The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [371]
Only the bravest of hearts dared to walk down into the basement. That was Bobby Jr.’s terrain, and he was not simply a lover of nature in its most popular forms, but of the exotic and even dangerous species. There the visitors had to be alert to one of Bobby Jr.’s falcons, or some great snake suddenly slithering across the cold concrete. When Ethel led two reporters down into the darkness, she was attacked by a coatimundi. The reporters, throwing their notebooks to the wind, pulled the anteater-like animal off their hostess, and led Ethel upstairs, where she was bandaged.
The guests began their evening by warily petting Brumus. Then they were expected to become exotic animals themselves, to perform some act that had not been performed before, to tell an outrageous tale, to do everything but slap their flippers and jump for fish. It was all very well for the ebullient Ethel, pregnant with her eighth child. Art Buchwald could reel off his latest humor column. The columnist Rowland Evans could pass on some political gossip. Professor Arthur Schlesinger treated the world like a classroom. But for those who were shy or just socially reticent, it could be the most excruciating of evenings. “When I go to Hickory Hill, I always feel like a chimp having to perform,” Joan Kennedy lamented, her beauty not attribute enough. “Kennedy life can be rough on human beings.”
Whereas most Washington hostesses set out their engraved seating cards after laboriously determining status and interests, at Hickory Hill the most disparate peoples were thrown together. That was the idea, to shake things up so that the only predictable outcome was that anything might happen short of fisticuffs and duels.
In that most famous of Hickory Hill soirees, Ethel extended the dance floor all the way to the pool and set out tables around the water, including one rather precarious perch on a wooden plank out over the pool itself. Ethel, a woman who never saw wet paint she didn’t have to touch or a can of shaving cream that she did not consider a potential spray gun, was such a leader of pranks that she went into the pool in her gown first. Schlesinger and another guest were soon pushed in to join her. It was a thumb in the eye to all the sanctimonious cave dwellers of Georgetown who acted as if civility and boredom were synonymous.
Bobby was a quiet partner in his wife’s pranks. He thought that he could have it all, college high jinks and serious endeavors, a life as intense and passionate in its moments of play as in the long serious hours of public service. Jack enjoyed good conversation, lovely women, and loyal friends, but he stayed a thousand leagues away from the frenetic fun and games at Hickory Hill. “I never once saw the president and Jackie out at Hickory Hill,” recalled Rowland Evans. “And I know I would have been there.” As close as he was to Bobby, the president compartmentalized his younger brother as much as he did everyone else, from his wife to his lovers.
On one of the few occasions when the president came out to Bobby’s for dinner, the children rampaged through the house, creating a cacophony of shrieks and shouts. “I say out!” Kennedy exclaimed. “I’m the president of the United States and I say out!” He may have been president, but at Hickory Hill, Kennedy was just another tedious adult whose orders went unheeded.
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Lives in Full