Haywire (28 page)

Also there was a tall handsome Arizonan, George Gregson, who had many things to his credit. For one, he was a widower; his wife, the lovely (to judge from a photograph we once saw) daughter of Dr. Edwin Janss (head of the Janss Corporation, which had developed all of Westwood and Holmby Hills—another plus), had been killed in a tragic automobile accident right after the second of their two children had been born. George, fortunately for us, had never married again. His daughter, Patsy, was by now a year older than I, and son, Eddie, a year younger, the ideal ages for step-siblings. Mother and George met perfectly: drinking champagne at a white-tie party, with, in the background, a
ton
of fresh caviar heaped in the hollow back of a huge swan magnificently carved from a block of ice. Patsy, Eddie, Bridget, Bill, and I met perfectly, too: at the Ringling Brothers Circus, when it was still held in a big tent with a terrific, steaming, smelly sideshow. We all bought
chameleons on little leashes to pin on our shirts and afterward went back to the vast Janss estate, which fronted what seemed to be a mile of Sunset Boulevard (from which it was set back by another mile of driveway) in Holmby Hills; there the children lived with George and their grandparents, and there, in the splendid greenhouses latticed with a jungle of orchids, we set our chameleons free. That afternoon, I fell madly in love with Eddie, even though he was a year younger, and fantasized about a double wedding. The idea of marrying my stepbrother had an undeniable cachet. Patsy was as crazy about horses as I: not only that, the Jansses owned Conejo Ranch (which the Janss Corporation eventually developed into Thousand Oaks, a gigantic industrial park and shopping center in the San Fernando Valley), where they invited us to go riding whenever we wanted. George, who had an endearing habit of saying “Cheerio, pip-pip” with a Southwestern twang, and even looked a bit like a cowboy with his steel-blue eyes, sprouted overnight, like Jack’s beanstalk, into the towering position of top contender for Mother’s hand. It was spontaneous combustion, as far as we were concerned.

And then, one bright November day, just before Thanksgiving, off the train at Pasadena and into our lives stepped an Englishman. The mere fact of his nationality ranked him, sight unseen, as a redoubtable challenger; in addition, the scrupulousness with which Mother primed us for his arrival was so noticeably intensive that we were predisposed to scratch all the preliminaries and hand her over without even a token interview on behalf of our own self-interest. A period of probation or courtship seemed redundant: we knew enough. His name was Kenneth Wagg, and he had four sons (“with such en
chant
ing looks and exquisite manners”), who, ranging from thirteen to four years old, flowed around us age-wise with agreeable fluidity. He had featured in Mother’s letters from England as a heroic fellow who had saved her from starving to death by keeping her supplied with two cups a day of Horlick’s Malted Milk, a putty-colored powder whose brand name made us snicker when we considered the ramifications of advertising it (“Hor-lick’s? Tch, tch, Kenneth”), whose heavy cloying taste we found more palatable disguised with chocolate anything (eventually, for consumption in this country, Kenneth was to devise Horlick’s Malted Milk Puffballs, plain or chocolate-coated—only the former in our house—a sort of highly nutritional candy, too esoteric for sale
anywhere but in specialty drugstores), and whose every incongruity made it a vital factor in our destinies.

Kenneth’s affiliation with Horlick’s had an appealing maverick edge. Although he came from a fine old banking family and had been traditionally groomed and educated (at Eton and Oxford) to carry on in Herbert Wagg & Co., he had chucked his banking career when, after marrying the beautiful Katherine Horlick, his father-in-law, Jimmy Horlick, invited him to join
that
family concern. Katherine and Kenneth had recently divorced; she (heedlessly, said Mother; picturesquely, we thought) was now living in Egypt, having left him to bring up their four children alone with the help of a nanny. His position as president of Horlick’s Corporation in Racine, Wisconsin, meant that he made frequent trips to the United States, of which this was ostensibly one. He was also assistant to the managing director of the parent company in England, which led Bridget, Bill, and me opportunistically to contemplate our potential future in Europe.

