The Kennedy Debutante

by Kerri Maher

  He started walking away, then stopped and turned back to Kick. “I thought you were married to some English lord of the manor,” he said, half in question and half in jest.

  Why did Waldrop have to go bringing Billy’s sweet face into this place that had been mercifully devoid of any memory of him, where the hustle and bustle of reporters and the hammering clack of typewriters were vigorous enough to keep her mind present here, and not floating off in some cloudy memory-fantasy. Shake it off, she told herself. “I should think the editor of a newspaper would be better informed than that,” she replied with her most winning dare me smile.

  Frank’s ears turned red for a second before he guffawed with laughter. “I can see I’m going to have my hands full with you,” he said.

  “I’ll see to it, sir.”

  It felt good, mouthing off like that to her new boss. She’d forgotten how thrilling that kind of risk could be. Still, it was hard to lose the image he’d brought to her mind, of Billy heading out to dinner in London on his night off, without her.

  * * *

  “He’s crazy about you, you know,” said Inga Arvad on a sultry late-July morning on their way to work. Kick and the stunning Danish journalist had become friends at a party given by one of the Times-Herald’s beat reporters in his cramped studio apartment a few weeks before. She was referring to John White, one of the paper’s star journalists, who had also been at the party. He and Kick had argued heatedly about birth control, of all things: he thought it was essential for the modern family “who didn’t have as many resources as Pa Kennedy to raise a noisy brood, to say nothing of the modern man and woman who want to fully enjoy one another’s company,” and Kick believed what the church had taught her, which is that it wasn’t man’s place to stand in the way of God’s will.

  He’d been hounding Kick ever since, which was nothing short of remarkable, since he might have been going after Inga, like everyone else. Her social views were more liberal, like his—in fact, she was still married to filmmaker Paul Fejos, but he was in Peru working on a documentary series, and his memory never gave her pause about taking lovers. Plus, she had that glossy blond hair, exotic accent, and tantalizingly mysterious continental past, which included a brief flirtation with Adolf Hitler. But Inga was no Unity Mitford: she was too confident to be sycophantic, and too worldly to be in thrall to such a monster. If Inga was like anyone, it was Marlene Dietrich.

  “John’s such a big bag of wind,” Kick said dismissively, though secretly she was flattered. John White reminded her of Bertrand—a whip-smart iconoclast who wasn’t afraid to say anything. But John was pure American, more vulgar without the British sense of propriety to temper him. He had a gruffness, a very masculine appeal. Kick could imagine him as a boxer or football player, always tan, fit, and a little disheveled.

  “Be careful, ma chérie. John is handsome and can be very charming,” Inga warned in that auntly tone she sometimes took, the only thing that irritated Kick about her new friend. She was merely seven years older, twenty-eight to her twenty-one, and Kick had traveled just as much as Inga—though she knew she lacked the experience with men that twice-married Inga had. Still, Kick had been in love. And had likely lost him for good. Didn’t that count for something in the realm of experience?

  “I’ll be fine, Madame Bovary,” Kick joked. “I know how to watch out for myself.”

  Inga laughed gently and linked her arm through Kick’s. “I am sure you do, Isabel Archer.”

  “Well, at least we both have ignominious ends in common,” Kick quipped, glad that Sister Kit, the same nun who had educated her about her body, had also lent her copies of these otherwise verboten novels.

  Soon she’d situated herself at her desk with a cup of the horrible black stuff from the staff room everyone politely called coffee; at least it woke her up, so she drank it to be part of the team. The phone rang off the hook that morning, and she took pages of messages for Frank, who stayed behind his closed door. Inga was across the room, alternately resting her feet in their chic shoes on the desk as she talked on the phone or sitting with elegantly straight posture as she typed on her Royal with a furrowed brow. Page was a few desks away from Inga, as buttoned-up and serious as ever despite her red nails and lips.

