Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (36 page)

“By the time we got to Crete—which was, I think, the sixth day—Jackie seemed to be getting some of her strength back,” recalled Stelina Mavros. “She was very excited about seeing the relics of the Minoans [a 3,500-year-old civiliza- tion]. That afternoon, we all got into our bathing suits and went for a swim off the shore. Where we were headed next was the big question. It really was up to Jackie. She had a map, and she knew just where she wanted to go. We were in her hands.”

Jackie’s next stop was the harbor of Itea on the island of Delphi, then to the island of Levkas, and finally on to Smyrna. When the ship finally reached Smyrna, Jackie and Lee wanted a tour of Ari’s hometown. Up until this point, Ari had not emerged from his cabin when the
Christina
docked and everyone disembarked for tours, out of respect for the First Lady’s desire for privacy. He knew that if he made an appearance with Jackie, the paparazzi would de- scend upon them. But apparently Jackie didn’t care as much about that as Ari thought she did. She just wanted to see Smyrna, and so he obliged. The two toured Onassis’s child- hood haunts as he told her more about his life, his loves, and in particular, his romance with Maria Callas. His father, with whom he had an acrimonious relationship, had been a suc- cessful tobacco merchant in the Turkish port of Smyrna. His mother died after a kidney operation when Ari was six years old. He was driven by his desire to be successful in order to win his father’s approval. A dejected-looking Lee trailed be- hind with some other friends as Ari and Jackie walked, hand in hand.

After Ari told Jackie his story, he asked her for her own. He encouraged her to talk about the one subject around which everyone else in her life tiptoed: Baby Patrick. “He

had a son of his own whom he loved dearly,” says Stelina Mavros, “and he had great sympathy for what Jackie was going through. ‘You should talk about it,’ he told her. ‘You shouldn’t hold it in. It’s not good for you.’ First slowly, and then eagerly, Jackie opened up to Ari about her pain, her sor- row. He was a good listener, very sensitive, very compas- sionate, a good friend. Jackie told Lee that she really appreciated Ari’s ear. She so craved attention, she so craved understanding, someone in whom she could confide,” re- calls Mavros. “I remember thinking, ‘How is it that the First Lady of the United States could be so desperate for a human touch?’ I overheard her say, ‘I would have loved that baby. I would have loved him
so much.’
It made me cry.”

No man had given Jackie so much personal time and at- tention in a long while. Jackie would not forget Onassis’s compassion. It was clear that the two had a chemistry; pho- tos taken of the two of them while they toured Ari’s home- land show a Jackie who was glowing once again. When those photos appeared in the press, the President was not happy about their publication, especially after Bobby tele- phoned him and asked, “Now, how does
that
look? Maybe Jackie should have listened to Ethel.”

According to Jack’s personal secretary of twelve years, Evelyn Lincoln, Ethel also logged a number of telephone calls to make certain that Jack knew that she had “warned Jackie, but would she listen to me? No. Never. She never lis- tens to me, that one.”

Jack Summons Jackie—To No Avail

T
he President missed his wife, and he wanted her to come home. Rita Dallas, Joe’s nurse, remembered that Jack was “listless and moody” in Jackie’s absence. Using the excuse that the cruise was generating negative publicity, he called Jackie and demanded that she return. She refused. She was enjoying herself, she said, and she found Onassis a gracious host. When Jack protested, Jackie made it clear she would not be back in Washington a day sooner than the previously agreed-upon date of October 17.

Jack would later receive correspondence written by Jackie from the cruise, making it clear that her feelings for him were stronger than ever. “I miss you very much, which is nice,” Jackie wrote, “though it is a bit sad. But then I think of how lucky I am to miss you. I realize here [in Greece] so much that I am having something you can never have—the absence of tension. I wish so much I could give you that. But I can’t. So I give you every day while I think of you. [It is] the only thing I have to give and I hope it matters to you.”

“Jackie intimate with Ari? Rubbish,” says Stelina Mavros. “Everyone would have known about it because Ari would not have been so discreet to not let us all know in some way that he had won that prize. He did want her, I know that, because he said so after the cruise. ‘One day, she and I will meet again,’ he said, ‘and this time, nothing will stand in my way.’ He was very dramatic, like a fictional character in a play. That’s just how he spoke.”

Jack Summons Jackie—To No Avail
285

Joseph Paolella, one of Jackie’s Secret Service agents, says that because the agents all knew what Jack was doing outside his marriage, they sometimes mused among themselves about the possibility of Jackie also being un- faithful.

“We used to ask, you know, ‘Does she have any boyfriends?’ She must have
something
going on,” recalls Paolella. “Or point to one of the guys on her detail and say, ‘How ’bout you? Are you the one?’ It was a common joke,” he says.

“If anything was going on, it most certainly would have been relayed through the agents. There was never a hint of anything like that going on with her. She spent a great deal of time away from Jack during the week at Glen Ora and if she ever wanted to do anything, she had plenty of opportu- nities. But she was devoted to her children, to her horses, and to living a good, country life.”

Jackie’s sexual relationship with Jack had been influ- enced for years by his roving eye, as well as his health prob- lems, and she just had to learn to adjust to his approach to their private time together. Also, Jackie knew that her hus- band suffered from the chronic venereal disease nongono- coccal urethritis, or chlamydia. A nurse who worked for Dr. Janet Travell, Kennedy’s physician, says that Jackie was ter- rified of the disease.

