Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (25 page)

Joseph nodded his head and placed his hand on her cheek. Jackie rested her head on his lap and kissed his hand. Then she stood up to kiss the side of his face that had been para- lyzed.

At Horizon House

J
oseph worked tirelessly at Horizon House to regain his faculties, with periodic visits from all of his family members lending their support and encouragement—except for Ethel, who said that she could not bear to see her father-in-law in such a weakened state.

Joan would sometimes visit her father-in-law with Ted, and she would often show up at the hospital alone. Nurses remember her sitting and talking to the old man for hours,

leaving his side only to break down in tears in the hallway. She so loved Joseph, perhaps because he praised her at every opportunity, even at Jackie’s expense.

One story about Joseph that Joan has often told has to do with the time she, Jackie, Ethel, their husbands, and the rest of the Kennedys were at the Big House for Thanksgiv- ing dinner. They were all gathered around Rose’s polished fruitwood table in her ivory-and-gold dining room. As it did every year, a centerpiece of gourds, small pumpkins, bananas, apples, and autumn leaves with four silver can- dlesticks decorated the table, with platters of food placed all about it: hot clam broth; a butter-browned twenty-six- pound turkey on a silver serving dish; homemade cran- berry sauce; buttered string beans; creamed onions; mashed orange sweet potatoes with a melted marshmallow topping; corn muffins; and for dessert, apple or pumpkin pie and vanilla ice cream. “Eh, now
this
is living,” Ted would say.

Despite their tremendous wealth and the manner in which they relished their lifestyle, the Kennedys were also notori- ously thrifty. Rose was known to run around the house scolding the help for leaving lights on; she would loosen bulbs in the closets because “you don’t need light in a closet.” Joseph and Rose both liked to think they had money problems, though they had millions.

“No one in this family lives within her means, except for Joan,” Joseph said as they ate. “She’s thrifty, and I like that about her, let me tell you.”

Once Ted bought Joan a diamond pin worth many thou- sands of dollars. Joan decided to wear it to an embassy re- ception in Tokyo, and to offset its loveliness she wore two strings of pearls that she had purchased for fifteen dollars

each at Garfinckel’s in Washington. “Everyone thinks they look real,” she told a reporter candidly. “But, you know, I don’t think I’ll buy the real thing. These are good enough, don’t you think?” That was the kind of behavior Joseph liked in Joan.

“Now you, young lady,” Joseph said, pointing an ac- cusatory finger at Jackie, who was known for shopping binges that involved tens of thousands of dollars spent on antiques, clothes, and jewels. “I see not the slightest indica- tion that you have any idea of how much money you spend. Bills come in from Italy, Paris, Rome, all over the world for your extravagances. It’s completely ridiculous to have such disregard for the value of money. You should be more like Joan.”

Ethel, sitting next to Joseph, may have feared he might criticize her next. In truth, Ethel was as big a spendthrift as Jackie, with no concept of the value of money. Once when an accountant told her that her checking account was over- drawn, she responded very seriously, “But how can that be? I still have checks left!” Barbara Gibson, who would later become Rose’s personal secretary, says, “Ethel was big on fine wines and would order her favorite,
Pouilly Fuissé
, by the case. She would buy designer dresses she liked in a variety of colors. When you went to her home for dinner, it was always luxurious—lobster tails, prime rib. I remember when Rose Kennedy and I went to Ethel’s once, and the menu was Alaskan King Crab. Sarcastically, Rose said something like, ‘It must be nice to be so very, very rich.’ ”

If being reprimanded for her spending habits hurt Jackie at all, she knew just how to receive the criticism with good grace, allowing Joan her moment of glory.

“Oh, you are so right, Grandpa,” Jackie said, with a pointed look at Ethel. “We should
all
be more like Joan.”

Joan enjoyed telling that story, and she told it often. “I love Grandpa and Jackie for that,” she said.

Joseph’s illness was therefore especially difficult for his youngest daughter-in-law, and the visits were emotionally draining. Ted told her that if visiting his father was so upset- ting, perhaps she should stop going. Yet Joan continued to go.

One day Joan showed up with Jackie, and the two sisters- in-law wheeled Joseph up and down the hospital corridors, gossiping and laughing like sisters, as if the old man wasn’t even there. One of Joseph’s therapists, Patricia Moran, re- members Joseph abruptly stamping his foot on the floor in order to get their attention. “It’s as if he was saying, ‘Pay at- tention to me, why don’t you.’ ” Afterwards, she says, they all laughed heartily, Joseph included.

“Gosh, what can we do to get Ethel down here?” Jackie would ask Joan. “When is she going to learn to deal with the real world? It is often not pretty, you know? Maybe Bobby can do something.” Even Bobby, however, was unable to convince his wife to visit Joseph.

Despite her reluctance to show up at Horizon House, Ethel had great love, respect, and admiration for her father- in-law, holding him in high esteem and, like Jackie and Joan, seemingly ignoring the fact (or maybe just accepting it and not allowing it to affect her opinion of him) that it was really Joseph who had set the standard for the womanizing that would continue to plague all their marriages. Like Jackie and Joan, Ethel always made certain that her children treated Grandpa with the utmost respect.

