Just Jackie by Edward Klein (web based ebook reader txt) 📗

“You know, Niki,” Jackie said, “since I’ve been married, I’m sure that Ari has never been with another woman.”

ELEVEN

THE FALL

OF THE HOUSE

OF ATREUS

January 1973

PANICKED OR STUNNED

War was still raging in Vietnam, and each week hundreds of American casualties were airlifted straight from the battlefield to veterans’ hospitals all over America. Kitty Carlisle Hart, who had arranged a stage audition for Lee Radziwill nearly eight years before, was now on the board of the American Red Cross, and someone suggested that she bring a friend to the veterans’ hospital in the borough of Queens in New York City to cheer up the wounded soldiers. She asked Jackie to come along.

“Well,” said Kitty, “I had no idea that these very young men, teenagers, were just thirty-six hours away from the battlefield. I worried—you know how shy Jackie was. They were missing limbs, some of them. Row after row, panicked or stunned, in bandages. Some of them were dying—in fact, some of them were dying as we spoke to them.

“And Jackie just went from bed to bed, and she talked with them. I don’t know how she did it, but, somehow, some way, Jackie seemed to calm them, and comfort them. No hanging back. I just followed in her wake, because she was doing it all herself.

“She just knew what to say, and what to do. No fear, hesitation, or anxiety. She cared a great deal about these poor souls.”

RESUSI-ANNIE

On a frigid January evening in 1973, Jackie dined with Ari and an American friend at the Coach House, a Greenwich Village restaurant that was owned by a Greek and that specialized in fine American cuisine. The friend had heard tales of Jackie’s troubled marriage, and as he dipped his spoon into a bowl of the Coach House’s famous black bean soup, he was on the lookout for signs of marital discord.

There was none. Ari treated Jackie with a tenderness bordering on reverence. And she, in turn, seemed to be genuinely concerned about her husband’s welfare. A good deal of champagne was consumed during the course of the meal, and by the time dessert came around—generous slabs of rich pecan pie topped with dollops of whipped cream—Jackie was in a light, playful mood.

“I’ve been keeping a secret from you,” she teased Ari.

“A secret?” Ari said, feigning concern. “What kind of a secret?”

“A deep dark secret,” Jackie went on. “And you’ll never guess what it is.”

“All right, let’s have it,” Ari said, playing along.

“Well,” Jackie said, “I had a consultation with Doctor Rosenfeld.”

Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld was an eminent heart specialist who treated Ari for minor cardiac symptoms.

“What on earth for?” Ari asked.

Suddenly, he was no longer playacting.

“I’m going to tell you,” Jackie said.

She had phoned Dr. Rosenfeld and asked, “What would happen if Ari had a heart attack?”

“Someone would have to resuscitate him,” the doctor replied.

“How?” Jackie asked.

“In the first instance, by chest compression and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” the doctor told her.

“I want you to show me how to do that,” Jackie said.

A few days later, Rosenfeld showed up at Jackie’s Fifth Avenue apartment. He was followed off the elevator by Dr. Michael Wolk, his bright young partner, who was carrying a four-foot-tall vinyl doll.

“What’s that?” Jackie asked.

“It’s called a Resusi-Annie,” Rosenfeld explained, “and we use it in hospitals to teach CPR techniques.”

Jackie ushered the doctors into her living room, where Wolk laid the Resusi-Annie on the floor.

“He’s going to give you a demonstration,” Rosenfeld told Jackie.

Wolk pressed down on the doll, whose chest swelled to suggest a woman’s breasts. Then he performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

“Okay,” Rosenfeld said to Jackie, “now it’s your turn.”

Jackie got down on her hands and knees, and bent over the Resusi-Annie. She placed her lips over the doll’s mouth, and pretended that she was breathing life into the lungs of Aristotle Onassis.

“Now, that is a very good secret,” Ari said when Jackie had finished her story.

“You really like it?” Jackie asked.

“Of course I like it,” Ari said.

Jackie basked in his approval.

“You see,” Ari said, turning to the American friend sitting at their table. “People say Jackie and I don’t get along. But does a wife who is not getting along with her husband take lessons on how to save him from a heart attack? No! She doesn’t. She gives him a heart attack. And then she collects his money.”

THE HEIR APPARENT

The day after Jackie and Ari dined at the Coach House in Greenwich Village, Alexander Onassis pulled up in front of the Olympic Airways office in Athens in his red Ferrari. Alexander was twenty-four years old, and his face and body were finally beginning to fill out. He had matured considerably since his father had anointed him the heir apparent of his vast shipping empire, whose worth had nearly doubled to a billion dollars in the past few years.

Father and son had a volatile relationship. They argued constantly, especially about Jackie. Still, Ari had begun to trust Alexander with day-to-day business affairs. Not that Ari was ready to retire. But as he approached his sixty-seventh birthday, and began to experience health problems, his future no longer seemed as limitless as before.

Ari did not find it easy to delegate authority to Alexander. He was never sure whether he approved or disapproved of his son. Depending on his mood, Ari’s feelings toward Alexander alternated between a gushing sentimentality and a raging contempt. But he had named his son after Alexander the Great. Alexander represented Ari’s bid for immortality.

Alexander normally showed up at the Olympic Airways office dressed in a dark navy suit, silk shirt, and conservative tie. The women there often remarked on how handsome he looked—especially for an Onassis—though they carefully avoided mentioning that they could detect a deep sadness in Alexander’s eyes. He had not inherited his father’s magnetic personality. He was more like his mother Tina—moody and mournful.

Today, however, Alexander appeared to be in better spirits than usual.