The Importance of Being Kennedy Read Online Free PDF Page A

to get by, and the first time Joseph Patrick gave her any trouble, she picked him up, hollering and kicking, and carried him to his room like a roll of linoleum.
    The weekly nurse came a few days before the baby was due, and Mrs. K started her pains right on time, same as she did everything else. Everything was going along nicely and I quite thought we’d be cleared away by teatime with the baby safe in her crib, but when it came time to send for the doctor, he couldn’t be reached. He’d been called away to somebody with complications, and you couldn’t send for any other doctor. They were all run off their feet with influenza cases.
    I said, “It hardly matters. It’s her third child. She knows what to do.”
    The nurse said, “It does matter. If the doctor isn’t here when it’s born he won’t get his fee and then I’ll be for it.”
    It seemed to me you couldn’t do much to stop a baby if it was ready to come, but she was the nurse and I was only there to help. So we tied Mrs. K’s knees together with a scarf and the nurse instructed her that whatever she did she mustn’t bear down when she got one of her urges. She was a model patient. I never heard her cry out once. And that’s how we kept Rose Marie from being born until Dr. Good arrived, bounding up the stairs with his ether mask.
    I loved all my Kennedy babies for their different funny little ways, but Rosie was the real beauty among them. She’d a mop of black hair and big green eyes and she was so contented. She’d lie in her crib for hours, smiling at the world and playing with any little toy you gave her. Not like Jack, always crying. Not like Joe, always looking for trouble.
    If I’d been Mrs. K I’d have been up in the nursery gazing at Rosie all day long. She was like a perfect little doll and Herself loves dolls. Sure she has a whole room full of them at Hyannis, all in their glass cases. But she didn’t trouble us much in the nursery. She preferred to be down at her bureau, clipping out articles on how children should be raised and making lists of things that had to be seen to. Timetables, charts for their weight, charts for their teeth.
    Joseph Patrick was forever asking why did I live with them.
    “Don’t you have a mother and a daddy?” he used to say. “This is my house. But when I go to school you can still stay here. You can look after Rosie.”
    I wasn’t sure I would be staying, because me and Jimmy Swords were sort of engaged. Frankie Mulcahy was back from Pennsylvania and Margaret wanted us to name the day as soon as Jimmy came home. A double wedding at Most Holy Redeemer and then to Mazzucca for ice-cream sundaes. She had it all planned. But Jimmy didn’t come back from Flanders in a marrying frame of mind.
    He said, “What’s the point? Bringing more kids into the world. Cannon fodder for another war. Factory fodder for the bosses. It’s all shite.”
    He’d got in with a lot of socialists in his battalion, putting the world to rights while they were waiting to be sent up the line to fight the Bosch.
    I said, “I thought we’d won this war so there won’t ever be another one. And what’d happen if everybody had your attitude? There’d be no more babies. Nobody to look after you when you’re in your bath chair.”
    He said, “I’m not going to be in a bath chair. I’ll put a bullet in my brain sooner. And I’m not getting married. It’s nothing personal, Nora. You can keep the ring.”
    Silly beggar. He’d never given me a ring.
    I did wonder, had he met someone else, somebody prettier. One of those French mam’zelles. Mammy always said it was a good thing I had my health and strength, because my face would never make my fortune. I wasn’t exactly heartbroken over Jimmy but I did stop looking in the mirror. Looking in the mirror could make a girl dissatisfied.
    Ursie said, “Never mind. You’re better off staying single. You’ve a nice little job and a roof over your head and that’s more than