(5 of 9)
Her husband sometimes erupted at the bills. Nixonites accused her of spending $100,000 on her wardrobe. She snapped back in a New York Times interview, "I couldn't spend that much unless I wore sable underwear." But Jackie was really not just a clotheshorse. She applied the same sense of style to herself as she did to the White House. Says Richard Martin, associate curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute: "Her style was not vanity but a way of living, not simply adorning herself but expressing her vision of beauty in the world." The museum's collections contain couture clothing from Onassis, all of it donated anonymously.
In 1963 a third child, Patrick, was born to the Kennedys, but he lived only two days. His father went down to the hospital boiler room and wept. But they were a real family now. After the assassination, Jackie recalled to Theodore White the nights when Jack would turn on the phonograph in their bedroom and play the title song from the Broadway hit Camelot. Perhaps he saw his presidency as a chimera, "that brief shining moment" that must not be forgot. But the song was instead a premonition of tragedy.
The Kennedys went to Dallas on a political fence-mending trip in a state the Democrats had barely won in 1960. The shots rang out as they endured a hot motorcade trip across town. Afterward many people tried to persuade Jackie to change her clothes, but she insisted on wearing the stained pink suit. "I want them to see what they have done," she said. She also refused to take tranquilizers, fearing they would blunt her reactions and interfere with her planning -- because plan the funeral she did. The riderless horse, the eternal flame, the wailing Irish bagpipe -- all were her idea. When the hearse rumbled past, she asked little John to salute his father. The nation saw her then as a mother, first and foremost.
The next day she wrote a long letter in her own hand to the new President, thanking him for walking along with the family "behind Jack," for his kindness to her and even for tolerating the shouts of the children playing in the White House nursery school. It is signed, "Respectfully, Jackie." It is a letter that commands infinite respect.
She moved to a house in Georgetown, but life there proved impossible. In that quaint, pricey village, houses are close to the street, and tour buses were soon belching smoke in her windows. She then sought out the relative anonymity and familiarity of New York City. She bought an apartment on upper Fifth Avenue across from Central Park. As a child, living two blocks away on Park Avenue, she played in the park. She emerged from her doorman-protected life to help Bobby Kennedy out on his presidential run. His assassination stunned and depressed her. Frank Mankiewicz, Bobby's press secretary, recalls meeting her the night he was killed. "Jackie told me that some people are acquainted with death and some are not," Mankiewicz says. Talking of women she had met two months before at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., she said, "Those women know a lot about death. They see it all around them. Now, Frank, so do we. And if it weren't for the children, we'd welcome it."