The minute we laid eyes on Kenneth Wagg, we knew we’d hit the jackpot: he was as good as gold. And that was an interesting paradox, since he had no wealth to speak of. How he was going to support us in the style to which we were accustomed, when he had four sons to educate expensively in England, gave us no pause; we became instant converts, prepared to adapt ourselves to a monastic life of poverty and sacrifice, because Kenneth’s most outstanding quality, which he wore like a medal ready to turn over to Mother whenever she was ready to accept it—a quality his rivals had lacked to one degree or another (we intuited, once we saw the real thing)—was the depth of his feeling for her. He was madly, overtly in love. By some cocky inference we assumed that meant with us, too, but just to play it safe, we set about wooing him. Since Kenneth had already produced a slew of boys, Bridget and I were well aware that the onus of this task fell on us, and were gratified to detect, within minutes of meeting him, that he was openly susceptible to the novel enchantments of little girls.

That afternoon we threw ourselves into our seduction of Kenneth with a vengeance, monopolizing him for a grand tour of the house, which included our wardrobes, cajoling him to sit next to us on the piano bench and play the bass in duets, flirting with him over interminable games of pick-up-sticks, and giggling appreciatively when he said words like “lorry,” “petrol,” “la
bor
at’ry,”
and something that sounded more like “squiddle” than “squirrel.” By the time we were halfway through dinner, it was Kenneth who had seduced us. We were absolutely entranced by everything he said or thought or did. He taught us to master the British method of holding one’s knife and fork, particularly attractive to Bridget and Bill because not only was it the reverse of American (knife kept in the right hand, much simpler), but also involved dexterously pushing food onto one’s fork in various layers, allowing for considerable creative leeway.

“Kenneth,” I said the next morning, trying to make him feel at home, “isn’t it silly for you to waste money staying at the Bel Air Hotel when you could marry Mother and move in with us?”

Mother was speechless with embarrassment but Kenneth, to our relief, looked delighted.

“Nothing would give me more pleasure,” he answered fervently, “but unfortunately your mother—”

“Brooke,” spluttered Mother, regaining her voice, “I’m going to have to explain the conventions of courtship to you—”

“Mother,” Bridget interrupted, coming to my rescue, “I’ve never seen you blush before” (which was true).

“If the house isn’t big enough for the three of us and Kenneth’s four sons,” Bill said diffidently, “we could all move into the Bel Air Hotel.”

“Or I could design a new house altogether,” resumed Bridget. “I’ve always wanted to be an architect. A real honeymoon cottage, with my
very own
room” (giving me a sidelong look).

“Me, too,” said Bill.

“I’m going to work on it right away,” Bridget mused. “
Everybody
can have their own room. That makes nine bedrooms unless”—she grinned—“Kenneth and Mother want to share theirs; that’ll save some space.”

“If you ask me, it would be much better to move into the Bel Air Hotel,” remarked Bill hopefully.

“Children!” shrieked Mother in mock distress. “Enough of this line of torture. You’re disgracing me. Poor darling Kenneth—if you keep this up, you’ll subvert your own objective and drive him away forever. He’s not used to such radically forward behavior from children—or adults. Remember, in
his
country—even in
this
country, for God’s sake—”

“Oh, I think they’re absolutely correct,” said Kenneth,
beaming. “The person you have to convince, children, is your mother. She’s causing me no end of difficulty. Allow me to enlist your help at once; undoubtedly you carry more weight with her than I. I seem to be as effective as a gnat.”

“Oh, no,” moaned Mother, “this is unendurable.”

“Oh, yes!” we all chorused gleefully.

“Before you get too carried away with yourselves,” demurred Mother, executing a little tap dance, which was a sign she was about to win her point, “perhaps I should remind you”—mid-routine she paused emphatically right in front of Kenneth—“that I am not yet even a gay divorcee, so
don’t count your chickens
,” and, punctuating each word with a series of steps, she continued to tap her way around the room.

Kenneth, who had to leave for Racine after Thanksgiving, returned almost immediately to the Bel Air Hotel for Christmas, precluding any doubts we might have had concerning his intentions. We joyously dragged him to the Farmer’s Market for the purchase of six-dozen ant colonies, which had caught our fancy that year as the perfect gift, and conned him into helping us wrap and deliver them to friends all over the city.

