The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation Read online

  Ethel’s only hesitation about Vicki had to do with her age; Kathleen was three years older. Joe was two years older and Bobby Jr. the same age. Still, she said she was going to reserve her opinion of Vicki until she got to know her better.

  Most certainly, one person who could best testify to some of the challenges of being a woman in the Kennedy family was Ted’s ex-wife, Joan. Vicki had heard that Ted hadn’t told Joan about his plans to marry her, and that she had to hear about it from a reporter from The Boston Globe calling for comment. Joan was so upset—at least this is what Vicki had heard—so much so that her sons had to rush to her side to comfort her. Was this true? When Vicki confronted Ted about it, he said yes, that was exactly what had happened. He had no problem with it, though. Why, he asked, should Joan Kennedy, “of all people,” have to know everything that was going on in his life? He didn’t feel the least bit compelled to run his personal agenda by her. Vicki was put off by his response. It was so utterly disrespectful to the mother of his children, she couldn’t believe the words had come from his mouth; she made a mental note of it. “Look, you’re coming in at the ninth inning of a long baseball game,” he told Vicki, according to one source. “Don’t try to figure out my relationship with my ex-wife, and maybe just keep your distance from her.”

  As fate would have it, though, Vicki would accidentally meet Joan one day on an airplane to Nantucket. She didn’t know what to expect when she saw her sitting at a window seat. “No, no, no, come here and sit next to me,” Joan immediately said when she saw Vicki.

  Vicki sat down with some hesitation. She then broke the ice by noting how wonderful Joan’s children were and what a good job she and Ted had done in raising them. “You should be very proud of yourself and of your family,” Vicki said, “and I’m so proud to become a part of it.” Joan smiled her gratitude. It was a nice way to start a conversation; only another mother would have known how to best lighten the mood. Even though it was only to be an hour’s flight, what Joan then had to say was definitely enlightening. She asked if she could give Vicki some advice; Vicki said she would welcome it.

  “You know, I used to be beautiful once, too,” Joan began. It was a sad self-evaluation that had to have been difficult for Vicki to hear. However, Joan, who was now fifty-six, did have a sort of faded blond beauty; her face was deeply lined, and maybe she’d had a tad too much cosmetic surgery. It looked like perhaps she was trying to hang on to the past a little too hard. She told Vicki that she should watch out for the Kennedy men, that the way they viewed women was “revolting.” She also said she didn’t think Vicki knew what she was signing up for, that it was “a real men’s club over there.”

  Joan had a good foundation for her opinion. “Back in the fifties, she came into the family as one of the most gorgeous women to ever marry into it,” recalled her former personal assistant Marcia Chellis. “She was blonde, blue-eyed, and had a great figure. She’d been a model and knew how to make the best of her assets. However, every time she had a viewpoint, she was either shot down or dismissed. They didn’t take her seriously simply because of her appearance. They couldn’t imagine that a woman who looked as she did could also have a brain. All of those dinners at Joe and Rose’s where everyone was supposed to chime in with an informed opinion? Each time Joan tried to do so, they snickered at her, shot her down, and moved on to another subject.”

  On their plane ride together, Joan told Vicki that even after she proved her mettle by stumping for Ted when he broke his back in that plane crash in 1965, she still felt blatant sexism from the men in the family who dismissed her as empty-headed and just a pretty face. She said that the men used to call her “the dish,” as if she should be flattered. She did not consider it a compliment. Joan also recalled that Ethel used to tell her to not allow herself to be referred to that way because “she always knew I was a lot more than just … this,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face. Had it not been for her work on Ted’s behalf, Joan said—and history does show that this is true—he would have lost his Senate seat. She got no credit for it, though. Now, years later, she warned Vicki that she would have her work cut out for her if she ever hoped to gain true respect in the Kennedy family. “Those men do not respect women,” Joan concluded. “Period.”

