“I thought to myself, Oh well, same old Ethie,” recalled her friend, using her nickname for her. “I wasn’t offended. After all, I’d known her for more than forty years.”
Years earlier, Ethel would probably have left things as they were; certainly she was used to putting a person in her place without much regret. Maybe she really was growing, though, because the next day she called to apologize. “I have a lot on my mind,” Ethel said, “and I took it out on you. I’m sorry.”
Ethel also revealed another reason she’d been so upset. She said that the night before she’d decided to attend an Al-Anon meeting in order to become better educated about substance abuse. To that end, she and her friend Elizabeth Stevens—who’d suggested the idea—drove to the church in which the meeting was being held. They then sat in the car outside for an hour until finally Ethel decided she couldn’t go inside. She feared being recognized and didn’t have it in her to deal with it. She felt terrible about it, she now said. Why, she wondered, couldn’t she put her pride aside long enough to help her son?
Trying to reassure Ethel, her friend said it was admirable that she’d at least tried to attend the meeting and that maybe next time she’d be able to do so. “Meanwhile, don’t worry, Ethie,” she advised. “Michael is smart. He’ll figure this thing out,” to which she responded, “I’m afraid there’s a big difference between intelligence and wisdom.”
“Relax and try not to let it all get to you,” concluded Ethel’s friend.
“I will,” Ethel said.
“Heavy is the head, Ethie,” said her friend.
“Excuse me?”
“… that wears the crown.”
Ethel chuckled and said, “I wish.”
“I Don’t Feel Things”
Likely one of the reasons June and Paul Verrochi were able to avoid the subject of their daughter, Marisa, and Michael was because none of their friends who’d heard whispers about the relationship had the nerve to bring it up to them. That changed, though, when a good friend of June’s named Linda Del Vecchio decided to broach the subject.
Linda had been hearing stories about Michael and Marisa for at least a year. During a luncheon at Ye Olde Union Oyster House in Boston on November 3, 1996, she tried to bring things out into the open by asking June about Marisa and Michael. June, immediately defensive, said that Marisa was almost eighteen, old enough to make her own decisions. It was then that Linda posed the question: “But how long has this been going on? I’ve heard it’s been for some time.” That’s when June lost it. She started to sob so hard, three waiters rushed over to help. “On some level,” she managed to say, “I think I always knew.” However, she said she was afraid to have it confirmed because she was worried about what it might do to her daughter if she was forced to admit it.
“You must talk to Marisa immediately,” Linda told June. “Promise me you will,” she insisted. Through her tears, June agreed. Then, she had a thought. “Vicki once told me that Michael had a repressed Catholic upbringing,” she said. “Do you think that has something to do with it?” she asked. “Who cares?” Linda responded. Then, as if still trying to put the pieces together, June further observed, “He’s lived such a spoiled, entitled existence. Maybe that’s what this is about. Maybe he believes he can get away with anything.” Linda became exasperated. “Who cares what his issues are, June?” she exclaimed. “He’s too old for Marisa. Get your daughter away from him. Now.”
That night, June called Paul, who had gone to Washington on business. She anxiously told him about her luncheon and asked him to return. He canceled his meetings and came back to Cohasset the next morning.
Marisa had classes that day, November 4, but later in the afternoon she was confronted by her parents. Feeling cornered, she denied she and Michael were anything other than just friends. June and Paul said they didn’t know whether to believe her. Upset, Marisa left their home in tears, went back to campus, and … called Michael. Details of the conversation between the two are unknown, but based on Michael’s subsequent call to Michael Skakel, it’s clear that he understood the gravity of the situation.
Michael Skakel happened to be sailing with Michael Kennedy’s brother Max when he got the call on his cell phone. Though there was poor reception, Kennedy’s message was clear: “Get your fat ass back here immediately,” he demanded, “because all hell is breaking loose.” He told Skakel that Marisa’s parents had confronted her, but that she had denied everything. “It looks like the shit is really going to hit the fan,” Kennedy said. Skakel agreed that he would return.
