Haywire Read Online Free PDF Page B

service, probably in Greenwich, since she lived there, makes more sense.… Oh, hell, I think Kenneth Wagg is having a nervous breakdown, for Chrissake, cried hysterically on the phone.… Ya, of course, it’s rough for all of us, but God almighty, he’s come up with the worst idea I’ve ever heard of—the kids go up to New Haven and they all stand around having some sort of macabre service while she’s being cremated. Pure crap. Christ, we don’t know yet whether it was from natural causes or sleeping pills, no note or explanation—they’ll have to do an autopsy. Morning papers will be full of it, goddamn reporters all over the place.… Right. Talk to you both in the morning.… Thanks. You’re sweet, Nedda.… Okay, okay. Here, speak to Pamela.”
    Father was always energized by the telephone. He came over and sat on the bed beside me and put his arms around me. I sagged against his chest. He smelled of wonderful aftershave lotion, bay rum, one of the first scents I could remember; I played with his tie clip, the only one he’d ever worn, a gold facsimile of an airplane propeller with a sapphire at the center. He was so fond of it he had had Cartier’s make him twenty or so over the years, all identical, just in case one got lost. His stomach rumbled and he sighed. “Goddamn gut of mine.” Then he got up and paced the room with his hands in his pockets and came back and stood in front of me and sighed again.
    “Brooke,” he said, “little Brooke. You were the most beautiful baby I ever saw.” He began to blink his eyes very fast; I could feel tears start at the corners of mine and concentrated on squinting at him. Pamela was still talking on the phone in low serious tones, and we seemed to be alone, years ago. We stared at each other and remembered the beginning. I saw his face stripped of all the time that had accumulated there, its structure fine and strong,his pale blue deep-set eyes filled with certainty instead of anguish. We grieved for ourselves, aching both for my lost childhood and his youth, when our lives, as they affected each other, had been simple.
    “You see”—he frowned, desperately trying to find the momentum to lift us out of our time warp—“we really aren’t sure yet how Maggie died.” Come on, Pop, I cheered him on mentally, you can do it. He thrust his hands down very deep in his pockets and hunched forward, bowing his head. One hand came up with a gold cigarette lighter, which he flicked on and off, on and off. His voice crunched as if he had laryngitis. “She was miserable about the play, as you know, and herself in it. She wasn’t sleeping at night—terrible insomnia. They got a doctor to come to the hotel yesterday and this afternoon to give her a sedative, a shot of some damn thing or other so that maybe she could nap before the performance tonight. Around five, after she finally fell asleep, Kenneth went across the street to Kaysey’s to talk to Gabel and Margolis about the possibility of buying her out of the goddamn play. When he got back a couple of hours later, the door to her room was locked and chained on the inside and apparently she wouldn’t answer his knocking. So—he went downstairs and called up; no answer. He got worried, got the hotel management to break the door in, and there she was.”
    “Dead.”
    “Ya. Brooke, hand me a cigarette, would you—over there by the lamp.” Pamela was hanging up the phone.
    “Leland, darling, Josh and Nedda wondered—”
    “Just a second, just a second. Before he left, the doctor gave her a bottle of sleeping pills, in case she needed them later. Kenneth says they were right by the bed, and when he looked in the bottle—afterwards—there were only
two
missing. That’s the hell of it—doesn’t make any sense. I mean you’d think if she
wanted
to kill herself she’d dump the whole bottle down her throat.” He put the cigarette in his mouth, letting it dangle while he rubbed his eyes ferociously as if to