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| Ted Kennedy, around 1970. |
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| The only picture of Mary Jo Kopechne I've ever seen. |
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| Cover of Black Water, by Joyce Carol Oates, 1992. |
The Presidential aspirations of Ted Kennedy ended during the
night of July 18-19, 1969, when Kennedy’s Oldsmobile went off a bridge on the
island of Chappaquiddick, just off Martha’s Vineyard. Kennedy was able to get
out of the car, but his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned in the upside down
car. Kennedy did not report the accident to the police until the next morning,
after the police had towed his car out of the water and found Kopechne’s body.
The accident at Chappaquiddick would forever cast a pall over Ted Kennedy’s
legacy.
Joyce Carol Oates published Black Water, a short novel based on the events of Chappaquiddick,
in 1992. Black Water tells the story
of Kelly Kelleher, an idealistic young woman who meets The Senator, as he is
always referred to in the novel, at a party on an island off the coast of Maine
on July 4, 1991. Kelly and The Senator start talking, hit it off, and leave the
party together. On their drive to the ferry, The Senator is driving too fast,
misses a turn, and his car lands in murky black water. The Senator escapes the
car, but Kelly is unable to, and drowns. Black
Water is told from Kelly’s perspective, and the book flashes back in time
as Kelly slowly drowns, thinking that The Senator will come back to rescue her.
Black Water is
written impressionistically, almost like a poem, as various lines repeat again
and again in the short chapters. The novel gives a voice to the voiceless, as
we observe the thoughts of this doomed young woman. It’s quite a good book, and
it inevitably makes one think more about Mary Jo Kopechne. Who was this young
woman who died so tragically? A great deal of mystery still surrounds the
events of Chappaquiddick, and there’s very little information to be found about
Mary Jo Kopechne. I’m a collector of books about the Kennedys, and I’ve only
ever seen one photo of Kopechne. It’s the same 1962 college graduation photo
that was on front pages the day after she died. Didn’t anyone take a photo of
her during the next seven years?
Oates does little in Black
Water to distinguish The Senator from Ted Kennedy. The Senator is meant to be
a portrait of Ted Kennedy in 1991, so instead of the dashing young man Kennedy
was at the time of Chappaquiddick in 1969, The Senator is in his mid-50’s, and
is a bit disillusioned with politics. As he tells Kelly, “It makes me angry
sometimes, it’s a visceral thing-how you come to despise your own words in your
ears not because they aren’t genuine, but because they are; because you’ve said them so many times, your ‘principals,’
your ‘ideals’-and so damned little in the world has changed because of them.”
(p.139-40) The physical descriptions of The Senator are clearly applicable to
Kennedy: “That dimpled grin, the big chunky white teeth,” with eyes “the blue
of washed glass.” (p.20) “And his broad handsome-battered face, the eyes so
transparently blue, the nose just slightly venous but a straight nose,
lapidary, like the jaws, the chin, the familiar profile.” (p.39)
In a 1992 interview with The
New York Times, Oates said of the book, “I wanted the story to be somewhat
mythical, the almost archetypal experience of a young woman who trusts an older
man and whose trust is violated.” If Oates wanted Black Water to be mythical, then why did she stick so closely to
the events of Chappaquiddick? Why not create a different, fictional scenario?
If Oates’ interpretation of Chappaquiddick is that it was about a younger woman
and an older man, I would disagree. Kennedy was only 8 years older than
Kopechne, and Chappaquiddick was less about a man taking advantage of a woman
than it was simply a terrible, tragic accident. Ted Kennedy certainly didn’t
mean to drive off that bridge.
Black Water is a
fascinating book, and a quick read at 150 pages. I would recommend it for
anyone who is interested in Ted Kennedy and the Chappaquiddick incident.
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