The Importance of Being Kennedy

THREE CATEGORIES OF FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS

Baby Patricia was born in May of 1924 but she was a month old before her daddy even saw her. We all went to meet him off the train from New York. Rosie with a painting she'd done for him, Joe tormenting Jack in the back of the car, arms and legs flying, and Kick and Euny hanging out of the window like a pair of ragamuffins shouting, ‘Daddy! We got another sister!’

Rosie was being tutored at home at that time. They'd tried her at the Edward Devotion where the boys went and they'd tried her at the parish school but she couldn't keep up. She got top marks for good behaviour and effort and a special mention for her dancing, but it was too much for her. She'd toil home on her chubby little legs, dragging behind the bassinet, hardly able to keep her eyes open, school fatigued her so.

Mrs K did a lot of reading up about slow children and then she took her to see a special doctor in New Jersey, the big expert, Dr Henry Herbert Goddard. She came back wearing her tough-nut face, the one I've seen on her a thousand times, when any other woman would break down and cry.

She said, ‘It isn't good news, Nora, but I'm determined we can beat this. We just have to make greater efforts with Rosie.’

She had it all written down, what this Dr Goddard had said. Three categories of feeble-mindedness. Idiots, who were the worst, then imbeciles and then morons. As far as he could estimate Rosie was only a moron.

Mrs K said, ‘At least she's in the top category. Dr Goddard says idiots have to wear diapers all their lives.’

Well, I had my Rosie out of diapers before she was two.

She said, ‘The problem is this, morons are harder to care for because they look so normal. As they grow up they have to be watched every minute or they get into all kinds of difficulties. Do you see what I mean?’

I didn't see what she meant at all.

I said, ‘I know she's the sunniest child I ever looked after.’

‘Precisely,’ she said. ‘She's amiable and eager to please and when she's older men will take advantage.’

I said, ‘Well, that's a long way down the road. She's only six.’

‘But something to think about nonetheless,’ she said. ‘We have to keep her safe from men, Nora, because she must never have babies.’

I couldn't see why. She was just grand with Euny and baby Pat. And if Herself was anything to go by too much brains and education only made for a restless mother.

She said, ‘We have to develop what little gifts she has.’

I said, ‘She has the gift of contentment and that's no small thing. It's like a monkey house upstairs when they come in from school but Rosie'll sit in a corner and play for hours making a tea party with the dolly cups and saucers.’

She said, ‘I know, dear heart, I know. She's a good girl. But I'm determined to get her reading and writing, whatever Dr Goddard says. Perseverance pays dividends. And you're very good with her, Nora. I don't know what we'd do without you.’

Fidelma said, ‘She said that? You should have asked her for a raise.’

But Mrs K didn't give raises, only job security, and variety, because those Kennedy children were like a box of Candy Allsorts. Young Joe was tall and strong, like his daddy, and Pat looked likely to turn out the same way. Kick was thicker set but she had Mr K's freckles, same as Jack did. Euny was the one that most favoured Mrs K, especially when she smiled. Not that that happened so often. She was as skinny as a string bean, wouldn't eat, couldn't sleep. Euny just lived on her nerves.

And Rosie was the beauty. She had milky skin and lovely dimpled arms you could just have taken a bite out of.

‘Fat,’ Mrs K called it. ‘We must watch Rosie's line or she'll end up looking like a tubby little peasant.’

Mrs K kept herself as trim as a candle and she expected everybody else to do the same. The children were weighed regular as clockwork and Rosie was the only one who ever got a black mark. Jack had to have extra malt and cod liver oil, to build him up, and Euny got extra bread and potatoes to try and put a bit of flesh on her, but many a time Rosie had her rations cut, to try and slim her down. I didn't approve of it, myself. I like to see a child enjoying her food, not corrected just for the way God made her.

I had all the girls in matching outfits. They looked a picture, lined up ready to go to Mass on Sunday morning. Wool coats with bonnets and muffs for the cold weather and cotton print dresses in the summer, with white ankle socks and Mary Janes. But when we went to the seashore they wore any old rags, just shorts and vests, first up, best dressed, and they ran around barefoot, brown as tinkers.

When I first worked for the Kennedys we'd go to a different place every year, but once we'd tried Hyannis we took the same cottage there every year.

Mrs K's driver said, ‘Know why we're going to Hyannis again? Because Your Man was turned down for the Country Club at Cohasset.’

I said, ‘And how would you know a thing like that?’

‘Because Herself told me,’ he said, ‘when I was driving her into town. She said it was because the Cohasset doesn't take Catholics but if you ask me it's more likely they'd heard about him running whiskey. And do you know why he got in at Hyannis? Because they're not so toffee-nosed down there. They saw the colour of his money and didn't bother to enquire where he got it.’

I said, ‘So they're no more particular than you are, Danny Walsh.’

