“And they bought the election for Jack.”
“Bought the election?” Alicia laughed. “That’s preposterous. Jack wouldn’t need to buy votes! Women probably lined up for blocks just for the chance to ogle his name.”
“Don’t you find it strange that he won by the narrowest possible margin? Isn’t it peculiar that he got Texas of all places? They despise Kennedy there.”
“Lyndon Johnson is from Texas. That’s probably the reason Jack picked him as a running mate.”
“Wake up, Alicia,” he said. “Joe Kennedy hired Sam Giancana, Chicago Mafia boss, to make sure Jack won. Giancana knows all the union leaders and spread Papa Joe’s millions among his underworld to produce votes. They stuffed the ballot boxes in Illinois and in Texas, and probably a few other places for kicks. The Kennedys are so tight with the Mafia, they’re basically mobsters themselves.”
“Have you been talking to Novella? She thinks the Kennedys have ‘given us mobsters,’ as if they’re fleas.” Alicia sighed, and studied her hands. “What are they so concerned about?” She looked up. “Is it still the affair with Jack? Because I haven’t gone public.”
“They think you’re waiting until he takes office, and it’s stressing them out.”
“Just tell them I won’t blackmail Jack, or anyone else in that family. What can they do if I don’t say anything?”
“What can they do?” Fred scoffed. “Have you noticed that the president-elect hasn’t nominated the attorney general yet?”
“Presidential appointments are not something I’ve kept up on,” Alicia said, though this was not entirely true.
“He’s hesitating because he knows the press will explode when it’s Bobby.”
“That can’t be right,” she said. “How can Jack have an attorney general who’s never practiced law, who’s never seen the inside of a courtroom?”
“It’s a fuckin’ joke,” Fred agreed. “But it’s happening all the same. Not sure if you’re up on the details, but the attorney general is in charge of the FBI, and in charge of who gets into the country, and who’s kept out.”
“Shit…”
“Yup. There’s one person who can revoke a reentry permit for no reason, and it’s the AG of the U.S. Something tells me he’ll keep you out.”
Alicia didn’t know what to say. She lowered her gaze and stared again at her bony, white hands. Fred scooted closer.
“They’re ruthless. They got into bed with Giancana, a man who hangs people on meat hooks. They’re also super fucking ambitious and super fucking paranoid. A chilling combination.” Fred cleared his throat. “You should know, Alicia, that they think you’ve given birth to Jack’s child. They believe you popped out some bastard baby over the summer, and put it up for adoption. Gave it to a friend or some shit.”
“That’s not true,” Alicia said, face tingling as the blood drained from it.
“I didn’t think so.” Fred nodded, and the whole bed shook. “You told me years ago you couldn’t have kids. Plus, if you hadn’t gotten yourself knocked up by now … Everyone knows Jack never uses a condom and I confirmed that you’ve never visited any of the three doctors the Hollywood girls use.”
“You checked to see if I had an abortion?”
“I’m very thorough.”
“Well, they’re wrong,” Alicia said, shaking her head. “I didn’t put her up for adoption.”
“Her?” Fred’s mouth dropped. He drooled a little on his shirt. “What the fuck are you talking about, her?”
“There is a baby,” Alicia said, starting to weep. “And she is Jack’s. Novella helps take care of her, but she is all mine.”
* * *
Her name was Benedetta Maria Kopczynska.
She was born on the sixth of August, in the morning, after a brief labor supervised by Novella.
“You must give zee correct drugs!” she demanded, bracing against Alicia’s screams. “Zis is a crime what you do to her!”
Kate couldn’t be there. She wanted to but was busy working in Connecticut, where she was depicting the Queen of Egypt onstage.
“Another jam for Alicia Darr!” she said, but sent Alicia a gift nonetheless.
Five thousand dollars, in hard cash.
