by Kathy McKeon
“Don’t be afraid, Kat, we’re not going to land in the water, we’re landing on the boat!” John reassured me. “There’s a big space on the deck.” I wasn’t convinced that would prove any less perilous, but everyone else on board seemed to be enjoying the ride and the view of the turquoise Ionian Sea sparkling beneath us, so I did my best to mimic their devil-may-care nonchalance. Sure enough, as Mr. O’s private island of Skorpios came into sight, with Christina bobbing gently offshore, the pilot lined us up over the deck of the super yacht and expertly set us down. The yacht’s staff was waiting to greet us in their crisp white uniforms. The paparazzi and international press were waiting, too, surrounding the Christina in an armada of small boats they had chartered from fishermen and yacht clubs on nearby Greek islands. Madam’s big secret was definitely out of the bag. If it surprised her at all, she didn’t show it.
Skorpios looked like a page torn out of an Old World fairy tale, with servant women in long black dresses and head scarves busy sweeping and scrubbing the stoops of low-slung little pastel dwellings that I took to be housing for the help. And the help, so swift and silent they were almost invisible, seemed able to anticipate Onassis’s every move and every wish, whether up at his hilltop villa on the island or down on the gleaming decks of the Christina. No one was ever idle. I never even spotted them taking a break or chatting with one another when Onassis was out. When I went to unpack Madam’s bags, one of the Greek girls from the Christina was already finishing the task and wanted to come unpack mine as well. I was given a private guesthouse, where the sound of the sea lapping the shore crooned me to sleep beneath linens cool and soft as a mother’s hand. I was moved the next day to private quarters on the Christina, across from John’s and Caroline’s rooms. There was a little porthole above my bed, and I could see water slapping and bubbling against the glass. I’m sleeping underwater, I realized anxiously.
Before the wedding, the kids and I killed time exploring the huge boat. It was like having a cruise ship to ourselves. There was a swimming pool, whose colorful mosaic floor would rise with the push of a button and turn into a dance floor, and a dining room with a long banquet table where the likes of Frank Sinatra, Winston Churchill, and Marilyn Monroe had been entertained.
Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier had held their wedding reception on board. Had Princess Grace lain on one of the same plush white beach towels emblazoned with a big red O that I did while lounging in the sun?
Did Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton sip cocktails at the full bar on the leathery stools—made, or so the crew claimed, from the foreskin of whale penises?
The wedding took place late Sunday afternoon. It was a gray and drizzly day, with a chilly wind off the sea, no trace of the azure skies and balmy sunshine we’d enjoyed since arriving. The Greeks were still all smiles, though, insisting that rain on a wedding day was good luck. I helped the children dress. They were being given the roles that pages usually got in Greek Orthodox ceremonies, each carrying a six-foot-tall candle in the wedding procession. Madam had selected a breathtaking ivory Valentino dress from her closet for the occasion. The skirt skimmed her knees in delicate accordion pleats, and the top was sheathed in beige lace. The dress had long sleeves and a high collar, and she completed the demure look by sweeping her hair back off her face and tying it with a satin ribbon, the way Caroline wore hers. I didn’t get to watch the ceremony—there were only forty guests in all, and they barely fit inside the tiny chapel on Skorpios—but I waited outside with the Secret Service men. A few reporters were allowed to squeeze in at the last minute to record the details, and they reported that both bride and groom wore crowns of orange blossoms on their heads, their hands joined together loosely by a long ribbon as a symbol of their union.
When the newlyweds came out of the chapel, everyone tossed rice and sugared almonds at them, the first for luck, the latter for fertility. The wedding party piled into golf carts—Caroline had to sit on her mother’s lap—and zipped down to the dock to board the Christina for dinner and the reception. Everything was lavish, but at the same time small and low-key. The international press treated it like a royal wedding, though, and whipped itself into a frenzy that never did let up after that.
By the time she returned from her honeymoon cruising the Greek isles, Jackie Kennedy had become Jackie O.
The difference was apparent right off the bat back at 1040, which was now just one of half a dozen homes Mister and Missus bounced between. Madam frequently jetted between New York and Athens. There was a grand apartment in Paris, too, but Mr. Onassis went there alone more often than not. Sometimes they would all board his private jet to meet the Christina in Puerto Rico for a weekend cruise around the Caribbean with the kids.
The Kennedy compound on the Cape and Madam’s beloved horse-country retreat in Peapack were also still in the mix, though Onassis couldn’t stand the country life and avoided the whole equestrian scene like the plague. For John and Caroline, 1040 remained home base until they were old enough for boarding school, but there were longer stretches of time now when their mother wasn’t there, and it was just us staff alone with the kids. She called to talk to them every night when she was away, checking up on their schoolwork and activities, but her absences pretty much pinned me to 1040 around the clock. She’d promised she was getting closer to hiring a new governess; we’d just have to make do until then.