  After that little talk, Vicki couldn’t help but admire Joan. Certainly, all she’d heard about her from Ted was that she drank too much, which in and of itself seemed to prove Joan’s point. Actually, Joan was a smart woman who, even if she did have her problems, seemed to be working on them. At the end of the year, she would even become an author; her book, The Joy of Classical Music, about her greatest passion in life, was scheduled to be published by Doubleday in October. Vicki thought it was a great accomplishment, but when she mentioned it to Ted he didn’t seem impressed. She definitely began to better understand what she was going to be up against in marrying him, and now nothing would surprise her.

  Like some of the other Kennedys, Ted’s daughter, Kara, also had a critical opinion of Vicki, but at least hers had to do with wanting to protect her father. After all, she and her brothers had never known Ted to be so emotionally invested in any one woman, not even their own mother. They couldn’t help but wonder if Vicki had some hidden agenda. That she seemed able to do what Joan had failed at, which was to not only captivate their father but help him to be a better person, didn’t bode well for Vicki. The speed at which she’d gained influence over Ted was disconcerting. Was their father really just searching for a soulful connection with anyone because he felt so abandoned by his children after their failed intervention?

  Over the next few months, the Kennedy progeny even began to suspect a financial component to Vicki’s interest. They stood to inherit about $30 million, equally. A big question for them now had to do with how that amount might be impacted by their father’s marriage. They couldn’t very well sit down with him to discuss it, not after all that had recently happened. Therefore, in the true tradition of powerful family members who can’t openly communicate with one another, such concerns had to be addressed via lawyers and other representatives. Through these channels, the Kennedy offspring came to understand and would have to accept that there would be no prenuptial agreement with Vicki. This shock would become the subject of a great deal of heated back-and-forth between lawyers. Finally, Kara drew a line and said she was sick of the fact that every time there was a disagreement about money, the family’s pit bull attorneys had to be dispatched to settle it. That didn’t get her far, though. She and her brothers were assured by their father’s counsel that their inheritance was safe and they were told to just butt out. In their minds, it wasn’t so simple, yet what could they do? They had to hope for the best. Making things worse for everyone, Vicki was hurt by the controversy and even angry about it. Wisely, though, she decided not to allow it to affect her. She knew how to pick and choose her battles, and she had enough on her plate trying to figure out her dynamic with Ted.

  “From the time we were engaged, he used to push me onstage to speak at events,” Vicki would recall. “That would just surprise me. So, my first trade union convention, it was the garment workers, we were in Florida. We weren’t married yet … I remember walking in and they said, ‘Ted! Ted! Ted! Ted! Ted!’ It was exhilarating and he got up and then they introduced me and he said, ‘Go on up, Vicki, say a few words.’ I said, ‘Ted—’ And I’m thinking he has totally lost his mind. What am I going to say? ‘Oh, tell them the story of such and such. Go on, they want to hear from you, they’d love to hear from you.’ And he used to do that to me all the time.”

  Vicki looked at Ted’s coaxing her onto the stage with a little suspicion, especially given everything revealed to her by Joan. Was he just showing her off? Was she now just a little wind-up toy he could send out onto a stage to make himself look good? I can still get the hot broads, can’t I? Though she decided to give Ted the benefit of the doubt, she would definitely keep her eye on him.

  Ted and Vicki married in a civil
ceremony on July 3, 1992, at Ted’s home in McLean, Virginia.

  The Balance of Power

  Summer 1992. Victoria Reggie Kennedy, wearing a colorful sarong, her brunette hair cascading to her shoulders, was talking to a longtime Kennedy employee as the two ambled slowly along the sand-and-pebble-covered beach of the compound. “I had worked for the family for many years as a property manager,” recalled the caretaker, who’s still employed there and asked for anonymity. “I understood the way the neighborhood functioned, which was as an open space for all of the Kennedys and their many friends.”

  In particular, everyone was free to visit, without advance warning, the so-called Big House, which is where the senator now lived with his elderly mother, Rose. Vicki had confided in one close friend that she felt just a little anxious whenever she walked by the wing where Rose—101 by this time—was bedridden. Would that be her one day? Still living in this house in fifty years?

