Jackie After O (17 page)

And here he was, on his last journey to Skorpios from American Hospital in Paris. A second launch carried Jackie, Senator Ted Kennedy, Christina, and his three sisters. Other mourners were arriving by ferry.

A light rain fell as John and Caroline stood on the dock, waiting to greet their mother and say good-bye to her husband one final time.

Jackie was a widow again. After Kennedy's soul-crushing death, and then the devastating back-to-back murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in 1968, capping a decade of despair, she seemed to take this funeral in stride. Disembarking onto Skorpios still wearing the black leather trench coat and her fly-eye sunglasses, this death, with this husband, had been long and slow, and she was as ready as she could ever be.

“A widow for a second time,” whispered one old woman in a black shawl as the funeral procession walked by. Others whispered about a curse that Jackie had brought on the Onassis family—and whether Maria Callas would be coming.
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Once again, what appeared to be a Mona Lisa smile swept beneath Jackie's glasses.
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The village priest led the six pallbearers some two hundred yards up the hill toward the chapel, with about sixty mourners trailing slowly behind. The procession's pecking order was clear. Jackie held John's arm. Caroline stood between her mother and her uncle Ted, who was wearing a navy blue trench. Christina walked ahead of all of them—closest to the casket—surrounded by her aunts, arm in arm, an old Greek custom, though it looked as if they were forming a wall to block out Jackie and her children.
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March 18, 1975. Onassis's funeral procession to the chapel on Skorpios. Christina Onassis, center front, surrounded by her aunts; second row: John Jr., Jackie, Caroline, and Ted Kennedy.
(Bettmann/CORBIS)

The chapel courtyard was lined with hundreds of white lilies in pots draped with red velvet. There were seven large wreaths on white tripods outside the chapel. Set in theatrical and coordinating fashion against the dazzling pink blossoms of cherry trees on the terraced hillside behind the Chapel of the Little Virgin, one of the wreaths, made of white and pink carnations, pink hyacinths, and white lilies had a banner across it that read:
TO ARI FROM JACKIE
. Four other wreaths were from a Swiss bank.

Not all of the sixty invited mourners could squeeze into the eighteenth-century chapel. And Onassis employees—gardeners, domestics, and sailors—each in job-specific uniforms, huddled near the entrance holding candles. Inside, the walls were lined with decorative columns and arched niches painted sky blue. Greek Orthodox priest Zavitsanos Apostolous, with his thick black beard, black cap, and ceremonial robe, read from St. Paul's Epistle to the Thessalonians. A small choir sang in verse: “I went to the grave and saw the naked bones, and I said to myself, who are you? King or soldier? Rich or poor? Sinner or just?”

One of Onassis's sisters rushed out of the chapel, overwhelmed with grief.

“Come and give him your last kiss,” Father Apostolous said to those before him, prompting the tradition of mourners to touch their lips to an icon on top of the simple wooden coffin. One by one, they did, each leaving a white flower on top. When it was Christina's turn, she shook and swayed, and was helped back to her seat. Jackie, who appeared drawn but tearless, stepped forward, kissed the oak lid, and bid him good-bye.

Beyond that, there was no eulogy. Onassis did not want one. When the funeral was over, pallbearers carried the coffin by its four silver handles and placed it on a concrete sarcophagus beneath a cypress tree to the left of the chapel, opposite the grave of his son. Alexander Onassis had died at age twenty-five when his Piaggio plane, part of Onassis's Olympic Airways fleet, had dipped its right wing just after takeoff and dived into the runway. The freakish loss of his only son had plagued the millionaire with a deep depression—many believed it was then that he lost his will to live—and the suspicion that an enemy had fatally rigged the aircraft.
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Onassis had chosen this grave site for himself shortly after Alexander died, telling one adviser to leave the cypress tree there and giving very specific instructions to pass along to the architect.
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March 18, 1975. Christina Onassis and her aunt say a final good-bye to Aristotle. Jackie stands to the left of Caroline.
(Bettmann/CORBIS)

As Jackie stepped out of the chapel following the coffin, which had his name and the face of his patron saint on it, she slipped on her sunglasses even though the skies had darkened further, the clouds releasing a few big drops. The priest said more prayers and a dazed Christina tossed some dirt on the coffin as it was lowered into the vault. Jackie's face crumpled. With quivering lips, she struggled to stay composed.
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But she would soon recover.

