The Kennedy Debutante

by Kerri Maher

  Brushing a lock of hair off his forehead, she felt a tug of desire. But instead of sensing the welcome pleasure of Maria Sieber’s sheets, she felt the shove of the cold, salty waves that had brought her to that bed in the first place.

  She was up late that night, and so it was hard to drag herself to mass the following morning. But it was worth the somnolent walk to church. The leaves were changing color, and though they weren’t as vibrant as what she might have seen in Boston or on the Cape a few weeks ago, the reds and oranges reached into her heart and wrung some of the sadness out. There was a new priest at the altar that morning, and he did not speak of sacrifice. He spoke of hope and perseverance. Using Jesus’s parable of the mustard seed from the Gospel of Mark, he explained how even the smallest of efforts could lead to the mightiest of ends, how kindness to our neighbor could be the seed that grows into a great, shady tree that provides shelter to others from the harsh rays of the sun.

  Full of his message, she walked to the convent, where she asked to see her sister. It took a while for Rosemary to emerge, and by the time she did, Kick had become chilled sitting at the tables among the browning stems and fallen blooms of the autumnal garden. True to her promise to Jack, Rosie looked slimmer, and almost girlish in her excitement.

  “Oh, Kick, thank you for coming!” she said, grasping her sister’s hands. “I only wish you’d been here for mass this morning. It was all about Job and his doubting, and how very important it is to stay confident that our Lord in heaven knows what’s best for us even if we doubt it at the time.”

  Kick laughed. “I heard a wonderful sermon this morning, too,” she said. “Though with a different message.”

  “Tell me,” said Rosemary, and Kick did. The sisters sat together as the sun warmed their shoulders. It felt so strange, exchanging observations on two sermons, as if they were speaking to their mother or one of their instructors at Sacred Heart in a more innocent time, before England, before the war. As that conversation faded and Kick tried to think of how to bring up the future, Rosemary preempted her.

  “Daddy came to see me yesterday.”

  “He did?” Kick was surprised. She hadn’t realized he was in town again; he hadn’t rung her yet, and he always did, first thing if he hadn’t done so before he boarded his plane.

  “He has such wonderful news,” Rosemary gushed. “He’s found a doctor who can help me . . . relax. Not get so upset all the time. You know I hate it, don’t you, Kick? I hate being the way I am, always causing trouble all the time.”

  “Rosie, darling,” Kick said urgently, putting her hands on her sister’s. “You’re not trouble. You get angry, yes. But don’t we all? Doesn’t Mother? And Daddy’s not one to talk. He’s been in a state ever since getting back from England.”

  Rosemary shook her head, her clean brown curls bouncing around her face and making her look so young. “It’s different for me. You know it is.”

  Kick opened her mouth to protest again, but couldn’t.

  “And Daddy says that if I’m good, and follow the doctor’s instructions, I’ll be able to have what I’ve always wanted. Children and a home of my own.” Rosemary beamed. Kick began sweating in the cool autumn air.

  Maybe John was wrong, she thought desperately. He’s not a doctor, after all. Dr. Freeman is the doctor, and Daddy wouldn’t do something bad for any of us. And he has spoken with Dr. Freeman personally, while John hasn’t. And the New York Times praises him to the sky. Kick wished that she had been the one to hear the sermon about Job that morning.

  Drawing in a shaky breath, Kick asked, “Are you sure that this is what you want?”

  Rosemary nodded her head vigorously.

  Kick squeezed her sister’s hands and said, “That’s what’s important, then.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Though it shamed her to even think it, Pearl Harbor was a relief. It gave her something to pray about other than her lost sister, lost love, aimless life, and the profound, insidious anger she was constantly strangling in her throat. On December 7, she’d been out, having a lazy Sunday lunch with John and Patsy, digging into a slice of roast beef with gravy and mashed potatoes because she hadn’t eaten any breakfast that morning, so hard had it been to get out of bed at all, when all of a sudden someone turned a radio up to its top volume, and the whole place went silent while the announcer stated with disturbing calm that President Roosevelt had just confirmed a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

