CHAPTER 22

She met her father for supper at the Tabard Inn, a quiet place that fashioned itself after a Federal drawing room. He looked better than he had in ages, with color in his cheeks and filling out a trim suit. His smile was genuine and relaxed, and his eyes had gained back a little of that twinkle they used to have behind his round glasses.

“Kick! How terrific to see you after work. No more long lunches for my girl,” he said proudly. Once they were seated in the leather chairs, he added, “Frank tells me you’re doing wonderfully. And don’t tell him I let the cat out of the bag, but he’ll be giving you a real assignment soon. He knows your talents are wasted on secretarial work.”

“That would be great, Daddy.” Kick beamed, not caring if it was her father who’d gotten Frank to give her a serious writing assignment. She was sick of the phones and needed a challenge.

Kick and her father ordered, and then chatted about her siblings over old-fashioneds. Bobby was doing well at Milton Academy; Eunice was contemplating a move from Manhattanville College to Stanford, where her recent ailments might be eased by the California sunshine; Jean and Pat were doing well in school; and Teddy missed his older brothers terribly but was happy being his mother’s pet. “It’s almost like he’s an only child,” Joe remarked with a laugh.

“And Joe Jr. is off to a marvelous start,” he added with confidence. Kick had been exchanging letters with her eldest brother and so knew that there was a part of him that was anxious for America to go to war so that he could distinguish himself as a navy pilot and finally break out of Jack’s shadow. He’d never forgiven Jack for hogging the spotlight in the Athenia disaster those last weeks they were in England, then for publishing his Harvard thesis as a book to such great acclaim—especially after their father had never been able to get his own dispatches from Spain published. Kick knew that Jack had done none of it on purpose, and in fact supported Joe Jr. wholeheartedly, going so far as to say he was relieved their parents poured all their political ambitions into his older brother. But Joe Jr. still felt threatened. “Every paper I open, there’s Jack’s smiling face,” he’d said in one recent letter to Kick.

Kick had to bring up Rosemary herself. “Jack and I went to visit Rosie the other day,” she said.

Immediately her father’s face darkened, and he ground his molars together before saying, “I spoke with the Mother Superior this morning, and it sounds like she has been a bit better since she saw you both.”

“You don’t look encouraged, though,” Kick observed, feeling unsteady and less hungry. She set her spoon down without finishing her vichyssoise.

“Believe me, Kick, I’d like to think that the influence of her siblings could make a difference, but it never has in the past. Except temporarily.”

“Daddy, I’ve been thinking a great deal about her lately, especially with the . . . trouble . . . she’s been having, and I wondered if maybe getting married might help her? She is such a beautiful girl, and so tender with children. And men have always been able to set her right—you, Jack, and Joe, for instance. I’m not surprised that in a convent full of women she isn’t thriving.” There, she’d said it. She held her breath.

Joe set down his spoon. “Your mother and I have discussed that possibility. But I can’t in good conscience pair her with a man until she’s under control. Can you imagine what would happen if I gave my blessing to a match and then she embarrassed herself and the family?” He shook his head, then said gravely, “That would be a sin.”

“I don’t think that would be likely to happen, do you?” Kick pressed, feeling braver since he hadn’t dismissed her suggestion. “If the courtship went well, that is? Wouldn’t we see signs beforehand if it wasn’t the right choice? Can’t we try?”

“I’ll tell you what I’d like to try,” her father said, his expression changing from melancholy defeatism to spry hope as he sang the praises of Dr. Freeman, with whom he’d actually met twice on this trip to Washington. Mother will be beside herself, Kick thought as her stomach dropped a few inches.

“I know a bit about Dr. Freeman myself,” Kick said carefully, not wanting to give her mother and their colluding away. “My friend John White on the paper has been writing a series about Saint Elizabeths Hospital.” For once she was glad to be able to use a man’s name to help her case.

“Oh?” Her father appeared ready to listen, so Kick explained to him the same facts she’d already relayed to her mother.

“Journalists are paid to doubt, of course,” was her father’s first shrugging reply. “And those extreme cases that he describes are in keeping with what Dr. Freeman has explained to me as well. The results are in proportion to the problem.”

“Has he dealt with a . . . mild case like Rosemary’s before?”

“Honestly, Kathleen, I don’t like being interrogated by my own daughter. There are some things best left to parents.”

Then I hope you talk to Mother, she thought forcefully, pushing her bowl away. This was just like her father these days. I should have known. She only hoped that the carrot Jack had dangled before Rosemary would be temptation enough to help her sister control herself and help their father see the right course of action for his oldest daughter. She would pray a rosary for it that night.

