The Summer I Met Jack

by Michelle Gable

  “That’s funny,” George answered, “I was going to ask how you always find yourself in the most convoluted of circumstances in the first place.”

  “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

  Alicia meandered toward the front door and peered outside. The streets were quiet, other than the occasional dead leaf tumbling on the sidewalk. In front of the Center was a rack; attached to it was a single blue bike.

  “Hey, George,” Alicia said, slinking up beside him. “Is that Paul’s bike out there?”

  “Is it blue? Then, yes.” He sighed. “Who rides a bike in this weather?”

  “Do you know where he is? And how long ago he left?”

  “Dumont’s for lunch,” George said. “About ten minutes ago. I don’t care for the direction of this conversation.”

  “Perfect!” Alicia scurried to the door. “I’m having my lunch break now. If anyone asks, I borrowed Paul’s bike! Not to worry, I’ll take the utmost care!”

  “You don’t get a lunch break when you start at eleven!” George called, but Alicia was already outside.

  After yanking the bike from its rack, Alicia wheeled it along, thinking she was lucky she wore the uniform that day, given the trousers involved.

  At the corner, Alicia lunged up onto the seat and sent a prayer to the heavens. If anyone was up there, would He please help her body remember how to ride?

  Alicia wobbled and weaved for several blocks, almost crashing into three different cars. In her path, seagulls squawked and then scattered. Somewhere, the ferry blew its horn. Then, her memories clicked into place, and soon Alicia was sailing down the road in something akin to a straight line.

  She coasted toward Greenwood Avenue, where the homes got bigger, the trees denser. After a series of quick rights and lefts, Alicia swung around the corner and to the end of a cul-de-sac. She stopped beside the flagpole and dropped her bike into the gravel.

  Marching up the front stairs, Alicia gathered her wits, and swiped the sweat that’d bubbled beneath her nose. She punched the bell, and was startled by the answerer. Mrs. Kennedy was tinier than she remembered.

  “Miss Darr?”

  Alicia smiled. That Rose Kennedy remembered her name was an achievement of some kind.

  “Mrs. Kennedy, how are you doing?”

  The woman didn’t answer and instead surveyed Alicia, head to toe.

  “Goodness gracious, what is that you have on?” Rose asked, making no effort to hide her distaste.

  “It’s a uniform. I didn’t pick it myself.”

  “I should hope not. Dear, you have a lovely figure and that outfit is doing you no favors. Have you seen the latest collections from Paris?”

  “No, I haven’t had the chance.”

  “What a shame,” Mrs. Kennedy said. “Please. Come in.”

  She gestured, and Alicia followed.

  “I read about the passing of your father,” Alicia said. “And I’m so sorry. He seemed like a formidable man. He was obviously quite dedicated to his family, which, as far as I’m concerned, is the best thing you can say about a person.”

  “He was a wonderful father, and that’s only the start.”

  They proceeded farther into the home. Alicia didn’t know whether to ask for Jack, or simply follow Rose to whatever room they were going to.

  “I lit a candle,” Alicia said. “For your father. At St. Francis.”

  Alicia flinched, jarred by her own fib. She hadn’t attended church since the morning after Labor Day, but it seemed like the right thing to say, something that’d comfort a woman like Rose. Mrs. Neill had a candle in the house somewhere, Alicia reasoned. She’d light it tonight, in arrears.

  “How nice,” Mrs. Kennedy said, and smiled in her taut and lipless way.

  She stopped and turned around.

  “Remind me, dear, are you here to see Pat or Eunice?” she asked. “It must be Eunice. Pat’s not here.”

  “Actually … it’s Jack?” Alicia said, her voice leaping to new heights.

  Rose studied her for a good, long while. Alicia was nearly ready to settle for Eunice when Mrs. Kennedy called out in her raspy, shrill voice.

  “Jack! A young woman is here to see you!”

  The house remained silent and Alicia’s perspiration returned for a second show. She thought about the bike, and Paul, and her job, and wondered what she was doing at this house. How come she never recognized a risk until after she’d taken it? It was a wonder she was still alive.

  “Yes, Motha?” said a voice.

  Alicia wiped her top lip and glanced up, and there stood Jack, in the hallway, looking far too bright and tanned for midfall.