“Everything we have, all that we are, we owe to

The Walking Cane
191

Grandpa,” Ethel would tell her offspring just before they visited Joseph. “You see that bike? It’s because of Grandpa that you have it,” she would say. “You see that swimming pool? It’s because of Grandpa that you have it. Now go over there and kiss your Grandpa.”

The Walking Cane

J
oseph Kennedy made rapid progress during his therapy, though he did not regain his speech and never would; the day soon arrived in the summer of 1962 when he would take his first poststroke steps—a major achievement in the life of any handicapped person and the ultimate goal of months of painstaking therapy. It was a miracle, Rose said, “a true mir- acle.”

With fitted leg brace and a surgical shoe, Joseph was about to rise from his wheelchair when a doctor handed him a hook-handled cane supplied by the hospital. His face be- came crimson red as he screamed out, “No! No!
No!
” The ordinary cane was offensive; he wasn’t just any man and would not use the cane anyone else would be given. He threw the offending stick across the room, narrowly missing a nurse. After a great deal of coaxing, Joseph finally agreed to use the cane, but only after the doctor had promised to buy him a new, more handsome one.

With two attending physicians, several staff doctors, many patients, his business associate Ham Brown, and his nurses Luella Hennessey and Rita Dallas watching—a full

audience—Joseph was just rising from the wheelchair again when there was a clattering of heels in the hall. All eyes turned to see Jackie quickly walking down the hallway flanked by two Secret Service agents, one of whom was Clint Hill. “Please, stop!” she implored.

Surprised, Joseph dropped back down into his chair, his mouth agape. Jackie, dressed in a pale yellow and white sleeveless shift with white heels and accessories, rushed to her father-in-law like a beam of light. She bent down and kissed him on the cheek, and soon the entire room was filled with her exuberant energy. Jackie said that she had heard Joe was going to be taking his first steps, and she wanted to be with him when he did so.

Joseph’s eyes were brimming with tears as Jackie hugged him warmly. Taking his face in her hands, she continued, “The whole family is so proud of you. Jack told me to give you a big hug.” They began to weep. Reaching into her pocketbook, she took out a handkerchief. “Aren’t we ridicu- lous?” she asked with a smile as she wiped his eyes.

Jackie motioned to Clint Hill to come to her side. The agent handed the First Lady a long, wrapped package. Jackie opened the side of the box and pulled from it the ex- pensive black and silver walking stick she had purchased the day she heard Joseph had been stricken and would never again walk. On the band was engraved “To Grandpa, with love, Jackie.”

Joseph took the walking stick and rose from his chair; Jackie hooked her arm through his. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s take a walk.”

Life at the Hyannis Port Compound

D
espite the controversies surrounding the Kennedy broth- ers’ relationships with Marilyn Monroe, family life at the Hyannis Port compound continued as if nothing was wrong. Keeping the family name unsullied was of prime importance to the Kennedys, even among each other.

In the tradition set by Rose, if family members didn’t recognize unpleasant things, then surely they weren’t hap- pening. Those who married into the stoical clan had to fol- low the Kennedy line, no matter what their private opinions. So it was easy for them to celebrate the Fourth of July in 1962 at Hyannis Port as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

Cape Cod is where the many Kennedys would congre- gate during the summer months and for holidays, birth- days, or during times of trouble. Whereas the Palm Beach compound—the winter home—was inhabited by Joseph and Rose, with rented homes nearby for the others, in Hyannis Port everyone was thrown together in close prox- imity.

In many ways, the beauty and serenity of the Hyannis Port compound made it seem a million miles away from the real world, especially in the summer of 1962, when racial tensions and violence were at an incendiary level in some American cities, particularly in the South. In a couple of months, the situation would escalate into a race riot when James Meredith would attempt to register at the all-white University of Mississippi. That night, Jack would appeal to

white Mississippians in a nine-minute televised speech, dur- ing which he would plead for racial tolerance.

“Summer picnics were the favorite outings of young and old alike during those wonderful Cape Cod days,” recalled Jacques Lowe. “Basket upon basket would be filled with hot dogs and hard-boiled eggs, hamburgers and marshmal- lows, cokes and beer. All the Kennedy children and their friends and pets would crowd into the
Marlin
[the Kennedy yacht] and motor over to some nearby island such as Great Island. There on the beach, a barbecue would be set up, baseball bats and footballs would come out, and the children and the grown-ups would partake in the sim- ple joy of living.”

Jackie would find herself at the Hyannis Port compound often, even in later years, after she was no longer a Kennedy. She enjoyed the peace and serenity there, as well as a sense of security, and though she may not have wanted to admit it for fear that her presence would become obligatory, she ac- tually enjoyed the company of most of the Kennedys. She and Jack rented from Morton Downey another home nearby on Squaw Island, so they had a place to go to when Jackie tired of being so close to the family.