“I’m not my father,” John fired back.
* * *
JOHN WOULD CONTINUE to see a therapist on and off for years. For the moment, by merely articulating his feelings of inadequacy to another person, John at least could put things in perspective. “He could drive himself insane trying to compete with the legacy of a legend,” Littell observed, “or he could figure out a way to live his own life.”
Right now, John had to find a way to pass the bar exam on his third try. If he didn’t, he would be forced to give up his job as an assistant DA and—even more important—be derided in the press as a disappointment and a dunce. This time, at Jackie’s urging, he hired a tutor for $1,075 to help get him the 660 score he needed to pass.
There were other matters to attend to that summer—starting with the Kennedy Foundation Dinner on June 1, followed by the wedding of his cousin Kerry Kennedy to New York governor Mario Cuomo’s son Andrew Cuomo (who would also go on to serve in President Bill Clinton’s cabinet and himself be elected governor of New York).
It was during the Kennedy-Cuomo wedding at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington that John learned just how much some of his Kennedy cousins resented him. Out of consideration for JFK’s family, the bride had placed a round Persian rug over the marble plaque near the altar that marked the spot where the president’s coffin was placed during his funeral.
Several young Kennedys had been having a field day with the HUNK FLUNKS headlines, seizing the opportunity to torment their rock star cousin at every turn. One called John over to the center aisle, told him to look down, and then yanked the rug off the marker. John took a step back and gasped. “God,” one cousin said, “he doesn’t even know where his father’s funeral was!”
Another usher at the wedding, James Hairston, was mortified. “Put it back!” he shouted. “Put the rug back!”
When she heard about the incident, Jackie shook her head in disgust. “Now I know I made the right decision,” she told Plimpton, “to keep him away from those baboons.”
It didn’t stop John from getting together with his cousins one more time on July 22, 1990, to celebrate matriarch Rose Kennedy’s hundredth birthday. Just two days later, he took the bar exam a third time—only under circumstances that vastly improved his chances of passing. Having established the fact that he suffered from a learning disability, John was given more time to complete the test.
As soon as the test was over, John headed out on a road trip with Billy Noonan. Driving up to Rhode Island, they gave a lift to a teenage couple whose car had broken down on the side of the road. On the way to the young couple’s home in Warwick, Rhode Island, John chatted with them but shrugged off any suggestion that he looked “awfully familiar.”
Apparently, the teenagers figured it out themselves. A few days later they walked up to John’s cousin Patrick Kennedy as he was campaigning for Congress in Rhode Island, and promised they and everyone they knew would vote for him because John had been kind enough to help them out when they were stranded.
Not long after, John faced reporters again—this time after learning he had finally passed the bar exam. “I’m very relieved,” he said. “It tastes very sweet at the moment.” The next day, family friend Ted Van Dyk called and asked how he liked working in the DA’s office.
“It stinks,” answered John, who went on to explain that he was going to remain there just long enough to meet his mother’s expectations. “Then,” he said, “I’m going to do something else.”
As it turned out, John spent four years in the prosecutor’s office “putting away the bad guys—people who have swindled elderly widows out of their life savings, or who sell drugs to schoolchildren,” Michael Cherkasky said. “You’re definitely wearing the white hat.”
John did not get many opportunities to prosecute cases in court—District Attorney Morgenthau was wary of the circus atmosphere that accompanied John everywhere he went. But John did win the six cases he did manage to prosecute. “He was a natural competitor,” Cherkasky said, “and trying a case in court is a one-on-one sport.”
John, whose salary as an assistant DA topped out at $41,500, owed some of those convictions to the defendants’ desire to unburden themselves to him. “So they tell everything to me, the prosecutor, because for some reason they think I’m their friend,” John explained. “And then when I send them to jail, they say thanks and it was great meeting you.”
“Even though his job was to put me away, I liked the guy,” said Venard Garvin, who was sentenced to two to six years in prison for drug possession. In the middle of the trial, Garvin sidled over to John and said, “It’s the job. It’s not you.”
