Jackie After O (27 page)

“To me,” Exner said, “he was Jack Kennedy and not the president.”
¹⁸

Back in New York, Jackie could not escape the blanket coverage of Exner's confession. The words echoed in her head and destroyed a little bit more of a dream she'd held on to. The man whose life she had been devoted to, the father of her children, the man whose legacy she was further immortalizing that very month with final plans for building the JFK Library in Boston, had carried on with some bimbo for most of his time in the White House. Jackie must have known but, like many women of her generation, had let it go. Now, how could she be any more humiliated?

Perhaps she would not have been so mortified if the Camelot myth had not existed. But the myth was a powerful one. Jackie would know. She had created it on a rain-soaked night in Hyannis Port a week after the assassination. She had asked Theodore White, a reporter for
Life
magazine, to come right away; there was something she wanted the magazine to say to the country. He arrived by limousine—no plane would fly to Cape Cod in the weather—and was greeted by Jack's sister Pat Lawford, some aides, and friends, all of whom Jackie asked to leave. She then turned to White and told him she was angry that some journalists were already assessing the president—dead less than a week! Jack's legacy should not be left to the historians, she said.

“Well then,” White said. “Tell me about it.”

She talked for hours, as if trying to purge herself of the grief. Some of what she related was too personal for White even to use. And then she said this: “When Jack quoted something, it was usually classical, but I'm so ashamed of myself—all I keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy.” She was referring to a Broadway production about the King Arthur legend that had debuted in 1960. “At night,” she told White, “before we'd go to sleep, Jack liked to play some records; and the song he loved most came at the end of this record. The lines he loved to hear were: ‘Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.'”

Camelot. Camelot. Camelot. Emotionally spent from the interview, and knowing that his editors were ringing up a huge expense by holding the presses for him, White typed quickly in a servant's room, relying heavily on Jackie's musical imagery. He let Jackie read the story as he called New York at 2:00
AM
to dictate the piece from a wall-mount phone. A secret service agent in the other room burst in and complained.
“For Christ's sake, we need some sleep here!”

One of his editors thought there was too much talk of Camelot. Jackie overheard the discussion and entered the room, handed him her penciled changes to the story, and shook her head, pleading with her eyes to keep Camelot in there. White fought on her behalf—and won.

Now Camelot—the fairy tale that Jackie had practically written—had a new ending. And she was devastated all over again. Her first vote had been for JFK. And after he died, she did not vote in the next presidential election, as if she could have only cast her ballot for one person. Regardless of what she may have known about JFK's indiscretions in real time, journalists never reported on his philandering, because, they rationalized, his adultery had nothing to do with his job. But if Exner carried information between the mob and the president, her sexual relationship with him
was
relevant
and
reportable, especially in the post-Watergate era, and especially if she called a press conference. There was no hiding anymore.

Right after the Exner news broke, Jackie went to see a friend unannounced. The friend was Karen Lerner, recently divorced from Alan Jay Lerner—the author of the musical
Camelot
. Alan Lerner had been a classmate of JFK's at Choate and Harvard. And by collapsing on Karen's couch and staring into space, perhaps Jackie thought that she could prove to herself that Camelot did exist somewhere—even if it had only been a stage production. Jackie never mentioned Exner during the visit. But Lerner understood everything that went unsaid. And it was plain for her to see that Jackie was depressed.
¹⁹

Jackie's only salvation at that moment was work. She could lose herself in a book project. She could control it, shape it, enjoy it, and hide behind someone else's name on the cover. She needed to tend to her own legacy, as preservation activist—even the Grand Central battle would surely drag on for years—as an editor, and as a single, working woman. The Birkin bag filled with manuscripts was the only baggage worth carrying anymore.

When Christmastime came around, a simple gift from Rebecca Singleton stood out. She gave Jackie something she'd probably never wear—a softball team T-shirt that the staff typically wore to their company picnic. Singleton had rustled one up from storage and knew that Jackie would appreciate its symbolism.

“You are one of us,” she told Jackie, handing her the package. “This is your official welcome. We don't know if you are going to [play] second base. But it's great having you around.”

Jackie was truly home. And it was fitting that she remained in America for the holiday among the twinkling lights of Park Avenue rather than rocky shore of Skorpios. For vacation, she, John, and Caroline flew to the groomed slopes and hot tubs of Sun Valley, Idaho, instead of Gstaad. The trip to the resort mountain was comforting in the company of Ted Kennedy, his wife, Joan, and their three children, as well as two other branches of the clan: the Lawfords and the Smiths. The snow was knee-deep. The extended family agreed to pose in a horse-drawn sleigh and when a photographer asked them to all turn toward the camera, Jackie, in a black stretch ski jacket and jeans, gave a mirthful shout: “And neigh!”

F
or Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the transformation from wife and widow to public preservationist and editor was extraordinary not only on a personal level for her but also because it signaled new possibilities for women.

