Jackie, Janet & Lee

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Unfortunately for Jamie, there was only one prayer book in the box and he had to hold it up for his sisters to refer to throughout the service. They did so without so much as even a nod of thanks, or a word of liturgy. “I felt like saying to them, please, it’s our mother’s funeral, can’t we just at least act like siblings on this one day, please?” Jamie recalled.

  In the church’s vestibule following the service, Jackie finally broke down. Crying, trembling, and smoking nervously, she was completely distraught. Her mother’s illness had really taken a toll on her. Standing in a corner by herself while mourners consoled one another all around her, it was as if Jackie was all alone in her sadness, which is maybe how she’d felt for some time while caring for Janet.

  From the other side of the vestibule, Jackie’s breakdown caught Lee’s eye. It also caught the attention of Oatsie Charles. After hesitating a moment, Lee walked over to Jackie, followed by Oatsie. As Oatsie waited her turn, the sisters embraced. While pulling away from each other, whatever anger Jackie felt toward Lee seemed to momentarily vanish. “You and I, we’ve been down a long road together, haven’t we, Lee?” she asked. Lee seemed overcome by the question. “I love you,” Jackie added, crying. “You know that, don’t you?” Lee nodded, kissed Jackie on the cheek, and then rushed away, her hand to her mouth. While their mother’s illness seemed to have made Jackie more in touch with her emotions, it had, at the same time, made Lee even more protective of her own.

  After witnessing the exchange, Oatsie approached Jackie. “I am so sorry,” she said, reaching out and embracing her. Jackie was stiff in her arms. “She pulled away and looked at me as if she didn’t even know who I was,” Charles recalled. “She was in total shock, not herself. I saw such pain in her eyes. But, then, I also saw a steely resolve come over her. She knew there was no way she could go out to the front of the church until she collected herself. She was Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, after all, her mother’s daughter.”

  Once in front of the church, there was a mix-up about the transportation that was to take the family to Island Cemetery. In the confusion of the moment, Jamie was about to get into the limousine with Jackie, Yusha, and Bingham. Jackie abruptly grabbed Jamie’s arm. “No, Jamie,” she said, holding him tightly. “Please go and find another car,” she said, her voice shaking.

  “Sure, if that’s what you want, Jackie,” Jamie said. He looked at Yusha. He looked at Bingham. Then back at Jackie. From their expressions, he had a strong feeling that some sort of confrontation was in the offing. Jackie either didn’t trust him enough to have him witness it or simply didn’t want him to get involved. “Still, I found it very harsh,” recalled Jamie, “that the only son of Janet Auchincloss had to hitch a ride with someone else to get to the cemetery.”

  Jamie’s intuition was correct: There would be a confrontation.

  Bingham Morris got into the front seat with the driver, while Jackie and Yusha made themselves comfortable in the back. Once they pulled away, according to Yusha’s later memory, Jackie made her position clear, speaking to, basically, the back of Bingham’s head. “I would appreciate if you would return any of Mummy’s belongings that may be left at your house in Southampton to the Castle,” she said in a level tone. “And also,” she added, “I would like for you to be out of the Castle by the time the sun sets tonight.”

  Bingham, appearing a little disoriented, turned around to face his stepdaughter. “But, Jackie, I was planning to spend the night,” he protested.

  Jackie shook her head, no. “Absolutely not,” she said. “I want you out. By the time the sun sets. Tonight, Mr. Morris. Do we have an understanding?” Furthermore, she said he would be entitled to just $25,000 from Janet’s estate, “and don’t you dare try to contest it,” she warned him, because if he did so, she threatened, Alexander Forger would see to it that he’d end up with absolutely nothing. Then she reiterated that she wanted him out of the Castle. “Not tomorrow. Tonight, Mr. Morris. Tonight!”

  Bingham Morris nodded his head. According to Yusha, there was no further discussion about anything else on the way to the cemetery. “I got to the cemetery at around the same time as the family car pulled up,” Jamie recalled. “As they all filed out of the car, I could tell that something upsetting had happened in that vehicle. I remember thinking, I may have been kicked out of the family car at my own mother’s funeral, but maybe it was for the best. I was just glad I didn’t have to witness another big scene.”