After discussing it more fully, June and Paul began to believe that Marisa was covering for Michael. Late that evening, an incensed Paul confronted Michael after pounding on his front door and demanding to be let into the house. The two men then had a heated conversation, during which Michael insisted that he and Marisa had never been anything more than just friends. Michael said he was insulted that Paul would ever think otherwise.
As soon as Paul left, Michael got on the telephone with Marisa to tell her about the visit. Because he was so upset and talking so quickly, Marisa couldn’t quite figure out what he had told her father. However, based on his emotional state, she surmised—incorrectly—that he had pretty much come clean about everything. Now Marisa was the frantic one. In her mind, the secret was out. She felt she had no choice but to tell her parents what had been going on, starting with her mother.
Early the next morning, November 5, Marisa met with June and this time confessed everything, all of it tearfully coming forth with an abundance of emotion—even the surprising and upsetting revelation that the relationship with Michael had actually begun back when she was just fourteen! This would have been two years before Vicki found Michael and Marisa in bed together. In fact, it would have been two years before Marisa had even moved into the Kennedy household! Was this possible? Though Michael, in months to come, would steadfastly deny it, it was Marisa’s testimony to her parents just the same.
“No, no,” June protested. “I don’t believe you, Marisa,” she exclaimed.
According to one confirmed account, Marisa looked her mother squarely in the eyes and said, “Yes. You do, Mother. You know you do.”
Now there was no stopping the chain reaction.
June called Paul. He raced over. Marisa then told him the same story.
Livid, Paul stormed out of the house and went straight to Citizens headquarters. In front of stunned witnesses, he burst into Michael’s office, his anger flaring. Michael immediately stood up from his desk chair, drawing himself to his full height and lifting his head as if hoping to intimidate Paul. According to witnesses, Paul drew back as if he were about to punch Michael right in the face. He didn’t, though. Instead, he broke down into tears. “How could you do this?” was the only question he could ask Michael. “This is my daughter, Michael. How could you do this?” He must have asked the question ten times. Michael didn’t have an answer, though. Finally, a distraught Paul screamed at Michael that he was a pathetic excuse for a man and left the premises without incident.
Michael was haunted by Paul’s question. “How could you do this? How could you do this?” If anything, the altercation with his former friend brought to the fore something Michael Kennedy had suspected all along, which was that he didn’t feel much genuine emotion with regard to Marisa. “Paul asked me how I could do it,” he recalled to one relative. “And he kept asking me and asking me and asking me. And the only thing I could think of was that I was sure someone with a heart could’ve answered the question. But that wasn’t me. I’m not normal,” he sadly concluded. “I don’t feel things.”
Two days later, on November 7, at about three in the morning, June Verrochi climbed up onto the roof of the family’s six-story Commonwealth Avenue town house. It was pouring rain; she was barefoot and in a white silk nightgown. As a small crowd gathered on the sidewalk below, June didn’t make a move. She was dangerously close to the edge. Someone called Marisa, who then called Michael Skakel, who summoned
the police. Both rushed to the scene. An hour later, they watched as firefighters used a one-hundred-foot ladder to bring June down from the roof. Once she was safe on the ground, June collapsed—not into her daughter’s arms, but rather into Michael Skakel’s. He then accompanied her to Massachusetts General Hospital.
The next day, a spokeswoman for June said that she had not intended to try to commit suicide. She explained that June had “received some very disturbing news and was taking doctor-prescribed medication.” She added, “We’re not going to discuss it any further.”
After news of June’s breakdown made the papers, Vicki once again confronted Michael about Marisa. According to a friend of hers, she was as clear with him as she could be: “I want the truth, goddamn it, Michael. You’ve lied so much, you’ve forgotten what truth is even like.” Maybe he knew she was right, because this time Michael was candid: Yes, he and Marisa had been involved, he confessed, but he thought maybe it was over. He wasn’t sure.
