The Importance of Being Kennedy (2 page)

I came to work for the Kennedys in the spring of 1917. I’d been five years in America by then, come over to be with my two sisters. Marimichael Donnelly from across the lane was on the same sailing as me. They waked us two nights together with whiskey drummed up from somewhere by the Donnelly boys, telling us what a grand future the both of us had and then weeping and clinging onto us to keep us at home. We’d neither of us been out of Westmeath before. I’d never appreciated that sky and water could stretch so far, and I know they say the world’s like an apple and doesn’t have an edge you can tumble over, but I’ve never understood how they know. I was braced for the end all the way, till I saw the roofs of East Boston.

Marimichael had a sister who’d gone ahead too. That was how we did it in those days. The oldest one went, then she’d send the fare for the next and so on, till everyone was settled. It was the only thing to do. The factories were starting up around Tul
lamore, so the demand for hand-knitting was dropping off and there was no other way to make a living.

We were six in our family, one boy and five girls, except Nellie was in the graveyard, dead with the measles and only four years old. Ursie’s the oldest. She left for Boston in 1909. Took a correspondence course in bookkeeping and taught herself the Pitman Shorthand and she was off. She got work in the office of Holkum, Holkum and Jauncey, and to hear her she ended up practically running the place.

Ursie always had ideas. Writing paper without lines was one of her things, not that there was a lot of letter writing going on in our house, but she said lined paper was common, and she used to have a fit if ever Mammy put the milk can on the table instead of the china pitcher. After she got to America and started earning, she’d send us marvelous things, not only money. Caramels and hatpins and silk stockings, and a beautiful handbag for Mammy one Christmas, real leather from Jordan Marsh, lined and with a big gilt snap. Dear God, we had everyone from Ballynagore come in to see that handbag. We should have charged for the viewings.

She must have had some courage to go off like that, not knowing a living soul in America. When they were handing out gumption, I reckon Ursie got Edmond’s share. He’s hardly been further than the foot of the stairs.

Margaret went out to join Ursie in 1910 and I cried myself sick. Ursie wasn’t the kind of sister you missed, except like an aching tooth after it’s been pulled, but Margaret had always been my pal. We’d shared a bed, even. When Mammy and Deirdre went with her to wave her off on the bus I couldn’t bear to go with them. I was convinced I’d never see her again.

She kept saying, “You will too. I’ll send for you and then you’ll send for Deirdre.”

But Deirdre could never have gone to America. She had a
sweet nature and the voice of an angel but she was the kind of girl that would easily be taken advantage of. She used to get confused enough in Tullamore market, so she’d have been lost in a minute in Boston. Anyway, Father Hughes said a girl like Deirdre would likely be blessed with a vocation, so we all prayed for that and our prayers were answered. She went to the Maryknoll Sisters, and then to Africa to teach little black children about our Risen Lord, which left just me at home and Mammy and my brother, Edmond.

Ursie kept writing that I should still think of going to America.
Mother won’t stand in your way
, she wrote. She didn’t call her “Mammy” anymore, since she worked for Holkum, Holkum and Jauncey.
She’ll be a lot happier knowing you’re making something of yourself. She has Edmond to take care of her.

Edmond was supposed to be the head of the house. Dada had the Irish disease, and after we lost Nellie, he just turned his face to the wall and died.

Mammy used to say, “Edmond’s a thinker. He doesn’t rush into things. And did you ever see such a fine head of hair on a man?”

Well, that part was true. I believe it acted like a goose-feather comforter. It kept his noddle so warm and cozy his brain fell asleep.

I don’t know whether I would have gone and left Mammy in his care, but anyway, as things turned out, it was Mammy who left us. She’d a growth under her left bosom that had eaten her away inside and she’d been too shy to say anything until it was too late.

“Never mind,” she said. “I’ve had a good life. I’ve had my span.”

But she’d only had forty-seven years and she could have had more if she hadn’t been such a muggins about taking off her
vest in front of the doctor. She died in the autumn of 1911 and, before the year was out, Edmond took off his thinking cap and announced he was marrying the Clavin widow from Horseleap and bringing her to our home. So my mind was made up for me. I couldn’t have stayed in the house with that woman. She’d a face would turn fresh milk. Margaret sent me the fare and I was on my way.

