The Kennedy Debutante

by Kerri Maher

  She laughed off his offer, and said, “I suppose I’ll have to find a way to cope, then.”

  John looked put out, but Kick ignored it. Surely he knew that a girl like her would take more courting than a few lunches and an invitation to meet his sister? American boys had no clue. She thought of Peter Grace and his years-long patience, which had finally come to an end. Just a few months ago he’d married mousy Margaret Fennelly, of all people. Well, Kick had thought when she learned the news, if he’s going to be happy with Margaret, then his pursuit of me was completely misguided.

  I know what love can be, and I’m not going to settle.

  * * *

  It was torture waiting for word from Offie and Biddle, but lunch with Nancy Astor’s niece Dinah Brand went a long way toward reassuring her that she was on the right path. Dinah blew into Washington on a cloud of Penhaligon’s perfume, armed with a packet of letters she handed Kick as soon as they sat down.

  “These are all from your friends, begging you to come back and save Billy from that parvenue.”

  Kick laughed at the flattery.

  “I’m working on it,” Kick said, still not wanting to mention the press visa. “I have a plan, but I don’t want to say too much about it yet. It’s almost impossible for Americans to get over there.”

  Dinah waved her long fingers, and said, “Pish. You’re a Kennedy.”

  Kick looked at the letters and opened the one on top from Debo and Andrew that began, “Dearest Kick, Billy still loves you. You! Sally is only second-best, and he’ll be ruined if he marries her. Even the duchess doesn’t like her . . .”

  Kick felt her heart swell, her stomach riot. So things had gotten that serious between Sally and Billy? Just a few months ago, it only sounded as though they’d been seen together in the groups that roved from club to club over London. Now, it appeared, much more was at stake. Kick swallowed and realized her throat was parched. Her precious press visa—maybe she was too late. “I haven’t heard from Billy himself in weeks and weeks,” she admitted to Dinah. “I worry that I might not . . . make a difference.”

  Dinah looked at Kick as if she’d suddenly sprung a third eye. “Darling, none of us has ever seen Billy so smitten with anyone as he was with you. His heart is yours, forever. He’s just that sort of man. Of course he hasn’t written you lately because he doesn’t want to remind himself of you when he’s on this absurd collision course with Sally. He’s only with her because he’s lonely and doesn’t want to go back to the war a bachelor. God forbid a virgin. He’ll drop her like a hot potato if you arrive back on the scene.”

  From your mouth to God’s ears, thought Kick, though Debo’s letter sat like a bad omen on the white tablecloth.

  The next day, there was a letter from Billy waiting for her after work. The sight of his nearly illegible scrawl on the Compton Place stationery sent a convulsion of excitement through her. Maybe their friends had succeeded in talking him out of it already. Maybe he’d come to his senses all on his own, and in her reply she’d be able to write the wonderful news that she was just waiting on a visa for the next boat to him. Maybe God had sent Dinah to prepare her for this news.

  Her eyes moved over his words so fast she hardly understood them, especially as the tears rushed in. “I finally had to give up hope of our ever marrying . . . 400 years of history . . . I respect your position on the religion question . . . I respect you too much to ask . . . I must return to the war . . . Sally’s been a great comfort to me . . . I’ve made up my mind . . . duty . . .”

  Curses on the passenger boats! It had taken longer for Dinah and her packet of pleas to sail across the ocean than it had taken Billy’s letter in one of the new airmail carriers. When Dinah had boarded her ship in London, there had been hope. Now there was none. He was engaged to Sally, code breaker extraordinaire.

  And curses on Billy! Hiding behind what he thought she wanted. Behind propriety and those four centuries of history.

  She crumpled the letter and threw it into her closet before screaming into her pillow. Then she was seized by an overwhelming need to move. Run, swim, jump—do anything other than sit in her wretched little apartment. But where would she go? This wasn’t Cannes or Hyannis Port or Palm Beach, where there were wide-open spaces in which she could exhaust herself in water or on a court. So she screamed and screamed and screamed, until the cotton pillowcase was hot and wet, pulverized with her grief.

