Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [89]
When everything had been officially sanctioned by the authorities, Frank and I went off quietly to stay with our friend the “Irish Nightingale” Morton Downey at his home in Palm Beach, Florida. We repeated our wedding vows in a Catholic ceremony overlooking the ocean, officiated by a priest friend of Morton’s. It was romantic and fun and felt like yet another new beginning. From the day we were married, Frank had always referred to me as his “bride,” and I suddenly felt like one again, in another lovely gown and with tropical flowers threaded through my hair. It was on that trip that Ann Downey and I were invited to the beautiful Kennedy house right on the ocean in Palm Beach to play tennis with Teddy and some others. Rose Kennedy, the indomitable matriarch of the clan, was in residence, so after our game we were invited to her room for Mass. She was a strict Catholic and had a priest come every day. The octogenarian mother of nine had lost an eye by then and wore a patch. When we walked into the room, her one good eye homed in on me and didn’t avert its gaze. There were several of us sitting there, but that tiny woman just stared and stared at me until Teddy Kennedy was so uncomfortable that he said, “Here, Barbara, come and sit over here.” I moved to another seat, but the eye followed me. It was most disconcerting. I have no idea why she took such an interest or who she thought I might be. She never said.
After our romantic sojourn in Florida, Frank decided that the simple service in the Everglades wasn’t good enough, so he asked me to arrange for us to be married once more in a full Catholic service in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York. Both of us loved “St. Paddy’s” and had mused about how nice it would have been to have married there the first time around, so when we were finally able to face each other, hold hands, and take our vows in the exquisite Lady Chapel, it meant a great deal to us both.
As part of the healing process after Dolly’s death, Frank made another decision that came as a complete surprise. We were sitting across the aisle from each other on his plane coming home from somewhere when he scribbled a note and handed it to me. “I want to adopt Bobby,” he’d written. “I love him and I want him to be my son. He deserves to be part of a bigger family.”
Startled, I cried, “But, Frank! He’s a fully grown man, not a boy. I’m not sure he wants to be adopted.”
“I’ve made up my mind,” Frank replied. “I’m going to do this, for you and for him.” He wouldn’t listen to my protests and sent another message back to his lawyer, Mickey Rudin, sitting in another part of the plane. Mickey came forward to try to talk him out of it, but Frank was most insistent. “Just do it!” he snapped finally.
When we got home, I called Bobby to gingerly explain Frank’s proposal. His reaction was as I expected. “But, Mother, I don’t want to be adopted,” Bobby said. “I have a father, and anyway, I already took Zeppo’s name. It’s very kind of Frank, but please tell him this isn’t what I want at all.”
Poor Bobby. I truly felt for him. The men in my life had not always been very sensitive to his needs, and at that time he was trying to reconnect with his real father, Bob, who was still in Europe. Bobby knew Bob had prevented Zeppo from adopting him all those years before, and I think my son sometimes regretted changing his name to Marx, so I completely understood his position. I pleaded his case to Frank, but my pigheaded Italian husband was determined to go ahead. In the end, his family vetoed the idea anyway, so nothing ever came of it. I tried to tell Frank it didn’t matter. I said, “Look, darling, it doesn’t make any difference. Why upset yourself like this? Bobby’s our son in all but name anyway. I wouldn’t pursue this; it’s way too controversial.” He finally capitulated but I knew he was wounded.
Bobby had other father-figure issues to work out anyway because in 1979 the man who’d been his first stepfather got sick. Zeppo