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

see,” she explained to us, “that I think I have fallen in love with him. And that is trouble, real trouble.”

We waited, accustomed to the contradiction implicit in Mother’s strongest feelings.

“When I was in England,” she went on earnestly, “at first I was so terribly unhappy about Leland and homesick for you and miserable about the play that when this gentle kind Englishman came along and made me so terribly happy, I found all sorts of excuses for falling in love with him. He paid a great deal of attention to me, he made me forget how sorry for myself I was feeling, he reintroduced me to a way of life that was gracious and leisurely and to people who took the time to be charming, all the things that I had known as a child growing up in Virginia and had forgotten existed, although some part of me must have hungered for them ever since, I suppose. At the same time, half of me knew that I would never see him again and if I did, we would probably dislike each other. So I assumed I was deluding myself: how could I fall in love with a man as different from—let’s say your father—without its being loneliness or perversity? Or a bit of both? And the less we had in common, the easier it was to pretend love. He was no part of my past and seemed to have no stake in my future. Then, when I came home, I was even sadder and lonelier than before, because I had to face reality again and all the ugliness of the divorce. Then, when Kenneth came back into my life at Thanksgiving, I was happy all over again. But I told myself that I couldn’t take it too seriously or count on it at all, since we would be separated most of the time by six thousand miles. Besides, I thought maybe I was just using him to make myself feel cheerful. The minute he left for Racine, I knew I was hooked. In real, honest-to-God hot water, as I said.”

We waited some more.

“In love, you mean,” Bridget responded finally.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Mother resentfully. “And I’ve told Kenneth that he’d better be careful. It’s come as something of a shock. It’s the last thing in the world I want. I’ve warned him I’ll make him pay for this—and if he’s smart he’ll run away as fast and as far as possible.”

So we thought it was the best Christmas we ever had.

Although they weren’t to be married for another two and a half years, Mother and Kenneth’s relationship was established for once and for all. In January, 1948, they went East. Mother had known for some time that she was afflicted with otosclerosis, a form of deafness caused by the growth of bone over the middle ear. She was anxious to meet the world’s foremost specialist in the disease, Dr. Julius Lempert, who had invented the Lempert or fenestration operation, a delicate piece of surgery in which a new opening or window is bored through the mastoid bone and a new drum grafted over the aperture. After her first consultation with Dr. Lempert, she called us to announce excitedly that he was the most fascinating man she had ever met and had so impressed her she was checking into his private hospital on Seventy-fourth Street, the Institute of Otology, to undergo the operation at once. She had always made light of the fact that she was going deaf in her left ear and made equally light of the operation, which was to be a long and serious one.

“Oh, I wish you were here so that you could meet Dr. Lempert,” she raved. “He looks exactly like a gnome out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. It was love at first sight. I’m so crazy about him I’ve decided to bequeath him my ears, or what’s left of them when he’s finished. And now someday I, too, can be a valuable scientific specimen in his museum. You can all come and point at my fenestrated ear bones and giggle and say, ‘We used to know the person who belonged to these quite well.’ ”

The operation was a success and restored full hearing to Mother’s left ear. Afterward, although she dutifully returned to Dr. Lempert every two years for some kind of dreaded maintenance visit in which she let him “fool around with my window,” and even conceded to wear a protective plastic cap over her ear whenever she washed her hair, she in no way obeyed any of his other instructions to cut down on her diving, shooting, or flying.

As soon as she was released from the hospital after ten days in bed, she caught a cold that delayed her return to California for some time.

“Dr. Lempert is furious with me,” she told us morosely on the phone. “He won’t let me budge. Actually I don’t care so much about whether or not his beautiful operation is ruined as the fact that Kenneth has just abandoned me.”

We commiserated, knowing perfectly well Kenneth had planned to go back to England at the end of January and was more upset than she.

“He won’t be back for two months,” she despaired. “I really hate him for this. If only he were here, I could show him how much.”

“But remember you promised to take us all to England this summer.”

“By then it will be too late,” she growled. “I’ll have forgotten all about him. I’ve already given him fair warning—I’ll be just fine for a week or two; then the letdown will set in. He’s promised to help me by writing long letters, pages and pages every day, until they bore me; that will be somewhere in the next couple of months—April, let’s say, for good measure. Then he can start tapering them off until we’re reduced to postcards once a year.”

“I’ll bet he’s got some secret old girl friend in London,” suggested Bridget provocatively. “Maybe he