  A bit before noon, John breezed past Kick’s desk on his way into Frank’s office, and without looking at her, he dropped a sealed envelope on her desk. There was something small and round inside, and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what it was, but something told her this was a prank. If there was one thing a Kennedy could sniff out, it was a prank. The thing to do was be ready to strike back. With that thought in mind, she drew in a fortifying breath and opened the envelope. Inside was a folded piece of paper with John’s handwriting on it, and when she unfolded it, a little disk of rubber fell onto her desk. It looked a little like a deflated balloon that had been rolled up, and it had a vaguely chemical smell, similar to what she sometimes inhaled when a car was being filled with gasoline. Perhaps the note would provide a clue.

  Moonlighting at a gentlemen’s magazine for extra cash, doing an article on these little gems. Even the military promotes them in adverts to our boys. “Put it on before you put it in,” the slogan goes.

  Kick felt her cheeks flame up. This was one of those things that men . . . she couldn’t even think of it. Quickly wrapping the disk back in the paper and stuffing it into the envelope, Kick looked around to see if anyone had noticed what she’d been reading and touching. As she sat at her desk, drumming her fingers on the blotter and considering how she could possibly retaliate, her phone rang. It was Rose.

  “Mother, I’m not supposed to receive personal calls at work,” Kick said, her irritation sharper for having just been made a fool of in so private and intimate a fashion.

  “I know, Kathleen, and I’m sorry, but this is business, in a way.”

  “Oh?” She could hardly concentrate with that thing on her desk. And she hated all the more that John had succeeded in distracting her this way.

  “Yes, you see, your father’s heard about a procedure that might help our dear Rosemary.” Of course. Of course you’re calling about Rosemary. Not to see how I’m doing. Not that I’d tell you the truth right at this of all moments.

  “Procedure?” she repeated, trying mightily to focus.

  “There is a Dr. Walter Freeman, at Saint Elizabeths Hospital right there where you are in Washington, and he has been getting some apparently excellent results with a sort of new brain surgery. Your father and I read an article about it in the Times, and he’s been curious about it ever since. As you know, Rosemary has been having . . . more trouble lately.” Kick knew. Her older sister was in a convent just a few minutes away from her own apartment, but she’d been sneaking out when the last lights were turned off, then wandering the streets until either she got scared or someone caught her and called the Mother Superior.

  Unlike with John and his little roll of rubber, Kick knew exactly what her mother was asking her to do. “You want me to use my press card to make some inquiries about Dr. Freeman?” Kick asked her mother. She wouldn’t have to go far, as it happened—John White had recently embarked on a series of articles about the hospital. But why did it have to be John?

  Rose sighed with relief at not having to actually make the request in so many words. “Yes. Could you? I’d be so very grateful.”

  It was amazing how solicitous her mother had become since their return from England. Kick couldn’t quite bask in it the way she wanted to, though, knowing that she couldn’t share with her mother her heart’s greatest desire.

  But their interests were aligned here, at least: Kick did care what happened to Rosemary, so she replied, “Of course, Mother. I’d be happy to.”

  “Thank you, Kathleen. Bless you. Now, what about you? Do you have everything you need? I’m going to Saks tomorrow and could pick something up for you.”

 
There were a few things she needed, but she didn’t feel like using now as the time to make such requests. “No, thanks, Mother. I’m fine.”

  As soon as she hung up, John appeared at Kick’s desk.

  “What did you think?” he smirked.

  “Of?” Kick replied innocently. It was a pity she didn’t find him less attractive. That frequently unshaved jaw and those big shoulders stirred something in her. It was different from what chivalrous, fine-featured Billy evoked, that pure, girlish longing. John infuriated her, but the fury was tinged with pleasure. It was difficult to describe, it was so unfamiliar. Perhaps it was exactly what she needed.

  But first there was the matter of the “little gem” in her desk. She wasn’t about to let him have the satisfaction of knowing he’d rattled her.

