Kathleen recalls it a little differently. She says it took her parents four days to accept that her leg was broken because “you know, Kennedys don’t cry and all … so I had to keep a stiff upper lip for a while. I learned then that, as the saying goes, ‘you have to get back on that horse.’ I think the accident taught me to be tenacious about life, to not let events that can occur by happenstance define you in a negative way.”
For a little while, when she was a teenager, Kathleen dated Jackie’s half brother, Jamie Auchincloss. “It was puppy love,” he recalled. “We sent love letters to one another, that sort of thing. I found her interesting. She was a tomboy; I liked that. We were in sync because we were related to this royal family, yet we didn’t really identify ourselves in that way. Though I was an Auchincloss, she was a real Kennedy—she didn’t trumpet it like the rest of them. You had the distinct sense that she was her own person. One funny story comes to mind: she told me that when she was young and would write letters to her grandma Rose, the old woman would send them back to her with corrections in red pencil. I later learned that this was the case with all of Rose’s grandchildren.”
At the age of about fifteen, Kathleen transferred out of the parochial Stone Ridge Country Day School, a Catholic school, to Putney, a progressive secular school in Vermont. Many people thought her decision was a rebellion against Catholicism. She laughs at the notion and says, “No. I was rebelling against the idea of there being no boys. Stone Ridge was a single-sex school, and that made no sense to me. How were we as young women supposed to be in the world if we had no association with men? I just didn’t understand it, so I campaigned hard to change schools and, somehow, I got my way.”
Those who worked for Ethel recall Kathleen’s Putney years as her most rebellious. In some ways, she began to mirror her mother’s sometimes volatile nature. Noelle Bombardier, Hickory Hill’s estate manager, recalled Kathleen, at about eighteen, coming back to Hyannis from Vermont for the summer break and deciding to celebrate the vacation months with a picnic she wanted to have with four girlfriends from school. She asked Noelle to go to the specialty cheese store where the Kennedys had an account and purchase a quarter pound each of Gouda and Gruyère cheese. Going the extra mile, Noelle also purchased a quarter pound of feta. When she returned to Ethel’s, Noelle called out to Kathleen to tell her that she had returned and placed the three cheeses on a counter. Kathleen walked into the kitchen and became upset. “That’s too much cheese,” she said. “Why did you buy so much cheese?” She then picked up the block of feta and threw it at Noelle, hitting her on the shoulder.
“What is wrong with you, Kathleen?” Noelle demanded to know.
“That’s just too much cheese,” Kathleen repeated. “Go back and return it. You’re wasting money. My mother hates it when you waste money, and you know that’s true.”
Years later, Noelle would remember, “It’s funny, the silly little stories that come to mind when trying to recall a young girl you were around for so many years, but that incident occurs to me today whenever I think of Kathleen. Later, when I told Mrs. Kennedy about it, she wasn’t surprised. ‘She’s just going through this teenage phase where she’s nasty, angry, and never more self-righteous than when she’s wrong,’ she said. She then wanted to know every detail of Kathleen’s picnic plans: How many girls? Where were they going? Would there be any boys? ‘I know you want to protect her,’ I told Mrs. Kennedy. ‘But how? She’s so headstrong.’ Mrs. Kennedy looked at me and said one word: ‘Shackles.’ We both then just died laughing. ‘Look, she knows her own mind,’ she finally said. ‘It’ll serve her well. All my girls need to be tough. When they grow up, they cannot be weak, and if people think they’re bitchy, too bad. It’s a small price to pay.’
“Of the four daughters, I would have to say that Kathleen was probably the most willful in high school and all the way through college,” recalled Noelle. “Lots of teenage rebellion stuff, more than Mrs. Kennedy had with Courtney, Kerry, or Rory. She would holler at Kathleen, ‘Good luck with that mouth when you grow up, because you’re sure gonna need it.’ Sometimes she could be sort of funny about it. For instance, she would tell me, ‘Please, Noelle. I can’t handle any more bad news about Kathleen right now. My diet pills are starting to wear off.’
