe and sound was no surprise at all. With his father, Joe, incapacitated by his stroke, and his older brother, the president, now gone, Bobby had stepped into the role of family patriarch and protector.
“You’re doing a great job, Kath,” Madam said, interrupting my reverie, making one of her periodic checks to see how the children were faring. I had seen her stopping at the seats of other family members, too, leaning in close to ask how they were, if they needed anything. I assumed she had done the same in the other cars she visited on our long, slow journey; she always seemed more keen to give attention than attract it.
Now and then Ethel would go back to the last car to stand outside on the observation deck with her husband’s casket, acknowledging the million strangers along the tracks who grieved with her. I could see their faces, too, flicking by like pictures framed in the train’s window where I sat with John and Caroline. Factory workers and farmers, people holding signs and waving flags, nuns crossing themselves and soldiers saluting, young girls blowing farewell kisses and tossing flowers. Mothers jostling babies; crippled grandmothers in wheelchairs.
The number of people lining the tracks slowed the train to a crawl. There were more black people than white, it seemed to me. Passing through the stations in larger cities—Newark, Trenton, Philadelphia, then Baltimore—we came to a standstill as crowds surged toward or even stood on the tracks for a better look.
We didn’t know at the time, but as we pulled out of Elizabeth, New Jersey, people standing on the tracks for a last glimpse of Bobby’s casket failed to hear another train rounding a curve from the opposite direction. Four people were struck, two of them killed.
Darkness fell, and as we crept through another rail yard, there was a sudden flash from a newsman’s camera right outside the window where the children sat, and we heard something thud against the train’s carriage. John grabbed ahold of me, his eyes frantic with fear.
“Kat, is someone shooting at us?” he cried. “Are they coming to get us next?”
My heart broke that this innocent child, his father and now his uncle both gunned down, had drawn such a logical conclusion. I squeezed his soft hand in mine.
“No, John, we’re safe. That was just a camera’s flash, and flowers hitting the window,” I told him. “They’re very sad that your Uncle Bobby was killed, and they’re throwing bouquets of flowers to show how much they loved him.”
What was supposed to be a four-hour trip to Washington took nearly twice as long. As we neared Union Station, I got John changed into a fresh shirt and his dark funeral suit with its little tie, then retied the bow on the back of Caroline’s dress, and straightened the satin ribbon in her hair. Madam left the train with them for the funeral procession to Arlington National Cemetery, where television floodlights and a thousand candles handed out to the mourners lit the burial site.
After watching Bobby laid to his final rest, John and Caroline walked hand in hand with their mother to the eternal flame that flickered nearby, marking the grave of President Kennedy, where they knelt and said good-bye once more.
The Cape that summer felt quiet and empty. No one took the boats out, and a police officer was posted at the corner around the clock as tourists and well-wishers flocked to the gates to leave notes or wreaths, or to light candles.
Madam was worried about her fatherless nieces and nephews, too anxious to lose herself entirely the way she usually did at the Cape by painting at her easel in the sunroom for hours at a time, or disappearing for the day with Bunny Mellon.
“How can Ethel handle this herself with all these kids, and pregnant with another baby?” she lamented aloud one day as she headed out the door to go find David again. She was spending a lot of quiet time with him, just sitting out on Ethel’s porch, clasping his hand or hugging him, trying to ease a pain that never did let go.
Then, on an August morning toward the end of our stay, the mood suddenly shifted with the news that Madam was expecting a houseguest. There was a ripple of excitement across the compound among the help, and one of the summer girls pulled me aside just before the visitor’s limousine pulled into the driveway.
“You know you have the richest man in the world coming, don’t you?”
EIGHT
Ari and Seamus
The old man who stepped out of the limo was quite short and stout, but with a bearing I found intimidating, even though I was the one looking down at him. There was something hawk-like about Aristotle Onassis, the way his dark, hooded eyes bore right through you. We hadn’t been expecting him so early, and Madam was still down at the beach swimming. I met her guest in the driveway and showed him inside while his chauffeur began unloading what seemed like an awful lot of boxes and bags for a short summer visit.
