Haywire [antikvár]

^^^ jhis book is a personal memoir; but it is also a larger story— about careJessness and guilt, and the wreckage they can make of Jives. My family seems to me the personification of these qualities. Both my parents we re exceptiona! in ordinary ways: the y were at-tractive, intelligent, and well educated. it was the scope and sweep of theii talent and success that made them distinctive. My mothei was an actress, Margaret Sullavan, and my father a theatrical producer, Leiand Hayward. They were happily married for ten years, had three children in even succession (I am the oldest), and lived in California during the thirties and early forties, a golden era not only for movies but for children who, like us, grew up surrounded by its opulent trappings. When they divorced, the impact was naturally profound and ultimately disastrous—not so much for them, perhaps, as for their children, two of whom eventually did time in mental institutions. However, this is not primarily about my parents' lives, except as they bore directly upon our own. It is really about their children— Bridget, Bill, and me—each of whom reacted uniqueiy to the haphazard slew of catastrophes, looking for a means of escape. Other people marry and divoice, Ieaving other children angry and disturbed. What distinguishes this particular story are the par-ticular qualities of its protagonists, and the extraordinary effects they had on their children. Our lives were a series of extremes. A thanksgiving of riches was bestowed on us at birth: grace and joy and a fair share of beauty; privilege and power. Those blessings which Iuck had overlooked could be bought. We seemed to exist above the squalor of suffering as most people know it. We were envied. But there were also more expectations, more marriages (my mother four times, my father five), and more damage: more of us (three out of five) suffered mental breakdowns. My parents failed, as they succeeded—on a massive scale. And they left behind them a Iegacy, vested in their children, that put the odds against survival ineluctably high.