Jack handed Alicia her uniform.
“Thank you” didn’t seem like the appropriate response, for the compliment or the clothes, and so Alicia smiled weakly and tossed on the uniform. As she scooted upright, Alicia realized that her hands were shaking and her heart was beating fast. A minute ago, she felt pure ecstasy, and now she was overcome with the creeping sense of sick.
“Every girl should have an orgasm like that,” Jack said with a chortle.
“Yes, I … uh … don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” he said. “Are you kidding me? That was terrific, kid. Too many broads are frigid, unable to enjoy themselves. Not that I’d know firsthand.”
“Of course not,” Alicia said, and stood.
Her legs were wobbly. She slipped on her shoes and crammed her stockings into her pocket.
“Hey,” Jack said, his voice softening. “Was that … okay?”
“Yes, yes, perfectly fine,” Alicia said, because of course if that happened, the overwhelming physical reaction from that unspeakable place, then of course everything was fine, much more than okay.
“Do you need a ride home?” Jack asked. “You don’t live here, right? At the house?”
“No,” Alicia said, and laughed.
Her body loosened.
“A friend is picking me up,” she said. “I live on the east end, by the Center. Today is my last day, actually. I came to help a … friend. With the party.”
“Ah, that’s what you meant with your cryptic comment from the other day.”
It took Alicia a second to remember the comment herself.
“Yes,” she said, and glanced away.
“So, you won’t be returning? To our employ?”
“No, I’ll be moving on.”
“Well, then.” Jack flashed a grin and zipped his pants. “Sounds like I’ll have to spend a bit more time at the theater. Here, I’ll walk you out.”
“Thank you,” Alicia said in a whisper.
Jack showed her not out, but halfway to the door. After a hasty kiss and a somewhat rigid hug, he turned back. Alicia scuttled out onto the porch, panicked about what George must think. May God forgive her for corrupting that sweet boy.
When she reached the flagpole, George was idling in his mother’s green Studebaker with the windows down. The only sound came from the crickets, and the gentle rumble of the Atlantic.
“I’m so sorry George,” she said, sliding into his car. “I got held up. I feel terribly that you’ve had to wait so long.”
“Long?” He kicked the car into drive. “It’s been about a minute, two minutes tops.”
Two minutes?
Alicia frowned. She looked at the clock on the dash. It’d been ten minutes since she’d called him. Ten measly minutes. Hadn’t she rung an hour, a lifetime before? Sex with Jack Kennedy surely lasted longer than a drive from the east end.
Sex with Jack Kennedy. She’d had sex with Representative Kennedy. The realization began to hit her, in parts, like small, lapping waves.
“You okay?” George asked. “Your breathing sounds … funny.”
“Yes,” she said, taking in shallow gulps. “I’m fine, thank you.”
Alicia squirmed and stretched her uniform taut over both knees. Thank God this was George; he’d never stop to question the whereabouts of her stockings. It was possible he didn’t know women wore them in the first place.
“You seem a touch peaked,” he noted.
“Yes. It was a long, strange day. That family…”
She didn’t know how to finish the thought.
“Mmm-hmm.” George bobbed his head. “They’re a lot. Well, no more Kennedys for you. That’s the good news.”
“Yes, what a relief,” she said. “No more Kennedys. Thank the heavens above.”
POPE CONDEMNS “ART FOR ART’S SAKE”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 5, 1950
HYANNIS PORT
The morning after Labor Day, Alicia went to mass.
It wasn’t because of what happened with Jack. Alicia didn’t feel all that guilty about their night together, and neither did she view it as a confession-worthy offense. Maybe her attendance was about nostalgia, or the solace of ritual. Or perhaps it was because she had nothing else to do that day, now that she was down to the one (part-time) job.
Donning a tartan dress in a color described as “burnt glass,” Alicia packed her handbag and took off along South Street. St. Francis Xavier sat a few blocks up from the Neill home, right on High School Road, the dividing line between the west and east ends, the moneyed and the not. It was appropriate that a church might be in the middle, though technically St. Francis favored the rich side of the street.
