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

its security,” Ari said, “and she gets both from me. She can do exactly as she pleases—visit international fashion shows, and travel, and go out with friends to the theater or anyplace. And I, of course, will do exactly as I please. I never question her, and she never questions me.”

The arrangement was similar to the one that Ari had established with Ingeborg Dedichen, but it seemed to work for Jackie. When they were together, she doted on her Greek husband, sketching his portrait, buying him modish neckties to offset his somber suits, and presenting him with a cigar cutter so he would not bite off the tips of his long Havanas.

Ari gave Jackie expensive jewelry and lavished attention on her and her children. He also encouraged her to indulge her appetite for beautiful things. Once, in a published interview, he explained his tolerant attitude toward his wife’s spending.

“God knows Jackie has had her years of sorrow,” he said. “If she enjoys it, let her buy to her heart’s content…. There is nothing strange that my wife spends large sums of money. It would be abnormal if she didn’t. Think how people would react if Mrs. Onassis wore the same dresses for two years, or went to second-class beauty salons, or rode around in a family-type automobile. They would immediately say that I am on the verge of bankruptcy, and that soon my wife will be forced to work to earn a living. … If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.”

Indulged by her husband, Jackie was happier than she had been since the last few months of her marriage to Jack Kennedy.

“One day we were relaxing at the beach,” said Jackie’s friend Vivian Crespi. “We were lying in the sun … drinking wine in our bikinis. And Jackie turned to me. ‘Do you realize how lucky we are, Vivi?’ she said. To have gotten out of that world we came from. That narrow world of Newport. All that horrible anti-Semitism and bigotry. Going every day to that club with the same kinds of people. Don’t you feel sorry for them? You and I have taken such a big bite out of life.’ ”

The helicopter settled on the helipad, and a moment later a lone figure emerged from the swirling storm of dust. But instead of the short, stubby figure of her husband, Jackie saw the thin silhouette of a stylishly dressed woman.

This was Niki Goulandris, one of the richest women in all of Greece. Niki and her husband Angelos had founded the Goulandris Natural History Museum, the only private museum of its kind in the world. In addition to being a trained botanist and horticulturist, Niki was an accomplished botanical painter. She was presently engaged in an ambitious, years-long project of painting life-size pictures of the twelve different varieties of wild peony that were native to the hills and mountains of Greece.

Her interest in the study and portrayal of Greek peonies was a fitting project for a woman of Niki’s Greekness. Myth and legend surrounded such plants in ancient Greece. Magical powers were attributed to them, and it was said that their black seeds, when drunk in wine, guarded against nightmares. In many ways, Niki was a Greek replica of Jackie’s best American friend, Bunny Mellon. Both women embroidered life with flowers.

Jackie and Niki climbed into an open vehicle and began the bumpy ride down the steep side of the island. Below them they could see an excavation site swarming with workmen. Towering, full-grown trees, their roots wrapped in huge balls, were being unloaded by cranes from flatbed trucks and lowered into place.

For the most part, Ari ran Skorpios exactly as he saw fit. He hired all the help, set the menus for the meals, and made up the seating arrangements for the parties. The island was his domain. In a certain way, Jackie was as much a guest on her husband’s island as were the many friends they invited to visit them each spring and summer.

To keep Jackie occupied, however, Ari ceded sovereignty over a part of the island to her. She had his permission to landscape the grounds and decorate one of the island’s villas, the Pink House, where Maria Callas had once resided.

Ari suggested that Jackie use the Spanish architect Julio Fuentes to help her with the project. Fuentes was already drawing up plans for a gigantic villa that Ari was thinking of building on the crest of the island. Ari had in mind something like the Trianon at Versailles, or a kind of domesticated Acropolis, though Jackie vowed that she would never let him build such a house there.

Instead of Fuentes, however, Jackie summoned the American decorator Billy Baldwin, who had done residences for her and Bunny Mellon.

“This house I want to be a total surprise,” Ari told Baldwin shortly after he arrived. “I trust you and I trust Jackie, and I don’t want to know anything about it.”

But as Baldwin soon discovered, that was not the way things worked in a Greek marriage.

“Onassis had made me responsible for the island,” said Stefanos Daroussos, “and I was expected to know down to the last penny exactly what was being spent. Jackie was no exception. She could not spend Onassis’s money without his prior knowledge and approval. She needed to discuss with him all her decorating and landscaping ideas. Then I would get orders directly from Onassis, not from her. Everything came from him. Everything had to be in writing, even Jackie’s garden plan.”

Before long, Ari grew fed up with Billy Baldwin’s exorbitant fees, and Jackie had to let him go. She turned to the interior designer Renzo Mongiardino, who had done Lee’s spectacular New York apartment. But Mongiardino’s tastes were too grand for Jackie, who wanted the Pink House to be a simple cottage. In exasperation, she called Bunny Mellon for help. Bunny dispatched her own private decorator, Paul Leonard, to Skorpios to replace Mongiardino.

“I went there and helped