A new book unmasks the Kennedy family secrets. Here we share an edited extract of the book Ask Not: The Kennedys And The Women They Destroyed.
Janet couldn’t stand to hear Jackie blame herself. None of this was her fault. But it was obvious why Jackie was so distraught: Her in-laws Rose and Joe Kennedy were already making snide remarks about Jackie’s smoking having caused her recent stillbirth.
If her marriage to JFK ended, the Kennedys, too, would blame Jackie. The press would blame Jackie. Society on the whole laid the success or failure of any family – but especially one with this much lustre – on the woman.
It was Jackie’s performance as a wife (dutiful, domestic, sexual) and a mother (if she could even successfully give her husband children) that would determine the success of their marriage. Not Jack.
Janet told Jackie to get a divorce while she was still young and beautiful and could make another life for herself. That November, physically stronger but emotionally still a wreck, Jackie left for London to be with her sister Lee.
TO DIVORCE ‘JACK’ KENNEDY
Jack could spin all the stories he wanted to his adoring press. But Jackie’s silence, her decision to put three thousand miles between them, spoke louder than anything that he could say.
Jackie had left him, likely for good. In Virginia, she confided in her neighbour Walter Ridder, the famous newspaper publisher. If anyone knew how this would play out in the media, it was Walter. She asked him to go for a walk and give her advice: What would happen if she filed for divorce?
“It’s not a decision you can make on a personal basis,” Walter said. That this came as no surprise to Jackie – product of a broken home, a prominent wife considering divorce precisely because her husband had depersonalised and abandoned her and their stillborn baby – was as much a reflection of her dutiful nature as it was the times.
“If you should leave him and divorce him, there is no way he can be president,” Walter said. “And I doubt you want that mark on your life.”
“I know,” Jackie said. She couldn’t see that this was not something she was doing to Jack, but something Jack was doing to himself. Jackie had Walter’s sympathy – up to a point. “We have all known Jack is difficult in the ways of women,” Walter said.
“But a) you knew that from the beginning” – you signed up for this. Do not complain. “And b) I’m sure that there are many moments that make up for it.”
FIRST LADY – AMERICA’S HOUSEWIFE
That was true, Jackie had to admit. Despite everything, she was still deeply in love with Jack. He was the smartest, the cleverest, the best gossip, the brightest light in any room. When she had his attention there was nothing like it.
“When he’s around,” Jackie told Walter, “he’s just an enchantment.”
So think hard, Walter said. “Now you’re in the public domain, and the decision you have to make involves a great deal more than your personal relationship with Jack.”
“I know that,” Jackie said. “I know that, and that terrifies me.”
It was a terrible weight for a 28-year-old woman. The idea that her needs could cost the country a potentially great president. Couldn’t she just tolerate it, as so many women of their class did? Sexual promiscuity did not necessarily mean anything. So much of being Mrs John F Kennedy made up for that.
Didn’t it? After all, her life’s ambition, as she wrote in her boarding school yearbook, was “not to be a housewife”. Then again, what was becoming First Lady if not becoming America’s pre-eminent housewife?
This was Jackie’s conundrum: her best chance at a great life depended on maintaining a smart marriage. Faithful husbands did not necessarily make the most interesting or enthralling ones.
Edited extract from Ask Not by Maureen Callahan, out Wednesday (HarperCollins, $35.99)
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