The Summer I Met Jack

by Michelle Gable

How a million butterflies rushed into her stomach. That’s what they meant by the expression, then. She hadn’t previously known.

  Alicia wasn’t thick. She had no misapprehension that Jack’s presence was any kind of affidavit on their night together. She was a (former) maid, and he was a wealthy congressman, and her ability to speak French and encounter his mother at mass did nothing to change that. No, the thrill in Alicia’s belly was not due to any romantic notions but because of the very nearness of him.

  “What are you doing here?” Alicia asked again, grinning.

  She had not known her face capable of expanding that much.

  “Shouldn’t you be in Washington? Doing Washington things?”

  “Ha. Well there’s a lot more to being a congressman than doing ‘Washington things,’ and we’re on recess. Fact is, I had a speaking engagement at the Kiwanis Club, and I figured why not pay a visit to my favorite Viennese artist?”

  “Viennese?!” George squawked.

  Jack turned to the man.

  “Hello there, the name’s Jack Kennedy.”

  He extended an arm, and George reciprocated the handshake like a regular human adult. Alicia’s smile grew.

  “This is my friend, George Neill,” she said.

  Jack nodded, then leaned against the candy counter.

  “How was your Kiwanis speech?” Alicia asked.

  “Eh. All right. If you want to know the truth, I only agreed to it so I’d have an excuse to see you.”

  Alicia’s heart gave a leap, though she recognized the flattery for what it was: thin. But a girl couldn’t argue with the way Jack said it, cute and sheepish both.

  “Buttering me up, are you?” Alicia said with a blush. “No need to work so hard. I’ve already proven that I have no defense against your charms.”

  “Just how low is this defense, I’d like to know,” he said, stretching closer. “When do you get off?”

  “Soon. We’re wrapping up.”

  “I have to go,” George said, startling them both. “Alicia, you should lock up.”

  She gaped at him. George Neill was rather precious about the Center. He hid his keys when they were both at home. Once he dropped a set on the sidewalk and wouldn’t let Alicia pick them up.

  “I need to leave,” he said. “Right now. I have a previous engagement.”

  “Oh.” Alicia’s eyes fluttered. “Are you going somewhere with your mom?”

  “I know other people, you know.”

  With that, George grabbed his hat and vanished through the front door.

  “One perceptive kid,” Jack said as he walked to Alicia’s side of the counter. “He can take a hint.”

  Alicia laughed nervously. Goose bumps ran across her skin.

  “That could very well be the first time anyone’s accused George of being perceptive,” she said.

  Jack smirked and took Alicia’s hands in his. Her entire body slackened.

  “So, Alicia.”

  He squeezed her hands. She warmed from the energy coming off him.

  “Yes?” she said, with a croak.

  “Are ya gonna take me for a tour or what?”

  * * *

  George would lose his wits if he saw Alicia like this, naked while in proximity to his beloved projector and all those cans of film.

  But there was no time to worry about George Neill right then, given Alicia’s company, and the congress they’d just enjoyed. Now Jack was seated, propped up against the wall. Alicia had her body curled into his. He’d draped a jacket over them both.

  “You’re so petite,” he said. “So deliciously tiny and impish. Except for the breasts, of course. I could hold you like this all day.”

  Alicia recognized the exaggeration, but at least Jack was not hurrying this time. She squeezed her eyes closed and told herself to savor every second in this wondrous, dreamlike fog. Irenka was right about the sort of girl she was, but Alicia didn’t care. She’d never been happier than she was right now.

  The truth was, Alicia enjoyed sex. It was a devilish realization, but after what she’d been through, moments like these reminded Alicia that she was alive, a human in this world.

  “You okay, kid?” Jack said, and kissed Alicia on the head.

  She nodded, unable to speak, wondering if forever was too long to ask him to stay. A silly notion. Alicia shook it off.