“It was one of her greatest fears, and certainly made her husband less than appealing as a sexual partner, let’s face facts,” said the nurse. “She told Dr. Travell that she be- lieved Jack’s VD had something to do with the death of Patrick, and the other problems she had with pregnancies. Even John had had a tough time, almost died shortly after birth.”

In fact, according to the nurse, Dr. Travell confirmed to Jackie that the female partner is always infected after the first time she has intercourse with a man suffering from Jack’s condition. Her pregnancies can then be affected by the disease, sometimes resulting in premature births, sometimes in miscarriages, sometimes in stillbirths. That Jackie suffered from severe periods of postpartum depres- sion after her pregnancies can also be explained by her having been infected by Jack’s sexually transmitted dis- ease.

“I’m not sure, but I think I want to be thought of as desir- able,” Jackie once told Ethel in a candid conversation about their husbands early in their marriages. According to what Ethel later recalled to Leah Mason, Jackie giggled nervously when she made the confession; women of her generation rarely spoke of such things.

“Then you shouldn’t have gotten married,” was Ethel’s response. “You don’t get fireworks with marriage. You get children.”

Ethel may have been like her mother-in-law Rose in the Victorian approach she took to physical intimacy with her husband: intercourse was not to be enjoyed, it was to be en- dured; it was a woman’s duty, and the reason to do it was to have children—not for joy, or passion. When Rose felt she had fulfilled her marital duty and had enough children, nine of them, she cut Joe off. As a devout Catholic, birth control was out of the question for her, and there was no other way she knew of to limit her brood.

Joan had her own emotional issues surrounding her sexu- ality, most having to do with self-esteem. Was she good enough for Ted? She never really believed so, and said so time after time. Still, in the first ten years of her marriage,

Joan’s sex life with Ted was active. When they were to- gether, she was making love to her husband.

Jackie was a healthy, vibrant, young and beautiful woman, brimming with self-confidence, always ready to take on the world. She had none of Ethel’s perhaps old-fashioned views about sexuality, and none of Joan’s self-esteem issues. Unfortunately, what she did have was a philandering hus- band who suffered from chlamydia.

“Ari Is Not for You”

J
ackie’s relationship with her sister, Lee, was at this time what it had always been: complex. They loved each other dearly; each was often the other’s closest and most valued friend. In many ways, Jackie was Lee’s healer, and vice versa. They helped each other recover from life’s blows, from dramatic changes and problems, and from bad rela- tionships.

The flip side of their relationship is that Jackie and Lee engaged in a not-always friendly competition for attention for many years, with Jackie usually the victor. When they were younger, Jackie’s mother, Janet Auchincloss, once observed, “Jackie always looked marvelously put together, while her sister Lee seemed blown out of a hurricane.” Both were stylish, glamorous, and charming but, as First Lady, Jackie was the one the world really cared about, not Lee.

While in Smyrna, Jackie and Lee had a heart-to-heart

talk, during which Jackie explained the harm it would do to Jack’s political career if Lee continued the affair with Onas- sis. Also, Jackie said, Ari’s romance with Maria Callas and the way he had so heartlessly left his wife, Tina, did not bode well for Lee if she was considering anything of a long- term nature with him. Jackie said she was genuinely con- cerned about Lee.

“You really need to think about this,” she told Lee, ac- cording to Stelina Mavros. “Ari is not for you. Trust me.”

“I know this because, afterward, Lee told me that she was in turmoil over Jackie’s advice,” said Mavros. “Did Jackie want him for herself, was she really looking out for Lee’s best interest, or was she only concerned about her husband’s political career? Lee was never sure and, of course, what happened between Ari and Jackie just five years later only added to Lee’s uncertainty about her sis- ter’s true motivations. The fact that she was even suspi- cious of them, though, I guess says a lot about their relationship.”

Only Lee would know what she was really thinking, but at the time that Jackie spoke to her about Ari, she wept openly about how she only wanted a man to “love me for myself.” Then she appeared to give in when she made the decision that she would not continue to see Onassis. Instead, she would return to her husband, Stas, the Prince.

“I cannot know for sure, but I personally believe that Lee had already decided to end it with Ari, anyway,” says Mavros. “I think she felt that it would make her and Jackie feel closer if she acted like she was doing what Jackie sug- gested. But most people believe that she had already made up her mind about Ari, and she was only ‘acting’ with Jackie. She had already decided to go back to her husband.”

On the last night of the cruise, Aristotle Onassis presented the Bouvier sisters with expensive gifts: three jeweled bracelets for Lee, and an extravagant diamond-and-ruby necklace for the First Lady, worth $50,000 in 1963 dollars.

“Oh, Ari,” Jackie exclaimed. “You shouldn’t have.” “Yes, Ari,” Lee said, as she gazed at her sister’s bauble.

“You
shouldn’t
have.”

P A R T S I X

Jack’s Rapprochement with Jackie: “Getting to Know You”

B
y the fall of 1963, the President and his First Lady had grown closer, and that much was clear to all observers. Sev- eral occurrences had transformed Jack, and thus had changed his relationship to Jackie for the better.

The first was, of course, the death of Patrick. Kennedy’s Secret Service agent Larry Newman recalls, “After the baby’s death, I saw the President and First Lady on their way to becoming friends as well as husband and wife. He would stop at the car and help her out, instead of getting out and walking ahead of her as he was known to do. They would talk more, spend much more time walking together, talking things over, being a real couple. The death of the baby was something they shared and deeply felt. It made them much closer.”