Jackie After O by Tina Cassidy

Author:Tina Cassidy [Cassidy, Tina]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Her words for Ari would surely be a lot less poetic.

France is a country that loved her as much as she loved it. After her junior year abroad studying at the University of Grenoble and the Sorbonne, and her special summer with Lee, Jackie’s next trip to Paris happened a decade later when she returned with President Kennedy on his first state trip to the continent. For the presidential gala there, she wore a simple sheaf gown adorned with pink-and-white lace creatively made of raffia. She lit up the room. Or, as one writer said about that evening, “Truly la vie was very much en rose.”28 The next night, at a state dinner at Versailles, she wore a Givenchy gown with a cream robe, prompting Charles de Gaulle to say she belonged in a Watteau painting.29 With her command of the language and knowledge of French culture, she interpreted de Gaulle for her husband, who acknowledged his wife’s popularity there by saying, “I do not think it altogether inappropriate to introduce myself to this audience. I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.”

That was then.

Now, Jackie knew that the French, like the rest of the world, were wondering why she was not at Onassis’s side when he died.

Her plane landed in Paris at 7:00 AM. She made no statement, waited in the VIP lounge while customs handled passport formalities, and then a chauffeur drove her to 88 Avenue Foch. There, she shut herself in from the media horde and let most of the day pass. At 5:15 she emerged, accompanied by Onassis’s private nurse, Monique Clouthier, an imposing bodyguard, and her sisters-in-law Artemis and Kalliroi.30 The group left for American Hospital, where her husband’s body was laid out on a bier in a hospital chapel, surrounded by white flowers.

Christina had been at her father’s side since Friday and into Saturday, when he died. But she was not at the hospital when Jackie arrived Sunday evening. The two were not friendly, not from the very beginning. In fact, Christina and her brother had cried during the reception on the yacht after their father’s wedding to Jackie, the siblings clinging to the childish fantasy that their divorced parents would reunite. But Christina was not just avoiding her stepmother at the hospital. She was devastated. Indeed her life was a Greek tragedy. In 1946, Onassis had married Athina (Tina) Livanos, the teenage daughter of shipping magnate Stavros Livanos—Onassis’s industrial rival. Tina divorced him in 1960 after catching him having sex with Callas in the saloon of the yacht. Tina then married Stavros Niarchos—another shipping rival—whose previous wife, Eugenia, was Tina’s sister. Eugenia had recently died of a suspicious overdose. With her mother married to her uncle, Christina—who battled weight problems, dressed sloppily, and was woefully insecure about her relationships and appearance—now had to endure an international fashion icon for a stepmother, leaving the young woman to feel even worse about herself (despite constant dieting and a nose job).

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