by Kathy McKeon
When I arrived at my childhood home, I expected to walk through the door and find Mam perked up by the prospect of seeing me, sitting by the kitchen fire and waiting, maybe even putting a chicken in the pot for a celebratory dinner. The fragrance of the fresh bread she had made that morning would still be lingering in the air. My brothers would come in from working the fields, and we would all have a nice reunion and everything would be fine again.
But the kitchen was empty, and the air was heavy and stale. Peering into her dark bedroom, I could see a figure beneath the white sheets.
“Mam, Aunt Bridge said you’re not getting up,” I said, my tone more accusatory than pleading. If coaxing could work at this stage, Aunt Bridge already would have succeeded. I needed to be tough, let her know this nonsense was over.
“I can’t get up,” she replied dully. “I don’t know why.”
“Come on, I’ll help you,” I insisted. I got her robe and held it out for her. “Let’s go sit by the fire.”
“No, I don’t want to,” she cried. “I hate that kitchen! I don’t want to be in there!”
I retreated to make some tea and toast. If she wouldn’t get up, maybe I could at least get a bit of food in her. She had always been stout and rosy-cheeked, but now she looked haggard and empty. She was only fifty-six years old! I took the tray in and sat at her bedside, but she left it untouched. I wasn’t sure whether it was because she couldn’t bring herself to, or simply wouldn’t. Part of me still wrestled with the notion that this was all a dramatic ploy for attention. She had never wanted Briege and me to go to America in the first place—that was all Dad’s doing—and she never stopping hoping that her daughters would come back home to her. Spending all that time with us in New York had only made her pine that much harder.
Days passed with me making no progress. Waiting her out wasn’t going to work. I needed a new strategy.
“We have to do something, Mam,” I told her the next day. “How about we go see Aunt Kathleen? Do you think we can do that?” Kathleen Carroll was her sister-in-law, who lived a mile and a half away. They’d always enjoyed visiting back and forth before. To my surprise and relief, Mam agreed.
“I think I can walk to see her,” she said.
I had expected resistance, and wasn’t sure whether to trust this breakthrough. She could just be going through the motions to get me to stop badgering her. “You’re going?” I double-checked.
“Yes!” she said. She roused herself and began to dress. Aunt Kathleen was thrilled to see us, and we stayed for tea and a good long chat. Mam and I went back home with me silently congratulating myself for a mission accomplished.
The next morning, she refused to get up again.
I waited until midafternoon, then put on my coat and went into her room.
“I’m going to leave you here for a little while and go see Mrs. Kirk,” I announced. Mrs. Kirk was a cousin of Mam’s and had been maid of honor at her wedding. They’d been great friends their whole lives.
“I’ll come with you!” Mam flew out of bed and fixed herself up, and off we went to Mrs. Kirk’s. By now, I was convinced that Mam was making a cod of me. Jim and Owney, the only ones still living at home, were out working all day and spending their free time with friends of their own. Jim had a girl he was serious about. Our house was tucked far back from the road, down an unpaved lane full of potholes, and you wouldn’t see another human being for a month. There were no other houses in sight. No lights, no voices. With her children grown and her husband gone, Mam was stuck alone much of the time with only the sound of the miserable, constant rain outside to break the silence. Companionship was what she wanted, but that wasn’t something I could provide indefinitely. I was just starting to claim my own life now. I hated to see Mam suffering, but at the same time, a part of me also felt like I was being held emotionally hostage.
Every day was a repeat of the same struggle with Mam, and I realized I would never be able to leave Ireland if the two of us stayed locked in this tango. The bicycle messenger had already pedaled up the lane with the first telegram from New York. It was signed “Nancy Tuckerman,” but obviously she was just following Madam’s instructions:
How is mom doing. Stop. Hope better. Stop. When coming back. Stop.
It had been just two weeks! Could I not for once put my own family first when they needed me more? I thought resentfully. I wired back:
Not good. Stop. Need to stay. Stop.