‘No, well,’ he said. ‘I'm only saying.’

You have to be very careful with hired help. I wouldn't want servants if they were giving them away with Oxydol.

LEARNING THE WAYS OF THE ENEMY

Bobby was born eighteen months after Pat. He was another one looked like a skinned rabbit, same as Jack. We thought he'd be the last.

Fidelma said, ‘She'll tie a knot in her hanky now. Sure, she only kept going to get another boy.’

I thought so too. She was tired of it all by then, even though she had me and Fidelma in the nursery and all the help she wanted in the house. Poor Bobby. He loved to be allowed up to her room, to sit on her bed and watch her get dressed for dinner, but there were times when I thought she'd forgotten she'd ever had him. Rosie was the only one in the family who petted him.

Kick was at St Aidan's, in first grade, and Euny was just starting in the kindergarten. Joe and Jack were day boys at Nobles down in Dedham. Herself would have liked them all taught by the sisters but Mr K said the boys had to go to a top-drawer school and start mixing with Protestants.

He said, ‘When you intend to go places it's never too early to study the competition and learn the ways of the enemy.’

There was talk though that we might leave Boston altogether. Mr K was doing more and more with the moving-picture business, on the train once a month to Hollywood, California. Danny Walsh said it was quite on the cards that we'd be shifting there, getting a house on the same street as all the movie stars.

He kept saying, ‘That'll give Brookline something to think about.’

As if Brookline gave two cents about the Kennedys. The children were at the age when they should have been having friends round to play but the neighbours were very stand-offish.

Mrs K always said they didn't need other children because they had each other but it didn't seem natural to me. That's why I loved going to Hyannis for the summer. Every blessed minute didn't have to be regimented when we were there.

As long as they worked hard at their sailing lessons and their swimming they were left to run free the rest of the time and they did mix with other children, Kick especially. The first thing she'd do when we got to the cottage was race round to see if Nancy Tenney was at home, and Rosie'd tag along with her. Mrs Tenney might have been a friend for Mrs K too. The Tenneys were a nice family, no airs and graces, but Herself wouldn't socialise. She'd get Danny to run her to early Mass at St Francis Xavier, then she'd be reading in her room or going for her swim, no matter how cold the water. Two or three times a week she'd go to the golf course, but just to play by herself, for the exercise, not for company as Mr K did.

Danny said, ‘And do you know what she does? She slips onto the course at the seventh and plays the same half a dozen holes over and over. She seems to think she's saving money if she's not seen going out from the clubhouse. Worrying about green fees with all the money she's got.’

That was her. Penny-mean. I know for a fact she spent five hundred dollars on her outfit for her sister Agnes's wedding but we were only allowed forty-watt light bulbs in the nursery.

Very often Mr Kennedy would be away a month at a time, but he'd write to the children, and always a proper personal letter to each of them that was old enough to understand, not like Herself, who wrote one letter and sent them each a carbon copy when she went travelling. And then when the word came that he was on his way home you'd have thought the President himself was expected, the children got so excited. They'd all go along to his dressing room, first thing, to watch him shave and tell him everything that had happened while he'd been gone, and then he'd read the funnies with them before they went down to breakfast. ‘Captain Easy’ and ‘Tailspin Tommy’. It was like a holiday for me and Fidelma the mornings Mr K was at home.

He always brought them presents too, when he came home from a trip, but only little things. A scouting knife or a Spaldine ball, or picture postcards of the movie stars. The only extravagance was the time he brought Tom Mix cowboy costumes, with the kerchiefs signed by the great man himself. They were intended for Joe and Jack, and they caused nothing but trouble because Kick helped herself to one of the hats and wouldn't be parted from it. Joe usually behaved nicely around his sisters but he lit into her as though she was some boy in the schoolyard and he wouldn't be pacified till he got his cowboy hat back.

When Mr K had been away he'd want to know about what they'd been up to, chapter and verse. How they'd been getting on in school or at the sailing club if we were up to Hyannis. Joseph Patrick won at everything he turned his hand to and so did Euny. Kick just enjoyed herself. If she won anything it was a happy accident, and Jack was the same. He could never quite be bothered to make that extra effort, even though he knew exactly what his daddy would say.

‘Don't let me hear you bragging about getting second place,’ he'd say. ‘All second place means is you have to try harder. First place is the only thing that counts. You're a Kennedy, remember, and Kennedys are winners!’

That was what they had drummed into them and they'd knock you flying to be first over the finishing line. I used to enjoy a game of checkers until the children got old enough to play. They'd study the board and try to distract you while you made your move, as if their lives depended on beating you. Rosie was the only one who wasn't like that. She didn't have the cunning to put one over on you, and anyway, she didn't really care. To her a game was just a pleasant way to pass half an hour, but naturally she did want to please her daddy. She'd have loved to go running to him, to tell him she'd won at slapjack.