One time while Madam was abroad, John fell sick with a bad case of bronchitis, and arrangements were made for a private nurse to come stay with him—a middle-aged Irishwoman who had won the family’s trust by caring for Grandma Rose after her second face-lift. Phyllis was sweet and attentive to John, telling him all about her own little boy, named Robert, and what good friends they could be. After John got better, she’d call to chat me up, wanting to know how John was doing, angling for a visit. I found her too pushy for my own liking, but she managed to convince Nancy Tuckerman to let her take John to a show with her son. They picked him up in a hired Town Car, with John’s Secret Service detail following. The next day, I asked John how he’d liked the other boy. It turned out that Robert was years younger than John—barely a kindergartner!
“He kept saying the wrong thing at the restaurant, and his mother would get mad at him,” John said. When the nurse called again to suggest she bring Robert over to play, she was politely but firmly discouraged.
Whenever Madam and Onassis alighted at 1040 for a while, the household was thrown into utter chaos. It was like a different weather front moving in, having a man in residence. Once when we were both waiting for the elevator and the doors slid open, I waited for Mr. Onassis to enter first. “After you,” he said. I was embarrassed, and felt it would be out of place. “Oh, no, no, you first!” I insisted, thinking it was polite. The doors were about to close, so Onassis heaved an exasperated sigh and just gave me a little shove. Even poor Shannon got his nose out of joint with the new world order: Onassis had given Caroline a white Pekingese puppy she named Daisy, and neither Shannon nor I could stand the nippy little thing. (John’s gift had been a red sailboat kept up at the Cape.)
The only bright spot amid all the upheaval was the entourage of extra help Onassis brought with him from the Christina’s staff, including his talented chef. Poor Annemarie had gotten herself fired the previous spring after chattering to a gossip columnist about some plan to write a cookbook with her recipes. It somehow got twisted around to rumors of the young German cook planning an insider’s juicy tell-all about Madam, and Mrs. Tuckerman brought down the ax with lightning speed. What Annemarie had said didn’t really matter in the end anyway; the fact that she had broken the sacred trust and said anything at all was what did her in. She was terribly distraught and wrote a letter of apology to Madam, but that was the end of Annemarie and the Kennedys. She landed on her feet, though, setting up a cooking school and catering business from her kitchen at home, where I dropped by to visit her once or twice on the sly. It was bad enough to lose my favorite coworker, but her replacemen
t made it all the worse: That was when Bea entered the picture. She was as dour as Annemarie was bubbly.
Mr. Onassis followed European time and custom even when in New York, which meant he never wanted dinner served until nine or ten at night. Bea whined on and on about having to stay up working so late. She was more of a cook than a chef anyway, so it felt like more of a rescue mission than an invasion when Onassis resolved the problem by bringing in some of the Christina’s kitchen crew. They made everything easier.
Onassis’s upside-down days meant sleepless nights for the rest of the household. We could hear him at two and three in the morning shouting in Greek as he ran his businesses by phone with people who were just getting to work and starting their days half a world away. I rarely saw his gray head on the pillow next to hers when I went in to awaken Madam each morning. Onassis usually slept in the guest room that adjoined her bedroom, connected by the master bathroom. Madam didn’t try to synchronize her internal clock to that of her night-owl mate. She would still be up as usual by eight to go jogging, and as the hours ticked by, she would eventually go rouse her sleeping husband to let him know she was heading out and make plans to meet up for a late lunch. Mr. Onassis would go to work at his airline’s offices in Midtown Manhattan and not get home until eight-thirty or so. When they stayed in, Madam’s evenings were now spent having cocktails with him in the living room. The works of art she used to love to regard in different rooms, or at different heights, in fresh light or paired with something new, were all left untouched where she had last hung them.
I had to wonder if she had imagined Onassis doing that with her, or if she missed the comforting routine. It looked like they were living parallel, but separate, lives.
They didn’t seem madly in love to me, but maybe I was just too new at it myself to understand.
Seamus and I had only been dating for three months, but I could feel that our relationship was heading somewhere serious already. We were at my apartment one night when he finally summoned the courage to ask me point-blank who it was I worked for, and what I did.
“Kennedys,” I answered. I pointed with a tip of my chin to the small framed photograph I kept on a little table. It was Madam and John on horseback in Ireland. A relative had sent it to me after our summer there.
“You mean Jackie Kennedy?” Seamus asked.
I nodded.
Seamus laughed.
“What’s so funny?” I said.
“I’m just glad you’re not . . . you know, a working girl!”
I had to laugh, too. I could hardly be insulted when I’d given him so much reason to jump to that conclusion: the men in sunglasses and dark suits with guns beneath their jackets who would appear from nowhere to drive me off in their black cars, this little apartment I only slept in every Thursday, all the last-minute cancellations and unexplained absences, like me telling him I had to go abroad “for my job” for three weeks without notice. (Would it have sounded any better if I had come home and said I was away on a Greek private island and luxury yacht?)