  * * *

  “Kick!” Jack shouted jubilantly.

  “Rats,” she cursed on seeing her brother in the foyer of the Gothic Times-Herald building. “You saw me first.” But really she was thrilled that he wanted to play their old game during the busy lunch hour. They bumped riotously into many people, some of whom stopped to watch while they jigged in a tight circle, calling out their rhymes:

  “Trick,” she said, with emphasis.

  “Lick.”

  “Prick.”

  “Stick.”

  “Chick.”

  “Flick.”

  “Brick.”

  “Crick.”

  “Thick.”

  “Mick.”

  “Hick.”

  “Shtick.”

  “Knick.”

  “Yick.”

  “Yick?”

  “Another form of yuck,” he said as both of them cackled and the small crowd who’d been watching applauded and then went about their business.

  “Sounds like a party foul to me,” observed John White, who thrust out his hand to shake Jack’s. Kick introduced them.

  “This must be the famous John Fitzgerald Kennedy? Hero and bestselling writer?” came Inga’s sultry voice from behind Kick.

  The moment Jack laid eyes on Inga, Kick knew where the two of them were headed. Her brother kept his cool in the face of the older European beauty, shaking her hand almost as if she were a man and saying, “I don’t know about the hero part,” but Kick could tell from the way his blue eyes lingered just a little too long on Inga’s fine, creamy features that he would be single-minded in his pursuit of her. Inga was harder to read. No blushing or stuttering gave her away. But when she breezily gave her regrets, saying she couldn’t join them for lunch because she had other mysterious plans, Kick was pretty sure her friend was already playing hard to get. And there seemed to be a subtle, but still extra, swish to her step as she clicked away in her Italian heels.

  Kick and John and Jack made their way to Hot Shoppes, which was jam-packed with reporters and junior statesmen looking for a fast and decent lunch on the cheap. Kick always ordered the grilled cheese sandwich with tomato and a Coke. If she was especially hungry, she’d add fries to her order and say a little prayer of thanks that her mother wasn’t within one hundred miles to see how low living alone had brought her daughter, dietetically—though with all the walking she was doing hither and yon, she was maintaining her figure without much of a problem. Taxis were a luxury on her salary, on which she was proudly living. John always ordered the Reuben and coleslaw, frequently with a root beer float. That day, skinny Jack ordered something called the Lumberjack Special: chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes with gravy, and maple syrup carrots. Plus a chocolate shake.

  “Will all that fit in there?” John asked dubiously, scrutinizing Jack’s frame, which was about half the size of his own.

  “Just you wait,” said Kick. Like her mother, she’d learned to be glad when Jack could eat, when one or another of his ailments wasn’t stealing his appetite.

  “Far cry from what our friends across the pond are eating these days,” said Jack, referring to the tinned meat and dry toast even their finer English friends were suffering. The friends she was avoiding writing to in the wake of Billy’s bad news. She wanted to kick her brother under the table for bringing them up but didn’t want to have to explain why.

  “Well, enjoy it while it lasts,” said John.

 
“Killjoy,” grumbled Kick.

  “Come on, sis, I thought you were Roosevelt’s number one fan these days?”

  “Just like my bestselling brother?” Kick asked with a raised eyebrow, referring to what she and her brother both knew was his last-minute reversal of thesis for the bestselling book Inga had mentioned, Why England Slept, prompted almost unbelievably by their father, who wanted to ensure his son didn’t make the same political mistakes he had. Just make Roosevelt look good, he’d told Jack.

  “Dad says to tell you he’s sending a few dead mice for you in case you get hungry, Hawk Lady,” Jack jibed.

  “Caw, caw,” Kick crowed in a flat voice. Jack chuckled the way he always did when he knew he’d gotten her goat.

  “You, a hawk?” John said to Kick. “I wouldn’t have guessed you’re for the war.”

