Just Jackie by Edward Klein (trending books to read TXT) 📕

business after Joe Kennedy’s stroke. When Smith whistled, the Kennedys and their hangers-on came running. Salinger was on the next plane to New York City.

“Guess what’s happened?” Smith said as Salinger walked through his door. “Jackie’s going to marry Onassis.”

He tossed a copy of that day’s Boston Herald-Traveler on the desk in front of Salinger. There was a story on the front page reporting that John Kennedy’s widow planned to marry Aristotle Onassis.

“We have to figure out some kind of a statement for the family to put out,” Smith said.

Salinger lit up one of his famous cigars.

“Have you got any idea of what you want to say?” he asked.

“How about, ‘Oh shit!’ “ Smith said.

THE PERFECT MATCH

That very same day in Greece, Ari sent word to his children, Alexander and Christina, to meet him for dinner at the home of his sister Artemis. Her seaside villa in Glyfada was located on Vassileos Georgiou, a lovely street shaded by palm trees. The old house had large, well-proportioned rooms filled with shining new reproduction Napoleonic furniture in mahogany and gilt. An elegantly carved wooden staircase led to a set of airy bedrooms on the second floor. One of those rooms was now occupied by Jackie Kennedy.

Shortly after Alexander and Christina arrived, Artemis announced dinner, and Jackie appeared on the stairs wearing a simple sheath dress and a single strand of pearls. She joined the family in the dining room, whose walls were covered with old-master-style oil paintings in ornate gold frames. Alexander and Christina, who were just emerging from their teens, avoided looking at Jackie as they took their places at the long table. Each place was set with expensive silver, along with hand-painted china that matched the serving dishes that Panagotitis the butler used to dole out Artemis’s specialty, meatballs with chili.

Ari looked across the table at Christina. There was not a hint of love or kindness in his eyes. He was perpetually upset with his daughter. He did not like her crazy moods. She was addicted to uppers and downers, and she suffered from bouts of suicidal depression. Ari did not like to watch Christina eat. It made him extremely nervous. She consumed vast amounts of chocolate and Coca-Cola, and at times ballooned to more than two hundred pounds. Sometimes Ari could not suppress his disgust, and he ranted and raved at his daughter in front of everyone in the house.

Jacqueline, age twelve (right), and Lee with their mother, Janet Lee Bouvier, attend a summer wedding in East Hampton, Long Island. Jackie may have loved her father more, but she spent her life trying to please her mother. (Morgan Collection/Archive Photos)

Jackie, age eighteen, with her father, John Vernou Bouvier 111. As Jackie’s greatest mentor in the arts of life, “Blackjack” taught her that women gain power by affiliating themselves with powerful men. (Morgan Collection/Archive Photos)

Less than a month after the assassination of John Kennedy, Jackie stands in the doorway of the Harriman house, her temporary residence in Georgetown, and bids goodbye to visitors Robert Kennedy and his wife, Ethel. The relationship between Jackie and Bobby was passionate but chaste. (UPI/Corbis/Bettmann)

Lee with Prince Stanislas Radziwill, the husband she planned to divorce so she could marry Aristotle Onassis. Jackie suspected her sister was living in a dreamworld when it came to Onassis, whose well-publicized love affairs were part of his publicity machine. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Author William Manchester in his Middletown, Connecticut, house with some of the foreign magazines that serialized his controversial book The Death of a President. “My first impression [of Jackie], and it never changed,” said Manchester, “was that I was in the presence of a very great tragic actress.” (Mondadori/Archive Photos)

Journalist Theodore H. White in his Manhattan town house. White collaborated with Jackie in creating the Camelot myth, but he left the riddle of her true identity to future biographers. (Courtesy of David White)

Jackie whispers to John Carl Warnecke at the seventh annual Robert Kennedy Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament in 1978, more than a decade after their love affair ended. The need for discretion added a further dimension to their romance—the delicious aura of secrecy. (Ron Galella/Ron Galella Ltd.)

Despite a tabloid’s prediction, wedding bells were not in the cards for Jackie and Jack Warnecke. He came to realize that he would never be able to provide Jackie with what she really needed: total security from the outside world. (Courtesy of John Carl Warnecke)

Jackie tours the ruins of Ankgor Watt with Lord Harlech, former British Ambassador to the United States. Onassis wondered whether there was more to Jackie’s friendships with other men than met the eye. (Archive Photos)

New Frontiersman Roswell Gilpatric accompanies Jackie on a trip to Los Angeles, where Bobby Kennedy was fatally wounded by an assassin in June 1968. Jackie’s purloined “Dear Ros” letter was used by her enemies to poison her relationship with Onassis. (UPI/Corbis/Bettmann)

Onassis, with his bride by his side, waves to newsmen from his yacht, the Christina, shortly after their wedding on Skorpios. Onassis fulfilled Jackie’s deep need for a man who could rescue her from feelings of helplessness. If that was a definition of love, then she loved Onassis. (UPI/Corbis/Bettmann)

Sailing aboard the Christina. For Jackie, Greece acquired some of the mythic attributes of Camelot, and in her mind Onassis became mixed up with her mythological view of John Kennedy, a man who paid with his life for defying fate. (Courtesy of Niki Goulandris)

Jackie pins a flower behind Onassis’s ear. When they were together, Jackie doted on her Greek husband, sketching his portrait, buying him modish neckties, and presenting him with a cigar cutter for his long Havanas. She filled a book with translations from Homer’s Odyssey and illustrated it in the margins with photos she took of Onassis, depicting him as