by Kathy McKeon
“No, you can’t take that,” I told her.
“You threw it away,” she argued. It was likely nothing of any importance, but I began tearing up any paper Madam was throwing away and tossing the shreds in a different bin, just to be on the safe side. This newcomer was a young, attractive party girl who liked to stay out late with her new boyfriend, and I figured she wasn’t sticking around long-term anyway. She didn’t know I was in the hallway one day when she picked up the phone, dialed a number, and murmured three words that made me freeze in my tracks:
“They’re leaving now.”
I knew Madam and Mr. Onassis were in the elevator on their way out for the evening.
“What’re you doing?” I challenged the maid as she hung up the phone. I didn’t wait for her answer and instead hurried to the dining room window. I could see photographers lurking across the street. The new hire and I had been friendly, with me even loaning her thirty dollars for the deposit on a fur coat she impulsively decided to buy when we were out shopping together the week before. It was an extravagant purchase on a servant’s salary, but I figured the boyfriend was helping out or something. That mystery man, I realized in the hallway, more than likely wore cameras around his neck. The maid all but admitted her betrayal when she narrowed her eyes and regarded me with pure contempt.
“If you tell,” she said evenly, “I’ll kill you.”
I turned heel and left her there. As soon as I saw Madam, I reported what I had overheard. “So that’s how he always knows when I’m coming out!” she gasped. Nancy Tuckerman dismissed the girl first thing in the morning. If there had been any sliver of doubt about the spy in our midst, it was erased when Madam took Ron Galella to court to make him keep away from her.
The verdict in her favor cited evidence that Galella had even “romanced a maid” to get information about Mrs. Onassis and her children! Mystery solved.
Seamus and I spent most of our free time as newlyweds house hunting. The ninety-day deadline for our eviction passed with nothing more than repeated queries from the trust about when our moving date would be. Even though Seamus was confident they couldn’t legally force us out without going to court, there was always the fear hanging over us that they’d do it illegally, and we’d come home one day to find our big maroon sofa on the curb along with the late president’s hi-fi. The money we were setting aside from our wages had to go to getting us a new place—an apartment if not a house—and the trust had to know we would never be able to hire an attorney to fight the eviction if push came to shove. We finally found a cute house in our price range in Sunnyside, a nice working-class neighborhood in Queens. The house had been built in the 1930s and never updated, but Seamus was eager to do the remodeling himself and make it ours. I could picture us raising a family there. There was a little garden, and trees in the backyard. The bank was less enthusiastic than we were when we went to apply for a mortgage. When I told Madam that the loan officer wanted a reference from my employer, she sat right down to write a letter of reference.
One look at who was vouching for my character and confirming my livelihood, and suddenly the bank couldn’t wait to loan us the money. Seamus closed on the house while I was in the Cape that summer. He called me from the backyard that night.
“Listen,” he said, holding the phone out from his ear. I heard a sound I’d never heard before, like a thousand cards being shuffled at once.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’s the sound of home,” Seamus replied, a chorus of cicadas in our trees.
We’d been settled for only a few months when I came out of the shower one morning while Seamus was happily working away on his long list of fix-it projects.
“Seamus,” I said, “there’s a lump on my breast.”
He dropped the hammer he was holding, and it clattered to the floor.
“Oh God, no,” was all he could say. It was just a small one, I told him, on the side.
We hurried to the doctor the next morning. He told me right away that I would have to have an operation to remove the lump and make sure it wasn’t cancer. As soon as I got to work, I told Madam the news. I was terrified.
“Oh, no, no, that doesn’t sound right,” she said when I repeated what my doctor had said. “I’m going to send you to my doctor.”
Her physician examined me and reached a different diagnosis: “This isn’t a tumor, it’s just a cyst,” he said. He prescribed something to get rid of the infection, and the cyst vanished, never to return.
I’d always been blessed with good health, and with me coming from a family of eight kids, and Seamus one of ten, I had no reason to think for an Irish-Catholic minute that getting pregnant was going to take time. Month after month, though, nothing happened. After two years of disappointment, my doctor suggested I try taking vitamin C, and lo and behold, it did the trick! The baby was due at the end of 1974.