I'd say, ‘For the love of God, let her win, why don't you? Just once in a while?’

‘Why should we?’ they'd say. ‘What's the fun in that?’

‘I'll try harder, Daddy,’ she used to say, when she could get a word in edgewise.

‘Good girl, Rosie,’ he'd say. ‘That's the right attitude.’

He loved her, of course, but you could tell it irked him to see a child of his so slow. Sometimes it took her a while to think what she was going to say and he didn't have the patience to wait while she got her words out.

When Mrs K took her up to her room to make her practise her letters he'd say, ‘I don't know where you find the patience, Rosa darling.’

He always called Herself ‘Rosa darling’.

She'd come down on a Sunday morning, wearing one of her new rigs, ‘Looking a million dollars, Rosa darling,’ he'd say, and then he'd run off to make one more phone call before we went to Mass.

I never saw him take her hand though or ruffle her hair. She'd hang on his arm, gazing up at him, but he didn't pay her a lot of attention and neither did the children. When they sat down to dinner he was the one they listened to.

‘Dad said this, Dad thinks that,’ was all you'd hear.

I said to Jack one time, ‘And what did your mammy have to say on the subject?’

‘Mother?’ he said, as if I'd asked him what was the cat's opinion. ‘Mother doesn't know about world events.’

Everything about Joe Kennedy was lickety-split. You could practically hear the wheels turning in his brain. He'd be out on his deck exercising with his Indian clubs and he'd have a faraway look in his eye. Then as soon as he finished he'd be on the telephone, barking out the day's orders to Joey Timilty or Eddie Moore. Timilty was Mr K's fixer, according to Danny Walsh. Always carried a big fat roll of dollar bills. Eddie Moore was different, a kind of general manager and allowed to sit in on a lot of the meetings and phone calls.

But Gabe Nolan drove Mr K and he reckoned there was only one person who knew everything Joe Kennedy was up to and that was Joe Kennedy himself.

Gabe said, ‘He's like a shark, cruising around on his own. He goes in fast, makes his kill, and he's gone before they know what hit them. And all his money's spread around. If anybody goes looking for an office with J. P. Kennedy on the shingle or a bank account they'll be disappointed because there ain't any such thing.’

But Eddie Moore was on the payroll, and Mrs Moore was expected to be on call too, in case Herself got the urge to go down to Sulphur Springs for the waters and we had any catastrophes in the nursery. It was through Mrs Moore we first got wind of the move.

She said, ‘How will you feel about leaving Boston, Nora? You'll miss your sisters, I'm sure.’

Fidelma said, ‘Is it Hollywood we're going to? Are we going next door to any fillum stars?’

She said, ‘No, no, not Hollywood. That's not a fit place to raise children. You're going to New York. My husband's down there right now looking for a suitable property.’

Fidelma had been to New York. She'd travelled there with the first family she worked for.

She said, ‘You'll love it, Nora. There's railways rumbling in the sky and railways rattling under your feet and eateries that stay open all night and shows with tunes you can sing. Not like this dead-alive hole. Still, I wish we could have gone to Hollywood. I might have got myself discovered.’

Mrs Moore was right, up to a point. There was one sister I was sorry to leave.

Margaret was expecting again. I'd have liked to be around to give her a hand, and there was little Val too. I loved to go and see him on my day off. Three's a grand age. Old enough to walk and not break your arms any more, and too young to break your heart.

Me and Margaret were always good pals. Edmond hung around with the Donnelly boys, used to go fishing with them and rabbiting. Ursie preferred her own company, and Deirdre was away with the fairies. The wind would whine in the chimney and she'd say, ‘Do you hear the angels singing?’ And if you got out the checkerboard to give her a game she'd say, ‘Budge over, Nora. Saint Bridget wants to sit there.’

They say she's happy in Africa, love her. Maybe they all hear angel voices over there.

Ursie said, ‘New York is a wonderful opportunity for you. I'll give you a list of museums you must go to. You see, you're drawing the dividend of loyalty. Your Kennedys can't manage without you. Just like me and Mr Jauncey.’

Ursie and her Mr Jauncey. He was all she ever talked about. How she kept his appointment book and remembered every little thing for him, even his wife's birthday. How he was the most respected lawyer in Boston and trusted her to see all his papers.

‘I'm privy to all kinds of delicate things,’ she used to say, ‘but of course I'd never speak of them.’

Margaret'd say, ‘Oh go on, Ursie, it won't go no further than these four walls. Tell us about one of his murders.’

‘Mr Jauncey,’ she'd say, ‘is not that kind of lawyer. Mr Jauncey is corporate.’

She was first at her desk every morning and the last to leave at night. She said he called her his ‘office treasure’.

Margaret said, ‘Has he ever asked you to be any other kind of treasure?’

