Father was always on the move, packing his overnight case engraved with the logo LH 10%, flying back and forth between New York and California even more frequently than before—working much too hard, said Mother. Bridget, Bill, and I were so accustomed to his trips that we accepted them as a matter of course. However, we looked forward to his return home, even from the office, with such excitement that the minute he walked in the door we jumped all over him and wouldn’t let him out of our sight until bedtime. Then, even if he and Mother had to go out, we would cling to him and beg him and badger him and trap him in our room until he had given us the latest installment of a marvelous, labyrinthine, never-ending tale he improvised for us in what had become a nightly routine. One night when he unexpectedly couldn’t come home for dinner, we were so disappointed that we wouldn’t eat. The next morning I wrote him a letter at his office,
Dec. 5, 1946
Darling Father,
I am very unhappy that you are not feeling well, and it was pretty lonely last night without you.
Mother had supper with us and this morning she had breakfast with us too.
Bridget and Bill have gone to school. I am all by myself writing this letter to you, with a great deal of love.
You should have heard the coyotes last night! I didn’t hear them, but Emily did, and she said that they were awful.
Bridget, Mother, and Emily are making doll’s clothes for Bridget’s rubber doll.
Anyway I miss you more than anything.
Lots of love,
Brooke
One afternoon when the Tocaloma Club station wagon pulled up to our garage to let us off, an ambulance was waiting. While everyone watched, aghast, two attendants in white came down the steps carrying a stretcher with Father on it. Before we could move, the stretcher vanished into the back of the ambulance, doors closed, red lights began to flash, and, with an ominous sound, the ambulance was gone.
We had never seen Mother cry before. It was very serious, she said: Father had hemorrhaged again from the strain of working too hard. He needed lots of rest and blood transfusions and would be in the hospital for a long time, and we couldn’t go with her to visit him in the hospital until he was out of danger, because it wasn’t allowed, but we could help a great deal by being very brave—that would help her to be brave, too—and by saying prayers for him every night and every day as well. We were heartbroken. It was terrible to see Mother cry and terrifying to remember what Father had said to me that day when he and I had walked away together from the chicken coop; if, as he’d said then, the sight of a drop of blood made him afraid to death, suddenly I knew how much more afraid he would be at the idea of bleeding, literally, to death.
He didn’t bleed to death, although he was in the hospital for a long time; everyone was very relieved, Mother reported to us, that he didn’t have to be opened up again, but we felt, during that time, as though somehow somebody had died anyway. The air inside the house changed color and became dark gray as if all light were filtered through drawn shades, reminding me of the heavy gray velvet on the walls of my grandfather’s room—the room in Maisie’s house where we visited him once just before he died—even the windows and fourposter bed draped in gray velvet with gold tassels, impressive and hushed, until Grandfather, alone, without the nurse’s help, went into his bathroom. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said courteously, closing the door behind him, and we could hear him coughing and coughing, viscerally, as if he would never stop, while Father, agonized, stood at the window’s gray light, playing with a gold tassel and looking down at the traffic on Fifth Avenue.
Also the house was quiet because around this time Mother, too, became ill. An old back injury was acting up, and she was confined to her bed under heavy sedation, while a stream of doctors came and went. Mother had never gone to bed sick before then, although we knew she had a bad back, because she’d often made fun of herself for having to keep a thick magazine like Vogue on hand to slip under her right buttock whenever she sat down. This unorthodox procedure, prescribed years earlier by an osteopath who thought she needed to support her right hip a little, was, she claimed, the only remedy that kept her from having chronic backaches.
Emily made us walk instead of run through the house, and, to our further consternation, forbade us to go anywhere near Mother’s room. “No, I’m not trying to be mean,” she said when we demanded querulously to see for ourselves how Mother was coming along, “and yes, I realize that when you’re sick in bed you like to have company. But it’s a funny thing. Everything’s the opposite when you get to be our age—and Mrs. Hayward is a spring chicken compared to me—you find out there’s nothing to make you sicker quicker than the combination of noise and pain.”
Shortly after both she and Father recovered, Mother—surprisingly—decided to go back to work. John Van Druten and Alfred de Liagre were taking The Voice of the Turtle to England and she agreed to go with it. She had fallen in love with England ten years before and to do “The Turtle” there was an irresistible temptation, she told us, but she would only be gone for six months at the most—and less, if English audiences didn’t like the play. In May, 1947, we put her on the train for New York with the warning to eat more and smoke less. The concept of six months as a stretch of time had very little meaning to us at all. “It’s not forever, I promise you,” Mother said sadly, hugging us goodbye.
From England she wrote us letters, long monologues, that vividly described its postwar ravages: the bomb damage in London, the queues for heavily rationed food, the pervasive feeling of envy and bitterness toward Americans, which, although she realized was impersonal, hurt her, and the guts and spirit of the English people for having lived through such devastation.
