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

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  As expected, Ted was unhappy about Patrick’s reluctance to move forward with a senatorial campaign. “My dad really wanted me to run for Senate,” he recalled. “But while we were handling my mom’s problems, I decided to finally burst the bubble and announce I wouldn’t do it.” Patrick said publicly that he believed he could best serve Rhode Island by retaining his seat on the House Appropriations Committee, where he delivered money for state projects. Now for sure Ted was disappointed in him—which was not unusual. “With my dad, happiness is a moving target, anyway,” Patrick reasoned at the time. “He’s angry today. Tomorrow he won’t be. After that, who the heck knows?”

  Without further clarification, everyone assumed Patrick wasn’t running for Senate only because he was choosing his mother’s care over his own political ambitions. There was more to it, though. “In fact,” he recalled, “the life I needed to save at that moment was my own.”

  Weeks later, Patrick secretly checked into the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota with a new addiction to Percocet, which he had started taking for back pain and to relieve symptoms of his anxiety disorder and bipolar disorder. He’d been taking as many as twenty a day, yet somehow still managing to function as a congressman. “You can handle anything in the moment,” he said at the time. “It’s out of fear of what might happen in the future that undoes us. But I now see that the only way forward for me into my future is to take care of myself in the present,” he said in a statement. “It remains my great challenge.”

  Breaking with the Past

  Summer 2005. “There’s just “so much to do,” Joan Kennedy was saying to Kara. “I don’t know where to begin.” Wringing her hands in despair, she seemed out of sorts as she gazed around at her surroundings. “So many memories,” Kara said as she picked up a framed photograph of her parents on Ted’s yacht.

  According to pictures taken that day, Kara’s short blond hair was parted on the right; she wore no makeup and was in a red blazer over a white T-shirt with jeans. Joan’s hair was long, to her shoulders, and blond, in a style reminiscent of her 1960s ingénue look. Her face was plumper than usual and it looked as if she, perhaps, had undergone some sort of filler injections. Her lips seemed a little more cushiony than may be normal for a woman her age; they were painted a bright red. She was still thin and shapely, though, in her black velvet leggings and oversized white knit sweater.

  Why Joan wanted to sell the large shingled home on Squaw Island was a question Kara and her brothers had been asking for months. Now it was gone for good, sold for about $4 million, far less than the $7 million Joan had hoped for as per Webster Janssen’s evaluation. If her children hadn’t gotten so bent out of shape about the sale, Joan maintained, buyers wouldn’t have been scared off and she probably could have gotten full price, or more.

  Given everything that had recently occurred, Joan’s relationship with her children was more tense than ever. Still, Kara wasn’t going to let her mother orchestrate the move on her own. She insisted upon helping. She’d actually wanted to hire a moving company to take all the home’s contents and put them into storage. Most of the furnishings were to be sold with the house. However, Joan wanted to go through the smaller mementos herself and pack them safely.

  It was agreed that Joan’s caretaker and assistant would accompany her and Kara to the compound for the day of packing. Kara then called Ethel Kennedy’s assistant, Leah Mason, to ask if she might also be able to help. Leah agreed to do so. Ten minutes later, she called back and said that Ethel wanted to also assist.

  On the appointed day, Joan, sixty-eight, and Ethel, seventy-seven, stood in the living room of the enormous thirteen-room house and looked about it, both feeling sad and nostalgic. As two of the three women who had originally taken Kennedy brothers as wives—Jackie being the third—one can only imagine their memories of this place. While gazing around Joan’s parlor, they would have seen lovely antique furniture all about them, which Joan had been collecting since she was young. There were also, of course, dozens of framed photographs of Kennedys throughout the years—pictures documenting Ted’s many political campaigns, along with family vacations and photos of Jack and Bobby and all their relatives. It was virtually a shrine to the days of Camelot. When Kara said she didn’t know why her mother wanted to sell the place, Ethel said, “That is her decision, Kara. Not yours.”

