Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (16 page)

Before she got up to mingle with some friends, Jackie asked Joan to call her later in the week just to keep her in- formed of what was going on with Ted. Jackie also told her

sister-in-law that perhaps she would find something for her to do at the White House. “That’ll keep you busy,” Jackie said with a laugh. “Creative satisfaction is where you find it. If you’re busy enough, believe me, you won’t give Teddy a second thought.”

Before she walked away, Jackie added one last thought that the agent who overheard this conversation would never forget: “Make sure Ted knows you found that necklace.”

And with that bit of advice, Jackie departed. Joan re- mained at the table to mull over her lesson, absentmindedly flipping through the pages of a
Paris Match
magazine left by her sister-in-law.

The Bennetts

T
hose who knew Joan Kennedy best during her Camelot years have said that she was the family’s emotional heart, its conscience. One could always rely on Joan to be the under- standing, compassionate Kennedy during times of crisis. Though it appeared that she didn’t know how to handle her own life, she was known for a clear-eyed assessment when- ever asked for an opinion about someone else’s complex issue. Whereas Jackie was known for her practical advice, and Ethel for her religious point of view, Joan’s perspective was more reasonable and heartfelt.

Because she seemed so victimized by Ted, it often ap- peared that she was a weak person who—unlike her sisters- in-law and other women in the family—did not know how

to reconcile herself to her husband’s unfaithfulness. Ted’s philandering was unacceptable to her, even abhorrent. She couldn’t fathom why she should accept it, and never really understood how Jackie and Ethel allowed it. Joan felt that fi- delity was paramount in a marriage, whereas her sisters-in- law and many others in her circle believed that there were other concerns, such as power, prestige, money, and even children.

Of course, Joan was stuck in the wrong time and place to do anything about her marital frustrations, other than to complain about them to Jackie and let it all crush her emo- tionally.

Virginia Joan Bennett was born in the early-morning hours of September 2, 1936, at Mother Cabrini Hospital in Riverdale, New York, daughter of Harry Wiggins Bennett and the former Virginia Joan Stead, after whom she was named. Her father was Protestant, but Joan was raised a Catholic, like her mother. A successful advertising execu- tive, Harry provided well for his family, which also included a sister, Candy, two years Joan’s junior. The family first lived in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Bronxville, New York, in a four-room apartment in a complex called Midland Gardens.

Harry Wiggins Bennett was a strikingly handsome and amiable Cornell graduate, nothing at all like carefree Black Jack Bouvier or the tough-minded George Skakel. Easygo- ing, congenial, and fair-minded, he was “a nice, nice person and hard worker,” as Joan put it. A little bit over six feet tall, gregarious, charismatic, with a deep, resonant voice, Harry enjoyed acting in neighborhood theatrical productions as a hobby. Joan was, as she recalled it, “the apple of his eye,” al- ways trying to please her father, who believed that life was

good and fair, so there was no sense in complaining about it—no matter what happened.

“I was always told to smile, always smile—and never complain. It was the same thing in my marriage,” she would observe.

Joan’s mother, Ginny, was a small-boned, attractive woman with a round, clear-complexioned face and conta- gious smile. An amateur seamstress, she made most of her daughters’ clothing when they were in school. Ginny was also the household disciplinarian, doling out occasional whacks, when she felt it necessary, with a hairbrush that she kept hanging in sight with a bright pink ribbon. She also en- joyed playing the piano and began giving Joan lessons when the girl turned four, rewarding her daughter with gold stars when the child made progress.

It would seem, at least on the surface, that Joan’s up- bringing was anything but eventful. While her sister Candy was outgoing and social, Joan was a shy, completely unath- letic, retiring yet bright student who never expected much of herself or anyone else except, as she said, “to be treated fairly, nicely.” A thoughtful, introspective person, she would spend hours alone in her own world which was filled with the arts and her music.

There were cracks in the veneer of the Bennetts’ idyllic middle-class life, however, and they were apparent to any- one who knew the family.

