Fairy Tale Interrupted

by Rosemarie Terenzio

  In the weeks leading up to the party, I became more and more excited, because this was going to be just that—a party. No expectations. No press. No pressure. We didn’t have to appease advertisers or woo celebrities. It was a rare opportunity to have a good time and toast ourselves. And I really needed to have some fun again.

  The night did not disappoint. The city twinkled festively outside the wall of windows in the loft space we had rented through Biz’s friend. The Puck Building is an old downtown edifice that once housed the satirical monthly Spy magazine, which famously poked fun at everything, including George. Without any hidden agendas, the George staff was more relaxed that night.

  Carolyn gave me an enormous hug as soon as she found me in the big, open room. “You are the best-dressed person here,” she said, holding me at arm’s length to get a full view.

  I didn’t have a single nonblack item in my closet, so I went shopping and bought a sheer, light-blue sheath with tiny silver sequins. It was gorgeous.

  “I love that, of course, you ignored John’s rules completely.” She wore a black dress.

  “Fuck it. I don’t care.” She laughed. “I don’t work for George. I can wear black.”

  For the first time since starting my job, I brought friends other than Frank to a work function. A family friend, an ex-boyfriend, the guy I was having a fling with, and a few other folks came to the party to see my other life and meet John. The staff party was the perfect opportunity to introduce my friends to him. I didn’t need to worry that they would act like freaks, say something inappropriate, or tattle to a paper; we could all let our guard down and just enjoy ourselves. And, of course, my friends were thrilled to be invited. The DJ was awesome, too. I was dancing with a friend when Prince’s “It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night” came on and I felt a tug on my elbow. It was John.

  “Would you like to dance?” he asked.

  “Sure, I’d love to.”

  He looked amazing in a green velvet Gucci suit that only he could pull off. He grabbed both my hands, which made us laugh. Even in the dim light, I could see his face brighten as we grooved to Prince’s soulful singing.

  As we danced together, I felt every eye in the room trained on us. Forming a circle, people craned their necks to get a glimpse. It was just John, whom I goofed on every day. And I had spent countless hours making fun of the way other people got swept up by his charm. But in that moment I felt like a princess. It was intentional on John’s part. He wanted everyone in that room to know I was special. He was giving me permission to show off by showing me off. And yet it felt as if we were the only two people on the dance floor.

  He stopped in the middle of the floor and kissed my hand. “Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate everything you do for me. You’re my best friend.”

  The past year had been rough. John and I had each been through a lot, personally and professionally. The stresses of not knowing whether George would be in business by next Christmas or what story about him, Carolyn, or the magazine would pop in the press next had left our nerves frayed and exposed. But despite the consuming nature of my work, the ups and downs of the past, and those surely to come, I knew, dancing with John, that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. He wasn’t just a boss but someone I truly cared about, and he felt the same way about me. No matter how difficult the subject matter, we were always up-front and honest with each other. Our relationship had started out sincerely, and it never changed. With Frank gone, I had no one else like that in my life.

  “John, I just want you to know I really love my job,” I said. “Whatever you decide to do, I’m coming with you.”

  I gave John a hug and a kiss, secure and happy in the knowledge that with him I would always have a job and a life. A great life full of drama, glamour, inside stories, and laughter. I didn’t care if we were working at a magazine or selling ties on the street, I wasn’t leaving his side.

  The day before the Christmas break, I found the usual mountain of lavish gifts on my desk in what had become quite an expensive holiday ritual for Carolyn. She’d bought me scarves and shoes and a purse she had seen me coveting in the window of the Prada store almost a month before. I would have to talk to her about next year—she couldn’t keep shopping like this. Especially if George went under. But for now I decided to just enjoy it and be grateful.

  On top of the pile sat a note from John. While everyone else drank leftover alcohol from the Christmas party in the conference room, I took a moment to myself and opened the card.

  CHAPTER

  10

  “What’s wrong?” I asked John, who I could tell was upset.

  “Carolyn has decided she’s not coming to Rory’s wedding,” he said, standing at the round table in his office where I piled the mail, looking through his papers without reading them.

  John’s cousin Rory, the youngest of Robert Kennedy’s children, was getting married at her mother’s home in Hyannis that Saturday. The entire Kennedy family was gathering; if Carolyn didn’t show, it would raise eyebrows. Not to mention the endless speculation that would occur when the press got wind of it.

  “You know how she is. She’ll put up a stink and say she’s not going, but she’s going to go,” I assured him.

  “No, she’s not. She’s determined to stay home this weekend, and I’m not going to fight with her about it.”

  Okay. Here we go. I would have to step in and make sure the disagreement didn’t get overblown. “You’re not going to the wedding alone.”

  I was annoyed that nowadays I always seemed to be playing referee. The constant scrutiny of their marriage had taken a toll. Where they once laughed off problems or misunderstandings, they now blew them out of proportion and were both too stubborn to work things out on their own. When they were acting like twelve-year-olds who needed an adult to take charge, it was easier for me just to try to make peace than to deal with the fallout. This was a couple that wasn’t allowed to just have a normal fight and move on.

