And I didn’t buy the television to compete with anybody either. That wasn’t it at all. In any case, trying to keep him away from that old bugger is like trying to keep a wasp out of jam. Try too hard and you’re liable to get stung.
A sensible person would have given the television money to Stutz against the loan, but you think, What the hell have I been able to give the kid in the last ten years? Food and clothes and me, which strictly speaking doesn’t add up to entertainment. And figuring we practically live in The Bluebird, where else would I put it except here? Naturally, Daniel would prefer to have it at home. Now why’s that? Because if he claims to be watching television at home, how am I to know if he is or not, with him there and me here? He and the old charmer could be sitting thick as thieves and me without a clue, an inkling. Not on your life, Mother Brown.
What I’d like to say to Daniel is this: Don’t go making the mistake of thinking you’re something special to him. Everybody’s had their turn at that – me, Earl – and what did it ever come to? He’s old and there’s nobody else for him but you because the rest of us ran away to save whatever we could before he’d used us all up. I wouldn’t wish that feeling on my worst enemy, let alone you. So don’t flatter yourself when you’re no more than a convenience.
The trouble with truth is it’s cruel. That’s why nobody can bring themselves to tell it and I can’t neither. He’s never heard the word convenience out of my mouth.
And then he has the gall to tell me I never bought the television for him anyway. No, I bought it for myself and for the customers. “We wouldn’t have got a TV,” he says, “if Kennedy wasn’t running for president. And the reason you set it up in The Bluebird was so you could see him every night on the six o’clock news. And now those dumb Portuguese couldn’t live without watching ‘The Roy Rogers Show’ five nights a week while they wait for their supper. If you moved it out now, they’d riot.”
The resentment in his voice when he said that, where’d it come from? Patience is supposed to be the cure for what ails them, so I was patient. Didn’t I explain how, this being an election year in the U.S., a person could learn a lot about world affairs watching the news and hearing the candidates discuss the issues? Kind of a practical education. “You’re getting to an age where you ought to be paying attention to these sorts of things. They’re talking about your future,” I told him.
All he said was, “I like Nixon.”
I gave up and went to scrub potatoes in the kitchen then. Retreat so’s you live to fight another day. It’s hard to blame the kid when Stutz is as bad, an encouragement to him really. He hasn’t got a good word to say about the Senator either. Of course, Stutz being the sort of religious he is, the Senator’s being Catholic is no incentive. Tolerance was always a watchword with Stanley, and I tried to show Stutz that he had a prejudice but he couldn’t bring himself to agree. Never mind that after the first debate he as much as said that if you elect the Senator you’re mailing America parcel post to the Pope. “Change all the menus, it’s fish on Fridays for everybody,” he says. Considers it the height of wit to call the Pope “Big John” and the Senator “Little John.” It gets on your nerves after a while, a person with one joke.
The problem is that the Senator’s got too much class for the likes of Connaught to appreciate. I said as much to Stutz. “Yes,” he shoots back. “Class spelled M-O-N-E-Y.” You know exactly what kind of individual you’re dealing with when they confuse the two. Stanley always knew the difference. Say with Roosevelt, who wasn’t exactly a rag-picker. I looked Stutz straight in the eye and said, “Don’t talk to me about class. Class around Connaught is when a man doesn’t wear brown shoes with a blue suit.”
How’s Stutz expect to win an argument with me when he doesn’t have the facts? Me, I’ve got them cold. “Look,” I told him, “Senator Kennedy’s been to Harvard and Princeton, the best colleges in America – ask anybody, it’s public knowledge they are – and one in England besides, the name of which I don’t recall offhand. He’s a war hero and he reads 1,200 words a minute – about a thousand more than you do in a year. He’s visited thirty-seven countries and wrote a book that won the Pulitzer Prize. And look, just look at that wife of his. They say she speaks five languages and buys her clothes in Paris. It isn’t any ordinary dope that attracts a wife such as that. Like attracts like.”
When I was Daniel’s age I was going to speak French. Now there’s nothing left but Je ne sais quoi. Quelle heure est-il? Not enough for a conversation with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Not enough for a conversation with a dark, sophisticated man on the deck of an ocean liner.
She’s a beauty, that Jackie Kennedy. Even pregnant she’s beautiful, which is a feat. It’s how you can judge if a woman is really beautiful, if she can hold onto her beauty six months gone. Then the good bones and breeding shine through. Me, I was never happier in my life than I was six months pregnant, my feet disappearing underneath me, ankles like an elephant’s. But beautiful I wasn’t. Now I’m sorry I wouldn’t let Stanley take my picture. “Next time, next baby,” I said. “I’ll improve with practice.”
What gets to me is nobody around here is smart enough to recognize what’s truly beautiful. In particular the men. Big tits is their idea of beautiful. Ask a man in this dismal hole to name a beautiful woman and nine times out of ten you’ll get Marilyn Monroe. A person shudders to think that their kid will grow up no different. Not that I expect Daniel to marry a Jackie Kennedy. I’m not that far gone. Just so’s it isn’t some doll who wears too much make-up, tight skirts, and owns a pair of pointy boobs that look like they’re trying to drill their way out of a pink angora sweater. All I ask is for her to be good enough for him and not so good that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. Amen.
Still, the rumour is that Papa Joe Kennedy isn’t cut from the finest glass himself. You have to hand it to the old Paddy sonofabitch, he saw to it that his boys were an improvement on him. Which is all I aim for. I take heart when I see what can be done when you put your mind to it. Love conquers all. Not one of those Kennedy boys can’t pass for the finest Irish crystal – Waterford, no less.
Which must make it kind of disheartening for a father when he sees those brainless women carrying on over his boy, misjudging the Senator for a movie star instead of a future president. Old Joe didn’t raise him to be Errol Flynn, did he? The reporters have a name for them – jumpers. The double-jumpers are the ones holding the babies. They ought to have their heads examined, bouncing up and down on tiptoes, jiggling, squealing. It’s enough to give us all a bad name. Worst of all, men like to see it. A certain kind of smile will pass over Stutz’s face when he sees them hopping all over the TV. Deep down, he has it figured for sex, even in my case. Let him suppose what he supposes. Nobody imagines a person like me can believe in the higher, finer things. My friend Pooch certainly didn’t. That time I made the mistake of letting down my guard and talking of Stanley, what did she say? “Rub your eyes, Vera. Nothing could ever have been like you say, that good. How long were you married? Less than two years, right? Trust Pooch, who knows whereof she speaks, two years is as long as the warranty lasts and then something is sure to break. Money troubles, he starts running around, something. Seems to me that what you’ve been admiring all these years isn’t a husband but a character out of a book. Either way, he’s dead or never was. A ghost.”