Working in Gimbels, buying Mary Janes—the Callaghans had an affinity for shopping. And it wasn’t lost on my mother—she was a championship shopper. She had tons of stores she loved—each one had a different specialty for her, a different reason we went there. We would spend hours looking, trying things on, discussing items—sometimes buying but not always. And always eating in the store’s restaurant for lunch. They had great names. Lord and Taylor’s was the Bird Cage—it was filled with colorful fake birds and birdcages.
She had some particular tastes. In the age of panty hose, she was a nylons-and-white-gloves gal. Forward-thinking in some ways but old-fashioned in others. In the 1970s she and I would search and search for stores that carried stockings—it was a quest.
My mother also loved to shop for my father. Recently, somebody complimented him on his dashing outfit. He opened up the jacket, and there was a Saks label. He was still wearing a jacket she had bought him thirty years ago! My father also still wears the navy overcoat my mother bought him for his father’s funeral in 1970.
My father’s father, Pa Quinn, died when I was four, and my father’s mother, who I called Nana, had only a few more years of good health after he died before she entered a nursing home. Both of them were born in Ireland. My grandfather, Martin Quinn, was born in 1894 in County Clare and came to New York in 1913. My grandmother, Ellen Lancer, came from Schull, which is in West Cork, sometime around 1911 or 1912, joining her sister, who was already here. Both of them worked as domestics.
Nana’s first job was with a family that lived in a brownstone on the Upper West Side. Then she went to work as a chambermaid for a wealthy family in Oyster Bay, on Long Island. At the time she met my grandfather, she was working as a lady’s maid for a family that lived in a house between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, around where Rockefeller Center is now. My grandfather was a streetcar operator on Sixth Avenue (and then later a bus driver, after the trolleys were put out of service). No one knows exactly how they met—it wasn’t the kind of thing they talked about—but in all likelihood Nana met Pa Quinn while riding a streetcar he was driving.
Nana was a tough cookie—smart and in charge—which you had to be when you were a lady’s maid, the second-highest rank for a female servant, just below housekeeper. (Downton Abbey fans, take note.) She had a lot of responsibilities. She traveled through Europe two or three times with the family she worked for. Along the way she picked up a working knowledge of some of the foreign languages she heard.
The Quinns were married in 1924, and after having their two boys, Lawrence and Martin, who they nicknamed Buddy, they moved to Hell’s Kitchen, a neighborhood just north of where I live now. It was full of Irish immigrants who worked, among other jobs, on the Hudson River docks loading and unloading cargo ships. My father tells me that one of my grandfather’s uncles, Uncle Mike, had a saloon on Ninth Avenue somewhere between Thirty-eighth and Forty-fifth Streets.
Soon they moved to Yorkville, and my father grew up on East Ninety-sixth Street. When my father, Lawrence, was five, Nana took him and Buddy to Ireland for two years to look after her dying mother, or at least that’s how the story went. It could have been true, but it’s also likely that she and my grandfather had a fight and she took off. Nana drank too much and had a tendency to just take off.
She knew how to take charge. During World War II, Nana used the German she’d learned while traveling in Europe to help a family in their neighborhood—Yorkville had a large German immigrant population. One of her German neighbors came to the Quinns’ door asking Nana for help because the FBI was threatening her with deportation. Nana accompanied her to the FBI office, and between her little bit of German and the neighbor’s little bit of English, they were able to sort things out, and the German family stayed in New York. That story makes me think my father married a woman very much like his mother.
Nana was tough enough to deal with unpleasant or tragic realities head-on. So when my father enlisted in the navy in World War II, her reasonable expectation was that he would die in the war and never return. This prospect was personally horrible, but it also had some practical implications—such as what to do with my father’s clothes. Nana sent them all to be altered so they would fit Buddy, his younger brother who was shorter and chubbier. So when my father came home from the war he had no clothes! What she had done was tragic, sad, practical, and Irish. She was Irish, so why would she expect the best outcome—that my father would survive the war? And why waste his clothes?
By the time I was born, my grandparents had moved from Ninety-sixth Street to a two-family house on Sedgwick Avenue in the University Heights neighborhood of the Bronx. After Pa Quinn died and before Nana’s health declined, I would visit her there. She was still tough as nails and very smart. She definitely wasn’t a cuddly grandma, but she was very attentive and focused and spent a lot of time with me. When I visited, she’d take out an old purple metal Louis Sherry candy box that was full of little flags from all over the world. We’d dump them out on the couch, and she’d teach me the flags of all the nations. She was so proud—she knew them from all her travels. She would quiz me over and over and beam with pride when I got the nations correct.
Given that all four of my grandparents came from Ireland, you might think I’d have lots of stories about what their lives were like before coming to America. But while Ireland was often a topic of conversation at family gatherings and dinners, none of my grandparents talked about their life in Ireland with great specificity, and they didn’t talk about being Irish. They were Irish, so that was a given. And while they were proud of their Irish heritage, as am I, they were much more focused on becoming Americans. Both my grandfathers served in World War I, which was how they got their citizenship. It’s not the only reason they served, but it was important to them to become American citizens.
