Any rapport Vicki and Joan shared was not accidental. According to all accounts, they had to work at it and talk through problems whenever they arose. Understandably, situations arose that couldn’t be avoided.
For instance, every year even after the divorce, Joan had still spent Christmases with Ted and her children at Ted’s home in Virginia. After he married Vicki, though, that no longer seemed appropriate. Also, Joan had customarily spent every Thanksgiving at the compound with Ted and their children. Again, right after he married Vicki, this too seemed no longer possible. Thus the first few Thanksgivings were hard on Joan. There would end up being two turkeys—one for Ted and family, and then one the children would bring to Joan and share with her. In the coming years, though, Vicki felt comfortable inviting Joan to her Thanksgiving table—and Joan appreciated the invitation and accepted. She then joined her ex-husband, his new wife, and all of their children (and grandchildren) for Thanksgiving at the Big House, and did so for many years afterward. “Vicki is very cognizant of treating my mother with due respect,” said Ted Jr. at the time. “She realizes that my mother deserves something.”
Pat’s Regrets
It was the winter of 1993 and Pat Kennedy Lawford was lunching with her friend Patricia Brennan in Beverly Hills at the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was a bimonthly affair. Brennan recalled, “Every other month, she would call and say, ‘I’m coming to Los Angeles, so we’re due,’ and I knew what that meant. And even though we hadn’t seen each other in two months and would probably not see each other for two more months because she lived in New York, for those three hours, we were as close as two old friends could be.”
At this winter 1993 lunch, Pat Kennedy said, “Jackie’s so lucky. She had a couple of fabulous marriages and never really had to worry about her kids. They just turned out so well. I don’t know how she did it.”
“You’ve been a good mother too,” Patricia offered.
“Oh, please!” Pat Kennedy said. “I was a terrible mother.” After adding that she felt she was a much better grandmother, she explained, “Don’t forget, I’m the one who rented a house across the street for Chris and the nanny when he was an infant so Peter and I wouldn’t be disturbed by the crying.” At that, the two friends burst into almost uncontrollable laughter.
As the two women talked, Pat said that she still believed her children never forgave her for leaving their father. “They loved Peter so much,” she said, “and they felt that I ripped them away from him and forced them to live three thousand miles away in New York. I think they never got over it,” she concluded sadly. “But I could never explain to them that their daddy had been such a bastard to me. You just can’t do that to a child. No matter how old they are, you still can’t do that to a child.”
“On some level, I think they knew,” Patricia observed.
Pat just nodded. “I sometimes think I drove Peter to it,” she said again, according to her friend’s memory of the conversation. It seemed like an odd statement. Patricia asked what Pat meant by it. “Oh, you know how we Kennedys were back then,” Pat said with a soft smile. “We were so full of ourselves, weren’t we? All of that power and money. Why, we were at the center of everything. I think maybe I looked at Peter as not really belonging.” She said that she hated to admit as much, but she feared it was the truth. She had to wonder, she said, if “perhaps I drove him into the arms of other women. I just don’t know anymore…” As her voice drifted off, the two women just stared at one another.
At seventy, Pat Kennedy Lawford was still a striking woman, with bright red hair and a full Kennedyesque smile. She’d had a tough life, though, battling alcoholism for a long time. After the family’s unsuccessful intervention, Pat’s drinking continued unabated. Finally, in June 1988, a car she was driving careened into a tree and she was arrested for driving under the influence. Always stubborn when it came to her drinking, she wouldn’t listen to anything anyone had to say about it, even when Joan tried to talk to her about her own personal experiences. Finally, after the arrest, it was Jackie who appealed to her old friend Pat, telling her she was, as Jackie put it, “too good a person to have to be thought of in that way.” She asked Pat to spend time with her at her summer home on Martha’s Vineyard—a lavish estate, isolated in the middle of 375 acres. During that time, the two women connected once again as “sisters,” enjoying together the limitless peace of the Vineyard. Afterward, Pat significantly cut back on her drinking. Most people credited Jackie’s influence for that small but important victory. By 1993, Pat was no longer drinking at all and, in fact, never had another relapse. “The hardest thing I ever had to do was get sober,” she told one relative. “I think I didn’t know how strong I really was until I realized that, yes, I had actually done it. It’s truly my biggest personal victory. For the first time in years, I feel good about me.”
Like Eunice and Jean, as the years went on, Pat would become invested in several organizations that served the mentally retarded, but in a way that was not high profile. It was interesting to those who knew her well that when she had been younger and married to Peter Lawford, she’d had such a penchant for Hollywood and a celebrity lifestyle, yet as an older woman she retreated into a much more private life in Los Angeles and New York.
By this time—the winter of 1993—Pat’s children were all grown, most with children of their own. Chris was thirty-nine, married with three children. He’d had terrible bouts with alcohol and drug dependency but had been sober for about eight years. In years to come, he would write a couple of books about his struggle for sobriety, thereby making it a public and very inspiring story. An actor, writer, attorney, Chris would go on to become an activist and public speaker. He definitely had his father’s charisma and sense of panache. Pat’s daughters Sydney, thirty-eight, and Victoria, thirty-five, were also now married with four children and three, respectively. Robin, thirty-two, was unmarried at the time. “They’ve been better to me than I’ve been to them, I fear,” Pat told Patricia Brennan.
