Jackie, Janet & Lee

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Six months passed.

  By June, Lee was more in a panic than ever. The wedding was just a month away and she was no closer to an answer as to what she should do about it. When she suggested that it be postponed, Stas blew up at her, telling her that the plans were made, his father was looking forward to it, and that there would be no postponement. Though he knew the ceremony was imminent, Onassis seemed to not want to engage with Lee about it, maybe waiting for her to ask his opinion. Finally, she did. “What shall I do?” she asked him, this according to what she later recalled to Agnetta Castallanos. If she left Stas, would she have a future with Ari? “Do you want to be with me? Or not?”

  Ari said he was not willing to commit to Lee at this time. “He cared about her, he said, loved her, even,” recalled Agnetta Castallanos. “But, no, he was not ready to marry her. When she told him she was being pressured to marry Stas in the Catholic Church, he told her not to do it. Why was it so necessary? She was already legally married, he pointed out, and the Church wedding would just be a more significant tie to a husband about whom she was already ambivalent. ‘Do not do it,’ he told her, and he was emphatic about it. He warned her that if she renewed her vows to Stas, it would change things between them. She asked if it was because of Callas that he would not commit to her. He said no, absolutely not. ‘I can make you no promises,’ he told her, ‘but I do care about you, Lee, and I do see a future for us,’ he told her. ‘But, as you must know by now, I am not a man you can pressure.’”

  In mid-June, Ari invited Lee onto the Christina with a group of friends for a week. When she got aboard, she found Sir Winston Churchill and his son, Randolph, sitting on the deck with about a dozen others, all in casual wear baking under a hot sun, the men smoking cigars, the women with cigarettes, and everyone drinking daiquiris. A couple of months earlier, Churchill had been bestowed honorary citizenship of the United States by President Kennedy. He was in bad shape, though. At eighty-eight, he looked as if he was suffering from dementia, just staring straight ahead as his son tended to him, laying a blanket on his lap, propping him up in his chair. His wife, Clementine, two years younger, also seemed frail and unwell. She sat in a chair, appearing almost comatose, her head tilted to the side as she gazed blankly out at the sea. As Lee debated whether or not to approach them, who should come sashaying onto the deck but Maria Callas. One can only imagine Lee’s reaction.

  Karina Brownley, whose father, Leon, had a number of business interests in common with Onassis relating to the shipping business, had sailed many times on Onassis’s incredible voyager the Christina, sometimes with Lee on board. At the age of seventeen, she was on this trip in June of ’63 along the coast of Italy. She recalled an evening when she and her father dined with Ari, Lee, Maria, the Churchills, and other friends on deck. There were probably fifty people at the table. It was formal, the men in sleek black suits and ties, the women in long evening gowns. Lee was wearing a pink-and-white lace dress and—perhaps because they were eating outdoors—a white organdy picture hat trimmed with a filament of delicate silk roses. Maria struck a strong contrast in a black chiffon shift and matching cocktail hat with draped veiling (which she pulled back from her face at dinner), and three-quarter-length silk gloves (which she did not take off while dining). The food—Greek, of course—was plentiful, as was the supply of costly wines and exotic liquors. A full moon coated everything on the deck with a patina of silver. “You must understand that mermaids are both good and bad luck,” Onassis said, holding court, as always. “Good luck if you find one in the sea. But bad luck if you bring her aboard. Never ever bring a mermaid on board. Remember that.” As always, every statement he made was with great authority. Maria hung on to his every word. Now and then, she glared at Lee, who then returned the favor.

  After dinner, Lee and Aristotle excused themselves from the table, with Onassis saying, “Lee and I are going to be unavailable for the rest of the evening. Please,” he added while grandly extending his arms, “enjoy the many pleasures of the Christina. Good evening.” Lee gathered her things and got up without saying a word. “But will you be joining me later at the bar?” Maria asked Ari, her expression hopeful. Onassis swung his eyes to her and said, “I seriously doubt it, my dear. But let’s gather in the morning for breakfast.” Frowning, Maria muttered, “So be it.” With that, Ari and Lee took their leave, but not before Lee turned to give Maria a small, wry smile.

