The Importance of Being Kennedy (8 page)

They say there were terrible sights to be seen in the city after the stock market tumbled. Businesses boarded up, men in good suits hanging their heads and waiting on line for a bowl of soup. Ursie said it was the same in Boston. Middleton’s closed down, for one thing, because nobody could settle their accounts, which put Margaret out of work with two young mouths to fill and Frankie Mulcahy’s chest not all it should have been.
I send her what I can spare,
Ursie wrote,

It was true it would have to be some kind of calamity for lawyers not to do well out of it, so Ursie had no worries. But it tickled me to think of Joe Kennedy as a lifeguard, helping to keep America afloat and pull her safe to shore. He watched out for his own, plain and simple, and if your name wasn’t Kennedy, he’d have the lifebelt off you before you knew it and sell it to the highest bidder. Anyway, Mr. K had a big new project. He’d palled up with the state governor, Mr. Roosevelt, learning the ropes of political office.

We were spared seeing the worst of things out in Bronxville, tucked away in our nice leafy garden. There was nobody panhandling on our street, no breadlines. Mrs. K’s packages still arrived from Paris, with gowns she didn’t have any occasion to wear, and Gabe Nolan still drove Mr. K around in the Rolls-Royce. He’d prospered. He didn’t have factories or warehouses full of stock. He just moved around quietly, picking up all those worthless bits of paper. Then he waited for their value to climb back up. And it was the same story when we went up to Cape Cod in the summer of 1930. In Hyannis you’d never have known there was anything wrong in the world. The sun seemed to shine every day and even Herself was in a good humor. There were no more visits from Miss Swanson, and Constance Bennett’s photo went back up on Kick’s bedroom wall. Jimmy Roosevelt and his wife came to stay, and a wonderful singer, Mr. Morton Downey, moved into a house just around the corner, so some evenings, instead of the everlasting cowboy picture shows they’d have a little musical soiree. The help all sat with the kitchen door open so we could hear him singing in the parlor.

Every day at Hyannis was filled. They all had a tennis lesson in the morning and sailing practice in the afternoon, with special instructors brought in, if there wasn’t a regatta for them to race in. Mr. K organized swimming contests too, and running races and games of football, but Mrs. K had no part of any of that. She liked to swim, but just gentle paddling about, with Danny Walsh to accompany her. They were a sight to see, walking down to the water’s edge together, Herself in a big rubber helmet to save her hair from the salt, and Danny in a woolen swimming costume, legs on him like a gray heron. His job was to bob around close by, in case a big wave swept her off her feet.

Fidelma said, “When you answered that advertisement, Danny, I’ll bet you never thought the job would mean taking your trousers off.”

He said, “Flexibility, Fidelma Clery, that’s the answer to survival today. You can’t just be a driver. Nor a nursery maid, so you can wipe that silly smile off your face, Nora Brennan. Think how much more I’m worth to the Kennedys than you are. Driver, swimming companion, projectionist, handyman.”

I didn’t care. I still wasn’t going into that ocean.

There were all the outdoor activities, but that wasn’t all. The older ones were expected to prepare for mealtimes too. Mrs. K had a notice board nailed up for pieces she clipped out of the newspapers, conversational topics she thought they should know about, so they’d have something to say at the dinner table. It was for the benefit of Joe and Jack mainly, so they could decide what they thought about things and then listen to what their Daddy had to say, but Kick and Euny were allowed to join in as well. Not Rosie though. She was excused from conversationalizing, and from the sailing lessons.

Mrs. K had her up to her room every morning for two hours instead, to try and bring her along with her reading and writing. It was no vacation for Rosie. She’d have liked to sit in the dunes and play with her dollies, I know, but Mrs. Kennedy said she’d never improve if she wasn’t pushed. And when her lessons were over she still didn’t get any peace. The others would drag her off to play French cricket and yell at her when she dropped the ball. Eunice was the only one who had any patience with her. She’d take her out in her dinghy once in a while and show her how to tack and trim the sails and Rosie would come back with a smile that’d light up a Christmas tree.

“I’ve been crewing for Euny,” she’d say, pleased as punch. “She said I did pretty good.”

She was a help with the little ones too. She’d feed Jean for me and push Bobby on the swing. Sometimes he’d get mixed up and call her “Mother.” He was a quiet one, Bobby. Always studying the floor, but then he’d up and do something to surprise you. I was sitting on the lawns one time with wee Jean on my lap when he came running up from the strand. He pushed a seashell into my hand, said “Love you,” and ran off again, come over all shy. A Scotch bonnet shell. I have it still. And that was the summer he punched Joseph Patrick. Young Joe had taken the book Jack was reading and wouldn’t give it back so Bobby landed him one with his little fist, and when Joe laughed at him he burst into tears and went and hid.