  A Blaze of Glory

  “You want things to work out,” Lee Radziwill Ross was telling Adora Rule as they left the Island Cemetery, where some of Janet’s cremains were buried in a simple wooden box swathed with one of her favorite scarves. “But I’m a practical person,” she allowed. “In the real world, things are not so easy.” As she spoke, she was walking next to her husband, Herbert, holding his hand. Jackie was in front of them, making her way with Yusha toward their gleaming silver limousine. While Lee studied her sister, she noted that “people just are who they are,” and said that there was no changing them. She also said that Janet had never tried to change who she was, that she’d always lived her life on her own terms. “I hope I have, too,” Lee concluded.

  “Your mother would so love it if you and Jackie could be closer now that she’s gone,” Adora told Lee.

  Lee shook her head. “I can’t imagine that happening,” she said frankly. “We’ll see, I guess.” She didn’t seem hopeful, though.

  Eight small boxes of ashes had been set aside for Jackie, Lee, Jamie, and Yusha as well as for Yusha’s grown children, Cecil and Maya, and Hugh’s offspring, Tommy and Nini, each with the intention of being distributed on the grounds of Hammersmith Farm, the place where Janet had always found limitless peace. Once back at the farm, Lee and Herbert, along with Adora and her daughter, Janine, walked with Michael Dupree through the rock garden, where Michael then spread some of Janet’s ashes. They were followed by Jackie, along with Caroline and John Jr. and Tina and Anthony. Trailing behind were the rest of the family members as well as friends, employees, and relatives, including Bingham Morris, who tried to make himself scarce after Jackie’s dressing-down of him. Also present, of course, were Mannie and Louise Faria

  Because the Faria daughters, Joyce and Linda, had to return to college after the funeral, they were not present for the spreading of ashes at Hammersmith. However, thanks to Janet’s largesse, both would be able to have all of their college expenses paid for from her estate. As well as bequeathing Mannie and Louise $30,000 in her will, Janet set aside $60,000 for the Faria girls’ education, as promised. Linda Faria would go to Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island, graduate with a degree, and become a mathematics teacher. Today she is the assistant superintendent of schools in Middletown, Rhode Island. Joyce Faria would go to Northeastern University and graduate with a bachelor of science degree in journalism. She presently works in public relations. Other employees also benefited from Janet’s will; she left Jonathan Tapper, for instance, $8,000. Booch got the $25,000 Jackie had told him about and a gold watch. Each of Janet’s grandchildren and step-grandchildren was bequeathed $3,000.

  Janet’s real-estate holdings, including the Castle and the Windmill, were divided into sevenths—six shares to her living children and stepchildren, Yusha, Nini, Tommy, Jackie, Lee, and Jamie, with the remaining seventh bequeathed to Janet Jr.’s three children, Andrew, Lewis, and Alexandra.

  “The Black Ships Festival is tonight,” Jamie told Yusha, Tommy, and Maya. “You know how much Mummy loved those annual fireworks.”

  The Black Ships Festival was an annual event that paid homage to Commodore Matthew C. Perry, USN, of Newport, Rhode Island. “Black Ships” is the American translation of kurofune, the Japanese term for the foreign ships that were excluded from Japan for two hundred years. In 1854, Commodore Perry negotiated the Treaty of Kanagawa, the first treaty between the United States and Japan, thus ending two centuries of Japanese isolationism. Every year, the Black Ships Festival celebrates the sign
ing of this treaty. Part of the festivities is a fireworks display at sunset, which Janet used to love to watch from the Deck Room of the Big House, and later from her porch at the Castle.

  As the small group walked along, they stopped and spread Janet’s ashes about the property’s many elegantly designed lush gardens. Finally, when they got to a lovely sitting area at the center of which was an enormous sundial, they dispersed more of Janet’s ashes in the same spot where Janet Jr.’s ashes had once been spread. “Mummy is with Janet for all eternity,” Jackie said to Yusha as she approached. “I think she’d like that.”

