The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [40]
Bobby could dive into that sea a thousand times, but he would never be able to knife into the water with the ease and elegance of his big brothers. Bobby scrambled on in life, fearful that he would be dismissed as unworthy and that when he arrived at the table of life the food would be gone and the guests departed. Once, when he was only four years old, he came careening down to the dining room, terrified that he would be late, and ran into a glass door, severely cutting his face. Another day he was playing in the toolshed when he dropped a rusty radiator on his foot, breaking his second toe. The pain was excruciating. Most boys would have burst into tears, dragging their injured foot behind them as they stumbled toward the house. Bobby sat there grimacing in pain, not even removing his shoe. A half hour later he finally took off his shoe: his sock was soaked in blood, and he had to be taken to the hospital.
In the high stakes of inheritance, Bobby seemed to have drawn the worst card. Unlike his brothers, he wasn’t a handsome child whose presence could charm the uncharmable. Bobby was scrawny and small, always struggling to keep up, running along double time while his brothers forged ahead with long strides. As a boy, he had soft, gentle features that suggested he had best stay away from the tough playing fields of manhood. His mouth was often pursed in a wry expression, suggesting nothing if not bewilderment. Some called him shy, but it was a strange shyness, for he would suddenly burst out like a cuckoo clock on the hour, making a few loud noises, before shutting himself up again. He was not especially smart either. Not only was he not a top student, but he showed none of Jack’s flashes of brilliance that excused his otherwise mediocre school record. Joe Jr. was one of the top students in his class at Riverdale, while in sixth grade Jack won a commencement prize for best composition.
“Bobby looked on both [of his parents] as if they were saints,” reflected Kirk LeMoyne “Lem” Billings, Jack’s closest friend. “He could see no defects in either. They did not reciprocate. They did not return his love.” Joe and Rose surely loved their son, but he seemed at times an interloper, an observer to the dramatic comings and goings of his big brothers, half ignored as his parents doted over little Teddy. Bobby was the most emotionally vulnerable of the boys. “Bobby got along better with his mother than with his father,” his younger sister Jean reflected. “Jack, the reverse. His father was often very rough on Bobby; his mother would console him, ‘You’re my favorite,’ half jokingly.” Rose may have told Bobby on occasion that he was her favorite, but she most likely did so because he was not.
Life for Bobby was a foreign language that he spoke only haltingly, stumbling over the syntax, his accent showing that this was not a tongue that came naturally to him. He struggled to stay up with the world his father taught him must be his. As a boy in Bronxville, he signed up for a paper route, an endeavor that Joe thought admirable training for a youth. Admirable training it was, but primarily for the Kennedys’ chauffeur, who delivered the papers each morning. “I put an end to that,” his mother recalled. “Bobby said he was so busy with his schoolwork.”
Bobby had the deepest faith of any of his brothers. He appeared so devout at St. Joseph’s Church in Bronxville that one of the nuns, Sister M. Ambrose, thought that he “might have a religious vocation.” “Bishop Bernard from the Bahama Islands used to be given permission by Father McCann to collect at the Masses at least once a year,” Sister Ambrose recalled in a letter to Bobby years later. “After an appeal at the nine o’clock mass, you went home, got your bank, and gave the contents to the Bishop.”
The Kennedy boys had set their roots in Bronxville far deeper than their parents ever would or could. Rose wanted her sons to go to an elite Catholic school or, if Joe spurned that