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

Father saying, “I’m really lousy at these things, no help at all—I’ll stand outside the coop and wait.”

“Me, too,” I said, grabbing his hand.

“Come on, you two, don’t be fainthearted,” called Mother, concentrating on how to hold the axe and taking a few practice strokes at the stump under Andrew’s direction. Father and I walked around the side of the coop and stood in the pasture. Father leaned down and picked a thick blade of grass, which he stretched out tight between his thumbs and pressed against his lips to blow on; it made a strange buzzing whistle. I hooked my fingers through the chicken wire with my back to the action, listening vaguely to the sounds of chickens squawking as Andrew chased them around and of Father blowing on his blade of grass; if I squinted, I could just see—or imagine—against the pale shimmer of the lower pasture, the wide loops of the brook meandering along.…

“Brooke, Leland,” called Mother, “come here—Bridget and Bill will set a good example for you. Look how brave they’re being.” I glanced back; Bridget, Bill, and Emily were grouped around the stump; Andrew had a chicken expertly pinned down on it, and Mother had raised the axe.

“Don’t look,” said Father without turning around. “Think about something wonderful. Vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce—Christ, I can’t stand the sight of blood, I can’t stand the sight of suffering, I hate pain. Look at that big bird out there, what do you think it is? A hawk? Beautiful the way it catches the wind. God, I wish, I wish I still had my airplane—” Behind us there was the loud thump of the axe, chickens squawking, Bridget and Bill squealing. I looked back again. The body of Mother’s chicken was flopping all over the coop, headless, with fountains of blood spurting out.

“Oh, no,” I said, stuffing my head against Father’s stomach.

“Let’s walk up to the house,” said Father, shaking his head.

“But Mother will get mad at us,” I wailed.

“She already is,” answered Father, pulling me along. “Your mother is a remarkable woman, the bravest person I know, and I happen to be the most squeamish. That’s that. Your mother can’t understand squeamishness at all, and she can’t tolerate what she can’t understand. If she wants to call me a coward, I can’t argue with her—she’s a hundred percent correct. One drop of blood and I almost faint. Christ Almighty, when I hemorrhaged, couldn’t stop bleeding, I thought I would die from fear long before I bled to death.” He smiled down at me. “Cheer up. You take after me, so at least we can keep each other company—we’ll be in hot water together at the lunch table, kid.”

That was the first time I had a glimmering of insight into the difference between Mother and Father; up to then I had seen them as counterparts of the same person, Mother and Father, with diametrically opposed points of view, perhaps, but the same identity. It was also the first time I had to make a choice between them, but while disobeying Mother or in any way allowing myself to fall short of her expectations was a terrifying position to put myself in, I wasn’t sure there was a choice after all. (Which was worse, my watching her kill a chicken or her anger at my not watching her kill a chicken?) I was very grateful that I had Father, who was much bigger and smarter than I, to express myself for me.

Shortly after this, Mother decided to compromise and divide her time between Connecticut and California. In order to keep up with Father, who had refused to totally sacrifice his business in Los Angeles, she bought another house in Beverly Hills as a base of operations and kept the farm as a backup residence. As willful as she sometimes appeared to be, Mother was capable of acute introspection; she was a harsh self-critic, far harder on herself than on anyone else, always the first to blame herself for any problems that arose. At times she kept diaries in which, along with animated descriptions of daily events, could be found stern remonstrances regarding her own behavior if it fell below some invisible standard she’d set for herself. In a memo to herself during her pregnancy with Bill five years earlier, she wrote:

I am guilty of growing old, losing my sense of fun and humor. I take my responsibilities too seriously. I’ve become smug, both with Leland and the children. So I must read this every day because I need to be reminded that I’m becoming a tyrant. From now on, I must make myself have fun with Brooke and Bridget and to hell with discipline. Brooke is sensitive and shy and I have frightened her and cowed her. Leland loves his airplane and his friends and I have taken his pleasure in them away. I am really going to restore them, and find Brooke’s confidence again.

Honest to God.

Jules Stein, founder of MCA:

“I can see him just as if he was standing right here and trying to sell me a bill of goods on something. I can see his smile, his drive, his conviction. He always had that radiant effervescent smile—rarely ever saw him when his face wasn’t shining—ready to tell you something or sell you something.

“I would have hated to have been trying to convince a client to come with us [MCA] if Leland was trying to get him for his organization. Then we bought his agency—this was in 1944—and his clients turned out to be our most important clients. As a matter of fact, when I look back even today at the list of clients he represented, the lists we got at that time, it’s bewildering. He overshadowed everybody in the business. Even our list was secondary to his. I was just flabbergasted to think that he had so many important people—not only performers, but writers and directors—he had the best cross-section of artists in