by Gill Paul
That night, after Battista and Tina had retired to bed, Maria made her way to Ari’s Bar. He was waiting for her at the entrance, unsmiling. Without a word, he took her hand and led her to the Christina’s lifeboat, which had a small suite of rooms. They tiptoed to the bedroom and had begun to unfasten each other’s clothes before their lips touched for the first thrilling time. When they were naked, he pulled her onto the bed, and she tasted salt on his skin, smelled his scent. Their limbs became entangled till it wasn’t clear which were his, which hers; then she felt the deep, primal touch of him inside her very core . . .
The bed creaked and a stiff breeze rattled the rigging, but they were quiet, entirely lost in the moment, as they consummated their union with all the desire they had been repressing for the past two weeks.
Afterward Maria cried tears of pure happiness. Ari wrapped her in his arms and held her so tight that it felt as if they were one being.
Act II
Chapter 18
Washington, D.C.
September 1959
For once, Jackie and Jack were eating breakfast together in the dining room of their Georgetown house, with its striped Regency-style wallpaper and tall sunny windows. Usually he rose before her, dashing off to the Capitol or meeting with his advisors. But this morning he stood at a raised lectern, which was more comfortable for his back, while she sat at the table, with the Washington Post and Times-Herald spread in front of her.
They ate different meals. Jack liked poached eggs and broiled bacon with toast and marmalade. He suffered from Addison’s disease, a disorder of the adrenal gland, and his weight could plummet if he didn’t eat enough. He always had a huge breakfast on top of his other meals—favorite dishes such as fish chowder and baked chicken. Jackie watched her weight and had done so her entire life. Her breakfast was half a grapefruit, followed by a boiled egg and one slice of toast with just a scrape of butter. She was zealous about exercise too, doing sit-ups and push-ups every morning.
“Are you busy today, kid?” Jack asked.
She glanced up. “Why? Do you need me? I don’t have anything on the calendar.” She’d been hoping to do a spot of shopping; she fancied a fur-lined winter coat and some patent-leather boots, before the weather changed. Lee had sent a picture from a London magazine of exactly the style she wanted.
“Just wondered.”
He was looking at her fondly and she smiled back, although it felt false because she was still angry with him. The conversation she had overheard, when he mentioned a “tryst” between him and Lee, stuck in her craw. She’d even obsessively looked up the formal definition in a dictionary and it said, “An agreement, as between lovers, to meet at a certain time or place.”
Whenever she tried to convince herself that she was reading too much into a single word, she remembered how her husband and sister had treated it like a private joke between them, and she knew it could be true. How awful that she couldn’t trust them. Jack, she knew about, but Lee—she was heartbroken.
Something caught her eye on the front page of the paper and she read it quickly. “It says here that Maria Callas is cruising with Onassis on the Christina,” she remarked. “I wonder if she will become his latest conquest.”
Jack loved gossip and squinted at the black-and-white photo of a group walking down a Greek street, Maria and Onassis in the foreground. “Didn’t she used to be a big fat mama?” he asked. “I remember her being built like a tanker.” He puffed out his cheeks.
“That was years ago,” Jackie told him. “She’s very chichi now. She would make an attractive addition to his trophy cabinet. I hope he’s good to her.” She spoke the last words with a sharpness in her tone, and Jack looked up.
“Is everything alright?”
“Yeah, sure,” she replied, but the photograph had struck a chord. “I’m getting used to living in a cage at the zoo, where my looks and clothing choices are criticized by half-baked journalists who can’t even tie their own shoelaces. And my daughter is getting used to being paraded around like the new Shirley Temple.” She laughed to soften the sarcasm, but the words were heartfelt. “Honestly, sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it. You’ve not declared for the presidency yet. Why not change your mind so we can lead a normal life?”
She was teasing. She knew Jack would never give up his great ambition, but she wished he would appreciate how much it cost her.
He walked around the table and stood behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders and kissing the top of her head. “Politics is the only game worth a candle,” he said. “And in the top job, I could really change things. I know you make a lot of sacrifices. Don’t think I don’t notice. But I believe you would make an excellent First Lady. The best.” He began to rub her shoulders.
Jackie closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation, happy to have his undivided attention for once. “So, you don’t think I should lower my voice and dumb down and wear frumpy dresses from the Sears catalog?”
“I think the team is wrong about that. The public likes your movie-star glamour and your intelligence. Voters want someone to admire rather than a replica of their next-door neighbor.”
She was tickled by the praise. With Jack, compliments were few and far between, so when they came, they meant something. “Before I get anywhere near being First Lady, we’ve got a tough year ahead. Bobby gave me a list of primaries he wants me to attend and I all but fainted. Caroline won’t recognize us.”
“The nanny—what’s-her-name . . . Mrs. Shaw—can bring her along to some . . .” He cupped her face in his hands and tilted her head back so that he could kiss her forehead. “Why not stand up so I can kiss you properly?” He couldn’t bend far when wearing the back brace.