“Looking back, I have to say that Mrs. Kennedy and Kathleen were exactly alike: strong-minded, opinionated, and determined. And also, as much as Mrs. Kennedy was infuriated by it, that’s how much she cultivated it because she wanted those girls to be powerful in their lives. ‘If we can just get through this bitchy phase,’ she used to tell me, ‘we’ll be good to go.’”
After Putney, when Kathleen was at Radcliffe studying history and literature, she met David Townsend, a college tutor four years her senior. From the start, Kathleen and David’s relationship seemed like a good one. Townsend would go on to become a professor at St. John’s, happy in his work, not at all eager to be in the public eye. “He’s an intellectual,” Kathleen would observe. “I mean, he teaches Greek and Einstein and Shakespeare and chaos theory. In other words, he’s very strong.”
The couple, who married in 1973, soon moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is where two of their children, Meaghan and Maeve, were born.
Doctors’ Orders
By 1983, Kathleen was thirty-two. Because her brother David had been to several treatment facilities that were ineffective, he had become a primary concern of hers. “She and her mother disagreed about his treatment, though,” said Noelle Bombardier. “They disagreed about it “a lot.”
One psychiatrist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to whom Ethel had sent David had provided him with fifty prescriptions over an eighteen-month period, including Percodan and Dilaudid. As far as Ethel was concerned, this doctor knew exactly what he was doing—“Otherwise, how did he get his license?”
Kathleen didn’t see it that way. “Doctors overprescribe all the time,” she told her mother.
“Yes,” agreed Fina Harvin. “I’ve read that doctors prescribe and prescribe and prescribe and they don’t even check with each other to see what the patient is getting.”
“Oh please,” Ethel shot back. “Says who?”
“Life magazine,” Fina exclaimed.
Ethel shook her head in dismay. “No. It’s alcohol,” she said. “Alcohol is what’s ruining our youth today, not drugs.”
Ethel added that many of her Skakel relatives were alcoholics and that if it was true that the disease was genetic then they probably got it from her side of the family. Even in the older Kennedy generation there were problems of this nature that had gone unaddressed. For instance, there was no doubt that matriarch Rose had long been dependent on sleeping pills and tranquilizers, especially as she got older, as was Ethel herself. “My sister was taking all kinds of pills in a way that was not safe,” said Ethel’s brother Jim back in 1994. “The drug Restoril was the one most prescribed to her and to the other Kennedys, probably Rose, too,” he recalled. “That was the big sleeping pill back then, especially in our family. We all thought that if it came from a doctor, it had to be harmless.”
Ten years earlier, in November 1973, the year of the tenth anniversary of JFK’s death, Ethel spent most of her days walking around in a fog thanks to prescription medications. The milestone anniversaries of Jack’s and Bobby’s deaths—with so many television specials and news reports recounting the tragedies, as well as the inevitable books and magazines—would always send her into a downward spiral. On this anniversary, she hosted a memorial Mass at Hickory Hill, attended by most of the Kennedys, including Jackie.
“Just look at us,” Ethel told Jackie, crying in front of Noelle Bombardier. “We’re wrecks and we’ll never get over it, will we?” A tearful Jackie had to agree. “The two women embraced and held it for a long time,” recalled Noelle Bombardier.2
The next day, as Ethel and Noelle sat in the kitchen at Hickory Hill, they began to talk a little about Bobby. “Can I tell you a secret?” Ethel whispered. “For a moment a
fter he was shot when he was laying there on the floor bleeding, I thought he was going to live. Why, he opened his eyes, Noelle, and he looked right up at me. And I thought, Oh my God. He’s going to live. He’s going to live. Then, later, at the hospital, they put a stethoscope to my ear, and I could hear his heart beating. It was beating … beating … beating … but then…” Her voice trailed off. “Our life together had been so great and so exciting up until then, Noelle,” Ethel said sadly. “And then, just like that, it was over.” (This was a rare moment of candor; Ethel almost never talks about Bobby’s assassination, even to this day.)
