memoirs,
Haywire,
she wrote that when my mother died:
the entire student body at the Greenwich Academy was warned at the assembly by Miss Campbell that it was to respect that story [that Frances Fonda had died of heart failure] for an indefinite period of time.
As soon as school got out that day, I ran all the way home and right up to Mrs. Wallace’s room. Mrs. Wallace was a governess who’d been hired to help Grandma with us after Mother’s death. She was an attractive, kind lady with gray hair pulled back into a soft bun.
“Mrs. Wallace,” I asked breathlessly, “did my mother commit suicide?” If Mrs. Wallace was surprised by my question, she didn’t show it. Instead she took me onto her lap and said gently, “Yes, Jane, she did. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”
“But is it true that she cut her throat with a razor?”
Mrs. Wallace hesitated for a second. Right then and there she must have made the decision to tell me as much of the truth as a twelve-year-old could handle.
“Yes, she did. For a few months she’d managed to convince her doctors in the sanitarium that she was doing better. They wrote your father and grandmother that she didn’t seem ‘to be behind the eight ball anymore.’ That’s how they put it . . . ‘not behind the eight ball.’ They were hopeful that she’d be coming home for good soon and so they relaxed their guard and that’s how she did it. She wrote notes to each of you before she died.”
“Does Peter know?”
“No, he doesn’t, and I really think it would be best if we didn’t tell him just now. He’s so fragile.”
“Do you think I could see the note she wrote me?”
“Your grandma told me that she doesn’t have the notes anymore. I’m sorry.”
That would give me plenty to think about.
I wasn’t angry, but I would have liked to have read her note to me. Was she mad that I hadn’t seen her on her last visit home? Maybe if I
had
seen her, I could have said something really nice to her and she would have changed her mind. Maybe she knew I didn’t love her and that’s why she did it. But did I love her or didn’t I? I couldn’t answer that, because some part of my heart had been tumbled into numbness.
A few months later, in December 1950, Dad married the girl he’d fallen in love with—the tomato—Susan Blanchard, Oscar Hammerstein’s stepdaughter. They flew to the Virgin Islands for the honeymoon.
One evening I was over at Diana Dunn’s house when the phone rang. Mrs. Dunn answered it and her face sort of collapsed as she listened and the “Oh” that came out of her was about two octaves lower, the way voices get when there’s bad news. She glanced quickly at me, then dropped her eyes and covered the mouthpiece.
“Jane, your brother has had an accident. He’s shot himself and is in a hospital in Ossining. Your grandmother wants me to bring you there right away.”
Peter’s shot himself.
I went outside myself again.
The hospital was near Sing Sing prison. When I got there Grandma explained that Peter had been declared dead on arrival but at that very moment, miraculously, the prison doctor, who was a leading surgeon for puncture and bullet wounds, had walked into the hospital from a hunting trip. He discovered Peter’s heart was still beating, though faintly, and he had worked fast to stop the bleeding. The bullet had gone into Peter’s belly, hit his rib cage, pierced his stomach and kidney, and lodged just under the skin next to his spine. I sat with Grandma in the waiting room. After a while, the doctor came out of the operating room and called Grandma into the hallway. I heard him tell her that in spite of his efforts, Peter’s heart had stopped beating, and while they’d managed to start it up again, he didn’t know if Peter was going to make it. That was the first time I remember seriously praying. I said, “Dear God, if you let him live, I’ll never be mean to him again. Amen.”
Dad cut short his
Haywire,
she wrote that when my mother died:
the entire student body at the Greenwich Academy was warned at the assembly by Miss Campbell that it was to respect that story [that Frances Fonda had died of heart failure] for an indefinite period of time.
As soon as school got out that day, I ran all the way home and right up to Mrs. Wallace’s room. Mrs. Wallace was a governess who’d been hired to help Grandma with us after Mother’s death. She was an attractive, kind lady with gray hair pulled back into a soft bun.
“Mrs. Wallace,” I asked breathlessly, “did my mother commit suicide?” If Mrs. Wallace was surprised by my question, she didn’t show it. Instead she took me onto her lap and said gently, “Yes, Jane, she did. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”
“But is it true that she cut her throat with a razor?”
Mrs. Wallace hesitated for a second. Right then and there she must have made the decision to tell me as much of the truth as a twelve-year-old could handle.
“Yes, she did. For a few months she’d managed to convince her doctors in the sanitarium that she was doing better. They wrote your father and grandmother that she didn’t seem ‘to be behind the eight ball anymore.’ That’s how they put it . . . ‘not behind the eight ball.’ They were hopeful that she’d be coming home for good soon and so they relaxed their guard and that’s how she did it. She wrote notes to each of you before she died.”
“Does Peter know?”
“No, he doesn’t, and I really think it would be best if we didn’t tell him just now. He’s so fragile.”
“Do you think I could see the note she wrote me?”
“Your grandma told me that she doesn’t have the notes anymore. I’m sorry.”
That would give me plenty to think about.
I wasn’t angry, but I would have liked to have read her note to me. Was she mad that I hadn’t seen her on her last visit home? Maybe if I
had
seen her, I could have said something really nice to her and she would have changed her mind. Maybe she knew I didn’t love her and that’s why she did it. But did I love her or didn’t I? I couldn’t answer that, because some part of my heart had been tumbled into numbness.
A few months later, in December 1950, Dad married the girl he’d fallen in love with—the tomato—Susan Blanchard, Oscar Hammerstein’s stepdaughter. They flew to the Virgin Islands for the honeymoon.
One evening I was over at Diana Dunn’s house when the phone rang. Mrs. Dunn answered it and her face sort of collapsed as she listened and the “Oh” that came out of her was about two octaves lower, the way voices get when there’s bad news. She glanced quickly at me, then dropped her eyes and covered the mouthpiece.
“Jane, your brother has had an accident. He’s shot himself and is in a hospital in Ossining. Your grandmother wants me to bring you there right away.”
Peter’s shot himself.
I went outside myself again.
The hospital was near Sing Sing prison. When I got there Grandma explained that Peter had been declared dead on arrival but at that very moment, miraculously, the prison doctor, who was a leading surgeon for puncture and bullet wounds, had walked into the hospital from a hunting trip. He discovered Peter’s heart was still beating, though faintly, and he had worked fast to stop the bleeding. The bullet had gone into Peter’s belly, hit his rib cage, pierced his stomach and kidney, and lodged just under the skin next to his spine. I sat with Grandma in the waiting room. After a while, the doctor came out of the operating room and called Grandma into the hallway. I heard him tell her that in spite of his efforts, Peter’s heart had stopped beating, and while they’d managed to start it up again, he didn’t know if Peter was going to make it. That was the first time I remember seriously praying. I said, “Dear God, if you let him live, I’ll never be mean to him again. Amen.”
Dad cut short his
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