In his defense, Michael noted that his psychiatrist had recently diagnosed him a sex addict and figured that this condition was at least partially responsible for his behavior. Michael said he was surprised; he’d thought of himself as either a psychopath or sociopath and believed that this was why he’d always been unable to connect with his feelings or would mimic emotions he couldn’t really experience. He was heartened, he said, to be told that true a psychopath or sociopath—they’re actually two different conditions with similar characteristics but key differences—doesn’t question his lack of emotion; it actually never occurs to him to do so. The doctor told him he probably had suppressed his feelings after his father was murdered rather than experience deep and prolonged grief, and that the family’s historic pathology of avoidance just served to feed such behavior. All this made sense to Michael. It felt like an answer, anyway, to questions about himself he’d been asking for years. Now, he said, all he wanted was to learn to be a better man. He was going to check into a rehab facility in Arizona and get help, he told Vicki. Would she come back to him if he officially ended it with Marisa?
If?
Vicki said absolutely not. Was he out of his mind? He had put her through too much, and she was done with him. She was sick of his endless self-absorption; every concern of his was about himself and how he felt about things and what he was going through. What about her? “How little you must think of me,” she said angrily. She then swept up their children and fled to her father’s mansion in Connecticut, moving in with him and Kathie Lee Gifford.
Soon after, she filed for a legal separation.
Run with the Fox
It was December 18, 1996. Ethel Kennedy was sitting in a back booth of a restaurant at the Boston Harbor Hotel at Rowes Wharf with Michael Skakel. At sixty-eight, she seemed older than her years, maybe closer to eighty, her face deeply etched by years of worry, frustration, and anger. She was wearing a black leather raincoat, her hair beneath a small matching leather hat. She was deep in conversation with her nephew about the situation with her son Michael.
While Ethel always knew that Skakel cared deeply about her family, some of her sons had recently told her they believed he was a traitor and more loyal to Marisa than to the Kennedys. Complicating things, rumors continued to circulate that Michael was somehow responsible for the death of Martha Moxley. Skakel had lately come to believe that Michael and Joe were actually the ones encouraging a criminal investigation against him because they believed he was a turncoat.
The question of Skakel’s loyalty to the Kennedys came to a head at the end of 1996 when Paul Verrochi gave him letters he said Michael Kennedy had written to his daughter. Paul said he did it to prove to Skakel that Michael was still in pursuit of Marisa, even though she’d made it clear that she wanted nothing more to do with him. It stands to reason that Skakel, if he was really trying to be helpful to the Kennedys, would have been judicious in the handling of this correspondence. Certainly, he would have realized how damaging it could be in the wrong hands. However, Skakel decided to give them to, of all people, Vicki. That bizarre decision, compounded with the fact that he had taken Marisa to a therapist, made him seem suspect. “Nobody can stab you in the back quite like the guy who says he loves you” is how Joe Kennedy put it.
Ethel wasn’t sure what to think about any of it, which is why she arranged the meeting with Skakel. According to what Skakel would later recall, she put her hand on his, leaned in toward him, and simply said, “I know everything.” She searched his face, waiting for a response. “Everything, Aunt Ethel?” he asked. “Everything,” she repeated in a low voice.
Ethel told Michael that the family now had to focus on giving Joe a fighting chance to be governor. He was a good man, she insisted, who’d worked hard to be of service, just like his father. He had great ideas for the state, she said, and he deserved the opportunity to act on them. It would be completely unfair if the unfortunate business presently unfolding between Michael and Marisa were to jeopardize Joe’s future in politics. She had always been worried about the impact of the resulting scandal should Michael’s indiscretion become widely known, and her fear had not eased with the passing of time. She was also concerned, she added, because lately she really had to question Michael Skakel’s allegiances. Was he loyal to the Kennedys or to the Verrochis? “Pick a side,” she demanded, reminding him that loyalty was everything to the Kennedys. “Whose side are you on?”
“Yours,” Skakel exclaimed. “I’ve always been on your side, Aunt Ethel.”
