95 Piccadilly
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I remember July 16, 1999. No one who experienced that could forget it, or the wall of media coverage that rivaled the death of Diana, Princess of Wales two years before. For two families, it must have been a living nightmare, as helicopters hovered over familiar water and perpetual news footage looped to feed a public frenzy. John Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy were suddenly everywhere and nowhere at once. And I remember thinking, even as a young man, what that must have felt like for the Kennedy family who, despite so many tragedies, had to be in shock at the suddenness of it all. I knew too well that grief should be private. The Kennedys never had that luxury, and it really hadn’t been so long since my own family had seen our own tragedy splattered across newspaper headlines when my brother had died. Tragedy somehow brings out tragedy in all of us.
With John and Carolyn seeing a re-emergence in popular culture after the release of Hulu’s Love Story, I couldn’t help but think of my late sister. You could have counted Shelley among those who were obsessed with Carolyn, seeing her as some sort of fashion icon – largely the way she’s remembered, even today.
Those who knew Shells – and certainly the girl I grew up with – would know she was obsessed with New York. London, yes, but secretly I think New York may have even trumped that love for a minute. As a young writer, she wrote endlessly of the city and the world that she embraced – the fashion scene. It was how she lived her life. People would stop her and say, “You look like you stepped out of the pages of Vogue,” and it fed something deep in her. Something affirming. Something dangerous. The kind of attention that maybe becomes a damning mirror you start to believe is permanent. I’ve come to believe that’s why she always said her favorite book was “I Still Dream of You.” She recognized the character Maggie Fortenberry. She knew her intimately – a former beauty queen trying to reconcile who she was with who she is. As much as she once sought and embraced the character of the untouchable beauty, I believe she came to resent it. When you’re someone like Shells, who had that certain “it” factor, who had people fawning over you, it must be difficult to adjust when the volume from sycophants lowers. And it does, somehow, always seem to lower. While it lasted, it brought a slew of interesting suitors (or tales of them): the Spanish aristocrat, the socialite, the famous news anchor whose name she liked to dangle but never quite confirm. It was all in a days work, and somehow the Kennedy clan – at least the fashionable ones – hovered in her reality.
Oddly, when we were mere kids, even before there was a Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, she and I developed an odd routine before entering family events. Sitting in the car or just before a door would swing open, we’d say to each other, “Smile, John-John. Smile, Caroline.” It meant check yourself. Whatever you’re carrying, leave it at the door. In a competitive family with high standards – where criticisms could come bluntly – you could feel like an expectation before you were a real person. How much so? As I approached adulthood, a family member told me, “People expect certain things from this family, and we’re going to give it to them!” Lock, stock, and barrel. It came as a warning, perhaps, but it left an awareness that high standards can sharpen you, but they can also scar you. Even long after childhood – speaking entirely for myself – you can almost feel the walls go up and find yourself performing to satisfy an invisible audience.
It must be something many of us have felt. John and Carolyn Kennedy have been gone 27 years. Shells, almost a year. I still haven’t watched Love Story – not entirely. It will conclude this weekend and I’m sure to give it a go, and when I do, I’ll raise a dirty martini to the three of them.