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

psychological bonus, since the money they got back helped them rationalize the astronomical sums they spent on their wardrobes.

This attitude was completely foreign to the middle class in America, where puritanical sumptuary laws against the wearing of extravagant garments had been common in Colonial-era New England. Even in modern-day America, most people still looked upon a woman who wore a dress only once or twice as not only wasteful, but sinful.

However, such high-minded middle-class values were not shared by the superrich. William Paley, the founder of CBS, set up a trust fund that provided his wife Babe with $160,000 a year (about $1 million in today’s money) to spend exclusively on her clothes. Although Jackie received considerably more than that from Onassis—$360,000 a year for the first two years of their marriage, if Gratsos could be believed—she also had sizable expenses that were not part of Babe’s budget. Jackie paid for the upkeep on her own apartment in New York and her weekend house in Peapack, New Jersey; her staff of servants; the feeding and grooming of her horses in New Jersey and Virginia; and private schools for Caroline and John.

Until Onassis lost his son, and his world began falling apart, he had encouraged Jackie to spend more, rather than less. He had operated by the rich man’s philosophy that when his wife looked good, he looked good. However, toward the end of his life, Onassis no longer felt that way. Beset by problems on all sides, and bitter over his fate, he came to see Jackie’s spendthrift ways as a symbol of her disregard for him and his generosity.

It was not hard to understand why he felt that way. Jackie’s allowance was, by any standard, exceedingly lavish. Of course, it did not begin to compare with Bunny Mellon’s outlay for clothing, which came to $1 million in 1974 dollars, or the equivalent of $6 million a year today.

A LAST REQUEST

In addition to all his other diseases and disorders, Aristotle Onassis began the new year with a rampant case of influenza. He lost forty pounds in eight weeks. He slurred his words, had trouble chewing his food, and could not speak without supporting his chin with the heel of his hand. The pains in his abdomen became so severe he could not stand up straight. On Sunday, February 2, 1975, he called Jackie, who was in New York, and complained of being alone. The next day he collapsed, and had to be helped out of his clothes and into bed.

The members of his retinue converged on his villa in Glyfada, filling the downstairs rooms like a somber assemblage of knights awaiting the passing of their liege lord. The ladies-in-waiting—Christina, Artemis, Merope, and Kalliroi—kept vigil outside his bedroom door. Everyone seemed prepared for the worst, except Christina. The daughter who had been the bane of her father’s existence for most of his life was the one who fought hardest to save him.

She made three telephone calls: to Professor Jean Caroli, a gastroenterologist in Paris; to Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld, the heart specialist in New York; and to her stepmother, Jackie.

Come quickly, Christina told them. My father is very ill. He needs you now!

“I flew over with Jackie,” Rosenfeld said, “and when we arrived at Ari’s house in Glyfada, I examined him, and immediately made my diagnosis. In addition to his myasthenia gravis, he was suffering from acute gall bladder disease. He was taking a lot of cortisone, and was terribly weak. I ordered some equipment—oxygen and an electrocardiograph machine—and recommended that he fly to New York and undergo a period of intensive treatment there. We had an Olympic Airways plane ready to fly him to the New York Hospital.

“But the French gastroenterologist, Doctor Caroli, disagreed with me,” Rosenfeld continued. “He wanted to take Ari to Paris and operate at once to remove his gall bladder. He had Ari’s private jet primed and ready to fly him to the American Hospital in Paris.

“The French doctor did not seem to understand that Ari was not a good operative risk. He had myasthenia gravis, and the drugs being used for that would interfere with a successful surgery. I said that he was far too weak to survive such an operation.”

However, Christina and Onassis’s sisters did not agree. They were more familiar with Caroli than with Rosenfeld, and sided with the Frenchman in the heated debate that developed between the doctors.

“The family was pressing Onassis to go to the American Hospital in Paris,” Stelio Papadimitriou said. “He heard my cough, and called me upstairs, and just outside his bedroom I came upon Christina crying inconsolably. I asked her why, and she said, ‘Because my father refuses to go to Paris.’

“I went inside,” Papadimitriou continued. “It was a simple room with very few furnishings, and I found Onassis in a bad situation.

“I said, ‘Mr. Onassis, why are you behaving like a child? You should go to Paris. Or have you decided to leave everyone behind in a mess?’

“And he said, ‘Do you hear my daughter sobbing outside my door? Would you call her to enter the room?’

“I went and got Christina. The old man sat up in his bed and whispered to us in a weakened voice.

“ ‘I know that my daughter has serious shortcomings and will not be able to cope with life,’ he said. ‘And I know that you, Stelio, are a fiercely independent man who is always ready to resign his position, and that Christina will make you desperate. So if you wish me to go to Paris, let’s make a deal. Do you promise that no matter what my daughter does to you, you will never abandon her?’

“I said yes.

“And he said, ‘Bend to kiss me. From now on, Christina is your sister.’ ”

ROOM 217

Two days later, Onassis, accompanied by Christina and Jackie, left his Glyfada villa for the airport. “He was clutching a book called Supership, in which author Noel