After Onassis's funeral, she returned to Athens, stayed a few days with Artemis, and then boarded the plane for home. But before she did so, Jackie granted a brief interview with an Athens newspaper: “Aristotle Onassis rescued me at a moment when my life was engulfed with shadows,” she said, with flashbulbs popping. “He meant a lot to me. He brought me into a world where one could find both happiness and love. We lived through many beautiful experiences together which cannot be forgotten, and for which I will be eternally grateful.”
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B
ack in New York, Jackie checked in almost daily with Artemis to see how she was doing and, more subtly, to check on Christina's mood. After all, her stepdaughter would be the one to determine whether there would be a battle over the estate. When Jackie married Onassis, she had asked the federal government to stop the regular payments that had begun after the assassination. Financial support from the Kennedy family also ended with her marriage to Onassis. Although the children had trust funds, Jackie had a lifestyle to maintain and no active income. No job. Still, Jackie never wanted a public catfight over money. Christina knew it—and sharpened her claws. She instructed one of her father's henchmen to leak a story—a big story—that would embarrass the widow and make it impossible for her to demand a big number.

Jackie, who always canceled her newspaper and magazine subscriptions around assassination anniversaries or salacious book releases so she did not have to relive her tragedies or read unflattering stories, must have been blindsided on April 12, 1975, when she picked up her
New York Times
. There, on the front page, was a bold scoop by John Corry with a double-deck headline:
ONASSIS SAID TO HAVE PLANNED DIVORCE, PROVIDED $3-MILLION FOR WIDOW IN WILL.
That the article was in the paper of record, one that did not have a gossip column, gave the story credibility. The article contradicted earlier reports circulating for months that said she could receive up to $200 million after his death. Corry also reported the secret discussions with Roy Cohn the previous December, when Onassis asked him to begin divorce proceedings, saying that Onassis only dropped the issue because his health had rapidly deteriorated.

The story was not only embarrassing and infuriating, but the timing was horrible. The Municipal Art Society had planned an enormous concert rally for later that week at Grand Central, where organizers would unveil the campaign's slogan—“No more bites out of the Big Apple”—with Benny Goodman and Dick Cavett, among others. Now she could not attend without becoming a distraction.
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She was also set to leave for Greece the next week, on April 20, to attend a service on Skorpios marking the end of the forty-day Greek Orthodox mourning period.

Jackie demanded that Christina issue a denial of the report. Christina, still in Paris, was not yet fluent in handling the sort of high-profile public negotiations that her father had been expert in; she broke quickly and issued a statement saying her father's marriage indeed had been a happy one and “all rumors of intended divorce are untrue.” Christina also denied that she and Jackie were arguing over the will.
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The
New York Times
story prompted
Washington Post
columnist Jack Anderson to finally publish the story Onassis had given him months before about Jackie's spending,
MRS. ONASSIS SELLS USED WARDROBE
, the headline tattled, going on to say, “Associates recall hearing Onassis gripe about a $9,000 bill for gowns from Valentino's of Rome. ‘What does she do with all the clothes,' he exploded. ‘I never see her in anything but blue jeans.'”
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Reselling clothes was not new for Jackie. She would trade suits, gowns, blouses, pants, purses—some of which were never used and some of which were designed by Halston, Valentino, or Yves Saint Laurent—for cash. One favorite resale shop was Encore in Manhattan. While in the White House, she would have resale commission checks sent to her secretary, Mary Gallagher, who kept the books for the couple. Jackie's clothing was resold under Gallagher's name and the Encore checks would be sent to the secretary's home; she'd deposit the funds and then repay Jackie.

Jackie was outraged by the media frenzy but she left for Greece to attend Onassis's final service, leaving her mother to deal with the Associated Press reporter who tracked her down at home in Washington. Janet rarely spoke publicly about her daughter. But this time, she unleashed.

“There was never any question of divorce,” Janet told the media. “All marriages have their spots and they came from very different backgrounds and countries. They had their difficult moments as you and I have probably had … Obviously there was a good difference in ages. She had children in this country. He didn't want to be in this country very much, and they lived a life where they came and went when either one of them wanted to see the other one. It's difficult being married to somebody who has a very strong character with whom you had little in common through the years when you were growing up, when you come from a different country with different customs and ideas … But whose business is it besides your own? If you have enough sense and dignity to work it out between you … Actually I think she's going to miss him very much, at least she told me she was.”

Rumors of divorce, Janet added, “just make me sick.”
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When Jackie landed in Athens to mark the end of the mourning, the strain of all she had been through this year showed when she walked off the plane. She looked thin and pale, exacerbated by the tradition of not wearing makeup or jewelry during that period of grief.