Benny was born gorgeous, but Alicia expected nothing less. Her head was perfectly round, almost cartoonishly so. Atop this glorious head was a spray of black hair. She had Jack Kennedy’s eyes. It was both poetic and heartbreaking that the sole man Alicia found to love was the one man who could get her pregnant. Rather, the second man, if the soldier at the camp counted. But it was the aftermath of that pregnancy, and Alicia’s attempt to end it, that made childbearing a lost cause. Or so she’d been told.
The three left the hospital together—Novella, Alicia, and Benny, too. It was an odd sort of family, but for the first time since those days with Jack in Hyannis Port, Alicia was hopeful, filled with wonder. It was true what they said about motherhood. One glance and she loved that baby with every cell.
The women walked down Margutta with their new prize, Alicia so overcome she couldn’t feel the pain from the labor she’d endured. She swelled with joyful tears as they chatted, hatching big plans for this brand-new girl.
As they approached the studio, Alicia spotted something peculiar on their doorstep. They shuffled a few steps closer and that’s when Alicia saw what’d been left. Two dead cats. A mother and a kitten, gutted and lying side by side.
She cried out, and threw up in a nearby pot.
“Do you think they’ll hurt my baby?” Alicia said, once they were in the apartment, the locks all latched.
“Until we escape mobsters,” Novella said, “we tell zat Benny is mine.”
“We’ll say that Benny is yours?” Alicia gasped, horrified.
“Is gud plan,” Nova said with a definitive nod. “Keep her safe.”
“No,” Alicia said, though she understood that was exactly what they had to do.
Alicia loved Benny fully and from the start and would do anything to keep her safe. But for all the heartbreak that came with Novella’s idea, the anguish was doubled because Alicia couldn’t help but think of her parents. She couldn’t help but feel them, through the wide swath of time and place. In Alicia’s mind, it’d been Father who saved her. She never gave Mamusia credit for the pain she must’ve suffered when she let her daughter go.
“Oh, Mamusia,” she whispered into the Roman sky. “I wish I’d done a better job loving you.”
Within hours, the women worked out the details. Soon, Nova announced her pregnancy, the father’s name withheld.
“I will never marry in Italy until it’s legal to divorce!” she said, always a flair for the dramatic.
Over the next few months, Novella invited reporters to the studio, to photograph her knitting baby booties, in case doubters needed proof.
“Where’s your roommate? That painter?”
“She’s off with another of her princes. You know…”
Meanwhile, Alicia sat in the water closet, nursing Benny.
They kept the baby mostly indoors. If they wished to leave the studio while Nova was still “pregnant,” they hid Benny in a pram full of kittens. Neighbors were long since accustomed to seeing Novella Palmisano push a cartful of cats around, so no one looked twice.
As the plot played out, Alicia was careful with her emotions. She didn’t want to love Benny with too much force, but she couldn’t help but fall. A person! She’d created a human being! The power and responsibility scared Alicia, and her sleep worsened by the day.
How come no one ever told her about this? About the awful intensity of this sort of love? No wonder Kate never wanted children. What a fierce, consuming situation to bring upon yourself. It was all too painful, too brilliant to bear.
* * *
Fred left Rome the next day, and Alicia returned home two days after that, under strict instructions to wear sunglasses for the next four months.
Nova was cuddling Benny when Alicia walked in. She ca
lled out her daughter’s name, but for the first time, the baby did not look up at the sound of her voice. Alicia’s heart cratered, but what had she expected, having been gone for days?
Alicia realized she needed to get Benny back. They’d been living this charade for months now, and nothing had changed. Alicia was still being followed. She’d been assaulted in a well-lit restaurant, in front of dozens of patrons, and the man hadn’t been caught.
“I suggest you negotiate an agreement,” Fred told her. “You’ll get money, and they’ll get peace of mind. Everybody wins. And remember, although he’ll be president, you’re the one with power.”
Well past midnight, Alicia was lying in bed debating these things when she heard a rustling outside. Because her defenses were down, and she was worn to the point of pain, Alicia threw on a mink and went outside. She crept around to the alley. Near the window outside her bedroom, Alicia found a man rummaging through their trash.