Marimichael went into a cotton mill when we got to Boston, same as her sister, and Margaret could have got me a start at the grocer’s where she worked, but Ursie had bigger ideas.

She said, “You’ve a brain in your head, Nora. Use it. Nursing would be suitable. The uniforms are very tasteful.”

But I liked the idea of going into service, somewhere where I’d have my own room.

I said, “If I’m going to wipe BTMs and mop up dribble I’d as soon do it for a nice sweet little baby as somebody who smells of sickness or some grouchy old feller. I’ll go for a nursery maid.”

“Just be sure it’s the right kind of family,” she said. “A doctor, or a lawyer, like Mr. Jauncey. Cultured, professional people. There are people who have money to run a full staff but no breeding. You don’t want to end up with a family like that.”

I got a start with the Griffin family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to look after Loveday, who was three, and the baby, who was on the way, Arthur. Ursie seemed to think they were good enough for me, even if they were a bit modern. Dr. Griffin was a scientist at the university but he thought nothing of pushing the bassinet out on a weekend. There was only me, a housemaid, a woman who came in on Mondays to do the laundry, and a man who helped with the garden. Mrs. Griffin did all the cooking and I had every Sunday off and one night a week. I used to meet Margaret at a soda fountain and she’d give out to me about Ursie
while we watched the boys go by. That’s where we met Jimmy Swords and Frankie Mulcahy.

It’s a funny thing about boys. They go around in pairs, and if one of them is good-looking, the other’s sure to be a poor specimen. That was Frankie. He always looked like he lost a dollar and found a cent, but Margaret fell for him, and Jimmy was keen on me. The only problem with Jimmy and Frankie was they worked as fish porters. They were always washed and shaved and dressed in a nice clean collar and tie when we saw them, but there was still that smell. You can never get rid of it. Jimmy seemed steady though. We never quarreled, and the Griffins liked him, because he used to bring oysters for them or a lobster, when he came to walk me out.

I had my nursery and my own room up under the roof and I had my beau. I was very suited, but then Dr. Griffin said he was moving to a different university, in California, and I had to decide whether to go with them. Ursie thought I should.

She said, “You’ve made a good start, Nora, now build on it. The Griffins think highly of you and you mustn’t flit from position to position. It doesn’t inspire confidence.”

But Jimmy didn’t want me to go.

He said, “I’m putting money by. Stay in Boston and we’ll get married. Next year.”

So the Griffins went off to California and I applied for a new position, in Beals Street, Brookline. The Kennedy family. They had a little one just walking, Joseph Patrick, and another one on the way.

I had to go to the house to be interviewed and inspected by Mrs. Kennedy. She’s only a year or two older than me and people say she has the secret of eternal youth. To look at us now you’d think I could give her a few years, but that first day I met her she seemed quite the little matron. First thing she told me was
how she had to be most particular about the help she employed, because of her position.

She said, “My husband is president of a bank.”

The house was nothing to shout about and neither was the money they were offering.

She said, “And I expect you recognize me.”

But I didn’t know her from Atty Hayes’s donkey. She laughed.

She said, “You’re a newcomer. If you were Boston-born you’d know my face from the dailies. I’m Mayor Fitzgerald’s daughter.”

Well, you couldn’t be in Boston five minutes without hearing of him, so that satisfied her. She rattled on, perched at her bureau like a neat little bird, telling me all about her travels and the big shots she’d met. She even had tea brought in, and I still didn’t know if I had the job or not.

“I was my father’s right-hand woman,” she said. “My mother didn’t have the nerves for public life so I went everywhere with him. But now of course I’m too busy running my own home. Mr. Kennedy works very long hours in business.”

And that was the truth. I was there three weeks before I properly met him. He’d get home late and leave again early. He was a tall carrot-top of a man with a tombstone smile and ice-blue eyes. He came up to the nursery one Saturday morning and started throwing Joseph Patrick up in the air to make him squeal.

He said, “I’m Joe Kennedy. You have everything you need? Anything you need, tell Mrs. Kennedy. Money’s no object. And make sure this boy of mine eats his greens. I have big plans for him.”

