Jackie and Maria

by Gill Paul

  She concluded the letter by saying that she was praying for Mrs. Kennedy and her children. She knew the former First Lady was Roman Catholic but hoped she would accept some Greek Orthodox prayers sent with her most heartfelt sympathy.

  Maria reread the pages and frowned. Words alone were inadequate, but it was the sentiment that counted. She felt very emotional about John F. Kennedy’s death—for more reasons than one.

  A WEEK LATER, on the morning of her fortieth birthday, Maria awoke to the clatter of Ari bringing her a tray on which sat a glass of champagne, a perfectly turned omelette, and a vase containing a single dark-pink rose. After she had eaten, he ran her bath, pouring in a generous glug of jasmine oil, and as she reclined in the water he presented her with her first gift: a Van Cleef & Arpels sapphire-and-diamond necklace.

  “Ari! It’s divine,” she exclaimed. “You’re so good at choosing jewelry!”

  “Why not try it on?” he suggested, and helped her fasten it around her neck. “Beautiful!” he declared, standing back to appreciate the effect. “Might I join you in your bath?”

  “Of course,” she said with a seductive smile, curling her legs to make room.

  He stripped off his dressing gown, climbed into the claw-foot tub, and made love to her slowly and sensually, the oil making their skin slippery, the water sloshing over the edge.

  “My only worry,” he said afterward, “is that now I will spend the rest of the day smelling like a homosexual.”

  Maria laughed: “You need have no worries on that score. I’ll give you a glowing reference.”

  At lunchtime there was another gift: a glorious nineteenth-century gold-leaf mirror adorned with sirens. Then midafternoon a bouquet arrived that was six feet tall and bursting with rare tropical blooms in shades of dark pink, white, and green. She felt thoroughly spoiled.

  The celebration continued that evening, when Ari hosted a birthday dinner at Maxim’s for twenty close friends and stood to toast her: “To a woman who is as talented in love and friendship as she is in music,” he declared. “I wish for your next forty years to be filled with joy.”

  Maria clinked glasses with the guests, smiling and playing the role of birthday girl, but deep down she was not happy about this milestone. She hated the fine lines that were etched at the corners of her eyes and the way her face was succumbing to gravity. How could she compete with Lee Radziwill, who was a decade younger? She was unhappy with the instability of her voice in its higher registers, and the way it did not always behave as she wanted it to. And she still felt profound sadness that she did not have a child, someone to give her a sense of purpose for the future.

  “When is your Tosca at the Royal Opera House?” Maggie van Zuylen asked, breaking her train of thought.

  “Next month,” Maria replied with a smile. “Zeffirelli’s production is very modern. He’s quite the genius.”

  “Am I invited?” Ari asked. “I’ve heard so much about it I feel I must see it.”

  Maggie gave Maria a subtle wink, but she felt uneasy. Was Ari jealous of Zeffirelli because of her dinner with him? Or did he hope to arrange a clandestine meeting with Lee once he was in London?

  “Of course you’re invited,” she told him, hating the way jealousy gnawed at her, spoiling the moment.

  In the car on the way back to his apartment, she confessed to feeling nervous about Tosca. “I’m not sure my voice is up to the challenge.”

  Ari squeezed her knee. “Even if there is a slight wobble, audiences feel privileged to have seen you perform. Your acting is better than ever, your voice miles superior to any other singer. You always give value for money.”

  “I am not the best any longer,” she said, thinking of all the new young stars emerging.

  “Audiences want to be able to say, ‘I heard Maria Callas,’” he continued. “And I am the happiest man in the world because I can say, ‘I fuck Maria Callas.’” He ran his hand up her thigh. “I fuck her a lot.”

  Maria laughed. In the early days she used to chastise him for swearing, but she had long since given up. “What about ‘I love Maria Callas’?”

  He kissed her passionately, then held her face between his hands and looked deep into her eyes as he said, “I will always love Maria Callas.”

  That should be enough for me, Maria thought. But it wasn’t. He had been very generous but he hadn’t given her the one birthday present she yearned for more than any other—a date for their wedding. It was beginning to feel as if he never would.

