An Uncommon Education (2 page)

Our last visit there took place on May 15th, 1983, an apparently normal, if not muggy, Sunday a month before my ninth birthday. My father had come home to eat lunch before meeting a new client later that afternoon. It was the third day of a heavy rainfall and I felt tired. He roused me enough to get dressed, out the door, and down the sidewalk, but by the time we were moving I knew I was not only tired, I was also sick. I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt his indignant description of Mr. Saab’s great-grandmother, a woman with a full black mustache and three chins, and my father was being asked to restore every line. Our walk was painstaking: he trying to convey a thorough description of that unfortunate woman, me focusing all my attention on keeping my lunch down. In retrospect, I’m glad it wasn’t a sentimental occasion. There’s nothing worse than ceremony when it comes to enjoying the last moments of something essential, like innocence or good health.

Mr. Saab had come, as many of my father’s clients did, with a few other men who stood just behind him. To this day, I’ve never figured out if they were supposed to be guardians or relations or both. I trailed behind the group as my father started his tour. As he walked he held one arm out behind his client, guiding him, but also careful not to touch him, like an usher at a fine theater.

The Kennedy house always carried the faint smells of dust, mold, and old perfume. I usually took comfort in its musky odors, but on that day the minute they hit me I grabbed my father’s jacket and pulled hard. He looked down at me and I motioned for him to come closer. He smiled apologetically at his guests before leaning down. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I told his ear, not touching it, afraid to move. He stood up slowly, his eyes fixed on me. I met his gaze, unrelenting.

He put one hand on my shoulder, “My daughter is feeling a bit tired,” he said, “she’ll wait for us while we take a look around.”

“I can go home, Dad,” I said.

“Of course you won’t go home!” he said, as though I’d suggested an adventure not worth having. “Where’s Mrs. Olsen!” he hollered, acting like we owned the place and he was summoning the help.

Mrs. Olsen was the government-appointed caretaker of the house. She appeared at the end of the hallway, coming forward cautiously and resentfully, her thick black hair a stark contrast to the paper-thin skin of her face. She must have been in her early sixties, but there wasn’t a strand of gray on her head.

“Mrs. Olsen,” my father said, continuing his performance, “Naomi is not herself. Would it be all right if she stayed here with you?” The question was a mere formality, a courtesy a rich man would display. To my astonishment, Mrs. Olsen nodded mutely. Maybe she, too, occasionally wanted to convince herself that this house was still someone’s home. My father turned back to his client before the spell could be broken.

“Let’s begin in the music room, to your right.” The arm went out, the hand just behind Mr. Saab’s back, blocking Mrs. Olsen and me, moving the men onward and out of the way. “If you’ll be so kind as to stay on the hall carpet, it is a requirement here”—he frowned; this was a personal disappointment of his—“and press the red button to your right when you feel you have the best view. Mrs. Rose Kennedy herself, the president’s mother, is the voice you will hear on the recording. I believe you will find her reflections amusing.” This last word in his script was always improvised: sometimes it was “entertaining,” sometimes it was “informative” or, if he was in an odd mood, “enlightening.” I could tell he was nervous when he used “amusing”; he was encouraging them to be distracted.

As soon as they were done with the music room and had walked up the stairs and out of sight, Mrs. Olsen turned around smartly, leaving me standing just inside the front door.

If I had been feeling better, I would have enjoyed the thrill of being left alone in the house, the chance to pretend that I belonged there. I practiced leaning idly against the wall, pretending I were simply stopping here between lunch in the kitchen and my afternoon piano lesson. The front door hadn’t been fully shut, so a breeze first carried in the smell of things growing outside, then picked up and blew the door open all the way, slamming it against the doorstop. I felt totally alone, as though my father and his clients upstairs and Mrs. Olsen in the back were just figments of my imagination.

With the door wide open I could see the rainwater dripping from the doorframe onto the welcome mat, already so saturated with water it was about to brim over. But it was getting brighter overhead, the sky beginning to dry. I walked outside and perched on the wet top step, listening to the distant sounds of people moving around upstairs. The wind died down and I smoothed my dress, one of my father’s favorites, trying to talk myself out of feeling as sick as I did. In another minute my father’s voice called down the stairs, “Naomi! You feeling better yet? Ready to join us?”

