Paris
August 1968
Maria awoke slowly, aware of a familiar voice saying, “She’s coming round.”
She opened her eyes a slit. Bright sunlight was reflecting off white sheets and white walls, and there, with a halo of light around her head, was Bruna, along with a nurse.
“What happened . . . ?” she croaked, then stopped. Her throat felt raw and she didn’t want to strain it.
Bruna rushed to explain: “I couldn’t rouse you last night and there were open pill bottles on the floor so I rang an ambulance. You’re fine, though. They think you were just in a deep sleep.”
“Please don’t tell Ari,” Maria whispered. She would hate for him to hear of it.
“Of course not,” Bruna promised.
“I didn’t try to kill myself.” Memories filtered back of the night before, and she knew she had just wanted the pain to stop. It hadn’t been a suicide attempt; not like her mother’s.
“Mary Carter rang while I was waiting for the ambulance and I’ve rung back to tell her that you’re fine.”
Maria vaguely recalled telephoning Mary but had no idea what she had said.
“As soon as the doctor discharges you, Mary wants you to pack a case and fly to the States. She is going to take you on a road trip through the American South. An adventure, she said, to take your mind off everything.”
Maria considered this. “What if Ari is trying to find me?”
“If there is anything urgent, I will take a message.” Bruna’s tone was cold, judgmental. She had turned against him.
Maria lay back on her pillows. It sounded like a plan. At least it would be better than sitting in Avenue Georges Mandel waiting for him to call. Anything would be better than that.
ONCE SHE WAS well enough, Maria flew to Kansas City, where Mary Carter met her, and they began a crazy six-week tour in a rented Cadillac DeVille that took them to Colorado Springs, Santa Fe, Las Vegas, L.A., and San Francisco, followed by a flight to Cuernavaca in Mexico, then back to Dallas. They stayed in motels and with friends, ate in diners and fancy restaurants, shopped in dime stores and designer boutiques, and the whole time Maria talked and talked.
“All my life I’ve been undefended,” she told Mary. “My mother didn’t love me, didn’t even like me, and my father was too weak to take my side. Battista was a pimp, only interested in hiring me out for cash. The press turned against me. The audience at La Scala booed me. And now Ari has abandoned me . . . it is my fate. Some people are born to be happy but I was not one of them. I am destined always to be the tragic heroine.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. You have so much going for you,” Mary argued. “You have the greatest voice of our time, and you have dozens of good friends. Loyal friends.”
“I am not loveable. I’m too irascible, and I upset people by speaking home truths.”
“That’s not true. I love you. All your friends love you.”
Maria ignored that. “Nine years I gave him. Nine years! I neglected my career and let my voice deteriorate—all for him! I left my marriage for him. I looked after him better than any wife and put him on a pedestal, even when I knew he was being disloyal. I was always honest with him. He said he loved me so many times, Mary. All lies. I’ve got no child, no ring on my finger, nothing to show for it, nothing to look forward to. Just lonely middle age, and then death.”
A vivid memory came back of their first meeting in the Hotel Danieli, when he had said, “If I make you a promise, I will always keep it.” Had he broken promises to her? He’d said, “When the time is right, we will marry,” but presumably he would argue that the time had never been right. She should have paid more attention to the fine print before committing herself so wholeheartedly.
“You could go back to singing,” Mary suggested. “Directors would jump at the chance to have Maria Callas perform again. You could choose a repertoire that suits you. Promise you’ll think about it.”
Maria felt exhausted at the thought. She would have to practice slavishly for months to get her voice back to performance level. But it would be a way of regaining her dignity. She could show Ari what he was missing. At least she had talent; what did Mrs. Kennedy have except a famous dead husband?
EVERY MORNING, WHEREVER they were staying, Maria called Bruna in Paris to find out if Ari had phoned. Always she replied that there had been no word. Maria agonized. Where was he now? He’d told her Mrs. Kennedy was visiting only for a couple of weeks. She called Maggie and a few other friends in Paris, but no one had any news.
“Forget about him,” Mary urged.
“I’m not going to forget him in a few short weeks . . .”
“But promise me you’ll do your best, honey.”
Maria couldn’t tell her that she fantasized about Ari calling to say he couldn’t live without her and begging her to come back. It was all she thought about. A love as great as theirs couldn’t simply be over; it was unthinkable. They’d had two passionate months in the Caribbean that spring, and a romantic month on Skorpios in July. How could love evaporate so quickly?
She knew she had made a tactical error. Ari was not the type of man to whom she should have issued an ultimatum. It had driven him away, leaving the field clear for Mrs. Kennedy. If she had not lost her temper, she could have been back on Skorpios with him by the end of August. She bitterly regretted that final argument, but she had reached her limit. She couldn’t continue letting him push her aside every time Mrs. Kennedy lifted her little finger and beckoned. She had to keep some dignity.
Maria did her best to put on a brave face for Mary, to chat gaily with all the friends they visited, to discuss her operatic “comeback,” to paint on her black eyeliner, dress up, and venture into the world, but beneath the mask she was bruised and bloodied. As the days passed, then the weeks, the pain got worse, not better.
Where was he? What was he doing? Did he miss her even a fraction as much as she missed him?