  Chapter 44

  Palm Beach, Florida

  December 25, 1963

  The glittery, bauble-strewn Christmas tree in the front hall of the Kennedy’s Palm Beach home bothered Jackie. It felt wrong to celebrate just four weeks after Jack’s death, but the children needed some normality; it wouldn’t be fair to cancel Christmas.

  Lee and Stas were there with their two children, and Ethel and Bobby brought their ever-expanding brood, all of them shoehorned into the mansion’s eleven bedrooms. The children soon went feral, rushing around and whooping in extended games with no apparent rules that lasted from breakfast till dinner. Caroline and John joined in, but they were quieter than usual. John normally liked to be in the center of the action when his big cousins were around, but now he hung back, shadowing his sister.

  Jackie watched them for signs of grief, but during the day she saw just their unusual quietness. Only at bedtime, when she tucked them in, did the questions come pouring out.

  “Why did that man shoot Daddy?” Caroline asked on Christmas night, after the gifts had been opened, the wrapping paper tossed in the trash, and the ham carved to the bone.

  “There are bad people in the world,” Jackie told her. “Just a few. Your daddy was a target because he was president and he wanted to make things better for everyone: rich and poor, black and white. Some people didn’t like that.”

  “Why not?” Caroline persisted.

  “I don’t know,” Jackie admitted. “Maybe one day when they finish investigating, someone will explain it to us.”

  Her children were sharing a double bed in the room next to hers. She slipped off her shoes and crawled between them so that she could put an arm around each.

  “When is he coming back?” John asked, fighting to keep his eyes open.

  “Who do you mean? The bad man?” Jackie combed her fingers through his hair. “He’s not coming back.”

  “Not him,” John said. “When is Daddy coming back?”

  Jackie took a deep breath to control herself. “He’s in heaven now, sweetheart. But he will always be in our hearts.”

  She could feel Caroline crying, her little frame quivering, and she pulled their heads to her shoulders, holding them tight until she felt their muscles relax and they slid into sleep.

  She was haunted by memories of the previous Christmas. They had all been together in the White House and everything had been perfect: a huge tree, tasteful white and silver decorations, beautifully wrapped presents. The best years of their marriage were spent in that house. How could it be that last Christmas had been Jack’s final one?

  And then she realized that for the past twelve months he had been living each date for the last time, and no one knew. His last birthday, his last swim in the ocean, last cocktail, last time he tucked his children into bed, last time they made love. Their last kiss, on the morning he died, just after they’d landed in Dallas.

  “Thanks for coming to Texas,” he’d said. “It means a lot.” Then he’d kissed her.

  DOWNSTAIRS, JACKIE POURED herself a large vodka on the rocks and sat sipping it while the other grown-ups chatted. They were trying to avoid mentioning Jack, as if worried it would remind her—which was laughable. How could she ever forget, even for a second?

  “How’s the new house?” Ethel asked.

  Jackie had moved to a town house in Georgetown, on loan from friends. “It’s spacious,” she said, “but too close to the road. Crowds of sightseers stand outside with cameras waiting for a
glimpse of me or the kids.” She wrinkled her nose. “What kind of people would do that?”

  Lee shook her head in disgust. “I’ve seen them having picnics right there on the sidewalk. They throw sandwich wrappers and pop bottles onto the front lawn, and when the protection officers go over to remonstrate, they just take photos of them.”

  Jackie couldn’t bear the sound of cameras now, especially the ones with flashbulbs. The explosions and the flash made her rigid with fear. Any one of those sightseers could have a concealed gun. One day a woman had leapt toward her as she walked to the car and managed to touch her hair before a Secret Service agent stopped her. Why would she do that? What made her think it was okay?

  Anything unexpected took Jackie straight back to the car in Dallas, so viscerally it was as if she were still there. Earlier that day, one of Ethel’s indistinguishable children had jumped through a doorway waving a toy pistol, and Jackie got such a fright she screamed over and over. A stranger coming to the front door made her panic. She was constantly scared that she or one of her children would be killed by a random lunatic, and the raucous atmosphere of a Kennedy family Christmas wasn’t helping.

