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

“Absolutely true,” Father would agree complacently as she rocked him back and forth. “I don’t think Mother’s ever said a cross word to me.”

“Oh, Leland, how could I? How could I? Such a darling boy—almost as good-looking as his father. I was never very stern with him—probably should have been, but I couldn’t help it. Always talked to him like a brother.” She’d squeeze him and laugh some more with such gusto we’d all join in. “Now, children, it’s time to pick some fruit for you to take home. Let’s go see what’s ripe before the birds get it all.”

My grandmother would put on her straw hat with cherries all around the brim, and take the three of us, each fighting for one of her hands, out into the dying sunlight. We’d jump up and down beneath the trees, hurling ourselves against branches that glowed with strange sweet fruit—overripe persimmons and pomegranates already beginning to crack. And while the seeds trickled down our chins, staining them like blood, she, laughing her wonderful laugh, filled our paper bags until we could hardly lift them. It seemed, for those few minutes, that whatever had been eluding us all day had fallen into our sticky outstretched hands like the fruit itself.

Father produced his first play, A Bell for Adano, in the fall of 1944. Although his interest in the theatre was longstanding, it was said that his move away from the agency toward production was a capitulation to Mother, to her dogmatic insistence that the agency business was beneath him.

Several times that year, Bridget, Bill, and I crossed the country on the Super Chief to visit Mother, who was under contract to stay with “The Turtle” until December. Whenever we returned, we wrote her hundreds of letters on every conceivable kind of stationery in handwriting that changed every week under Miss Brown’s tutelage. “Dear Mother, I love you. Bill is playing. Love, Bridget.” “Dear Mother, I am going to play the wedding march when someone is married. Love, Brooke.” “Dear Mother, I love you, I can read. I can play the piano. I have a loose tooth. Love, Bridget.” “Dear Mother, I miss you. One of my upper teeth is coming in now. It feels funny. Bridget is eating fast now, Bill is eating a little faster too. Oh I want a little kitty. Love, Brooke.” Bill sent pages of odd scribbles and Father sent notes on his blue Memo from Leland Hayward paper, in a scrawl so large there were only three or four words to a page, “Darling—Enclosed are some exhibits from your children—love letters, rare paintings + expressions of Bridget’s soul—Also my heart, my love, my every thought, my desires—Living without you is horrible. Each month I love you more and the whole world less—You’re everything there is in life to me. Without you it is pointless and silly—I wish we had been born + always lived together—I did not have lunch with Garbo today—Leland.” And in anticipation of a trip to Europe planned for the two months’ vacation she had that summer, he dispatched a message that took up three full pages of Western Union paper:

MAGGIE DARLING AM CALLING YOU LATER BUT WANTED YOU TO GET THIS FIRST. I HAVENT GOT THE ASTAIRE CONTRACTS YET AND WONT HAVE THEM BEFORE THE MORNING. I WANT TO MAKE A DEAL WITH YOU AND I GIVE YOU MY SACRED WORD OF HONOR I WILL KEEP IT ON BROOKE AND BRIDGETS HEAD OR ANYTHING YOU WANT. I WANT YOU TO LEAVE TOMORROW AFTERNOON AND COME HOME, STAY HERE AND WE CAN GO AWAY FOR THE WEEKEND ANYWHERE YOU LIKE AND LEAVE HERE MONDAY OR TUESDAY AFTERNOON FOR NEW YORK AND SAIL NEXT SATURDAY, LEAVING YOUR TRUNK AND MINE IN NEW YORK. AM BUYING THE TICKETS FOR NEXT SATURDAY NOW SO HAVE TO GO. I KNOW THIS IS UNREASONABLE AND AWFUL BUT IF I WERE TO LEAVE TOMORROW NIGHT IT WOULD BE REALLY CATASTROPHIC. I JUST CANT TELL YOU HOW AWFUL IT WOULD BE AND WHAT IT WOULD DO. I COULD LEAVE HERE BY THE END OF THE WEEK AND BY THE END OF THE WEEK I MEAN FRIDAY OR SATURDAY BUT I HATE BEING HERE ALL ALONE AND AM GOING CRAZY BEING HERE ALL ALONE. BESIDES THAT I THINK YOU OUGHT TO SEE YOUR CHILDREN AS BROOKE IS REALLY GETTING OUT OF HAND ABOUT YOU. IF YOU WANTED ME TO AND DIDNT WANT TO COME ALL THE WAY BACK HERE I WOULD BRING BROOKE ON TO NEW YORK BUT WHAT I WOULD REALLY LIKE MOST OF ALL WOULD BE TO HAVE YOU COME BACK TOMORROW AND I GIVE YOU MY SACRED WORD OF HONOR AGAIN THAT WE CAN LEAVE HERE MONDAY OR TUESDAY AFTERNOON AND SAIL NEXT SATURDAY. IF YOU WILL DO THIS FOR ME I GIVE YOU ANOTHER SACRED WORD OF HONOR, I WILL DO ANYTHING YOU ASK OF ME ANY TIME NO MATTER HOW UNREASONABLE. IF YOU WONT, I WILL BE ON IN TIME TO SAIL THIS SATURDAY BUT IT WILL BE REALLY AWFUL THE THINGS IT WILL DO. ALL MY LOVE LELAND.

(Father often wired people to warn them he was about to call or called them to warn them he was about to wire them. He liked to spend his dinner at Chasen’s or “21,” depending on which city he was in, calling or wiring people from his special table with a telephone at hand. One night he put in a call to his client Dashiell Hammett, who was three thousand miles away. “Dash,” he said tersely, “I sent you a letter this morning. You’ll get it sometime tomorrow.” “Is that all?” asked Hammett. “That’s all. It explains itself,” answered Father and went back to his lamb chops.)

Mother sent us back long letters, almost conversations. To Bridget, on her fifth birthday, she wrote, “My darling Bridget, It’s Sunday and I’m sitting all by myself in my new apartment trying