Despite his intense gaze and coarse exterior, Mr. Onassis quickly proved to be a true gentleman; I had expected such a rich, important man to be cold and demanding, but he was friendly to the help, which always says something promising about a person’s character. He was also extremely generous. After I took him upstairs to show him his guest quarters, he reached for my hand and pressed a bill into my palm. I quickly tucked the money into my pocket. I wasn’t used to being tipped by Madam’s friends but wasn’t about to refuse the gift, either. I waited until I was by myself to check my pocket, not wanting the rest of the staff to find out Santa Claus was in the house. I nearly whooped for joy when I pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. I should show him the rest of the rooms, was my immediate thought.
I went into the kitchen to fetch him a glass of iced tea.
Some of Ethel’s and Rose’s girls had scurried over to catch a glimpse of the mysterious tycoon or pick up a bit of gossip. What’s he like? everyone wanted to know. I just shrugged. Letting them wonder what I knew was always more fun than actually telling them. I took the tea to the sunporch, where I had parked Mr. Onassis and invited him to relax until Madam returned. The kids were out, too, having their tennis lessons.
Back in the kitchen, Mr. Onassis’s driver was still hauling in the special provisions our guest had brought. Such a strange assortment it was! There were tubs of white cheese in cloudy water, and tins of black stuff that looked like frogs’ eggs. There were two cartons of foreign cigarettes, as well as the fat cigars Mr. Onassis favored.
There was nothing remarkable about the visit, and Madam treated him the same as she did any friends who came for a holiday. They relaxed in the living room with after-dinner drinks, then retired to their separate rooms each evening. No whiff of romance in the air. He made an effort to draw in the children, though, asking them to come sit with him for a spell. Caroline always took her time to size someone up before letting them in—she was like her mother that way—and the way to John’s heart was to get down on the floor and play with him, not deliver a monologue. They were polite, as always, but didn’t seem terribly interested when I caught sight of them in the drawing room, listening to Mr. Onassis talk.
Bobby’s death was still fresh, and the void it left in their lives was not a stranger’s to fill, no matter how kind or sincere his intentions might have been.
My ongoing struggle to have a life of my own, cleanly and fully separated from Madam’s, took a promising turn when I went to an Irish dance at a club in Queens one Friday night. It was the Labor Day weekend, and the place was packed. I spotted a very tall man with thinning dark hair getting rebuffed by a miniskirted g
irl. I wouldn’t turn him away, I thought. He was a newcomer; I hadn’t seen him at any of the dances before. I was decked out head to foot in full faux-Jackie mode: a gray skinny-ribbed turtleneck sweater over a long button-down suede skirt and tall lace-up leather boots. A medallion on a chain hung around my neck. When the rejected newcomer made his way to me and asked for a dance, I didn’t hesitate.
“Sure.”
Seamus was younger than his receding hairline made him look; he was a few years younger than I was, in fact. He was a football star from Leitrim, up in the border region, same as Innis-keen. He’d come to the States on a loan to one of the teams in the Irish soccer league here, and would be returning to Ireland the following spring. He seemed gentle and kind, not out to maul a girl the way the other lads were. Seamus was shy and awkward in a charming way. He reminded me of my youngest brother, Owney. I wanted to put weight on him, he was so skinny. We passed each other later when I was coming off the floor with another guy, and he was going on with another girl. “Hi,” I said, instantly worrying that I’d seemed too eager.
The next night, I went with friends to another Irish dance, this time clear up in the Bronx. And there he was again. We danced and chatted, and at the end of the evening, Seamus offered me a ride home.
“How?” I asked. Nobody at these working-class dances had a car or even taxi fare, for that matter. Maybe Seamus meant to give me a subway token?
“My brother and his friend,” Seamus replied. “I’m traveling with them.”
