Haywire by Brooke Hayward (android based ebook reader .txt) 📕

Just as Father liked all nursery food—puréed peas, creamed chicken, mashed potatoes, ice cream—he liked being taken care of. He loved Pamela because she took wonderful care of him. English women, far more than American women, are built-in nannies, housekeepers, gardeners—with the lightest touch in the world. Pamela had a great gift: she understood the men she loved. That was where she began and ended; it was the only life she had. No man could ever leave a woman like that. Where could he possibly go?

Diana Vreeland:

“Your father has always been a great romantic. I’ve known him forever and he hasn’t changed by a hair. I’ll never forget the time I first met him: 1922. Cedarhurst, Long Island, at a party. The heat of the collegiate days of ‘Saturday night at the country club.’ I’m very interested in this type, who is standing: he doesn’t speak to any of the girls, he pays no attention to anything; the party goes on; he is obviously waiting for someone, but he doesn’t kill off time with another chap or with anybody. I remember him because he was quite pale and his eyes were very avid and very searching. He was waiting. Then, in the dark—it was in the days when we wore big evening dresses—a girl comes in and she has on a navy-blue serge suit. And she has the most beautiful face I’ve seen in my life. Where she had been, why she had come at that hour, why she wasn’t dressed, I have no idea. They said hello, they went straight onto the dance floor, and they danced the rest of the evening alone. Just the two of them. That was Lola Gibbs, who became his first wife. She was very beautiful. Very unusual. The face was small and very special. Also, the fact that she had on a blue serge suit and a shirtwaist made her look very racy, as she was in no way involved with evening clothes, nor did she give a damn. Nor did Mr. Hayward give a damn. They had their own ball, their own party, and that was all.”

It was not so very hard to believe the popular legend that Father once, unable to resolve some lovers’ quarrel with Lola on the way to Europe, jumped off the boat mid-Atlantic in despair and had to be rescued. He admitted to being not only a romantic but a man who truly preferred the company of women. Even when he most disapproved of the way I was leading my life, he still adored me, not because I was his daughter but because I was a female. I wanted him to be an archetypal father, and he couldn’t be. He knew it, too.

He also was capable, at times, of a certain kind of cruelty. But although he could and did say savage things, his intention never was to hurt. His cruelty was unthinking, childlike. He just said what he thought was obvious; quickly and only once, because the idea of saying it over again bored him. His mind would already be on something else.

Like most children, he tended to speak very directly. But in a Freud-oriented world, it was hard to take Father at face value, even harder as I’d grown older and more sophisticated. He’d say, “You’re acting like a goddamned fool,” and I’d think, He hates me. But he’d meant nothing more than what he’d said. It didn’t really bear decoding. “I want a darkroom” did not mean he had some buried passion for his mother. It meant he wanted a new toy from F. A. O. Schwarz, a grownup’s version of a huge electric train. Exactly like Bill and his cars. It also meant that he wanted it immediately and was prepared to go to any lengths or to any expense to procure it. He had a childlike need for instant gratification coupled with a childlike disregard for the impossible. Introduced to Loel Guinness’s private helicopter on a visit to Palm Beach, he coveted it on sight. So, undaunted by the fact he was in his mid-sixties, he took up helicopter flying, managed to pass the stringent physical requirements for getting his license, and converted part of the lawn at his house into a helicopter pad.

“What in God’s name do you want to be an actress for?” he used to ask me when I came up to his office for a friendly visit between rounds. “For a smart girl like you—dumb, plain dumb.”

His fingers would twirl a matchbook exasperatedly around the edge of his desk. “Awful profession. Wait a sec—don’t go away, darling, sit down. Gotta finish this phone call—” He’d slam down the receiver, punch another button. “Crummy connection—bastards cut me off.”

He had a way of leaning back in his chair that was more ominous than if he had leaned forward. “What the hell was the point of giving you an expensive education? Colossal waste of my money, not to mention your time and brains.” He’d fix me with a stare so dark with oppression and injury that I’d swear to myself I’d never come back. Then the intercom would buzz and he’d cheer up again. And my resentment would subside while I played with the new gadgets on his desk, and looked at the silver-framed photographs on the piano, and reminded myself that naturally it was much easier for him to deal with a machine than a daughter, a daughter being synonymous with emotion, and that the more he loved me the more ferocious he was apt to become; in short, that I should be flattered.

“Your brother, Bill,” he once announced to me on the telephone in the angriest voice I’d ever heard him use (Bill had just been returned to Menninger’s after his most famous “elopement” had landed him in jail), “is going to be worth just about a plugged nickel. That is, if he’s lucky. That