Think about it: my grandparents were just four kids who got on ships and left behind the only homes they had ever known. They had no expectation that they were ever going to return, from a place they had never even seen. But they had heard about this place—New York. They had heard that unbelievable things could happen here, that there was something great, almost mythical about this place. So they came here. And they were prepared, as immigrants always are, to work hard, to do whatever it took, and that’s what they did.
They were servants or car washers or milkmen or firefighters or bus drivers. They worked as hard as they had to, and New York gave them a great opportunity, through that hard work, to have homes that they could live in, and some of them eventually die in. All four of their children went to college. Some of their children even went on to graduate school. All their grandchildren went on to college and became professionals. And that’s because they decided to take the risk and come to and believe in New York.
My grandparents’ stories helped me enormously in understanding the experiences of most New Yorkers. People’s ethnicity matters. It’s part of who they are. It mattered to my parents and grandparents because even though they wanted to be Americans and New Yorkers, they didn’t want to forget the past or set aside their cultural heritage, which they valued. For my family, that meant taking pride in having persisted and persevered in the face of devastating poverty. Their heritage is fueled by faith and enriched by literature and poetry. We’ve learned to find beauty in everyday things, even in the face of misfortune. And although we’ve come to expect the worst, that doesn’t keep us down or prevent us from simultaneously striving for the best.
I’ve found that all New Yorkers—whether they came here from someplace else or had parents or grandparents who did so generations ago—share an appreciation that you can leave where you came from and bring big parts of it with you and find something wonderful in a place you’ve never been. Immigrants built the city that welcomed my grandparents. They had no money and they didn’t have much education. But they came with energy, faith, loyalty to their family, and determination to make good lives for themselves and for generations to come. New York City provid
ed the rest—opportunity, obstacles, and a sense that anything was possible. That’s the city they loved, and the city that Kim and I are proud to call home.
CHAPTER 3
Our House of Sorrows
I can still see the classroom. I was in eighth grade. My friend Debbie and I were sitting at our desks. The chairs and desks sat two by two in rows, with aisles on either side. Debbie leaned over to me and whispered, “Can you believe Sister so-and-so said you’re going through a hard time because your mother has cancer? Isn’t that crazy?” Debbie said that the sister had told her mother and asked her to tell Debbie to be nice to me. That wasn’t necessary. Debbie was already my friend.
I don’t know if I was going through a hard time just then, but my mother had taken a turn for the worse. She was often sick and not always around, but this was the first time anyone had mentioned the word cancer to me. When I got home from school, I called my sister and told her what I’d heard. Ellen said it was true. While I wasn’t entirely shocked, because things never seemed right with my mother, I was still surprised to be hearing it for the first time.
I now know it was not the first time Ellen actually told the truth. This is how it happened. Our mother had scheduled her mastectomy and arranged for her parents to come out and stay with us. She didn’t tell them why she needed them until they arrived, and when she did, my grandfather started crying. Ellen, who was sixteen at the time, was outside the room, listening. No one told her what was going on, but she figured it out from what she overheard. Ellen, a very smart and determined girl, decided that someone had to tell me why our mother would be gone for so long.
She took me upstairs to the one large bathroom in our house. I remember that bathroom vividly, with its icky tan-orange tiles and fixtures and matching paint. I liked to take baths there, and when I was older I’d hang out there because it was quiet and the lock on the door guaranteed privacy. I’d soak in the tub and read magazines and books, which is something I still like to do.
Ellen sat me on the edge of the porcelain tub and locked the door. She told me that our mother was sick and explained she had cancer and would be going to the hospital for an operation. I asked Ellen if Mommy was going to die. She said that she didn’t know.
To this day, I remember everything about that room, including what it felt like to sit on the edge of the tub. Yet as much as I’ve tried—and I’ve really tried—I can’t remember that conversation with Ellen. My mind goes blank. Maybe it was too much for me to absorb. I was six. So that’s why I was surprised when Debbie said my mother had cancer. But my conversation with Ellen goes a long way toward explaining why I had this sense throughout my childhood that something was wrong without knowing exactly what. Children usually have a way of knowing when something is up, and I knew something was way off kilter.
There were definitely clues. For one thing, my mother had enormous scars from the mastectomy. That kind of procedure was even more brutal in the 1970s, and there was no such thing as reconstructive surgery. So to hide her scars, she always wore men’s button-down shirts (another clothing item we searched for on our shopping missions), which was weird because none of the other mothers dressed like that. Occasionally you could see the scar if her nightgown or housecoat slipped. To cover when anyone noticed, my parents told this ridiculous story that she’d had a tooth infection, which had spread down her face and into her chest area, and that the scar was a remnant of the infection. Of course it was absurd, but I never thought to question the story, maybe because I wanted to believe it.
I can’t blame my parents for not being more direct. They were doing the best they could, at a time when people knew next to nothing about child psychology and the best way to talk to a child about something as serious as the likelihood that her mother was going to die. And they would never have sought professional help. That wasn’t even in the realm of possibility. This was an era when people kept secrets from their children and didn’t ask for help in dealing with their troubles. Some people took to drink, as my mother did and as others in my family had done. Others took to prayer, as my mother, aunt, and grandmother did. But one thing they all did was keep it from the children.
