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

face in the phone booth). “Leland called yesterday. It seems a year and a half ago he promised you a car for your birthday if you got good grades. You, of course, did not tell him I’d promised you a car if you didn’t smoke. I’ve recently noticed cigarettes appearing for the first time. This, darling, is what I call playing one parent against the other. In other words, if Leland and I were not divorced, this situation could not have occurred.” (I made a minute examination of my fingernails; it would have been foolhardy to interrupt her once she started.)

“You didn’t tell Leland that I’d said you could have a car if you didn’t smoke. This is being dishonest by omission.” (Mother’s voice sounded as if I were strangling her.) “Now he’s in a quandary; he certainly doesn’t want to break his promise. I’m in a quandary; I certainly don’t want to be the policewoman you call on me too often to play. But also I’ve overextended myself on your various pleasures this year—skiing at Christmas, Florida at Easter, graduation, début, and, finally, a trip to Europe this summer. This, if you remember, was to have been my year for travel and leisure—instead of which, your expenses are so great I haven’t budged from home. It’s given me vast pleasure to do these things for you, but now I have to draw the line. A car’s upkeep is not negligible; aside from the very costly insurance and running expenses—gas, oil, et cetera—we figure that each car averages around twenty-five dollars a month in repairs and extras. I cannot afford to keep a car for you now. I have arranged to give you a clothes allowance next year, and I feel it’s a hardship to add a car—not only that, but I have to clear out the garage for a third occupant, which will sit out there all winter unused—your father and I are agreed you shouldn’t take it to college. And all this for a girl who can’t resist smoking!” (Oh, God, I thought, I can’t stand these lectures—why did I call her?) “So we go to more expense and build a house to protect the furniture which the garage now holds. If Leland is willing to pay for the upkeep of your car, then I have nothing more to say. It’s like that horse he offered you several years ago—the initial cost is small compared to the upkeep.”

She paused momentarily; I didn’t know what to say. “And one other thing.” (Oh, no! I banged my fist on the walls of the phone booth.) “Leland says what you want, above all else, is an M.G. This I cannot allow. At least when, God forbid, you have that accident, you must have a fifty-fifty chance of survival. I don’t have time now to explain to you why. Please grow up soon and stop creating these situations.”

As usual, it was pointless to argue with her. Besides, there were more pressing things to think about. Events were rushing by, and, if possible, gathering momentum. I was pretty, bright, talented, confident, happy. I felt as if I’d come through a long dark tunnel into a sunlit meadow. Beyond that stretched the summer, two whole months of traveling in France and Italy and Scotland. Then Vassar. My whole life lay before me.

Although I had seen little of them in the last few years, the two people I loved most in the world were my sister and brother. It was an odd kind of love, one that did not demand much of my time or of theirs. I was not dependent on them, nor they on me. We expected nothing of each other, nothing at all. Perhaps we had deduced from the way matters had ended with Mother and Father that even the most committed relationships were not to be counted on. We couldn’t damage each other if we wanted nothing from each other, not even rudimentary loyalty. The quantum “nothing” had its own value. Unhindered by what brothers and sisters ordinarily expected of each other, we were free to love without ordinary rules. We were free to come and go as we pleased. We were free to feel without demonstrating what we felt. By the same token, we were exempted from the need to regret what we didn’t feel. Outsiders were often surprised that we didn’t keep better track of each other. What they dismissed as cold or flippant or imperious behavior was devised by us as an intricately expressive sign language. All this is a long way of saying that however deeply we cared about each other, our care had a rogue quality. And occasionally, when it mattered most, our signals could get crossed.

In August of that year, 1955, Kenneth, three of his sons, and I were grouse-shooting in Scotland. We stayed at Yester, a beautiful Adam house with vast grounds, which belonged to the Marquess of Tweeddale, who was Kenneth’s brother-in-law. I was deliriously happy. When we weren’t shooting, we were mackerel-fishing. Marjorie, Kenneth’s sister, presided over a breakfast table that never numbered less than twenty. At noon, there were elaborate picnics on the moors with hampers of food transported to the blinds by station wagon. In the late afternoon, there were seven-course high teas, and at night black-tie dinners at which we consumed a previous day’s bag. Afterward, the men drank port with their savory, and the ladies, in their long dresses, retired to the drawing room to await the setting up of the roulette table. I had the feeling I was walking through a reel of Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game.

Mother was in Greenwich with Bridget and Bill. I felt sorry for all three of them. They had to be getting on each other’s nerves. Greenwich had never been much fun in the sultry heat of August when everybody had left town. And, at best, Mother could be difficult. The one reliable soothing agent, Kenneth, was off