  “They’d congregate in the enormous kitchen and anywhere else they liked, not only there but in all of the homes,” said the caretaker of the Kennedys. “It had been that way from as far back as I could remember, when Rose lived there with Joe.”

  As he and Vicki walked the coastline, she asked for some information about how the estate was run, “what sort of security was in place,” he recalled, “how paparazzi were kept off the property, that sort of thing.” Vicki also wanted to know if there were specific rules in place for visiting one another. He told her that there were none; people just came and went from one another’s homes as they pleased. Vicki stopped walking and turned to face the employee. “That really stinks,” she said bluntly. He looked at her with surprise and asked, “Excuse me, ma’am?” Vicki sat down on an Adirondack chair and beckoned him to take the chair next to hers. Then, according to his memory, she said that she refused to allow her and Ted’s home to be used as a “flophouse” for miscellaneous Kennedys and their friends. “That’s very disrespectful to us,” Vicki said. “Don’t you agree?”

  He didn’t know how to respond.

  After a thoughtful beat, Vicki said that she wanted the employee to change all the locks in the Big House and then make copies of the new keys not only for her and Ted but also for the many nurses and other caretakers charged with looking after Rose Kennedy. As he took notes, she continued by saying she would also need several DO NOT TRESPASS signs—maybe a dozen or so for around the property. Also, she said, there should probably be new signage around the pool that would keep everyone but her, Ted, and her children out of it except by invitation. She said she would need to think about the specific language, but that it would probably be along the lines of: FOR TED KENNEDY’S FAMILY ONLY.

  “Will there be anything else, Miss Reggie?” asked the caretaker as he stood up.

  Vicki rose, tilted her head back, and squinted up at the blazing sun through her large aviator sunglasses. “Yes,” she said. “Maybe some earplugs,” she added, “because once all those Kennedys figure out what I’m up to, I think I’m going to need them.” She smiled at the employee and asked if she could count on him. “Of course, Miss Reggie,” he said. He turned to leave. As he was walking away, she called out to him, “Oh, and one more thing.”

  He faced her again.

  “It’s Mrs. Kennedy.”

  * * *

  ABOUT A WEEK later, Joan, who lived down the beach from the Big House, needed a half dozen eggs for breakfast. She asked her daughter, who was visiting with her two children, to run over to Ted’s to raid his refrigerator. Kara sprinted over to her father’s house, about a half mile or so. When she got there, she found all the doors locked. This was odd. Annoyed, she raced back to Joan’s to get her keys. When she returned to Ted’s, she tried to let herself in, but her key didn’t work; it took her a few moments to figure out what was going on: the locks had been changed. Now she was angry. She stomped back to her mother’s and called her father. The specific details of that call remain unknown, but what we do know is that Ted suggested that Kara give Vicki some time to adjust to her new role in the family. He was sure it would all work out for the best, he said—and, yes, by the way, he did have eggs in the refrigerator and he would happily bring them over to Joan himself. About an hour later, when Ted brought the eggs to Joan, he ran into Kara sitting on the porch, stewing. “Are you happy now?” he asked her. “Do I look happy?” she responded. He said he didn’t want to talk about it, that if Kara had issues with Vicki she should take them up with her.

  Later, according to this family account, Kara saw Vicki walking along the shore. She went up to her and asked for a word. She then told her that the compound had been run a certain way since her father was a child. She didn’t think it was fair for Vicki to just waltz in and change things around. She said that she’d gone to the Big House that morning to get some eggs for her mother and the door was locked. Vicki asked what time it had been; Kara said it had been about seven. When Vicki then asked if Kara felt that was appropriate, Kara got a little heated. Yes, she said, going to her father’s house to fetch eggs for her mother, was, in fact, quite appropriate.

