Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (72 page)

Joan and Ted:

Creating the Illusion of a Marriage

A
fter the meeting of Kennedy family members and doctors in Virginia, quickly laid plans went into action to—as Richard Burke would remember it—“create the illusion of a marriage” between Ted and Joan Kennedy, all for the sake of public relations and good politics. Joan would spend more time in McLean (with the liquor cabinet always locked in her presence), Ted would spend less time with his Palm Beach mistress (though he would not give her up), and the two would attend the children’s school functions together and make other personal appearances that would generate the news that they were working on their marriage.

“I think she was searching for her own identity,” observes Richard Burke of Joan at this time, “and appeared to want to hold on to the concept of defining herself as Mrs. Kennedy. I believe she was terrified of losing that label.”

In the intervening months, Ted’s brother-in-law Steve Smith agreed to act as his campaign manager (a post he had held during Bobby’s ill-fated campaign). Others came along to fill other positions, including Ted’s former press repre- sentative Dick Drayne, who signed on to do battle with the media for the Kennedys.

By August 1979, the decade-anniversary of Chappaquid-

dick, the Kennedy handlers had put together briefing papers for Ted relating to his Chappaquiddick fiasco: There was nothing new to say, he accepted full responsibility, and all questions have been answered. Ted even called the Kopechnes at their ranch home in Pennsylvania, “to see where they stood, whether or not they were going to say anything damaging,” recalled Mary Ann Kopan, Mary Jo Kopechne’s aunt.

It might have been understandable that Ted didn’t know where the Kopechnes stood because, years earlier, Mary Jo’s family sent Joan and Ted a card when twelve-year-old Ted Jr. had his leg amputated because of cancer. It seemed odd under the circumstances. Joan responded with a nice note of her own to the Kopechnes.

In fact, the Kopechnes had strong feelings against the Kennedys, and yet they said nothing to Ted that would indi- cate that they would be the slightest political liability. Ted’s call remained completely innocuous.

“Thank God that’s over with,” Ted reportedly said when he hung up.

On September 6, the Kennedy office leaked a new story to the media indicating that neither Rose nor Joan would op- pose a possible candidacy by Ted. (Carter ridiculed the an- nouncement, saying, “I asked my mama, and she said it was okay [for Carter to run for re-election]. And my wife, Ros- alynn, said she’d be willing to live in the White House for four more years.”) The next day a CBS-TV poll showed that Ted had a 53–16 lead over Carter and that he could probably have the Democratic nomination if it was what he wanted.

In a couple of months, Ted would be on the cover of
Time
magazine with the bold headline: “The Kennedy Challenge” and an accompanying story about Joan called

“the Vulnerable Soul of Joansie” that did nothing to en- hance her image: “Public life has not been kind to Joan Kennedy. Its wounds can be seen in the puffy eyes, the ex- aggerated makeup, the tales of alcoholism. Today, she is a sadly vulnerable soul and an unknown factor in her hus- band’s electoral equation.” In speaking of her marriage, she was quoted as saying, “Subconsciously, I’d like to have been like Ethel and had one baby after another.” The distressing article implied that Joan wasn’t even good at being an alcoholic: “She passes out after only three drinks.” The feature also reported that Joan was at her Boston home a few months earlier when Ted’s car pulled up. “Oh Christ,” she reportedly said. “Here he comes. I’m getting out of here.” Then, she strode away rapidly. Though Ted was angry at Joan when the story was pub- lished, she stood up to him well.

The article listed as Ted’s “dalliances” alleged girlfriends Amanda Burden, Paige Lee Hufty, skier Susie Chaffee, and Margaret Trudeau, “among others.” Joan closed the maga- zine after reading the feature and walked away muttering, “Nice list . . .”