If that was true, Ethel said, then why would he have given Vicki those damning letters Michael had written to Marisa? That made no sense to her. Skakel explained that he did it so that Vicki would understand, once and for all, that she needed to end her marriage to Michael. He did it, he said, not only for Vicki’s sake but also for Michael’s. “But that is not your place,” Ethel exclaimed. “And why,” she further inquired, would he take Marisa to a therapist?
“Same reason.”
“That is not your place, either,” Ethel said, her temper rising. “Both are her parents’ place, not yours.”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Ethel,” Michael said.
Ethel studied her nephew’s face carefully. “Let me tell you something my mother used to say,” she said, staring hard at him. “You cannot run with the fox and hunt with the hounds.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“Figure it out.”
In His Father’s Shadow
Joseph Patrick Kennedy II was born on September 24, 1952, the second of Ethel’s brood after Kathleen. He was just eleven in 1963 when his uncle Jack was assassinated. On the day JFK was buried, Joe’s father, Bobby, wrote to him: “You are the oldest of all the male grandchildren. You have a special and particular responsibility now which I know you will fulfill. Remember all the things that Jack started—be kind to others that are less fortunate than we—and love our country.” Six years later, his father was also taken from Joe. He’d been in boarding school when it happened and was flown across the country to be at his father’s deathbed.
“Unlike some of his brothers and sisters, who may have been a little too young to have many precious memories of their father, Joe really had a history with him,” observed Ben Bradlee. “He thought of him as a real hero. Once he was gone, he missed him terribly. No one in the family would ever forget that he had walked up and down the length of the train that carried Bobby’s body from the funeral Mass in Manhattan to Washington, introducing himself to more than a thousand mourners and thanking them for their sympathy. He was only fifteen and, by the way, was wearing one of his father’s suits. I heard Ethel later said, ‘He’s really got it, that kid. He’s got it.’”
With the passing of time, there’s little doubt that it was the loss of his father that fueled a kind of burning anger in Joe, just as in others of his relatives, and that it was this rage that fueled his tempestuous youth. Expelled from or otherwise dropping out of a number of schools, including the University of California, Berke
ley, in 1972, from which he departed of his own volition, Joe was pretty much always in trouble. He and Ethel were always at odds. Maybe making things more complex for him was a pervasive feeling among the adults in his life that Joe wasn’t all that bright. “It’s just a shame that Joe isn’t smart,” Rose Kennedy once told her secretary Barbara Gibson as the two strolled along the beach. “Him being the oldest,” Rose said with her clipped Boston accent, “it would be so much better if he was the smartest.” Barbara said she sensed that the boy was doing his best. “Oh, I’m sure he is,” Rose said, “and that’s what I’m afraid of.” When Barbara suggested that they just had to hope for the best from Joe, Rose countered with, “Hope all you like, dear, but we Kennedys prefer reality.” Joe—as an adult—would come to believe that the entire time he was in school he was an undiagnosed dyslexic, and that this was the reason he’d had so much trouble with his studies.
Complicating his life was a fear in Joe, deep and ingrained, that he couldn’t measure up to his father. Though he sat in Bobby’s chair at the dinner table now, he believed in his heart that he would never be able to replace him. Still, as the oldest male, Joe was a father figure to many of his siblings and cousins; he did his best to keep them all in line, though he was rarely successful. As a result, many people in the family felt he had a chip on his shoulder. “I think Joe would think he was a wimp if someone told him he was a good listener,” observed his first wife, Sheila Rauch Kennedy. “This is a man who has described himself as the family pit bull.” Though others have been more charitable, they made the same point. “He’s the family cynic” is how Michael once put it. “He’s not always kind.” Joe was especially competitive where his cousin John was concerned. After all, in his mind he was the one actually doing what people expected of him, but John was still the family’s Golden Child. The two were not that close. “I think he loved John, hated John, and wanted to be John all at the same time” is how Christopher Lawford put it.
The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation Page 24
