The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [235]
For all Bobby’s calculation and shrewd ambition, he had time for friendship and family that Jack simply didn’t allow himself. He touched his children and kissed them, enveloping them in his warmth as his parents rarely had done when he was a little boy. He did not discard his old Harvard football buddies because they were no longer useful to him but kept up a correspondence in which they humbled each other with their rude put-downs. When Nick Rodis or Kenny O’Donnell came to Washington, they had to come out to Hickory Hill, the new house in McLean, Virginia, that he and Ethel had bought from Jack, or they would feel the blunt blows of his wrath.
In a matter of weeks, Ethel and Bobby had transformed a Hickory Hill that under Jackie’s tutelage had been a sedate, elegantly appointed estate into an eclectic amalgam of summer camp, zoo, boot camp, college fraternity, political headquarters, and religious retreat. Less than intrepid visitors were well advised to turn around and drive back down Chain Bridge Road to Washington.
Ethel had the high skittishness of the Skakel clan. Handing off her newest baby to the latest nanny or maid like a football, she ran to be present whenever Bobby made a speech or quizzed a witness in a Senate hearing. The couple played tennis matches with all the intensity of the finals at Wimbledon and had discussions with their friends over dinners that were equally competitive.
Years later Rose mused that when a family has everything, sooner or later it must experience loss. Ethel’s losses began on October 3, 1955, when her parents, George and Ann Skakel, died in a private plane crash in Oklahoma. Ann had spent much of her life with a drink in her hand, and her family mourned her with as much liquor as tears. Bobby kept his wife away from the Skakels’ Greenwich home for their nonstop Irish wake, an absence that only exacerbated the growing tensions between the two families. As much as Bobby tried to succor his wife, her parents’ death left Ethel with a white-knuckled fear of flying so extreme that sometimes he had to cancel trips.
The Skakels and Kennedys had two different visions of life. The Skakels were full of matchless exuberance, an unbounded generosity of spirit, and a blithe unconcern for the world beyond their gated precincts. Bobby was a Catholic Puritan who puckered up his lips at the taste of liquor. He was profoundly concerned with making his mark on the world, disdainful of mere inheritors, and impatient with those beyond his intimates whose words would not advance him. Both families kept a tight hold on their truths. But for the Skakels, there was no excuse for Ethel not joining her six brothers and sisters to mourn their parents as they should be mourned and limiting her presence to an appearance at the funeral. Bobby had a worthy excuse. As a Skakel, his wife had two possible solaces: religion and liquor, her family’s secondary faith. If alcoholism could be passed on, either by inheritance or proximity, then his wife was vulnerable.
During the 1956 presidential campaign, Bobby traveled with Stevenson. He was supposed to be a campaign aide, but he spent most of his time taking notes and making observations. “Bobby accompanied Stevenson on his presidential campaign at his father’s request,” according to Rose, “because of course Joe thought Jack would eventually run [for president] and anything that Bobby could learn from Stevenson’s campaign would be useful.” For months Jack had been ingratiating himself with the Democratic candidate, but that did not mean that he and his brother still admired him. Stevenson was the archetypal liberal that the Kennedy brothers abhorred. He had what they considered a prissy, overrefined quality. “He’s got no balls,” Bobby told O’Donnell. “I think he’s a faggot.”
The liberal ladies might swoon over their precious champion, but Bobby privately sneered. The