At the end of the summer of 2008, Mary’s illness was, at long last, diagnosed. “You’re married to a woman who has borderline personality disorder,” her psychotherapist told Bobby. Like most people, he knew little about BPD. Of Bobby’s research into it, the writer Laurence Leamer would later note for Newsweek, “When he opened “I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me by Jerold J. Kreisman and Hal Straus, he finally felt he had an understanding of what was happening with his wife. Bobby read that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association lists nine criteria for BPD, five of which must be present for a diagnosis. Mary seemed to have every one of the nine, including a perceived sense of abandonment, a lack of identity, recklessness, suicidal threats, intense feelings of emptiness, and inappropriate displays of anger.”
Finally, there was an explanation for Mary’s behavior, and one that actually made sense. “We’d all been trying for so long to understand,” said Alyssa Chapman. “There was a great sense of relief. My God, we thought, this is it. Even though it sounded daunting—borderline personality disorder—we were so happy to have this … thing be named.”
Despite the diagnosis, Mary’s family to this day doesn’t believe that she suffered from BPD. They have called the diagnosis “a vindictive lie” and “an insult to those who do struggle with this very serious illness.” They would always maintain that Mary’s problems were a direct response to continued psychological abuse by an unfeeling, insensitive husband. Kerry just tried to keep the peace with them and act as a buffer between them and her brother while everyone tried to find new ways to help Mary.
By this time, Kerry Kennedy had made a good and productive life for herself, built around activism and philanthropy. She and Andrew Cuomo divorced in 2005. A year later, he went on to a stunning comeback after his 2002 political embarrassment by being elected New York State attorney general in a race against Republican nominee Jeanine Pirro (who is presently a noted Fox News commentator). In 2010, Andrew would be elected the fifty-sixth governor of New York. Meanwhile, Kerry would continue to raise their children, co-parenting with her former spouse, with whom she remained close, as well as continuing her work as a social activist.
Despite how busy she was, Mary’s problems were always foremost on Kerry’s mind. While she sometimes felt torn in her allegiances to her brother and her best friend, she still believed she knew what was best for Mary, and that was to not be with Bobby. The fact that he wanted out of the marriage gave Kerry even more confidence that her advice to Mary to let him go was good for both of them. Then Bobby suddenly changed course.
For Bobby, Mary’s BPD diagnosis answered a lot of questions. At least now he knew what he was dealing with. In the fall of 2008, he decided to recommit himself to the marriage.
One friend of his recalled that being at the Kennedys’ home for dinner in October 2008, he found Mary in a good mood. As she prepared a salad in the kitchen with the chef, she spoke of a vacation she and Bobby planned to take now that things seemed a bit calmer. They were thinking of a cruise, she said. The way she glanced over at Bobby and caught his eye made it clear that the two still had something strong. As Mary spoke in an animated manner, Bobby stared at her with a small, loving smile. Despite everything they’d been through, she remained beautiful in his eyes. “You could see the adoration he had for her,” said the witness to the scene. “As I watched, I thought, My God, he loves her so much. I had no doubt that he could make it work. I later said to him, ‘You’re doing a good job with her, Bobby. Whatever you’re doing, keep it up.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Can I let you in on a secret?’ I said sure. He said, ‘I actually don’t know what the hell I’m doing.’”
The calm didn’t last long. A couple of nights later, Kerry and some other friends were at Mary’s home when she came completely undone and started talking about killing herself. “Mary! You need to keep your shit together,” Kerry told her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. Everyone was startled by Kerry’s outburst. “You have to fight this thing in you,” Kerry said as she started crying. “At least for your kids, don’t you dare stop fighting it.” Kerry warned her that every time she threatened suicide, she risked having her children taken from her.
Kerry really was at her wits’ end. “The system is Kafka-esque,” she would later explain. “Here’s Mary, teetering, possibly suicidal. If she admits that she is, the court takes her kids away and her therapist has to commit her, calling police if she won’t go voluntarily. So she was stuck. If she saved herself, she risked losing her children—her greatest fear.”
IN THE WINTER of 2010, Bobby met a woman who apparently helped him understand just how destructive his marriage was not only to him but to Mary as well as their children. She was the television actress Cheryl Hines, who played Larry David’s wife on the popular sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm and was presently in a role on TV’s popular series Brothers & Sisters. Her own marriage was ending; she had one child. In his darkest moments, Cheryl gave Bobby hope. Her love for him provided the trigger he needed to finally make his move: He filed for divorce after sixteen turbulent years of marriage to Mary.
Of course, Mary didn’t take it well and neither did her and Bobby’s children, especially their oldest boy, seventeen-year-old Conor. Of the four kids, Conor had always been the most attached to his mother. He was protective of her, hated seeing her so unhappy, and couldn’t help but blame his father. For a time, he didn’t even want to speak to him.
Conor (and his brother, Fin) had long suffered from severe asthma and anaphylaxis allergies. In addition to peanuts, Conor was particularly allergic to almost thirty other substances. “Mary had to take him to the emergency room twenty-five times in the first three or four years of his life,” Kerry Kennedy would recall. “Back in 1998, she helped Bobby raise more than $30 million to establish the Food Allergy Initiative, a nonprofit organization to fund research. She would become one the world’s great experts on food allergies.” (In the years to come, Bobby would also dedicate himself to looking into the role vaccines might have played in his sons’ conditions since neither he nor Mary suffered from allergies.)
Despite his allergies, Conor was still a happy and content child. In recent years, though, he’d become withdrawn while also seeming to lose self-confidence; he would mumble at people rather than speak to them plainly, not looking them in the eye. When someone suggested therapy, not just for Conor but for all Mary’s children, Bobby was reluctant; he said he didn’t want his offspring to end up as another generation of Kennedys dependent on therapists. The more pressing issue was Mary’s state of mind, he decided, and hopefully there would be more time later to deal with that of his children.