  Thirty seconds before, John and Patsy had been discussing a Christmas party to try to cheer Kick up, though they had no idea why she’d become so sad lately. Kick suspected John might know it had something to do with Rosemary, but he seemed to respect that there were some questions he could not ask. And anyway, he was enjoying some of the benefits of her distress. In the week after she discovered that Rosie’s procedure had “not gone as planned,” in her father’s words, and that she couldn’t so much as see her sister—indeed, would not be able to see her for quite some time, while she “recovered”—Kick hadn’t been able to sleep a wink. After watching her nod off at her desk, John had taken her home after a bowl of some sort of Chinese soup whose powers he swore by, and rubbed her shoulders while they sat on her couch. In minutes, she’d fallen into a deep sleep. He must have carried her to her bed, because she woke up ten hours later in her clothes, with only the afghan from the couch covering her. Since then, he’d put her to sleep several times a week, though she’d begun getting into her longest, thickest flannel nightgown in preparation, and she was certain from the occasional sigh of pleasure that escaped his lips that he relished the feel of her skin and bones under his fingers, just below the layer of cotton. She even let him kiss her goodnight before she nodded off.

  Now nothing could seem so frivolous as a holiday party, no matter what the reasons. The radio stayed on quite some time as CBS tried to make contact with Honolulu and got only an eerie, crackling silence in reply. The only other sounds were the filling of coffee cups and the subdued scrapes and clinks of forks and spoons on plates. Kick and her friends finished their lunch, paid their bill, and then went out into the street and saw smoke billowing into the sky from a building many blocks up the wide, straight conduit of Massachusetts Avenue. “Something’s happening at the embassy,” John said, his voice rough. They discovered later that the Japanese were busy burning all the papers in their building.

  That night, huddled in the tent of her nightgown while John used his thumbs to undo a tight knot in her right shoulder, Kick asked, “Will you sign up?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “I think I might be able to do more good as a journalist than a soldier, at least for now.”

  Kick’s heart sank at this, and she wasn’t sure if it was because John’s patriotism and sense of duty were no match for Billy’s and all her English friends’ when war became inevitable, or because it meant John would be staying in DC, putting her to bed and presenting her with harder and harder choices.

  * * *

  A week after America at last joined the Allies, Kick received her first letter from Billy in months.

  Dearest Kick,

  I write to you from Eastbourne, where I am enjoying a few days of leave with Andrew and Debo. It’s not the same without you, even now.

  News of your country’s misfortune has made me think of you ever more intensely. I know you are farther away from Hawaii than you are from London, but somehow knowing there’s been an attack on America has made me fear for you as much as I did when you were still here on those fateful days in 1939. They seem like yesterday and one hundred years ago, both, at once. Goodness, I am rambling, becoming more like my father, I fear.

  I suppose I just want you to know I am thinking of you. Despite what keeps us apart, I do wish the very best for you and your family. I wouldn’t wish war on anyone, let alone someone so dear to me.

  Am, as ever, your

  Billy

 
She wondered if Sally was also at Eastbourne. In the next few days, Kick reread his letter so often that the stiff paper began to soften. She wasn’t sure how to reply and began to wonder for the first time in a long time if perhaps she could get to England after all . . . could it make a difference as Dinah and her friends had told her it would, despite the finality of Billy’s previous letter explaining his engagement? And even if she could get there, what then? Recalling Father O’Flaherty’s story about his Protestant friend, she asked herself what the differences really were between the Catholic Church and the Church of England. If she converted, and believed ardently in that conversion, her soul would be safe. Wouldn’t it?

  But converting would make her another lost daughter. How could she do that to her crippled family?

  * * *

  The last Spaghetti Salon before Jack and Kick were to depart for Palm Beach for the holidays doubled as the Christmas party Patsy and John had been discussing when the news of Pearl Harbor broke. The Fields had trimmed a tall tree with white lights and ornaments from their travels, like little straw hats, pottery stars, and carved wooden animals. The living room was fragrant with swags of pine and holly on the mantel and across the doorways. Kick was relieved not to see any mistletoe. In honor of the occasion, Patsy had only added garlic bread, a green salad, and a few precious bottles of champagne to the table. Other guests had brought desserts.

