The Men We Became

by Robert T. Littell

  At last, I made it to the kitchen, where Marta was still wielding her spatula and treated me to breakfast, without Guinness. Marta “Scooby” Squbin entered John’s life when she was hired as a governess for him and his sister in 1969. By the time I met her, she more or less ran the household and had a warm, familial relationship with John. Marta had a tough-love way about her that kept all of us in line. I could never get a handle on her accent; I just did what she told me to do. Marta was smart and tough and capable, and she managed to make John’s friends feel connected to the family in a way that Mrs. O, because of her fame and her reticence, couldn’t, notwithstanding her graciousness. In later years Marta held my kids and fussed over their breakfasts. That morning she fed me close to two pounds of American bacon and a dozen or so 100 percent U.S. English muffins. I stopped chewing only to thank her. John returned the next day and we had lunch before I headed back to my mother’s house in Princeton. Despite our high spirits, we admitted to each other that we’d missed a few highlights on our drive-through adventure. In the spirit of friends forever, we took a solemn oath to do the whole trip again someday, with stops at the museums.

  Five

  ON BENEFIT STREET

  I DIDN’T RETURN to Brown until the following year. I like to explain my year’s absence by telling the tale of my great sacrifice on a lacrosse field in Maryland near the end of sophomore year. Absorbing blows by the other team like a human punching bag, I was struck by an enemy knee and burst two blood vessels in my right leg. The injury led, directly or indirectly, to a less-than-stellar academic finish that year. I lay on the couch in pain for four weeks while John and Frannie nursed me back to health with a constant supply of Premium crackers smuggled out of the Ratty. At the end of the semester, the dean suggested I take a year off.

  I spent the year living in Boston, earning a living at a variety of odd jobs and seeing Frannie every weekend. John and I kept in close-enough touch. I would travel to Brown for the occasional party or to see him in a play, and we met in New York over the holidays. When my exile was complete, I returned to Brown for my junior year and accepted an invitation from John to live with him at 155 Benefit Street. The “dorm” was a town house in the elegant College Hill historic district, and John shared it with several friends. The house was inhumanly cold in the winter. Our landlord was a man named Ronnie who lived in Washington, D.C., and was never seen. His mother lived two doors down from us and kept a shrewd eye on her son’s property. If one of us accidentally slammed the door, she’d poke her head out of her screened back door and bark, “What’s going on?”

  My housemates, besides John, were the sweet and beautiful Cordelia “Dee” Richards, John “the Bear” Hare, and Christiane “Kissy” Amanpour. Kissy, the smartest of us all, didn’t go to Brown; she commuted to the University of Rhode Island each day. In between, she made sure we didn’t all freeze and starve to death. Like a den mother, or maybe a general, she laid down the rules and we followed them. We each had to shop and cook once a week and were charged with specific areas to keep clean. The biggest job at 155 Benefit Street was message-taking, because the phone rang off the hook most of the day. The house ran like a Swiss watch. Dinners were not quite formal but still represented a quantum leap in civility from our frat-house routine. Over good (occasionally great) food, we would engage in dinnertime conversation that was serious and stimulating. I was the sole conservative in the group, a Republican by “accident of birth,” as JFK Sr. had once said to explain why he was a Democrat. Thus, I usually ended up as the knuckleheaded “counter” to Kissy’s fiercely well-informed “point.” I required constant assistance from John, who, while firmly on Kissy’s side in nine out of ten debates, acted as the de facto mediator between us. It helped me that John wasn’t a traditional liberal. He shared the liberal values of his Democratic family, but his thoughts on how to achieve those ends were at times surprisingly conservative. (Something we moderate Republicans refer to as “practical.”) Ronald Reagan was President at the time, and John and I both admired him. John had also lived too close to the epicenter of political power all his life to see things in terms of pure ideology, or “good guys” and “bad guys.” So, to my great relief, he listened to my ideas with an open mind, despite my unpopular party affiliation, and we found that we often agreed, at least in principle.