To my relief, Seamus didn’t pounce on the truth the way Pat had, digging like a little terrier crazy for a juicy bone. Instead, he backed right off the whole subject of my shadow life with Jackie O. He endeared himself to me even more when he called one Saturday to ask if he could bring his three-year-old niece on our date that day: His sister had a wedding to attend and her babysitter was a no-show. We met at a diner for ice cream, and I was even more charmed when I saw what a sweet relationship Seamus had with little Tara, entertaining her with funny stories and coloring with her as we chatted. Seamus may have been intimidating when it came to size and muscle, but he was a genuinely kind and gentle man. What a great father he’ll make someday, I thought.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. I was ready to kick him to the curb when he called one evening to cancel plans to go to one of the Irish dances, claiming he had an infected tooth and his jaw was all swollen and throbbing. Some friends invited me to join them instead, and as I was dancing with one of the guys, who should I spot across the floor dancing with another girl but Seamus McKeon himself. He saw me, too, and caught up with me as the song ended. He’d taken an aspirin or put some whiskey on the tooth and his jaw had healed right up, or so he claimed. “Don’t touch me!” I snapped, shrugging his hand off my shoulder. “The person who brought me will be the one to take me home,” I added. I was furious. Let him think there was competition, it would serve him right! He called me later to apologize again, and I realized that all I wanted was to teach him a lesson, not lose him. We both knew our single days were over, and I was sure Seamus wouldn’t be testing it again.
That summer he followed me to the Cape, renting a room in a boardinghouse each weekend. I casually introduced him as “my boyfriend, Seamus” when he dropped by the compound to say hello one day and Madam surprised us in the kitchen. He became buddies with the Secret Service guys, who liked him so much they offered him free use of an empty bed in one of their hotel rooms. Seamus was glad to move out of the boardinghouse, since the landlady was always banging on his door at night demanding to know if I was in there (I wasn’t). It was the first of many summers for Seamus at the Cape, but far from a typical one. There was a tense mood hanging over the compound, and the press was swarming outside the gates like hungry locusts. It wasn’t just Jackie O they were after, though. Teddy was in their crosshairs now, under a cloud of suspicion after the terrible death of a young woman who had once worked on Bobby’s campaign staff.
I didn’t know Mary Jo Kopechne, but she was one of the bright-eyed young people who were perpetually in the orbit of the senators, first Bobby, now Teddy. There had been a reunion party on Chappaquiddick Island off Martha’s Vineyard for the girls who had worked the phones for Bobby’s campaign, and Teddy later told investigators he had offered Mary Jo a ride to catch her ferry that night. After making a wrong turn onto an unlit road, his car had plunged off a dark, narrow bridge and sunk in a tidal channel. Teddy had freed himself from the driver’s seat, but Mary Jo drowned. Teddy didn’t report the accident until the next morning. A week later, he pleaded guilty to leaving the scene.
I hated to see the Kennedy family facing yet more tribulation. I felt sorriest for Joan, my favorite of Madam’s sisters-in-law. Joan was as nice as she was beautiful, and that was saying a lot, since she could pass for a model with her high cheekbones and wavy blond hair. Now the public that held the Kennedy brothers in such high esteem was vilifying her husband, and questioning the nature of his relationship with the poor girl who died. It seemed like the Kennedy women—Rose, Madam, Ethel, now Joan—were doomed to live out their private tragedies in the glare of the public spotlight, each in turn becoming masters at presenting a brave face when their hearts had to be breaking. What with Jack’s widow now remarried and leaving the fold, Bobby gone a year, and the last Kennedy brother now tarnished by scandal, it wasn’t a summer of bonfire galas on the beach that year for the clan. I was relieved when it was time to leave for Ireland. I was even more relieved when I got back and learned a new governess had at last been hired. Marta’s arrival would surely free up my evenings to go out with Seamus or just hang out with our friends back at my apartment.
Madam had been royally irked when she finally learned of my little bachelorette pad with Bridey a good year or more after we’d first rented it. I hadn’t planned on telling her at all, but as I was getting ready to head there one evening after my day’s work was done, I chanced to overhear Madam talking with Caroline in the living room.
“Why don’t you go ask Kath?” I heard her suggest.
I hurried to the back elevator and frantically mashed the button, hoping I could still make my escape. The door opened just as Caroline’s voice wafted down the hall, calling my name.
“I think someone wants you,” the elevator man said.
“Just go! Go!” I urged him. The doors slid shut, and I was free, for a few delicious hours, at least.
The next morning, Madam confronted me
.
“Where were you last night?” she demanded testily. “Caroline was looking for you!”
“Oh, I went out,” I answered vaguely. Arguing that I wasn’t on the clock would have been pointless; there wasn’t such a thing as “my” time in her world, just her time bestowed on me when it best suited her. I had long ago lost count of the number of weekends off that had been appropriated without apology or compensation. I could feel my resentment rising as she pressed on about my disappearance the night before.
“Well, I don’t want you just leaving without coming to me first and telling me where you’re going,” she said.
“I was going home to my apartment.”
“What do you mean, an apartment? With who?”
“With Bridey.”
“The Smiths’ girl?”
I nodded. If I was going down, so was Bridey.
“But why do you need an apartment?” Madam pressed.
“Just to have a place to relax, and have friends over,” I explained. I didn’t add that I was tired of having to stay out window-shopping and spending my money eating in diners or buying movie tickets to kill time on my day off, because I knew the second I walked back through the door at 1040, that time no longer belonged to me. Madam’s face softened.