I waited until I was starting to show before sharing the news.
“Oh, you’ll be leaving me now,” was Madam’s immediate reaction. The flash of self-pity passed quickly, and Madam was soon clucking over me like a worried mother hen.
“Kath, don’t carry that, it’s too heavy,” she’d warn if she saw me lifting a suitcase or box. She told me to go to Saks Fifth Avenue and pick out whatever I liked for my nursery. I selected a beautiful white crib trimmed with a narrow green band, and a fancy carriage with big fat wheels. As my pregnancy advanced, Madam hired a pleasant older woman to help me and get trained as my replacement. She lasted only a week. She was near sixty, and the job demanded far more than she’d thought; she apologized on her way out.
One of my last chores was also one of the most nostalgic—wrapping and hiding all the Christmas presents Madam had bought. As I tied the ribbons onto finished packages, I imagined doing the same for my own child the next year. I remembered how Charley and I would always get the Christmas tree ready for Madam and the kids to trim, setting out the boxes of decorations and stringing the lights through the tree’s boughs. Madam and the children seemed so happy as they drank eggnog and hung the ornaments, Christmas carols playing in the background and a fire crackling in the hearth. I wanted to create those kinds of memories for my family, too.
I was lying in bed at ten o’clock on Christmas Eve when the phone rang. It was Madam.
“Kathy! Where did you put the presents?” She sounded in an awful panic.
“Madam, they’re in the back hallway behind the curtains,” I told her. It was her own closet they were sitting in. She was acting like I’d sledded down from my mountaintop and pillaged Whoville.
“Well, you should’ve told someone where they were!” she said.
The baby wasn’t due for a couple of weeks, and on New Year’s Eve, I still felt up to ringing in 1975. Seamus and I were planning on going to a party his sister was throwing. I had my hair in rollers and was making a nice pot of stew over my kitchen stove when I started having labor pains that afternoon. I called Briege to ask what to do. She urged me to put off going to the hospital as long as I possibly could.
“If you go in too soon, they’ll just torture you,” she warned. I weathered the contractions for five hours, then took out my curlers and let Seamus take me to the hospital. I had lovely hair going into the delivery room. Clare Maureen McKeon was born fifteen minutes before midnight. I was so wiped out I thought Seamus was coming home from celebrating when he appeared at my bedside with a big smile.
“How was your sister’s party?” I asked.
“Kathy, we have a daughter!” he announced. “Did you see the baby?”
He took me to see our firstborn. I had it all now, my own little family snug in our own little house, the future wide open with possibility and promise.
Seamus called 1040 to tell everyone our news, and Madam sent flowers and her congratulations.
She had hired Seamus to oversee some renovations on the Peapack house that winter. She came out on a Thursday in March to check the progress, and they’d bickered over be
droom shutters she wanted taken down, painted, and reinstalled in two days’ time. Seamus told her it was impossible. The labor was more involved than she understood, and they wouldn’t dry by then anyway. Madam had squared her shoulders and thrust out her chin.
“I could do these myself in five minutes, Seamus,” she huffed on her way out the door. Seamus was still painting the shutters Saturday when Nancy Tuckerman called and told him everything was on hold. Aristotle Onassis had just died in a Paris hospital where he was being treated for respiratory trouble.
Madam sounded herself when she called me a month or two after his funeral to see if I would be able to work at the Cape that summer.
“You could bring the baby with you,” she suggested, “and just work around her schedule.” She made it sound easy. Provi was coming back, too, taking over the kitchen this time as cook. Bridey would be there at Jean Kennedy Smith’s, presumably, which would be good fun, plus there was Tom and Regina Kennedy (no relation), a wealthy couple in the neighborhood that Seamus and I had befriended long ago while the wife was volunteering on Bobby’s campaign. I couldn’t wait to show Regina the baby.
Clare was an easy little girl, and I knew she’d love all the attention she’d get with so many people around up there. Seamus was working hard but would still be able to come join us for a weekend or two. The extra money would be nice, too. We decided it made sense for me to go up for the season. Clare spent that summer dozing in her carriage on the porch and crawling after the oranges and grapefruit I rolled across the kitchen floor for her, until Provi complained that we were too noisy and kicked us out. My days were busy but not demanding, and it felt good to soak in the happy chaos of another Kennedy summer.