But he could be a grouch. Fidelma took to him more than I did. She says he’s still the most prayerful of the lot of them, and he did used to screw his eyes up tight when he was saying his rosary at bedtime. You’d have thought that would have endeared him to Herself, but she was starting to feel her wings by the time Bobby came along. And none of them ever got paid the attention Joseph Patrick did.

Things were so sweet between Mr. and Mrs. K that summer, she even had her way over Jack’s next school. He’d been intended for Choate, following in young Joe’s footsteps, but he was sent
to Canterbury instead, a proper Catholic school, right up by Candlewood Lake. He was in and out of the school infirmary all that first term, what with the batterings he took on the football field and his sore throats and stomach aches, so Mr. K said we’d all better go to Florida for the Christmas holidays, so Jack could get his strength up. Blue skies and palm trees on Christmas Day. Fidelma swore she’d died and gone to heaven. Ursie reckons Deirdre gets weather like that all the time in Africa.

But Florida didn’t do Jack a lot of good. He’d only been back at Canterbury five minutes when he was rushed to the hospital with his appendix attack, and after his recuperation he never went back. Mr. K said he was to have private tutoring at home to make up what he’d missed and then go to Choate in September. He said Mrs. K could choose whatever schools she liked for the girls but from now on his boys were going where he decided, to mix with the crème de la crème. That was how Lem Billings ended up part of the family.

Jack brought him home from Choate on their first weekend break, and apart from the war, they’ve been joined at the hip ever since. They were a pair. Both growing too fast for their own good, both covered in pimples, both of them needing glasses. They found one another highly amusing, talking in silly voices, sniggering and making up names for people. “Nurse Strict,” they called me.

I liked Lem though. He remembered his manners, and it was nice to see Jack with a proper friend. Those children had grown up too closed in, always playing with each other sooner than climb over the garden fence to find outside company. But in the end Lem hardly counted as an outsider anymore. He’d come to Bronxville every midterm break and to Hyannis too and leave half his belongings behind at the end of the vacation, that’s how sure he was he’d be coming back.

Mr. K said, “There’s a rumor that boy has family in Philadelphia, but I guess we’ve adopted him.”

It was all said in good part though, and we had another golden summer. Mrs. K had a little cabin built in the dunes, a place where she could sit and read without a football knocking the book from her hand, and I remember her quite gay and smiling.

Fidelma said it was because the Holy Father had sent out a letter reminding wives of their sacred duties. We’d all had to listen to it read out at Mass, everybody shuffling and coughing and looking at their watches, I don’t know if that was why Mrs. K came over all sweetness and light but anyway, when we headed back to New York in September she went up to Boston to see Dr. Good and she came home with the news that there was another little blessing on the way, Number Nine, due in February. In Ballynagore they used to say it was terrible bad luck to have three weans in a family born the same month.

I heard Mrs. Moore congratulating her.

She said, “You look wonderful, Rosa. You have the figure of a twenty-year-old.”

Mrs. K said, “I know I do. But I’m too old for this, Mary. I’m forty-two and I’m tired. After this one there can’t be any more babies. Joe will just have to realize.”

Of course, Mr. Kennedy could have anything money could buy, including lady friends for his comfort and consolation, and there never seemed to be any trouble about that between him and Mrs. K. They got along just fine, and when he opened his mouth she’d gaze up at him as though the Golden Oracle had spoken. But that was twenty years back. The shine has gone off Joe Kennedy since then, and Herself has her darling boys to gaze up at now. I’ve seen her. She looks at Jack just the way she used to look at Mr. K. Pity help the girl he marries. She’ll have Rose Kennedy for competition, fluttering her old eyelashes, hanging on his arm more like a sweetheart than a mother.

Teddy was born just after Kick’s twelfth birthday and Jean’s fourth. It had already been decided Jack and Rosie would be his godparents. Jack wanted the new baby to be called George Washington Kennedy, but Herself wouldn’t hear of it. He was to be named Edward Moore, for Mr. Moore, who was like a special uncle to those children. When Jack had his tonsils out it was Eddie Moore who visited him, and when his stomach was so bad that he had to go to the Mayo for tests, it was Eddie Moore who took him, because Mrs. K was in Paris getting another dose of culture and Mr. K was up and down to Albany with Jimmy Roosevelt, visiting with the Governor. Mr. Roosevelt was intending to run in the presidential election and Mr. K had offered his services.

Gabe Nolan reckoned we could end up at the White House ourselves someday.