That November, Jackie, relieved that John had silenced his critics in the press by finally passing the bar, rewarded him with a lavish thirtieth-birthday party in one of the largest industrial lofts in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. Although Jackie footed the bill, the official hosts were John and his friend Santina Goodman, another Brown alumnus with a late November birthday.
In keeping with the party’s big band theme, John wore a vintage zoot suit and spats, twirling a chain that hung from his pants pocket. He spent much of the evening dancing with his mother, who managed to sneak in undetected through a rear service entrance. Jackie beamed as John blew out the candles on his birthday cake—as always, a homemade chocolate cake prepared by Marta Sgubin. (In keeping with another long-standing family tradition, John later dug into his favorite dessert—floating island—also prepared by Marta.)
Also among the guests that evening was Christina Haag, although it was clear that their five-year affair was over. John had already moved into a bachelor pad in TriBeCa, and the buzz about him and Hannah intensified when she bought an Upper West Side apartment. The fact remained, however, that Hannah still shared a house in California with Jackson Browne. Despite the occasional tryst with John, Daryl still couldn’t bring herself to leave the rock star.
John consoled himself with a bevy of beauties, including theatrical director Toni Kotite, models Richardson and Avizienis, and doe-eyed, whispery-voiced Wilhelmina model Julie (“Jules”) Baker. “She comes from Pennsylvania,” John told Littell, “and she looks just like my mother.” John and Jules Baker would date, although not exclusively, for years. When Littell brazenly asked his former roommate what the sex was like with Baker, John replied with an unequivocal “Oh my God.”
Yet John never gave up on Hannah. After a fight with Browne, she would fly across the country and dive into John’s comforting arms. “He’s mean to her,” John would say of Browne’s tempestuous relationship with Daryl. “They’ve got a lot of problems.”
But so did John and Daryl. It wasn’t long before they were walking along a Manhattan street, drawing stares as they quarreled over something innocuous like where to shop or which movie to see. Occasionally, they argued heatedly about politics. “People gave John a lot of room to pontificate,” a friend of the couple said. “He was JFK’s son, after all. But Daryl grew up around big party donors and politicians as well as movie industry types. She had her own opinions and she let him know.”
Hannah was, in fact, well read and witty—all of which ran counter to her windblown, slightly ditzy, sun-kissed California-girl image. “She was smart, very smart—nothing like she might seem at first glance,” John Perry Barlow said. “She was a great person to be around, but when she was with John they both changed, and not for the better.”
Not surprisingly, virtually all of John’s male friends liked Hannah. They also realized that she and John were simply too much alike. Daryl was fond of saying that in every successful relationship there had to be a flower and a gardener—one who loved to be tended to and one who loved to do the tending. Unfortunately, Daryl said to John, “We’re both flowers.”
Everyone laughed off Hannah’s remark, but it had the ring of truth. Even while he was trysting with Madonna and the others, John found it impossible to toss aside the torch he carried for Daryl. Hospitalized with an undiagnosed ailme
nt during the filming of At Play in the Fields of the Lord in the Brazilian jungle, Hannah was in and out of consciousness for days. Once her fever finally broke, she realized John had filled her room with one thousand long-stemmed American Beauty roses.
* * *
JOHN’S KENNEDY COUSINS, meanwhile, were once again proving themselves to be something considerably less than gallant. Family loyalty was tested yet again when John’s cousin Willie, Jean Kennedy Smith’s son and a fourth-year medical student at Georgetown University, was charged with raping twenty-nine-year-old Patricia Bowman on the lawn of the Kennedy estate in Palm Beach. The alleged rape took place in the early-morning hours of March 30, 1991, and followed a wild night of drinking at Palm Beach’s Au Bar with Uncle Ted and his son Patrick.