  Yusha, Tommy, Maya, and Jamie then headed around to the back of the Big House along a paved road—passing a blind corner and Mannie’s hand-painted sign that said “Honk Horn”—down a long grassy pathway to a dirt road that led toward the pier at the end of the property. Once at that pier, Jamie walked to the end of it by himself, his head bowed at the exact place where, years earlier, his father, Hugh, used to sit and fish for mackerel. He then scattered some of his mother’s ashes to the wind. Stepping back, he allowed Yusha, Tommy, and Maya to do the same. The four then turned around and began the long walk back up the rolling and manicured hills toward the Castle, passing Jackie and Lee on their way but with a great distance between them.

  As twilight set in and the night breeze picked up, Jackie and Lee slowly made their way down to the pier together, each with her own small box of ashes. The two sisters stopped at the end of the wooden dock. There was no railing in this spot, just the flat surface of timber, pock-marked with bird droppings. The sisters stood inches away from the pier’s edge, very close to the undulating waves beyond it. As the other mourners watched from a distance, Lee emptied the contents of her box into the sparkling water. She lowered her head as if in prayer. A moment later, Jackie, with a dramatic, wide flourish of her hand, sowed her mother’s ashes up and outward toward the blue sky.

  As the daughters of Janet Lee Bouvier Auchincloss stood together in private tribute to the headstrong but devoted woman who’d given them life, a series of loud popping noises interrupted their reverie. They looked up in surprise to see the sky filled with unexpected starbursts of fiery red, golden yellow, and emerald green. Putting her arm around Lee, Jackie drew her close, so close that Lee was able to put her head on Jackie’s shoulder. The sisters then watched the streaking fireworks in a state of wonderment as their beloved “Mummy” went out in what was nothing less than a fitting blaze of glory.

  Epilogue: Passages

  At their mother’s funeral, Lee doubted that she and Jackie would find their way back to each other. Not surprisingly, she was right. The next five years found the sisters leading their own lives, coming together only at special family occasions such as the birthday celebrations of their now-grown children. While there was no obvious acrimony between them, there also wasn’t much warmth.

  Once Janet was gone and Jackie finally had time to really think about the difficulty of the last few years, she realized she was quite angry at Lee for having made herself so unavailable. “She was not okay with Lee having abdicated her role as a caretaker” is how one of her friends put it. “She still hadn’t reconciled in her mind whatever had been going on between Janet and Booch, and she felt she’d been abandoned by her sister during a very tough time,” continued the source. “She needed time and distance from Lee to come to terms with it.” Moreover, Jackie said she now realized that the real reason she didn’t want Lee to have Janet’s gift of $650,000 back in 1987 was because she felt her sister didn’t deserve it. She was probably being petty, she said, but she couldn’t help it. That’s just how she felt.

  During this time, Jackie stayed in touch with her half brother, Jamie, and stepsiblings Yusha, Tommy, and Nini. However, she also decided to relegate Hammersmith to her past while becoming attached to her own estate on Martha’s Vineyard. Everything was different for her at Hammersmith, she said, especially after Mannie Faria died on the property about a year after Janet. Jackie made sure to keep Janet Jr.’s husband, Lewis, in her life, though, and remained close to her nephews Andrew and Lewis and especially her niece Alexandra. Meanwhile, Jackie continued to dote on her adult children, John and Caroline, as well as her grandchildren from Caroline—Rose, Tatiana, and John, who, as he got older, began to answer to “Jack.” She also remained happy in her relationship with Maurice Tempelsman while continuing her rewarding work at Doubleday.

  Meanwhile, Lee almost entirely broke with the past. She sold her share in Hammersmith back to her siblings, and then rarely, if ever, spoke to them again. She and Jamie lost touch completely. “Mummy was the only thread holding the two of us together, and it was tenuous at best,” said Jamie of his relationship with Lee. “After Mummy was gone, it completely unraveled.”

  Lee built a very happy life for herself with her husband, Herbert Ross, and her children, Anthony and Tina. She became immersed in Herbert’s successful film career while on the sets of his movies, forging new and exciting friendships in the world of show business. It was her choice, the way she had decided to live her life. Perhaps it was also her way of avoiding certain emotional triggers that might have jeopardized her continued sobriety.

