Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (34 page)

up this time—there was something wrong, she knew. She was experiencing pains. She dug her nails into the sand and screamed for help. Within seconds, she was sur- rounded by Secret Service agents, who helped her back to her home, and into bed.

When the pains did not subside, Jackie called her physi- cian, who, fortunately, was vacationing nearby. Dr. John Walsh, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Georgetown University Medical School, arrived immedi- ately. With the tragedy of her earlier unsuccessful pregnan- cies weighing heavily on her mind, Jackie was nearly hysterical with fear and dread. A helicopter was summoned, and she was taken to the military hospital at Otis Air Force Base, where she would give birth by cesarean—which had been anticipated all along, as all of her deliveries had been made in this fashion—to a four-pound ten-ounce baby boy. The child was so frail, however, it was decided that he be immediately baptized. He was given the name Patrick Bou- vier Kennedy in honor of Jack’s grandfather and Jackie’s dad, Black Jack Bouvier. By the time Jack arrived, Patrick had been placed in an incubator. This time no one had to tell him that he should be by her side; their relationship had deepened at least that much in the years since Arabella’s death.

Sadly, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy died on August 9 from hyaline membrane disease, a lung ailment common to pre- mature babies. The President was hit hard by his son’s death; many—including Jackie—said they had never before seen him cry. “That was the one time I saw him where he was genuinely cut to the bone,” recalls Secret Service agent Larry Newman. “When that boy died, it almost killed him, too.”

The First Lady was so overcome with grief that she sealed herself off in her makeshift suite at the military hospital while the press swarmed outside her window. Of course, Jackie received many letters of condolence, but probably none more perplexing—and filled with double meaning— than the one from Jack’s mistress, Mary Meyer. According to Secret Service visitation logs, Jack had been with Mary Meyer at the White House just two evenings before Patrick was born.

“Dear Jackie,” Mary wrote. “Anything I write seems too little—but nothing that I feel seems too much. I am so, so, so very sorry.”*

Baby Patrick was the first Kennedy to be buried in the large family plot at Holyhood Cemetery, in Brookline, re- cently purchased by Joseph Kennedy. As the little white cas- ket was being lowered into the ground, Jack, overwhelmed with grief, put his hand on the coffin as if in a final farewell. After Patrick’s funeral, it was Joan who provided the most comfort to Jack during the time he secluded himself at

home.

“She was a rock through this for him,” said Joan Braden. “It was surprising to some. Joan was usually the one you needed to rally around in times of crisis. But for this one, she was there for Jack. I think she wanted to do it for Jackie, too. She felt terrible for what the two of them were going through. In so many ways, Joan was—is—probably the most sensitive person in the family. It’s easy to say someone

*Mary Meyer would meet an unfortuante demise on October 12, 1964, when she was murdered while walking along the Chesa- peake and Ohio Canal towpath in Georgetown. A twenty-three- year-old laborer was arrested, tried, and acquitted. The case has never been solved.

would do anything for another person, but with Joan Kennedy, it was always the truth.”

Former Kennedy aide Dave Powers who stayed with Jack at Squaw Island recalled, “The first night [after the funeral], she just sat with him for a long, long time and just talked. There was none of the orthodoxy you might expect from Ethel. No talk about how Patrick was in heaven and happy, but rather just warm, human, simple talk.”

Jack and Jackie’s Squaw Island home was sparsely and simply furnished with comfortable, upholstered chairs and thick, woven rugs. It was large and airy, and spotlessly clean. On the walls were watercolored seascapes that had been painted by Jackie. As Joan and Jack stood before one of the paintings, Powers heard Joan say, “There’s no ex- plaining what happened. I’m not like Ethel. I don’t know that all things happen for a reason. I just know that things happen.”

“That they do,” Jack said, his blue eyes tearing up.

“And when they happen,” Joan continued, “we just have to go on, somehow, and know that we have the strength to carry on. It’s in every one of us, Jack. That strength. It’s our birthright.”