  “Shows how little you really understand me,” Kick said, suddenly annoyed.

  “You’re right,” John said. “I especially can’t understand how a woman of such intelligence could waste her mind on a religion that oppresses women.”

  Jack whistled and Kick groaned, “Here we go again.”

  “Again?” Jack asked John.

  “I’ve made it my mission to disabuse Kick of Catholicism. Surely you’re not in favor of the tenets of your faith that keep women barefoot and pregnant,” John ventured to Jack as their food arrived. “I saw the way you looked at Inga back there. If she were a good Catholic girl, she’d hardly be so desirable at twenty-eight.”

  Kick couldn’t help but be glad that John’s castigating eye knew no boundaries.

  But typically, Jack didn’t let anything ruffle him. He laughed, dug into his mashed potatoes, and washed it down with a long swig of shake before replying, “John, my friend, there is Saturday night, and there is Sunday morning. Never the twain shall meet.”

  Kick smirked as John shook his head in disbelief. Though Kick didn’t love the truth behind her brother’s retort, she was mighty glad he’d put John White in his place. God had sent her broken heart one small consolation, it appeared. Washington was about to get a lot better with her favorite brother stationed in the Office of Naval Intelligence.

  CHAPTER 20

  Her telephone rang in the middle of the night. When she rubbed her eyes and focused on the alarm clock beside her bed, she saw it was just after two in the morning.

  “Hello?” she said sleepily. It was cold standing in her kitchen in her cotton nightgown, and she began to shiver.

  “Kathleen! I’m sorry to trouble you in the middle of the night, but I couldn’t reach Jack, and I simply had to talk with someone who could help. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep until I did.” Rose was practically hysterical, having trouble getting enough air between shallow breaths.

  “What is it?” Kick asked, though she knew. There was only one person who could transform her mother into this kind of mess.

  “Rosemary’s been out on one of her walks,” Rose said, with all that implied.

  “Where was she this time?” Kick asked, pulling an afghan off the couch and wrapping herself in it to warm up. The last time Rosemary went out, she’d been in a bar, smoking and drinking and flirting with a man old enough to have voted for Honey Fitz. She’d gotten very worked up when he’d proposed taking her back to his house. The bartender had been the one to call that night. The previous time, she’d been sitting on the lap of a young navy officer near the Washington Monument when a passing police officer, an Irishman with great national pride, recognized her and pulled her away. “Can’t have treasures like the Kennedy girls getting into this sort of trouble,” he’d told her father, who’d swiftly had the young man promoted to sergeant.

  “The same place as last time,” her mother gasped.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Visit her later today. Please try to talk some sense into her. And ask Jack to come, too.”

  “I doubt she’ll listen to either of us, Mother. She’s dying for some independence.” Which, honestly, Kick could understand. When her parents had shut down her life in London, she’d lost everything. In some ways, she was glad Rosemary was showing her parents the dangers of locking their children away.

  “Please try, Kick.”

  “Why don’t you come down?”

  “I’m booked solid with closing up the house in Bronxville and a thousand charity events.”

  Of course.

  “And if what you say is true,” Rose went on, “and Rosemary is angry with her lack of freedom, then she’s more likely to listen to her siblings than her parents.”

  “All right, Mother.”

  Rose sighed with anxious relief and said, “Bless you. Please do try to get Jack to come with you. Oh, and, Kathleen? Have you learned anything about this procedure of Dr. Freeman’s?”

  “Yes,” Kick said. She’d been dreading this conversation. She wasn’t sure what her mother really wanted with regard to Rosemary and this procedure, but she had a feeling her mother was on a different side from her father. Kick didn’t want to cause either of her parents more pain, especially her father, who’d suffered so badly these past two years.

  “I knew you would,” sighed Rose. “I’ve been praying for it.”