IN MID-SEPTEMBER, THEY returned to Mary’s Dallas home, where Maria learned from a newspaper that Ari was in his Pierre Hotel suite in New York. That was encouraging. Surely if he and Mrs. Kennedy were a couple, he would have stayed at her apartment? It had been over six weeks since she had spoken to him, and she couldn’t tolerate the silence any longer. She had to hear his voice.
She waited until Mary was driving her daughter to school before dialing the number, feeling sick with nerves. She had to give her name before the operator would connect the call. Would he even accept it?
“Hello, Maria,” he said when he picked up. She couldn’t detect any warmth in his tone.
“How are you, Ari?”
“Fine. And you?”
“Also fine.” She told him about her road trip, and of her decision to go back to professional performance.
“Good,” he said. “I’m glad.” That was all.
“What brings you to New York?” she asked, then bit her lip, hoping he wouldn’t say that it was Mrs. Kennedy.
“Business,” he replied.
“Are you staying for long? I’m coming up for some meetings next week.” She held her breath, hoping he would suggest that they see each other.
“I will be gone by then,” he told her. “But I hope your meetings go well. Good luck with your return to the stage.”
“Good luck with your business.”
“Goodbye, Maria,” he said, and scarcely gave her a chance to say her goodbye before he hung up the phone.
She threw herself on the bed and sobbed out loud, gasping for breath. How could he be so cold? He hadn’t sounded angry. Worse than that, he had sounded like a polite acquaintance, someone she used to know long ago. And he had sounded as if he couldn’t wait to get off the phone.
When Mary returned, she took note of the swollen red eyes, the puffy face and hoarse voice and, without asking questions, enfolded Maria in a hug.
“I’m flying to Paris,” Maria told her. “You’re right: I need to start talking to directors. I need to be busy.” She quelled the frisson of panic she felt at the thought.
BACK AT AVENUE Georges Mandel, Maria helped Bruna pack all the possessions Ari had left there—his clothes, his bottle of brilliantine, the spare pairs of sunglasses, his humidor, even his old toothbrush—and dispatch them to Avenue Foch. She packed away all the photographs of him, even her favorite one of them standing hand in hand on the deck of the Christina, which she had always kept on her night table. Next she called her old voice coach and arranged an appointment. She began testing her voice, sitting at the piano to accompany herself to see what felt comfortable. She called her Paris friends to put lunch and dinner dates on the calendar, so that she could stay as busy as possible. It was an effort, and she was weighed down by sadness, but at least she knew since the phone conversation that Ari had truly gone. It didn’t make sense, but she had no choice but to accept it.
On the evening of October 16, the telephone rang and Bruna came into the salon, her tone disapproving as she said, “It’s him—Mr. Onassis.”
Maria leapt to her feet and rushed to take it in her private bathroom, waiting till Bruna had hung up the hall phone before speaking. “Hello, Ari,” she said, trying to keep her tone tranquillo.
“Maria, help me! I’m begging you!” He sounded distraught, not like himself at all.
“What’s happened?”
There was a pause. “I can’t tell you but I need you to come and save me from myself.” He generally held his drink well, but she detected a slowing of his speech and the careful diction he used when trying to disguise inebriation.
“Where are you?”
“I’m on Skorpios, but it’s all a mistake. I don’t want to be here.”
“If you don’t want to be there, then leave.” She frowned. “Get on the Christina and sail away.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “You’re the only one who can stop this happening. Please come.”
She was silent for a moment. Every fiber of her being wanted to rush to the airport and fly to him, but she mustn’t. She summoned what inner strength she could muster. “Ari, you sent me away, remember? I’m not going to come running now. If you want to see me, fly to Paris.”
“You don’t understand,” he said again. “It will be too late. Oh, hell . . .” Then he hung up abruptly and there was a whining tone on the line, followed by nothingness.
Too late for what? Maria wondered. Should she have said she would go? No, of course not. She couldn’t.
All the same, a flicker of hope was lit within her. Ari was in some kind of trouble, and he turned to her. Perhaps he would accept her invitation and travel to Paris. She had made it clear she would see him if he did. That was as far as she could go, under the circumstances.
THE FOLLOWING EVENING, Mary Carter called from Dallas. “Maria, dahlin’, I need you to sit down. I have bad news.”
“What is it?” Maria’s heart lurched as she sat in the telephone chair in the hall.
“The Boston Herald announced that Ari is going to marry Mrs. Kennedy within the week. They haven’t said where. I thought you needed to know before you hear it from someone else.”
There was a ringing sound in Maria’s ears and she clapped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out. When she could gather her thoughts to speak, she breathed, “Marry? Are you sure?”
“All the TV channels are reporting it. I double-checked before calling you. I’m so sorry, honey.”
There was a stabbing pain in her diaphragm. Maria bent double. Would he marry the Kennedy woman? After all the excuses he had made not to marry her? Yes, she believed he would.
“He is a vile, evil man,” she said. Words did not seem strong enough to express her fury. “I am glad he is out of my life. She’s welcome to him.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? I don’t want you to be alone after this news.”
Maria knew Mary was a good friend, and was grateful for her concern, but she felt an urgent need to get off the phone. “Don’t worry. I won’t do anything foolish. I have dozens of friends in Paris, and I have work plans I need to prepare for, so I have to go now. But . . . thank you for telling me.”
As soon as she hung up, she collapsed onto the floor and curled into a ball. It felt as if she had been hit hard over the head with a mallet and couldn’t catch her breath.