“That’s the downside of being a Kennedy,” Kathleen later told one reporter. “There’s a lot of nonsense out there about us, and because I am out here in front of people the assumption is that I have to address it. I don’t. My platform is not the Kennedys. It’s education. It’s taking care of our kids.”
Unfortunately, her campaign never gained traction. “By Election Day, the party had pretty much written her off,” Karen Tumulty reported for CNN, “removing her name from its list of priority candidates. She lost by eighteen percentage points—the only Kennedy ever to lose a general election. What she needed to learn was how to break the Kennedy mold without destroying its value.”
In the end, Kathleen was defeated by the incumbent Republican, Helen Delich Bentley, 59 percent to 41 percent. “It was pretty devastating,” recalled Ethel. “After all, Grandpa [Joe] had always said, ‘We don’t want any losers around here. In this family we only want winners.’ So Kathleen felt she’d let us down, especially me. Of course, that wasn’t true, at all. We were proud of her for going for it. I always told her, ‘Whatever it is. You have to go for it.’”
Of course, years later, in 1994, Kathleen became Parris Glendening’s running mate and then, in November of that year, he became governor of Maryland and she his lieutenant governor. “It was a slow but I think sensible evolution,” she would conclude. “I took my licks,” she said, “or as my mom would say, ‘Kennedys die with their boots on.’ In other words, we just keep on going; we don’t stop.”
Fresh Start
After his brother’s death, Bobby Kennedy Jr. wanted to do everything he could to live a good, sober, and happy life. Considering everything he had been through—life on the run as a Kennedy refugee, the loss of his mentor, Lem, the drug overdose—he felt lucky to just be alive and was grateful that God had spared him, even if He hadn’t done the same for David. He continued to devote himself to environmental concerns as well as to his marriage; and he and Emily had another child to join Bobby III, a girl born in 1988 whom they named Kathleen (“Kick” for short, after Bobby’s deceased aunt by the same name). By the early 1990s, though, the relationship had run its course. Some people in their lives insist he cheated on Emily and, truth be told, it certainly wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. One thing was certain: As a response to what happened to David, Bobby felt that life was too short to be unhappy. He deserved happiness, he told Emily, and so did she. He wanted them both to have fresh starts. Therefore, in 1993, the couple separated and she filed for divorce. It wasn’t ugly, though. It was a relief, some in the family felt, to see two people make a decision that they weren’t right for each other and then end things without a lot of acrimony.
That same year, Bobby—still technically married—began dating a best friend of his sister Kerry’s, an uncommonly attractive and vivacious brunette named Mary Kathleen Richardson. Mary and Kerry had known each other since they were fifteen; they met on their first day at Putney boarding school in Vermont. “The next weekend we hitchhiked to Boston to see my siblings Michael, Bobby, David, Courtney, and Kathleen, and for the rest of her life, she spent nearly every weekend and vacation with our family,” Kerry would recall. “We were roommates from the time we were fifteen until thirty, when I got married [in 1990].”
Mary had been a straight-A student at Brown, where she and Kerry were also roommates. “We were inseparable,” Kerry recalled, “we shared friendships, a closet, a cash card. People couldn’t tell our voices apart. Mary was brilliant, strikingly beautiful, radiant, luminous, spiritual, funny, fun. At any time there would be a handful of students waiting for when Mary might be free for a talk, but what they really wanted was a listen. Even as a teenager, Mary listened with compassion to all our adolescent pain and confusion, affirmed our feelings, and made us whole.”
Whereas Emily was homespun, Mary—seven years Bobby’s junior—was sophisticated, with long, dark hair past her shoulders and brown eyes that were her most spectacular feature; they were large, soulful, and endlessly intelligent. Raised Catholic, she was one of six siblings born to a father who was a professor at Hoboken’s Stevens Institute of Technology and a mother who was an English teacher in public schools. A big presence on the New York social scene for a while, hanging out with notables like Halston, Calvin Klein, and Andy Warhol (who mentions her several times in his published diary), she was popular, someone to whom others seemed to gravitate. “Mary combined that RFK/roll-up-your-sleeves/get-the-job-done ethos with Jackie’s otherworldly elegance, including the breathy voice,” recalled Michael Mailer, a close friend of hers during this time.