  John crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at Kick, who sat, trying to look as naive as possible.

  “You inscrutable little kitten,” he finally said.

  “Someone told me once I had a good poker face,” she said. “Too bad I hate playing cards.”

  “Cards are for people who don’t know how to play real games,” he said.

  “My brother Joe would disagree with you,” she said, standing up and grabbing her handbag from the floor. “Hot Shoppes?” she asked breezily, referring to the diner so many of them frequented for lunch. “I want to pick your brain about a few things.” No time like the present to start working on her mother’s request.

  “Can’t today,” he said, sounding genuinely regretful. “Have a meeting with a source.”

  “So clandestine,” she said in an exaggerated tone.

  John waggled his eyebrows and took off, leaving Kick short of breath and confused. Slipping out of the office and into the searing August noon, Kick shaded her eyes as she trotted around the corner to a deli, where she bought a tuna salad sandwich and a cold bottle of Coca-Cola, which she pressed against her forehead as she crossed the wide boulevards to get to a bench in the shady, green respite of Franklin Square. Even sitting under the generous branches of a leafy cherry tree, Kick was hot. Like she was in one of the steam rooms of the spas her mother sometimes took her to. The cold soda helped, until it was gone. Soupy Boston had nothing on Washington’s humidity.

  She squinted against the powerful sun. From her bench, she could see the arching white dome of the Capitol, the immensely tall Washington Monument piercing the blue sky, and even a bit of the Doric splendor of the Lincoln Memorial, though she couldn’t see the great president enthroned behind the columns. It was a sight to behold, and she understood why all those buildings’ clean, white lines appealed to patriots and immigrants alike, speaking as they did to the rigor and order of life in the United States. Occasionally, especially at night when the cruel sun had dipped below the horizon and streetlights and spotlights began to illuminate the city, Kick could feel a surge of pride in her chest at the sight of these buildings.

  Then she would recall what it had felt like to stand at the base of Big Ben, or St. Paul’s, or to look out a window from the houses of Parliament down into the rushing Thames, and for a precious second or two she could feel in her bones how those buildings had changed her. But that sensation was hard to hold on to. And if it was getting hard for her to remember what it had felt like to be in London, she could imagine how hard it must be for Billy to remember being with her, especially after all that had happened. London itself was changed. Though he had traveled across the channel only once in two years, he was in the new and exciting place, having new and exciting adventures, not her.

  When the Blitz began, her friends invented a whole new way of going out in the evenings. First, everyone who was on leave and in town would check in at the Ritz or Savoy—before it was bombed and had to close, it was the Café de Paris. Some nights, a few of them would stay long enough to gather a larger group that would move on to one of the other nightclubs, always leaving word of the next destination with the maître d’, who passed along the intelligence to anyone allowed to have it. There was something so deliciously clandestine about it all, and so admirable in the way they worked all day and then danced so much of the night, only to get up the next morning and do it all again. “It’s our only way to thumb our noses at Hitler now,” Debo had written her. “We carry on, to show him he hasn’t gotten the better of us.” How Kick wished that she, too, could be at the center of things, even as the bombs fell, even if it meant having to pick her way through rubble to get back home. All that danger, the huddled togetherness of drinking and dancing while sirens wailed outside, sounded vastly more thrilling than moving to Washington, DC, to live the independent life she’d craved for so long.

  Kick finished her sandwich, then crumpled its wax paper cover and gripped it in one fist while she held the now-warm Coke bottle in the other. Only proximity would mend the rift between her and Billy; of that much she was sure. How can I get back? It had been her nightly prayer of the past two years, always going unanswered.

  CHAPTER 19

  Her prayers at last received an answer in the unlikely form of Carmel Offie, a friend of her father’s who worked in the State Department. She made a passing remark that DC “is great, but no London,” and he’d replied, “You know, you could parlay that job at the Times-Herald into a press visa to get to London, though your father would kill me for suggesting it.” The rest of the lunch had been consumed with plans for making it happen, starting with a well-placed phone call Offie promised to make to Ambassador Anthony Biddle, who was stationed in London working with Poland and other countries currently occupied by the Nazis.

