Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot by J. Randy Taraborrelli & Beth Fowler

Author:J. Randy Taraborrelli & Beth Fowler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781607882510
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2012-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

Jackie’s Saddest Days

At the same time that Ted and Joan moved into their new rented home, Jackie purchased a fourteen-room, brick town house close to them, at 3017 N Street in Georgetown, just down the street from the temporary home offered her by the Harrimans. Jackie’s new three-story, mottled-brick house featured a spacious drawing room with a fireplace and French doors leading out to a flagstone patio. To the right of a center hall was a dining room, and behind it, the kitchen, laundry room, and servants’ quarters. A large master bedroom was on the second floor, along with a study, a large dressing room, and a small office. On the third floor were four large bedrooms and a small workroom. All floors were accessible by an elevator at the front of the house.

While Joan never had any company at her home, Jackie had more than she could handle at hers—and not anyone she had invited, either. Unfortunately, her new home had become a tourist mecca. Fans would line the street in front of it, hoping for a glimpse of the former First Lady, and would shout out “Jack-eee, Jack-eee.” Some of the braver ones would actually attempt to peer into her windows or knock on her door to ask for an autographed picture before being told to leave by Secret Service agents. “I’m a freak now,” Jackie complained to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara one day when he came calling. “They’re like locusts,” she said of the fans. “They’re everywhere. It’s getting worse. Every day, it’s getting worse.”

Night after lonely night, she would sort through Jack’s books, papers, and personal mementos, many of which she planned to send on the road in a traveling exhibit of JFK memorabilia. There was the tiny ancient statue of Herakles and the Skin of a Lion, which Jack had bought for himself while in Rome the June before his death; a book of poetry he had borrowed from Eunice and enjoyed too much to return; a handful of family snapshots that he carried with him everywhere he went—it all now had special and heart-wrenching meaning.

Like Joan, Jackie found solace only by artificial means, by taking sedatives and antidepressants such as Amytal to get through the days and sleeping pills for the nights. She drank heavily, with vodka now her liquor of choice. Later, she would say that she played the events of the assassination over and over in her mind, wondering what she could have done differently, how she could have saved Jack’s life. She developed a pattern of awakening in the middle of the night, her body torn by dry sobs and shudders. During the day she would be completely fatigued, an exhausting kind of sadness hanging over her.

One afternoon, according to Jackie’s Secret Service agents, Jackie and Joan met in Washington for one of their intimate lunches, which in the past had usually centered on Jackie counseling Joan about Ted’s philandering. This time, there was no consolation coming from Jackie. The tables were turned.

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