Another week passed, with Mam still showing no inclination to stay out of bed and get back to her normal life. I tried to busy myself by mopping the floor and tidying the cupboards. There were still hens to feed, but Mam had stopped having anything to do with turkeys ages ago. I spent tedious hours sitting by the fire in the kitchen, just thinking and waiting.
“I came all the way from the United States to see you and you still won’t come out to talk to me,” I called crossly into the dark bedroom. “You just make me sit here by myself.”
One afternoon when I went out to pick up groceries at Finnegan’s market, I walked back over to Mrs. Kirk’s, desperate for advice. Could she come talk to Mam, I asked, see if maybe she could snap her out of it? Mrs. Kirk shook her head sadly. She didn’t think people could just decide to stop being depressed. This might be more serious than I realized. “You’d better get her to a doctor, Kathleen,” she urged me.
The bicycle messenger arrived with another telegram.
How much longer. Stop.
I started making appointments, dragging Mam from office to office for tests and consultations. Somewhere along the way, I learned of some nuns who ran a nursing home in Dublin for women who’d had nervous breakdowns or were seriously depressed. I got in touch, and they said they could help her.
“No, I’m not going there,” Mam declared. “They’re just going to abuse me and push me around.”
“Mam, they won’t,” I promised. “It’s not like that. They’ll make sure you get up and get dressed, that you get some exercise and good nutrition. You’ll go to church every day and get Communion.” Mam reluctantly agreed to give it a try.
I’d sent word to Seamus of my plan, and he had gallantly offered to use his own vacation time to fly to Dublin and help me. The telegrams were coming from Nancy Tuckerman every few days now, each more urgent than the last, reminding me I was overdue back home, wanting to know when I was returning. I had to walk a mile and a half to the village each time to reply, a variation each time of the same message.
Need more time. Stop.
Madam probably had convinced herself I wasn’t returning at all, that I had my Irish fiancé now, and we were going to make a life for ourselves back in Ireland. It would be time to go to the Cape soon, and she was worried I was abandoning her. Returning to Ireland for good always had been my dream, true enough, but Seamus and I saw that happening in some distant, successful middle-aged future, not right away. We both loved New York, and Seamus saw a more exciting future for himself in construction here than back home. I believed in him, too. We had a real shot at staking a claim on our own piece of the storied American dream now.
I managed to deliver Mam safely to the nuns’ care, and they soon reported back that she was starting to come along. They were getting her up each morning to go eat breakfast at the table with the rest of the patients, and taking her for mandatory walks in the garden and to daily prayers. She would need to stay a while longer. It took two weeks, they had cautioned me when she checked in.
Seamus flew into Dublin airport, and the mere sight of him instantly restored me from my own utter weariness. We dashed off to Leitrim to see his family for a couple of days, and stopped to visit Mam when we got back. She adored Seamus and was thrilled to see us.
“I’m coming home with you today!” she said.
“No, Mam,” I reminded her. “They said you need to stay another week.” Her face sagged with disappointment and, maybe because Seamus was there, shame.
“A lot of patients are worse than me,” she sulked.
“I’m not that bad at all.”
“No,” I agreed gently. “You’re not bad at all.”
I still had the extra ticket Madam had bought me. She couldn’t have known that her generosity came with a price tag I could never manage. Looking at my needy, broken mother, I knew I couldn’t care for her in New York. American doctors were notoriously leery of uninsured immigrants who never paid, leaving their debts behind when they just turned around and went back home. And psychiatrist bills aside, I couldn’t very well quit my job to babysit Mam.
Aunt Bridge wasn’t helping my guilt by reminding me every time she saw me that this was my fault, my fault and Briege’s. We shouldn’t have gone to America and left Mam in the first place, she sniped, and bringing Mam over for Briege’s wedding had only served to rub her face in the life she didn’t have, with her daughters by her side as they should be.
Mam was back in bed when Seamus and I left for the airport. It was early July, and our wedding was just four months away. I knew it was unlikely Mam would be there, so I reminded her that both Seamus and I would be back the following summer for a nice long visit. It was the best—the most—I had to offer.