  Why had Onassis invited Maria? As he would later explain to Lee, he simply wanted to demonstrate to her that the two women could be in the same place at the same time, and he would choose her over Maria. “You will always come first,” he promised Lee. On the one hand, Lee was flattered, but on the other, troubled. While she understood the gesture, it frightened her. She would later say she thought it was a sick game, a horrible thing to do to Maria. She certainly had no affection for the opera star, “but I am not a mean person,” she said, “and that was cruel.” She couldn’t help but wonder if Onassis would humiliate Maria in that way, what might he one day do to her?

  Brownley says that the contingent met the next morning for breakfast in the main dining room. A glowing Lee sat next to Onassis, her eyes sparkling, while Maria sat with some other gentlemen, looking dour. Later that day, Maria got off the Christina at its first dock.

  The rest of the week was heavenly for Lee. Onassis treated her like a queen, telling her that every person working on the Christina was at her disposal, giving her expensive jewels every day, taking her shopping in small villages along the Italian coastline as they docked at this one and that one. He reminded her that she was young and beautiful and said that if she wanted to be truly happy, she needed to make some tough decisions about her life; otherwise, he said, she would end up like poor old Clementine Churchill—sick and sad at the side of someone sicker and sadder. As Lee would later tell Agnetta Castallanos, “Maybe for the first time, I thought, yes, this is what I want. Ari is what I want. Ari is what I deserve.”

  By the end of June, strong rumors about Ari and Lee had begun to make their way into gossip columns in the United States. These stories had built so quickly that people in Lee’s life were beginning to believe they were true—and one of those people was her mother, Janet. After all, Lee was never in London with Stas when Janet tried to track her down. Where was she? Stas would always say he had no idea, but that he would pass a message on to her. “Well, who’s taking care of the kids?” Janet would ask. Stas would explain that they had help, and then hang up quickly. Lee would never return the call.

  While Lee was cruising with Onassis, Janet summoned Adora Rule into her large dressing room to make plans for a four-day visit from Jackie, Caroline, and John. On the wall was a large collage of family photos that she had designed herself, and then had framed in white. The overhead lighting in this rectangular space was purposely soft—fluorescent light emanating through latticework and rice paper. While practicing her isometrics in this quiet space, Janet gave a long list of instructions to Adora having to do with plans she was making for family time. As she was wrapping up, she said, “Also, on an unrelated note, I want you to keep your eyes and ears open when it comes to Lee and this Onassis character.”

  Adora wondered if the two were friends. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Janet said as she touched her toes without bending her knees. “Men and women cannot be friends.” Adora then asked what it was that Janet was looking for. She said she didn’t exactly know. “Is it true that Onassis has his own private island?” Janet asked. Adora said that, yes, it was true. She said she’d read in a newspaper that he’d just recently bought it and that its name was Skorpios. Trying to be helpful, Adora then added in a conspiratorial tone that she’d heard many stories about Onassis, that he was quite the subject of controversy. “Well, he’s complicated, I’m sure,” Janet said, her tone now suddenly sharp. Then, stopping her exercise, she regarded her assistant carefully and added, “Nobody is just one thing, Adora. We all have black marks somewhere in our past. Don’t be so quic
k to judge. It’s not very becoming.”

  Standing In for Jackie

  Lee Radziwill left the Onassis cruise after about a week’s time at the port of Fiumicino, and headed for Germany, where she was to meet President Kennedy. Jackie, pregnant, had asked if Lee would stand in for her during the President’s tour of Germany and Ireland. Of course, Lee was thrilled to do so, to see what it might be like to be in her sister’s shoes. She met the Kennedy contingent in Bonn, where a dinner with the President of Germany was scheduled. She was also in West Berlin with Jack when he gave his historic “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech on June 26, 1963. Then it was off to Ireland. “What do I most remember about Lee on this trip?” asked Dave Powers, special assistant to JFK. “Her beauty. Her charisma. She was wearing a pure white coat when she got off the plane in Ireland and she looked marvelous. Everywhere she went, she just lit up the room. She was different from Jackie. Jackie was more, I suppose, royal would be the word. Lee was a little more accessible, easier to know. Everyone loved her. The press corps thought she was fantastic. She was funny. Very entertaining. I wouldn’t say Jackie was entertaining, necessarily. But it was different for the First Lady. There was certain decorum necessary. Lee was free of that, and we all thought she was marvelous.”