  Apparently, the two women then sized each other up: Kara, thirty-two, who had spent her entire life on these sacred grounds, and Vicki, a mere six years older, who was new to these shores. Vicki said she understood Kara’s concern. However, her young children were both living in the Big House now, she explained, and she felt it wasn’t safe for them to have people walking in unannounced at all hours of the day. She wasn’t as concerned about Kennedys, she said, as she was about their friends, people Vicki didn’t even know. As a mother, she said, Kara should understand. Plus, there was Rose Kennedy’s privacy to also consider. If Kara wanted eggs, Vicki said, all she had to do was call first. She just didn’t understand why this was such a big problem. In later telling this story to a friend of hers, Kara would recall, “What I wanted to say is, ‘Well, Vicki, I think maybe a better question might be: Why are you such a bitch?’ But I didn’t.”

  Instead, Kara warned Vicki that she was going to make a lot of enemies in the family if she wasn’t more careful. She cautioned her that no one wanted a new sheriff in town, not after all these years. Vicki was firm in her response. All she cared about, she said, was protecting her husband, her children, and Rose Kennedy. “But from who?” Kara asked. Maybe she expected Vicki’s answer to be: “From the likes of you people.” Instead, Vicki kept her cool, held her ground, and said from anything that invaded their privacy. All she was asking was that visitors called in advance before coming over to the Big House during early or late hours. In the afternoon, she said, she would allow more latitude.

  “I actually think you may want to take the high road here,” Kara suggested.

  Vicki said that, unfortunately, her experience thus far with the Kennedys had shown her that “the high road doesn’t always take you where you want to go.”

  According to this story, the two women stared each other down; finally Kara smiled and nodded. “Hmmm … you’re very … interesting, aren’t you?” Maybe it sounded condescending, but to hear Kara tell it later, she didn’t mean it that way at all. She meant exactly what she said: Vicki was very … interesting. “I could say the same about you,” she told Kara with a smile. The two then took a long walk together down the beach, just as Kennedy women had been doing for decades, maybe commiserating about challenges they faced or maybe just getting to know each other. Who knows what they said during their stroll? Neither ever discussed it. But it had to have been … interesting.

  About a week later, Vicki’s NO TRESPASSING signs went up around the Big House. Now, instead of traipsing in front of the main house in order to get from one part of the compound to the other, Kennedys of all generations had to walk all the way down to the beach and then cross over to the other side. “This is absolute bullshit,” said Joe Kennedy, speaking pretty much for everyone. “Who does she think she is?”

  From this point on, Joe would have serious reservations about Vicki. “She’s too big for her britches,
” he said, sounding like a man of the fifties, certainly not the nineties. “I have to talk to Uncle Teddy about her. He needs to straighten her out.” If anyone in the family led a revolt against Vicki, it was Joe. Because he was the oldest son of the new generation, there was still a sense among some of the Kennedys that he was, at the least, the symbolic head of the family. No one wanted to cross him. No one, that is, except Vicki, who wasn’t the least bit cowed by him. When the two were in the same room, she would always be cordial, but the tension between them was palpable. Once, in front of John, Bobby Jr., and some other family members, she said to him, “You have a problem with me, don’t you, Joe?” He said, “Should I?” She looked at him with indifference and said, “Probably,” before walking away. John did a double-take. Smiling broadly, he then mouthed to Bobby, “I love her.”

  “I was contacted, I won’t say by whom,” said Dun Gifford, “to see if anything could be done about Vicki. I thought it was disrespectful. I was just a family friend, having not worked with Ted for years. I called him and told him, look, you have relatives opposed to your wife. He was not surprised; he already knew. He was calm. ‘It’s going to take time,’ he said. ‘Soon everyone will agree that she’s a wonderful woman.’ I told him I’d heard she was putting up signage. He said, ‘Good for her, then. I say put ’em up if that’s what it’ll take for people to understand who’s in charge now.’ I thought, That’s intriguing. She’s in charge now? I liked Ted’s attitude. I respected him for it.”