The Men We Became by Robert T. Littell

Author:Robert T. Littell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Nine

RITES OF PASSAGE

SOMETIME IN THE mid-1980s, people started getting married. I knew that people got married, of course, but I didn’t take any notice until I’d participated in a few weddings myself. The marriage of John’s sister, Caroline, to Ed Schlossberg was one of the first I attended. And it set the bar high. Not only was it elegant and emotional, it was unpretentiously, unexpectedly fun.

John and Caroline were as emotionally close as they were temperamentally different. Respectful and protective of each other, they had the kind of bond that parents wish for their children. I never spent a lot of time with Caroline—she rolled her eyes a lot when John and I were together, which seemed right, given that she was his elder sister and far more serious—but she graciously invited Frannie and me and a bunch of John’s other friends to her big day.

The wedding was held on July 19, 1986, on a warm, sunny afternoon in Hyannis Port. Frannie and I stayed at a bed-and-breakfast in town the night before, arriving near midnight after an eight-hour, traffic-filled drive from New York. This drive was made all the more annoying by Frannie, who spent hours worrying aloud about her forty-dollar dress from Casual Corner. I considered leaving her at the McDonald’s in Milford, Connecticut.

Interestingly, although Caroline was always the more reticent of the two, she planned a much bigger, more inclusive wedding than John did ten years later. No doubt that had something to do with the fact that Mrs. Onassis was still alive and knew how much joy a big festive ritual can bring to an extended family. The “family” in this case included not just Kennedys and Schlossbergs but their friends and also many members of John F. Kennedy’s administration, men and women who had known Caroline since she was a baby. The ceremony took place at a church in Centerville, Massachusetts. At the last minute Frannie decided that maybe a hat would help, and we were almost late while she dashed into a shop in town and bought a purple straw thing with flowers. After church we went back to the family compound in Hyannis Port, where two big tents had been set up. What can I say? It was a happy, gorgeous event, everyone excited for Caroline and Ed and glad to be celebrating in the name of love.

I got to meet the globe’s biggest testosterone warehouse, Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was pleased to note that I was maybe an inch taller. We shook hands and he scowled at me, which I took as a compliment. John liked Arnold a lot and found our “big man” posturing funny, especially considering how big Arnold actually was.

Soon enough the dinner gong rang and the whole party moved toward the enormous white tent where dinner was being served, buffet-style. After finding our table, I went with John to get some food and found myself standing next to Mrs. Onassis’s sister, Lee Radziwill. John, the respectful nephew, introduced us, a bit gingerly I thought.

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