Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

outrageous things to people, but Eunice didn’t even blink. “That’s very nice,” she replied.

Maria invited me to sit at her table for dinner. Afterward, we danced. “Wow,” I thought, “this girl is totally my style.” Not that I fell in love, because I didn’t know her. But I could see that Maria was full of joy, she had a good personality, she had this long black hair, and she was a bundle of positive energy that I wanted to be around.

The next morning our instructions were “Leave your belongings and valuables in your room. Dress in your tennis clothes and be downstairs at nine o’clock.” A bus took us to the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills. There we hung out in the area that served as the green room, we had fun, we schmoozed, we ate. I met everybody, including Vice President Walter Mondale, comedian Bill Cosby, singers Diana Ross and Andy Williams, tennis stars Ilie Nastase and Renee Richards, former Tonight Show host Jack Paar, and Pele. All the while, the tennis games were being played out on the club’s two central courts. It was not a real tournament: it just moved along, and whenever they called you to play, you did, because it was all about charity and not about trying to win. The whole time, Caroline Kennedy and Maria were circulating, each with a camera, photographing everybody and taking many pictures of me.

Whoever matched up the doubles partners definitely had a sense of humor. Mine was Rosey Grier, the six- foot-five-inch, three-hundred-pound ex-football star. He played tennis only a little better than me, fortunately. Our opponents were a couple of ten-year-olds. We managed to get the ball back and forth with them, and when Rosey and I lost a point, we ripped off our shirts and threatened the kids—that made the crowd laugh, which is what Ethel wanted. People were donating a lot of money and paying to sit there and watch the whole day, so they deserved a good show. At one point, I introduced Pele to receive an award, and he introduced me, and Bobby Kennedy Jr. came onstage and praised all the participants and handed out more awards. As the tournament was wrapping up in the late afternoon, Caroline and Maria came up to me in the staging area and asked, “What are you doing after this?”

“I don’t know; going home to Los Angeles.”

“You should think about coming to Hyannis Port.”

I knew that was someplace north of New York, but I didn’t know exactly where. “How do we get there?”

“By plane.”

“How long is that flight?”

“Maybe an hour and a half. But we have our own plane, so don’t worry about that.”

Afterward, we moved on to a restaurant for an early dinner, and here the push from Caroline and Maria continued. “You’ve got to come to Hyannis Port.”

Looking back, I think I know what happened. Maria and Caroline decided, “Wouldn’t it be funny to have Arnold come to Hyannis Port?” That was their sense of humor. “Hercules at Hyannis Port! What a show that would be.” Caroline knew me from my visit to Harvard earlier that year, and I don’t know how much she egged Maria on. But for sure they’d told their cousins about the plan. So now they were on a mission.

I wasn’t sure if I should go. It seemed too complicated. Plus, I had no money with me and only the tennis outfit and the racket they’d given me.

“Don’t worry about your clothes being back at the hotel,” Maria said. “The room’s paid for anyway by the foundation until tomorrow night. By that time, you’ll be back, and you can pick up your stuff and fly home. In the meantime, come with us. What we do, so you know—are you into waterskiing?”

“Yeah, I know how to water ski. I can’t get up on one ski, but I can get up on two.”

“Do you swim?”

“Yeah, yeah. I feel very comfortable swimming.”

“Well, because we go out sailing and taking turns getting dragged behind the sailboat, and we go out to the Egg Island. And we have a great time! All we do is water stuff. So you really don’t need to bring anything. You already have tennis shorts, and Bobby, my brother, can give you other shorts, or a shirt, whatever you need.”

“I have no money with me, nothing.”

“You’re staying at our house! You don’t need any money.”

First a planeload of the “grown-ups” flew up: Ethel, Teddy, and that generation. Then at nine o’clock I went up with the cousins. I remember landing at ten thirty or so at night, and we were now at the big house in Hyannis Port, and Maria was really showing off. “Let’s go for a swim!” she said.

“What do you mean, go for a swim?”

“It’s a beautiful night! Let’s go for a swim.”

So we went out. We swam to a boat quite a long way out. She was a regular water rat, climbed on board to catch our breath, then swam back in.

All of this was part of the test. The cousins drag people up to the Kennedy compound all the time, and they test them. And play tricks. Of course, I had no idea.

Finally we went to sleep. Bobby gave me his room, right next door to Maria’s. The next morning I woke up to this big commotion. “Everybody get dressed! Everybody get dressed! We’re meeting at church; Grandma is coming to church. The Mass is for her!” Everyone was racing around taking clothes from everybody else.

Suddenly I realized: I had only a tennis outfit. I said, “I have nothing to put on.”

“Well, here, take one of Bobby’s shirts,” said a cousin. The shirt didn’t look so promising: Bobby weighed 170 pounds, and I weighed 230. It was bursting at the seams; buttons were ready to pop. I had no clothes, and we were going to church with Rose Kennedy meeting us there. Bobby tried to lend me pants, but they were way too small. I couldn’t get them past my thighs. So I had to go to church wearing shorts, like a little kid. It was highly embarrassing—which, of course, was the purpose. All the cousins were laughing. “This is hilarious! Look at his pants! Look at his shirt!”

Then we went back to the house for breakfast. I had a little bit of a chance to regain my bearings. The Kennedy compound was a cluster of white two-story houses on big lawns along the water; very picturesque. Rose had her own house, and so did each of her kids. I was at the Shrivers’ house because Maria and Caroline had agreed that I would be mainly Maria’s guest.

Over the course of the day, the grown-ups were gathering at this or that house for breakfast, lunch, cocktails, and so forth. The idea that I wouldn’t need any dressy clothes was absolutely bogus because the men were all were decked out in their white pants and blazers for the cocktails—and there I was in my shorts. But I made the best of it, as Maria and Caroline introduced me.

Rose came over to meet me. She was very curious about this guy from the muscle world and started asking about exercising. “Our kids don’t get enough exercise, and I’m concerned. Can you show us some exercises now? I need something myself, for my stomach.” Rose was almost ninety at the time. Soon I had the younger grandkids plus some of the parents doing crunches and leg raises, and it was hilarious.

But there was a lot here to figure out. Why was there a family compound? Why have all these houses bunched all together? It was fascinating how the Kennedys circulated among themselves: “Today we’ll have cocktails at Teddy’s, and then we’ll have dinner at Pat’s, and tomorrow we’ll have breakfast over with Eunice and Sarge,” and so on.

The cousins were supercompetitive and wanted to test me to see if I was a good sport: they dragged me on a line behind the sailboat, for instance. But under the leadership of Joe Kennedy II, the oldest, they were also gracious. When they were getting ready for their usual game of touch football on their grandmother’s lawn, he asked me, “Do you play?”

“I’ve never touched a football,” I said.

“I noticed yesterday that you introduced Pele like you really knew him, so you must come from a soccer background.”

“Yeah.”

So he made them all play soccer that day. It was one of those little gestures that you never forget. Joe, Robert F. Kennedy’s firstborn son, had a reputation as a rough guy who would have fits of anger and shout. But that day, I saw how classy he was and how understanding. He wanted to know what I was doing, what my training was about, and the world I came from, Austria. It helped that he was closest to me in age—five years younger—he related to me more than some of the others did. When a person shows me that kind of consideration, I will do anything for him for the rest of my life.

Toward sunset, Maria and I took her grandmother for a walk. Rose quizzed Maria about grammar, as if to make sure her college education was up to par: “Is it so-and-so and me, or so-and-so and I?” Then she switched into German to talk to me, explaining that she’d gone to convent