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

personal adviser. But I had a hard time stringing together Maurice’s syntax. He indulged in linguistic gymnastics, and inserted German terms in the middle of his sentences.

“And he wasn’t around that much,” this friend continued. “He was always traveling to Africa on business. What business? Don’t ask me. ‘Maurice is going to Botswana,’ Jackie would say, ‘so let’s go to the movies!’ It was like she was let out of jail.”

“I think she found him an amusing conversationalist,” said another friend. “He helped with investments. Their relationship was just cozy. It was predictable and not demanding on her. She’d talk about what pleased her—friends, work. But Maurice wasn’t singled out. She’d say, ‘I love my work, my writing, my editing, my grandkids’—when they finally came along—all the things that she had to be grateful for. But she did not mention Maurice.”

Nonetheless, while Tempelsman was recovering from his angioplasty, he and Jackie discussed the idea of getting married. Tempelsman gave Jackie a gold eternity ring encrusted with emeralds and sapphires. The inscription inside was in French. It was addressed to “Jacks,” the nickname that Black Jack Bouvier had given Jackie as a child. She wore it along with the wedding ring that had been given to her by Jack Kennedy.

“It was the only time they came close to getting married,” said a Tempelsman intimate. “And it was Jackie who raised the idea of marriage.”

For years, stories had persisted that Tempelsman was prevented from marrying Jackie by his wife Lilly. According to these tales, the strictly Orthodox Lilly refused to grant her husband a “get,” or Jewish divorce. Her position, if true, seemed to present an almost insurmountable obstacle, since according to Jewish tradition, only a rabbinical court could overrule her wish to stay married.

“But I never believed any of those stories,” said a diamond dealer who knew both Maurice and Lilly well. “He might have needed Lilly’s consent to obtain a religiously sanctioned divorce, but he certainly didn’t need her approval to get a civil divorce. You can’t keep someone a prisoner in a marriage if he doesn’t want to stay in it. In my view, it was convenient for Maurice to have the protection of being a married man. He was not ready for another marriage.”

Others had a different interpretation of why Jackie and Maurice never married.

“There were simply too many things in the way of their getting married,” said one of his friends. “The children were not a problem. His kids and hers saw each other and liked each other. But they had different religions. And a legal bond would have made things very complicated financially for both of them, and for their heirs. What’s more—and this point cannot be stressed too strongly—Jackie had come to like her independence. She was no longer the woman she had been before. She did not need or want to be married. She was happy the way things were. Why change it?”

FIFTEEN

THE TIME OF

HER LIFE

Spring 1989–Fall 1993

THE BEST DISGUISE

One day in the spring of 1989, John Loring, who was working on yet another Tiffany lifestyle book for Jackie, called her and said, “Where do you want to meet? Your office floor or my office floor?”

“Oh, could we just go to a restaurant?” Jackie said. “Couldn’t we just go out?”

“You’re joking,” Loring said. “You don’t really want to do that.”

“Yes, I really want to do that,” Jackie said. “Could we just go out and have lunch?”

“Where are we going to go?” Loring said. “I’ve got an idea. How about Le Cirque? It’s the only safe place to go.”

“Yes,” she said. “Sirio [Maccioni, the owner of Le Cirque] knows how to handle these things. This is perfect! That’s exactly where we are going to go. You get there well ahead of time, and get it all organized so I know when I come in where to go.”

“I already know where you’re going,” Loring said. “You’re going to a table in the corner by the door, so you don’t even have to walk more than three paces into the restaurant before you’re sitting down.”

“Great,” said Jackie. “I’ll be there.”

Just as they planned, Loring was waiting when Jackie came through the door of Le Cirque, the fashionable eatery in the East Sixties. Three waiters rushed forward to create a human shield and escort Jackie to a chair facing Loring, who was seated on the banquette at the corner table. Before anyone in the restaurant had noticed, Jackie was leaning toward Loring, her hand slightly up to her face.

“It wasn’t because she didn’t want to be seen by the people in the room,” Loring explained, “It was so she didn’t have to see the people in the room staring at her.”

After a while, Sirio Maccioni came over to their table. He had known Jackie since the 1950s, when he was the maitre d’ at the Colony Club, and she dropped in with Senator John Kennedy. Sirio asked if he could bring his three sons over to meet her.

“Oh, yes, please send the boys over,” Jackie said.

By a great coincidence, the columnist Liz Smith happened to be having lunch at Le Cirque that day. She devoted half her column the next day to the fact that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had lunched at Le Cirque, and had paid rapt attention to the man she was having lunch with.

“Well, Jackie’s rapt attention to the person she was having lunch with,” explained Loring, “was to avoid seeing everyone else in the room whispering to each other and doing things that would make her uncomfortable. But once she decided to eat lunch out, she loved going to Le Cirque for what she began calling her festive lunches.”

Loring always arrived well in advance. One time, before Jackie made her appearance, Ivana Trump came over to ask Loring if he would introduce her to Jackie after she was seated.

“Let me ask her first,” Loring said.

During lunch, Loring turned to Jackie and said, “Ivana