As if things weren’t troubling enough, at this same time there was a break-in at Hickory Hill. Ethel had always refused to have a security system installed, which was surprising considering the tragedies of her life. “She said there were too many people in the household and that the alarm would forever be going off,” said Noelle Bombardier. “Not only that, she used to always repeat her husband’s mantra, ‘Kennedys can take care of themselves,’ which, of course, was tragically ironic. I spoke to Senator Kennedy about this matter many times. I didn’t feel that any of us were safe, the staff included, at Hickory Hill and also at the Kennedy compound. He said he had talked to Mrs. Kennedy about it on numerous occasions, especially after Bobby was killed, but that she was adamant about it. ‘She doesn’t want to live in fear,’ he told me, ‘and I’m not going to fight her on it.’”
Maybe one of the reasons Ethel wasn’t particularly conscious of danger was because the Kennedys had always lived with it, even before the assassinations. For instance, back in 1957, when Bobby was chief counsel of the Senate’s racket committee hearings, he was charged with investigating criminal activity surrounding the labor-management relations. The most famous of his cases related to Jimmy Hoffa, a labor union leader with ties to organized crime. Bobby’s family was constantly threatened during this time. “They had thrown acid into the eyes of a journalist from the New York Post,” Ethel told her daughter Rory for her HBO documentary Ethel, “and they would say they were going to do the same to your children.” Kathleen Kennedy Townsend added, “There was a period of time when we were going to Our Lady of Victory School, we couldn’t leave with all the other kids. We had to go up into the principal’s office and wait for Mummy to pick us up because it was too dangerous for us to just walk out of school.” After the assassinations, death threats were an even more common occurrence. It could be said that the family was somewhat inured to the idea of violence even before Bobby was killed, and for Ethel, that didn’t really change after his death—thusly, no security measures were in place at Hickory Hill or at her home at the compound.
One night, a vagrant broke into the house by scaling a fire escape and somehow ended up in five-year-old Rory’s room on the third floor. (The Hickory Hill manse had five floors.) At the sight of the man coming in through the open window, Rory’s cocker spaniel began to bark. Rory had to have been scared out of her mind. The man asked, “Where’s Mommy’s room?” The little girl pointed that it was down the hall.
When Ethel heard something in the hallway, she cracked opened her door to find the stranger on the other side. She screamed out in fright. The next thing she knew, all her sons had exited their bedrooms, run to the intruder, and tackled him to the ground. Then Ena came bounding out of her room with an African Masai hunting spear in one hand and an enormous wooden mallet in the other. She started madly pounding away at the intruder. Once he was subdued, they all waited for the police to arrive as Ena held him at bay with her spear. Though the telling of the story seems somewhat amusing, it was actually quite upsetting. Bobby later referred to the intruder as “a would-be rapist.”
Shortly after the incident, Jackie was scheduled to once again visit Hickory Hill. Whenever she came to visit Ethel, it was usually with one or two security guards in tow. Ethel thought that was completely unnecessary but, as she put it to Noelle Bombardier, “to each her own, I guess. Jackie and I just handle things differently.”
The morning of Jackie’s arrival, Ethel walked into the servants’ dining room as they were having breakfast. Everyone bolted to their feet. “My sister-in-law Jackie is coming to spend the day. I want you to take all the kids to the park,” Ethel said, directing Ena, “and keep them there for the afternoon. And tell Jackie’s security detail that I’m worried about the kids and that I want them with you for protection.” Alarmed, Ena said, “Oh no, Mrs. Kennedy. What’s going on?” to which Ethel said, “Nothing. Everything is fine. I just want those men out of the house.” She also said that she would like the rest of the staff to stay away from the drawing room for a few hours. She asked them to find something to keep them busy. She thanked everyone and then walked out of the room. Everyone sat back down. “What in the world is going on?” Ena Bernard asked Leah Mason. “Search me,” Leah answered.
After Jackie showed up that afternoon, she and Ethel made themselves comfortable in the drawing room. Jackie reached into her purse. She took a vial of pills from it, poured a few of them into the palm of her hand, and downed them with a glass of Chardonnay. She handed it to Ethel, who did the same. Then, for the rest of the day, the two widowed sisters-in-law sat in the living room with their heads back and their feet up, listening to classical music and relaxing as they talked about good times and bad, cried a little about the way things had worked out for them, and promised each other that everything would get better with time. Everything just had to get better with time.