  This détente was acceptable to both sisters. However, as often happens in estranged families, serious illness would precipitate a rapprochement. At the beginning of 1994, Anthony’s cancer came back again, with a vengeance. At this exact same moment, his aunt Jackie was diagnosed with cancer, too.

  Jackie’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was so fast-moving, she and Lee barely had time to settle old scores. In fact, they didn’t even try. The last thing either wished to do, especially during such a critical time, was review their troubled history and try to come to terms with it. Instead, Lee was simply present for Jackie as she battled the disease. As much as possible, Jackie tried to also be present for Lee as she dealt with her only son’s aggressive cancer, now discovered in his abdomen. Still, there was a troubling undercurrent between them. No doubt it was the awkwardness that occurs when complex life circumstances make the venting of suppressed hurt and anger feel somehow inappropriate. In other words, they needed to sit down and have a good talk and, once and for all, make themselves completely vulnerable to each other and tell each other the truth about how they felt. Unfortunately, even after all these years, they still weren’t able to do so.

  Jackie did have the love and support of her close circle, people such as Maurice and, of course, her children and other family members, like Yusha and Jamie. She wrote to Jamie in February to tell him not to “worry,” saying that the reports about her illness had been “exaggerated” by the media. He happened to be moving to Ashland, Oregon, at the time. “Moving to Oregon sounds like a wonderful idea,” Jackie wrote to her half brother in the last letter he would ever receive from her. Shortly thereafter, she wrote to Yusha: “You know how much I love you—as always, XO Jackie.” That would also be the last note Yusha would ever receive from his stepsister, ending over a half-century of special correspondence between them.

  Then, of course, there was always Jack.

  Jack Warnecke, now divorced for more than twenty years, had never gotten over Jackie. He continued to send her Valentine’s Day cards every year and see her whenever he was in New York, which was quite often. For a number of years, he didn’t believe Maurice would be permanent in Jackie’s life—wishful thinking, perhaps, because he hoped he’d have another chance with her. She always wondered, too; he was such a good man, had she made the right decision in choosing Ari over him? Somewhere along the line, though, they reconciled themselves to the reality of their relationship. “Wouldn’t it be the craziest thing in the world if, after all this time and all we’ve been through, we became just friends?” he asked her. Jackie said, “Why, Jack, we already are!”

  In March of 1994, Jackie discussed with Jack a new treatment plan now that the cancer had spread to her brain. This process involved the insertion of a stent in her skull through which chemotherapy would be introduced i
nto her system. As she explained it with customary pragmatism, he couldn’t help but be just a little shocked. They had to laugh; after everything Jackie had been through in her lifetime, he knew she could handle this new horror. She said that he should not spend even a moment worrying about her. “I am too young to die,” Jackie said. “Why, I’m only sixty-four! I refuse to go,” she concluded.

  Years later, Jack Warnecke would wish to keep private other details of what he and Jackie discussed in this, their last phone call. He did share one moving memory. “How are you dealing with it all?” he asked her. “I do cry from time to time,” Jackie said, lowering her voice. “In the shower, Jack. Where no one can hear me. I think that’s best.”

  * * *

  Jackie’s health declined so quickly, her friends and family couldn’t believe it. On Wednesday morning, May 18, 1994, she was given the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church in her Manhattan apartment, the same one on Fifth Avenue in which she had started life anew after President Kennedy’s assassination. Soft Gregorian chants filled Jackie’s home as a procession of friends, family, and loved ones held vigil throughout the day and into the evening, Auchinclosses, Bouviers, and Kennedys among them. The group of loved ones became hushed and seemed to part in the middle as Lee walked out of the elevator and into the parlor. Appearing small and frail, she had Anthony at her elbow in place of Herbert, who was shooting a movie in California. After embracing John and Caroline, Lee took a deep breath to compose herself and then stepped into Jackie’s bedroom and closed the door.

  Jackie looked peaceful in her large canopied bed, partially under a blanket with an intravenous tube connected to one arm. She had earlier decided that she wanted to die at home on her own terms. In order that she might hasten her own death, she wished to be injected with more morphine than would have been legally permitted at any hospital. By this time, she was in a deep coma.