Seamus came up and would make himself useful by taking care of little repairs the aging gardener-caretaker and his nervous young helper hadn’t gotten around to, like replacing a rusted-out shower outside or resetting the boiler when the heat wasn’t working. Madam sometimes forgot Seamus was in the house, and would come sauntering into the kitchen in a flimsy nightgown. “Seamus! Sorry! Don’t look!” she would cry out. Seamus would already have turned around to face the wall.
The battle-scarred cousins imposed special “Seamus Rules” for the football games. You were supposed to wait to the count of ten before you rushed the passer or quarterback, but Seamus, they claimed, had a quick count. “It’s my feet that are quick, not my count,” Seamus protested, but the Skins were taking no risks. Seamus was given a blocker, and it was none other than Rosey Grier, who was the size of a refrigerator. The only way to get around Rosey was if you were airlifted. Seamus spent a good part of the games pinned to the ground with Rosey’s knee in his back. It was all in good fun and nobody got hurt. John had turned into a strong, athletic teenager and was more than capable of holding his own on the lawn by then. Caroline had graduated from high school and was enjoying a grand adventure in London, where she was interning for Sotheby’s.
Around seven-thirty one morning, Madam came running to find me in the kitchen, where I was putting the kettle on to boil water for her tea. Clare was in her high chair. I was surprised to see Madam up already.
“Quick, get Seamus!” she cried. “There’s a man sleeping in the living room! On the sofa!”
I ran to the bedroom and rousted Seamus from a deep sleep.
“Seamus, come quick! There’s a stranger asleep on the couch and Madam wants you to wake him up!”
Seamus jumped out of bed, scrambling to pull on his shorts.
“Why does she want me when there’s Secret Service out there with fookin’ guns?” he wanted to know.
“Just go! Go!” I gave him a shove, and he sprinted to the living room. A scruffy young man was indeed sound asleep on Madam’s sofa. A backpack and weird leather hippie hat were on the floor nearby. Seamus gave the intruder a poke and he startled awake.
“What the fook are you doing here?” Seamus demanded.
“I’m a friend of Caroline’s,” he answered. “She invited me for the weekend and said I should just wait for her.”
“She said that, did she? Well, that’s interesting, since she’s not even in the country,” Seamus retorted. By then, I was having second thoughts about sending my unarmed, half-asleep husband to confront the intruder, and frantically ran back to the phone in the pantry and dialed 9, which was our intercom to the Secret Service trailer. “There’s someone in the house!” I cried before slamming down the receiver. The agents appeared just as Seamus was frog-marching the intruder out the patio door. The agents took over and searched the stranger, then bustled him off. They let him go after questioning him. Just a harmless flake, they assured us. Madam had wisely remained locked in her room. Once the coast was clear, she ventured out again, still trembling, she was so scared.
“Oh, Madam, I’m so sorry,” I cried. “This won’t happen again! I should have been in the living room before you!” I had taken the back stairs down to the kitchen and hadn’t passed by the sleeping intruder. Madam wasn’t blaming me, but I felt guilty anyway, wanting to have spared her the shock of discovering the stranger in her house.
“Kath, you know, we have to learn to lock the doors at night,” she said. We were all too accustomed to the relaxed life at the compound, with everyone walking in and out of one another’s houses all the time, and so many people always around, plus the Secret Service trailer just steps away. We routinely left the kitchen door unlocked. I made a point to check it from then on, and all the windows, too.
Seamus adopted a take-no-prisoners attitude after that whole incident. One day while I was feeding the baby, a knock came to the same door the intruder had used, and I called out to Seamus to answer it for me. I heard him open it, then a woman’s voice saying, “Who are you?”
“The question is, who are you?” Seamus countered in a not-so-nice tone.
Which is when I heard the lady say, “Oh, I am so sorry! I am Eunice Shriver.”
Seamus immediately apologized, but that was the last time I asked him to answer the door or the phone when I was too busy. At least he hadn’t body-slammed her and claimed it was legal because her sweat was on his hand.