A graduate of Brown, Mary was smart, creative, and an architectural designer at the prestigious design firm Parish-Hadley. There was also something sort of edgy about her. She had been a family friend for years, her status in that regard making her a little off-limits and taboo, which, admittedly, also made her all the more appealing to Bobby.
Her attributes aside, Mary did have some particularly troubling emotional issues. She suffered from depression. All her friends and family members knew it because, throughout her life, it had been so absolutely debilitating. At twelve, she stopped talking for almost two weeks, either unable to express her emotions or unwilling. She was diagnosed with anorexia as a teenager and at twenty-two ended up being treated for it in Boston’s McLean Hospital for more than three months. Whenever things took a bad turn for her, she would talk about suicide. At twenty-five, she tied a plastic bag over her head, but then panicked when she began to run out of air and ripped it away. At twenty-six, she took two hundred barbiturates, regurgitating them before they could take effect. Her eating disorder continued unabated, with bingeing and purging. She became addicted to alcohol and prescription medication. However, in 1989, she finally took hold of her life, went to AA, and became sober. Clean living, though, did not mean an end to her emotional problems. She could still fall into the darkest of moods, becoming agitated over seemingly nothing, and then lash out. John Hoving, a social worker and friend of hers, recalled, “What Mary projected to the world was not someone with an illness. She kept most people at arm’s length, giving the impression that she had it all together. But I lived it. There was no way that this woman was not very, very sick. In two seconds flat, she could flip from anger and rage into white-picket-fence mode, put on her Martha Stewart face, and convince anybody, including her own family, that she was in control of her faculties, environment, and personal matters. It was always jarring.”
Obviously, all the Kennedys knew of Mary’s problems, though with the exception of Kerry, they were unaware of her suicide attempts. Because he, too, had struggled so much in his own life, Bobby’s heart went out to Mary. He was still sober after his overdose back in 1983, but it had been difficult for him. He felt he understood Mary’s demons and wanted to help her, especially because he still felt guilty about what had happened to David—or as his brother Douglas put it: “He had this Saint Francis complex where he felt he could save people, and Mary fell into that realm.”
Before he knew it, Bobby had fallen for Mary.
In March he flew to the Dominican Republic for a quick divorce. Mary was six months pregnant by this time and he wanted to get on with his life with her. Emily didn’t fight it.
Though Mary was in love with Bobby, she wasn’t so naive as to think he was someone in whom she could fully place her trust. After all, from the time she was a teenager, she’d known what Kennedy men were generally like; it’s not as if she was blind to their failings. Not only was Mary Kerry’s best friend, long before her first date with Bobby she had worked for him at the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights (before it became known as Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights). She’d also designed the logo for Joe when he started Citizens Energy—she’d compiled its first annual report as well—and then volunteered for Joe’s campaign when he ran for Congress. So, suffice it to say, she’d been around Kennedy men for some time and knew how they generally treated women. “She knew the score” is how one of
her friends put it. Even given what she knew, though, officially marrying into the family after being around them most of her life was a heady thought for Mary.
“Does it make me sound shallow that I really want to be a Kennedy?” she asked her friend Alyssa Chapman. The two were in Macy’s in New York trying on expensive dresses. It was October 1993 and Bobby had said Mary should “go wild” with her spending as his present to her for her thirty-fourth birthday. “Does it sound like I have stars in my eyes?” Mary asked. “Because you know that’s not me.”
“No,” Alyssa assured her, according to her memory of the conversation. “Every girl wants to become a princess. The Kennedys are about as close to royalty as you can get.” However, she added, given what Mary had seen in the family, was she really sure that this was what she wanted for herself? “It’s not all golden,” she reminded Mary. Mary said she understood the two sides to being a Kennedy and that she was willing to take a chance that there would be more sweet than bitter. “Do you love Bobby?” Alyssa asked. “Or just the idea of being a Kennedy?”