He said, “Joe Kennedy doesn’t really have the time of day for Roosevelt. You know what he’s like when he’s around anyone born with a silver spoon, how he plays the barefoot Boston boy. And
you should hear him go on about Mrs. Roosevelt. She gives him the hoohas. But he keeps writing the checks. He’s backing him so he can get up close and study how it’s done. You’ll see. Next time round it’ll be Kennedy who’s running for president.”

I said, “It’s his boy he wants it for, not himself.”

He said, “I know he wants it for the boy. But if he got it first, then he could keep the seat warm. See what I mean?”

I never heard anything so silly. Joseph Patrick was only seventeen. But Mr. K had started including all the boys when he gave his pep talks about the future, even Teddy, who was still in diapers.

He’d say, “You’ve heard of the Three Musketeers. Well, you’ll be the Four Kennedys. When the time comes it’ll be a team effort to get Joe the presidency, then after his eight years he’ll pass it on to Jack, Jack to Bobby, and Bobby to Teddy. Once we’ve got it we’ll keep it in the family, like Mayer and Goldwyn. I learned a few things from those pants-pressers out in Hollywood.”

The girls he left to Mrs. K, which was how Kick came to be sent to the Sacred Heart Sisters. She was enrolled for Noroton, on the Long Island Sound, in the autumn of ’32. She might have been allowed another year in the day school but boys had begun to notice her, calling her up on the telephone, inviting her to cookouts and football games. Herself soon put a stop to that. Kick was on her way to Noroton so fast I hardly had time to stitch the name tags in her clothes. She was to be kept pure, with her mind on her studies and wholesome pursuits, and no more silly talk about boys.

Mrs. K used to say, “When a girl loses her good reputation, Kathleen, she loses everything.”

I don’t suppose she thought it any of her business to worry about the ones who might lose their reputations on account of Joseph Patrick. He was a chip off the old block when it came
to girls, always chasing them and then as soon as he caught them, giving the next one the eye. You hardly saw him with the same girl twice, but he always picked stunners. Mrs. K thought he should only walk out with Catholic girls but Mr. K said he didn’t care if they were Seventh-Day Adventists, as long as they were pretty. I’d watch the old goat sometimes, especially up at Hyannis, joining in the football, showing off in front of Joe’s girlfriend, finding occasion to bump up against her. And he always insisted on his good-night kiss, even if the girl had never met him before in her life.

Fidelma brought it up to Mrs. K one day. She said, “They don’t like it, you know, being made to kiss Mr. Kennedy. And I shouldn’t like it neither. Sixteen years old and you’re expected to kiss some old man. It’s not right.”

Mrs. K said, “What nonsense. They’re simply being made to feel part of the family, which is more than some of them merit.”

They were just somebody else’s daughters.

Kick didn’t want to go away to school. She didn’t think it was fair that Rosie was allowed to stay at home, but Rosie couldn’t have managed the lessons at a school like Noroton. She was grand as she was, getting her own private lessons and helping me and Fidelma with the little ones.

Thursday afternoons Kick was allowed visitors. Mrs. K quite liked to go, being an old Sacred Heart girl herself, but when she was traveling, Rosie and I would go instead. They served you tea in a big visitors’ room looking out across the Sound. It made a nice trip out, and when I couldn’t be spared, like when Jean and Teddy had the chicken pox, Rosie would go on her own. When they say she was always an imbecile, that’s what I bring up to them. If she was an imbecile, how could they have let her go visiting, all the way to Darien, with nobody but that fool Danny Walsh to keep an eye on her?
Mr. K was away all through that autumn, trailing around with Mr. Roosevelt on the presidential campaign, and Herself sailed to France and Italy, to recuperate from giving birth to Teddy and shop to her heart’s content. That was the trip when she started buying the dollies, but not for Jean to play with. They were dressed in national costumes, beautiful, expensive things, to be kept under wraps away from dust and sunlight. Eventually she had so many she had to get a special room for them, up at Hyannis, and none of the help liked going in there to clean. There was a maid called Freda, who swore she saw one of them move.

We saw nothing of Mr. Kennedy till the week of the election. Mrs. K was sitting on thorns, wondering if she was married to the next president’s right-hand man.

I said, “Will it mean moving again? Will we shift to Washington if Mr. Roosevelt gets in?”

“Very likely,” she said. “Of course we don’t know yet what position Governor Roosevelt has in mind for us, but we’ll certainly need a home in Washington.”

That was when we started hearing a lot of “we.”

“We’re throwing a party at the Waldorf, to celebrate our victory.”

“We’ll join the children at Palm Beach later, Nora. We’re invited onto Vincent Astor’s yacht first, as a thank-you for all we did to get FD elected.”

Then it was, “We’re waiting to learn what the President wants to do with us.”

