The paparazzi capture a sporting moment between John and me in Central Park, John’s favorite playground in New York City. (Schwartzwald Lawrence/Corbis Sygma)
We’d get shot for that today.
John replied deferentially, “We’re just leaving, Officer. I apologize, we’ll be out of—”
He didn’t finish his sentence because he fell in again, slipping while trying to get in his kayak. This time he went headfirst into the slime. The MP, probably assuming the slime would kill him, just disappeared. Or maybe he couldn’t bear to watch.
John completely erased this event from his memory. I brought it up several times in later years, and he denied knowing what I was talking about, though he happily boasted about beating the Staten Island ferry in an incident that took a few years off my life. We’d been paddling for pizza, heading to famous old Grimaldi’s, a shrine to the faithful located underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. We left West Street at dusk, hiding out from an unexpected lightning storm in the shadow of the Peking, the 377-foot four-masted barque moored at the South Street Seaport. It was a quick storm, dramatic and beautiful. When it ended, we headed out to cross the river to Brooklyn. We made it across in a flash, thanks to a current that was frighteningly fast. We landed on some rocks under the Brooklyn Bridge and decided to battle back right away, before it got any darker or we got any more tired. Fear can ruin your appetite. We pushed off, pointing toward Liberty Island, and started paddling for our lives. John, with great technique and rhythm in his kayak stroke, began to pull away. Still a novice, I got swept up in the chop and was literally spinning with the whirling water. I stopped working, to conserve my energy, and watched jealously as John slashed right under the bridge back to Manhattan. Then, like a cork in a stream, I got caught in a crosscurrent and was pushed west, right back across the river. I caught up to John, who was hunkered down under the Peking again, and testily suggested he keep an eye on his buddy next time. He said he watched me the whole time. Having determined that I was flotsam at best, he’d decided to press on.
Leaving the safety of the Peking’s shadow, we made our way back around the tip of Manhattan. We were passing two docked Staten Island ferries when a horn blasted and the closer ferry pushed out of its slip with surprising speed. I was trailing and barely had time to reverse. John was directly in front of it, his arms moving like a hummingbird’s wings. The ferry surged toward the Statue of Liberty and then it got very quiet. I couldn’t really see anything through the darkness and rain. I called out, “John?”
Ten seconds later, a little louder and a little more fearful: “John?”
No reply. And then, from the shadows of the bucking swells a hundred yards ahead, a voice shouted, “Hey, Pokey! Are you coming, or what?”
“Funny. Real fucking funny,” I replied with enormous relief.
Thirteen
PASSING GRACE
JOHN WAS UNUSUALLY subdued during the holiday season of 1993. On the racquetball court, where our most serious conversations took place, he told me that his mother was sick. And that her cancer was metastasizing. It was the first time I’d really understood what that word meant. Mrs. Onassis’s illness progressed quickly, and by the time I learned she was sick, it was already clear she wouldn’t survive. John seemed resigned to her fate, outwardly stoic and relying, I think, on her strength to carry him through. He didn’t like talking about her illness. We stopped referring to our mothers in conversation. The only thing John enjoyed during those sad months was his mother’s company. It was a special time for both of them, as she tried to prepare him for a life without her and he immersed himself in the life she still had. Among the most important things she told him then was not to be afraid of his name. This had a profound effect on John.
During one of many stress-relieving racquetball games we played that spring, John told me he was grateful that if his mother had to die from cancer, at least it wouldn’t be a long battle. He said that she was comfortable with her own fate and that her comfort made him feel better. John stayed by her side as much as she wanted, making his peace with things in her presence. She died on May 19, 1994, at the age of sixty-four. John went down to the street from his mother’s apartment the next morning and read a statement to the crowd of reporters and well-wishers gathered there. He read, “Last night at around 10:15 my mother passed on. She was surrounded by her friends and her family and her books and the people and the things that she loved. She did it in her own way and on her own terms, and we all feel lucky for that, and now she’s in God’s hands.”