“Both,” Mary said, trying to be honest. “I don’t know how you can parse it out,” she reasoned. “It’s what he brings to the table, isn’t it? Being a Kennedy.”
In Mary’s view, Bobby’s whole world glimmered with promise. She had long admired his determination to be of service, and his work as lead attorney for Riverkeeper had made her understand the importance of caring for the environment; she hoped to contribute to that effort. He believed he could make a difference, and she loved that about him. Moreover, she had great respect for his devotion to his children. She believed that when they had kids of their own he would be a strong and dependable father. She recalled that she’d lost her own father when she was twelve to colon cancer; he’d gone into the hospital and passed away quickly before she even had a chance to say goodbye. Therefore, she said, she felt that the sudden loss of a beloved father was something else she had in common with Bobby. “So, yes,” she decided, thinking out loud, “it’s more than just being a Kennedy. Bobby makes me feel like anything is possible. He inspires me.”
Red Flags
Maybe it wasn’t so surprising that Mary Richardson was concerned about Bobby’s ex-wife, Emily, with whom Bobby maintained a good relationship. The former spouses spent a lot of time together, too much as far as Mary was concerned. Mary’s antenna was up about Bobby. While he insisted that he and Emily were simply co-parenting their children—she would remarry shortly after the divorce—Mary didn’t know if she should believe him. The fact that trust had become an issue for her so early in their relationship probably should have raised red flags for both of them. However, Bobby felt Mary would learn to have faith in him with time, and that he should just continue to be as honest as possible when it came to Emily. As long as he didn’t have any secrets, he felt, things would work out.
One day after Bobby took the kids on a picnic with Emily, he returned home to his pregnant fiancée and found her in a rage. She was convinced that something was going on with Emily. She was so hysterical, she had completely unraveled. It was as if she had dreamed up a scenario of infidelity while Bobby was gone and then spiraled out of control within a few hours’ time. Though Bobby insisted nothing was going on with Emily, Mary wouldn’t accept it. One thing led to another and, before he knew it, she hauled off and punched him right in the face. Because she’d had some boxing training, she knew how to land a right cross, and in doing so, her diamond engagement ring cut deep into Bobby’s cheek. When Mary saw the blood, she burst into tears and crumpled into a heap on the floor. All this melodrama over nothing was more than Bobby could handle; he screamed at Mary and took off to get medical treatment.
The next morning found the couple full of apologies: she for not believing and then hitting him and he for not being more sensitive to her concerns. Mary begged Bobby to forgive her and pleaded with him not to tell Kerry or any of the other Kennedys what had happened. He agreed to come up with a lie to explain the stitches under his eye. When Bobby said he’d had a gardening accident as a way of explaining his injury, Kerry didn’t believe him. After all, she and Mary had been best friends for years. “Mary’s was a classic mental illness,” she recalled, “which made her so unlike herself—kind, generous … perfect friend, force for good on our earth—that it was as if she’d been invaded by a foreign body. Every time I saw it happening, it scared me. I never held her accountable because that was her disease, not who she was as a person, and we all knew it.”
As much as she loved Mary, Kerry began to question the wisdom of her brother’s decision to marry her. Kerry didn’t know what to expect of the union and was actually fearful about it. “It’s true what they say,” she told one relative. “Our greatest fears lie in anticipation,” she said, quoting Balzac.
Even Ethel could see trouble ahead and tried to reason with Mary. After all, she knew her son well and recognized that even sober he wasn’t easy. “None of the men in this family are a walk in the park,” is how she so aptly put it. She’d known Mary since she was young and wasn’t sure she was cut out for life as a Kennedy wife. Mary told Ethel she was eager to marry her son. Finally, according to one verifiable account, Ethel just warned her flat-out: “I know him better than anyone, and he’s not for you. Not right now, anyway. Because I love you, Mary, I must insist that you wait.” Mary disagreed. She said she knew what she was doing. Therefore, on April 15, 1994, she and Bobby Kennedy were married.