  Before long, Jack’s spine got the best of him and he was forced to stand. With a grimace, he hobbled up onto his feet. From the corner, Alicia watched him struggle to dress. He seemed so old right then, so frustrated and unpoised, no glimpse of the cocksure Kennedy boy. Alicia wondered how he could be so many people at once.

  “Well, young lady,” he said, “I hope no other gentlemen have received your special tour.”

  “Are you a gentleman, then?” Alicia teased, and stood.

  She hurried into her clothes.

  “It depends who you ask,” Jack said with a snigger. “Jesus, kid. You’re funny, beautiful, and smart. A deadly mix.”

  As Jack wrestled himself into his shirt, pain ripped across his face. He reached out to steady himself.

  “Careful of the projector!” Alicia yelped.

  “I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

  Jack let go of the projector and massaged his lower back.

  “I’m so sorry.” She darted to his side. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive, it’s just that George is very finicky about his equipment. Please, let me help you.”

  “I’m dandy,” Jack said, batting her away. “Just slept on it funny. Come on, I’m famished. I need a snack.”

  Jack shot toward the stairs and Alicia trailed after him. Once in the lobby, he ransacked the counter, as if it were a pantry in his home.

  “What do we have here?” he said, plunging both hands into the popcorn bin.

  Two fistfuls of popcorn—that’d be a medium? A package of Junior Mints. Coke directly from the tap. A little bit of this, a crumb of that. The total climbed.

  Hungry, but too poor to join in, Alicia hopped up onto the counter and adjusted herself to show a large swath of leg. She was not a debutante, or a social register type, but she had some assets to be sure. Jack played fast and loose with actual money, but he had vast appreciation for the sort of currency Alicia possessed.

  “Jesus, look at you,” he said, and ran a finger along the outside of her thigh.

  She shivered. Oh, the rapture of his touch.

  “You’re a specimen, Alicia Darr,” he said. “The embodiment of womanhood. But shouldn’t you be wearing stockings? We can’t let any of your patrons get the wrong idea.”

  “It’s your fault my stockings keep getting lost.”

  Jack studied her for a second, and an admiring smile formed. In that moment, and for the first time since she could remember, Alicia felt like a regular girl; she was no longer a refugee, or a person on the run.

  “You might be a painter,” Jack said, “but you’re the work of art.”

  “Oh, shush.”

  Alicia blushed furiously.

  “It’s funny,” Jack said. “You remind me of a woman I once loved. She was Danish. You have the same air: Nordic.”

  “I’m hardly Nordic.”

  She scooted off the counter. Alicia was parched; she’d have to sneak a pop after all.

  “Tell me about your family,” Jack said, straight from nowhere.

  “Uh, what’s that?”

  She turned around, empty cup in hand. Jack stared at her with such intensity, Alicia thought she might combust.

  “Your family,” he said. “I want to hear all about them.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.…” she stuttered, filling the cup.

  It was mostly fizz.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because I have no family.”

  “You have to come from somewhere.”

  Jack sauntered toward her, and Alicia backed up to the soda machine. Soon she was pinned between him and the ice tray.

  “
Vienna, right?” he said.

  “Not Vienna,” Alicia admitted. “Poland. I’m originally from Poland.”

  “Really?” He squinted. “I could’ve sworn you said Vienna.”

  “Hmm. Well. I’ve been to Vienna many times.”

  “What was it like?” he asked. “Growing up in a place like that? With all the Reds?”

  “I didn’t grow up with the Reds,” she said, a bite to her voice. “They’re why I didn’t go back. We should lock up. I’m sure George is wondering where I am.”

  As Alicia tried to wiggle free, Jack pressed against her. Alicia stiffened and, as a matter of fact, so did Jack. Ten minutes had passed and already he was at full attention. Alicia wasn’t the most experienced, but it was her understanding that men usually needed greater time in between sets. Jack Kennedy defied explanation, and the few things she knew of men.

  “Why are you avoiding the question?” he asked. “About your family? I’ve memorized every curve to your body, but I don’t know the first thing about your past.”

  “I don’t have a family. This must be hard for you to understand, since there are so many of you scrabbling about. But all of mine are gone.”