The funeral was somber and elegant, serious without being wrenching. There were very few tears, though lots of obvious love and respect. Indeed, it was so evocative of Mrs. Onassis—beautiful and dignified—that it felt as though she’d arranged it herself. Held at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on the Upper East Side, the service was a graceful and unusual mix of religion and art and patriotism. References to country, culture, and faith were intermingled throughout the ceremony—how often does that happen? It seemed to me as if half the guests were famous; actually, almost everyone was—I just didn’t know their faces. The Clintons were there, as well as scores of Kennedys. I remember seeing Barbara Walters, Mike Nichols, and, incredibly, Muhammad Ali.
At the funeral, John spoke only briefly, though his few words were quoted everywhere. He said his mother should be remembered for “her love of words, the bonds of home and family, and her spirit of adventure.” Caroline read a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay called “Memory of Cape Cod.” Then Maurice read a poem, “Ithaka” by C. P. Cavafy, that stayed on my refrigerator door for the next five years. (You should go read it right now—I guarantee that it will improve your week.) Watching Maurice that day, solemn and sad and the opposite of flashy, it struck me how different he was from her two husbands. Maybe at some point in her life, she decided to try someone who was admiring and kind and attentive. And she liked it. Jessye Norman, the opera star, interrupted my down-to-earth musings with her awe-inspiring voice. There is no way anyone could make “Ave Maria” sound more beautiful. Then Senator Kennedy spoke, an intimate, pitch-perfect eulogy balancing humor and substance and sadness and uplift. The funeral ended with everyone singing “America the Beautiful.”
Quite a few of John’s friends attended the funeral. Afterward, we shared stories about Mrs. O. I recalled the one time I’d seen her step out at night, to attend John’s thirtieth birthday party. Each November, John and his close friend Santina Goodman, another Brown alum whose birthday was around the same time, threw themselves a celebration. That year, 1990, they pulled out all the stops, renting a big loft, hiring a band, and inviting a multitude of friends. John outdid himself sartorially that evening, wearing a genuine zoot suit from the 1940s. It was totally ridiculous-looking. Typically, he told me that he expected to see everyone wearing them in six months. Mrs. O came with us in a limousine to the party, which was held in an industrial loft in Chelsea. We slipped in a back door and took the freight elevator up, feeling as sparkly as it gets. I remember she was making jokes about the paparazzi and bantering with her son, seeming to enjoy the buzz she was causing. She and John danced together, to a live band of Parliament/Funkadelic veterans (though no George Clinton), and then after a while she vanished into the night.
John felt pretty alone in the world the summer after her death. He said to me once, speaking about Caroline’s husband and kids, that she was “lucky she had them…,” not finishing the thought. He was an orphan and he felt it. Try as I might, I had trouble offering comforting words. I apologized to John for this. I’m not as good as I’d like to be at dealing with death and mourning. Kissy Amanpour did a better job. A good friend of both John’s and his mother’s, she was a great comfort, even taking time off from her job to be with him. John had broken up with Daryl earlier that year, which added to his sense of aloneness.
A close-knit crew. (Reuters NewMedia Inc./Corbis)
I do think that the death of his mother was in some ways liberating, if immensel
y sad, for John. It left him unequivocally an adult, the bearer of his parents’ legacies. And while Mrs. O respected her children’s independence, she was larger than life, and her influence, so positive for so much of John’s life, was hard to escape.
John and Caroline held a high-profile auction of their mother’s things at Sotheby’s in April of 1996. They were strongly criticized for it, but the auction had been Mrs. Onassis’s idea. She was a practical woman and figured that a yard sale was a winning idea. And she was right, to the tune of $34 million. Before she died, she encouraged John to go through with the sale, saying of her many possessions, “Sell them! Tell them it was from Jackie’s love nest.” Which John repeated more than once—he loved her impious attitude toward her own celebrity. So after he and his sister donated something like 38,000 items to the John F. Kennedy Library and culled from the hoard the things that mattered to them personally, they sold some five thousand–odd items to the public. If my children want to sell my high chair when I’m gone, I hereby give them my blessing.