  “I guess folks will have an interest in you for some time to come,” Ethel said, not unkindly. “But finding a house set back off the road would help. Do you want me to view some for you?”

  “Thanks, Ethel, but I think you have enough on your plate.” Ethel had given birth to her eighth child that summer. How did she even remember their names? Jackie wondered.

  “Will you stay in Washington?” Bobby asked. “That’s the first decision.”

  Jackie looked at him. He knew better than anyone that she was having trouble making decisions. It felt as if her brain wasn’t working properly, as if the neurons were misfiring.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and was grateful when Lee changed the subject. Her sister had been wonderful these past weeks. She was always on hand, sensitive to her needs, bringing drinks, ashtrays, and fresh handkerchiefs as required. On the night of the funeral she’d left a note on Jackie’s pillow that read, “Good night, my darling Jacks—the bravest and noblest of all.” But Jackie didn’t confide in her. That wasn’t the way their relationship worked. She was the one who had always looked out for Lee, and they couldn’t switch roles overnight.

  Only Bobby shared the immensity of her grief. He was broken by Jack’s death. Shattered. Like her, he was crawling through the days, barely managing to get by. That’s why he was the only person she could talk to. She could tell him the raw truth without censoring herself the way she had to around others.

  After he had rushed to collect her from Air Force One on the day of Jack’s death, she told him every gruesome detail, omitting nothing. It poured out in a torrent. Still did, whenever they were alone. She couldn’t help repeating it. Maybe she should hold back so as not to upset him, but the words came of their own volition.

  That afternoon, they had walked along the beach in the Florida sunshine, waves washing over their bare toes, the shrieks of children in their ears, and she had told him the list of what she called the “if onlys.” She had gone over them so many times in her head that she thought she would go mad if she didn’t share them.

  “If only we had persuaded Jack not to go to Texas. We all knew he had enemies there. Why did he not make the governor come to Washington to resolve that stupid argument . . .”

  “There’s no point thinking that way,” Bobby interrupted.

  “But there is,” she said. “I need to pin it down. If only we hadn’t been in an open motorcade. If only I had been watching out of his side of the car and seen the shooter take aim. If only I had realized that sound like a car backfiring was actually a gunshot. I should have pulled him down to the floor and shielded him.”

  “It was up to the Secret Service to protect him. They’re the ones who failed. Not you. You did all you could.” He took her hand, squeezed it.

  Jackie kept walking in silence. Nothing he said could dispel the feeling that she had let Jack down when he needed her most.

  A gale of laughter rose from the adult family members sitting near where the children were playing, and Jackie felt so furious that she could have punched them all. How could they laugh when Jack was dead? How could anyone laugh again?

  IN THE FIRST months after Jack died, Jackie often went to Arlington Cemetery alone, to sit by his grave. The winter skies were the color of gunmetal, and a hard frost made the clods of earth sparkle. It was unbearable to think he was there, beneath the soil, yet she couldn’t see him, couldn’t touch him. Her Secret Service men hovered at a respectful distance.

  One day after visiting the grave she went to pray in St. Matthew’s Cathedral, and the bishop came to sit with her, crossing his hands in his lap, his round face solemn.

  “You must have many questions,” he said. “I want you to know that I am always here for you.”

  “Yes, I have a question: What kind of God let this happen?” Jackie challenged him. “What possible reason could there be, when Jack had so much to give to the world?”

  “It is not always for us to know the reason why,” he replied, “but we must have faith that everything happens according to God’s plan. Remember that this world is not the last. There is another beyond, where you and Jack will be reunited once more.”

  Jackie felt furiously angry with him, sitting there as if he were the font of all knowledge, yet speaking to her in platitudes. “Answer me this,” she demanded. “If I kill myself now, would I go to the same heaven as Jack? Because, quite frankly, I don’t want to be here anymore. I only want to be with him.” She put her hand over her mouth to stifle a sob.

