Fall 1995. “Why in the world would you wear such a thing?” Ariel Paredes, Gustavo’s daughter, was asking John Kennedy. The two were at the kitchen table of Ethel’s home on the Cape gazing at a newspaper photo of John rising from the ocean while wearing an awful black swim cap. As he ate breakfast, John was surrounded by a stack of publications, research material for stories he was about to assign to reporters at George. He explained his reasoning behind wearing the cap. He hoped paparazzi would think it was so ugly, they wouldn’t take his picture. “Kinda dumb, huh?” he asked.
“Yeah, real dumb,” said Ariel.
“So now here I am, looking like a complete idiot in The Boston Globe,” John said.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ariel added, laughing. As she spoke, John poured himself another bowl of his favorite cereal, Total Raisin Bran. Ariel rolled her eyes. “Worst cereal ever,” she said as John poured milk on it. “You’re such a … dude.”
John chuckled. He said that lately he was all business all the time with George, “so shut up and let me just have my dude cereal in peace, will you, please?”
Though off to a good start, within a short period of time George began to show signs of sales fatigue. It’s a given in the magazine business that new publications have a difficult time in the marketplace and often don’t make it. John had a lot at stake. “It felt personal to him, maybe too personal,” said Michael Berman, who would eventually end up having a falling-out with John over the running of the publication. “This was his baby. He was living and breathing this magazine. It had to succeed.”
Adding to John’s complicated life these days was that Carolyn continued to show signs of insecurity. The longer she was with him, the more uncertain she seemed to be about their relationship. Some of her lack of confidence had to do with the response of others to John, which she witnessed on a daily basis. After all, it was difficult for people to avoid being swept away by him. His presence could suck all the oxygen from a room. No matter who was in his company, that person would become invisible. Carolyn had always been used to her own acclaim, though on a much smaller scale.
“Carolyn was accustomed to being the most interesting person at a party,” said a friend of hers from their Connecticut days, “and when it came to men, she was used to being the one being pursued. Once, we were together at a bar and a guy came up to her and hit on her hard. She flipped her long, luxurious hair, gave him a long look, and said, ‘Go away, little man. I am so out of your league.’ Maybe it was an act, but she at least appeared to be self-confident, before John. After John, things changed. When she realized she was so much in his shadow, it became a real issue. She started to feel that she was just an adjunct to him. It didn’t feel good.”
Making things even more complex for Carolyn was that she saw firsthand that John could have any woman he wanted. They seemed to fall all over themselves just to be near him, to breathe the same air. Carolyn couldn’t help but be a little jealous of all the admiring glances thrown in his direction. Like everyone else, she knew of the reputations of Kennedy men and, as she got closer to the family, saw in the next generation some of the bad behavior of the earlier one. “I see what goes on in this family, and it scares me,” she told her friend Stewart Price.
“But John is different,” Price offered.
“It’s a good thing, too,” she said. “I know myself, and I’m definitely not that pathetic Kennedy wife who’ll stay home with the kids while her husband is out screwing around,” she said. “No,” she added. “I’m that pissed-off Kennedy wife who’ll be in prison because she took matters into her own hands.”
Adding to the dilemma of her life was that every time John wanted to go to the Cape to be with his relatives, Carolyn didn’t want to go. Not only did she still feel she didn’t fit in, but by this time she also realized she was always being photographed while at the Cape. She’d previously thought photographers couldn’t get close to her when she was at the Kennedys’ sanctuary, but she was disabused of that notion one day when she saw a pack of paparazzi on a pier just shooting away at her. Now she felt she had to put on an act for public consumption, which added a new level of angst to going to the compound. She was still taking pills just to get through it, she confided in certain people, and an occasional line of coke, too.
It’s sometimes said that every couple has that one fight that they can’t get past, a disagreement that remains an issue between them no matter how many times they try to sort it out. If that’s true, the question of whether Carolyn would accompany John to the compound to be with his relatives was their recurring argument, the one they just couldn’t seem to settle no matter how many times they tried.
“Fine,” John said one night in front of friends at a restaurant. “Don’t come with me, hell if I care. I’m sick of having this same fight.” Apparently, they were supposed to spend another weekend with the Kennedys, and Carolyn had made her objections clear. When her eyes filled up and she started to cry at the table, John became frustrated. “You’re crying because you don’t want to have fun on the beach with my family?” he said, being a little loud. “I don’t get you, Carolyn. What’s wrong with having fun?” He also noted that it was often the case that when she got to the compound she seemed to enjoy herself, especially with water sports. There were plenty of published pictures of her at least appearing to have a good time. So why fight it? In response to all that, Carolyn just rose and rushed off. John groaned. “Should I go after her?” he asked his friends. They all said, “Yes. Of course. What’s wrong with you?” Sighing heavily, John got up and left the table. Fifteen minutes later, he returned. “She’s gone,” he said, looking disgruntled. “Took a cab back to the apartment, I guess. I’m so over her now. What a big baby.”
John Perry Barlow, who was at the table, recalled, “He was really worked up. I said, ‘John, so what if she doesn’t want to go? Leave the poor girl alone. Stop badgering her.’ He said, ‘But it’s my family. We’re getting married, and she won’t even give them a chance.’ I said that she’d given them plenty of chances. It wasn’t easy blending in with that bunch, I reminded him, and he should know that by now. If they somehow make her feel badly about herself, I told him, he should be more understanding. ‘Don’t you ever again make her feel so small, do you hear me?’ I chastised him. He felt badly by this time and said he was going to go home and apologize.”
By the beginning of the new year, Carolyn was still deeply troubled and feeling maybe not up to the “job” of being with John. Unfortunately, a terrible argument in Central Park would come to define this time in her relationship to John for much of the public. It happened one Sunday morning in February 1996.
The couple was first photographed by paparazzi while they were arguing in front of the Tribeca Grill, where they’d had brunch. Then they were filmed screaming at each other and gesturing wildly. His face twisted with rage, John laid into Carolyn, and she returned his fury—as the media documented the entire combative scene. At one point, John snatched the engagement ring right off her finger. It was ugly, the two pushing and pulling at each other while screaming and sobbing. The whole world bore witness to it, too; it was big news everywhere, and to this day people still remember it and wonder about it.
“From a public relations standpoint where George was concerned, the fight was very bad,” recalled Richard Bradley. “We were afraid of how it would affect advertisers, especially women’s fashions and cosmetics. I know John regretted it but, unfortunately, it was Carolyn who suffered the most in the court of public opinion. On the video, she definitely looked like the aggressor. It helped to set in stone an unflattering image of her as being dramatic and unhappy. We all knew John had a temper, but the public didn’t. It looked like Carolyn had brought out the worst in America’s Prince, that she was changing him, and a lot of people held that against her. In the end, I think Carolyn was more angry at herself that she’d let John get to her in public than she’d been at whatever they were arguing about.”