Jackie After O (21 page)

After the assassination, when Jackie had moved back to Manhattan and craved evenings out that were interesting rather than just simply fashionable, she'd go to Elaine's, a club that Guinzburg, Plimpton, and their intellectual friends had made popular with a crowd that would later include Andy Warhol.

Guinzburg had assumed the helm of the Viking ship, which now faced financial difficulties. He ran the operation from an opulent office, which had a Viking helmet on the windowsill, and a dartboard on the wall containing pictures of agents and reviewers who annoyed him.
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He knew what made a good editor; that's all he hired. But he also understood the importance of notoriety, a less subtle way to encourage writers and agents to send their best work to the house, and for readers to buy books. Jackie would be a public relations boon for Viking. He recognized that right away. But still, this was her idea, not his.

They met at Le Périgord, which, because it was not far from the United Nations, was a draw for diplomats and politicians. By the end of their meal, they agreed in principal that she would work at Viking. But they still needed to settle some important details, and made a date to meet at her apartment at 1040 Fifth.

There, he made his way past the doorman, up the elevator that opened to her apartment, and by the domestic help into the sanctuary of Jackie's home. She greeted him warmly and brought him into the living room. He peered out French doors that offered a magnificent view of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its new enclosure, which would house the Temple of Dendur, a Cleopatra-era monument about eighty-two feet long that had once stood on the banks of the Nile. The temple was sent to America in appreciation of the $12 million in federal funds that Jackie had convinced JFK to offer Egypt for saving temples that were at risk of flooding when the Aswan Dam was built.
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Now it was being reconstructed stone block by stone block on an island—Manhattan—within Jackie's daily view. That something so monumental and literally set in stone could have a new life seemed symbolic at that moment in 1975. And Jackie made a mental note to bring Caroline for a private tour of the project when she graduated in a few weeks. The reconstruction work was almost done, and it was marvelous to see.
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She and Guinzburg had barely begun to talk when the phone rang, a call Jackie had to take. Just then, Caroline bounded in and plunked down her bag. With her light brown waves, all one length just past her shoulders and parted in the middle, Caroline looked the part of the irreverent teenager.

Caroline spied Guinzburg sitting alone and approached him.

“Is my mom gonna go work for you?” she asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” he said.

Caroline grimaced, as if she had just smelled something rotten. It was the face of a typical daughter who did not think her mother was capable of doing anything, let alone getting a job. He chuckled. Jackie returned to the room and Caroline retreated elsewhere in the apartment.

The two settled in to talk. This was not an interview. In his mind, she already had the job. It was just the details that needed to be finalized.

“What title do you want?” he asked her. “It might be hard to throw you in as an editor.”

“How about associate editor? I kind of like that.”

But associate editor would have meant that she would have line-editing responsibilities—something for which she had no experience. They agreed she should start as a consulting editor, which meant all she really had to do was acquire books, spot talent, and bring ideas to the table. She would have Mondays off for the hairdresser, and Fridays off for horse riding at her new country home in New Jersey. There might be other days not in the office because she would be in the library.

Salary?

“I don't care about money,” she told him. “This is not about that.”

He explained that market pay was about $10,000 a year. The sum was fine with Jackie, but they both knew that she could spend that entire year's salary in one fitting at Valentino.

They agreed she'd start her job after Labor Day. Publishing was notoriously slow in the summer, with the industry fleeing the city in August. And besides, Jackie had a few other important milestones that would consume the season.

J
ackie could have been forgiven if she never wanted to step foot in Greece again, but she mustered her strength and with her kids planned one last trip to Skorpios for July, when she would turn forty-six, to say a proper good-bye, round up what remained of their belongings, and pack in the memories.

Jackie also invited her New York friend Karl Katz, as well as
Paris Review
editor Clem Wood and his wife.
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Onassis's sister Artemis would also be joining them.

But this would not be the relaxing vacation any of them hoped for. Jackie, for one, felt the doors to the past slamming shut all around her. Her parents had just told her that Hammersmith Farm, the childhood home that she loved and the place that had hosted her first wedding reception, was finally sold after four years on the market in a deal that was not yet public.
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And Tuckerman—her right arm for so many years—would be starting a new job in publishing as the assistant to Doubleday's publisher, Sam Vaughan, working in the publicity and promotion department, creating special events for authors. That news was also still a secret.
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July 14, 1975. Saying good-bye to Skorpios.
(Anastasselis Polydoros/Gamma-Raphovia Getty Images)