  Kara suggested that they all go through each room and take whatever pictures and other mementos they could find and put them into boxes. They figured it would take two days; Kara called it “the long goodbye.”

  “Oh, this was hard,” recalled Leah Mason. “Thirteen rooms. And every room packed, and I mean packed, with little mementos, plaques, photos, trophies … every piece holding some important memory. It looked like a Kennedy museum. Joan’s caretaker was no help at all. She kept pointing at pictures and saying, ‘Oh my God. Look. It’s Jackie!’ Meanwhile, Joan was weepy and upset. She had this habit of playing imaginary piano keys with her fingers when she was nervous. She kept saying things like, ‘This stuff. Oh my God, it’s all too much.’”

  Patrick, looking distressed, showed up on the second day reserved for moving. Gazing about him at all the boxes, he said it felt to him like his mother was selling off his entire childhood. He had purposely avoided all details of the sale. His spokesman said he didn’t know how much the property sold for, nor did he know anything about the new owners. Kara was aware of something about her brother that most people in the family didn’t know, though: he’d just gotten out of the Mayo Clinic. He didn’t even tell his parents or Teddy. Somehow his stay had also escaped media scrutiny. It wasn’t successful, though. While it did handle Patrick’s opiate addiction, there was a plethora of other prescription drugs he had in his medicine cabinet that hadn’t been addressed, such as Ambien. Now, on this day, he seemed jittery, uneasy, and foggy. He rambled on about how he and his cousins used to love to catch Atlantic killifish in muddy marshes and grass flats with wire traps while here on the island.

  Not surprisingly, being in the old house also brought up a lot of issues for Patrick. Leah Mason and Joan’s caretaker both walked into the parlor in time to hear Joan angrily say to her son, “We all know how much I ruined your life, Patrick. But maybe everything doesn’t need to be talked about.” A few more statements were made by both mother and son having to do with whether keeping secrets was in the best interest of sobriety. “What in the world are you talking about?” Joan finally asked. “When have we Kennedys ever had any secrets? Please,” she exclaimed as she rose and rushed off. From his demoralized appearance, Patrick felt terrible.

  “Five minutes later, Joan reappeared,” recalled her caretaker. “Standing in front of Patrick and Kara, she said, ‘There’s no escaping your father and no escaping my past with him as long as this house exists in my life. Why can’t you two understand that?’ They were surprised. We all were. Suddenly, Joan’s urgency to rid herself of the old place made perfect sense. In her own way, she was actually taking care of herself, trying to break with a past that had been anything but kind to her.”

  “But Mother, why didn’t you just tell us that?” Kara asked, bewildered. “We would have understood.”

  With hard eyes, Joan answered, “Because I do not have to explain myself to you. I get to have my own thoughts and my own ideas without having to ask for approval from you two, or your brother.” With that, she rushed off once again. Kara ran after her while Patrick just slumped into a chair.

  Later, when almost all the packing work was done, Joan and Ethel decided to go down to the beach for a stroll. Kara and Patrick stayed behind in the kitchen, gazing sadly at the pen and pencil measurements on the wall in a corner that denoted how tall they and Teddy had grown every year of their childhood. “Look how little we were,” Kara said sadly. Leah Mason joined them. “Can I get either one of you a drink?” she asked. Kara shook her head no. Patrick didn’t respond; he just stared straight ahead at the scribbles.

  “Kara said she should have realized the real
reason her mother wanted to sell the house,” recalled Leah Mason. “She felt so stupid. She said it was just obvious. ‘We should be proud of her, Pat, not angry with her,’ she told her brother. ‘She feels she has to get rid of her old life, that it’s the only chance she’ll ever have of making a new one.’ Patrick just seemed lost as he continued to look at the measurements on the wall.”