It was only after my brother Owney moved her to a small house he bought up on the main road next to Finnegan’s shop—a house with no memories of the daughter and husband she had lost—that her sorrow finally lifted.
I was expected at the Cape as soon as I got back. Marta was taking her annual trip home to Europe, so I would be caring for John and Caroline as well as their mother again. Mr. Onassis wasn’t coming. I went to my little room, put on my lavender uniform, and resumed my other life.
Caroline was thirteen going on fourteen that summer, just starting to tug at the reins that her mother was reluctant to loosen. Her teenaged cousins had a lot more freedom, and Caroline wanted to be treated the same. She was a straight-A student and a kind, responsible girl. She wasn’t likely to join the ones who’d sneak off behind the dunes to drink and party around a little bonfire, their portable stereos blasting the Doors or Beatles or Stones to the backbeat of crashing waves. Their shenanigans were an open secret, and though I didn’t drink, I knew there were Irish bunnies and other young staff members who did join them. Sometimes a gang of cousins would just hang out in the basement at Rose’s or a rec room at Ethel’s, moving all the furniture to create a dance floor. Madam always sent me to fetch Caroline at ten o’clock. I would sit in the dark on the steps by the garage to wait. The other kids loved to tease her by loudly announcing that her governess was waiting for her. Even the youngest of them got to stay out until eleven or midnight, if they had a curfew at all. Caroline would stay inside as long as she could, hoping I’d give up and leave, but I just sat and waited, and finally she would emerge, fuming.
“Why can’t I stay?” she’d demand.
“It’s your mother making the call, not me,” I reminded her. I was as sick of this drill as she was, and I didn’t blame her for being so frustrated and embarrassed. Madam picked on her too much, telling her she couldn’t get the hippie jeans with hobo patches like all the teenagers were wearing, or that she needed to stay away from the French fries she loved to eat. I’d conspired with her on the jeans, the two of us secretly sewing on colorful patches and using nails to shred them so they’d look worn and frayed. She hid them but wore them whenever her mother wasn’t around.
Caroline was getting ready to start boarding school that fall at the Concord Academy, and as I stitched name tags into all her clothes that summer, I hoped she would get the chance to spread her wings a bit, even if she did have to take the Secret Service with her. As she stalked home for her too-early bedtime on yet another summer night when she could be dancing and laughing with her cousins, I decided to do what I rarely did, and confronted Madam as soon as I had the chance.
“I’m not doing this again. I don’t like Caroline getting mad at me,” I began. “I feel she knows what she’s doing. She’s a good girl, you know.”
Madam was quiet for a moment.
“I think that’s right,” she allowed. “I’ll tell her that her curfew is at ten, and she needs to be home fifteen minutes later.”
It wasn’t much, but at least it would spare Caroline the humiliation of being walked home like a kindergartner by her nanny. She was ready to start becoming her own person. I couldn’t help but wonder how that was supposed to work for her when not just her mother but the whole world wanted to cling so fiercely to the child she once was. More than five years had already passed since her father’s assassination; soon it would be ten.
I knew Caroline was excited about me getting married and would be thrilled to come to the wedding, but as Seamus and I made out our guest list, we debated whether to even send Madam an invitation. I couldn’t picture her and Mr. Onassis in our budget banquet hall at the Astoria Manor, getting swarmed by our rowdy Irish friends and eating poached chicken breasts, but at the same time, I knew it would hurt her feelings if we didn’t at least ask. “She won’t come anyway, but out of politeness we should invite her,” I said to Seamus, tucking an invitation with response cards for Madam, Mr. Onassis, and the children into an envelope and addressing it.
With the clock ticking down, I still needed to buy a wedding dress. I took the train up to the Bronx on my next day off. I’d seen a bridal shop on Fordham Road while visiting Aunt Rose and Uncle Pat. The salesgirls helped me pull six or seven dresses off the rack to try on, advising me to choose the style I liked best regardless of the fit—it would be altered at no extra charge. I pulled on a satiny ivory gown with just enough beading and a ladylike high collar and long sleeves.
“I’ll take it,” I instantly decided. I put a deposit down and went to my aunt’s house to share the news.