“It struck me as odd that the girls never referred to their parents as ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad,’ it was always ‘Harry’ and ‘Ginny,’ ” said Joseph Livingston, who was a childhood friend of Candy’s and who spent time with Joan. “There were problems, but I think they were never looked at or an- alyzed. Both parents were drinkers, though no one ever

mentioned it, ever. It was as if it didn’t exist, which is the way it is in many alcoholic families. It doesn’t exist.”

Like Jackie, Joan was the eldest of two daughters and closest to her father; she idolized him, and he felt the same about her. And like Jackie’s mother, Joan’s mother was a dif- ficult woman to please or understand. She was never com- pletely satisfied with herself or her daughters. Ginny thought Candy was too much the party girl, while, on the flip side, she thought that Joan was too complacent. She urged her teachers to make the girl work harder. She ex- pected a lot from her children. Recalled Livingston, “She used to say, ‘I just want things to be
right
.’ But nothing was ever right where she was concerned. As a kid, I remember staying out of her way because if I didn’t, she would pull me to the side and start straightening my tie or rearranging my hair, saying, ‘It’s just not right, Joseph. It’s not
right
.’ ”

As her father made more money, Joan’s family became up- wardly mobile, moving into a four-bedroom Mediterranean- style home on a quarter-acre plot in Bronxville and enjoying a thoroughly uneventful lifestyle. Unlike Jackie and Ethel, Joan had no cooks, nannies, housekeepers, or other servants as a child. “We did for ourselves,” Joan says.

As a teenager, Joan’s beauty blossomed, but she still had trouble making friends, especially in high school, where she remained reclusive. Her sister Candy was more popular. “She was a cheerleader and went out on dates while I went to the library,” Joan recalls.

On a visit to Bronxville, a researcher would be hard pressed to locate people who remember Joan Bennett; she apparently made little impression in high school. Even fel- low students are surprised to learn that she was actually in their class. “I went to school with her?” said one woman

who had been in her twelfth-grade history class. “You must be joking!”

“She stayed to herself,” said Ted Livingston, Joseph’s brother, who dated Joan when both were in the eleventh grade. “But then I got a load of her mother one day when I went to pick Joan up for a date. And I knew why.

“The mother made me nervous; just her presence in the room made everyone a little uneasy. Joan came downstairs all smiles, beautiful, and wearing a blue knee-length dress and white sweater. Mom followed, also smiling. She seemed jittery, but trying very hard to act casually. Then, just before we left, Ginny said to Joan, ‘I’m still not sure that that dress is the right color for you, Joan. I think it makes you look, oh I don’t know, pale, I guess. You just don’t look right.’ You could just see Joan’s happiness just sort of evaporate. She deflated right in front of me. I felt terrible for her.”

Joan’s former assistant, Marcia Chellis, recalls, “Joan talked occasionally about her father but she rarely spoke of her mother, and I sensed that there were unhappy memories she did not care to recall.

“For Joan’s mother, little or no help would have been available to her for a condition [alcoholism] that was then considered to be a social stigma, a shameful secret, and a sign of personal weakness, especially for a woman. Joan may have been deprived of the warm, secure mother-daughter relationship that provides the basis for self-esteem.”

In June 1954, Joan graduated from high school and en- rolled in Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic women’s college which had just recently moved from Morningside Heights in New York City to a new fifteen- acre campus in Purchase, forty-five minutes north of Man- hattan. The young women who attended Manhattanville

were taught by nuns. It was an organized environment in which Joan—whose major was in English and minor was in music—seemed to fit, especially as she immersed herself in the study of classical liturgical music, to which she was exposed by attending daily Mass and High Mass on Sundays. While in college, Joan emerged; her personality and beauty began to shine. “Thank God, my wallflower days were over,” she recalls. She became a New York “debu- tante” twice: first at the Fifth Annual Gotham Ball and then, a few weeks later, at the Nineteenth Debutante Cotillion and Christmas Ball. She then began competing in a number of beauty contests and in March 1956 was picked as “Queen” by the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce for its annual floral

pageant.