“Do you have that strength, Joansie?” Jack asked, using Ted’s nickname for her. “Can you get through this life God has given us?”

Rather than answer the question, Joan embraced the Pres- ident.

“I know one thing, Jack.
You
do,” she said as she held him. “Of all people, you do.”

“The President listened and was deeply moved,” said Dave Powers. “She left at eleven that night and the President walked with her out to the driveway. ‘You know,’ he told me

when he returned to the house, ‘she’s a great girl.’ She was there the next night and the next, and the President was grateful. She did a great deal for him.”

It would seem, based on the remembrances of others close to the President, that Jack developed a new respect for his sister-in-law and for her unique brand of simple, common, and good sense. She wasn’t afraid to address difficult sub- jects, which was unusual in the emotionally closed-off Kennedy family and was behavior worthy of admiration, and she was even insightful in her clear-eyed assessment of emotional occurrences.

Thirty-four-year-old Jackie Kennedy’s mourning after the death of her infant was a private misery, and one the rest of the Kennedys were ill-equipped to handle. It’s never easy for a family to address the tragic death of any newborn. For the Kennedys, who rarely communicated their true feelings to one another, it was nearly impossible to come to terms openly with Patrick’s death. Jackie’s seeming emotional de- tachment—“I don’t really want to discuss it, thank you”— made some feel that she was “doing just fine under the circumstances.” She wasn’t. This was a darker time for her than most people knew.

For his part, Jack thought he was helping his wife by spar- ing her the specific details of Patrick’s illness prior to the baby’s death. “He did so much to protect Mrs. Kennedy at that time,” recalls Pam Turnure, Jackie’s secretary. “I didn’t realize until after Mrs. Kennedy had come home that she hadn’t understood how serious the boy was until he died. But he really protected her from all of this. He had a double concern—for her and for the child.”

During the grieving process, Jack, at a loss, did the best

he could. When Jackie mentioned that she hadn’t heard from Adlai Stevenson, of whom she was very fond, Jack called Arthur Schlesinger to ask him to call Stevenson and have him drop her a note of condolence, “because I think it’ll make her feel a little better.”

Of course, Jack also had his insensitive moments. “Jackie,” he told her on one blue day, according to what Janet Auchincloss, Jackie’s mother, once said, “we must not create an atmosphere of sadness in the White House because this would not be good for anyone—not for the country, and not for the work we have to do.” One might imagine that those words did little to lift Jackie’s spirits, though she would never say one way or the other. Jackie’s well-meaning mother was also at a loss as to how to deal with the matter. “It’ll get better as time goes on,” was all that she could offer her daughter.

While pregnant, Jackie had decorated a nursery in the White House for Patrick with a white crib, rug, and curtains. The walls were done in blue, as if she had been expecting a boy. Now she was back at the White House, but without a baby. As days turned into weeks, Jackie fell into a disturbing melancholy, staring off into space, crying unexpectedly, and losing her appetite. No one knew what to say to her to con- sole her, nor did they know how to handle her sudden crying jags and her many questions about her own responsibility in Patrick’s death. Perhaps if she hadn’t traveled so much in the early months of her pregnancy, if she had taken better care of herself, the baby would have lived. Hospital psy- chologists who had been recommended by Jackie’s doctor were not able to convince her to discuss her loss openly with them, nor could the priest that the family had asked to visit her on a regular basis. Feeling that it was the proper course

of action to take, everyone in the family avoided the topic of Patrick’s death altogether and tried to act as if it hadn’t oc- curred.

It would be Joan, who had suffered her own miscarriage a month earlier, who would prove to be the most sensible when it came to understanding Jackie’s torment about Patrick.

“I think it hurts her so much more when we’re silent about it, acting as if it hadn’t happened,” Joan said of her sister-in- law at a luncheon with Pat, Eunice, and Ethel. According to what Ethel later explained to her friend Joan Braden, the women were sitting in Ethel’s kitchen in Hickory Hill eating clam chowder, which she always served from a large tureen her mother had given her, a family heirloom of sorts. Ethel had never had a miscarriage or stillbirth, but her last preg- nancy had been troubled.