  Of all of us, Kissy went on to the most extraordinary career, becoming one of our era’s greatest war correspondents. From what I could see, she began her career of observing and analyzing conflict at a young age. Born in London to a British father and an Iranian mother who was effectively exiled from Iran during the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution, she grew up knowing the personal dimensions of political conflict in a way that few Americans do. Her academic focus was on global relations and she’d written several brilliant papers arguing, among other things, that we needed female voices in the world’s capitals to pull humanity out of its seemingly permanent cycle of violence. I remember sitting painfully cross-legged in front of Kissy’s bookcase, studying a long paper she’d written titled “Hawks Versus Doves.” My hope was to find some nugget that would let me win at least one friendly argument. But I was destined to lose every time. The only thing I ever convinced her of was my need for extra helpings of her excellent Persian rice dishes, with the bottom layer perfectly crisped.

  I had one memorably bad afternoon that fall, which John helped me through with comedic flair. Frannie, who was away that semester studying in Paris, sent me a letter asking why I hadn’t written more (actually ever) and wondering where my heart lay. I spilled my remorse to John, saying that my heart felt staked and I could think of nothing to convince her of my lasting affection. John thought for a minute, the lightbulb went on above his head, and he said, “Send her a sock, man. Pull a sock from the Beast and mail it to her.” Dirty socks being something of a signature, I guess. Actually, I didn’t totally get it, but he had a better way with the ladies than I did, so soon enough a sock (clean, out of respect) was winging its way to Paris in an envelope. Two weeks later, I got a call from my beloved. John had saved my relationship. She’s still laughing.

  John had done reasonably well at school his sophomore year, spending more time at the library than the rest of us with NCAA commitments. On Benefit Street, however, he became a real scholar. And he did amazingly well, especially if you consider that he really did see some letters backward. Through a combination of hard work and sheer smarts, he mastered his subjects and in celebration lined up all his completed textbooks on the mantel in his bedroom, like trophies. His desk, now appointed with one of the many replica “presidential chairs” he owned over the years, was a tribute to organization. This was important, since he always had a huge load on his plate. John carried the schedule of two people most of his life. He got at least twice as much mail, twice as many phone calls, and three times as much unsolicited advice as the average busy person. There was always something going on, whether it was a Kennedy Library event or a cousin’s campaign or a charitable obligation. It was a combination of energy and sense of duty that kept him going, though every once in a while he would be overwhelmed by all that was asked of him. One time, a high school in Alabama formally and very sweetly requested that he be its commencement speaker. Not the type to crassly toss an invitation into the round file, he went into a funk because he couldn’t say yes. He missed two lectures that day, sitting at his desk crumpling up letter paper in an attempt to respond. Basically, he couldn’t find the other words to accompany the only one—“no”—he had to write.

  John was more studious than he let on. Like most kids at school, he wanted to do well without looking to be trying hard. At the time, we scorned “overachievers.” There was a general prejudice at Brown in favor of understatement, authenticity, and the superiority of the diamond in the rough. It extended past academics into every aspect of life: We wore wrinkled, who-cares clothes, even the rich kids drove beat-up cars, and very few girls wore makeup. You were either beautiful or you weren’
t, effortlessly smart or not—effort only compounded the problem. Things changed during the early 1980s, when Brown became a “hot” school and much harder to get into. All of a sudden, seriously accomplished students showed up on campus, along with convertible BMWs and stylish clothes. But we wanted to get by on pure brilliance—and no work. When John’s sister, Caroline, referred to him and me once as “underachievers,” we were flattered. Except that John wasn’t, and could never have been, a slacker, since he felt too strong a sense of obligation to live up to the hopes of others.