  As much as I wanted to solve another problem for John, I felt for Carolyn. While the press was interested in them as a couple, they were relentless with her. No matter how private she and John were in their personal lives, the media wouldn’t stop hounding her. The stories, the speculation, and the meanness toward her never wavered.

  In the past three years, the press had Carolyn getting divorced, becoming anorexic, being cheated on, cheating. Sometimes she was pregnant and sometimes she couldn’t get pregnant. Photographers followed her everywhere, including to the gynecologist’s office. In fact, when the paparazzo tailing her one afternoon realized she had entered the office of an ob-gyn, he knew he hit pay dirt. He took a picture of the plaque outside the office with all the doctors’ names. Because the practice had a fertility specialist, the newspaper, which ran a picture of the plaque, concocted a story that Carolyn was having trouble conceiving.

  That was familiar territory for the tabloids, but even respected journalists went after Carolyn. Somehow, it was perfectly acceptable for publications such as the New York Times, New York magazine, and Newsweek to make disparaging remarks about her personality based on nothing more than how she looked in photos. Newsweek printed that “Carolyn . . . has the public persona of a vaguely soulless mannequin.” Maureen Dowd wrote an insulting article in the New York Times painting Carolyn as a “cunning” woman who shared the blame for turning the serious Kennedys superficial. She quoted Edward Klein, the author of a number of books on the Kennedys—or, as John called him, “a guy who had lunch with my mother twenty years ago and has been dining out on it ever since”—who described Carolyn and John as “a 90’s couple, all image and no substance. The content is gone.” Over and over, people said the same thing: Carolyn wasn’t good enough for John.

  Besides having to deal with the public criticism, she also felt the pressure of being the caretaker in John’s big life. Something grave was always happening—such as the battle with cancer that John’s cousin and best friend Anthony Radziwill seemed to be on
the verge of losing. Anthony was like the brother John never had. Each the best man at the other’s wedding, Anthony and John spent almost every summer weekend together on Martha’s Vineyard. It went past family; they enjoyed each other’s company despite their mutual merciless teasing (one of Anthony’s favorite jokes was to call the office and offer me a job at HBO, where he worked).

  No matter the problem, Carolyn played the cheerleader, propping John up. She was the one at the hospital with Anthony while John worked late into the night at the magazine, and she would have to pick up the pieces if Anthony died. “John, we’re going to get through this,” I heard her say many times. “It’s going to be okay.”

  And now the newest crisis: George had lost its publisher. Hachette began severing ties when David Pecker jumped ship to take a job running American Media—the National Enquirer publisher. (It was ironic that Pecker now put out a magazine that hounded John and Carolyn relentlessly, which I didn’t find very funny, although John did.) While Pecker had long put pressure on John to bring up George’s numbers, he’d also been the one to decide to publish it in the first place, so he’d had a vested interest in its success. After his surprising departure, George’s future with Hachette became even more tenuous.

  Then in June 1999, John returned to the office after a meeting with Hachette’s new CEO, Jack Kliger. He had a smirk on his face when he motioned for me to come into his office.

  “So Jack told me they’re not going forward with George,” he said, still grinning.

  Had John finally lost it? Why the hell was he smiling after getting such bad news?

  “We’ll be all right,” I said reassuringly. I could never act upset, because my role was to make him feel okay about everything at work, just as Carolyn did for him at home.

  “Kliger didn’t even have to say it,” John said, starting to laugh. “You know how I knew? When I went into his office, I put my water bottle on his desk. And he was so nervous, he picked up my water bottle and started drinking from it.”

  While the verdict wasn’t a surprise, it was a setback for John, who refused to accept failure for the magazine. Vanity Fair had taken six years to become profitable, but because John was behind George, people expected miracles. John felt the solution was to find another partner. Determined to keep George going in some shape or form, John had already begun to raise money and had sunk some of his own capital into its next incarnation. “This magazine has to be a success; otherwise I can’t move on to the next venture, whatever that may be,” he said. He was in “let’s roll up our sleeves and figure it out” mode. The hunt for new investors took its toll on John, but he remained upbeat, declaring to the staff, “We will find a new home.”

  Carolyn knew it was up to her to feed his optimism.

  But what about her? When would life calm down and give them a little breathing room to focus on their marriage and enjoy each other? Never, it seemed. Now that John had to find new investors for George and build his business anew, there was no end in sight.

  At her wit’s end, Carolyn began to act out—not showing up to a lunch date with John or going out for cocktails without letting him know where she was. Worried sick, John would call me to see if I knew her whereabouts. “Oh, she’s probably just blowing you off like you’ve done to her a million times,” I would say, trying to make light of the situation.

  But there was nothing funny about backing out of a Kennedy wedding at the last minute. Magazine editors, perusing the paparazzi offerings, would mark her absence. The follow-up coverage would be never-ending and nasty—and once again my job to manage.

  Time for an intervention.

  “John, I need to have a little chat with your wife in private.” I stood up, indicating my intention to take his seat and call her from his office.

