Haywire, Brooke Hayward [the best ebook reader for android TXT] 📗

you, and someday, at that rate, you may catch up. But for now, let’s just stay here the rest of our lives.”

Father and Mother, behind me, were still talking. I stretched out in the sun and gazed down at the water, letting myself lap against the stones. All this time, I thought over and over. All this time.

n the next decade, Father became a sick man. A stroke only temporarily slowed him down; more insidious was the excruciating attack of pancreatitis that put an end, once and for all, to cigarettes and liquor. Uncomplainingly he substituted Diet Rite Cola for Wild Turkey, and photographing the night skies for flying them. But he was not so uncomplaining about the lives of his remaining two children. After Bill’s time as a paratrooper was up, he went from Germany, where he was stationed, to New York. Father and Pamela were not particularly enthusiastic. As a result of Father’s cold shoulder, Bill came out to California to see me (“and bum around,” said Father). He stayed on. I had removed myself to the comparative sanctuary of the West Coast upon my marriage to struggling actor-director Dennis Hopper; Father’s disapproval of that union was exceeded only by Pamela’s. (She was offended by the way Dennis dressed; he couldn’t be relied on to turn up in the proper raincoat for the proper occasion.) The day of our wedding Father had called me up at 6 a.m. to remind me I still had time to call it off. When, in the 1961 Bel Air fire, Dennis’s and my house burned to the ground, Father’s response, by long-distance telephone, had been, “Christ, I hate Los Angeles; why the hell didn’t God burn down the whole city while he was at it?” Although the next year Dennis and I produced a daughter, Marin, Father was not pacified. The day in 1967 that I decided to get a divorce, however, he called again. “Congratulations,” he announced to me in Los Angeles from his office in New York City—I could tell by the sound of his voice that his feet were up on the desk—“on the first smart move you’ve made in six years.” But he didn’t let his dislike of Dennis (which survived the divorce) dampen his enthusiasm for the huge success of Easy Rider, which my brother, Bill, and Peter Fonda co-produced and Dennis directed.

On the night of February 3, 1971, Bill was skiing in Alta, Utah (“Terrific powder,” he said wistfully), when Father was rushed to the hospital. Pamela finally caught up with Bill by telephone—no easy matter, as he put it—to report that the subsequent operation was an unqualified success. Father was already insisting that he be released at once. A good sign.

I had been easier to reach. I was walking out my front door in Los Angeles when the phone rang. Father, in rehearsal with Father Daniel Berrigan’s play The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, had suffered a small stroke. A warning.

His decision to produce “Catonsville Nine” had provoked a certain amount of controversy. It was unusual for Father to commit himself to such an unequivocal, fervent, anti-war statement. Admittedly a WASP of the old school, he backed away hurriedly from anything radical. And during the year since he’d first read Dan Berrigan’s adaptation of his book about the trial, Berrigan had gone on to federal prison, to serve out his term. In addition he faced co-conspiracy charges in an unlikely alleged plot to kidnap Henry Kissinger.

Father was also meeting with some resistance from Pamela. Pamela didn’t condone Dan Berrigan’s plan to go into hiding for those months before he finally faced his prison sentence. Not only was he a fellow Catholic but more, a Jesuit priest, and Pamela, who wasn’t sure she approved of his burning Selective Service files in the first place, was positive she approved not at all of his going underground once he’d been convicted for it. She felt it was unethical. But Father loved the material. “Very gutsy man” was his opinion. “A lot braver than I could ever be. Besides, I don’t think he’s guilty. And if I only produced plays that followed my own political beliefs—God, how limited.” “Catonsville Nine” was due to open on February 7th. Father’s main beef, when he entered the hospital, was that he might not be able to attend the opening night of his play. Maybe he knew it would be his last. He did know that sooner or later he was going to end up in the hospital for some extensive tests; he’d been having trouble with the circulation in his legs and was buying time until after the opening.

On the night of the third, just before leaving his apartment at the Beekman to go to one of the last previews, he suddenly stopped talking in the middle of a telephone conversation with his secretary, Kathleen Malley. Kathleen had got through to Pamela on the other line, and Pamela had run into Father’s bedroom to find him unconscious.

I called him from California right after he came out of surgery.

“How do you feel, Pop?”

His speech was still slurred from the anesthesia. “Groggy as hell,” he answered faintly. “Hurts to talk. Big bandage stuck on my neck.”

“Don’t talk, Pop. You’re not supposed to. Good luck with the play. I hear it’s terrific.”

Then he woke right up.

“Where’d you hear that?” (I could almost hear his head snapping around.) “Goddamned right, terrific. Did you ever get to meet Dan? Marvelous fellow. Play opens in two days. Don’t forget to call Kathleen; she’ll read you the reviews. I can’t stand it; they won’t let me out of here for my own opening. First one I’ve ever missed. Do you realize? Two days. What luck. Just kills me.”

The morning after the play opened, I called him back. He was in wonderful spirits.

“What about those notices!” he shouted into the phone. “Great, huh?”

Then suddenly his mood changed and he launched into