October 20 marked the dedication in the Boston suburb of Waltham, Massachusetts, of the John F. Kennedy Presiden- tial Library, giving Ted an opportunity to make remarks, along with President Carter, who was also a scheduled speaker. Jackie flew in from New York for the ceremony. (When President Carter kissed Jackie on the cheek as he moved through the crowd on his way to the podium, Richard Burke recalls, “She recoiled as if bitten by a snake.”) While there, Jackie enjoyed a warm reunion with Joan. Though the two women rarely saw each other because their lives had taken them in completely different directions, when they did

have the occasional reunion, affection was deeply felt be- tween them.

“Oh my God, Joan! Just look at you,” Jackie exclaimed. “I’ve never seen you look so . . . so . . . together.”

As Joan smiled, she reached out and embraced her sister- in-law.

It was true; Joan had never looked better. She had lost the bloated look that had diminished her attractiveness in recent years. Her blonde hair was cut in a stylish pageboy, she had shed some weight, and hadn’t had a drink in almost six months. Jackie must have taken a certain amount of pride in Joan’s recovery, because, just a few years earlier, Joan showed up unannounced at her apartment on Fifth Avenue, needing to talk. She was torn, she said. Should she move out on her own to Boston, or stay with Ted and the children in McLean? Would she be abandoning her children? Would they hate her?

“When I realized my drinking was becoming a real prob- lem, I went to see Jackie,” Joan later recalled. “I’d been told that an alcoholic by nature starts to blame everything and everybody except himself. And that’s when I knew that I had to get away and have some time for myself. So Jackie and I talked about all that. I felt close to Jackie because both of us needed space to be alone.

“I was always a person who could be alone and like it. Jackie and I were the Kennedy wives who were different that way. We treasured our privacy and, for instance, en- joyed slipping away and reading a book on the beach. I be- lieve that private time is growth time. Although I don’t talk about this much to the children, I think I’ve provided an ex- ample that having a camaraderie and private time is equiva- lent to having a full life.”

Jackie had been a bit ambivalent about the notion of Joan leaving her children. However, she also must have related to Joan’s desperation. A little more than fifteen years earlier, she had considered leaving Caroline and John with Ethel and Bobby, so distraught was she after Jack’s death. Ulti- mately she had decided against it. However, her situation was different from Joan’s. In time, Jackie would be able to pull herself together, whereas Joan’s alcoholism had made it impossible for her to be a good and dependable mother. Her sobriety had to come first now—which is what she had been told at Alcoholic’s Anonymous—above everything else, even her children. Because Jackie had alcoholism in her own family and had often fretted that she, too, could fall prey to it, she understood Joan’s misery.

“Listen, you do what you have to do,
for Joan,
” Jackie told her favorite sister-in-law, according to what Joan later recalled to Joan Braden. “If you take care of Joan, the rest will fall into place. How many years have I been telling you that?”

“Too many years,” Joan said, with a laugh.

Now, just a short time later, Joan seemed like a new woman, in control and ready to face the future. “Is it true?” Jackie wanted to know. “Is Ted going to run?”

Joan confirmed the information, saying, “We’re going to give it our best shot, anyway.”

“Well, if Ted runs,” Jackie warned her, “you’ll have to be twice as strong as I was when Jack and I were in the White House, Joan. It’s much worse now than it was for us then,” she said, probably referring to the post-Chappaquiddick Kennedys’ world and the media’s ever-growing interest in the private lives of politicians. “It feels to me like everyone is watching,” she said. Joan had to agree.

Jackie and Ethel were pleasant to one another at the li- brary’s dedication, but it was clear to all observers that, even after all these years, they had never resolved the differences between them brought about by Jackie’s marriage to Aristo- tle Onassis. Sometimes they were thrown together, though, in situations involving their children, and for those times they were cooperative with one another, such as when Jackie’s son John ran away from home when he was about eleven—to Hickory Hill.