  After Ireland, the contingent winged its way to England, where Jack would visit the grave of his deceased sister, Kathleen, in Chatsworth. There was also a stop at the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire before then returning to the States.

  For Lee, this little tour was a bittersweet experience. It wasn’t what she had hoped for in that she didn’t really get to experience life as First Lady. Rather, she was viewed, even though respectfully, as just another noteworthy person with the Kennedy contingent. It was as if she had been so close to true glory, but not quite there, a First Lady also-ran, as it were. It made her feel depressed.

  “You will always come first,” Onassis had told her. That sentiment resonated with Lee. Now, more than ever, she wanted to come first.

  A Sacrifice for Jackie

  In Janet Auchincloss’s mind, the problem was obvious: Her daughter Lee was the sister of her other daughter, Jackie, who happened to be First Lady of the United States. Lee was famously married to a royal; they had two children. Now she seemed to be involved with a high-profile crook. While Janet may have been able to give Onassis the benefit of the doubt in front of an employee like Adora Rule, she actually viewed Onassis as nothing less than a criminal. She needed to know exactly what was going on.

  When Janet set her mind to finding out information, she usually did so. First, she called Jack Kennedy. However, he said he didn’t want to discuss Lee’s love life with her. In his position, it wasn’t appropriate, he said. He suggested she call the attorney general, his brother Bobby, who had helped spearhead the annulment from Michael.

  Janet and Bobby had an easy rapport these days; ever since Jack was inaugurated she had made an effort to get along with Bobby and his wife, Ethel. Bobby told her that he knew for certain that Lee was involved with Onassis, and that he didn’t like it. If they were just dating, maybe he could live with it, he said, though he’d rather it not be the case. However, if it started looking as if she might divorce Stas and marry Onassis, no, that would not be something he or the Kennedys would ever be able to accept. They were all hoping for a second term for Jack, he told her, and any marriage between Lee and Onassis would scandalize not only the First Lady but the entire administration. More to the point, though, Bobby wanted to know what Lee was going to do about remarrying Stas, especially after everything that had been done to get her the annulment from Michael. Janet said she would take care of it.

  In early July, Janet had what has been described by most people in their lives as a tense and upsetting conversation with Lee in New York after Lee got back from the Kennedy tour. The wedding ceremony to Stas was just days away, and Janet could see that Lee was waffling about going through with it. Now Janet knew it was because of Onassis. True to form, though, Lee would not confirm that she and Ari were involved, but she would also not deny it. She simply felt it was not Janet’s business. Of course, Janet disagreed.

  During this conversation, Janet outlined Lee’s duty as sister of the First Lady—which, at the very least, was to not bring scandal to Jackie’s White House doorstep. She was quite clear with her daughter: Everyone had gone through a great deal of trouble to process an annulment specifically so that Lee could marry Stas in the Catholic Church. Jackie had put her reputation as First Lady on the line. The President had interceded. The attorney general had become involved. The Pope was enlisted. Even poor Michael Canfield had had to give a deposition and swear that he couldn’t sire children and that Lee didn’t know about it when she married him—further grounds for annulment. That there should be any question at all as to how Lee should now comport herself given these extreme circumstances was far beyond Janet’s comprehension.

  The clock was ticking. Janet said that Lee should end whatever she had with Onassis and reaffirm her vows with Stas, as planned. Period. If not just for the sake of propriety, then for Jackie’s sake. “You must do this for your sister, the First Lady,” Janet told Lee. “But why?” Lee asked. Janet didn’t want to hear it.

  Apparently, Lee didn’t have it in her to fight her mother, or Stas either, for that matter, who was pushing hard for the wedding, as were many members of his family—including his father. All evidence points to Lee not asking Jackie for an opinion. She probably felt it not wise considering what Jackie had gone through to help with the annulment. Also, Jackie’s position on infidelity was quite clear. To think that she was making this big a sacrifice for such a disapproving sister must have been difficult for Lee, but she decided to do so anyway.

