Free Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot by J. Randy Taraborrelli Page A

Ethel and Bobby were devoted to one an- other. Neither would ever seem to regret their decision to wed; the differences in their personalities meshed together
    to create what many of their peers considered to be the per- fect couple. “The best thing I ever did was marry Ethel,” Bobby would later comment of the woman who was his partner, his supporter, his friend.
    “Whatever they did, they put their whole hearts and souls into it,” observes Mary Francis “Sancy” Newman, a neigh- bor of the Kennedys in Hyannis Port. “They were ideal in that way and seemed to have the kind of marriage most peo- ple of that time wanted. You could see in the way they looked at one another that they adored each other.”
    As she would later tell friends, Ethel was a virgin when she met Bobby—not a surprise, considering her strict Catholic upbringing and education. In fact, the word “sex” was never uttered in the Skakel home because Big Ann was so puritanical. Women weren’t even allowed to wear pants in the Lake Avenue home, because Big Ann found them amoral. Short tennis dresses were deemed acceptable for sports activities, but a woman had to change into something more appropriate as soon as she got off the court. Bobby later told friends that he didn’t know Ethel was a virgin until their wedding night, though he certainly must have sus- pected as much. He didn’t dare ask, and she wouldn’t think to tell him.
    Years later, at a Hyannis Port luncheon with Jackie, Joan, Jean, Eunice, and some close friends, Ethel admitted that her wedding night had been “a disaster.” She said that her inex- perience had been obvious, and that she had been intimi- dated by Bobby. “It was just terrible,” she said. “I think Bobby was finished before I got into the room . . . or at least that’s how it felt to me.”
    Joan laughed. “Well, really, whose honeymoon has ever been anything but terrible?” she asked.
    At that moment Rose walked into the room. Immediately, the women stopped talking. Discussing such matters in front of the family matriarch was considered inappropriate. Ethel instinctively put a hand over her mouth.
    “Now, just what are you ladies talking about?” Rose asked.
    “Oh, we were just saying how well Bobby sleeps at night,” Jackie said quickly.
    “That he does, dear heart,” Rose said. “That he does.” Then she added, “He gets that from me, you know.”
    After honeymooning in Hawaii and a drive back east in Pat Kennedy’s convertible, which the newlyweds picked up in Los Angeles, Bobby went back to his final year of law studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, while Ethel began her life as a Kennedy wife. The couple settled into a small one-and-a-half story colonial home—much sim- pler surroundings than Ethel was accustomed to, but it was an environment in which she seemed content. Ethel sur- rounded herself with friends who knew how to cook—be- cause she didn’t—and domestics who knew how to clean—because she didn’t. “A girl has to have some help, after all,” Ethel explained to Rose, who was already harping on her daughter-in-law to cut back on her spending, a run- ning theme throughout their relationship.
    For the next year, Ethel focused her attention on getting to know her husband’s personality. He could be explosive at times but was for the most part gentle and retiring. She as- sisted him with his studies in any way she could and, as she would later recall, she set about “doing what newlyweds do, try to learn all you can about your spouse before the children come along and completely ruin any time you may have with him.”
    On spring and summer weekends the couple would fly to Hyannis Port to be with Bobby’s parents and in fall and win- ter they flew to Palm Beach, Florida, for the same purpose. Ethel spent much time poring over books, encyclopedias, and almanacs, in an effort to learn as much as possible about every subject so that she could, as she put