Once inside the white clapboard building, Alicia snuck into a pew. Hopeful ladies beamed, fast to notice the fresh blood. With the strike of the organ came an unexpected sense of foreboding. Here she sat, in another country, five years from the war’s end, and it still felt tenuous, like the Gestapo might crash through the doors at any moment and demand proof of who she was.
Alicia closed her eyes and reminded herself of how far she’d traveled from that life, figuratively and in fact. She breathed deeply, calmed by the Hail Marys and Glory Bes. Though she hadn’t been to mass in a year, the rhythm returned easily, another language mastered. Alicia was happy almost, comforted as though she’d enjoyed a nice visit with an old friend.
As Alicia exited the church after the service, she whispered to herself, “I am Alicia Darr.” Alicia Darr, the artist, the American, the burgeoning beauty, if she could be so bold. Alicia Darr, raised Catholic, now not necessarily belonging to any particular faith.
“Miss Darr?”
Alicia flipped around to find a curly-haired, power-packed force standing feet away.
“Mrs. Kennedy!” she said, alarmed or rattled, she wasn’t sure.
“I thought that was you.…”
“It is! It’s me!”
“Tuesday-morning mass?”
Mrs. Kennedy nodded approvingly and Alicia blushed. If there was any truth to the rumor that Rose Kennedy could read one’s thoughts, it was right then dispelled. Alicia’s head was full of Jack. His smile. His face. His skinny legs and very flat ass.
“Did you and your friends enjoy yesterday’s party?” Alicia asked, speaking briskly. “It was a terrific event. You planned it well.”
“So, you’re Catholic,” Mrs. Kennedy said, by way of answer.
“Yes. I am. I am Catholic.”
“Color me shocked,” Mrs. Kennedy said, her voice rough and rippled. “I knew the Catholic Charities brought many of you girls over to the States. I didn’t realize you were one of them.”
“I was indeed,” Alicia said.
Mrs. Kennedy gave a side-eye of sorts, and Alicia weighed the possibility that she might know about her and Jack. He never would’ve told his mother, Alicia didn’t think, but Rose noticed details and she was accustomed to the look of stolen sex, and the sound of it in her home.
“I attended school at a convent,” Alicia blurted.
“What’s that?”
“I went to convent school. In Europe.”
Alicia hoped she hadn’t used up all her prayers inside the church.
“Isn’t that funny?” Mrs. Kennedy said, a half smile playing at her lips. “My daughters attended convent schools, too. The only place to raise a proper woman, if you ask me.”
Around them, people bustled. A few shook Mrs. Kennedy’s hand as they passed. Meanwhile, Alicia’s skin glistened in the September sun. It suddenly seemed very hot and crowded on these Hyannis streets.
“I’ve heard that you’re no longer working for us,” Mrs. Kennedy said, after introducing Alicia to two older ladies, who were delighted to find such a youthful visage at Tuesday-morning mass.
“Um, yes, that’s correct. But it wasn’t that I quit!” she added. “I was hired as temporary help for the holiday. You probably knew that.…”
“What are you
doing now? For work? You’re the…?”
Mrs. Kennedy took a second to analyze Alicia, head to toe. “The Viennese actress?” she said.
“Artist,” Alicia corrected, though she did not bother with “Viennese.” “I’m working at the Center, while I concentrate on my work. I’m a painter. I hope to attend art school one day.”
“Art school?” Mrs. Kennedy formed her mouth into a straight line. “How … exotic.”
“It was, er, something I trained for.”
“At the convent school?” she scoffed.
“No. Before school.”
Before the war.
Rose Kennedy gave another tight smile. Alicia decided to take her exit before she said the wrong thing.
“It was lovely to run into you,” she said, and extended a hand. “C’est bon de te revoir!”