“I don’t necessarily believe that,” Patricia said.
“Well, I do have some regrets,” Pat concluded. “But it’s been a wonderful life just the same. Who was it that said something like, ‘Maybe the best one can hope for is to at least end up with the right regrets’?”
“That was Arthur Miller,” Patricia answered.
“Oh yes, Marilyn’s husband,” Pat said, maybe flashing back to all of the history she’d shared with Marilyn.
“Do you ever see Jackie?” Patricia asked.
“Of course,” Pat said. “All the time.” She said that Jackie had never changed, she was “still pretty terrific” and always knew “just what to say and do in every situation. Oh, she’s so perfect, I hate that woman,” Pat added with a wicked laugh. “I just hate her!”
At that, the two friends again dissolved into laughter.
PART EIGHTEEN
Jackie: Her Final Years
“Life Goes On”
I guess life goes on for us,” Jackie Kennedy Onassis said during the 1993 holidays, according to her longtime cook Marta Sgubin. “I am beginning to finally feel that we’re just like any family,” she added of herself and her children. “Nothing major has happened in years. Thank God for that!” Indeed, by this time it seemed that life was, at long last, serene for Jackie and her two children.
Jackie’s daughter, Caroline, now thirty-six, had three children—Rose, Tatiana, and Jack, who was just a baby. The children called her “Grand Jackie,” and Jackie doted on them. Caroline’s marriage to Ed Schlossberg was rewarding, and very private. She never wanted to be a public person, and for the most part managed to avoid the spotlight, with the exception of an occasional speech given at a benefit or a Kennedy-related tribute. When she turned down an offer to be chairwoman of the 1992 Democratic National Convention, many people were surprised, but not her own family. “We know who Caroline is,” her uncle Ted said at the time. “She’s like her mother. Could you see Jackie doing it? No. So
we shouldn’t expect it of Caroline.”
Caroline’s friend Alexandra Styron, the daughter of writers William and Rose Styron, observed of her at this time: “She seemed to have come into her own. I’d never seen her happier. She looked beautiful, though she was stick thin. Her skin glowed. She and Ed were as much in love as any married people I had ever seen. They had a very quiet social life. They went out to occasional dinner parties given by friends, but they stuck pretty close to home. Caroline was extremely unassuming, down-to-earth.”
John, now thirty-three, had turned out to be devastatingly handsome, with his wavy dark hair, penetrating eyes, and athletic body. One of his great appeals, though, was that he was viewed as an “everyman” by most Americans in the sense that, despite his famous pedigree, he still seemed somewhat fallible. For instance, he’d had a great deal of trouble in school—failing math a couple of times and later failing the New York State bar exam twice. Flunking the bar was embarrassing but, typical of John, it was also something he played off of with characteristic self-effacing humor, at least in the public arena. Privately, though, he was worried—mostly because Jackie was unhappy about it and felt he had simply not applied himself.
“I remember him saying, ‘My mother is all over me about this thing,’ ” his friend Stephen Styles recalled of John’s trouble with the bar exam. He added that John then said, “For a Kennedy to flunk even once is not acceptable. Twice? They throw you off the compound for that. Three times? It’s out of the family for good then.” Styles added, “He was joking, but he was also concerned. ‘I have to pass the third time, or I’m in deep shit with my mom,’ he said.”
Jackie tolerated John’s private life as well as could be expected, even though she’d not been very happy about some of the women who came his way. One in particular who seemed to be a thorn in Jackie’s side at this time was actress Darryl Hannah.
John first met Darryl in 1978 when both happened to be vacationing in Saint Martin with their families, then again at the 1988 wedding of Jackie’s sister Lee Radziwill to director Herb Ross. At the time that he began dating Darryl, he was dating a string of other women, including actresses Christina Haag and Sarah Jessica Parker and model Julie Baker. As the story goes, in September 1992, Darryl was apparently the victim of domestic violence at the hands of rock star Jackson Browne, with whom she had been involved for about a decade. According to several friends and many news accounts, she ended up with a black eye, a broken finger, and numerous bruises. When Darryl called John to tell him what had happened, he flew to Los Angeles and brought her back to New York with him. Their monogamous romance started at that time.
Also at about this time in 1992, John had quit his job as a Manhattan assistant district attorney—after arguing six trials and winning convictions in all six—and had moved into Darryl’s Upper West Side apartment. “Jackie was not happy about any of it,” recalled Stephen Styles. “I was at Darryl’s with John when I overheard a telephone conversation between him and his mom. ‘Look, I’m just living my life, Mom,’ he said. ‘What do you want from me?’ I don’t know what she said to him, but his response was, ‘Well, I’m sorry, but that’s just not going to happen. I will see you tomorrow night at dinner and we can talk it over. I’m fine, Mom. I really am.’