The final sale total was far beyond what anyone had expected. But when the dust settled, John and Caroline received less than $100,000 each. The bulk of the proceeds, after the auctioneers had taken their cut and the sales taxes had been paid, went to pay off the rest of the taxes due from the transfer of Mrs. Onassis’s estate. One hundred grand is not chump change, but it is a far cry from the millions they were reported to have received. John felt like a professional boxer: He’d taken the hits for having the auction, given up a piece of himself, and received a fraction of the prize money. And all without ever revealing publicly that the auction was his mother’s idea. In this, he protected her from the press as she had always protected him. Money is great, but in the end I’m not sure John felt it had been worth the trouble. Maybe better to have quietly disposed of the stuff and avoided the beating he and his sister took in the ring of public opinion. When he received his check for the proceeds, John looked sad and a bit disgusted. He held up the letter and said, “After all that, this is what we get, less than a hundred grand.”
He dropped the letter on the table and put the episode behind him. It was time to move forward and assume his role as the man of the family. John’s sense of personal responsibility, always strong, grew greatly after his mother’s death. Like most people, I suppose, he was forced to acknowledge the cold, clear space between him and mortality that the loss of parents creates. Anyway, he was thirty-three years old and seriously engaged in the pursuit of career, marriage, and whatever else adulthood entails.
One of John’s new responsibilities, shared with his sister, was to oversee the home on Martha’s Vineyard. I’ve already noted his jousting with Burt. John also had to forge a new, private relationship with Maurice Tempelsman. Here, too, I think he felt the need to establish his own sense of order. The summer after Mrs. Onassis’s death, my family and I were up at Martha’s Vineyard as John, a little unsurely, tried to find his balance. Maurice was on the Vineyard also, though staying on his boat in Menemsha along with his son and family. I read his presence as a gesture of kindness to John and Caroline, an effort to provide continuity and comfort. Maurice came over in the morning and left in the evening, an awkward routine that indicated they hadn’t figured things out yet. On the Fourth of July Maurice asked John if it made sense to have a six o’clock barbecue for the whole gang. John, maybe feeling that it should have been his invitation to offer, didn’t respond. He said something like “Whatever you want to do, Maurice” and walked away.
That evening John kept all of us in the barn until Maurice and his family had cooked, eaten, and returned to their boat. We never saw them. This was not John’s usual gracious way. In fact, it was downright rude. John had always had a decent relationship with Maurice. He was happy that his mother had found a companion who made her happy. And the two men seemed to share a genuine affection for each other. But after his mother’s death, during the summer of 1994 in particular, I think John was determined to establish himself as the man in charge.
Jacqueline Onassis’s companion, Maurice Tempelsman. (Mitchell Gerber/Corbis)
About this time he also had a disagreement with Ed Schlossberg, Caroline’s husband. Ed got involved in a project for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington to make a film honoring John F. Kennedy’s contribution to the arts. John, hearing of Ed’s efforts thirdhand, was angry. It was all he could talk about one racquetball session. He went on and on about how Ed should have consulted with him, and questioned whether Ed should be involved in the project anyway. I assure you, this would not have ruffled a feather any other time. John and Ed got along well. But now, with John intent on establishing his own primacy in the family, he saw Ed’s involvement in the tribute as poaching. The two of them sparred for a bit, which resulted in the project’s cancellation. It was really a territorial issue, the kind of alpha-male stuff that zookeepers understand best.
With his house in order, John turned his attention to his career, deciding that the time had come to start putting his family name to good use.