  “Alicia Darr,” he said, face breaking into a grin. “It’s swell to see ya. But I gotta ask, what the hell took you so long?”

  * * *

  They sat in the sunroom, which was a different place in the low October light. Mrs. Kennedy had just left for her daily three-mile walk, this time pushing her mother in a wheelchair, a horsehair blanket draped over the woman’s lap.

  “Thanks for the telegram,” Jack said, as Rose drifted out of sight. “Sorry I never got the chance to reply. I figured an in-person thank-you would be better.”

  “So, you did receive it,” Alicia said, finding her steam about it beginning to cool. “I wondered, since I’d heard nothing in return.”

  “Sorry, kid,” Jack said, and shook his head. “I probably received a thousand notes, calls, and cables. So many I couldn’t possibly keep them straight. And, really, it’s not a manners deal, to respond to a condolence.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Alicia said, sinking into her seat, feeling foolish.

  Of course Jack received a tidal wave of sympathy. Of course it’d be unwieldy to respond to each one. Jack was grieving, and he was campaigning, and he had a regular job, too.

  “I know you weren’t obligated,” Alicia said, “I just wanted to be there for you. My heart hurt, to think of your sorrow.”

  “Aw, kid, you’re sweet.”

  Jack launched himself to standing and began to pace the room.

  “It’s easy to forget,” he said, “that he’s gone. The campaign keeps me so busy that sometimes I don’t have a second to think. Then someone introduces me using his name, and it knocks me on my ass.”

  Jack sat down again, reclining into his seat back, stiff as a plank. Alicia noticed that his tan was yellowing, and he looked tired, and a bit jowly. She fought the urge to ruffle his hair.

  “I’ll tell ya one thing,” he said. “It was a damned show, his funeral. Thousands lined the streets. He was loved. And he made a difference in Boston.”

  “He must’ve been so proud of you,” Alicia said, thinking of the people she’d loved, and lost, and the funerals they’d never get to have. “How is your mother taking it?”

  “Mother? What does she have to do with it?”

  “It was her father.”

  “Yeah, well. Rose Kennedy’s not so hot, as far as daughters go,” Jack said with a grunt. “She didn’t make it to the damned funeral. Too busy shopping in gay Par-ee.”

  He swirled a hand.

  “Yes, but she tried, didn’t she?” Alicia said. “I read in the paper…”

  “Depends on one’s definition of ‘try,’” he said, and rolled his eyes. “She could’ve, if she wanted to badly enough. The woman has money and planes at her disposal, and she knew the end was near. It’s a travesty, is what it is. The man gave her the world.”

  Jack slapped his hands together and jumped up.

  “No use moping. He created a legacy, and that will live on. There’s more to life than the breaths we take.”

  “‘As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life,’” Alicia said, the words forming without her having to think of them.

  Jack shot a glance in her direction, his top lip slightly raised.

  “‘Were all too little, and of one to me,’” he said.

  Alicia grinned.

  “‘Little remains:
but every hour is saved…’”

  “Damn, she knows Tennyson too,” Jack said. “Did I tell you that was my favorite poem?”

  “No,” Alicia said, delighted to have their minds meet in this way. “I love ‘Ulysses.’ It’s so sad, yet inspiring at the same time.”

  “It’s the perfect poem for my grandfather. Just like Honey Fitz, Ulysses isn’t satisfied by his own accomplishments. He’s not one to rest on his laurels, because there’s always a new obstacle, a new challenge to face.”

  “Or a new challenge to chase.” Alicia smiled. “Actually, the poem reminds me of you. Ulysses isn’t ambitious, he’s downright impatient for new experiences. And there’s his affection for the sea.”

  “How’d you find out?” Jack asked.

  “About your grandfather? It was in the papers.”

  “No. I meant about your parents. How did you find out they were gone?”

  Alicia’s face went white. She said nothing.

  “Tell me, Alicia Dahr-ling,” Jack said, his full attention locked on her. “You went from Łódź to Radom to convent school. And then, to my great fortune, you ended up here. But what happened after you left school? What happened to your parents? What are the details you left out?”