  It wasn’t as if Lee had any animus toward Stas. She didn’t. He was a good man, father of her children, and she did have great affection for him. However, their marriage was long broken by both of their affairs. How ironic was it, then, that both were being pushed into a church marriage by their parents, he by his father, and she by her mother. One would have thought them old enough to make their own decisions—Lee was thirty, Stas forty-nine—but old habits die hard and their mutual impulse to subjugate themselves to their parents’ will was deeply engrained.

  When Lee telephoned Onassis to tell him of her plans, he was hurt and upset. This was their one chance to be together, he told her, and he feared she would live to regret her decision. However, he told her he understood her conundrum. He figured the Kennedys were behind it. In fact, he would later tell his biographer Peter Evans, “The Kennedys could accept me as Lee’s lover: that was personal. What they couldn’t accept was the idea that I might actually marry her: that was politics.”

  Ari wondered if they would still be able to see each other. Lee wasn’t sure. She didn’t know what the future would bring. He promised he would not abandon her, though. His magnanimity made her fall just a little deeper for him, but Lee knew Ari well. She knew that her decision would change things just by virtue of the fact that she was defying him. “She had a sense that she was making the biggest mistake of her life,” said one person who knew her well at this time. “She just hoped that she would reaffirm her vows with Stas, wait an appropriate amount of time, and then, hopefully, continue with Ari and everything would be okay. She felt powerless to do anything else.”

  Therefore, on July 3, 1963, Prince and Princess Radziwill were once again wed, this time in a small, private religious ceremony at Westminster Roman Catholic Cathedral in London.

  Baby Patrick

  On July 28, 1963, Jackie Kennedy celebrated her thirty-fourth birthday at the Kennedy compound with her husband’s side of the family. By this time, the world knew she was pregnant again. She’d told Janet and Lee back in January, but the White House didn’t make the official announcement until April. The news was met with great excitement by a country already swept away by the First Lady’s signature style, taste, and personality. Even those who didn’t agree wit
h their politics couldn’t help but be affected by the general wave of excitement; the last time a First Lady had been pregnant was back in 1893 when Mrs. Grover Cleveland gave birth to a daughter, Esther. With the baby due in September, plans were made for delivery by cesarean section at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington. A contingency plan, however, was put into place that, should the baby arrive early while the Kennedys were at the Cape, it would be delivered at Otis Air Force Base Hospital in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

  On Wednesday, August 7, Janet and Janet Jr. were in New York making plans for the teenager’s upcoming debutante party, scheduled to take place at Hammersmith on Saturday the 13th. However, while there, they got word that Jackie had gone into premature labor. Since she wasn’t due for five more weeks, Janet was immediately worried. She and Janet Jr. quickly boarded a helicopter to be with Jackie at Otis Air Force Base Hospital.

  By the time Jackie’s mother and sister arrived at Otis, Jackie’s personal obstetrician, Dr. John Walsh, had already performed an emergency cesarean section and delivered a baby boy who weighed less than five pounds. The baby’s size—though small—was not the issue. It was what would later be diagnosed as the life-threatening hyaline membrane disease of the lungs—then the most common cause of death among premature infants in the United States—that generated the greatest concern. (Today the ailment is known as infant respiratory distress syndrome.) The situation was so dire, it was decided to have the child baptized by a Catholic priest in the operating room. Jackie, at this point, was sedated and not aware of the crisis.

  Jack decided that, given the baby’s condition, Jackie should see him immediately upon her awakening; he saw to it that the baby was wheeled into her room. With Dr. James Drorbaugh, the attending pediatrician, at her side, Jackie placed her hands into the portholes of the isolette—a rolling incubator—and lovingly adjusted the baby’s warmed blankets and held his hand for a few minutes. She noticed his soft brown hair. He was fragile, his breathing labored. With oxygen escaping through the portal opening, the visit needed to be cut short. Downplaying the situation for Jackie, the doctor explained that the baby was having a little trouble breathing and, just as a precaution, would be transferred to Boston for more specialized care. Jack reminded his upset wife that John Jr. had also been delivered prematurely by Dr. Walsh and that he, too, had spent time in an incubator, “and look at him today.” He did what he could to comfort Jackie, but, of course, he was anxious as well. Jackie then reaffirmed that she wanted to name the child Patrick, after Jack’s grandfather, and Bouvier, in honor of her father.