When young John had informed his mother that he was leaving, she not only told him to go but also packed a suit- case for him. As it would happen, John Jr. would be one of those rare children who would run away from home with his own Secret Service agent, John Walsh, in tow. Defiantly the youngster, suitcase in hand, walked down Fifth Avenue to the corner of 83rd Street, where he and Walsh hailed a cab. The two were driven across the Triborough Bridge to La- Guardia, where John and the agent caught a plane to Vir- ginia. Once there, Jackie arranged for them to be picked up and taken to Hickory Hill. (After dropping John off, Walsh turned around and went back to Manhattan.) Before the boy’s arrival, Jackie had already spoken to Ethel and ex- plained that he was having trouble in school, refused to apply himself, and said he would rather live with his cousins than hear his mother nagging him about his studies. Ethel agreed to make it as tough as possible for John at Hickory Hill.

In just a few days John found that visiting Hickory Hill and living there were two very different things. After Bobby’s death, Ethel ran Hickory Hill like a boot camp, never letting up on her children when it came to chores— painting the house, doing the gardening, picking up after

the assortment of animals. And there were always the com- petitive sports that John was never good at as a youngster. Baseball, football, tree-climbing—it was all more than the young prince could take. On the plus side, he could eat anything he wanted to. Ethel’s cook was instructed to pre- pare for the children anything they demanded, whenever they demanded it. John was used to a prearranged menu; he would ordinarily eat whatever was placed before him, or he wouldn’t eat at all. However, after four days of his fa- vorite peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, he was on the phone begging his mother to rescue him from his banish- ment. He promised to study, and with the threat of all those Hickory Hill chores hanging over his head, he did his best in the future to apply himself to his schooling. “And if you don’t,” Jackie would tell him, “I’m sending you back to Aunt Ethel’s.”*

Shortly after the
Time
magazine feature, CBS aired an hour-long special, “CBS Reports: Teddy,” which would turn out poorly and would bode ill for Ted’s campaign and his hopes of ever being elected President. No matter how much preparation, no matter how much strategizing, no matter how much everyone in the Kennedy camp hoped to fool everyone else, the simple fact that Ted was not being hon- est—about his life, perhaps, Chappaquiddick, and most cer- tainly his marriage—would be his ruination. The interview, taped earlier at his home in Squaw Island, was conducted by

*During this period, a bully was taunting John daily in the third grade, saying “John-John wears shorts.” One day John drove his fist into the child’s nose, almost knocking him out, much to Jackie’s dismay. Alarmed, she asked her son where he learned to hit like that. He replied, “The Secret Service, Mom!”

Roger Mudd, who wasted little time before asking Ted about “the present state” of his marriage.

Ted, never a spontaneous speaker, seemed caught off guard, though the question was inevitable. “Well, I think it’s a—we’ve had some difficult times, but I think we’ll have . . .” he began, stumbling. “We’ve, I think, been able to make some very good progress and it’s—I would say it’s— it’s—it’s—I’m delighted that we’re able to share the time and relationship that we—that we do share.”

“Are you separated or are you just, what?” Mudd asked, pressing.

“Well, I don’t know whether there’s a single word that should—have a description for it,” Ted said, sputtering along as if about to run out of gas. The expression on his face indicated that he knew he was in trouble.

After a commercial, the report reexamined the Chap- paquiddick tragedy—one decade and two months later— bringing back into focus that there were more than a few unanswered questions regarding the matter. Then, as if to drive any remaining nails into his own coffin, Ted botched the answer to the most important question of the evening, why he wanted to be President. It seemed as though he was unable to articulate his goals; he mumbled something about it being “imperative for this country to either move forward, that it can’t stand still, otherwise it moves back.”

The broadcast was devastating; no one in the family was pleased about it, least of all Ted, who felt that he had been sandbagged by Roger Mudd. If anything, it set the tenor for the way the media would handle Ted for the rest of his cam- paign: suspiciously. While Jackie’s reaction to the interview was unknown (though she probably wasn’t surprised by the way Ted had seemingly sabotaged his own campaign, since

she had always believed that he would never allow himself to be President), when Ethel saw it on television, she ran to her bedroom, slammed the door, and did not emerge for three hours. Joan watched with Marcia Chellis. Afterward, the two women sat in utter astonishment, before Joan finally got up and turned off the television.