  “I’m not really comfortable…”

  “Listen, you don’t have to tell me,” he said, sounding needled. “You can ignore the question, and keep hiding behind your red lipstick and good cheer. But I ask as someone who knows you. I ask as someone who cares.”

  “I’d just turned fourteen,” Alicia let slip.

  Jack gave a close-lipped smile. She couldn’t go back now.

  “A group of us,” she said, “older girls, we had moved to a different convent, farther from Warsaw. As I unpacked my things, Father Skalski summoned me to the chapel. He told me that my parents were captured in a roundup in Radom. My father was deported, and died in Treblinka. My mother was likewise presumed dead.”

  “Aw, kid,” Jack clucked, his eyes devoid of their devilish glint. “I can’t fathom hearing that, and at that age.”

  “It was truly awful,” Alicia said through the gathering tears. “Alas, I wasn’t the only girl in the convent to receive such news. I was lucky, in a way. So many had family members who vanished, unable to be traced. There is something to be said for a conclusion, if nothing else.”

  “Why do you have to be so damned gracious?” Jack shook his head. “I’m sorry, kid. I don’t know why I keep saying that, but I can’t think of anything better. Pretty pathetic for a guy who talks for a living.”

  “Don’t apologize. I came to comfort you, not the other way around. Yet, here we are. I don’t know how we traveled from your grandfather in Boston, all the way to my parents in Poland.”

  Jack chuckled dryly.

  “I can tell you’re about to clam up on me,” he said. “I get it. I’m done with death for today, too.”

  Without warning, Jack sniffed his underarms.

  “Jesus, I’m gamy,” he said. “I’m going to change my shirt.”

  Alicia stared. That Jack never dwelled on anything, figuratively or in fact, was sometimes quite jarring.

  “That’s fine,” Alicia said, remembering Paul’s bike discarded on the drive. “I should go. I’m on a bit of an unauthorized lunch break.”

  “Do you have plans tonight?” he asked.

  “Not as far as I know, but I’d have to check with George, to make sure.”

  “George?” he scoffed. “Don’t tell me you’re sleeping with that geek!”

  “Jack Kennedy!” Alicia said. “What a thing to say! Of course I’m not sleeping with George. But I need to butter up everyone at the Center, because I’ve missed so much work.”

  “Missed work?” Jack said. “What’s wrong? Were you sick and didn’t tell me?”

  “No, nothing like that. It was a few weeks ago. You might remember…”

  “How about this,” Jack said, slapping down her attempt to broach the topic of her failed show.

  He went to sit beside her.

  “Meet me at the Panama Club at nine o’clock.”

  Jack was close enough to touch, yet remained a hairsbreadth away.

  “The Panama Club?” Alicia said, glancing at his trousers, despite her good sense. “Isn’t it closed for the season?”

  “It’s closed to the general public, but I have my ways. Nine o’clock, Miss Darr. Don’t be late.”

  With that, Jack stood and exited the room. The air at once went cold.

  * * *

  Alicia tried the front door, which was locked, then jiggled the side door, too.

  The experience was all too familiar, with an extra reminder from the shuttered gallery a few doors away. After several more tries, she stepped out onto the sidewalk and peered up at the sign, and its alternating arcs of white and yellow.

  “Looking for someone?”

  Alicia flipped around to see the impish grin she so adored. There Jack stood, simultaneously dapper and ruffian, a sophisticated man crossbred with a disheveled boy.

  “Why, hello, Representative Kennedy,” Alicia said coquettishly. “Why are you cruising the streets at this inappropriate hour?”

  “Why are you cruising the streets, one might ask?”

  “I was scheduled to meet a handsome gentleman in this very spot, but he’s not shown up. You’ll have to do.”

  He laughed, eyes sparking in the dark.

  “Then it’s my lucky day. Come on.” He jerked his head. “Follow me.”

  As she trailed Jack, Alicia noticed he was carrying a picnic basket, like the one used on the Victura. The nip in the air told of fall, but last summer seemed more than one season ago.

  At the Panama’s rear entrance, Jack fiddled with the door, eventually freeing the lock in a manner that’d get any other man arrested. Alicia pictured the headline in The Barnstable Patriot:

  SCOUNDRELS BUST INTO PANAMA CLUB!