  I managed to balance sports, social life, and schoolwork better that year than I had before. Meanwhile my roommates were approaching Graduation Day. Like graduates everywhere, they were bombarded with parents and older friends telling them that “college is the best time in your life.” What kind of line is that? Who wants to hear that the best part of your life is over? All I’ll say is that it was a great time—I hope to better it. Our backyard on Benefit Street was always occupied with people talking, sunning, and barbecuing. It was like a little Malibu Beach community in rainy old Rhode Island. I participated in the fun as if I were graduating, too. I wasn’t particularly upset about missing the mortar-and-tassel festivities, mostly because I loved playing lacrosse at Brown and was looking forward to another year. Also, everyone who was leaving was a little worried about what they’d do next.

  Graduation Day came. We were exhausted and hungover because we’d hosted a big all-night bash at our house the night before. Putting down our beers at seven-thirty that morning, we’d all showered and changed into clean clothes. The odd transition from night to morning cast the day in a strange haze. The surreal atmosphere—everyone lined up in suits and skirts at the unholy hour of nine A.M., having last slept maybe a week ago—was compounded by a blazing hot sun that appeared from another state to fry the pale seniors in their polyester robes. I don’t remember anyone being elated, because we realized that a remarkable time was coming to an end. So we were proud of one another but a little stricken that it was over.

  John received a lot of attention that day. There were a bunch of professional photographers in the crowd, taking pictures for the tabloids. Lots of parents were keen on getting a shot of John, too, some even yelling for his attention as he walked by. Out of the blue, a good friend glued himself unnaturally to John’s shoulder as the seniors marched up College Hill, obviously determined to be in the news photos. John brought it up later that night, asking me if I’d noticed the strange tactic. He was surprised and maybe a little nervous. John’s assimilation at Brown was so complete, his celebrity so compartmentalized, I think we’d all forgotten about the outside world.

  The other unexplained thing that happened that day was that our house was raided. Surreptitiously and, I believe, illegally. And as far as I know, I was the only witness. At about eleven A.M. I came back down the hill from campus to get some film. There in the backyard were eight to ten Rhode Island state troopers. Not Brown security, not Providence police, but state troopers. They didn’t bother to acknowledge me as I entered through the gate, nor did anyone concern himself with that constitutional nicety, a warrant. As I walked up to the house, the senior officer was coming out the back door with a big smile on his face. He barked out, “Let’s go.” They piled into three unmarked cars and roared off down the hill. I walked into the house, curious as to what I might find, and even more curious as to what the troopers had found. I could not figure out why they had been there. It seemed weird that anyone, let alone the state, would do that. Were they looking for a little international press? Had some neighbor or bitter fellow student called them? Was this the political powers that be in Rhode Island looking to take a swipe at their more glamorous rivals in Massachusetts? That’s my theory: some dirty politics in action.

  Graduation Day at Brown in 1983. From left: Anthony Radziwill, John’s mom, friend Randy Poster in Ray-Bans, and the scholar clutching his diploma. (Bettmann/Corbis)

  I walked through the house to see if the troopers had rifled through the place. Everything was more or less in the same disorder as we’d left it. There were a few roaches and a bong lying around, which the troopers had left untouched. And since they were laughing on the way out, it didn’t seem that it would come to anything. But I felt uneasy, as though the real world was getting closer much too fast.

  The day after graduation John threw a huge graduation party for a group of about fifty Brown students in Hyannis Port. I don’t remember much more than people sleeping in the emptied pool and in the screening room beneath the grand matriarch Rose’s big house. Frannie and I stayed in John’s mom’s place, which was a bit off to the side and in the back, consistent with Mrs. O’s slight estrangement from the local gang. (I was surprised, though, when John ultimately considered unloading the house. By 1996 he had too many properties on his personal Monopoly board. He spoke of the possibility of his oldest pal, Billy Noonan, buying it, though that didn’t work out because the house was part of the contiguous family compound.) Leaving Hyannis Port the next day, which was hard because of the great energy we’d generated, a small group of us headed to the Vineyard to continue the never-ending party on Mrs. Onassis’s 150-acre slice of Eden. We stayed for days, reluctant to let the party end.