  “Well, I hope you’ll still feel that way after I explain what I’ve found,” began Kick as her whole body tensed. “It sounds like most of Dr. Freeman’s patients are really quite disturbed. Nothing like our Rosemary. And when he has performed the lobotomy, the patients might become less disturbed, but they are less aware as well. My friend John White, who’s been researching the hospital and its doctors, says that looking at the patients is like looking through a glass window. There’s nothing there anymore, if you know what I mean. That’s not what we want for Rosemary, is it?”

  Kick was surprised to find herself breathing heavily at the end of this speech, her heart pounding rapidly in her chest.

  “Oh, Kathleen,” Rose said, her voice small. “That is what I feared you might discover.”

  “Is Daddy convinced otherwise?” Kick asked.

  “Not entirely. Not yet,” said Rose. “But now that you have given me real information, I am armed with some arguments.”

  Soon she was off the phone but unable to get back to sleep. So she was wide-awake by the time she headed to the office, having already consumed two cups of strong, hot tea with toast. Inga joined her as she walked to work, and Kick was glad not to be alone with her thoughts.

  “How is your brother getting along in our fair city?” Inga inquired.

  “He’s busy,” Kick replied. So. Inga was curious about Jack. And he hadn’t shut up about wanting to bump into her again.

  “I haven’t been dancing in ages,” Inga said transparently. “How about a group of us get together tonight or tomorrow? I heard the new singer at the Tahitian is supposed to be excellent.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Kick, because dancing at an American club, the antithesis of the 400, was probably just what she needed.

  * * *

  The convent where Rosemary was living had high stone walls like all the Sacred Hearts in which the Kennedy girls had lived and studied, walls that made everything inside cold, echoey, and damp. The familiarity of it made Kick feel small and intimidated just as she had when she was eleven. At least this building had a garden at the back, full of climbing roses and patches of vegetables, with two wrought iron tables and chairs nestled into the greenery. Kick and Jack sat and waited there until the Mother Superior brought Rosemary out.

  Their sister looked pudgier than usual, and not just in her hips and arms, where she usually carried her weight—this time, her face seemed bloated, her eyes smaller. Her gray dress seemed to be made of sackcloth. Kick wondered what she put on when she snuck out.

  “Rosemary,” said the nun with a solicitous smile, “your brother and sister have made a special trip to see you.�
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  “They live here,” Rosemary said flatly, to the ground more than to any one of the three people standing around her. She didn’t smile.

  Kick took a few steps forward and gave her sister a hug, which she didn’t reciprocate. Jack went next, and he crouched down and tried to get his sister to look into his eyes. “I’ve missed you, Rosie!” He smiled that Jack smile, and for a second Rosemary smiled back.

  Taking that as her cue, the Mother Superior said, “I’ll leave you three to visit. There’s a bell on the table should you need anything.”

  She can’t leave fast enough.

  “It’s gorgeous here,” said Jack. “Have you helped with the planting? I always suspected you’d have a green thumb.”

  “Everything was planted when I arrived,” said Rosemary. “I just do the watering and pruning.”

  “Well, that’s quite a lot,” said Kick. “Pruning isn’t easy! I’m terrible with flowers. Remember that flower arranging class Mother made all us girls take? I failed miserably.”

  “I liked it,” Rosemary said wistfully. Then, her face brightening a bit, she asked, “How is Mother?”

  Jack and Kick exchanged nervous glances. “Worried,” Kick blurted out. She felt so unbalanced here.

  A few bees buzzed around the garden.

  Jack took Rosemary’s hands in his and led her over to the table, where they sat at last.

  “We’re worried, too,” he said.

  At this, Rosemary laughed—a hard, almost cynical laugh. “Worried? I’m not doing anything you don’t do.”

  The fact that she said this to Jack and not Kick was alarming. Just what was she up to at night?

  Unbothered as usual, Jack chuckled. “Now, Rosie, you know that it’s different for girls. I understand as much as the next person how important it is to have someone special in your life, but sneaking around isn’t the way to find a man. Certainly not a man worthy of you.”