The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [383]
Joe was not much for outsiders, but that fall Frank Sinatra and Porfirio Rubirosa, the semicelebrated playboy, showed up for a party. The group of women who arrived that afternoon were rudely scrutinized by Frank Saunders, the chauffeur, who thought the guests “looked like whores.” Joe insisted that his black riding boots be polished each day, and in the evening Saunders took the oiled, gleaming boots up the back stairs to the patriarch’s room. There the chauffeur stumbled onto one of the afternoon arrivals pressed up against the wall being fondled by Joe. “I have your riding boots, Mr. Kennedy,” Saunders said, as if that would make his presence less embarrassing. “My riding boots!” Joe exclaimed. “Just in time.”
The best times were when the presidential flag flew over the compound. The big house was not an expansive place that insisted on formality, for despite its size it remained a cozy house whose rooms seemed diminutive. On one such occasion the president was sitting with his shoes off next to Jackie on the triple sofa. Bobby rested in a nearby chair, and another friend, John Hooker Jr., sat next to Ethel on the stairs. Hooker recalled that suddenly “everyone in the room sprang to their feet. The president of the United States, within a second, had his shoes on and was standing straight up to welcome his father into the room.” At dinner it was Joe who sat at the head of the table, not his son the president.
Hooker was a decent athlete, and he was startled at the relentless competitiveness of the Kennedy men. He was a far better tennis player than Bobby, but the attorney general wouldn’t let it go at that and kept insisting on set after set, as if he could eventually wear Hooker down.
Over the long Thanksgiving weekend in November 1961, the Kennedy family played touch football against the Secret Service. These men spent their days guarding the president, but they were decidedly off-duty this afternoon, and they blocked Bobby and Teddy and the rest of the Kennedy gang, banging into the defense as they ran out for passes. High up in the second-floor window stood Joe, his fist clenched, doing what he always did, cheering on his beloved sons.
Another day during that drizzly weekend Bobby, Teddy, Steve Smith, and Red Fay had themselves a bruising game of touch football, playing until it got so dark that they could no longer see the football spiraling toward them in the chill of a New England late November. “All right, everybody into that wonderful Atlantic!” Teddy yelled, looking at Fay as if he thought his brother’s friend might turn tail. “Red boy, when that pink body hits that cold water, things are going to happen that you didn’t believe could happen to a grown man,” Teddy went on, anticipating the smack of the frigid Atlantic waters. “All right, everybody out into the black night bare-assed running as fast as you can.” The four men tore off their clothes and ran naked into the bay. “How I survived the plunge only the good Lord knows,” Fay reflected. “Literally for several days I felt the aftereffects.”
That holiday the family celebrated both Bobby’s and Sarge’s birthdays. After dinner Joan sat down at the piano. This was not an evening for only sentimental old Irish ballads. The Twist had suddenly become the rage at the Peppermint Lounge in Manhattan. And so, while Joan played, Jackie gyrated before the group in her pink Schiaparelli slack suit. Teddy decided he would give the dance a go. His mother adored her last-born, but she noticed, “He is so big and has such a big derrière it is funny to see him