  Six

  AT HOME IN THE CITY

  SCHOOL OVER, JOHN headed back to New York City, a place he loved with all the intensity and complicated emotions that true love entails. He knew New York the way people know their own homes: the quietest place to get the morning sun; the best spot to toss a Frisbee; the places to avoid because the proprietors, like creaking floorboards, would betray his presence to the paparazzi.

  Being John, he devised all sorts of games to keep himself amused: racing the bike messengers on his bicycle (dressed in a green gas mask and ski goggles), surfing the wake of the Staten Island ferry in his kayak, playing handball in Spanish Harlem, Rollerblading down potholed Broadway, and most of all, catching football passes in Central Park.

  New York City loved John back. He was the city’s native son, her royal progeny, protected and accepted, no matter what the situation. I always think of the New Yorker cover the week that John’s plane crashed: an illustration by Ana Juan of the Statue of Liberty wearing a black veil of mourning. It still makes me teary. I thought of John a lot when the Twin Towers fell, too, wishing he were there to talk to and knowing how much he’d have been hurt by the attack on his home. It was the biggest thing in my adult life that I didn’t share with him.

  While I was finishing up at Brown, John was bouncing around the city and country and world, living out of a suitcase. He hung with his longtime girlfriend, Sally Munro, and they traveled together to India, where John studied at the University of Delhi. We spoke on the phone occasionally, and I saw him when I went down to visit Frannie, who was now living and working in the city, but mostly we were busy doing our own thing.

  After graduating in 1984, with a political science degree tacked to my lacrosse stick, I packed up my car, now a two-seater MGB, and headed toward real life. My eventual destination was New York, but I wasn’t in any hurry. My mother was then living with her husband, David Katz, in a big cushy house they’d built on a golf course in Princeton. I got home from school, found a lounge chair by the pool, and hunkered down. I love David, happily still my stepfather many years later, and I knew for sure that there wasn’t any better real estate awaiting me in New York. Alas, Mom and David decided to move to California and sold the house. It was probably the only way to get me to leave. I was the last out, going down one side of the circular driveway as the new owners were coming up the other.

  But the transition to New York was easy: Frannie was there, and John, along with almost everyone else I’d known at school. John and I decided to get an apartment together and looked at places all over the city, including several downtown, before settling on one on the West Side, a few blocks from Central Park. I don’t know why we even bothered to look elsewhere, since John insisted on being near Central Par
k. I joked that he needed to be near Mummy, especially when he’d go out to get the facials she arranged for him. Probably the original metrosexual, John enjoyed the spa and was never bothered by my mockery. He liked his mother, too, though he didn’t really spend a lot of time at 1040. And he knew, as I did, that you’re lucky if you get to be a mama’s boy. Mrs. Onassis has been portrayed as an overbearing mother. I think that’s simplistic. She was strong-willed and opinionated, certainly, and it wouldn’t have been any fun to earn her scorn. She went to extraordinary lengths to protect her children and held them to high standards. But she was careful not to overstep her bounds. She let John be John. While she tried to help him avoid mistakes, I don’t believed she actively interfered—beyond the standard motherly nagging—in how he lived his life. Besides, she’d shown pretty good judgment over the years where her children were concerned. So she earned her influence. And she was cool—John was unabashedly proud of her.

  Our new home was at 309 West Eighty-sixth Street, a two-bedroom, two-bath sublet with alley views that we got through a broker at Feathered Nest, a realty firm. She gave us a little Tiffany obelisk when we moved in, which made us think we’d paid too much. The apartment’s owner had moved to Paris to work as a bureau producer for ABC News. Somehow we convinced him and the co-op board that we were aspiring monks and they let us move in. It was a renovated prewar building, not fancy but nice. The only problem we encountered was deciding who would get the master bedroom, which was much more luxurious than the other one. John, the born diplomat, suggested right away that we switch rooms every six months rather than pay different rents, which I suppose might have been awkward.