The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [381]
“Saddle up, Joansie!” Teddy yelled over the phone to his wife. “We’ve got a two o’clock tea at Lowell, then another one at four. There’s a banquet tonight in Boston and after that a coffee in Lawrence. We should be back at Squaw Island tonight. Did I tell you six are coming for lunch tomorrow? Could you get lobster?”
As she listened, Joan made sure she got it all down in her little notepad. “White piqué suit—black cocktail dress—8 lobsters.” Then, when Teddy’s urgent soliloquy ended, she enthused, “Wonderful, dear! I’ll be up on the first plane.” Joan appeared to be in ecstasy. “I’m going to see my husband” she told the cook. “I haven’t seen him in six days.”
Both Joan and Teddy were living lives that they had not yet quite claimed as their own. This was not England, and Teddy was not planning to sit in the House of Lords, an inherited position that gives its occupant little say in the governing of the nation. His resume had only a few items on it other than his surname, but he was Edward M. Kennedy, a full-blooded Kennedy, and in Massachusetts he had every chance of winning a seat in the Senate.
Growing up, Teddy had been only a summertime Massachusetts resident, but in a short time he had managed to seem like a true son of the Commonwealth. Unlike Jack and Jackie, Teddy and Joan came across as an accessible couple whose happiness did not seem beyond the aspirations of middle-class life. There was a guileless vulnerability to Joan that set her apart from any other woman in the family. She sought to live a women’s magazine kind of existence, her life as perfectly turned out to public view as her living room and her children.
The Senate aspirant and his wife purchased their own summer home on Squaw Island, only a five-minute car ride from the rest of the family at the Hyannis Port compound. Their house had a light, happy motif, the blue carpet like the sea itself, set against the white walls, the comfortable chairs, and the reproduction antiques. The children were perfect too, little Kara and Teddy Jr. As her youngest grew a little older, Joan liked to dress them in matching brother and sister outfits. Joan, unlike Jackie, did not wear European designer dresses but was content, like most of the women of Massachusetts, to buy her dresses off the rack. There was something reassuring about this youngest Kennedy couple, from Teddy’s speeches and public demeanor to his beautiful devout wife and the modest way in which he set out to make his way in the Senate.
Teddy had a consuming love for life at Hyannis Port. He may have been only a holiday resident, but the hamlet would always be his one true home. This summer of 1961 would have been a splendid time even if his brother had not been president, for few things on earth compare to the pleasures of grandparents, siblings, and children surrounded by love and imbued with health, money, and above all the time to enjoy them. The sweetness of these weekends was incomparable, and as with all true pleasures, their sweetness was vividly felt by those who partook in them not only in memory but also within each moment.
When the helicopter set down on the grounds after the ten-minute jaunt from Otis Air Force Base, and the president stepped out and Caroline and her cousins rushed to greet him, there was perfection to the moment. The president went sailing on the Marlin, sitting there watching Jackie water-skiing. He even, against all advice, tried a few holes of golf. “You