  “Should we be here?” she asked, as Jack stalked confidently inside.

  He led her through the kitchen, and to the ballroom, where he’d laid out a blanket. A Victrola and a set of candles were nearby.

  “Is this for me?” she said.

  “Sure. Who else?”

  Jack plunked the basket onto the floor.

  “I had Jeannette make us sandwiches, given my previous attempt at a meal.”

  “Smart choice,” Alicia said, then lowered herself onto the blanket. “I’m famished. And thirsty, too.”

  “Good. I also brought beer.”

  Alicia sat on her left hip, and swung her legs to the right. These new slim skirts were not made for picnicking. Alicia wondered how Pat and Jean and Eunice navigated the change in style. Probably, for picnics, they always wore shorts.

  Meanwhile, Jack took his time to sit. Once on the floor, he unwrapped two sandwiches, and poured their drinks.

  “Chee-ahs,” he said, and held up a glass. “To the magnificent A-lees-ier Dahr-ling, the prettiest girl I know.”

  They clinked glasses. Alicia took a sip. The bubbles tickled her throat. She’d have to make sure not to drink too efficiently.

  “I hope you don’t mind the setting,” Jack said, and licked a stripe of foam from his top lip. “Or roughing it on the ground.”

  “I’ve certainly dined in worse situations.”

  “Ha. Me too. The campaign trail is nothing but ‘worse situations,’ one right after the other. Dingy rooms. Shitty beds. The most terrible food you could ever consume.”

  “Funny, I picture the campaign trail full of glitz and glamour. Swanky hotels, flashbulbs popping. You are a Kennedy, after all.”

  “If there was any glamour whatsoever, I’d bring you along so I didn’t miss you so damned much.”

  Alicia responded with a happy sigh.

  “I do like gettin’ out there though,” he said. “Dreary accommodations notwithstanding. Keeps my mind off stuff, too. Missing you. Missing Honey Fitz. Fuck.” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe he’s gone. On
the other hand, he outlived Kick and Joe. How the hell did that happen?”

  “If only death had some logic. My father, he—”

  “How would you want to die?” Jack asked.

  “Beg pardon?” she said, forehead raised to the heavens.

  “What would you pick?” he asked. “Shooting, freezing, fire, drowning, or poison?”

  He rattled off these options, a rehearsed list. Alicia had been forced to contemplate her own death many times, but it was usually an either/or situation, nothing to do with the quality of it, nothing that invoked any degree of choice.

  “I’m not especially keen to discuss this,” she said.

  “We’re all gonna die at some juncture, kid.”

  While they’d indeed all die at some junk-sha, why think about that now? If she hadn’t known Jack’s history, she would’ve assumed such speculation was reserved for the sun-kissed and the privileged, people unaccustomed to loss.

  “I’d pick poison,” he said, with the assuredness of a scholar who’d mastered the topic. “Swift and easy. You wouldn’t even know what’s going on.”

  “It’d depend on the poison, and how it was administered.”

  Alicia knew a few who died that way. Her own father was gassed, which was more or less the same thing. “Easy” didn’t seem like the right word.

  “Trust me,” Jack said. “It’d be the way to go. What’s your choice?”

  “I don’t have one and I don’t like this conversation. Death will come whenever it damned well pleases, and in its own way, and there’s no use worrying about it in advance.”

  “You see?” Jack tapped a beer bottle against his right temple. “This is why we get along so well. We think the same way.”

  “I said nothing about poison.”

  “No, I meant about living in the moment.”

  Alicia tore the crust off her sandwich and took a bite. She did agree with Jack on this.

  “Gotta get to the living, while the living is good,” he said. “Personally, I don’t think I’ll make it past age forty-five.”

  “Jack!” She began choking on the sandwich. “What a thing to say!”

  “It’s true.” He shrugged. “My back, plus my recurring … malaria … the doctors pump me full of chemicals all year long. A body can only take so much.”

  She looked down to see that her fingers were speckled with crumbs. As Alicia wiped her hands, she wondered if Jack was more affected by his grandfather’s death than he’d let on. George was probably right. It was understandable—forgivable—that he’d forgotten her show.