He paused, and made a quarter turn. Alicia drew in a sharp breath. It was him, the man from La Fontanella. He gave her a menacing glower, then cocked back, as if loading before a pounce.
In that moment, Alicia was surprised to find she wasn’t scared. Her heart was beating at a reasonable pace.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.
Alicia lifted her shoulders. She used Fred’s words to fortify her courage.
“You can’t hurt me,” she said. “I’m the one with the power. I’ve been quiet, minding my own business, but you’ve forced me out of my shell. Tell Jack that I need to speak to him. Before it’s too late.”
KENNEDY LEARNS NIGHT ON THE TOWN IN MANHATTAN CAN PRESENT PROBLEMS
The Dubois County Daily Herald, January 10, 1961
NEW YORK
They’d arranged to meet at one o’clock, Le Pavillon.
Alicia chose a corner table, seated with her back toward the mirrored wall. She watched as the front door opened and closed. When someone of Jack’s build darkened the doorway, Alicia lifted her chin in anticipation, her insides a tangle of nerves.
When she spotted a familiar face that wasn’t Jack’s, Alicia’s first thought was Of all the luck. This was a favored Kennedy haunt but she hadn’t expected anyone else, especially not Bobby, shifty and ratlike as always. Alicia considered sliding under the table as he cut a path in her direction.
“Hello, Madam Purdom.”
He tossed his briefcase onto the floor and sat.
Alicia narrowed her eyes. Madam, he’d said, not madame. She did not miss the innuendo. He’d blame it on his clunky accent, but she knew better. Bobby missed no opportunity to call her a whore.
“Hello,” she replied coolly, and extended a hand.
Perhaps Jack sent his brother in to clear out the room. The president-elect couldn’t take any chances, being weeks from his inauguration.
“What is it I should be calling you these days, Mr. Attorney General?” Alicia said, as her eyes bounced about. “Congratulations on your most unexpected appointment. We heard about it in Rome.”
“I wouldn’t call it ‘unexpected,’” he grumbled.
“Really?” Alicia returned her attention to the table. “Everyone else did.”
A waiter darted over. He plunked down two glasses and filled them with Alicia’s favorite white burgundy, Château de Puligny-Montrachet.
“Nothing for me,” Bobby said.
“I’ll have the shrimp,” Alicia said, though she was not hungry.
“Shrimp” was his longtime nickname, an inside joke among his siblings, and appropriate since he was such a dirty, writhing arthropod. Alicia wanted to remind him that she was once privy to familial intimacies, thus wasn’t the two-bit slut he claimed.
“You look well,” Bobby said, without actually looking at her.
“Thank you,” she said. “I feel well.”
Alicia ran her fingers along the beveled grooves of the Baccarat glass.
“You look the same,” she added.
This was true, though not a compliment necessarily. Those beady blue eyes, the angry, gnawing teeth. In the ten years she’d known Bobby, Alicia’s view had not changed a speck. Lyndon Johnson called him a “little fart” and she couldn’t agree more.
“When does your brother arrive?” she asked.
“My brother?” he said, reaching around by his feet.
He whomped the suitcase on the table.
“You thought Jack would be here? Sorry, but ridding himself of old hassles is at the bottom of the president’s priority list. To that end.” Bobby tapped the suitcase. “Five hundred.”
“Five hundred what?” Alicia said, wondering if it was possible Jack really wouldn’t come see her that day.
“Five hundred thousand dollars,” Bobby said, exasperated.
“I really need to speak with Jack.”
“Five hundred is more than fair and is also all I’m authorized to offer. You wouldn’t get more out of him.”
Alicia’s stomach coiled. It was both an ungodly sum and somehow not enough. She needed the money, but money wasn’t why she came. Though her request to see him was mildly threatening, Alicia hadn’t planned to ask for a cent. She simply wanted to see Jack, and tell him about Benny, before he was swallowed up by the world.
“I don’t want your money,” she said, mouth dry. “I want Jack.”
So. This was what her life and a decade-long relationship had been reduced to: a suitcase of money. Alicia thought to the days when a suitcase was all she had, when she carried it off the bus in Hyannis Port, hoping her life would change but never picturing in this particular way.