  “I’m sorry I’m not much of a cook,” Kick told Patsy, “otherwise I’d have brought something sweet.”

  “Not to worry,” said her hostess, who’d lately become her friend. “Tell me all about this trip to Florida.”

  “There’s not much to tell, really,” Kick said. “We’ll swim, play tennis, and go to mass, and eat the one indulgent meal Mother allows at holidays. Then it’ll be time to come home.”

  “You make the beach sound like a funeral!” Patsy said with surprise.

  That’s not far off the mark, thought Kick, since Rosie won’t be there, and her joy in Christmas was always infectious. For Patsy, though, she shrugged and said, “Not a funeral. Just the usual Kennedy thing. Nothing new. Sorry, I know that sounds so jaded.”

  Patsy eyed Kick a little too long, just long enough to make her feel uncomfortably inspected before her friend said, “You know you can talk to me if anything is troubling you. I don’t have to share it with my brother.”

  Hot tears rushed to Kick’s eyes. She just managed to blink them back. After clearing the dampness in her throat, she replied, “That’s nice to know.”

  When Kick didn’t rush in to confess anything, Patsy nudged her and said in a girlish tone as she nodded toward Jack and Inga, “How about those two? Will they survive the time apart?”

  Her brother and his lover were sitting hip to hip on the oriental rug, legs crossed with plates of food balanced above their knees. They were laughing with Frank Waldrop and Jimmy Roosevelt.

  “You mean the Danish spy?” Kick asked sarcastically, relieved to be able to inject a little levity, referring to the ridiculous speculations about Inga’s possible relationship to Hitler.

  Patsy laughed. “It’s all so absurd, isn’t it?”

  Kick shook her head. “Absurd,” she agreed. “I wish Page had let sleeping dogs lie.” Her father’s former aide had found a photograph of Inga with Hitler at the 1936 Olympics in the archives of the paper while researching a different article. After consulting with Frank and Inga, Page said she felt it was her duty to show the FBI what she had found. Inga always laughed it off, saying that stories about her and Hitler had circulated for years, but always died off because there was no truth to them. The only truth was that she’d posed as a reporter before she actually was one to get a story on Hermann Göring’s wedding, which she’d done successfully, thereby launching her very real career in journalism. And since Hitler enjoyed surrounding himself with attractive blond women, especially for photo opportunities during that show of German strength in 1936, he had invited Inga to watch the Olympics with him. “Simple as that,” Inga had said, with a pouty shrug of her shoulders.

  “What are you two birds twittering about?” John asked, suddenly beside Kick and putting an arm around her shoulders.

  Patsy whistled like a chickadee, and Kick added drily, “Tweet, tweet.”

  “Oh, I see how it is,” John said. Then, he whispered to Kick, “Almost ready to go home, sleepy girl?”

  Kick felt desire yank at her core. Why John? Why this temptation? Now? She didn’t want him, not in the way she’d wanted Billy, and yet her body was betraying her. What she wanted from John was base, forbidden, and she felt ashamed at her own weakness. Stealing another glance at Jack and Inga, she flooded with rage. Her faith, her love for her family, stopped her from behaving as they did. But Jack didn’t have to choose between loyalty and lust. What would it feel like to give in? she wondered. Where would that path lead her?

  Look where it led Rosemary. Kick knew there were big differences between her and her sister, but what they had in common was more important than all of them: they were both Kennedy girls.

  Laughing off John’s question, Kick said, “I’m not tired at all. Fancy a dance? Last chance of 1941.”

  As the gramophone filled the room with Paula Kelly’s honeyed voice singing “I Know Why (And So Do You),” John took Kick’s hand, pulled her close, and began swaying her to the ballad, inspiring other couples to set aside their cups and plates to join them. It was lovely, and Kick wished ardently that it were enough.

