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

There was no longer any way to describe our feelings about Mother, not even among ourselves. Sometimes in Bridget’s room after dinner—or at dinner, if Mother and Kenneth went out—we tried, but it was useless. We didn’t have the vocabulary. Our feelings had lost all logic; conflict had rendered them blotchy, convoluted, and impressionistic, and without any training in any method of expressing anger or frustration—except not to—we were stumped. We certainly couldn’t express them to Mother. “I’m your best friend,” she would say, “and if you have any problem, you should come to me first.” But that was a trap, because whenever we presented her with a disagreeable fact, or argued with her, or crossed her, or chafed at a policy we thought unfair, she would do one of two things. Either she would override our dissent with a twenty-minute sermon or lapse into wounded silence, a silence that was anything but passive. We knew, subconsciously, that it was a form of repressed anger, but it didn’t make our own anger any easier to blurt out. There was no way to win. Once I said that to her, and she was quite taken aback. When it came down to it, I was more argumentative than Bridget and Bill; they were cleverer, although no less resentful. I fought a lot of battles, theirs as well as mine, and spent a lot of time in my room, working off the punishment for my insubordination.

Sometimes, however, in that suspended time before all was forgiven, Mother would visit my solitary confinement, and push things along. “Perhaps,” she would muse, “you would be happier living with your father.” Although she made that sound like a punishment, too, I sensed that she was just momentarily anxious about her inability to be a perfect parent. As usual, she was overzealous. Her standards were too high. “No,” I would answer, “I don’t want to go and live with Father.” Even though it was a very appealing idea. “Why not? Clearly he can offer you a lot that I can’t.…” That was true, too. But I wouldn’t have betrayed her for anything. “I want to stay here. I have all my friends, I’m doing well in school, this is my family, I’d miss Bridget and Bill.” Mollified, she would leave my room and wait. For my apology.

Bridget, Bill, and I often puzzled over whether we were what had changed or Mother. We thought maybe she’d been different before the divorce; now it was hard to believe she and Father could ever have been in love, let alone involved in the kind of intimacy that might result in three children. Mother had established, in the last few years, a modus operandi that eliminated her speaking to Father at all. She would make arrangements to leave the house before his arrival, on the rare occasions he visited us there, and to return after he’d gone. The obligatory details of our visits to him were handled by Kenneth Wagg over the telephone. Mother was adamant. She said it was too difficult. We couldn’t figure out how we’d been born. We were confused and ashamed, when we did go to see Father (never often enough), about enjoying ourselves thoroughly; it seemed an act of deliberate disloyalty to Mother. For her sake, we’d misrepresent the extent of our pleasure, respond too casually to her questions. “Tell me everything!” she’d exhort us breathlessly. “Well,” we’d say, having trained ourselves to look straight at her when we lied, “it was okay.” If we raved, she was bravely crestfallen. If we’d told her how splendid Father’s house was, how beautiful and generous our stepmother Nan, how thrilling the entire weekend had been, the look on her face would have been unbearable. One of the keynotes of Mother’s personality was her ebullient curiosity, but when it extended to Father its pitch was off center. In that area, she applied her acting skills to no avail; we refused to be duped by their charm. Our answers were nonchalant or evasive. Or lies. Once, when Father called during dinner to ask if we could visit him the following weekend, I burst into tears at the table and heard myself blurting that I didn’t want to go. That couldn’t have been more untrue. We leaned over backward to protect her, and ourselves, but from what we didn’t know.

We had not quite forgiven her for letting Emily go. We were getting old enough to look after ourselves, she’d decided; besides, it was high time for her to shoulder all the duties of an average mother. Much healthier for all of us. Otherwise we ran the risk of being pampered and she ran the risk of having her impact on us undercut by a nurse. We’d become too attached to Emily; a change was in order. And so, just before we’d moved to Greenwich, Emily had gone back to California to work for David O. Selznick as nurse to his stepsons Bobby and Michael Walker. That was as bad as losing Father. We were insanely jealous and wept for days. Once Emily was gone, there was no buffer between the three of us and Mother. We tried to substitute our black cook of several years, Elizabeth Hill, in the role of chief confidante, but Elizabeth’s capacity was limited. She rose at five o’clock every morning, did all the housework and laundry, and cooked three sensational meals a day. If we wanted to unburden ourselves of a grudge, we’d go to the kitchen and hang over the sink while Elizabeth made lemon chiffon pie or floating island. “Don’t bother me,” she’d grumble, “and keep your fingers out of my nice clean pastry.” After a while, complimented by our rapt attention, she would soften up and listen to our tales of woe. It was very soothing in the kitchen, very safe, mainly because Elizabeth snarled at anybody who entered it, including Mother. Mother was sufficiently intimidated by Elizabeth that she found it expedient