She rose slowly, stepping around the chair and into his arms. There it was: that special moment when it all became worthwhile. Their bodies fit like magnets, her head at his shoulder, hip against hip. After six years of marriage, she still felt the magical tug of lust. She loved the way he smelled, the solidness of him, the coarseness of that Kennedy hair, the electric touch of his lips. They kissed properly, arms wrapped around each other, lost in the moment, and she felt her mistrust and resentment dissolving, like aspirin in a glass of water. If only there was more of this, she might forget the word tryst entirely.
Jack broke away, and she could feel him checking his watch over her shoulder.
“Time for a quick one before the team gets here?” he whispered, his voice husky.
She smiled. “You sure know how to make a girl feel special, Mr. President.”
He put a finger to her lips. “Don’t call me that. I don’t want to jinx anything.”
“Come on,” she said, taking his hand to pull him toward the door. “Quiet on the stairs in case Caroline hears and wants to come and play.”
JACKIE LAY IN bed afterward, Jack’s sperm inside her, watching him whistle as he dressed. The front doorbell rang and he grabbed his tie and hurried out, turning in the doorway to give her a lascivious wink.
“Same time next week, Mrs. Kennedy?”
“Sure thing,” she called.
She swiveled and rested her feet on the wall above the bed so that her pelvis was tilted. She’d read in a magazine that it was a good way to help the sperm reach the egg. It made sense, when you thought about it.
An image of Lee with Jack flashed into her mind again, but this time it didn’t sting so much. Lee had her own family now, and she was happy with Stas, happier than Jackie had ever seen her. If anything had happened between her sister and her husband in a single treacherous moment, it was unlikely to be repeated. She could blink the image away.
Suddenly a memory flashed to mind from a week or so earlier. She and Jack had been driving to a rally. She’d noticed two crows sitting on a fence and recited the rhyme “One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy,” adding, “So we will have joy today.”
“Where does that come from?” he asked.
“It’s an old English rhyme,” she sai
d. “I think it’s supposed to be about magpies, not crows, and it goes right up to ten.”
“What does ‘four for a boy’ mean?” He was concentrating on the road ahead.
“I suppose it means you might be about to meet a boy? Or to get pregnant with a boy?” She wasn’t sure. “Five is for silver and six for gold. It must be something that’s given to you or comes your way.”
“So we just have to find two more crows for a boy, right? Keep your eyes peeled.” He peered out across the close-cropped autumnal fields.
Jackie didn’t want to tell him they would have had to see four crows sitting together. She joined in the game, and both looked for dark shapes in the sky or sitting on fence posts by the roadside, not quitting until they had spotted two more crows.
“Great! That should do it.” Jack grinned. He couldn’t have made his wish plainer: he was desperate for a son and heir.
With her feet still resting on the wall, Jackie tried to remember when she’d last had her period. She would love nothing more than a boy. Maybe, just maybe, they had made one today. Maybe he was right this very moment coming into being.
Chapter 19
Milan
September 1959
After she and Ari made love that first time, Maria crept back to her cabin. What had she done? Would Tina guess? Women were sensitive to betrayal. What about Battista? Would he smell sex on her skin? Be suspicious about the way she couldn’t stop grinning? She felt a mixture of extraordinary, incandescent joy and gnawing guilt, along with trepidation about what the future might hold.
Before they’d parted, as dawn was beginning to streak the horizon, Ari whispered, “I love you. I’ve never met anyone like you. I feel as if I’ve found my soul’s twin.”
And Maria felt the same. Everything about him—his power, his compassion, his energy, his intellect—made her weak with desire. She was thirty-five years old and in love for the very first time. Thousands of times she had sung about love and acted the part of a lover, but she had only been imagining what it felt like; now she knew.
Over the next few days, they tried to behave normally, especially in front of their spouses. Was she imagining that Tina seemed cooler toward her? When the English women whispered behind their hands, were they discussing her secret? Guilt made her tongue-tied over dinner, and she tried to keep to herself as she lay reading on deck. But every night she and Ari slipped into the lifeboat to make delectable, irresistible love. He made her feel feminine, sexy, and liberated. She wanted to ask what would happen at the end of the week when they docked and she flew back to Milan, but was too anxious about the reply. They had both said they believed in the sanctity of marriage. Then, on their second-to-last night, he brought it up.
“I can’t be without you,” he said, holding her close. “Not now.”
“Nor I,” she breathed, and the taut elastic of her anxiety eased a little. It would happen. Their feelings were too strong to be ignored.
It was sad to disembark, but Ari had already promised that he would come to Milan in a few days, and she decided to speak to Battista before then. He had a right to know.
Her husband laughed—a cruel, harsh laugh—when she told him on the night they arrived back at their town house that she was in love with Ari and he was in love with her.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he sneered. “You’re just a passing fling for Onassis. If you take it seriously you’ll be a laughingstock.”
“I hope we can manage this as civilized adults,” she continued, ignoring his taunts. “I would like you to move out of the house. You can go to Sirmione and I’ll stay in Milan while we work out the arrangements.”
He shook his head. “You’re fooling yourself. Onassis won’t leave his wife. He’d have to give her half his fortune. Wealthy men don’t do that.”
