The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [386]
Ann Gargan, though, was in many respects the most important person in Joe’s daily life. Ann and her brother Joe were the proverbial poor relatives, welcomed at the family table but relegated to the most distant seat, always at the beck and call of their betters. Ann sought to make herself indispensable, cutting Joe’s meat up into bite-size pieces, interpreting his wishes, thwarting the harsh regime of rehabilitation that the physical therapists sought to impose on her uncle.
Joe was flown up to the Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in New York City where he settled into Horizon House, a bungalow on the institute grounds. His children came, one after another, and whispered in his ear. One of them covered the old man’s twisted hand with a scarf. Bobby and Ethel hurried around the little house, checking everything out, pronouncing, “Everything works, Dad.” His children attempted to bolster him with their relentlessly upbeat cheerleading. They stood outside his door tense with anticipation, steeling themselves for this moment. Then they rushed into the room bursting with optimism, before rushing out again, their shoulders slumped with despair.
“For a group of people who don’t want to face bad things, it was hard,” reflected Dr. Henry Betts, who became Joe’s full-time physician. “It was harder than death because with death they always went on. They’d go home, by God, and they’d find diversion and fun and work and they’d go on, because they had repressed it in a way. But how could you repress this? It was around all the time. It was harder than death. So it was just terrible on all of them.”
Joe had grown to love Jackie more than any of his other daughters-in-law and had an affinity with her as deep as with any of his daughters. She did not try by encouraging words to pull him to his feet, but he sat there with her head in his lap. She kissed his twisted hand and caressed his face, and he seemed to grow tranquil.
Joe learned that the president was arriving later that day, and he motioned that he wanted to wear his finest suit and a beautiful tie. When he was elegantly dressed, an aide pushed his wheelchair outside on the patio to await his son. Joe could not stand up on his own, but when he saw his son striding toward him, he pulled himself to his feet, and with his crippled hand gave the president the same salute he had given him on inauguration day. Kennedy had struggled with his father’s will and power all his life, but he loved him with an unabashed emotion unlike anyone else. He rushed forward and embraced the old man, kissing his face.
That day Kennedy could well believe that his father might learn to walk and talk again and return to being the great patriarch of the family he had always been. When he and Bobby returned for another visit, the old man once again started to rise out of his wheelchair. A doctor hurried forward to steady him, but Joe pushed him away. Bobby rushed forward, and Joe struck out at him with his cane, screaming and flailing at him. The doctor pressed Joe down in his chair, while the Secret Service men stood ready to protect the president if his father struck out against him. Bobby loved his father deeply too, and he kissed his father and talked in sweetly soothing tones, calming the old man.
Joe had always been a problem solver, and this was the most maddening of conditions. He followed the therapy, made some progress, and then relapsed. That was the way it always was in rehabilitation, but he had been in such good physical condition prior to the stroke that his doctors believed he might yet walk far up the road to recovery.
Joe had always managed to avoid domesticity’s fatal embrace, but in this dollhouse of a bungalow, he and Rose were living together as they had not done during most of their marriage. Rose ordered meals from Joe’s favorite restaurant, La Caravelle, and in the evening the couple sat together in front of the television, proper Rose in her stocking feet, watching the same programs that married couples all across America were watching. Ann