  Alicia’s nose began to sting. She shook her head, annoyed at herself for not keeping this part of herself behind a heavier gate.

  “Sweet Alicia,” Jack said, his eyes welling in return. “Even if they didn’t survive, you had a family once. Let’s talk about them. It hurts when you don’t, when the world beats on, but you’re stuck in the same place. I’ve lost people too, you know. My older brother. My very favorite sister. I dream about her almost every night.”

  “You do?”

  Alicia and Jack looked at each other.

  “Yes. I do. I try to talk to her, too. Is that odd?”

  She smiled.

  “I talk to Father all the time,” she said. “Your sister, what was her name?”

  “Kathleen, but we called her Kick, the perfect nickname. I’ll tell you all about her, but first I want to know where you came from. I want to know who you are.”

  Alicia inhaled, her breath shaky as she gathered the nerve to reveal to Jack who she was, or who she’d been at one time.

  She started with her parents. Her father was a wealthy industrialist, her mother a poet. They both loved art, and music, and books. Her father held great influence with the Polish Academy of Literature.

  Alicia told Jack of her childhood home, which was grand and baroque. It lacked the scope of the Kennedy house, but was decidedly more grandiose, and festooned with emperor eagles, bull heads, mascarons, and swans. But then the war came, and they had to go.

  Eventually their family split up, thereby sealing their different fates. Alicia was lucky. She was dispatched to a convent school outside Warsaw, and then a second school, deeper in the countryside. It was not necessarily safe at these convents—they were subject to raids and Luftwaffe bombs, too—but it was safer than anywhere else in Poland.

  “I knew you were something special,” Jack said when Alicia reached the end of her tale, which was really only the start. “I knew you weren’t an ordinary broad.”

  “Is that so?” Alicia said, and dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “And what accounts for that opinion?”

  Jack stepped back. The space between them seemed unnavigable, the size of the sea.

  “You’re only twenty,” he said, “but you’ve seen so much. You’re astoundingly brave. And then there’s your wicked sex appeal.” He winked. “As well as your impeccable French.”

  “French is the least of it. I know five other languages.”

  She checked the clock on the wall. It was getting late.

  “We really should lock up,” she said, sliding away from him. “George left ninety minutes ago. He’s going to have a fit.”

  “Who cares about old George?”

  “I do. I also care about my job.”

  She opened a cabinet and pulled out her pocketbook.

  “Alicia,” Jack said. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting my things.”

  She held up her handbag.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me what happened with the war?” he said.

  “You want me to tell you how the war began?”

  “No.” Jack laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m smahter than I look. I actually wrote a book about the thing. What I meant was, what happened to you, and your family?”

  “You wrote a book about the war? Really? What’s it called?”

  Jack laughed again.

  “You’re awfully good at dodging questions,” he said. “You should be a spy, or a politician. Congresswoman Alicia Dahr-ling.” Jack gave another wink. “Let me ask again. When the war broke out, you went to a convent, but it couldn’t have been that simple. What are the details?”

  Alicia sighed, pondering how she might arrange the story to satisfy Jack’s curiosity, without divulging too much.

  “Most of us in Łódź had to leave for one reason or another,” she said. “The Nazis took everything, and to stay meant certain death. By 1939, they’d usurped my father’s textile business. They were burning schools and universities, any symbol of Polish culture or literacy, any proof that we had worth.

  “They began a campaign to target the intelligentsia, of which my father was a prominent member. I was young, nine years old, but I remember wondering how they could be after us. Surely, we were different, set apart.”

  Jack nodded, eyes glistening.

  “We were wealthy, and my parents were smart, and we knew important people. I thought we were special, and that this would save us, but none of it mattered. To the Nazis, we were all the same. Insignificant. Useless.”

  Alicia grew hot beneath her clothes. She tugged at her collar and cleared her throat.