“Is this not what you wanted?” Bobby asked.
It was, and it wasn’t. What she truly wanted could not be had, yet Alicia took a second to contemplate his offer. She thought about the checks she’d bounced in Rome, and in Switzerland. Police visited the studio last week.
“Any hooker in town would be thrilled with a fraction of this amount.”
“I’m not a prostitute,” she seethed.
“Hmmm, well, I do know that you’re a woman who can be bought.”
“No,” Alicia said. “I don’t want your money. Not a penny of it.”
Her jaw was set in steely resolve, but Alicia’s insides quivered. Jack was paying her off, like one of the mobsters who fixed his election. The soon-to-be most powerful man in the world deemed her complicity worth a fortune. Yet, it was the very specificity of the price tag that made her feel worthless.
“I don’t want it,” she repeated, as much to herself as to him.
“Don’t you need the money?” Bobby asked, sweat collecting at his hairline. “From what I hear, you’re flat broke.”
“You’ve heard wrong.”
Alicia wrapped her fur tighter. It was far too warm in the restaurant to keep it on, but she was trying to make a point.
“Look here, Mrs. Purdom—”
“Enough of the ‘Mrs. Purdom’ nonsense,” Alicia said. “I’m getting divorced.”
“I don’t care about your personal life. Are you gonna take the money or not?”
“I will not,” she said.
Alicia stood. She tucked her crocodile purse beneath her arm.
“You are welcome to pay for my meal and the wine, however,” she said.
Alicia’s nose tightened. Tears prickled.
“Give my best to your family,” she said. “And send your brother my sincerest congratulations. He will do great things for this country.”
“And where are you off to now? Planning to raise more hell?”
She gave a watery smile.
“I’m not planning on it,” she said. “Though, I guess, one never knows.”
“Where are you going?” he asked again.
“To my hotel. And after that, probably Rome.”
“In other words, you’ll continue to be a problem for us.”
“A problem?” She shrugged. “That depends on your definition. But don’t worry about me. I’ll make my way, somehow. Survivi
ng is what I do best.”
JUNE 2016
LOS ANGELES
“I’m sorry I haven’t taken the test,” Serena Palmisano says as she walks into Leonard’s study.
She assumes this is why Leonard’s summoned her to his home. He’s complained enough about wanting to return to New York, and that her indecision is holding him up.
“Who let you in?” Leonard asks.
He is confounded. No one gave him any warning and though he’d asked Serena to stop by, he did not expect her to show up so early. Lee follows closely behind. He’s wearing jeans and a button-down shirt, untucked.
“The man…” she says. “With the hair?”
Serena acts like she’s brushing something off her shoulders.
“He let us in.”
Ah, his would-be son-in-law. He is not Leonard’s favorite, but it’s nice to know he is capable of waking up before ten o’clock.
“Well, you’re here,” he says, unnecessarily. “Let’s talk.”
As Leonard sits, he remembers that he’s wearing sweatpants. There’d been plans to try a yoga class but he chickened out, after googling the poses. Yoga is supposed to be relaxing, but what is so relaxing about standing on one’s head?
“The reason I did not take the test,” Serena says, though he’s not asked, “is that I currently lack the…” She looks at Lee. “The guts. Novella—my nonna—was my life. I don’t want to change my past.”
“I understand completely,” Leonard says.
He should’ve given this girl credit, for valuing her history over a pile of cash.
“No one can force you,” he adds.
Serena’s thick lashes flutter. Lee fiddles with a thread on his shirt.
“Take the test, or don’t,” Leonard says. “It really makes no difference to me.”
“But … is that not why you asked us over?” she says with a squint. “To complain that I haven’t taken it?”
“No, actually. I called because another matter has come to light.”
Leonard ponders how he might address this prickly topic. He could give her the letter, to read for herself, but that feels like a sneak attack.
“Listen,” he says. “How much do you know about Alicia’s romantic past?”
The Summer I Met Jack Page 41