The Pink Suit: A Novel (21 page)

T
he farewell tour was Patrick's idea. Before they left America, they would take a week and travel to California, Texas, Florida, and all parts in between. “See the whole place, all of the United States, do it up right,” he said.

Kate thought that seeing the entire country would probably take a little longer than a week, but Patrick was so enthused, she hated to spoil it.

It was difficult to believe, but they really were going back to Ireland. It was amazing how quickly the idea became a plan—and a very good plan for all involved. Patrick's uncle still had a butcher shop in the English Market in Cork City. He had no sons, only daughters whose husbands did not care for the trade. Patrick could partner with him, build equity in the business, and within a couple of years the shop could be his.

They would live with the Old Man at first. Train into the city and back. Kate would try her hand at design, maybe take a few dresses to some of the posh shops in Cork City for consignment. And she could still work for the Ladies when they went to the Paris shows. It was their idea: they didn't want to let Kate go.

“You're one of us, my dear,” Miss Sophie told her.

“We had such hopes,” Miss Nona said.

It was crushing to leave them.

Every moment together, Patrick and Kate plotted, planned, and schemed for happiness. Nearly every sentence was qualified with the phrase “But it will be better once we get to the Island.” Although neither Kate nor Patrick could quite believe that to be true, their lives had become about the promise of it all. Every Sunday, there would be a roast joint in the oven, crusty golden potatoes, peas with mint, and puddings topped with bitter fruit and rich yellow cream. And there'd be proper pots of tea with buttered oatcakes served on a lace tablecloth. And peat fires to ward off the winter's chill.

And, perhaps, a child. Or two.

When the end of July arrived, a For Sale sign was placed in the window of the butcher shop, and Father John telephoned and spoke to Kate. “I can't believe you're really leaving,” he said.

“Not right away. It will take a while to sell the shop.” And then she told him about Patrick's plan for a “farewell tour.”

“You're going to drive across America in a week?” He sounded skeptical.

“Patrick has great faith in his Rose, with her V-eight engine and remarkable Oldsmobility.”

She thought she heard the priest chuckle. “I'll see you both at the rectory at half past two,” Father John said. It didn't sound as if they had a choice in the matter.

At half past, they arrived, wrinkled and damp. The summer had been torrid. “I won't miss this heat,” Kate said to Patrick.

“Nor all this sun.”

They sounded nearly wistful.

Father John was in the garden in short sleeves, his collar, and old cotton pants. He'd been pulling dandelions all afternoon. His face was deeply red, as were his arms. He poured them each a glass of grape Kool-Aid, chugged his down, caught his breath, and said, “Really? You're leaving? You know, they don't have sun in Ireland.”

“It's not that we don't love America,” Patrick said.

“We really love it,” Kate said. She was surprised by how much she meant it. “But the business had fallen off—”

“A man has to work,” Patrick said.

And that was true. Father John could not deny it. “Well, let's have a wee bit of a chat about your farewell tour, then.”

The rectory office was dark and cool, a welcome relief. It was filled with the comfort of books. Father John turned on his desk lamp, went into his file cabinet, and took out three large manila envelopes filled with maps. He carefully laid the AAA TripTiks across the width of his desk.

“This is America,” he said. “Been wanting to tour it myself. Do it up right, like in that television show
Route 66,
with the wind in my hair and the open road unfurling before me. Then I saw exactly how much unfurling would have to be done.”

Just talking about the open road made Father John seem younger. But the open road was, indeed, daunting. His desk was quickly filled with maps and books.

“How long?” Patrick asked.

“If you drove straight through to Los Angeles using the freeways and not stopping to see any of the sights, and then turned around and drove back, it would take about ten days. If you didn't sleep and you had a lead foot, and ate sandwiches in the car, you could make it in a week. It's well over five thousand miles there and back.”

Patrick picked up one of the maps. A thick yellow line with an arrow pointed downward on every page. “You'd need all of these?”

