Free The Importance of Being Kennedy by Laurie Graham Page A

she was tubbier and wearing spectacles, but she hadn’t a line on her face. Still that big, shining smile. “Did you hear the angels last night, Nora?”
    Directly after the New Year, Mr. K was off on his travels, to Florida first, to play a few useful rounds of golf, he said, and then to California. The children hated to see him leave. The house felt different when he was at home. Kick and Rosie loved making up little dances to perform for him, and the boys liked to get him playing spit or concentration. That last evening, before he left for the train station, Herself even dusted off the pianoforte and played “Silent Night.” Me and Fidelma sat on the stairs and listened.
    She said, “Happy families, Brennan. Fair brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?”
    Mr. K was to be gone a month at least. He came up to the nursery to kiss Bobby good-bye, only Bobby wouldn’t be kissed.
    He said, “Nora, I may not be around much but my children are everything to me. If ever there’s a problem, if ever there’s anything you think I should know about, especially when Mrs. Kennedy goes away to have the baby, you can ask Eddie Moore to call me. I don’t care what time of day it is. He always knows where I can be reached.”
    I said, “They like to get your little letters.”
    “And I like writing them,” he said. “Regular correspondence is a good habit for a child to learn. It’s been such a swell Christmas. I really hate to go, but when you’re in business you can’t turn your back for a minute. You have to be on the spot and on your toes.”
    After he left I heard Mrs. K back at the pianoforte. She was playing Mayor Fitzgerald’s favorite, “Sweet Adeline,” putting in all the twiddly bits, but when I looked in on her to say good night, her face was grim enough to stop a Waterbury clock. It was common knowledge, written up in the dailies, that Miss Swanson was down at Palm Beach too, and even a new mink jacket couldn’t take the sting out of that. Rose Kennedy loved her husband. She just didn’t care for all that pushing and grunting.
    Danny Walsh drove her up to Boston the next week, to a nursing home, to get ready for her lying-in. There were to be no more home births. She said, “I can’t get the rest I need with children running up and down the stairs, and it’s not good for the baby tohave a mother with jangled nerves. If there are any problems you must call Mrs. Moore.”
    Mary Moore was very good-humored about taking over when Mrs. K was away. She even came down when Joseph Patrick made his first Communion, because neither his Mammy nor his Daddy could be there. But I didn’t have to call upon her while Mrs. K was away to the baby hospital. Even Jack managed not to get sick, and we had a grand time. I gave Rosie a holiday from learning her letters and she helped me with Bobby and Pat, and when the others came in from school I left them in peace to play their own games. There were none of Mother’s Quizzes to study up for. Joe was thirteen by then, so he thought he was too old for milk and cookies by the nursery fire. He liked to be out of doors, throwing snowballs at tin cans or polishing his ice slide. But Jack didn’t care for the cold. He’d have his head in an adventure book or play a game of Chutes and Ladders with Kick and Euny.
    It didn’t worry us that Mr. and Mrs. K were both away from home. In fact we all preferred it. With Mrs. K you could never be sure where you stood. Little things bothered her. You could be getting the “dear heart” treatment, hearing how she could have married Sir Thomas Lipton, if she’d played her cards that way, and been a real English Lady; then she’d start going through the trash can and before you knew it you were getting a telling-off because you might have eked one more spoonful of malt extract out of the jar you’d thrown away. Left to ourselves, me and Fidelma could run that nursery blindfolded, and after Jean arrived we had plenty of chances.
    Jean