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

My senior year at Madeira was splendid. I worked very hard, and took the idea of myself as a scholar very seriously. (An appealing vision of myself as a consumptive author, amongst dusty stacks of books and easels in an unheated Parisian garret, fueled my studies.) I ranked high on my college entrance exams, and was accepted by Vassar, Bennington, and Sarah Lawrence. Vassar was my first choice—or, rather, that of Miss Madeira, whose eightieth birthday we celebrated that year. Vassar was her alma mater. Father, fully recovered, came down to Washington and had tea with Miss Madeira. This charmed her into recognizing me from then on whenever we passed each other on the Oval. I sang alto in the select glee club and was inspired, during my weekly Sunday trips into Washington, to canvass a strange heterogeneous mixture of churches, cathedrals, and temples. While passing through a brief religious fervor, I was, at last, confirmed. Embarrassingly, this meant I first had to be christened, a rite Mother had overlooked in my infancy. The confirmation took place in St. John’s Church, which met all of my requirements (the biggest rose window, the most vaulted nave, the most impressive altar in Washington), and was attended by all my friends. The high point was a fabulous breakfast in the rectory afterward, of codfish cakes and homemade baked beans made by the wife of the minister, Dr. Glenn.

“Dear Mother,” I wrote. “Being a senior is both fun and difficult—I enjoy the privileges and prestige, but on the other hand, I loathe setting an example to the rest of the school.…”

This was quite true. I cultivated an image of myself as an artistic eccentric, outside the bourgeois concerns that governed the rest of the student body. In the spring, I spent two feverish weeks between mirror and canvas painting my masterpiece, a life-size self-portrait in oil entitled “Nervous Breakdown.” I was often reduced to tears by the rigorous beauty of this creative endeavor.

I wrote, in typically florid style:

Dear Kenneth:

I just wrote, in one of my more energetic moments these last few days, a poem:

Awake! Bestir your senses drugged with sleep,

And rub the night from sand-filled eyes. To creep

In sluggish blindness by the Path of Shade

But dulls perception’s edge, as rusts the blade

From disuse. Nature’s torrents surging past

In irrevocable exuberance, last

A short breath only. Make your own ascent

A search of Life, until Life’s flow is spent.

And Life was always full of drama. To a friend of Mother’s, who was my kind hostess during spring vacation in Delray, Florida, I dashed off a tortured bread-and-butter note:

Have just gotten unpacked—hate to unpack—something so final and depressing about it. I hate school. Never has coming back been more miserable. The four walls have already swallowed us up again. Now the sinking feeling that I’m going into battle for a wasteful, useless cause is taking hold. Don’t pay the slightest bit of attention to any of this. Tomorrow will be better, when the wonderful memories will have dulled a little.…

Parodying the style of one of my overstuffed letters, Mother replied:

Dear Heart—

Bedtime is imminent—the exigencies of my vocation demand that I avail myself of every possible wink—my soporific, Horlick’s, stands awaiting me on my bedtable—and so, my beloved progeny, bonne nuit, gute Nacht, buenas noches, etc., ad infinitum.

It would be sheer rodomontade for me to suggest that all goes well with rehearsals—indeed, without prevarication, I can state unequivocally that I stink. Paradoxically I feel rather beatific. Your siblings are well.

Sanguinely yours,

     Ma

Moody and mercurial, I fell in and out of love five times. Graduation was almost upon me, as was my June début at the Greenwich Country Club Cotillion. My letters were filled now with responses to Mother’s queries about invitations, escorts, guests, dress, shoes, music:

Dear Ma,

To answer your last batch of questions, my favorite song is “Begin the Beguine.” As for Jane Fonda, she graduates the 11th and would love to come. May she stay with me that weekend or will it be too hectic? Will arrange date for her. This makes twelve for dinner. Kenneth and I will have to practice dancing together. OH! Don’t bother about white shoes—I have quite a nice pair of sandals from Calif. that went with that blue décolleté dress that was too suggestive. Father was in Washington two days ago on business. He came out to school for a couple of hours. He was worried about young William. I hope the monster hasn’t gotten himself into deeper trouble? I really feel sorry for him—he seems to have a knack for doing the wrong thing, especially with his school work. Almost a jinx. Father also said he would, if you approve, give me an M.G. for graduation. We are giving The Glass Menagerie in a week. It is extremely good in parts.…

My passing concern for young William was well founded. He had run into academic trouble at Lawrenceville and had been shifted to Eaglebrook, a smaller, less posh institution. Except for his skiing, he wasn’t doing particularly well there, either. However, our school production of The Glass Menagerie was my major preoccupation; hobbling around the stage as Laura convinced me I should become an actress. Mother could not have agreed less.

“I forbid it,” she said sternly when I called her to rave about myself. “Until you’ve finished college. What happened to your writing?”

Her allegiance to my writing seemed hypocritical; I pointed out that it was she who’d prohibited the publication of my book.

“That was probably a mistake,” she admitted, “but I would be making a far graver one if I let you go to acting school instead of college. If you’re still interested four years from now—so be it. I’ll give you my blessing.”

Also she was not pleased with the deal Father and I had made for my graduation present.

“Now I want to talk to you about another problem.” (I scrunched up my