Like much of the nation, Jackie was shocked not only by the charges leveled against Willie Smith, but also by the reports of Ted’s loutish behavior. A particularly disturbing image—one that John later said he had a hard time getting out of his mind—was of the Kennedy patriarch, clad only in the top half of his pajamas, behaving lewdly in front of Patrick’s date. (John remained ever loyal to his uncle, whom he believed had been built up by the press merely to be torn down again and again. John called this “the Teddy Factor.”)
Searching for humor in any situation, John made the sort of cringe-worthy suggestion to Noonan that he wouldn’t dare make in public. He suggested placing a sign in the front of the Palm Beach mansion: NO TRESPASSING: VIOLATORS WILL BE VIOLATED.
Willie had always been John’s favorite Kennedy cousin, and his mother, Jean, was the closest to Jackie of Jack’s sisters. Out of loyalty to their cousin and their aunt, John and Caroline joined the rest of the clan for the annual Labor Day picnic at Hyannis Port. Everyone made themselves available for the inevitable “united we stand” Kennedy family photo op, although Jackie later regretted it.
John spent the next two months primarily in the company of the dazzling, blue-eyed Jackie look-alike Jules Baker. At Charlie’s, one of John’s favorite hangouts in Cambridge, Massachusetts, they downed cheeseburgers and traded jokes with their friends, ignoring the fact that on the wall above them hung photos of President Kennedy, Jackie, Caroline, and John-John. Later, they went unrecognized at a Harvest Moon Ball in the western suburbs of Boston.
John was happiest, one friend said, “when he was around people who had no idea who he was. His true friends, the ones he could count on who he confided in, weren’t famous.” A lifelong fan of the blues, he made a secret pilgrimage in October 1991 to the Helena, Arkansas, Bluesfest. Checking into Clarksdale, Mississippi’s Riverside Hotel—the hotel where blues legend Bessie Smith died in 1937—he quickly befriended the Riverside’s eighty-three-year-old owner, Mrs. Z. L. Hill.
John stayed in one of the Riverside’s modest cabins and visited Mrs. Hill’s room in the main hotel. “He’d sit on the edge of the bed and they’d talk until dawn,” said her son Frank “Rat” Ratcliff. “They talked about the blues, about life.”
John returned a few hours later with a breakfast tray for Mrs. Hill, the African-American octogenarian he was now calling “Mother.” She, in turn, referred to John as “my son.” According to Ratcliff, “That’s how she thought of John, as her boy.”
Mrs. Hill had recognized John the minute he walked in to register, but she kept his identity secret—even from her own son. “John did not want anybody to know he was here. Nobody. I hate to admit it,” Ratcliff said, “but I talked to him every day for four days before I finally realized who he was.” Nor did he know the identity of the young woman John had brought him. She remained behind in the cabin, Ratcliff said, and never ventured out with John.
It was clear to Mother Hill and Rat Ratcliff that John was more than just a run-of-the-mill fan of the blues. “He was there to let it all sink in,” Ratcliff said. “You could tell he was loving it, just eating it all up. He knew a lot about the blues, but he wanted to learn more.” In the end, Ratcliff was impressed that John was “such a regular guy. No putting on airs or anything like that. He’d sit in the lobby and talk with folks for hours.”
If there was one Kennedy whose ability to connect with ordinary people seemed effortless, it was John. A few years earlier, his aunt Eunice Shriver had challenged John and his Kennedy cousins to come up with projects directed at helping people with mental disabilities—an obvious next step for the family that had founded the Special Olympics. The cousins voted on the best ideas, and the family foundation doled out fifty thousand dollars to the most innovative proposals.
After months of research, John zeroed in on the inadequate education and low pay of frontline mental-health-care workers. In addition to Reaching Up, which persuaded local officials to fund training programs, he lent the prestige of the family name to the Kennedy Fellows, a group of seventy-five health-care workers selected for a thousand-dollar scholarship each year.
Now John was signing on with the Robin Hood Foundation, a group of influential young New Yorkers who raised money for projects aimed at combating urban decay. John insisted that, unlike other charities, the Robin Hood Foundation and Reaching Up track every dollar being spent. “It’s easy to throw money at a problem and walk away,” John said. “Your conscience is clear—but is your money getting to the people it’s supposed to get to, or is it being wasted? Results,” he concluded, sounding more and more like a politician, “that’s what really matters.”