  Finally, seeming swamped by emotion, Patrick turned around, ran from the kitchen through the house and out the front door. He then trotted down to the beach where Joan and Ethel were standing, admiring the view. When he reached them, he said a few words to his mother and then took her into his arms. The two then held each other as a smiling Ethel turned around and slowly started making her way back up to the house. Halfway, she stopped and glanced over her shoulder to find mother and son still in an embrace that must have looked as if it would never end.

  A Daughter’s Surprise

  Once everything was packed, the Squaw Island house sold, and all debates relating to it behind them, Kara Kennedy had a strong intuition about it. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Joan would one day regret selling it. While she wanted to honor her mother’s commitment to moving forward with her life, she knew her well. Without telling Joan or her brothers, Kara approached the new owners of the property with a proposal that had actually not been her idea but, ironically enough, originally that of the family’s great nemesis, Joan’s former representative, Webster Janssen.

  “I had known when I was working with her that Joan wanted out of the house,” Janssen recalled. “But I also felt that if she went through the process of selling, of truly letting go, maybe that might be enough for her to move on. Maybe then she would still want to stay there occasionally during the summer. So I had this idea to sell the house furnished, and to have a provision in the sale that would allow Joan to lease the property during one or two of the summer months at the buyer’s discretion,” he recalled. It wouldn’t always be possible, of course. The spring and summer months were the only reason to even own the property. But still, I was able to make that a part of the deal.

  “I didn’t tell Joan I was going to handle it that way. Then we stopped working together and I never thought about it again. I certainly didn’t know Kara had gone back to my original idea. When I found out later through the grapevine, I was gratified. I felt I still had been able to have a hand in helping Joan, even with all the bad blood.”

  Like Janssen, Kara didn’t tell Joan about the provision in the sale. Her reasoning was that if her mother never mentioned the house again she would simply assume that she’d moved on and that would be the end of it. However, in a year’s time, Kara would find that she was absolutely right about her mother. When the summer season approached, Joan began to express deep longings for Squaw Island. “Tell me the truth, Mom,” Kara said, according to one account, “do you regret selling it?” As difficult as it was for her to admit it, especially after all the family warfare, Joan had to say that yes, she was sorry she’d let the property go. “But it’s too late now,” she noted sadly.

  One weekend shortly thereafter, Kara suggested that Joan join her and her two grandchildren—Grace and Max—for a weekend escape. After she helped Joan pack, the four got into Kara’s vehicle and started driving to what Joan thought was to be a small resort near the Cape, “just a quick getaway,” as Kara had put it. Much to Joan’s amazement, though, Kara drove her to Squaw Island … and right up driveway to her beloved old house.

  Joan was confused. “What’s going on?”

  That’s when Kara told her mother that the house was still hers for this summer and for every summer thereafter if it was available, and if she wanted it. Overwhelmed, Joan simply couldn’t believe it.

  As mother and daughter walked into the house, followed by the children, they found the antique furniture still in place, exactly where Joan had left it. “Joan began to cry; she later told me,” said her caretaker. “She told me that Kara took a big box from the trunk of her car and gave it to her. When Joan opened it, she found it filled with framed photographs of the Kennedys over the years, truly the crowning touch to making the home Joan’s, once again.”

  Joan Kennedy would spend many of her summer months in the Squaw Island home from that time onward … and she still does today.

  Crucible

  At six o’clock on a May morning in 2006, Patrick Kennedy woke up, leapt from his bed, and went into the bathroom to shower. Glancing in the mirror, he suddenly realized he was wearing a suit—pants, shirt, tie, jacket … even his shoes. What in the world? Feeling groggy and disoriented, he peeled off the clothing and showered. He then dressed again, left his apartment, and went down to the garage. Once there, he saw that his automobile, a green Mustang, was missing. His mind racing, he couldn’t figure out what was going on, but he knew it wasn’t good. As he started walking to the Capitol, it all started coming back to him. He recalled that the night before, he’d taken a couple of Ambien and a few other drugs—he’d figure out which ones later—and then woke up within hours thinking he was late for a vote on the floor. He quickly got dressed, got into his car, and sped to work with his headlights off. He then smashed into a barricade in front of the Capitol building. How was he not hurt? A sympathetic police officer helped him stash his car in the Congressional parking lot and drove him home. Hours later, he woke up in his suit, all of which brought him to this horrible moment of wondering just how long it might be before his misadventure was made public. Worse, what if he didn’t remember all of what had occurred? What if he’d injured someone, or worse? At this point, it felt as if anything was possible.