In 1959, Arthur Schlesinger met Jackie in Hyannis Port and noted that she was “flighty on politics” and full of “wide-eyed naïveté.”
¹
She believed that women were too emotional for politics and she sounded and behaved the way women of her time and place were supposed to. In a 1960 presidential campaign profile, Jackie said, “Running our home is a joy to me. I feel this is what I was made for. When it all goes smoothly—the food is good, Jack's clothes are pressed, the flowers look fresh—I have such satisfaction … I shop once a week at the supermarket to see what's new and to choose fresh vegetables.” When asked in the same article for her favorite menu for entertaining at home she said, “I try to please the men. Since they are tired after working all day, hungry, and almost cranky. I start with a good homemade soup.”
²
Never mind that she had an in-home cook—even then. Readers celebrated her words because it validated their own postwar suburban lives, where they made casseroles and vacuumed and volunteered while it was their husbands who “worked.” By the time she became First Lady, she believed it was her duty to provide her husband an escape with “a climate of affection,” with great parties in the White House, excellent and comforting food, and “the children in good moods.”
³

Although out of curiosity she read the weekly CIA summaries that Jack brought back from the Oval Office, ceasing to read them only because they depressed her,
⁴
she hid her intellect among traditional female roles, which were exaggerated by the fishbowl that was the White House. “Her friends who know her capacity and great intelligence are pleased that she has found a task to challenge them,” the
Boston Globe
reported in 1961. “Her greatest innovation so far seems to be the lovely little flower arrangements.”
⁵

In truth, the sound of her voice masked her intelligence. She was athletic, small breasted, big footed (size 10), and dared to wear pants when many women were still wearing June Cleaver shirtwaist dresses. But she was idolized for the gowns she wore. She was translating documents for the president, helping him with his book, and saving Lafayette Square from the wrecking ball. And yet few people knew about those accomplishments.

Jackie could never have known that she would be among the last of the prefeminist first ladies, nor that a cultural revolution was coming, one in which women would be paid for their work outside the home. Today, in these postfeminist years, the mommy wars have centered on the choice of work—even though many women do not have the option. Jackie needed to work, not to pay the bills but to save her soul. Even in the White House, she had spent more on clothes in one year than her husband earned as president. In 1975, still awaiting what would be a $20 million settlement (to come in 1977) on her Onassis inheritance, her $10,000 Viking salary would have seemed paltry, but it was huge to her because she was earning it. Working was not about the money. It was about her self-worth.

As she changed, so did women in America. Jackie could have remained a Warhol portrait, a bouffant and a pillbox hat, but instead she did not shy from wearing bell-bottom jeans and a tight-fitting Henley sweater for a brisk walk down Fifth Avenue—perhaps still an icon, but not one stuck on a pedestal.

While some women feel trapped by age, she seemed liberated by it.
Passages
author Gail Sheehy once said that women are most happy between forty-five and fifty-five because menopause and the empty nest are physical signals that they are free to move on. Jackie turned forty-six in July 1975. Her nest was emptying. She had reached an age when finding one's purpose beyond raising children becomes central to happiness. Shopping's thrills are short and shallow. Parties with polite banter are surprisingly exhausting. Being a trophy for a spouse is a relationship doomed to fail. And chronic searching can take you around the world, but finding home within oneself is the most rewarding journey. And that's what Jackie did in 1975. She had even begun to lay plans for a retreat that she could truly call her own—not at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, or on Onassis's island in the Aegean, but a tract of land she acquired on Martha's Vineyard, with the vast Atlantic defining the contours of her own private beach.

By the time the ball dropped in Times Square on New Year's Eve, bringing 1975 to a close, she could look back at everything she had accomplished over the course of one year, and had to believe that anything was possible. She had remained the caring mother she always was, but this year she was something more. She had reinvented herself. With the landmarking of Grand Central, she was part of an important cause, a cause that would require constant public relations efforts to keep the issue alive.

She also had a new job and she enjoyed reporting to work, laying the foundation for a publishing career that would span two decades. Her time at Viking would be formative, but short. She had a hand in seven books there, each of which said something about her interests:
In the Russian Style
, a picture book with illustrations that she selected based on her own visits to museums and palaces in what was then the Soviet Union;
Himself!: The Life and Times of Mayor Richard J. Daley
, by Eugene C. Kennedy;
Firebird and Other Russian Fairy Tales
(for which she wrote the introduction), by Boris Zvorykin;
The Face of Lincoln
, a picture book by James Mellon;
Inventive Paris Clothes, 1909–1930: A Photographic Essay
, by Diana Vreeland and Irving Penn; and
Sally Hemings: A Novel
, by Barbara Chase-Riboud, a story she had encouraged the author to write about Thomas Jefferson's affair with a slave. The last book was among Jackie's greatest publishing successes, having sold more than 2 million copies.

At a press briefing for
In the Russian Style's
publication, a reporter asked her how her children had viewed the book.

“Rapidly,” she said.

The word also summed up how her career went at Viking.

In 1977, Guinzburg got a call from literary agent Deborah Owen.

“I've got this manuscript,” she said. “And I know what you're going to think of it but I still need a fast response from you.”

The novel was called
Shall We Tell the President
, by the British writer Jeffrey Archer. The story involved Ted Kennedy as president in 1984, and an assassination plot against him. Guinzburg and Cork Smith had read the manuscript and thought it was OK. The author's reputation was well established; his last several books had been successful thrillers.