Whenever I saw the Fondas, I was reminded of Mother, although she was nowhere around. Hank, it pleased me to observe, was as strict with Jane as Mother was with me. The quality of that strictness was identical: fervent, almost puritanical. Jane and I were given to speculation about their past romance and marriage. We liked to suppose that beneath their rectitude smoldered a still unbridled passion for each other. The idea of a renewed love affair—unconsummated, of course, on our account—did not seem as far-fetched as all that. In Greenwich, sometimes, after Hank had come to pick up Jane and Peter, he and Mother would demonstrate headstands together for what seemed to be longer than necessary. We children would eye each other reflectively: they were still madly in love! (Whether or not they were, we preferred to believe it.)
However, I never did get to Hawaii with Jane.
Hank, about to start Mr. Roberts for Father, was staying with his family down in Santa Monica at the old Ocean House. We were in town with Father, Nan, Kitty, and nurse, at the Bel Air Hotel. One evening, Father offered to take me to Matador, a documentary about bullfighting. I was obsessed with bullfighting, having read all of Hemingway; my ardor was in no way diminished by a recent introduction to Luis Miguel Dominguín, whose entire body, I was fascinated to note—when he appeared in a brief bathing suit at the hotel pool—was covered with scars. That night, Nan was up in Monterey visiting her family. While Father finished off a business meeting in his room, Bill and I, elated at the opportunity to order Châteaubriand for two at $22.95, ate an early dinner alone in the hotel dining room. Afterward we waited for Father on the path by the lobby. It was still daylight, though about seven o’clock; people were arriving for cocktails. Father came toward us in a dark suit with a business associate on either side. Just as the three of them came abreast of us, he fell to his knees, and then slowly, like a mortally wounded elephant that didn’t belong there at all, sank to the pavement. There was pandemonium. A bellboy appeared with a huge bowl of ice; the desk clerk, the manager, guests gathered around him.
“Brooke,” he said desperately, regaining consciousness when I splashed ice water on his face, “I’m bleeding to death.”
“No, you’re not,” I said, equally desperately. I sat down on the pavement and put his head on my lap.
“Yes,” he insisted. “There’s blood on my pants. Call the doctor, not the goddamned hotel doctor—I want Dana Atchley. My telephone book—look under New York City—”
“That’s not blood, Leland,” said somebody else. “It’s just ice water.”
“I’m hemorrhaging, goddamnit,” said Father. We carried him back to his hotel suite. By the time we got there, it was evident he was right. There was more blood than I had ever seen, more blood than I thought the human body contained. The heavy sweet smell of it was everywhere; the white carpet was strewn with dark clots. Later, we burned his pants. The living room quickly filled with people; word got around fast. When I heard the ambulance siren, I went back into his room and shut the door behind me.
“Come here, Brooke,” he said, without opening his eyes. I sat on the edge of his bed, wondering how he’d known it was me. His skin was a terrible color, the same pale green as Christ’s on the cross in the middle panel of the Grünewald Altarpiece.
“Do you love me?” asked Father, still without opening his eyes.
“Yes, Father.” When I was six or seven, I’d come across the Grünewald Altarpiece in an art book, and it had scared me to think about ever since.
“That’s good,” said Father. “I love you, too. Poor little Brooke. Are you afraid I’m going to die?”
I certainly was. I didn’t see how anyone could lose that much blood that fast and live. There was no way to stop the bleeding, no way to plug him up.
“You’re not going to die, Father, I promise you. The ambulance is here. Besides, I won’t let you.” I was still invincible in those days, strong enough for both of us. The big question was whether I was strong enough not to cry. I rolled my eyes around furiously to disperse the tears, clenching my teeth with effort.
“Attagirl,” said Father. Only his lips moved, and his voice seemed to come from far away. “Well, I am. I’m afraid as hell. You must forgive me, darling.”
“What for, Father?” I asked, panicked, thinking I was about to hear his last confession. He couldn’t die. He wasn’t mortal like the rest of us: he was my father.
“For getting sick tonight, not taking you to that movie. The bullfight movie. What a terrible evening. I’m so sorry, darling, I know I promised you.…”
Father did almost die. He received massive transfusions every day for weeks, gallons and gallons of blood, according to Nan, who moved into the hospital with him. Then, after he began to recover, the doctors recommended that he take it easy for a while and retire. It was the work, it seemed, the pressure that made him hemorrhage. But Father got so cranky with enforced leisure, and it became so apparent that retirement would be, for him, a form of death anyway, that he was slowly allowed to resume Mr. Roberts. When the danger was over, Bill and I were sent home. It was almost fall, and school was about to begin.
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 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 with the one sure-fire distraction, me. Mother’s letters sounded slightly oppressed. I could just imagine the general claustrophobia.
Although I hadn’t yet seen her, Bridget had just come back from her two years in Switzerland. All her letters had begged Mother’s permission to remain in Switzerland for her senior year, with the idea that eventually she might go to the Sorbonne or the University of Geneva. Her arguments were so persuasive that I’d taken her side. I realized that one of the factors in her reasoning was me. Several times, long ago, she’d confessed to Kenneth in the heat of emotion that she felt inferior. In Switzerland, with rivalry at a manageable distance, she seemed to be thriving. Her French was fluent and she had many friends. Amazingly, for one who had always been physically cautious, she had taken up skiing with a passion; her picture, with blond hair streaming over her red Alpine team sweater, graced the cover of a Gstaad travel folder. That spring she had written:
Dear Mother,
About school: I understand your reasoning, but what I would really like to do—and it isn’t just a whim of the moment, because I have thought it out thoroughly—is to finish high school here. I love the school. The girls are wonderful, and for me, at this point, I would rather have contacts with girls from England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Jamaica, Singapore, Istanbul, Zanzibar, Southern Rhodesia … than Greenwich, Connecticut. Also it would be a shame to leave when my French is finally almost mastered; after all, it has taken me sixteen years to speak English as well as I do. And next year I could learn German and Italian. I still don’t see what’s wrong with the six years of European education you say I’m committing myself to; I like Europe, or what I’ve seen of it, and I think it’s more interesting than America. Here there is history—and what is there in America? Even though it must be hard for you to realize that I’m sixteen, I really have thought this out, and I honestly and truly do want it.…
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