  “A group of us fled Łódź for another town in Poland—Radom—where we lived for a few years, until that was no longer safe either. Shortly after my twelfth birthday, my parents sent me to the convent and they went into hiding. When the war ended, they were gone and I found myself alone, working as a typist at a displaced-persons camp in Germany. I applied for a visa, and that’s how I ended up here.”

  “Geez. That’s a mighty short summary of a great big deal.”

  Alicia whipped out a tube of lipstick and began to apply.

  “There’s no use getting flowery about it,” she said. “We all have complicated, sad stories from that time.”

  Damn, this boy was tricky. She’d have to be careful. Jack Kennedy had a crafty manner about him, a way of slipping right under the skin like he’d been there all along. Alicia had the sense she could tell Jack most anything, but the full story was too dear, too important to be passed around to shiny, white-toothed American boys.

  “Okeydoke, Alicia Darr,” Jack said, eyeing her thoroughly. “I can see that’s all I’ll get out of you today. But, let it be known, Jack Kennedy never gives up. I’ve yet to encounter a code I didn’t eventually crack.”

  SUMMER RESIDENT MAKES CHARITY GIFT

  The Barnstable Patriot, September 14, 1950

  HYANNIS PORT

  Jack Kennedy became a regular visitor, not only to Hyannis Port, but also to Alicia. Whenever possible, usually at the last minute and unannounced, Jack jetted up to the Cape for a rendezvous.

  “I’m sorry it can’t be more,” he’d say, “but I had to see your face.”

  It was better than nothing and Alicia relished these brief windows of time when they sunbathed on the beach, dined at the Panama Club, and visited Alicia’s bedroom after Mrs. Neill and George had gone to sleep.

  Jack had a way of stretching time. He was a congressman running for reelection, yet was never too busy to probe Alicia about her job, or her interests, or what Europe was like during the war. He was thoughtful and inquisitive and Alicia felt like a subject he desperately wanted to understand.

  “Why do you use so much blue in your paintings?” he’d ask. “Why do you make these harsh, almost unsettling moves with the brush?�
��

  Though he admired her depictions of Poland, Jack thought she should “lighten it up” every once in a while. Alicia was in America now. Seascapes were cliché, no question, but most folks had straightforward tastes and she’d sell a boatload to the tourists on Main Street. People wanted to look at pleasant, sunny things.

  Alicia smiled but saw no way to take his advice. She could paint a seascape no problem, but why bother when she had the real thing nearby? What Jack didn’t understand was that she painted Łódź, and the convent, because memories were all she had. There were no photographs, no keepsakes. She painted Poland so that she wouldn’t forget.

  Alicia couldn’t explain this to Jack, despite how much he prodded for more. One of the things he adored about her—or so he said—was that Alicia never complained. She never donned a sour puss.

  “How is it that you’re always in such a good mood?” he’d asked. “So happy and upbeat? I know girls who bitch when the sun’s too bright. But you, never. Why are you so incredible?”

  If Jack Kennedy found her “incredible,” Alicia didn’t care to prove him wrong. He’d probably learn the truth one day: about Poland, and her parents, and everything that led her here. Alicia was deft at skirting questions, but she was bound to slip eventually. She’d put this off, though, as long as she could. Their days together were still fresh, their relationship wondrous and magical and new. Nothing lasted in this world, and Alicia understood that she must relish what she had, while it was still within her grasp.

  * * *

  One morning, on the hunt for cottage cheese, Alicia pattered into the kitchen to find an unexpected caucus consisting of George, Mrs. Neill, and a certain representative from Massachusetts, live and in the suntanned flesh.

  Alicia froze in the doorway.

  “I made flapjacks,” Mrs. Neill announced.

  “An improvement over my usual poached eggs,” Jack said with a wink, and then bit into a piece of bacon.

  He was in his shirtsleeves, rolled up, with both elbows on the table and hair that screamed for a trim. Alicia hadn’t seen him in days, but the Neills might very well think he stayed the night.

  “You need to eat more,” Mrs. Neill said to Jack, full of cheer and without suspicion. “You’re thin as a rail.”