The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [38]
After a year in their rental house in Riverdale, Joe bought a splendid estate in the exclusive Westchester County community of Bronxville. When he was home, Joe joined the other men in this town of sixty-five hundred residents, commuting to New York City each morning by train, leaving Rose and their children behind in the brick Georgian mansion.
Alice Cahill Bastian, the nurse, recalled that Joe “was always the first one up in the morning in the household. Shortly thereafter, the sound of childish voices came from his room. The little ones had quietly crept down the hallway to enjoy a romp and reading the funnies with Daddy. This early morning visit was a highlight of their day and his. As he kissed them good-bye when leaving for his office or on a trip, he was never too hurried to ask them about school or their plans for the day. Oftentimes the younger ones would accompany him to the train.”
Joe was the more demonstratively affectionate parent. His children responded with a love that was far more deeply emotive than what they felt for Rose. They learned quickly not to lie to their father. He tolerated none of the casual dissembling he called “applesauce.” Nor did he want any “monkey business” at home or school. Though their mother’s hand disciplined them, they feared their father’s displeasure far more deeply. His slightest reprimand stung far greater than a coat hanger applied to their backside. Joe, however, like Rose, was often gone. “Daddy did not come home last night,” Kathleen wrote her mother in Palm Beach in February 1932. “We do not know when he is coming.”
Gossip was one of the town’s primary products, and a favored subject was the mysterious Kennedys living in the most expensive property in town. “They were considered nouveau riche,” recalled David Wilson, who went to school with the Kennedy boys. There were no Jews and few Catholics in Bronxville, but it was neither the Kennedys’ faith nor their ethnic background that had set the town buzzing. It was Joe’s sexual indiscretions.
Bronxville fancied itself a sedate, churchgoing, conservative place, but there were dalliances galore among the affluent couples. It did not matter what one did as long as one did it quietly. Joe was so public in his womanizing that even many of the children in town knew about his assignations. He was so disrespectful of the shallow sanctimoniousness of the village that he brought women to the Gramatan Hotel. Some of the teenagers in town were so brazen as to chase after Joe, hoping for a glimpse of his current companion.
Joe’s most flagrant adventures did not begin until after Rose gave birth to Edward Moore “Teddy” Kennedy, their ninth and final child on February 22, 1932. “People said, ‘Why do you want to have nine children [if] you have had eight?’” Rose recalled. “You are over forty years old, and you will be all tired out, and you will lose your figure and looks. Why do you want to pay any attention to those priests? So I got rather indignant and made up my mind that neither Teddy or I were going to suffer and [we] were going to be independent and make it in a superior fashion. We weren’t going to have anybody feel sorry for us.”
Rose was forty-one years old, and it was a difficult, tiring labor that left her exhausted and seriously ill. She was in bed for over a month. Rose had ample reason to believe that if she became pregnant again she might die in labor. Since she was not going to violate the church’s mandate against birth control, she saw that her only choice was no longer to have sexual relations with her husband. Joe had needed no excuse for his affairs, but now there was an unspoken agreement that