Maria narrowed her eyes. “Let’s wait and see, shall we? In the meantime, I would like you to pack your things and leave today. You can take the car.”
She turned and swept from the room, trying hard not to let the doubts that he had sowed take root in her head, like knotweed.
At seven that evening, Ari called, and straightaway he said, “I can’t bear this. I feel as if a limb has been severed. I need you, Maria. I’ll fly to Milan tomorrow. Tell me where to meet you.”
She hugged herself, overcome with joy. “Come to my house,” she said, and gave the address. “I’ll make sure Battista is gone.”
After hanging up, she stormed into the sitting room and unleashed her temper on her husband. She asked why he had not left yet, when she had asked him to, then berated him for losing the Met and La Scala contracts, for spending all her money, and for his embarrassing social skills. He tried to defend himself, but she had worked herself into a rage, and at the climactic moment she hurled a glass bowl across the room so that it shattered in the fireplace with a satisfying crash. Displays of temper always made Battista uncomfortable. She knew he would run away.
“I’ll give you a few days to come to your senses,” he told her as he scurried off to pack a bag. “You’ll soon realize that Onassis only wanted you for one thing.”
The following day, Ari arrived and presented her with a black box with BULGARI printed in silver letters on top. She opened it to find a stunning cabochon emerald-and-diamond bangle.
“You suit emeralds,” he told her, slipping it onto her wrist. “I think you will suit all the jewels I am going to buy you.”
“There’s no need for this,” she said, turning her arm to admire the bracelet. “I want nothing material from you. No money, no jewels. I only want you.”
THEY SPENT MOST of the next two days in bed, a tangle of limbs in sheets, lips swollen from kissing. They made love so often that her skin was hypersensitized and she could scarcely bear the separation when he left her to bathe or to talk on the phone. They fed each other delicious morsels scavenged from the kitchen, and sometimes slipped out the back door of her town house to eat in a local taverna, where she knew the owner would be discreet.
It felt as if they were honeymooners; she had no qualms about making love with Ari in her marital bed because it was as if he were the husband she should always have had. Maria had never known such passion was possible; now it was clear that Battista had been a friend and business manager but never a lover. Ari told her that marrying Tina had been a business arrangement with her father, not a love match; not like this.
Most of the time she managed to close her mind to the fact that she and Ari were married to other people, to block out the guilt. She concentrated on the here and now, on learning more about this beautiful man with every moment they spent together. Little details thrilled her: his humming a Greek folk song as he shaved; the fact that he bought an ice cream for the taverna owner’s young daughter every time they dined there, making her shriek with delight; the confident way he sat in a chair, inhabiting space, a presence no one could ignore.
But a phone call from Battista snapped her back to reality.
“Have you come to your senses yet?” he asked. “When are you coming to join me?”
“I’m with Ari now,” she told him. “I thought I made that clear when we spoke three nights ago.”
“In that case, I need to speak with you and Mr. Onassis,” he said coldly. “This situation cannot continue.”
Maria covered the receiver with her hand while she told Ari, and he agreed that his chauffeur would drive the two of them to Sirmione for a meeting the following evening. Matters had to be dealt with, and at least they would have each other for support.
IT WAS A gloomy, overcast day with intermittent showers. Ari’s Rolls-Royce smelled of new leather and cigars. They held hands as they headed north, saying little, staring out at the trees bent double in the gusty wind as if bowing to an imaginary monarch. Maria felt sick with nerves, and she realized that Ari was nervous too when he suggested they stop for a drink at a roadside bar.
“I’ll ask for his consent to a divorce,” Maria said. “With regard to the financia
l situation, I’ll be as generous as I can afford. I can still earn more when I want but it would be hard for Battista to make a new fortune at his age.”
“Don’t commit to a figure now,” Ari cautioned. “You’re too good-natured. Let the lawyers work it out.” He downed a brandy in one gulp and raised a finger to indicate to the waiter that he wanted another.
“What if he won’t give me a divorce?” What would happen then? What could they do?
Ari dismissed her concern. “Of course he will. Everyone has a price.”
She sipped her brandy, feeling it ease the tightness in her diaphragm. Battista knew their marriage had grown cold. Perhaps he would agree they could go their separate ways. Maybe he would find another woman, and they could all be happy.
He greeted them formally at the door of their three-story, yellow-walled villa set on a hillside overlooking the town.
“I was expecting you earlier,” he said. “Bruna has prepared supper. I suggest we eat straightaway.”
He led them to the dining room, where a chandelier glowed overhead. The shutters were open, offering a view over the lights of the town, all the way to the darkness of Lake Garda.
Ari pulled his chair close to Maria’s and spread her napkin on her lap, making his possession clear. Battista watched, his expression disapproving, as Bruna poured glasses of wine and water.
“Does Tina know about your affair?” he asked once Bruna had left the room, his enunciation making the word sound seedy.
“That is between me and my wife,” Ari replied.
Battista persevered. “Do you intend to tell her?”
Ari made an impatient gesture. “Of course.”
They fell silent again as plates of grilled fish and salad were served. There was no pasta course, no bread, and Maria worried that Ari would be hungry.