“Later, when I asked John about the conversation, he said, ‘She’s not thrilled about this thing with Darryl. She’s afraid we’re going to get married. But she doesn’t even know her.’ What was her biggest beef about Darryl? I asked. ‘The fact that she’s an actress,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t want me involved with a public person because that throws me even more in the spotlight, and that’s not what she wants for me.’ He also said no woman was ever going to be good enough for him in his mom’s eyes. He added, ‘But, that’s mothers for you, right? Why should mine be any different?’ ”
John was also thinking about possibly running for office one day, though nothing was concrete in his mind about it. In 1993, he said, “If your father was a doctor, and your uncles are doctors, and all your cousins are doctors, and all the family ever talks about is medicine, there’s a good chance maybe you’re going to be a doctor too. But maybe you want to be a baker.” Jackie was also against his entering politics, though. Again, too high profile for her taste.
Jackie, who had turned sixty-four in July 1993, was for the most part living at her estate on Martha’s Vineyard, though she maintained her residence in New York City. She had curtailed her activities at Doubleday somewhat, but was still going into the office three times a week. Meanwhile, she and Maurice Tempelsman were very happy together. “They bickered like an old married couple,” said a friend of theirs. “You would be out with them and Jackie would say, ‘Maurice, stop putting so much salt on your food.’ And he would roll his eyes and put the salt shaker down. Then, when she would turn her back, he would very quickly salt his food. They laughed a lot. He was good to her. He was exactly what she deserved.”
In August 1993, Maurice went to Russia on business, and while he was gone, Jackie missed him tremendously, recalled Marian Ronan, who worked for Jackie at her Red Gate Farm on Martha’s Vineyard. “On the day he was due to return, Jackie was like an excited kid on Christmas Eve. She brushed her hair until it shimmered like silk, put on white jeans and a T-shirt, and paced up and down until she heard his car coming. Then she ran to the front door with a huge smile on her face. When Maurice came in she slipped her arm through his and kissed him tenderly on the cheek, led him into the living room, and closed the door. It was a very touching scene.”
Ronan also recalled Jackie going into a “blind panic” when she thought she’d lost a ring Maurice had given her. “She phoned the house and, her voice shaking with anxiety, told me, ‘Marian, I don’t have my ring. I’ll die if I’ve lost it!’ The gold eternity ring was encrusted with priceless emeralds and sapphires and she often described it as ‘my most treasured possession.’ I quickly searched the house and found the ring right where she’d left it—on an antique china plate she kept in her bedroom. When I phoned Jackie back and told her I’d found it, she was incredibly relieved and told me, ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!’
“She insisted that we call her madam, but she always treated us more like family members than servants,” said Marian Ronan. “For all her social position, wealth, and fame, Jackie looked happiest while sipping coffee with her hired help in the home’s small kitchen, which was off the big main kitchen. She’d be sitting there in a swimsuit and bare feet with curlers in her hair, chatting away like a housewife.”
For a woman like Jackie Kennedy Onassis who had lived such a high-profile, even historic life, it was refreshing to her friends and family members that her concerns these days were anything but extraordinary. As she enjoyed her sixties, her biggest interests had to do with her job, her children’s welfare, and staying fit—she was a resolute dieter, a yoga enthusiast, and a proponent of anything else she felt would help her stay in shape and remain healthy.
Of course, Jackie was still in touch with the Kennedy family, though she didn’t see all of them as often as she might have liked. She and Ted remained very close, though she didn’t know Vicki well. She also remained in close touch with Joan, Ethel, and Pat. And she made it a point to speak to Eunice and Sarge as often as possible. However, there was still a sense that everyone wasn’t as close as they had once been. “But that’s what happens when you get older,” Jackie reasoned in 1993, “you start devoting your life to your grandchildren, I guess.”
“She never spoke about her late husbands, JFK or Onassis,” recalled Marian Ronan, “and she never discussed any of the Kennedy family. But in the kitchen there was a wall clipboard covered with a montage of photos showing Jackie, JFK and their kids, and Onassis.”
“She never looked back, except to do so in order to remember the good times,” said her longtime cook and good friend Marta Sgubin, who worked for Jackie for twenty-five years. “In my eyes, Madam was not a person who would ever grow old. She had a childlike p
ersona, an innocence, this despite her obvious sophistication. She was so thoughtful, I would always find little Post-its on the refrigerator complimenting me on the meal I had made the night before. ‘In all of your life, you will never make such an incredible dessert as you did last night with the mango ice cream,’ she once wrote. Another time, she wrote, ‘Bravo et Merci. Everyone said it was the best dinner in New York.’ She liked things just so, and she appreciated it when things were done that way. Madam felt it was important that people in her life knew that she appreciated them… that was vitally important to her.”
Not surprisingly, Jackie always remembered birthdays. In April 1993, when Ethel Kennedy turned sixty-five, many of her family members were gathered at her home for a celebration when the phone rang. “I’ll bet I know who that is,” Ethel said. When one of her sons handed her the phone, she smiled broadly as soon as she heard the whispery voice on the other end of the line. “Jackie,” she exclaimed, “in all of these years, you have never once forgotten my birthday. How in the world do you do that?”
After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family--1968 to the Present Page 45