  To celebrate her bright, shiny secret, she’d gone out with Inga and John and some of the other reporters and had quite a gay evening, though she regretted it the next morning when her head was pounding and her stomach churning. “If you’re going to keep up, you’ll need to learn to pick yourself up the next day,” John told her at work before taking her to lunch at a tiny restaurant called Betty’s. “Best thing about this place is that you can get eggs any time of day. And eggs and bacon are exactly what you need.”

  The coffee was good, too. “I hate to admit it,” said Kick, starting to feel human again halfway through her breakfast for lunch, “but you’re right.”

  “Why is it so hard for you to give in?”

  “Kennedy curse,” Kick said.

  “You joke, but it appears to be true. It’s what got your father in that mess in England.”

  “Let’s not talk about Daddy,” Kick said. Or England—I don’t want to jinx my chances of getting back.

  “Can’t talk about Brother, or Father,” John said, stroking his chin as if in deep thought. “What can we talk about? The only Kennedy lady I’m interested in is you.”

  Kick felt her face flush and drank some cool water to restore herself.

  “How about Dr. Freeman over at Saint Elizabeths?” she asked as casually as she could. “I read your first article about him. Sounds interesting.”

  Asking John about his writing was like flipping a switch in his brain—Kick was convinced it was part of his arrogant streak that he liked discussing subjects he knew more about than anyone else. But she also liked to see the way his work animated him, the way it ultimately took him outside himself and his own immediate concerns and desires. “It is interesting,” said John, leaning both arms on the table. He had such a tightly wound body, the heat from it just wafted off of him. She leaned back in her seat to stay cool.

  “The hospital’s been in that huge Gothic building for almost a century, and few journalists have ever really looked into it. Did you know that Carl Jung worked there? And Ezra Pound was a patient? It’s the nerve center of psychiatric work in this country, if you’ll forgive the metaphor.” He went on to describe the hospital’s state-of-the-art medical equipment and the new “truth serums” they were beginning to test on patients.

  “Is that what Dr. Freeman is studying?”

/>   “No, no,” said John, lighting a cigarette. “Dr. Freeman is testing lobotomies.”

  “What’re those?”

  “Brutality, if you ask me. He’s scraping out people’s brains in the hopes of curing them of a whole host of mental disorders. Which it does, in a manner of speaking. It can make hyperactive patients calm. Too calm.”

  Kick shivered. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you look into their eyes and it’s like looking through a window. A clear glass pane.”

  “But you said it calms them down?” She wanted him to say something more . . . hopeful. Something that might validate any shred of what her father seemed to believe.

  “Who’d want to be calm at the expense of everything else? Drinking too much and falling in love and having eggs and bacon on a Wednesday at lunchtime when you ought to be pounding away on your typewriter?” John grinned at Kick. It was his best smile, the kind and solicitous one that made her feel beautiful and necessary. She only hoped he meant that part about falling in love generally. Not specifically about her.

  “So you disagree with these articles in the New York Times that seem to suggest Dr. Freeman’s a genius?”

  John inhaled deeply on his cigarette and blew the smoke out so it just tickled Kick’s right ear. “Oh, he’s a genius all right. But so’s Adolf Hitler.”

  She nodded, understanding exactly and shivering again at the foreboding goose bumps on her spine.

  “And now for a happier subject,” he declared. “My sister Patsy is dying to meet you.”

  “Me?” Kick’s head was still in the discussion about Dr. Freeman, and she felt conversational whiplash.

  “She can’t imagine anyone as smart as I’ve said you are believing in all that Catholic nonsense.”

  “Not this again!” Kick moaned.

  “I’d leave you alone for a kiss,” he countered.