Ethel looked at Joan with a bewildered expression. “I just can’t believe that’s true,” she said, “that it hurts her for us to be quiet.” She added that if she had suffered such a tragedy, she would want to forget it had ever occurred and certainly wouldn’t want anyone reminding her of it. “I say we should just ask her how she’s doing, but never bring up what hap- pened,” Ethel suggested. “Besides,” she concluded, “Jackie doesn’t
want
to talk about it.”

“Then we should force her to,” insisted Joan. “It’s for her own good. A grieving mother needs to know that she’s not the only one missing her child.”

“I don’t know,” Ethel relented. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Jack should talk to her. But every time he starts, he gets nervous and goes and changes his shirt.” (Kennedy, al- ways conscious of perspiration, would sometimes change his shirt four times a day.)

Eunice and Pat disagreed. The topic of Patrick’s death should definitely be
verboten,
they insisted, regardless of Joan’s opinion and Ethel’s wavering on it.

“Nobody wanted to bring it up, ever,” said Rose Kennedy’s secretary, Barbara Gibson. “Back in those days, you really didn’t know how to handle such a thing.”

Because of her own concerns about motherhood, Joan was the most sensitive to Jackie’s emotional distress after the loss of Patrick. “A child is the most precious thing there is,” she had said. However, because her sisters-in-law so adamantly opposed speaking with Jackie about her sadness, Joan unfortunately lost confidence in her instincts. In the end, faced with so much opposition, she decided not to talk to Jackie about her great loss.

Lee Radziwill Invites Jackie-in-Mourning

L
ee Radziwill, Jackie’s sister, was also unsure about how to deal with Jackie during this difficult period. Though the two often confided in one another, Jackie was not forthcoming about her sadness over Patrick’s death. Besides her emo- tional torment, Jackie was also in great physical pain at this time. It had been her fourth cesarean, and she was not re- covering as quickly as her physician, Dr. John Walsh, had hoped. She was told to curtail all of her social activities for four months. This left Jackie, who was ordinarily a busy woman, completely frustrated. With little to do since Jack’s

sister, Eunice, had stepped in and taken over many of her en- gagements, at the end of two months Jackie was ready to scream.

“When all else fails,” Lee had said, “try getting away from it all.” Just as she had when Jackie was upset about “The Monroe Matter,” Lee decided that the best remedy for Jackie’s distress would be a vacation. In the fall of 1963, Lee suggested that Jackie take a cruise with her aboard the yacht of wealthy industrialist Aristotle Onassis.

Jackie first met Onassis at a dinner party in Georgetown in the 1950s, when Jack was a senator. Soon after, during a visit to Rose and Joe’s vacation spot in the south of France, Jack and Jackie had visited Onassis on his yacht, the
Christina,
docked at Monte Carlo. While Jack was with Winston Churchill, Onassis took Jackie on a tour of his os- tentatious cruise liner, a converted 2,200-ton Canadian frigate that cost him a million dollars a year to operate. After that, whenever Aristotle Onassis and his wife, Tina, sailed to the States, they had always made it a point to dine with the young Kennedys.

Jack and Jackie thought Onassis one of the greatest story- tellers they’d ever known. He loved telling Greek myths, fa- bles, and other wild stories—he said that he believed in mermaids, for instance, and swore that a “stuffed mermaid” could be found in a secret location on the Suez Canal. He had held them both captive with tales about his rags-to- riches life, how he had amassed his fortune, and how he loved to spend it. (Much of it was fiction, as Jackie would later learn, but Onassis’s appeal was in his ability as a story- teller, not in his accuracy for detail.) His personal attorney of twenty years, Stelio Popademitrio, recalls of his client Onassis, “He was a bit larger—no, actually
substantially