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

measure—while Father tried in vain to get them off. They threw darts, rode bumper cars, watched fireworks, paid a visit to every booth and rode every ride until two in the morning, when they went home and Johnny passed out on the sofa exhausted. He awoke at dawn, boiling hot and in a state of suffocation, because the cat had lovingly wrapped itself around his neck and gone to sleep, too; when he disentangled himself from its steaming fur and leaned over to see what time it was, he found a note pinned on his chest, which said, “Dear Johnny, when you wake up you will be a godfather. Congratulations.” He ran frantically around the house but it was empty. Nobody had been able to rouse him from his stupor for the big event, so he drove down to the hospital and consoled himself by taking pictures of my bare behind, which was identified by a little piece of tape with my name on it.

Johnny was a wonderful photographer. He’d taken up flying and photography at the same time, and used to say that he learned photography by taking pictures of Bridget, Bill, and me. From the very beginning, he practiced the theory that if we never saw him without his camera we would never be self-conscious if he pointed it at us, and he was right. He was always hanging around, ready to document every move we made, every step we took, and we allowed him to study us in depth, assuming, naturally, that he was one of us.

On weekends, Jimmy and Johnny were permanent residents. Jimmy had met Mother in 1930 while he was majoring in architecture at Princeton and she was touring in the road company of Strictly Dishonorable. He had no intention of becoming an actor; in fact, he obtained a scholarship to go back to Princeton for his master’s degree in architecture. Josh Logan, who was a class ahead, had persuaded him to join the Triangle, because he could sing and play the accordion. Josh also brought him into the University Players, not as an actor but as an accordion player in the tearoom that adjoined the theatre in Falmouth. He lasted one night in the tearoom, because it was unanimously decided that his music spoiled people’s appetites; then he was given various jobs—property man, some small parts—and finally was hired by Arthur Beckhart, New York producer, to play the chauffeur in Goodbye Again, a part that lasted two minutes in the first act and that put an end to Jimmy’s architectural career.

By 1936, he was a contract player at Metro, working all the time but getting only small parts in B movies. At Mother’s suggestion, Universal tested him for the leading man in Next Time We Love, a movie in which she was about to star, and he got the part. He played a newspaper reporter and she played a young actress who gave up her career to marry him. They were both particularly fond of the scene in which Jimmy had to go away on some assignment, leaving his young wife and baby behind. Jimmy felt that the situation called for a tear or two on his part, and had no difficulty filling his eyes for the first take, but the baby threw something at him and they had to cut. The second take was likewise ruined by the baby, and the third and fourth. By the fifth take, Jummy was unable to summon up any more tears. He didn’t know about glycerin, which is often used in movies to stimulate tears, and, in any case, would probably have been too embarrassed to ask for it, so he went behind the scenery, lit a cigarette, and held it to his eyes in the hope that the smoke would make them tear up. This experiment transformed his eyes into two raw blobs, and he almost threatened to shoot the child. Mother was delighted, particularly by the cigarette.

After he was drafted at the beginning of the war, Jimmy would come back to Evanston Street on leave, most of which he’d spend on our badminton court. During his first leave, I was in bed with a cold, lying grandly in the fourposter (canopied in green checks) of my new room in The Barn. Unexpectedly he slipped upstairs to pay me a visit during my nap time, when I was supposed to be asleep but was instead sneaking a forbidden look at some Beatrix Potter books, which tumbled loudly to the floor when I caught sight of Jimmy in uniform. He rolled me up in my bedspread like a sausage in wrapping paper, while I howled with laughter, and then perched me on his bony knee to tell me a story.

When Johnny Swope finally got married, in 1943, the ceremony took place at our house. He’d fallen in love with Dorothy McGuire, a young actress who had just starred in the stage and movie productions of Claudia. Johnny had swept her up romantically to Santa Barbara to be married at the historic old mission there, but to his chagrin was turned away because he was not a Catholic. Father suggested our house and that was that. Johnny had wisely avoided bringing Dorothy around before; past experience had taught him that Mother had a subtle way of overwhelming the girls whom he and Jimmy might bring over.

For Bridget and me, the wedding was the most exciting thing that ever happened at 12928. Bill was two years old and, as far as we were concerned, too young to appreciate the importance of the occasion. All the same, we allowed him to help us with our wedding present, a painting that depicted Dorothy in a red dress holding purple flowers, surrounded by the rays of the sun, while Johnny stood apart (separated from her by the three watery figures of us children) in a brown suit and porcine bowler stuck with a red feather; over all floated the message “DEAR