“Where to?” his brother asked as I climbed into the car. Seamus and I had talked about where we were from in Ireland, but I hadn’t breathed a word about what I did for a living in New York, or for whom. My ex-fiancé-for-a-minute, Pat, had shown far too keen an interest in my Kennedy life, even chatting up Caroline for twenty minutes at a time if she happened to pick up the house phone when he called for me. I had often wondered whether it was really me he was attracted to, or the brush with fame that came as part of the package. I made a purposeful decision to keep my job a secret from Seamus. I liked him and wanted him to like me for myself. I also worried about Madam and how she would feel about me bringing someone new across that invisible border between her family and the outside world, no matter if it was just along the edges. The paparazzi and tabloids seemed to be more aggressive than ever, and Bobby’s murder had pushed the usual demands for precautions and privacy to the brink of paranoia. Madam had even been quoted in the press saying something about it being time to flee the country if they were shooting Kennedys, because that made her children targets, too. Squeezed in against Seamus in the backseat of his brother’s car, something made me take a leap of faith.
“Do you know where 1040 Fifth Avenue is?” I asked his brother.
As we pulled up in front of the familiar green awning, Seamus wanted to know if we could see each other again. I was thrilled and gave him the phone number at the apartment Bridey and I shared, along with complicated instructions:
“You can only call on Thursday night, and you can’t call before eight o’clock,” I said. The doorman opened the car door for me, and I jumped out and hurried into the lobby before Seamus could ask any questions.
When my day off came round, Madam tied me up with one of her last-minute “do you have a second?” requests as I tried to head out the door, and I missed Seamus’s call when he rang my apartment promptly at eight. Fortunately, my sister was there and picked up. I had told her all about the footballer from Leitrim who had taken a fancy to me. There was an awkward silence, then some confused hemming and hawing on the other end. In my determination to remain vague and mysterious, I had neglected to even give poor Seamus my name.
“You’re Seamus, aren’t you?” Briege said helpfully. “Kathleen’s not here, but she’s on the way, so call back in half an hour.”
He did, and we agreed to meet at a café a few blocks away for a cup of coffee. We ended up staying for two hours. I took the lead in the conversation and asked all the questions. We began seeing each other regularly—or as regular as was possible between his football schedule and my now secret life with Madam and her unpredictable needs. I still didn’t tell him a thing about how I earned my living, and he didn’t pry, even when a day off got cut short and the Secret Service came to pick me up and ferry me back to 1040. The phone was ringing nonstop when I got there, and I could feel the tension of something unexpected happening, but no one knew what. Please don’t let it be someone else dying, I silently prayed. Madam buzzed me to her bedroom.
“Don’t say a word to anyone,” she said. “Mr. Onassis and I are getting married this weekend in Greece. We’re leaving for Athens tomorrow. This has to be kept secret, Kathleen.”
I was stunned but quickly offered my congratulations. I would need to pack quickly—not only for Madam but for the children as well, since I was doing double-duty again as governess. She stopped me as I set off to get the tissue paper to start stuffing the sleeves and pant legs of whatever clothes she planned on taking.
“Could you please do me a favor and go talk to Caroline?” Madam asked. “I just told her the news, and she’s very, very upset. She’s in her room crying.”
I knocked gently on Caroline’s door and went to sit on her bed, where she was curled up with her face in the pillow, her small shoulders heaving with her sobs. I couldn’t begin to imagine how she felt. A framed picture of JFK was always on her nightstand. I knew that however great a hero he was considered as president, he would always be ten times that hero to Caroline as a father.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’ll all work out good. He’s a nice man.” Hollow as the words must have sounded to a despairing ten-year-old, I meant every one. From what little I had seen of Aristotle Onassis, he seemed to genuinely want the children to like him.
“We’re going to Greece,” Caroline answered desperately. She usually enjoyed traveling and I wasn’t sure what she meant. Was this it—Madam taking her children and quitting America—or just a wedding trip? It wasn’t my place to ask Caroline for more details, if she even had them, or to assure her that she would still have the same friends, the same teachers, the same bedroom, the same life, because I honestly didn’t know whether any of that would hold true. Everything seemed to be happening so suddenly, like a record playing too fast to make out the song.