Then, shortly after they landed on the tiny island, Jackie learned of more surprising news. Christina was going to marry Alexander Andreades—the son of a wealthy industrialist whose grandfather had been Greece's prime minister. Christina had only known him for a month and had become engaged the week before.
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Meanwhile, despite front-page headlines implying that Jackie had been relatively cut off from Onassis's vast fortune, few people knew that Christina and her stepmother were privately negotiating a settlement in the $20 million range. Once that deal was done, they never had to speak to each other again. For now, Jackie was trying to keep up appearances. Christina, under pressure from her aunt Artemis, invited Jackie to attend her wedding.
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Regardless of the acrimony between them and the media circus that would likely ensue, Jackie and her son flew from Skorpios to Athens for the ceremony, held at a tiny, sweltering church surrounded by cypress and olive trees in Glyfada.
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About a hundred people crammed the street outside the chapel trying to catch a glimpse of this unlikely family: the troubled heiress, America's queen, and the handsome, dark-haired teenager. Old ladies dressed in black and mothers pushing baby carriages jockeyed for position along with the paparazzi. Police were there attempting to maintain order and not succeeding as the bystanders and photographers rushed the first limousine, this one carrying the groom. When he emerged from a car wearing a blue suit with red pinstripes and holding a cigarette in its plastic holder, the crowd applauded him. He seemed surprised.

Jackie, John, and Christina arrived forty-five minutes late. When Jackie stepped out of the limousine, the crowd surged toward her, leaving plenty of room for the bride and her stepbrother to climb out of the car. Christina wore an off-white layered gown with a purple sash and a gold cross around her neck. She made her way inside, was married in a Greek Orthodox ceremony, and emerged once again confronted by the gawkers, this time shouting their wishes of
“Na zisete!”
Long life to you.
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July 22, 1975. Bride Christina Onassis Andreadis and her groom, Alexander Andreadis (right), chat with the groom's father, Stratis Andreadis, during the garden party following the couple's wedding in Athens.
(Bettmann/CORBIS)

John complained about the temperature. “Gosh, it was hot in there,” he said.
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Jackie was more sophisticated in her public remarks, her words perhaps reflecting her hopes for herself.

“I'm so happy for that girl,” she said. “There is a lot of happiness ahead for her after a great deal of sadness.”
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But it was not to be. Almost immediately, Christina was completely alone again. The groom, in the army, had to return to his barracks without a honeymoon. Their marriage lasted only fourteen months. Then, in 1978, Christina married a one-eyed Russian, Sergei Kauzov, who was a former Soviet shipping executive and a suspected KGB agent. Their relationship ended within sixteen months. Christina, adrift, battling weight that exceeded two hundred pounds on her five-foot-five-inch frame, and trying to improve her looks with hair dye or plastic surgery, married for the fourth and final time in 1984 to French businessman Thierry Roussel, her crush as a teenager. They had a daughter, Athina, before divorcing in 1987 after he left her for another woman. A year later, while visiting friends in Buenos Aires, where her father first sought to make a fortune, Christina followed her family's tragic path as she was visiting friends: The official cause of death was pulmonary edema, or fluid in the lungs, perhaps caused by a heart attack. But she had sleeping pills by her side in her room, where she was found in the tub, in a few inches of water.
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Christina, three weeks shy of her thirty-eighth birthday, was buried on Skorpios near her father and brother. Jackie did not attend the funeral.
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Jackie, her friends, and family—after a languid good-bye to Skorpios, the yacht, the Ionian Sea, and whatever luxury, peace, and privacy they had been afforded over the last seven years—were headed home, back to the noisy streets of New York. Shortly after she landed in the sweltering city Jackie was struck by yet another hard reality. Skorpios had not been the completely private retreat she thought. Perhaps it never was.

Hustler
magazine's cover that month, August 1975, featured a woman's round, white, naked rear, set off by an ink-black backdrop and the words:

E
XCLUSIVE

J
ACQUELINE

K
ENNEDY

O
NASSIS

N
UDE

There were no exclamation points necessary.
Hustler
publisher Larry Flynt had bought the photos from a paparazzo, who had taken the shots of Jackie from a distance on the water off Skorpios four years earlier. She eventually knew the shots had been taken, but Onassis had refused to sue the photographer because he was too “cheap” to make it worthy.
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Five full-page color photographs showed Jackie totally naked, her wet hair pushed back from her face. Two were frontal shots, with her standing, holding a blue beach towel beside her. Two others showed her walking away, but oblivious she was being watched. Another had her bending over. One million magazines, which included a nude poster of her, flew off the newsstands in just a few days. If there was any solace in being so exposed, it was this: she may have been in her forties, but she had the slim, toned body of a woman half her age.