“You did it all by yourself?” Aunt Rose said, sounding dubious. “How do you know it looked good?”
“The shopgirls said so,” I told her.
“Well, of course they did!” Aunt Rose cried. “They would sell you anything!”
My sister thought I had been too rash as well. The two of them decided I needed to go back with reinforcements before making my final decision. They returned to the shop with me the next day to have me model my selection. As soon as I came out of the dressing room, they both said they loved it.
“I love it, too,” I said. Their honor restored, the salesgirls showed me the headpiece that went with the dress, and shoes to match. They were perfect, so I bought them as well. Alterations on the dress were finished, as promised, a week later. I had just enough money to pay for the whole trousseau.
“Does it have lace on it?” Caroline wanted to know.
“No lace,” I told her, “just beads.”
Everything was coming together.
“I envy you two starting out, doing it all your way,” Madam said wistfully one day. She was hungry to hear all about my plans for setting up house with Seamus. I realized for the first time that she must have felt the same way I had, though on a much grander level, about the magnetic force of the Kennedy family pulling you close. She had famously redecorated and restored the White House, but here she was wondering what it was like to pick out tea towels at Gimbels. To start from scratch and make something wholly your own.
“What’s the apartment like?” she wanted to know.
“It’s nice and big,” I said, “but there’s not much furniture left, since Seamus’s brother and sister moved out and took their things with them. We did buy a sofa, though.” It was the kind of maroon-floral monstrosity considered fashionable in the early 1970s, with a high back and big wings. I regretted it for years. Seamus’s brother or sister had left behind a cheap table. Other than the double bed I was leaving behind in my old apartment, I didn’t really have any furniture to contribute. If this had been an arranged marriage in some country where a dowry was expected, I’d have ended up being stoned by angry in-laws when all they got were some tea towels my sister sewed.
“Kathy, why don’t you and Seamus come down to my storage unit and
see what you could use?” Madam offered. She didn’t have to ask twice. The unit, it turned out, was more like a warehouse, packed with art, furniture, and all kinds of crates and boxes. She led us through the maze of things she’d even forgotten she had, making a list of what we were getting as she went. It was like winning a TV game show starring our very own host, Jacqueline Onassis.
“Oh, this is nice,” she said, selecting an Oriental room divider with delicately embroidered scenes on its four screens. A half-moon armchair wearing a slipcover in pale pink and melon would make a pretty accent in our guest room, but Seamus and I exchanged alarmed side glances when Madam also chose two flowered area rugs, one banana yellow, the other hot pink. (“I’m scared to walk on this,” Seamus’s uncle Martin later said when he saw the banana one in our living room. “Is it supposed to be a bedspread?”) The heavy beige velvet curtains were meant for windows much taller than ours, but Briege could always take them up on her sewing machine. I was too shy to turn anything down or speak up about what types of things might be useful. We didn’t want to seem grabby, or spoil the fun Madam seemed to be having setting up her imaginary little starter home.
The big treasure in the hunt turned out to be a bulky solid-wood hi-fi with sliding doors that hid an old black-and-white TV. The console had either belonged to JFK or was one of the many White House pieces that were replicated, with the doubles used by his widow at either the Cape or 1040. It weighed a ton. The old TV still worked but proved too low and too small to watch comfortably from our oversized couch. The stereo speakers, on the other hand, were out of this world. They could blow you into the next room when you cranked up the volume. When we discovered big reels of JFK speeches in one of the cabinets, we were too clueless to appreciate their significance and didn’t have the kind of machine needed to listen to them, so we threw them out. The hi-fi was eventually handed down to one of our daughters and her husband, who later donated it to the Salvation Army.
Boxes of pots, pans, cutlery, and wineglasses completed our Jackie O shopping spree, and Madam arranged for everything to be loaded onto a truck and delivered to us. Her thoughtfulness touched me more deeply than she could have known. Mam wasn’t going to make it for the wedding, and it felt nice to have Madam’s attention and interest in my big new beginning. Her generosity didn’t stop there.