Her observations, as always, were intermingled with elements of both gaiety and depression. In one sentence, feeling rejected and lonely, she would complain about the rude and inhospitable attitude of English country inns; in the next, cross at herself for feeling rejected and lonely, she would extoll their charm and the extraordinary beauty of the English countryside. Whenever possible, everyone went sightseeing, which she loved, but typically, no matter how lonely she claimed to be, after just a few days with a group—even of close friends—she felt a compulsion to get away from it, to be alone. She was dissatisfied with the rehearsals of the play and the incompetence of the backstage crews and, when “The Turtle” opened in Manchester, with its reception (“Oh, dear,” she wailed to Delly, “is this what we came to England for? Where, oh, where is our slick little play?”), although, in fact, it got good reviews.
Every week, as we had promised, we wrote to her, since she assured us that our letters meant more to her than anything, even a steak in rationed postwar England.
From Bridget:
Dear Mother,
Brooke had the mumps and I am expecting them.…
Dear Mother,
I have the mumps at last! Brooke’s party has to be postponed all because of me. Father is in Hawaii. He sent us some leis and bathing suits. Bill’s is just like shorts and a blouse. Ours are a much better kind than we had before. When are you coming home? Are you still having nothing to eat but tea? You should see Emily. She has no teeth left.…
Dear Mother,
Yesterday in club we went to the beach and Brooke and I got a sunburn. Half of my vaccination was sticking out from under my bathing suit and it got sunburned too. So now half of my vaccination is pink and half white.… Are you getting more food? I have almost forgotten how you look and talk.…
From me:
Dear Mother,
How are you feeling? When are you coming home? I certainly miss you. I wonder what I’m going to get for my birthday. Bridget has the mumps and Bill has a bee sting on his foot. He can’t walk. Grandsarah came over yesterday and asked about you. She talked to Father on the telephone. He said he is very lonely. Emily has all her teeth out. She looks very funny. Her mouth is out of shape. I wish I knew what you look like, I have forgotten how you talk.…
> Dear Mother,
Last night I had my ear opened. Now I can’t go in swimming this whole summer. I can’t get my head wet. Bridget has a rash. Bill has no ailments at all! …
Darling Mother,
I hope the play isn’t a success so you will come home. It is wonderful weather out here. We are all tanned like berries as Emily said. Have you had another egg? I must admit I have forgotten what you look like.…
And from Bill:
Dear Mother,
Yesterday I almost broke my ankle. To ducks are dead. Love and xxxxxxoxo
Bill
Dear Mother,
We are playing nice. Today we had a tea party. The ducks feathers are white. I miss you xxooxx
Bill
Dear Mother,
The ducks are eating the snails. I miss you ooo
Bill
Dear Mother,
Brooke saw a snake, xoxoxo
Bill
Dear Mother,
I had a wonderful time at camp. I am getting a banner for being the best camper. I love you.
LOVE
Bill
Dear Mother,
I had a very nice time at camp. The ducks have laid some eggs.
XXLOVEXX Bill
Dear Mother,
The day before yesterday I caught 12 fish.
LOVE
Bill
To my dear Mother from William L.H.
The poem by Bill—“Something and Nothing”
PART ONE
If I had something,
What would I do with it?
But, I have nothing, so what?
But, I must have something.
PART TWO
Too bad,
Ha! Hal Ha!
So, too bad,
How can I help it?
Well, what would I do with it if I did have it?
That’s the part I don’t understand.
PART THREE
If I had something,
So I don’t have anything?
I don’t know,
Well, how can I help it?
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Bill Hayward
By the time Mother came back, we really couldn’t remember what she looked like. Father went to pick her up and then suddenly there she was, just exactly the same as always, breathless from running up all the steps, not scrawny and dried up like a prune as she had written us, but beautiful, all familiar golden, with shiny golden hair parted in the middle and bangs across her forehead. We couldn’t let go of her; there wasn’t enough of her to go around, nor enough of us either, scrambling and scrabbling and scratching to be the first, nor enough time to tell her every single thing that had happened since she had left: weekly dinners with Grandsarah and kickball games with Martha Edens; inches grown, weight gained; the great snail invasion when we stuck snails down each other’s shirt and Father paid us to collect them in jars with salt at the bottom, which made them ooze bubbly green slime and shrivel up; the five-foot rattler coiled right under Father’s window one morning that so shocked him when he looked out that he got sick to his stomach all over it, and we kept the rattles to show her as proof of its size; Emily’s new false teeth; Bill’s new real tooth, on and on.
Then she told us every single thing that had happened to her since she left, which made us want to go to England immediately, and after that she said, “My darlings, there’s one more thing I have to tell you—or really Leland and I have to tell you—and I guess I’ve put it off until the very last because …”
Father stood with his hands in his pockets, looking toward the ocean. It was a very clear afternoon, one of those when you could see all the way to Catalina. By the subtle change in her voice, we knew that we should pay attention and stop trying to walk in single file along the narrow brick wall at the edge of the terrace.
“Now stop wiggling around for a minute and come over here. Please. So I can look at you. Just for a minute, then you can go right back.”
We came and stood before her, somewhat gravely, in keeping with her voice.
“I suppose this is a kind of family conference that concerns just the five of us.”
