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

with the idea of conformity, and it was more painful for her than for Bill and me: she was softer and had a longer way to go. It was also more difficult for her to cope with that curious ambiguity in our upbringing: on the one hand, we were wildly encouraged to have the spunk to be totally nonconformist and to take pride in expressing ourselves uniquely; on the other, we were forbidden to deviate from a strict set of rules that perpetually disciplined us to have consideration for other people and faultless manners with which to deal gracefully and tactfully with any conceivable social situation. “Children should be seen and not heard” was the doctrine around our house, “but if they are heard, it better be good and interesting.”

Insofar as rules can provide a margin of safety for children, Bridget was secure with them and wrote and illustrated an extensive “Book of Rules” when she was seven; however, even though it appeared that she was more comfortable with them than Bill and I, who were always chafing with disobedient inspirations, they had a more inhibiting effect on her, one that was reinforced by witnessing the punishments that were meted out to Bill and me. This seemed to endow her with a pious quality, which really got on our nerves. Even more aggravating, sometimes, was the assumption on her part that as one of us, she owned the other two; we were her possessions and it followed, of course, that our possessions were her possessions.

I wrote her sternly, when I was nine and she was seven, to set the record straight:

Notice! (To Brie)

Do not touch anything here while I am gone. If you want your dolls, take them and leave my horses alone.

If anything is touched by you (I can tell whether they are or not) you will have some fittable punishment.

Don’t play game until I come home from Club. Leave baskets alone. I have everything arranged nicely, just the way I want.

If you do not heed these warnings I will have to speak to Emily.

Will play with you when I get home. (Brooke)

Bill continued, in isolated grandeur, to invent trouble of a magnitude that left Bridget and me awed. There was a reckless, abandoned, spur-of-the-moment aspect to his nature that we found foreign but admirable. There was no telling what the morning might bring. He reminded us of a cat depositing some dreadful new species of prey on the doorstep. Since both his looks and his disposition were angelic, Mother and Father decided to pass off this rebellious streak as a momentary phase of development.

Bill had his own room adjoining Bridget’s and mine, with French doors that led out to the front of the house. A few days after Mother had it redecorated and painted deep blue—a nice masculine color, she said—we all came down with chicken pox. On her way into Beverly Hills, Mother stopped by our respective beds to see what we would like from the toy store to cheer us up. “A jar of Vaseline,” said Bill. “Whatever for?” asked Mother. “Just to have,” answered Bill. “No books or crayons?” asked Mother. “No, thank you,” replied Bill, “just Vaseline, please. My very own jar. To keep under my bed.” Mother thought it was an adorable request. In the middle of the night a car crashed into a eucalyptus tree on the dirt road, and over the earsplitting wail of police and ambulance sirens came even more earsplitting wails and thumps from the direction of Bill’s room. The house was suddenly lit up and, in mass confusion, everyone—Mother, Father, Emily, Bridget, and I—converged on Bill’s room at the same moment, where we crashed into each other and slid the length of the blue linoleum floor, which had been heavily greased with Vaseline. Bill, just before going to sleep, had been inexplicably seized by a compulsion to smear his entire jar of Vaseline over every inch not only of the floor but also of the freshly painted walls. Later he was awakened by the commotion outside and, having forgotten all about his slippery art work, jumped out of bed in the darkness to see what was going on only to land loudly and painfully against the bureau on the other side of the room.

Father determined that since Bill’s major passion in life was hoarding money, the most effective way of punishing him would be to dock his weekly twenty-five-cent allowance. Usually before Bill was able to pay off one punishment in full, he would, owing to a lapse, have accumulated another. He was always behind. Once he was given a tool kit, and after impulsively drilling a large ragged hole through the wall between his room and ours, he ended up owing Father thirty-seven weeks of future allowance.

The only money that Father liked to hoard was small change, and that was really because he kept it in a special bank, a large hollow glass brick—like a glass construction brick in appearance—with one narrow slit on top into which he emptied his pockets each night. The bank looked beautiful as it slowly filled up with pennies and silver and sometimes the green of folded dollar bills all mixed together, but the best part was the ceremony of opening it, which took place when Father could no longer cram in another dime. He would tie a string around the heavy glass, tell us to stand back, light a match to the string, and with deep satisfaction watch while the glass shattered and money exploded all over the place.

For us, by far and away the most interesting place in the house to be when Father came home from work was his room. It was loaded with all kinds of gadgets and paraphernalia. We loved to follow him in there and rifle through his cuff-link and watch collections. (The only jewelry Father ever wore was a pair of simple gold cuff links initialed “LH,” his airplane-propeller tie clip, and a watch, but