Madam asked us back the following summer, but that was my last one working for her. I was pregnant again.
There was no formal farewell, no send-off cake or any acknowledgment by either of us, but we both knew that I would no longer be Jackie’s girl.
ELEVEN
The Hole in the Flower
Our son, Shane, was born in the spring of 1977, and Heather followed a year later. Seamus built a successful career as a contractor, and I enjoyed staying home to take care of our family. Our lives were perfectly ordinary, and we wouldn’t have wanted it otherwise. I still called 1040 to chat with Marta and let her know I would be bringing the children into the city for a little visit with Madam. She always wrote a sweet note afterward, thanking me. In 1980, I decided to take the three kids up to the Cape for a little holiday and arranged to stay with our friends Regina and Tom. I called Madam to see if we could stop in to say hello, and she welcomed us with hugs and smiles, even digging out of storage an old painted wagon John and Caroline used to ride around in for my little ones to play with. She seemed surprised that I had come to Hyannis on my own.
“I had no idea you loved it so much, too, Kath,” she said. She had bought secluded beachfront property on Martha’s Vineyard and was building a magnificent home there. Her summer base was shifting from Hyannis to the Vineyard, but John and Caroline, off on their own now with college and careers, still liked to visit the compound. Seeing me gave Madam an idea.
“Why don’t you bring your family for the summer and stay in the house?” she suggested. We would be the caretakers for the season, and that way the house would always be ready whenever John or Caroline wanted to come. Seamus, she also knew, would ensure that the historic home was well maintained. It was a win-win proposition all around, and every June thereafter, we’d pile the kids, the dog, and all our gear for the summer into our van,
bicycles strapped to the roof, and drive up to the Cape.
John came back more frequently than Caroline, but the Cape was where she chose to have her wedding in the summer of 1986. I was touched to receive an invitation. The house would be full, of course, so we stayed at Regina and Tom’s. Madam’s hairdresser, Mr. Kenneth, and his assistant were there, too, tapped to style the bridal party. We all stayed up having a grand time, laughing and talking. Kenneth had offered to do our hair the next morning if we got up early. He was surprised to hear Regina wasn’t invited to the wedding, but insisted on doing her hair, too. Kenneth was shampooing my hair in the kitchen sink when I heard him give a strange little growl. “Oh, you sexy bitch,” he said. I was too freaked out to respond. Was this how Madam’s shampoos went all those years?
The wedding was gorgeous but not at all stiff and formal, everyone toasting the newlyweds beneath the billowing tent on the beach, old governesses mingling with old Cabinet members. Carly Simon sang, and fireworks lit up the sky. Instead of a little bride and groom, the towering wedding cake was topped with a quirky globe showing all the creatures of the world. I recognized the silver saber Caroline and Ed used to cut it as the same one I had noticed on the hall table that autumn day twenty-two years earlier, when I nervously stepped off the elevator at 1040 for a job interview.
Where were you when it happened, Kath?
Back at Tom and Regina’s house, the wedding fireworks apparently traumatized our dog, Max, who scurried under a table in a terrified panic. When the kids had badgered us for a puppy, Seamus and I had found a Shannon look-alike at a pet store to put in a box under the tree one Christmas morning. Tom had gone to coax poor, trembling Max out from his hiding place when the fireworks were over, and Max had bitten Tom on the hand. Seamus and I returned from Caroline’s wedding to see emergency vehicles and flashing lights outside Tom and Regina’s house. Tom got a few stitches to close the wound between his thumb and forefinger, and insisted he was fine. We were relieved but still mortified, of course, and insisted on taking our hosts out for dinner at the nicest restaurant in town the following evening. John was staying over at the Cape house and immediately offered to babysit Clare, Heather, and Shane. We’d brought a teen cousin along on the trip to watch them, but the kids were crazy about John, so we left them at the Cape house and headed to dinner in Tom’s fancy convertible. We enjoyed a lovely meal and were in great spirits as we cruised back up to the compound gates in the convertible and were met, once again, by the sight of flashing lights in the driveway. This time it was police and fire engines. Seamus jumped out of the car without bothering to open the door.