“You would. And more. To see the entire country, including the things you'd want to see, like the Grand Canyon, it would take weeks. Months, even.”

Kate had suspected as much, and probably so had Patrick, but the thought of one last trip with Rose and her Oldsmobility had gotten them through so many dark moments. The idea of a farewell tour was so lovely. Kate would miss that car, silly as that sounded.

Patrick leaned over and held her hand. “Maybe we'll just drive for three days, down the coast and back,” he said. “Just see what we can. Boston is nice, I hear.”

“Or not. Either way,” Kate said. “It's really fine.”

“Or,” Father John said, “you can see it all anyway.” He opened his desk drawer and took out three tickets and held them like a fan. “Freedomland.”

As soon as Kate saw the brightly colored tickets, the song from the ads ran through her head:
“Mommy and Daddy, take my hand. Take me out to Freedomland.”
It was the largest amusement park in America—and just a few blocks away.

The priest handed the tickets to Patrick. “The park's promoters donated them to the Gaelic football team, and we have extras.”

On the radio and on television, in magazines and newspapers—it was even featured on the
Ed Sullivan Show
and in
Life
magazine—the amusement park was advertised everywhere. “Just a half an hour on the subway from Times Square!” The park was shaped like America because it was the entire country in miniature. They even had a futuristic Satellite City, where you could ride a spaceship around Earth. Not the real Earth, but close enough.

“It's historical—and they have sea monsters,” the priest said. “You could take Little Mike. I bet he would love to ride a Wild West stagecoach with his beloved auntie and uncle, or take a Chinese junk across San Francisco Bay. What child would not like that?”

Patrick, a Yeats man, was clearly not impressed. “It's not real, John.”

“It's America; it doesn't need to be.”

Patrick put the tickets back down on Father John's desk. “Thanks for the kind thought, but—”

“Little Mike will love it,” Kate said, and picked them up again and put them in her purse.

In August, the First Lady went into early labor. The baby, a boy, died two days later. That night, Patrick and Kate were lying in bed, sleepless. Patrick was on his back, looking up at the ceiling fan, listening to the
tick, tick, tick
of it.

“I can't even imagine it,” he said.

For Kate, the scenes on the television news were more eloquent than words could ever be. The President and the Wife were getting into their car to leave the hospital. The stunned look on their beautiful faces, and the way he shyly reached out to take her hand and then held it as if he would never let it go—it all said so much more than words could.
The wise heart is mute,
she thought.

Kate and Patrick lay in dark for a long time. When it seemed as if they had both finally drifted off to sleep, he said, “Did you know what the baby's name was?”

She did. It was Patrick.

“We should get some sleep,” she said.

The next morning at breakfast, Kate announced that there'd been “enough sorrow.” Patrick looked up from the newspaper. His reading glasses sat low on the tip of his nose. “We're going to Freedomland on Sunday,” she said. “I'll do up my hair with the pillbox hat and wear the pink suit. I'll smile a good deal. It will remind everyone of happier times.”

Patrick blew on his tea to cool it. Thinking. Then said, “It's a fine idea, Mrs. Harris. We'll give it a go.”

They took Rose; they put the top down. Little Mike, in the backseat, was laughing. Patrick said the boy was basking in Rose's Oldsmobility. Although Kate was still not exactly sure what that meant, she laughed when Patrick said it.

As they drove, people they passed on Broadway waved at them. Kate waved back, as she'd seen the Wife do. It was the royal wave that the Queen herself did at her own coronation. It was just a slight twist at the wrist—a restrained move that oozed regality and did not suggest excitement. Kate mimicked it easily.

“It's probably the gloves,” Patrick said. “White gloves lend themselves to poshness.”

It was a dry, warm morning. Patrick took a very long way to the amusement park. In fact, he drove up and down Broadway a few times before they actually left the neighborhood. So many from the parish smiled and waved at them that it was difficult not to want to drive forever.