* * *
NOW, WITH THE passing of a decade, Ethel had become completely organized around the premise that the only way forward was for her to be in control of everything—everyone—around her. However, in trying to control David, she began to lose sight of what might have been in his best interest. “But she just didn’t know how to handle a drug addict,” explained Leah Mason. “How was she to know? I mean, who was to teach her? No one knew what they were doing. The reaching out to professionals was always dicey; there was always concern that someone they couldn’t trust would tell the world their secrets. Once, Mrs. Kennedy confided in me, ‘I’ve buried him a hundred times, already.’ I asked what she meant, and with a trembling voice, she said, ‘In my head. Every time David is late coming home. Every time I don’t hear from him. Every time I don’t know what he’s doing. I bury him in my head. It’s a mother’s worst agony, burying her child, constantly repeating itself.’ David didn’t realize what he was doing to her; how could he?”
“Once, David was sitting in the kitchen rocking back and forth in a chair, seeming in a trance, muttering something,” recalled Noelle Bombardier. “Maybe he was high, I don’t know, but as I got closer I realized he was saying, ‘I hate her. I hate her.’ I asked him, ‘Who do you hate?’ He said, ‘My mother.’ I asked him, ‘But why?’ He said, ‘Because she can’t love me, and I don’t know why. Do you know why?’ I said, ‘No, David, that’s not true. She may not be able to express this to you, but I know she loves you very much. I wish you could see that.’”
Sometimes, outreach from household help to David would put them at odds with Ethel, who thought everyone was coddling him. One day in the kitchen in front of staff members, Ethel really let Ena have it when she saw her hovering over David, who was nursing a hangover. “Mrs. Kennedy ordered David out of the kitchen and then tore into Ena, demanding that she stop trying to make David so comfortable as long as he was doing drugs in her home,” said Leah Mason. “‘I am not interested in his comfort,’ Mrs. Kennedy said. Ena challenged her about it. Finally, Mrs. Kennedy got within inches of Ena’s face and, with a great deal of heated emotion, declared, ‘You don’t know what it’s like for me as a mother. You have no idea. No idea at all.’ Ena got indignant and responded, ‘I have a child of my own, Mrs. Kennedy, or have you forgotten that?’ Mrs. Kennedy shot back, ‘Well, until your child is a drug addict, I don’t want to hear another word out of your mouth. That is my son, Ena. Stop enabling him.’”
At this time, Kathleen surprised everyone by applyin
g to the court to be David’s trustee. People outside the family assumed that she wasn’t happy with the decisions her mother was making and decided to step in herself. Maybe there’s some truth to that, but she really couldn’t have gotten far without the approval of the family’s iron-willed matriarch. Kathleen felt her mother had had enough of David and could use some distance from the decision-making process. Even though her intention was not to usurp her mother, her actions did often spark tension. “I know what’s right for my son,” Ethel told her in front of witnesses during one angry altercation. “He’s my child, not yours.” Generally, though, Ethel was happy her daughter had taken control of the situation and understood that she did it out of concern for her.
Outlining her own plan for him, Kathleen sent David to a rehab center that had previously treated Christopher Lawford. It didn’t work. Then she sent him to England to be treated by a surgeon pioneering neuroelectric therapy. That, too, was not successful. Months later, she checked him into Massachusetts General Hospital. The treatment didn’t take. After that, she chose another rehab center in Spofford, New Hampshire. No go. Then, in March 1984, she checked him into St. Mary’s Rehabilitation Center in Minneapolis. Nothing seemed to work.
Throughout this time, Kathleen was consumed by her brother’s illness, agonizing about whether she was making the right decisions and blaming herself that nothing she did made a bit of difference. The toll David’s addiction took on her was incalculable, the stress wearing her down. She now appeared to be much older than her thirty-three years. Extremely thin, she sported a short-cropped, easy-to-manage haircut and wore large, thick, and not very becoming glasses. She almost never wore makeup. Not only was she David’s advocate, she had a busy career working as a property program analyst at the Massachusetts State House in Governor Michael Dukakis’s Office of Human Resources. Of course, she also had her family, three children by the onset of 1984. She was definitely stretched to the limit.
The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation Page 21