Fourteen
BUSINESS CLASS
GEORGE, THE MAGAZINE John founded in 1995, represented an enormous gamble for him personally and professionally. It was the first time that he had ever publicly and commercially traded on his name. He made a calculated, courageous decision to invest his personal credibility in a business venture with long-term ramifications for himself and, he hoped, the country’s political culture.
The issue of work—a job—was complicated for John. On one hand, he had as many advantages, in the form of connections and opportunities, as anyone on earth. On the other, there were very few things he could do that would ever be enough. He couldn’t just go and be a good lawyer or work at an investment bank or even run a philanthropy, as so many rich kids do. His family’s heritage of civic involvement and his father’s unique contribution and sacrifice meant that John had to do something both genuinely valuable and truly big to consider himself as anything more than a failure.
George served several purposes. It was, first, a sincere and inspired effort to bring politics, through personalities, to the people. Kind of InStyle meets the Congressional Record. John really believed in a special bond between the American people and their leaders. With George, he envisioned a hip, inviting format that would bring the two attracting forces closer together. And because of his upbringing, he knew the influence of the media and was comfortable in that twilight zone between public and private life. He’d always believed that those who lived public lives, whether athletes, actors, or politicians, had certain obligations to their public. He wagered, through the unusual editorial premise of George, that people would find politicians just as fascinating as Hollywood stars once they got the glossy magazine treatment.
George was also an opportunity for John to build a platform from which he might possibly move into political life. The visibility, the experience, and the message of his editorial contributions were all valuable currency for a man exploring ways to contribute to American life.
A regular feature of George was an interview conducted by John with a major political figure. He often talked about the things he learned from these interviews. And he seemed to grow visibly with each one. The interview construct was a brilliant idea, really. George Wallace, the Dalai Lama, Fidel Castro in Havana, and the Vietcong military leader General Giap were all as curious about John as he was about them. And they felt comfortable with an interviewer whose relationship to power and controversy was personal. The rules that govern standard interviews—the problems of access, journalistic bias, and simple understanding between subject and writer—were changed when John was the interviewer. And despite his good manners, he was learning to ask the hard questions that make a journalist worth his ink. I think he enjoyed finding out that he could do it. Even more, when he spent time with these people, I think he saw that he was capable of greatness. At the very least, he was learning about the good and bad aspects of power, and
taking notes to hone his political skills.
The business of selling your name isn’t easy, and John was perpetually walking a tightrope between being effective and being too commercial. He understood that magazines must earn money. And he knew that his investors expected him to make maximum use of the assets at his disposal—namely, his face, name, and time. He worked hard, learning as he went, gaining confidence in the value of the editorial and his own honesty. Savvy and unpretentious about the Kennedy “myths,” he enjoyed surprising and provoking people. Approving the cover of Drew Barrymore imitating Marilyn Monroe’s famous birthday song for JFK must have cost him some sleep, but obviously his sense of mischief and humor prevailed. As he said in an interview at the time, “If I’m not offended, why should anyone else be?” When I first saw the racy photo, I remarked that it was “kinda fun.”
He laughed and answered, “Really fun!”
Under the George name, John oversaw the publication of 250 Ways to Make America Better, a compendium of essays, comments, and cartoons about how to improve America offered by 250 famous citizens from across the political and cultural spectrum. The contributors ranged from P. Diddy to William F. Buckley. Though the book was hardly a bestseller, it was a clever idea: Ask the public (not just the politicians) what they want for their country.
John structured the ownership of George so that he put up no money of his own, a savvy move that illustrates just how much his name and involvement were worth. I wasn’t surprised at the terms of the deal, since I’d already spent years marveling at his mix of generosity and cheapness. Basically, while he gave vast amounts of time and money to his friends and the causes he believed in, he kept track of every nickel. Given his largesse, you wouldn’t necessarily think he kept a ledger in his head. But he did. Every time I’d return a twenty-dollar bill that I’d borrowed in a pinch, he’d sing hallelujah, as though the angels had just visited.
The Men We Became Page 14