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

the intricate names of hundreds of medicines prescribed for one ailment or another but also for matching them up to the correct symptoms—almost before they appeared—of the correct person. In addition, her poetry revealed a newspaper reporter’s relish for disaster:

Alas and Alack! Alas for poor Brooke

She was washing the garage

And got caught on a hook!

Alas and Alack! Alas for poor Brie

She fell in the gutter

And hurt her poor knee!

Alas and Alack! Alas for poor Bill

He was gardening the garden

And poisoned a pill!

Alas and Alack! Alas for poor Mags

She was under the house

And turned into rags!

Alas and Alack! Alas for poor Land [Leland]

He was down at the beach

And got lost in the sand!

Alas and Alack! Alas for poor Em

She was making a dress

And ripped up the hem!

Alas and Alack! Alas for poor Edwin [Emily’s husband]

He was inside the chest

And ate an Ephedrine!

Bridget and I shared a room, and more than once, awakened by one of my nocturnal coughing attacks, she would turn on the light, hop briskly onto my bed, and, with clinical composure, put her ear on my chest to assess the condition of my bronchia. If she diagnosed my condition as serious enough—that is, if I managed to convince her that each rasping breath was my last—she would vanish, phantomlike, into the cavernous darkness of the hall to rouse Emily. The sight of Emily was such a comfort that I would burst into tears of gratitude and self-pity, thereby worsening my condition. “Em,” Bridget would whisper matter-of-factly, “her wheeze is getting worser and worser, and something tells me she’s probably going to wheeze to death this time. Just put your head on her chest and listen. I think you’d better call Mother and Father and Dr. McKenzie right this minute. What she needs is a shot of Adrenalin.”

While waiting for Dr. McKenzie to arrive, Emily would prop me up with pillows, murmuring, “Shush, shush, there’s nothing to be afraid of; what a brave girl,” Bridget would pitter-patter around the bed with a bottle of Tedral, Mother would rush in tying her bathrobe and exclaiming, “What is this nonsense? Of course you’re not going to die, darling, I promise you,” and if Father was around, he would sit at the foot of my bed and reassuringly intone his favorite passage from Bemelman’s Madeline: “In the middle of one night, Miss Clavel turned on the light and said, ‘Something is not right!’ And, afraid of a disaster, Miss Clavel ran fast and faster, and she said, ‘Please, children, do—tell me what is troubling you?’ And all the little girls cried, ‘Boohoo, we want to have our appendix out, too!’ ‘Good night, little girls, thank the Lord you are well! And now go to sleep!’ said Miss Clavel. And she turned out the light—and closed the door—and that’s all there is—there isn’t any more.”

Mother refused to be fazed by any of these crises. Once she had determined a course of action, she hacked her way through any opposition like a well-tempered steel blade; she had made up her mind about living on the farm, and that was that. She had made up her mind about our allergies, too: they were troublesome but temporary. We would outgrow them. Nature would take care of itself. All the cells in our bodies were being sloughed off like dead skin every seven years, replacing themselves with nice fresh ones (“Oh, no! Another seven years of this?”), and until then, the more exposed we were to whatever it was that triggered the allergies, the more resistance our immunological systems would build up. However impatient this theory made us, we clung to it like drowning rats, and it was, in any case, impossible to disbelieve anything Mother told us, because she was so convincing. She didn’t seem to talk, like other people, but to communicate information physically, as if she were leaning into whatever she was saying, not only with her voice—which even in a whisper crackled with electricity—but her entire body. “Absolutely! Positively!” The words hummed with the intensity of powerful incantations.

As totally as she projected the absolute essence of her own feelings, she absorbed totally—was penetrated by—the feelings of whoever was around her. It was a rare ability, but she never analyzed it; for her it was as simple and necessary, as natural, as breathing in and out. (“Come on, Brie, it’s so easy—just take a deep breath in,” she would say, patiently teaching Bridget, who was afraid of the water, how to swim. “Then blow it out. See the bubbles? In and out, that’s right; do it in rhythm, in and out”) As far as we, her children, were concerned, whatever we felt she felt it more. When we were sick and felt terrible, she felt worse. In order to reverse that process step by step before it got out of hand, she decided—when Mother made a decision, she would, mentally, plant her feet wide apart and clench her fists—first, above all else, not to transmit to us her feelings of alarm; second, to underplay the seriousness of the situation by discussing it with us only in matter-of-fact terms and then as little as possible (even though she herself would have read voluminously on the subject and consulted every conceivable medical authority); and indeed, third, to overplay the humorous aspects, which were, of course, always the grimmest.

It was a wonderful performance, to which Mother applied all her favorite theatrical principles, and in a sense, Mother acted out much of what she believed, but so effortlessly, with such skill and conviction—and charm—that by the time she finished, what started out as a performance had changed into something infinitely more real than most reality. Much of the time, nobody, least of all she, could tell the difference. To us, when we were very young, life seemed like an exciting game, invented, explained, and directed by Mother. She was basically mischievous and fun-loving—“Come on!