  The bishop regarded her in silence for a moment, as if formulating a profound theological answer, but when he spoke he was practical: “Who would bring up your living children? Who would look after Caroline and John?”

  And Jackie knew she couldn’t kill herself, because whether it was Lee or Ethel who raised them, no one would love her children the way she loved them. She was trapped on this earth because of them, and she had to find a way to be a good enough mother to make up for the fact that their father was gone forever.

  Chapter 45

  Paris

  March 1964

  The baron and I had dinner with Lee and Stas,” Maggie van Zuylen told Maria over afternoon tea, “and I guarantee you’ve got nothing to fear from Lee. She has no interesting conversation and her personality can best be described as brittle.”

  “Yes, but her sister is the world’s most famous grieving widow, and Ari positively salivates in the presence of fame.” Maria stirred her tea, pressing the back of her teaspoon against the slice of lemon.

  “Do you think the affair is still going on?”

  Maria shrugged. “I haven’t caught them in flagrante. As far as I’m aware, he hasn’t seen her since JFK’s funeral. When he came to London with me recently, her name wasn’t mentioned.”

  Maggie looked thoughtful. “He’s the kind of man who loves the pursuit and gets bored after conquest. He had his one-night stand with Lee and paid her with a bracelet. ‘Dearest, sweetest love’ is what you say to a favorite niece, not a lover.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I never told you this,” Maggie continued, “but Ari once paid Eva Perón ten thousand dollars to spend the night with him. That’s all he wanted—just to be able to say he’d had her.”

  To Maria the story was sleazy. She didn’t like to hear about that side of him.

  Maggie touched her arm. “Ari told me the other day that he thinks he has finally been accepted by European society through being with you. For a long time they held him at arm’s length because of his business reputation, but you bring him class, he said.”

  “Did he really?” Maria flushed. She would treasure that compliment.

  “So, what are you singing next?” Maggie asked. “And when can I come and hear you?”

  “Zeffirelli has asked me to sing Norma at the Paris
Opéra in May . . .”

  “How exciting!” Maggie cried.

  Maria made a face. “I haven’t given him my answer yet. It’s more technically challenging than Tosca and, frankly, I don’t know if my voice is up to it. I’ve had an operation on my sinuses since the last time I sang Norma and it’s affected my resonance. Besides, I haven’t been practicing as much as I should.”

  “You are the woman who learned Wagner’s Isolde in two months,” Maggie remonstrated. “And you’ve sung Norma many times before.”

  “You sound like Ari,” she said. “He wants me to accept so he can invite all our Parisian friends to watch.”

  “It’s a good plan,” Maggie said. “Hammer home that you are a much bigger trophy than Lee. Remind him how proud he should be to have you on his arm.”

  MARIA LAUNCHED HERSELF into a program of intensive practice and sessions with vocal coaches to get ready for Norma. She would nail this. She had to!

  Rehearsals began in April, and she loved Zeffirelli’s design for the enchanted forest, which changed color as the seasons progressed. She loved her multicolored costumes in flowing silk and chiffon that swayed like leaves in a breeze. And she adored the child performers, feeling a maternal protectiveness toward them. She made sure they were given plenty of rest breaks, and always kept a stock of candy and soft drinks in her dressing room, remembering how tough it had been when she was forced to perform at their age.

  All that was fine, but vocally she was still struggling in her upper register as opening night drew near.

  “Skip some of the high notes,” Zeffirelli advised. “Few in the audience will be any the wiser.”

  “I can’t do that. It would be cheating.” She would never compromise her art if she could help it. Instead she worked harder than ever, pushing herself to control the pulsation on her top notes, practicing long hours every day.

  Ari decided to invite their friends to the fourth night, once the critics had attended and the production had settled into its stride. He asked Princess Grace, the Aga Khan, Charlie and Oona Chaplin, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Maggie van Zuylen and her husband, and many others. He arranged a champagne reception for the intermission, and his excitement mounted as the evening drew near.