Mrs. K gave me a book to read the day I arrived, on how a nursery should be run. Everything was to be done by the clock. When the new baby came, she was going to nurse it, but between feeds there was to be no picking it up or rocking the cradle. If it cried, it cried. And little Joseph Patrick wasn’t to be played with,
except for half an hour of nursery rhymes and physical training in the afternoon. He’d learn to entertain himself with toys, and the only time he was allowed to snuggle on my lap was for his bedtime story.

She said, “Too much petting makes a child fussy and it’s a very hard habit to break.”

“Yes, Mrs. Kennedy,” I said.

Well, she didn’t have to know everything that went on in my nursery. I had my rules and routines and she had hers. She’d walk to St. Aidan’s every morning to early Mass, and then she’d do the marketing and write letters till lunchtime. Always a chicken sandwich and a glass of milk. In the afternoon she’d take a nap, and then have her hair done or go to the dressmaker’s, and once a week Mayor Fitzgerald would come to tea. The way Mrs. K talked him up, “His Honor this, His Honor that,” it was like expecting the President himself. It was such a letdown the first time I saw him. He was just a crafty-looking old knacker riding round in a limousine car, but Mrs. K thought the sun shone out of her Daddy’s fundament.

Sometimes on a Friday night Mr. K would have some people in for bridge, business gentlemen and their wives, but otherwise she didn’t see a soul. Her Mammy never visited, nor her sisters, and the neighbors on Beals Street kept to themselves.

The Ericksons’ maid said, “She thinks she’s the cat’s pajamas, your missis, but nobody round here’s impressed.”

We knew war was coming. It seemed to have nothing to do with us back in 1914, but we could feel it just around the corner by the start of 1917. Mrs. K said it was a terrible, unsettled time to be bringing a new baby into the world, but at least Mr. Kennedy wouldn’t have to go away to fight. She said he was too old, but he wasn’t. He was twenty-nine, same as Jimmy Swords.

Jimmy and Frankie Mulcahy both volunteered. There were
a lot of the Irish who wouldn’t, not wanting to take sides with the English, not even against that terrible Kaiser, but Jimmy said, “I’m an American now and Americans are going to fight, so I’m with them.”

Not Mr. Kennedy, though. All of a sudden he got a management position at the Schwab shipyard in Quincy, reserved occupation, and when they drafted him anyway, he went to a tribunal to appeal and he won. Mrs. K said they’d made an error when they tried to draft him, because he was engaged in vital war work, but that was only because Mayor Fitzgerald had pulled strings to get him in at the shipyard. Whichever way you cut it, Joe Kennedy was a draft-dodger. But that’s water under the bridge. God knows, we’ve had another war since then, and what he got away with in 1917 he’s paid for in buckets since.

Jimmy went off to a training camp, but the doctors failed Frankie because of his chest, and he was sent to a uniform factory in Pennsylvania, as a machinist. Margaret thought we should have married them before they went, but Jimmy never offered it and I had my mind on my nursery. Mrs. Kennedy was very near her time.

A weekly nurse was hired and Mr. K moved into the guest room so we could get the big bedroom ready. All the little trinket boxes and hairbrushes had to be cleared off the dressing table, and the rugs lifted and the floor washed down with carbolic acid and boiling water, for reasons of hygiene, the nurse said. It made you wonder how the human race ever got to be such a thriving concern.

She came along to the nursery still in her bathrobe that morning. She said she’d had a few pains in the night but she hadn’t wanted to say anything till Mr. K had gone off to business.

“This is woman’s work,” she said. “Now we’ll get on with it. We’ll have this baby delivered and everything tidied away by the time he comes home.”

I took Joseph Patrick to the park and played with him on the teeter-totter, and by the time he’d had his soup and lain down for his nap, the doctor had been sent for.

I’d never seen a baby born. When Mrs. Griffin had baby Arthur, she went to the nursing home so they could give her the twilight sleep and then she had two weeks of lying-in before she brought him home. I knew the facts of life, and I’d seen plenty of sows dropping their piglets, but it was hard to relate that to Mrs. Kennedy. I’d heard it said that women screamed and cursed and that there was blood and worse, but she’d hardly a hair out of place. She just lay there with the ether inhaler over her face and Dr. Good fetched the forceps out of his bag and fairly dragged the poor mite into the world. John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Though as I recall, he was hardly ever called John. He was Jack right from the start.