Mrs. Kennedy stared wide-eyed as she processed the words and, Alicia liked to think, the flawless accent. Perfect French coming from a refugee? Quelle surprise! Indeed, the pocket-sized woman was literally taken aback. She staggered backward, and almost tumbled down the stairs. Alicia caught her arm and pulled her to safety.
“Careful there,” she said.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”
“I hope you don’t mind me using French,” Alicia said, and released the woman’s arm. “I’ve heard you practicing with your records.”
“Yes!” Mrs. Kennedy said, blinking several times. “The records! Thank you! Okay, it’s time for me to go.”
The two women shook hands, and Rose turned on her stubby heels. She was partway down the stairs when she paused to look back again.
“It was lovely to run into you,” she said. “I mean that.”
Alicia smiled. She could see, plain as the Cape sky, that in Rose Kennedy’s exacting eyes, her stock had risen. It felt like some kind of coup, though Alicia didn’t know how Catholic she really planned to be. Nonetheless, it was nice to impress someone so impervious and, more important, realize she’d maintained such a strong command of Catholicism and of French.
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO … BE A DISPLACED PERSON?
Corvallis Gazette-Times, September 5, 1950
HYANNIS PORT
“I was just reading an article,” George said one night, after the seven o’clock had let out.
Alicia was examining a collapsed convent wall she’d painted last week, a dramatic piece heavy with grays and blues.
“Who was it about?” she said, now eyeing the boot prints depicted in the soil. “Barbara Stanwyck? She seems to be your favorite these days.”
Alicia took a step back, and put a hand to her chin.
“Barbara Stanwyck is a delight,” George said. “But this article was about displaced persons.”
“DPs?” she said with a small snort. “That sounds like a waste of time. After all, you have your very own DP, live and in the flesh. I’m pleased to entertain any of the curiosities you have about our sort.”
“It’s nothing specific. I only want to understand what life’s been like for you.”
“Aw, Georgie.”
Alicia looked away from her painting with a little pout. She walked over and swung an arm around George’s shoulders.
“You’re the sweetest,” she said. “An absolute gem. I’m glad to know you.”
He shook her off, right on time.
George was fussy and particular and this was too much touching, and for far too long. If Alicia didn’t live with Mrs. Neill, she would’ve thought George was raised inside a bubble by scientists evaluating the effects of social deprivation and poorly lit rooms.
“Tell me about these DPs,” Alicia said, and moved to give him space. “What did the newspaper say?”
“It was an editorial,” he explained, “about how the government is trying to train and educate them.”
“Them?” she said with a smirk.
“It’s not … I didn’t mean…”
She waved him off.
“I’m teasing,” she said. “Please, go on.”
“Okay.…” He eyed her warily, as if she might bite. “Apparently, refugees are struggling to acclimate, particularly on the job front. I guess they’re—the refugees—can’t find jobs, or hold them down when they do.”
Alicia’s eyebrows spiked.
“I assume that you’re about to offer a referendum on my ability to hold a job?” she said. “Feel free to keep that to yourself. The Kennedy gig was part-time, and if you think I want to pick up dirty bathing costumes for the rest of my life…”
“No, no, no!” All of George’s features lifted. “That’s not what I meant. Actually, it’s the opposite. The writer was going on and on about how DPs can’t find jobs, can’t hold jobs, yet the one displaced person I know created two of them out of thin air, in a very short period of time.”
Alicia chuckled.
“I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘thin air,’” she said. “Have you seen their house?”
“But somehow you managed to coax Mr. Dillon into paying you to hang around and look pretty.”
“Aw, Georgie, I had no idea you thought I was pretty.”
“And Paul agreed to no more than ten hours per week,” George went on, face reddening, “but I saw your last paycheck, and it was for over twenty!”
“I’ll take the hours where I can get them,” Alicia said. “By the by, you don’t seem to mind me ‘hanging around’ whenever someone spills a jumbo Coke, or when Dewey’s swigging whisky in the alley.”
“You have your uses.”