“I know,” was all I could say. “Your mom told me to help pack.”
Caroline, always the good girl who minded her mother, composed herself and got up to pack for whatever new life was awaiting her now.
“She told me I would need a couple of nice dresses,” was all she said. We pulled out some shorts and bathing suits, too, and I went to see about John, who was hanging close to his mother but didn’t seem visibly upset by the prospect of getting a stepfather.
It took some doing for John to dislike anyone, and Onassis had shown him only kindness.
“Did you get Caroline calmed down?” Madam wanted to know.
“Yes, she’s good,” I assured her.
Madam was on the phone all evening long. It would ring again the minute she hung up, and I would catch snippets of the same conversation with each new call: This weekend, yes . . . We’d love for you to come. Visitors kept coming and going, too. Ted Kennedy; her sisters-in-law Jean, Pat, and Eunice; her own sister, Lee, who was to be matron of honor. It was hard to tell by Madam’s businesslike demeanor whether she was happy. Is this what she wants? I couldn’t help but wonder. She and Mr. Onassis seemed like friends, not a couple. He was so much older than she was—she had just turned thirty-nine to his sixty-two—and they had nothing obvious in common. I had never seen him go jogging or horseback riding, and couldn’t picture him on water skis, either.
Did he love books and art as passionately as she did?
The rest of the staff still had no clue what was going on. “Is there a dinner tonight?” May anxiously demanded as the doorbell kept ringing. Then she spied the suitcases. “Where are you going?” she asked. I batted her awa
y like a frantic bee.
“That’s for me to know, and you to find out!” I teased, looking forward to her dismay when she did. Madam had sworn me to secrecy, and I felt proud that she had trusted me with something so big. Discretion was an everyday expectation in my job—I never offered up any details of life at 1040, no matter how curious the Central Park nannies got when they recognized John at the playground. Seamus still didn’t even know where I worked, or for whom.
Once I had the children set up and showered, I told them to go see their mom. She was still on the phone, so they sat in the living room and waited until she came in to talk to them, closing the door behind her. Madam came to find me when they were done. It was late, and the kids had gone to bed. I wondered if they’d even gotten supper in all the chaos.
Madam was ready to get her packing done. “And then you’ll need to pack for yourself,” she added. We would be gone for three weeks.
I was going to Greece? Except for Ireland, I had never traveled abroad with Madam—Provi still served as personal assistant for international trips. I had momentarily forgotten that I was doubling as governess again and was thrown for a real loop by her casual announcement that I was going along. I had been banking on the windfall of free time for myself with the family’s unexpected departure, and I was hoping to spend more time with Seamus. That he was more alluring than a Mediterranean holiday was as sure a sign as any that I was falling for him fast, and falling hard. I made a weak stab at staying behind.
“I don’t have a coat,” I blurted out, as if that would change everything.
“We’ll find you one,” Madam answered brightly, heading for her closet. She pulled out a gorgeous beige cashmere number and pronounced it mine. I managed a hasty call to Seamus and told him simply that my employer needed me to go on a last-minute trip, and I would get in touch as soon as I got back.
Fewer than twenty-four hours later, I was wearing my new coat as I stepped off the plane—Mr. Onassis owned the entire airline—in Athens. He was waiting there on the tarmac to greet his bride, and I noticed him nervously fingering the blue worry beads he had clutched in his hand. A helicopter was waiting for us and we climbed inside. John was beyond excited, checking out the instrument panels and asking a million questions. Madam and Caroline both seemed cool as cucumbers as we lifted straight up in the air, but I was terrified. The chopper didn’t feel anywhere near as solid and steady as an airplane, and when I heard that we were headed for Mr. O’s private yacht, I assumed we were going to land in the water. What if the waves toppled the helicopter over? Or we landed too hard and started to sink? I wasn’t a strong swimmer. I didn’t voice my fears out loud, but the kids could tell I was nervous and kept telling me there was nothing to worry about.