In addition to the scars and the excuses that made no sense, my mother would periodically disappear for a week or two. Usually while she was away getting treatment, I’d get sent to stay with family friends who had moved from Glen Cove to Maryland. I really liked and missed them, so it was fun and I didn’t think anything of it. I was thrilled to see them. Other times the stories got crossed, leaving me confused. For example, on one occasion, when my mother was supposedly in the city taking care of her friend Marge, who I was told was sick, my sister said that Mommy was in the hospital. I didn’t know if that meant she was at the hospital looking after Marge there, or if they got in a car accident together and were both in the hospital being treated for their injuries. Somehow I knew not to ask, so I was left to imagine all kinds of things.
It took me many years, and some therapy, to understand that I did what children typically do in a situation where there’s an ill parent, and especially when the illness is not discussed. You wind up assuming that you’re somehow responsible, even though what’s going on around you is reasonably beyond your control. You come to believe that it’s your fault that your mother isn’t feeling well. Or you think you’ve been sent away because you were bad, even though you can’t figure out what you’ve done wrong. And then you go about trying to fix things, which for a child is a terrible psychological burden, because the truth is that it’s all beyond your control when you’re a child and you really can’t fix anything.
I like to think, after years of working on understanding it, that one of the good things that came out of this terrible experience was an unexpected and positive legacy. Because of what I lived through, I’m highly motivated to fix things, to get things done. And unlike when I was a child, I really can fix things and make them better—for my family, my friends, and the people I serve. I really doubt I would have become the first woman—or the first LGBT person—to be elected Speaker if I hadn’t been driven by a leftover sense of guilt and responsibility for my mother’s illnesses and her absences. It never would have happened. If I were given a choice, I’d have found a different motivation, but I don’t have a choice, so there’s no point going down that road.
Finding out from Ellen that I had already known that our mother had cancer helped me clear up something of a mystery. Maybe mystery is too strong a word. But it’s helped me better understand something I wrote for a Mother’s Day essay competition for the Record-Pilot, which was Glen Cove’s local weekly newspaper. I got second place for my tiny essay. It was even published. There’s no date on the clipping, which my mother framed and kept in the living room (I still have it), but I’m guessing I was around nine years old. The title was “My Mom”:
My mother is marvelous. She is sweet, kind, and always there when I need her. I can’t dream of living without her. Even when she is sick we’re first on her list. Though sometimes we take her for granted, she never takes us for granted. She is always showering her love over my family with a bright and cheerful smile.
I can’t dream of living without her. I may have forgotten what Ellen told me about the severity of our mother’s illness, but I had been thinking about what it would be like if something ever happened to her. And it’s clear from what I wrote that I couldn’t imagine it.
My mom soldiered on for years. As her strength waned, her moods darkened. Alcohol was always her drink of choice, but as the pain worsened, she was given lots of medication for that and the stress. The doctors did what they could for her, but the meds and the drinks made for some fuzziness and unpredictability. If my guilt over not being able to fix her was painful but in the end provided useful motivation, growing up with a mother who sought solace in drink, with all its pain and suffering, gave me another strength.
This situation caused me to be a watcher—to gauge my mother’s moods and reactions and plan my respo
nse. So now I often can tell from body language how someone is feeling, and even when I was a little girl, hanging around at parties my mom gave, I learned to size up a room full of people in an instant. Psychologists now name it social intelligence or emotional intelligence, but back in the day, I just had this sixth sense that developed from worrying about how my mother would be acting or feeling. It probably was one reason the grown-ups called me the Mayor of Libby Drive, and it helped me get through many situations in my life. It was a small blessing, but I don’t take it for granted, and I am grateful.
In seventh and eighth grade I began organizing protests. When I was in seventh grade, the school wouldn’t provide band uniforms for us. I knew the school had the uniforms because when we were in the lower grades we had marched in them. So I organized an ill-fated, unsuccessful band boycott of the Memorial Day parade. And then in seventh or eighth grade, with a couple of other kids, I organized a letter-writing drive to try to keep the deacon in the parish from being transferred. It failed, too. But these failures didn’t deter me. They whetted my appetite.
When it came to my schoolwork, my mother kept close tabs on my grades. I’d bring home a test, and she’d ask, “Was your grade the highest?” There were a couple of kids in the class who were smarter than I was, and she’d always ask, “What did so-and-so get?” She wasn’t asking to make me feel bad; she was trying to motivate me. I know that because when it came to a big test or the science fair or the art fair, she’d do her best to temper my expectations and let me know that it was okay not to get the highest grade or win first place.
I think she was particularly sensitive to my feelings about these things, because Ellen was an academic star and I wasn’t. Ellen went on to Franklin & Marshall College, where she majored in geology; she did her master’s in geology at Harvard and has an MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. And she is extremely successful and superhardworking. (To this day, the family joke is that Ellen is the good daughter because she went to Harvard and married a doctor.)
With Patience and Fortitude: A Memoir Page 3