‘Don't be coarse, Margaret,’ she said. ‘Mr Jauncey is a member of the Harvard Club.’

She coloured up though, so I reckon Margaret had touched a nerve.

I said, ‘No, but you must like him. What if Mrs Jauncey was to pass away? What if he made you an offer? You know all his little ways. How many sugars he takes. Or do you like being an old maid?’

She said, ‘Mr Jauncey doesn't take sugar. And I'm certainly not an old maid. I'm a personal and private secretary, I'm a member of the altar guild, and I get a very generous bonus at Christmas.’

Well, but what does a Christmas bonus buy you when you've to go home to a boiled-egg dinner for one?

Margaret said, ‘You're a fine one to talk about old maids, Nora Brennan. Thirty-four and you spend your nights off playing Wincey Spider with my Val. You ought to be over Jimmy Swords by now.’

I was over Jimmy Swords the minute I saw how hard his eyes had turned.

I said, ‘I get offers.’

I did too. There was the Dawsons' driver, in Naples Road. There was Mitch, who taught the boys sailing up at Hyannis. I had my moments. But I had my seven Kennedys to consider too. I wasn't going to get silly in the head over some man and throw all that away.

ANOTHER LITTLE BLESSING

Mr Kennedy said, ‘I've had it with Boston, Nora. A man can't do business in this town. Folks here have money but all they do is take it out of the safe-box once a year, count it and then put it back. Well, the hell with it. It's time for a change.’

We moved to New York in the summer of 1927 but there weren't any railways rattling under our feet or theatre lights like Fidelma Clery had said there'd be. We were out in the country, in a big rented house in Riverdale. If you stood on a chair at my bedroom window you could see over the treetops to the Hudson River. We had lawns and flower beds and neighbours you never saw because they went everywhere by motor car. I don't believe anyone in Riverdale ever snubbed us. New York folk were too busy to care what line of business Mr Kennedy was in or where we went to Mass. But Mr K always seemed to think people were looking down on him. He always had to make the point.

‘I wasn't one of those trust-fund milksops,’ he'd say to Joseph Patrick and young Jack. ‘Everything I've achieved, I've done by my own brains and sweat. I started off a poor barkeep's son.’

‘The bollix he did,’ Danny Walsh used to say. ‘His old man had a motor car when most of the Irish didn't have shoes.’

For once Danny Walsh had it about right. Old Mr Kennedy did have a nice house in Winthrop and a respectable reputation. Mayor Fitzgerald might have been the one mentioned in the dailies all the time, but it wasn't always the kind of mention decent people would be proud of. I never heard any gossip about old Mr K.

We moved in August but it was October before I even saw the city. When you had a night off you couldn't walk out the door and jump aboard a tram like you could in Brookline. I could have been back in Ballynagore for all the entertainment there was in Riverdale. The only thing to do was cadge a ride into Yonkers with Danny Walsh and go to a soda fountain but the trouble with Danny was he was liable to make himself cosy at the Piper's Kilt saloon and forget to bring you home.

They were busy days anyway, and I liked that. We had a thousand things to do, getting the children settled and ready for their new schools. And we had Bobby to contend with, the most bad-tempered baby I ever knew. He was born looking peeved and he didn't improve, scowling out from his stroller with that cross freckled little face. I've never worked out what rubbed him up the wrong way so early in life.

Herself wasn't much better either. She was expecting number eight so the heat was getting her down and she missed the little bit of company she'd had in Boston. Father Creagh coming to tea. Seeing His Honour every week and hearing all the goings-on among the pols. She kept ringing for me to go to her room and there she'd be on the daybed making more lists. Get books on the history of New York suitable for an eleven-year-old. Try Band-Aids on Kick's fingernails to stop her nibbling. Ask druggist if Euny is old enough to take Pepto-Bismol. She wasn't even interested in her fashion magazines, she was feeling so swollen and dowdy. When she was like that I could sit on the bed and chat with her and for five minutes I'd forget what a slave-driver she could be.

She said, ‘God's sent me another little blessing, Nora, but I'm thirty-eight. I'm too old to be having babies.’

She was the same age as our Margaret.

I said, ‘You look ten years younger than my sister and she's only having her second.’

It was the truth. I wasn't buttering her up.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I put in a great deal of work to keep my looks. These things have to be worked at.’

That was Mrs K. Just as you were warming to her she'd say something that reminded you she wasn't any old girl-next-door.

She said, ‘Men have it so much easier. They go out to business, but when they come home everything else has been done for them. We women have to be wives and mothers and careful home-makers. We have to stay young and beautiful and keep our minds lively. And somehow we carry it all off. I never bother my husband with anything, you know? I deal with everything concerning the household myself. I had a college education. I could have done any number of things with my life, but being a good wife and mother, smoothing the way for a great man, those things are just as important, just as satisfying.’