---

Soon enough, the assignment from Frank came through, and she was industriously working on an article about the expansion of a library. It was a dull subject, but Kick enjoyed the work, piecing quotes together with facts culled from town records and her own descriptions of the facility. She was reminded of why she’d chosen Father O’Flaherty’s newsletter and the bulletin as methods of gaining independence in London. Those first attempts at journalism seemed so silly compared to what she was learning now, though, especially when John sat her down after reading a draft before she handed it in to Frank, and said, “This isn’t an essay for school. You’re not trying to impress a nun with your flowery language.”

“I know.” She winced.

“Then why did you write it this way? With all the adjectives? ‘Beautiful’—which, by the way, you say thirteen times in eight hundred words—and not just ‘dusty books’ but ‘ancient, dusty volumes’ and ‘educational and edifying.’ I could go on.”

“Please don’t,” Kick said, feeling her cheeks burn and wishing she’d given the draft to Inga.

John let the paper flutter down to her desk and said, “Cut this in half by getting rid of extra words, then add more quotes, and you’ll be on the right track.”

She took his advice and found that despite her irritation at his manner, his guidance had improved the article. And Frank must have agreed because another assignment soon followed. In a few weeks, her secretarial desk had been taken by a younger, blonder girl, and she’d moved across the room, two desks away from Inga and one from Page. Neither of the other two women were around much, though, as both of them were deeply involved with men not on the paper staff, and they used research and reporting duties as excuses for not being at their desks. Page’s beau was Frazer Dougherty, and Kick couldn’t figure out the attraction. He was handsome enough, she supposed, but he was nobody—not from a great family, or on his way to greatness in some other way.

“I’m glad for an escape from all that,” Page told Kick when they met up for a drink after work one night. “Working for your father was glamorous and all, but it was dangerous, too. So many egos at stake.”

Kick nodded like she understood, but she didn’t really—Maybe I like a little danger, she considered, and the thought surprised her. Inga and Jack she understood much better. And when she let herself, she felt wretchedly jealous of them, too. Not only was Inga getting the best of Jack these days, when that part of him used to belong to Kick—the dancing and sparring with her witty brother at parties and other engagements—the other woman was balancing the impossible: a husband, a lover, and a career that earned her respect from men, even men who didn’t want to sleep with her. In fact, from men who probably wouldn’t sleep with her because of her career.

One windy autumn night, Kick and John and Jack and Inga were at one of their favorite haunts, a former speakeasy near Logan Circle that served whiskey from the same distillery that had made it illegally in 1925. It nabbed some of the best jazz singers that blew through town, shuttling between New Orleans and New York City, and the four of them loved heading there after dinner at the Old Ebbitt Grill. That night they were waiting for Evelyn Dall to take the stage.

“She sang at Buckingham Palace,” said Kick nostalgically. “It was hilarious, actually. Lord Chamberlain was appalled when this platinum blonde American in a slinky dress took the stage. Apparently, he hadn’t known what ‘crooner’ meant, so when his advisors asked him if they should get a great crooner to perform at the palace, he’d thought it was some sort of instrument.” She laughed, recalling the absurdity of it, and the way the prime minister’s face had blanched.

“He really didn’t know what ‘crooner’ meant?” John asked with no small amount of derision.

Inga said, “You must understand the English sensibility. They are much too imperial to think they don’t know everything, and much too polite to inquire when they aren’t sure.”

“It’s not true for all English people,” Kick said, feeling defensive, “but it was certainly true of Chamberlain.”

John shook his head and finished his second whiskey. “No wonder,” he muttered into his glass.

And off they went, arguing again while Jack and Inga retreated into their own little sphere.

“Why can’t we be more like them?” John said later, nodding over at their companions. Jack’s arm was quietly draped over Inga’s shoulder, and as she smoked, he drank. A moment ago, they had kissed, and her red lipstick was still on Jack’s lips.

“John, I’m just not . . . going to be with you the way you want me to,” Kick finally said.

He sighed, exasperated. “Don’t bring the nuns into this.”

“I’m not. You are. Why do you keep coming back for more if you’re not getting what you really want?”

“Because I like you,” he said, sounding like the most miserable man alive.

“Don’t look so happy about it,” she said sarcastically.

“Have pity on me,” he said.

He looked worthy of pity, she had to admit. And he was loyal, if not faithful, exactly. There were still other girls.

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.”