“You’re swell, George,” Alicia said with a playful eye roll. “Now, the real coup will be convincing Paul to keep me on until next summer. Or until I hit it big in the art world.”
“Don’t worry about Paul keeping you on for now,” George said. “This Indian summer is predicted to be the busiest yet. You’re good for another month. Maybe thirty-five days.”
“Thank you, that’s very comforting.”
Alicia wandered toward the candy counter.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he called out.
His voice echoed through the emptied lobby.
“Oh, you darling boy.”
Alicia sighed as a tear slipped out. Dagnabbit, that kid was sweet to the core, even though he could bungle something as basic as “hello.”
“I’m glad to be here, too,” she added. “It gets better every day.”
After wiping her eyes, Alicia began inspecting the candy stash. If there was one skill she learned at the Kennedys’, it was how to take a good inventory. She noted they were low on Junior Mints.
“You know, today is my one-year anniversary,” she said, picking a glob of ketchup off the glass with her fingernail.
“Your anniversary?” George screwed up his face. “Of what?”
“My arrival in the States.”
“Really? Why didn’t you say anything? That’s a huge accomplishment!”
“Is it? Mostly I was thinking about how quickly time passes.”
“But … one year! Don’t they grant you citizenship now, or something?”
Alicia chuckled.
“Unfortunately, the process is a pinch more involved,” she said.
Alicia thought of her paperwork in Oklahoma: a Declaration of Intent for Barbara Kopczynska—whoever that was—forever abandoned in someone’s desk, in an office, in the middle of the country. Could she obtain citizenship as “Alicia Darr”? Her DP card said “Barbara,” as did her resident-alien paperwork, but to use that name now seemed almost fraudulent.
“It’s funny,” Alicia said. “This past year has flown, but at the same time I only faintly recall how I felt when we drifted into port. Remembering that day is like watching a news program about someone else: stirring, yet distant.”
“I can’t fathom leaving home and traveling to the other side of the world,” George said, shaking his head. “I’ve never left the Cape.”
“Try it one day.” Alicia squatted to rearrange a stash of Jujubes. “Th
ere’s a great big world out there and you should see it. On the other hand…”
She leapt up.
“Hyannis is pretty top-notch.”
How funny, Alicia thought, that they lived at the same address yet George’s universe was alarmingly small. Then again, it was lovely that there were people like him, folks who knew the war only from a distance.
“Do you have family?” George asked. “In Poland? You’ve never said.”
Alicia took in a sharp breath, surprised by the directness of his question. He was not customarily prone to such probing discourse.
“No,” Alicia said, and walked to the other side of the counter. “Like so many millions, there is no one and nothing left for me in Poland, which is why you find me here.”
George nodded and tightened his lips.
“People drink champagne in times of celebration, right?” he said.
“I believe that’s the general custom. Why, is there something to celebrate?”
“Yes, of course there is! You!” He gestured toward her. “One full year!”
“George.” Alicia put a hand to her heart. “That is so kind. But, really, it’s merely the passage of time. Nothing to get excited about. I haven’t done anything.”
“I disagree. I think Mother has a Heineken in the fridge? Is that similar to champagne?”
“I don’t think so,” Alicia said. “But I do enjoy a cold Heineken.”
She’d developed a taste for beer in the DP camp, the city of concrete barracks in which she’d lived while she awaited her visa. They didn’t have enough water for the thousands of refugees, and what they did have was often contaminated. It was cheaper to give them all beer than to treat umpteen cases of dysentery per week.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Alicia said, “a celebratory beer has champagne licked any day.”
“Celebratory?” said a voice.
Alicia and George both jumped.
“What are we celebrating?” the person asked. “And where’s my invitation?”
Alicia couldn’t respond, for she was left dumbstruck when she realized the person speaking was Jack Kennedy. She had not expected to see him until next summer, if at all.
“Jack!” she said, lit up from the inside. “What are you doing here?”
The Summer I Met Jack Page 8