  He walked out, not looking in my direction.

  I sat in his chair, gazing out over the buildings baking in the July heat, and picked up the receiver. I wasn’t nervous about confronting Carolyn. I loved Carolyn like a sister, and sometimes sisters argue. It wouldn’t be the first time we fought.

  Carolyn had started acting weird after I hired an assistant in May. My having some permanent help had been a long time coming. In the past year, I had taken on a bigger role at the magazine, as well as overseeing the marketing and PR departments at George—not to mention John’s personal media requests. My obligations had grown so much that I could no longer manage smaller tasks, such as ordering lunch or arranging car service pickups.

  I had Matt Cowen, the most loyal and competent intern ever, but when he was hired as an associate editor, I had to find someone. After an arduous hiring process (it was difficult to find someone who wouldn’t walk in and throw up on themselves because they were in the presence of John Kennedy), I finally found Debbie, a sweet, down-to-earth woman in her late twenties with a great work ethic who was excited to be a second assistant.

  Unfortunately, many of those smaller tasks were for Carolyn. “Let Debbie do that,” John would say. As my time to talk on the phone or hang out with her shrank, Carolyn was feeling increasingly isolated: her life wasn’t her own. She didn’t have a job to distract her, and Carolyn was a woman who was used to working. She still hoped to return to a career. But what? There were a lot of stipulations. She couldn’t go near fashion because of John’s magazine, and she also had to be available to him and his unpredictable life. Not to mention that Carolyn’s high-profile presence would have disrupted most offices.

  Shortly after Debbie started handling things for her, I could feel Carolyn pulling away when I did reach out. She didn’t pick up, like she usually did, when I called and started speaking into the answering machine.

  Then one day, John came in and said, “Carolyn asked if you could call the house only when you have to and not randomly.”

  “Really?” I snapped. “Then, John, don’t call my house unless it’s about work and tell Carolyn the same.”

  I couldn’t believe he was saying that to me after I had worked so hard for so long, devoting every ounce of my energy to George, John, and Carolyn. My response was insubordinate (after all, John was my boss), but it was exactly the rise John had hoped for.

  “I’m glad you’re pissed off at her. You should tell her exactly how you feel,” he said, leaving me to stop the bullshit with Carolyn, which I did.

  John and Carolyn were unfair to make me responsible for a dynamic I didn’t create. Now, with the situation brewing over Rory’s wedding, I had more crap to deal with. But so went the life of RoseMarie Terenzio from John Kennedy’s office. I picked up the phone to call Carolyn and got right to the heart of the matter.

  “Carolyn, are you fucking kidding me?” I said. “What are you doing? You’re smarter than this.”

  “I’m not a priority,” she said. “It’s always something else. George. Somebody getting fired. An event. A trip to Italy to meet advertisers.”

  “I know. But now’s not the time to take a stand. His whole family’s going to be at this wedding, and you need to go with him.”

  I had readied myself for an argument, but Carolyn didn’t offer one. Instead of getting angry, she softened. My chewing her out meant someone realized that she needed some propping up, too—even if it came with a dose of tough love.

  “I just want some normal married time,” she said. “I’m exhausted.”

  I thought back on all the times my mom had told me and my sisters, “In my next life, I’m going to raise poodles instead of kids.” Hearing Carolyn pine for normalcy reminded me that although they were the most famous people on the planet, Carolyn and John were going through the same problems as anyone else, the normal trials of marriage and family. They could work it out. But first I had to get her to attend this wedding.

  “Listen, Carolyn. You don’t want to put John in a position where he has to explain where you are, and you don’t want to put yourself in a position of being judged,” I said. “You get enough of that.”

  “I don’t have anything to wear.”


  “Go get a dress, and I’ll get you a car to the airport.”

  I was relieved when Carolyn agreed to go. It was one less thing to worry about.

  I pulled an open bottle of white wine from John and Carolyn’s refrigerator and poured myself a huge glass. It was nearly midnight on the Friday of the longest week ever. Although John and Carolyn had left together for Rory’s wedding, I still wasn’t done working. While sipping my wine, I was on the phone with Matt Berman, giving him an idea from John for the Rob Lowe cover shoot happening in L.A. the next day. John had a very specific image in mind: he wanted the actor—who was caught on videotape having sex with two women (one of whom was underage) before the Democratic National Convention in 1998, where he was campaigning for Michael Dukakis—to be in a repentant pose, holding rosary beads. The peg for the story was Rob Lowe’s new TV show The West Wing, which revolved around the White House. As I gave John’s notes to Matt, I sipped my wine in the silence of the loft’s large interior and began to wind down from a particularly stressful day.

  Despite having spent countless hours hanging out in John and Carolyn’s apartment, I’d never stayed there overnight or alone. But John had offered me their place because my air conditioner was broken. Earlier that afternoon, after overhearing me in the office calling around for a repairman, he leaned on the doorframe, crossing his arms, his shirtsleeves rolled up, looking at me like Are you kidding me?