I stood up unsteadily and held on to the iron rail, leaned over it, and threw up into Mrs. Kennedy’s dahlias. Afterward, I rested my cheek on the cool metal, wishing, not for the first time, that this perfectly staged home was mine. I pictured Mrs. Kennedy tending those flowers herself, or picking them out, holding up a bud to the blue paint on the shingles. I sat down until my stomach began to settle. As soon as it did I felt exhausted, desperate to sleep. I crawled through the front door and hooked a right, making my way under the velvet rope into the music room, the carpet burning my knees. I headed over to the piano bench, crawled up on top of it, and pulled Mrs. Kennedy’s hand-stitched piano cover over me, so that I was lying on my back, my face to the ceiling, when I heard her voice coming through the floorboards above me, the words going in and out: “when the baby came she threw . . . many a tea party . . . disgruntled . . . John’s particular pet . . .” They had reached Rosie and Kick’s room at the top of the stairs.

The tour was almost over; Mrs. Kennedy was talking about the guests that the family loved to entertain. There were so many of her speeches I wanted to interrupt, wanted to ask her about. In the girls’ room there was a rocking horse, a miniature sewing machine, and a tiny, glistening collection of ugly crystal dogs, probably Rosie’s, my father would argue, because neither one of us knew for sure and we suspected no one did. I opened my eyes, grateful for the weak spring sunlight in the room.

When I turned my head I saw it immediately: a little bit of white, sticking out from the underside of the piano. I reached out to touch it, and realized it was thicker than it had first appeared. After a few seconds, I managed to worm free a small collection of papers from under the slats. They had been tied together with a string that was so frayed I had to be careful not to break it as I pulled the knot open.

I looked quickly to the door before examining my find: a photograph of Rose, my personal favorite (I’d seen it earlier that year in one of my father’s books; it had been taken in 1954, and I loved to note the similarities between her young face and her younger son’s); a letter; and another photograph, this one of Amelia Earhart in a dark blouse and belted trousers, her hand in her hair as she smiled at two men.

I read the letter first:

Many, many thanks for coming to see me on Friday. You were darling. I hope you liked every-thing here. . . . Mother says I am such a comfort to you. Never to leave you. Well, Daddy, I feel honour because you chose me to stay. And the others I suppose are wild.

It was not in its envelope, but I recognized it from a small collection of Kennedy letters my father had unearthed at the library and had begun reading to me earlier that spring. The Kennedys’ first daughter, Rosemary, had written it to her father in 1939, about a year before she underwent the lobotomy that took away her ability to speak, read, and write. After my father read it to me, I’d snatched the book from his hands, fascinated that such a thing could exist within the pages of such a serious, adult book.

I stared at the same words in my hand, now, in Rosemary’s own writing. The sight of her uneven lettering brought the girl herself to life unexpectedly, and I closed my eyes, imagining her sitting with a pen and paper, searching for the elusive words that might have convinced her father to return. (She never found them; many biographies of the Kennedy family claim that he stopped visiting her after the lobotomy failed.) I wondered if she could have left anything behind that would have given a clue as to whether she had been born broken enough to deserve that surgery, or if it was somehow something she had earned along the way. I turned to the second photograph. I didn’t remember any reference to Amelia Earhart in Rose’s book, though the print had been signed: “To Rosemary. Amelia.”

I turned that one over. On the back, at the very top, was written: “For my brave girl. Got this one special. Daddy.” And, squarely in the middle, in careful printing of a different hand: “She could fly.” Then, in the same writing, at the very bottom: “Rosemary.” The letters were spaced widely apart and the ink was dark and thick. I imagined the author pressing the pen down deliberately.