  Once he got to his office at the Capitol, Patrick sat at his desk and braced himself. Looking down at him from their oil portraits were his heroic uncles Jack and Bobby. There were also framed photographs of his father, Ted, all over the office. He stared at a picture of him and Joan at a campaign rally. He could feel himself buckle under the imposing weight of history.

  Pulling himself together, Patrick then went into a meeting with Congressional leaders, one having to do with, of all things, mental health. His colleagues could tell that something was off with him, but then again, something was usually a little off with him. The meeting ended when Kennedy was called to the floor to vote on a port safety amendment. It was just one more day of an incredibly busy, stressful week during which he had tackled a dizzying amount of legislation on the House floor, from increased accountability of lobbyists to the cost of gasoline and other fuels to maritime and port security to complicated IRS tax codes and pension plan regulations, all of it demanding a great deal of study and preparation before he was able to vote. It seemed to never end.

  After a couple of hours, Patrick’s assistant came rushing over to him. “You need to get back to your office, immediately,” he told him, seeming frantic. “Something big is happening.”

  Back at his office, Patrick came to understand that someone from the media had recognized his dented Mustang in the parking lot where it had been stashed. Photographs of the vehicle were already making the rounds in the press. Reporters were asking questions.

  Patrick poured himself a Jack Daniel’s and Coke, sat at his desk, and waited for the onslaught. It didn’t take long before his secretary began fielding calls from the media, friends, family, and colleagues. Finally, she buzzed Patrick and told him that the one person he truly didn’t want to hear from in that moment was on the line: the Senator.

  “I saw the car in the press,” Ted began, “and I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s just a fender bender.” He didn’t seem to grasp the gravity of the situation.

  On one hand, Patrick was more than happy to downplay the accident for his father’s benefit. He also wanted him to know how sick he was, and how dangerously close he’d come to not only hurting himself, but others. However, Ted had always insisted that there was nothing really wrong with Patrick that he couldn’t just get over if he’d put his mind to it. He was tired of hearing about addictions in his family
—his ex-wife, his children, his relatives—more Kennedys than he could count seemed to be hooked on one thing or another. “The problem with this family isn’t disease,” Ted always insisted, “it’s lack of willpower. I’ll tell you what you need,” he would tell Patrick. “A swift kick in the ass, that’s what you need. You want to be a better man?” he’d ask. “Fine. Then be one.”

  It was ironic, given all his work in mental health care reform, that Ted still didn’t really understand addiction. In some ways, his myopic view was reflected in a mental health equity act he championed and that had been signed into law back in 1998. It was designed to end prejudice against mental illness by making it illegal to treat brain diseases any differently than other diseases. However, the bill only covered mental illnesses considered the most serious, such as paranoid schizophrenia. It ignored more common conditions, such as alcohol addiction and bipolar disorder, both of which plagued his son. In fact, Patrick was in the middle of crafting a new bill that would cover all diseases and make it illegal to discriminate against any mental illness, no matter its root.

  On this difficult morning, Patrick was in no mood to engage with his father. Instead, he told him he was tired and would talk to him later. Then, without much deliberation about it, he knew what he had to do: he made plans to check into the Mayo Clinic again—just five months after his last stint—to, once again, deal with his addictions.

  For Patrick, this latest misfortune would mark another major defining moment in his troubled life. The time had come to admit the truth—all of it—after many years of either concealing it or letting bits of it slip through his perfected practice of obfuscating.