“Maybe we should wait until Thanksgiving to go back home,” Patrick said. “Just in case business turns around.”

“Once more around the neighborhood?” she said.

“Of course.”

They both knew that the business would not turn around. At least, not as much as they needed. In three months, they would be gone. Rose would be sold. But on that day in August, they were still Americans. They had the suit.

Freedomland U.S.A. was just three years old. It was owned and built by the same man who'd designed Disneyland, but it was bigger and better and had cost a staggering twenty-one million dollars to create. Kate couldn't remember the man's name, but she'd read in the
Post
that he was in trouble because he'd built the park without Mr. Walt's approval, using Disney's staff and designs and, perhaps, some of his money.

Freedomland was bigger than Disneyland even dreamed of being. There were eight miles of rivers, lakes, and streams. Its Great Lakes held 9.6 million gallons of water. There were also five hundred thousand yards of streets, six miles of railroad track, and fifty thousand trees. Nearly ten thousand cars could be parked in their lots. Over ninety thousand people could pass through the gates in one day. In an effort to help people grasp the sheer enormity of the undertaking, the official guide was eighteen pages long. It had a two-page color-coded map that alerted visitors to the restrooms, a fact that Kate greatly appreciated, and explained in great detail the seven regions of the four-hundred-acre park.

“Massive,” was all Kate could say.

Even the traffic jam leading to the park was monumental, and they were soon stuck in it. After an hour of moving an inch at a time, Patrick Harris pulled the car off to the shoulder of the road just to take it all in for a moment.

“This is bigger than Ireland.”

“That's because it's America,” she said.

Parking was fifty cents, but the attendant waved them through. “No charge. Nice to see you, Mrs. K!”

Kate was surprised that the man was so kind and made sure that she waved that white-gloved wave directly at him. “Thank you so very much,” she said, whispering, just as the Wife would have done. The man blushed.

“Well, wasn't that fun, Mrs. Harris?” Patrick said sweetly, and kissed her hand, but that was just the beginning of it.

On the streets of Old New York, in front of the miniature of Macy's department store, on the tugboats in the harbor, and at the suffragette rally that was interrupted by a gangland robbery of the Little Old New York Bank—even on the horse-drawn streetcars—there were so many people who wanted their picture taken with Kate that she started to smile, pose, and talk like the Wife.

“They must think I work here.”

“Or they just like beautiful women.”

When the parade marched down Main Street, the band nodded as they passed her. Kate waved. One of the policemen helped her onto a float of the White House, and she waved while Patrick and Little Mike ran behind, laughing.

Kate, in her pink suit and pillbox hat, waved her way through the Great Chicago Fire, where, miraculously, the flames did not frighten Little Mike at all. Nor did the tornado ride, where houses spun like ballroom dancers. Kate continued to wave for hours.

By the time they'd reached the Santa Fe Railroad, where they rode the Monson No. 3 all the way to 1906 San Francisco, Kate had become so tired of waving that she wanted to stop, but everyone still waved at her, and so Kate continued on.

In Chinatown, they ate shrimp chow mein with chopped celery, fried noodles, and the tiniest pink shrimps that Kate had ever seen. She waved between mouthfuls. On the Earthquake ride, where San Francisco shook apart and then came back together, she was still waving.

When they took the half-hour tour of the New England countryside in an old Model T, past vineyards and rippling streams, and then cruised the Great Lakes on the
Canadian,
a gigantic paddle-wheel boat, Kate posed for pictures at every possible juncture. Somewhere along the way, she began to sign autographs, too. She wrote in the same handwriting that she had seen on Her Elegance's drawings.

After nearly eight hours of being the Wife, Kate wanted to stop, but it was difficult. There were so many people who wanted the simplest of things—a photo, a word, and, sometimes, a hug. She could not deny them. At the seal pool, Patrick and Little Mike were hungry again and announced that they were in desperate need of root beer floats. Patrick remembered that they'd passed an A&W on their way somewhere but couldn't remember where it was, exactly.