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

“Can my sister and I share your room tonight?” he asked Captain Costa Anastassiadis.

Costa was struck by the look of utter desolation on Alexander’s face.

“I said yes,” he recalled thirty years later. “But I was really helpless. Alexander and Christina felt pushed out.”

Several hundred newsmen descended on Skorpios for the wedding. To control this ravenous horde, Jackie distributed a statement to the press.

We wish our wedding to be a private matter in the little chapel among the cypresses of Skorpios with only members of the family present, five of them little children. If you will give us those moments, we will so gladly give you all cooperation possible for you to take the photographs you need.

Ari hired his own small navy of patrol boats to keep away the press. In addition, the real Greek navy was called into service; it set up a blockade 1,100 yards from the island. Needless to say, none of this had the desired effect. As press helicopters swooped down over Skorpios, a flotilla of fishing boats carrying newsmen attempted an invasion on the beach. They were beaten back by more than two hundred security guards hired expressly for that purpose.

A little after five in the afternoon, Archimandrite Polykarpos Athanassiou, resplendent in a gold brocade robe, began the service in the chapel of Panayitsa, or the Little Virgin. Jackie stood a good three inches taller than the groom, noted Mario Modiano, the Athens correspondent of The Times of London, who was one of four newsmen allowed to witness the ceremony.

“Jackie looked drawn and concerned,” he reported. “She wore a long-sleeved, two-piece ivory chiffon lace dress with pleated skirt. Her hair was secured with an ivory ribbon. The groom looked slightly off-key in a blue suit, white shirt, and white tie—the sort of thing Onassis loved to wear. Caroline and John flanked the couple, holding ceremonial candles, dazzled and serious. Jackie’s glance kept turning anxiously toward Caroline. The Onassis children seemed grim.”

Artemis had been given the honor of being the koum-bara, or sponsor, of the marriage. She placed delicate leather wreaths shaped as branches with lemon buds on the heads of the bride and groom. The wreaths were connected with a white ribbon, and as the priest chanted, Artemis crossed them three times. Rings were exchanged three times. Then Jackie and Ari each kissed a silver-bound goblet and drank the red wine. The priest translated the service into English for Jackie’s benefit:

“The servant of God, Jacqueline and I, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

Then the priest took Jackie’s hand and Ari’s hand, and led the couple around the altar in the concluding ritual, which was called Esiah’s Dance. Jackie looked stiff and uncomfortable, like an adult trying to imitate the latest teenage dance craze. When the dance was over, the priest declared them husband and wife. There was no kiss to mark the end of the ceremony. Not even a smile, or a clasping of hands.

Instead, Jackie took Caroline’s hand, and mother and daughter emerged from the chapel into a steady autumn drizzle. A sullen Secret Service man with a PT-109 tie clip, commemorating JFK’s World War Two heroism, fell into step beside them. The invited guests showered the newlyweds with flower petals as they got into an open-sided mini jeep. Jackie got into the front seat, put Caroline on her lap, and held her tightly. Her sister Lee and Lee’s own daughter sat in the back with John, who had never smiled once during the entire ceremony. Ari took the wheel, and drove toward the Christina in the harbor one mile away.

A SPECIAL SURPRISE

That evening, a sumptuous multicourse Greek wedding feast was prepared by the chefs of the Christina and served on board the yacht to the guests, including the Kennedy family, some close friends, and a few directors of Olympic Airways. Despite the music and the romantic setting, the atmosphere was surprisingly subdued, and everyone was aware of the nervous expressions on the faces of the bride and groom.

Arrangements had been made for Mr. and Mrs. Onassis to fly to New York on an Olympic Airways flight for their honeymoon. All the seats in the first-class cabin had been removed, and replaced by a large, comfortable bed. The flying bridal suite was separated from the rest of the cabin by specially designed curtains, and the nuptial bed was covered with expensive silk sheets.

Shortly after takeoff, a steward separated the curtains to the honeymoon suite by mistake, and was greeted by the sight of two naked bodies in the throes of energetic and creative lovemaking. When he realized exactly what he was viewing, he pushed the curtains back together and staggered out of the first-class section.

“I could not believe what I was seeing,” he told a friend in Greece when he called from New York the next day. “But the fact that the two of them never even knew I was standing there, openmouthed, dumbfounded, and staring at them, amazed me even more.”

“WOULD

YOU

SLEEP WITH ONASSIS?”

Joan Rivers was headlining in Las Vegas at the time, and like countless comedians, she worked material about the Onassis wedding into her act.

“Come on, be honest, would you sleep with Onassis?” she asked the women in her audience. “Do you believe she does? Well, she has to do something. I mean, you can’t stay in Bergdorf ’s shopping all day.”

The reaction around the world was just as unflattering to Jackie.

JACKIE, HOW COULD YOU? asked Stockholm’s Expressen.

French political commentator Andre Fontaine wrote in Le Monde: “Jackie, whose staunch courage during John’s funeral made such an impression, now chooses to shock by marrying a man who could be her father and whose career contradicts—rather strongly, to say the least—the liberal spirit that animated President Kennedy.”

If Jackie was offended by these comments, Ari was more philosophical.

“She’s got to learn to reconcile herself to being Mrs. Aristotle Onassis,” he