  * * *

  Kick made Eunice her pet project in Palm Beach. Her sister had become so thin and pale, she looked sick. Her cheeks were drawn, and her arms looked like two sticks joined with a hinge. I haven’t let this happen to me, and I’m not going to let it happen to my next closest sister, either, she told herself.

  “Come now, Euny, even Jack isn’t this far gone,” Kick said, setting about opening the shades in her sister’s room and letting in the light early one morning. Eunice drew in a painful breath and squinched her eyes shut.

  “That’s because what afflicts Jack is merely physical,” said Eunice, pulling the covers up over her head.

  “And what afflicts you is . . . ?” Kick asked impatiently.

  Eunice sighed with exasperation and threw off the covers with a flourish. “Spiritual, I suppose. Existential.”

  “I seriously doubt you’ve done anything to endanger your soul,” said Kick impatiently, thinking, Honestly, you’re only a year younger than I am and you sound like an anxious teenager. She shoved open a second window to let in some fresh air. The room had a funky smell that wouldn’t help anyone who needed mending.

  “One’s soul can suffer from more than just sin, you know.”

  Kick sat on her sister’s unmade bed and looked at her directly. “What’s this all about?”

  “Where’s Rosie?” Eunice said. It was more of a statement than a question.

  “Recovering,” said Kick, though she knew what her younger sister was really asking. What good would it do to discuss it, though? It wouldn’t change a thing.

  Eunice shook her head, disgusted. “You’re as bad as they are.”

  “Who?”

  “Mother and Daddy.”

  Kick sighed and looked away. “Listen, Eunice, what can we do? The only thing we can do is pray that Rosie gets better soon.”

  “Don’t you think it’s strange that no one is talking about her? It’s like she never existed. She’s just . . . gone.”

  Kick had noticed this same thing since arriving the day before. No one had mentioned Rosemary, not even their parents, and she was sure a few of the photographs of her had disappeared from dusted and polished mantels and tables around the house, though Kick hadn’t kept any sort of catalog of such pictures, so she couldn’t be sure. It was just a sense that she had. Also conspicuous was the door to Rosemary’s room, which was closed. It must have been shut c
ompletely, curtains closed and all, because even when the sun shone on that side of the house in the afternoon, no light crept into the hall as it did from all the other children’s rooms. The only sign that something was amiss was a new chill between her parents, who’d hardly spoken to each other at dinner the night before.

  Yes, Kick knew exactly what Eunice was talking about. And she herself was just barely keeping from erupting in fury at her father, What have you done! I warned you!

  “Let’s make a deal,” Kick said, putting her hand on her sister’s long, outstretched legs. “We won’t let her go. She’ll never be gone for us.”

  Eunice drew in a shaky breath. “All right,” she agreed quietly.

  “Now let’s go swimming,” Kick said.

  Every day after that, Kick cajoled Eunice into some outdoor activity that was as far away from their parents as she could get—golf, tennis, sailing, swimming. Their siblings were in silent cahoots, often following the now-eldest sister out the door and into the sun. Eunice even laughed at a joke Joe Jr. made during a round of golf, and Kick took that as a major victory. One morning, she caught Eunice tickling Teddy on the beach. Meanwhile, her mother practically force-fed Eunice piles of potatoes and chicken and roast beef, washed down with tall glasses of whole milk. Eunice complained of stomachaches and refused dessert, but after a week she’d begun to put on weight and her skin began to look healthy again.

  On Christmas Eve, her family dressed in something more like their Easter best. The Florida weather was warm and distinctly un-Christmassy, nothing like the wonderful cold she’d have been banishing with roaring fires and hot buttered rums in London. After a feast replete with cookies and cakes, to Teddy’s utter delight, all the Kennedys piled into a caravan of cars that took them to midnight mass, as was their tradition. They had celebrated Christ’s birth in so many places over the years, but this was the one constant. Midnight mass. As a child, Kick had loved getting to break the bedtime rules and gathering with so many others in a warm and brightly lit church, sharing in the exultation of the holiday. Kick searched herself for this same expansive joy as she stood and sang “Silent Night” beneath the arches of the little cathedral, but found only a tightness in her chest, her heart straining to beat.