In 1957, twenty-one-year-old Joan met her future hus- band, Ted, during her senior year at Manhattanville. That was the year the Kennedy Physical Education Building, lo- cated on campus and financed by Joseph Kennedy, was completed. Because mother Rose, daughters Eunice and Jean, and daughter-in-law Ethel had all attended Manhat- tanville, the dedication of the new building was a big family moment. Many of the Kennedys showed up for the cere- monies, including Rose and Joseph, Bobby, Jack, and Ted, as well as Ethel and Jackie.

The day of the ceremonies, Joan would later recall, “the place was buzzing with anticipation because of the distin- guished guests, but I locked myself in my room to write my [school] papers. I was probably the only one of the seven hundred students who was absent from the dedication of the gymnasium. I missed Ted’s dedication speech entirely.” Joan did attend a tea that followed the ceremony, which was also attended by the rest of the school’s seniors and the

Kennedy family. There, Joan saw Jean Kennedy Smith, whom she had met a few months earlier at a party at George Skakel’s home in Greenwich. Jean mentioned that she wanted Joan to meet her “little brother.” Joan recalled, “I looked up and saw Ted’s six feet two inches towering over me. At first, I was flabbergasted and surprised, and then when Jean drifted away, I knew, somehow, this was the man I would marry.”

Twenty-five-year-old Ted was a third-year law student at- tending school at the University of Virginia in Char- lottesville. He was the only Kennedy sibling, other than the disabled Rosemary, yet unmarried. At six feet two inches and two hundred pounds, Ted was a better athlete than stu- dent. He’d been a rabble-rouser in college—“Cadillac Eddie,” they called him—known for his heavy drinking and reckless driving habits. Rose had asked him to speak at the dedication—it would be his first important public address— and he had agreed to do so.

“I had never heard of the Kennedys,” Joan recalls. “Never heard of them! I just took no interest in current events. I didn’t know what was going on in the real world.”

Jean, who had a fairly good track record as a matchmaker (she had already introduced Ethel into the family), seemed to have another success. Ted and Joan hit it off immediately and began to date soon afterward. “He [Ted] liked her a lot,” said Kennedy family friend Lem Billings. “He said to me, ‘She’s so relentlessly cheery, nothing gets her down.’ ‘Noth- ing?’ I asked. ‘Nothing,’ he answered. ‘She’s perfect for my family.’ ”

Naïve though she may have been, Joan did detect prob- lems in Ted’s character from the very beginning. She had heard about his “Cadillac Eddie” reputation but didn’t want

to know anything about it. Nothing negative or controversial was allowed to exist in her life. “It was her reaction, I think, to her mother’s determination that she be the perfect little girl,” observed Theresa Carpenter, who attended Manhat- tanville with Joan, “and to the fact that her mother was far from perfect herself and never really tried to hide that from her children.”

Though Joan continued dating other men, she saw Ted a few more times during the next seven months. A devout Catholic, she, like Ethel, was still a virgin when she married. After Joan’s June 1958 graduation—sixty-eighth in her class of 108—she accepted Ted’s invitation to spend the weekend with him in Hyannis Port, where he wanted her to meet his mother, Rose. “My earliest memory of Joan was meeting her at the airport in Hyannis,” recalls Ted’s cousin and best friend, Joe Gargan, who had been sent to pick up the young Miss Bennett. “You couldn’t help but notice how

pretty she was—really beautiful, and just as nice.”

Bringing Joan home to meet mother was a big move. Ted knew how eager Rose was for him to marry “the right girl of the right faith,” and Rose had made it clear that if he married the “wrong kind of girl, we’ll all suffer.” In fact, Rose had been saying a nightly rosary that Ted would do the family proud and bring home the perfect Kennedy wife.