Although we had no doubts about Mother’s intentions either, having quizzed her about them, we were beginning to suspect the future would be slightly harder to pin down than we’d anticipated.

“The trouble is, you see,” she explained to us, “that I think I have fallen in love with him. And that is trouble, real trouble.”

We waited, accustomed to the contradiction implicit in Mother’s strongest feelings.

“When I was in England,” she went on earnestly, “at first I was so terribly unhappy about Leland and homesick for you and miserable about the play that when this gentle kind Englishman came along and made me so terribly
happy
, I found all sorts of excuses for falling in love with him. He paid a great deal of attention to me, he made me forget how sorry for myself I was feeling, he reintroduced me to a way of life that was gracious and leisurely and to people who took the time to be charming, all the things that I had known as a child growing up in Virginia and had forgotten existed, although some part of me must have hungered for them ever since, I suppose. At the same time, half of me knew that I would never see him again and if I did, we would probably
dislike each other. So I assumed I was deluding myself: how could I fall in love with a man as different from—let’s say your father—without its being loneliness or perversity? Or a bit of both? And the less we had in common, the easier it was to pretend love. He was no part of my past and seemed to have no stake in my future. Then, when I came home, I was even sadder and lonelier than before, because I had to face reality again and all the ugliness of the divorce. Then, when Kenneth came back into my life at Thanksgiving, I was happy all over again. But I told myself that I couldn’t take it too seriously or count on it at all, since we would be separated most of the time by six thousand miles. Besides, I thought maybe I was just using him to make myself feel cheerful. The minute he left for Racine, I knew I was hooked. In real, honest-to-God hot water, as I said.”

We waited some more.

“In love, you mean,” Bridget responded finally.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Mother resentfully. “And I’ve told Kenneth that he’d better be careful. It’s come as something of a shock. It’s the last thing in the world I want. I’ve warned him I’ll make him pay for this—and if he’s smart he’ll run away as fast and as far as possible.”

So we thought it was the best Christmas we ever had.

Although they weren’t to be married for another two and a half years, Mother and Kenneth’s relationship was established for once and for all. In January, 1948, they went East. Mother had known for some time that she was afflicted with otosclerosis, a form of deafness caused by the growth of bone over the middle ear. She was anxious to meet the world’s foremost specialist in the disease, Dr. Julius Lempert, who had invented the Lempert or fenestration operation, a delicate piece of surgery in which a new opening or window is bored through the mastoid bone and a new drum grafted over the aperture. After her first consultation with Dr. Lempert, she called us to announce excitedly that he was the most fascinating man she had ever met and had so impressed her she was checking into his private hospital on Seventy-fourth Street, the Institute of Otology, to undergo the operation at once. She had always made light of the fact that she was going deaf in her left ear and made equally light of the operation, which was to be a long and serious one.

“Oh, I wish you were here so that you could meet Dr.
Lempert,” she raved. “He looks exactly like a gnome out of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
. It was love at first sight. I’m so crazy about him I’ve decided to bequeath him my ears, or what’s left of them when he’s finished. And now someday I, too, can be a valuable scientific specimen in his museum. You can all come and point at my fenestrated ear bones and giggle and say, ‘We used to know the person who belonged to these quite well.’ ”

The operation was a success and restored full hearing to Mother’s left ear. Afterward, although she dutifully returned to Dr. Lempert every two years for some kind of dreaded maintenance visit in which she let him “fool around with my window,” and even conceded to wear a protective plastic cap over her ear whenever she washed her hair, she in no way obeyed any of his other instructions to cut down on her diving, shooting, or flying.

As soon as she was released from the hospital after ten days in bed, she caught a cold that delayed her return to California for some time.

“Dr. Lempert is furious with me,” she told us morosely on the phone. “He won’t let me budge. Actually I don’t care so much about whether or not his beautiful operation is ruined as the fact that Kenneth has just abandoned me.”

We commiserated, knowing perfectly well Kenneth had planned to go back to England at the end of January and was more upset than she.

“He won’t be back for two months,” she despaired. “I really hate him for this. If only he were here, I could show him how much.”