The True Story of Jackie Kennedy and a Very Illegal Garden
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Journalist Pete Hamill sat on the porch behind Jackie’s house on Irving Avenue, his hand moving swiftly across a sketch pad as he sat quietly. The porch was almost always empty, but when Hamill was in town, he liked to sit out there and draw or paint, his curly hair thick with humidity, his expression lost in thought. Hamill had dated actress Shirley MacLaine and his love life was now of particular interest to the New York tabloids where he bounced around as a columnist. But when he was visiting Jackie on the Cape, he kept a low profile, sitting with his sketch pad or striking up conversations with one of the kids’ friends. He particularly liked debating the cinematic influences of Star Wars. “At the heart of it, it’s really a cowboys and Indians movie,” he told John’s friend Billy Noonan, a serious look on his face.
Jackie’s social circle in Hyannis Port was similar to the one she had in New York. She liked inviting her friends or whoever she was dating after Aristotle Onassis’s death in 1975 to the Cape house for long summer weekends. While kids flowed in and out of Ethel’s house— “Big E,” they called her—grabbing an ice cream from the cooler, a Coke from the soda machine, or a handful of candy from the candy jars, Jackie extended invitations to family members one by one. The kids looked forward to their night at Aunt Jackie’s, away from the hubbub. Jackie’s antique tiger maple dining room table was like a ski slope, long and narrow. Each place setting had its own salt and pepper shakers and a big goblet of water. The chairs were tiny—except for Jackie’s at the head. She had a bell next to her seat that she could step on, calling the waitstaff to retrieve something from the pantry or refresh a guest’s drink.
While the kids were out, Jackie sat on the deck, sunning herself as she worked through a pile of manuscripts—Jackie started working as an editor at Viking in 1975—or she went up to the widow’s walk on top of the house, where she sunbathed nude. She loved painting in the sunroom, feet bare, hair pulled back, lost in her own mind for hours. If the kids were away for the evening, she had her dinner served on a tray, painting until the sun drained from the room. Jackie’s house was peaceful, quiet. It was where the other women in the family came for a moment of calm. Joan came over to play the piano, which was always out of tune because nobody else touched it. Rose came over to invite Jackie for walks. Sometimes, her friend Bunny Mellon came over from Osterville, always with a bundle of bright sunflowers in her arms to give Jackie as a gift. It was Mellon who helped Jackie plan her cutting garden behind the house, telling her what to plant and where. Jackie loved the delicate lilies of the valley, which she had placed on her breakfast tray each morning because she liked to wake up to their sweet scent.
One afternoon, [Jackie's assistant Kathy] McKeon, who happened to be looking out the window, noticed the teenaged Kennedy cousins rummaging through Jackie’s garden. She didn’t think much of it. The next day, though, they were there again. She went out to see what they were pointing at. She bent down to examine.
Why is there a big bunch of weeds here? she thought to herself. This flower bed is always so well taken care of.
Then she realized what she was looking at. She ran over to find Jack Dempsey, the police chief who was by now retired but often hanging out in the Secret Service trailer. She brought him over to take a look.
“It’s marijuana,” Dempsey said. “How did it get here, do you know?”
“Well,” McKeon replied, “I don’t think the gardeners planted it.”
“I have to tell Mrs. Kennedy,” Dempsey said as he turned to go into the house. McKeon took a shortcut to beat him to the porch, where Jackie was sitting.
Out of breath, she blurted out, “Madam, we just found marijuana growing in the flower patch!”
Jackie stared at McKeon, stunned. “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “Oh my God, this can’t get out. How are we going to fix this?”
McKeon walked with her into the kitchen, where Dempsey was waiting.
“How do we fix this?” Jackie asked him.
“Just ignore it,” Dempsey told her. “We’ll pull it.”
“Good,” Jackie said, relieved. “I don’t want this to get out.”
He and the Secret Service men ripped the plants up that afternoon. Caroline and John were too young to have had anything to do with it, and nobody told Rose, Ethel, or the other mothers. “I wasn’t one of those tattletales, I wouldn’t go and tell on them, no, no,” McKeon said.
McKeon, a young Irish woman who’d been with the family since right after Jack’s death, hurried to finish up all her duties for Jackie before the sun set, hoping to spend time with her friends who worked at the other houses on the compound, or to go out with her new boyfriend. But after Jackie put the kids to bed, when the house was dark and quiet, she always seemed to find another chore for McKeon. Could she just hang this one last picture? Could she just rearrange these things in the closet before she left? It seemed that those early evening hours, when she would have been unwinding from the day with her husband, were the hardest for Jackie. She wanted to put off being alone.
White House by the Sea: A Century of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port
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Jackie’s favorite thing in that house was an oil painting she’d done for Jack in July 1960—it hung at the end of the stairs, and it was of the Hyannis Port pier all done up with congratulation signs and fireworks for Jack after he won the nomination for president. When Jackie moved from Hyannis Port to the house she had built on Martha’s Vineyard in 1979, she left that painting, along with everything else. She walked out of the house on Irving Avenue, and she didn’t take a thing with her.
Excerpted from White House by the Sea by Kate Storey. Copyright © 2023 by Kate Storey. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio read by Kathe Mazur, from the audiobook White House by the Sea by Kate Storey.
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