And then, when the President didn’t appear to want to do anything with Mr. K, it was, “After all we did for that man. We should ask for our money back.”

Mr. K hung around in Washington though. He rented a house, a great big spread, according to Gabe Nolan, with views of the Potomac River, and he had a little elevator put in, big enough
for a bath chair and a bodyguard, to encourage the President to visit him.

Gabe used to say, “One thing about Joe Kennedy, he’s a hard one to snub. The weeks pass by and the President keeps not sending for him, but still he goes back to eat more shite and still he keeps smiling.”

But Mrs. K wasn’t smiling. Everybody else who’d helped the President get elected had been given a payback, even that old swindler Jim Curley. There were new ambassadors being sent all over the world and I know Mrs. K would have killed to go to Paris, but it wasn’t offered. Gabe said Mr. K had donated twenty thousand dollars to the campaign and it looked like he was getting nothing for his generosity but the brush-off. Danny Walsh said it was double that at least, and it wasn’t a gift. It was a loan, which Mrs. K said should be called in immediately.

Whatever he was thinking, you couldn’t read Mr. K. He went back to business, back to doing his morning exercises and quizzing the children every night, and he stayed thick as thieves with Jimmy Roosevelt, playing the long game. They went on a vacation together to England, with the wives along for company. I suppose if you can’t have the President’s ear, having his boy’s is the next best thing.

We’d had two golden summers at Hyannis, but they were over. From then on it seemed that every year there was something to cast a shadow. In ’33 it was the phone call that never came from the White House. It was Jack and Joseph Patrick forever sparring. And it was Rosie. Mrs. K had found a Sacred Heart school with Sisters who were willing to give private tuition. It was in Rhode Island. Rosie was enrolled there for September and it hung over us like a storm cloud all summer. I know Mrs. Moore pleaded for her not to be sent.

She said, “She’ll be so lonely, Rosa. It’ll be very hard for her to make friends when she’s being treated as a special case.”

But Mrs. K was determined. She said, “She has to go to school. I’ve really done everything I can. She needs to learn self-discipline and we’re all far too easy on her at home. She doesn’t always try her hardest, because she knows we make allowances. The Sisters will be good for her.”

Rosie cried and begged not to go. “I didn’t mean to dipsapoint you,” she kept saying. “I’ll try really, really. And I’ll help Nora with Teddy and Jean.”

She loved Teddy. Everybody did. He was a fat, smiling little body, always happy to be passed around and petted. I don’t remember him ever getting a sharp word or a paddling from Herself, no matter what mischief he got into. He was her frost-blossom baby and he was let get away with anything.

Now I look back, Jean was the one who got the rawest deal. Patty was strong enough to tag along with Euny and Kick and keep up, and Bobby was away in his own little world, but Jean was left out on a limb. After Teddy was born Mrs. K didn’t have any time for her.

I’d take her on my knee, but she wasn’t my favorite and she knew it, poor wee scrap. I still feel bad for her though she’s a grown woman now and making her own way well enough. It must be terrible to be lonesome with a great big family buzzing around you.

Outside of the nursery the only one who paid Jean any heed was Joseph Patrick. He took it very seriously that he was the big brother she looked up to, and her godfather too, but he was away to school. And when he did come home he and Jack were always fighting, particularly that summer. Joseph Patrick had won just about every sporting trophy going at Choate and all Jack had come home with was a set of arch supports for his shoes, recommended by a doctor who’d seen him about his back pains. He wore them, uncomfortable-looking things they were, and he did
some special exercises too, but he got nothing but ribbing from young Joe.

“Jack,” he’d say, “you been measured yet for the surgical boot?”

In the end Jack had his revenge. He told everybody at the dinner table how Joe had taken a drubbing from some senior boys at school, how he’d provoked them and taken them on and then they’d wiped the floor with him. He made everybody laugh, the droll way he told it, and Joe’s face was like thunder. The rest of that vacation every time Joe was in earshot, Lem Billings would say, “Hey, roomie, that fight Man of Steel was in? Tell me again. How’d it finish?” and Jack would say, “Man oh man, they wiped the floor with him.”

Joe and Jack had never been exactly best friends, and once they were grown men all they did was bicker and show off around each other. And Bobby, of course, wanted to keep up with both of them, to be a tough guy and a wiseacre. He knocked himself out stone-cold at Hyannis one time, smack into a tree, showing Joseph Patrick how fast he could run with a ball. He’d a bump on his head the size of a hen’s egg. Even Mrs. K thought a doctor should take a look at him, but he wouldn’t give in and admit to being hurt. He just chewed his lip and swallowed hard, acting the brave little soldier. He knew what the Kennedy rules were. No crybabies, no losers, and no sourpusses.