We looked over at Father, who hadn’t shifted his position.
Mother spoke rapidly and earnestly in the tone of voice that she used when she was explaining something new: “What I have to tell you is a little sad and unpleasant but certainly not the end of the world.” She paused and we tried to stand still politely. “You know how much, how very very much your father and I love each other, have always loved each other—and that’s one of the reasons you came to be—and of course we shall always love each other. But you see, sometimes grownups have disagreements, just like children, and get on each other’s nerves, and when that happens, it’s really best, rather than argue and argue, to separate for a little while—maybe a week or two or four—just a trial period, however long it may take to think things over from a more objective vantage point. You yourselves know how hard it is to come to an agreement when you’re right in the middle of a squabble. But that doesn’t mean at all that you stop caring about each other, does it?”
We listened very carefully. It occurred to me that Father had not moved since the beginning of this explanation, and really not at all for about fifteen minutes before it began, as if he were watching for turkey buzzards or flying saucers; it was the time of the flying-saucer scare and we all used to stare up at the skies, imagining.…
“Also it is imperative that you understand that I’m not talking about divorce. This is not the same thing at all.”
I glanced at Father’s back and longed to be standing over there beside him. Divorce. Now there was a word. Where had that come from, sailing out of the clear blue-and-gold sky like the shiny pebble that Bill had once thrown at me, and that I, innocently mistaking it for a piece of mica, hadn’t bothered to duck, so that it hit me squarely on the forehead between the eyes, making them sting. Father had removed himself from all this, probably because it was infinitely worse than watching Mother chop the heads off chickens, although this time I wasn’t lucky enough to be outside the coop with him.
The more frantically my thoughts darted around, the stiller I seemed to stand. Father, I thought, hanging on to his arm in my mind, what is she talking about? Divorce. Explain to her about the night with all the stars, the night you told us, remember?
One night just a month or so earlier, while Mother was still in England, Father and Bridget and Bill and I had all lain together under a blanket on the big chaise longue on the terrace, and while we gazed fixedly at the shimmering black sky and waited for flying saucers and falling stars, Father had told us stories about when he was a little boy. Then he had said, “But the worst thing that ever happened to me—ruined my whole life, really, at least what was left of my childhood—was when my mother divorced my father. Terrible. Terrible. I was only ten, and I never forgave Mother for it, never understood it. So capricious. Ten years old. It cut me in half. Divorce, it’s the most awful thing in the world. I ought to know. You three are very lucky, you’ll never know how lucky you are. That’s one thing you’ll never have to go through, no matter what, I promise you on my sacred word of honor.” Ten years old; that’s exactly what I was. “Ten years old, and I love you a great deal—Father,” he wrote in his very own handwriting on the round gold locket he gave me for my tenth birthday. We had never heard about divorce before, except from Grandsarah, who had skipped those details, and we were overwhelmed by pity and love for Father, cut in half when he was a little boy ten years old. Father, what about the promise, I reminded him, trying, in my mind, to shake his arm harder, but I could tell just by the way he was standing, that he already knew.…
“Furthermore,” Mother was saying, “you will see that this won’t really be as painful or make as much difference as it sounds. Although Leland won’t be staying here—he’ll be at a hotel—you will see him just as much as ever, probably more. He’ll come and have dinner with you when he can, just as he does now. You
see, one of the biggest problems of his kind of business is that, even more than now, he will find it increasingly necessary to travel, to spend so much time away from home—in New York, for instance—that we will hardly ever be able to see him anyway.”
“But, Mother,” said Bill. Bridget and I looked at him, astonished at the interruption. Father half turned away from the ocean toward us.
“Yes, my darling,” said Mother, kneeling down and kissing the top of his head.
“But we are in California to be with Father,” blurted Bill. “Isn’t that why?”
“Yes, my darling,” said Mother. She paused for a long time, then stood up and looked over at her gold cigarette case on the table. Nobody moved.
“Now it’s silly of me to make this all sound too serious,” she said, changing the matter-of-fact inflection in her voice to one of levity. “You all look stricken and there’s no need to be. Everything will be practically the same, you’ll see.” She smiled at us in a secret way, knowing how to make us giggle. “Only you must treat this just like going to the bathroom; it’s not something you talk to other people about. Even if they’re nosy and ask. All right? This must be just between the five of us. And Emily.”
We were tongue-tied. Father walked over slowly with his eyes down. He didn’t say a word either. Oh, please, I thought with all my strength, the way I did whenever he said he wished he could put me in his pocket and take me with him. He raised his eyes, and in that moment I knew from the look in them why he wasn’t able to say anything at all.
“Don’t worry, darlings.” Mother smiled. “We both love you, each of you, more than you will ever know. Now go on and play with what’s left of this beautiful afternoon.” And she turned toward Father.
“Father.” I said his name involuntarily. He looked at me again, blindly, and that made me want to cry. I forgot what I wanted to ask, there was so much. “Are you going right now?” That was just a fragment of what I wanted to know, but I couldn’t bear the look in his eyes.
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