John followed through, taking the subway to the South Bronx and Harlem to check up on projects funded by the Robin Hood Foundation. He also dropped in unannounced on Kennedy Fellows to ask what courses they were taking, and if there was anything more he could do to help them meet their career goals.
In addition to all of his volunteer work—little of which, by his choice, was known to the public—John appeared as host of Heart of the City, a six-part PBS series on the key role volunteers were having in the revitalization of New York. It came as no surprise when offers came pouring in from all the major networks, each seeking to add the name John F. Kennedy Jr. to its roster of on-air talent.
A career in television was certainly worth considering. John’s cousin, Maria Shriver, had long been an NBC News star, and “Kissy” Amanpour was burning up the track at CNN. It was also hard to imagine anyone more telegenic or well spoken than JFK Jr. A career in journalism was something John had actively considered for years—but only as a stepping-stone to a life in politics. Becoming “just another talking head on the tube,” a friend said, “just didn’t interest him.”
Career considerations would have to be put aside as John weighed what role, if any, to play in the latest unfolding Kennedy family scandal. Jackie drew the line at attending Willie’s sensational, nationally televised rape trial in December, and she asked John and Caroline to stay away as well. Most of the other Kennedys—Eunice, Ethel, Pat, and their children—showed up to lend moral support and proclaim their belief in Willie’s innocence. Caroline took her mother’s advice and stayed away, but John felt an obligation to Willie. He spent five days in the courtroom, allowing television cameras to film him chatting with Willie and placing a reassuring hand on his embattled cousin’s shoulder.
Reporters made note of the fact that John was lunching with Willie’s high-powered team of lawyers, and asked him if he wasn’t worried that standing up for his cousin might tarnish his reputation. “He’s helped me out in the past and I was glad to come,” John answered. “Willie is my cousin. I grew up with him. I thought I could at least be with him at this difficult time.” Smith was eventually acquitted, which John felt all along was the correct verdict. He firmly believed Smith was innocent, although, as Noonan observed, there was “plenty of smoke.”
The spotlight was back on John’s branch of the family with the release of Oliver Stone’s hotly debated conspiracy film JFK. John refused to screen the film, much less comment on it—other than to grumble that the hysteria generated by Stone’s movie made him feel “depressed.” Cornered by one reporter, he conceded th
at it was getting more and more difficult to avoid what was an inherently disturbing topic for him—namely, who shot his father to death. “Maybe,” he said with a sigh, “I’ll just have to leave town.”
A few weeks later, Hannah was back in town to promote her new film, Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Soon they were back to arguing on street corners, only this time their tiff outside his TriBeCa loft was captured by someone with a video camera. “So why did you come back, Daryl?” John yelled. “So why did you come back? So why did you come back?” He repeated the question a half dozen times while Hannah begged for him to calm down and try to understand her position.
After several painful moments of awkward verbal sparring, she gave John the answer he did not want to hear. “John, I want to make it work with Jackson,” she said in a clear voice. “I can’t see you anymore.”
No matter. In May 1992, John journeyed with his sister to Boston for what would become an annual ritual: the presentation of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Six weeks later, they were together again at the Democratic National Convention in Madison Square Garden for a tribute to their uncle Bobby.
That summer John also found time to flee into the wild—this time as a journalist. The New York Times paid John six hundred dollars to write a piece for the Sunday edition’s travel section on his kayaking expedition with three friends to the Aland Archipelago, between Finland and Sweden.
John’s Times story was titled “Four Desk Jockeys in Search of Manageable Danger,” but the danger seemed barely manageable when one of his companion’s kayaks capsized. The man’s legs were so numb that he could neither swim nor walk, leaving John to rescue him from the water, carry him to shore, and wrap him in a sleeping bag.
The Good Son_JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved Page 28