“Bobby was determined to make it work,” said one of his relatives. “At the wedding, I pulled him aside and said, ‘Man, I’m a little worried. Will you be okay? I mean, she hit you, Bobby. She actually hit you.’ He looked at me, smiled that great smile of his, and said, ‘Look, God has given me opportunities my brother David will never have to once and for all be happy, to have a good marriage, to have more kids. I don’t want to waste time analyzing it and trying to figure it all out. I just need go with my gut that Mary is the one. So, yes,’ he concluded, ‘I’ll be okay. I’m sure of it.’”
PART VII
The Reckoning
Heavy Is the Head
By September 1996, it had been more than a year and a half since Michael Kennedy and Marisa Verrochi were found in bed by his wife. It speaks to the distant and strained relationship she had with her parents that Marisa still had not fully disclosed to them what was going on. June and Paul Verrochi would later be clear that they still didn’t know about Michael. This strains credulity. After all, many people in their hometown of Cohasset were whispering about the relationship and wondering about it. Marisa had even been photographed at the Kennedy compound, with the pictures being published in the local newspapers. How could they not have known? “They continued to look the other way” is how one friend of the family’s explained it. “They knew, but they didn’t want to know.”
In September, things took a dramatic turn when Marisa—who would turn eighteen in four months—enrolled in college. She now said she wanted to look to the future and close the book on Michael. She felt she deserved a new life and didn’t want him to be a part of it. However, Michael refused to let her go. Instead, he continued to call upon her and surprise her with unwelcome visits. He even began to stalk her, or at least he kept showing up at places uninvited.
It was starting to get ugly, so much so that Michael Skakel took it upon himself to take Marisa to a mental health professional to help her sort through her emotions. However, when word got back to Michael that Skakel had done so, he was upset. It was just a matter of time, he feared, before word would leak out about him and Marisa via someone they couldn’t control—the therapist. The cousins had an argument about it, with Michael accusing Skakel of not being on his side but being, instead, on Marisa’s. Then, at this same time, Marisa became angry with Skakel for even confirming to Michael that he’d taken her for help. Everyone seemed to be turning on one another, as often happens when people find themselves complicit in the keeping of secrets.
When Marisa enrolled
in college, she and her father began to have a bit more communication, related to her tuition. However, he still didn’t push her about Michael and she still wasn’t forthcoming about it.
Meanwhile, Ethel had still not gotten anywhere with Michael. Compounding her confusion, she’d recently begun to interpret his bad decision-making as a personal affront. “I feel like he’s punishing me for something,” she confided to one good friend of hers, “but for the life of me, I don’t know what for.” Her friend was an Englishwoman about ten years Ethel’s senior who’d once worked for her mother back when Ann Skakel had a house full of British servants. She and Ethel had forged a friendship when Ethel was a teenager, and all these years later they remained friends. She was divorced with no children. “One does wonder,” she responded. She was taken aback by Ethel’s observation in that it suggested a surprising level of introspection. Perhaps Ethel was growing? If so, this confidante couldn’t resist taking her lead and building a bit on her theory. “Maybe Michael is in pain,” she offered, “and maybe he wants you to feel what he feels.”
Ethel let the hypothesis sink in, but not for long. “Are you suggesting that all of this is my fault?” she asked. No, of course not, her friend answered. She then tried to explain that her conjecture had nothing to do with Ethel’s possible culpability. Rather, it was a mere speculation as to why Michael might be lashing out. “So, it’s always the mother’s fault, isn’t it?” Ethel asked, still missing the point. “No, that’s not it at all,” her friend said, and by this time she was sorry she’d ever gone down this road with Ethel. “What I meant was—” Ethel cut her off. “Stop talking,” she said angrily. Then, walking away, she muttered, “I have better things to do with my time than to explain to you how families work.”
The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation Page 23