My family had talked about Rosemary, or at least she’d come up over dinner not long ago. My father developed heroic crushes, as my mother called them, where he’d dwell on a person from history exhaustively, or for however long we’d listen to him. He took special care to nurse the one he had on Rosemary’s mother, Rose, though I’m not sure if his adoration was pure or a front for talking about her as a role model for me. He never thought of my own mother as a role model, primarily because it was clear to all of us that she didn’t want him to.

That night at dinner, I was only half listening to him, wondering how he could have a crush on a ninety-three-year-old woman. I imagined her crumbling at the slightest touch, becoming a pile of dust in my father’s hands. “Now,
there
is an example of a woman with untold potential,” my father was saying. He loved to imagine women as limitless creatures, thinking he complimented us all by doing so. “Not only was she the matriarch to a nation, but she was able to do so even after her own early dreams had been squelched! You know, she was never even given a proper education. If it hadn’t been for her father,” he continued, “Rose would have gone to Wellesley College. And then who knows what. Pass the potatoes,
ketzi
.”

My mother intercepted me and passed the dish to my father. “She did go to the convent school, Sol. She did receive an education. And if Naomi is going to learn any of the manners you want so badly for her, you’ll have to learn to say please.”

“Thank you, my darling,” my father said carefully, barely breaking his stride. My mother released the dish into his hand. “It was her father’s political aspirations, you know,” he went on. “She was devastated. But he couldn’t have his Catholic daughter entering a progressive college during an election year.” He put his fork down, deep in thought. “I don’t think she ever forgave him. She always said it was her greatest regret.” He looked significantly at me.

My mother was still watching him. Her fork lay neglected by her side. He was eating again, oblivious to her stare, but I was riveted, my eyes on my mother, waiting for her to formulate the words that would decipher her expression. Finally, she spoke: “For a woman who ostracized one daughter and killed the other, you certainly have a very high opinion of her.”

My father looked up, his food halfway to his mouth. “She didn’t kill Rosemary,” he replied, the hurt and outrage in his voice making it sound thin and reedy, like a man who had just been pinched. “She might as well have killed her,” my mother said quietly, looking down at her plate.

“It wasn’t like that,” my father insisted. “The poor child was born defective. Her mother did the best she could.” “A lobotomy?” It was as much a question as an accusation. My father shook his head. “She did the best she could,” he repeated. My mother’s lips tightened. He had somehow made her angrier, but she said nothing more. I was already beginning to notice how, in my home at least, many conversations didn’t end with the last words spoken.

Aside from the obvious fact of her beauty, I sometimes wonder if my father’s early sadnesses had drawn him inexorably toward my mother. Maybe she felt familiar to him the moment they met; maybe, over time, he was able to soothe something raw in himself by tending to her so regularly. He certainly loved her. Though sometimes, when I watched as his energy and cheer emptied into her unchanging expression, I wasn’t sure why. It was like watching a man throw pebbles into a pond, studying the surface and hoping for waves.

I know now that my mother was, most likely, a lifetime sufferer of clinical depression or one of its variants, but all of us were poorly educated on the subject, my mother not least of all. I suspect that’s why so many of our behaviors around her pain were almost superstitious: the less we spoke about it, the less we acknowledged it outright, the less real it might become, like a demon that grows petulant when ignored and searches for a more attentive believer. But sometimes it was clear that her unhappiness had no desire, least of all to be acknowledged, and its very stagnation was part of what made it so penetrating. I’m sure my mother was aware that help was available to her in some way—occasionally she visited doctors, had “appointments,” as my parents called them—but she never sought regular care, as though it were her sole responsibility to overcome what gripped her so tightly it seemed she sometimes couldn’t quite breathe.

And so, as I lay on the piano bench, I found myself playing one of my favorite games: wondering what else my mother might have said during a conversation if she hadn’t stopped talking. I wasn’t even sure I knew what a lobotomy was. I was hardly alone in such ignorance, but at the time I simply thought I was too young, that this was one of the many things that adults understood and I did not.

The sound of heavy steps on the stairs startled me out of my reverie. I shoved the papers under my dress and made myself as still as possible, desperately hoping that they wouldn’t notice me. Unfortunately, my father saw me the instant I was in eyesight, as though I had been glowing.