The Men in My Life

by Patricia Bosworth

  That same day around noon my brother was hustled out of Deerfield in a taxi and sent back to New York on the train. He showed up unannounced at the brownstone, my mother told me afterward. “He was in a state of shock. He couldn’t speak. He just marched up to his room on the fourth floor and lay on his bed facedown.”

  MY FATHER PHONED Deerfield immediately, demanding to know why his son had been sent home from the school so abruptly without informing his parents so they could at least have met him at the station. None of the teachers would speak to him, but he finally reached Arthur, who explained exactly what had happened. My father still couldn’t understand why Bart had been sent home in the first place. It was as if he was personally being blamed for Clark Steuer’s death.

  The following morning, Daddy took the train up to Deerfield to confront the headmaster, Frank Boyden, who had also been avoiding him. Boyden was a legendary character, a crusty old despot who had been running the academy with an iron hand since 1902. He’d raised a fortune for the school and had made it more intellectually competitive with Choate and Exeter. Boyden was proud of all that he’d accomplished, and he was not going to let Clark Steuer’s suicide tarnish the school’s impeccable reputation. After he spoke to my father, he proceeded to hush up the death. (Indeed, when I tried to document the incident decades later, I was told by the school’s PR office that a suicide had never occurred at Deerfield, nor had a student named Bart Crum ever attended the academy, although his name was in the school yearbook.)

  Daddy repeated to Boyden what he’d asked Arthur. Why was his son removed from the school when he had nothing to do with Clark Steuer’s tragic death? Boyden replied, “Your son and Clark had an intense emotional attachment,” the last phrase uttered in ominous, accusatory tones. He added that under the circumstances it was better if Bart did not return to the school. “Think about it,” he said. Daddy didn’t put up any argument. He gathered up his son’s books and the clothes he’d left behind, and took the next train to New York.

  AT THE TIME I wasn’t informed of the terrible incident at Deerfield. In Geneva it was spring and I was barely cracking a book. Instead I necked passionately with some of Ecolint’s roughest, wildest students—rich Arab and Egyptian boys whose fathers were oil potentates.

  By then I was breaking all sorts of rules, sneaking out of study hall and biking into Geneva after the five p.m. curfew. I started rendezvousing with a mop-headed actor named Raymond whom I’d picked up in a coffee bar in La Vieille Ville. I didn’t tell him I was only sixteen; I just made him race me on my bike, ending up on the lawn near the lake.

  When Ecolint’s headmistress, Mlle. Travelletti, discovered I was meeting Raymond, she flew into a rage because I was a minor. She warned me I’d be expelled if I ever saw him again. Meanwhile I was confined to campus until the semester ended.

  That didn’t stop me. Through friends, Raymond and I arranged to see each other at dusk in a park behind the school. It just so happened that Ecolint’s hefty gym teacher was jogging around the park at that hour. She spotted us kissing behind a tree. I was sent back to New York the following afternoon.

  MY PARENTS WERE waiting for me at Idlewild outside customs. After the initial hugs and kisses, Mama asked me, “What in God’s name did you do?”

  “I don’t think I did anything that bad,” I retorted sulkily. “I just liked this boy and I wanted to be with him.”

  I noticed that Daddy seemed preoccupied. He didn’t greet me with the usual “Hey, baby, give your old man a kiss” routine. He grabbed up my suitcases and hurried us into a waiting cab. Once we were speeding back to Manhattan, he started telling me about Bart and all that had happened at Deerfield. He’d been home now for close to a month since his friend’s death. “He doesn’t talk—won’t talk—at all, and he won’t do anything except listen to music.”

  “We are hoping you may be able to reach him,” Mama said quietly. “You’ve always been so close.”

  Bart had barely communicated to me during our many months of separation. I’d written him a couple of notes—one from London; one from Chamonix, where I’d gone skiing. When he didn’t respond, I’d assumed he was caught up with school activities. On his birthday I sent him a box of Swiss chocolates. He’d responded with a scrawled postcard: “I don’t like chocolates. Remember?” But again, his silences hadn’t bothered me—he never talked much anyway.

  Once home we gathered in the kitchen. Daddy brought my brother from his room. He loomed behind our father, looking skinnier and taller than I remembered. Pimples dotted his cheeks. He didn’t respond when I attempted to hug him; he just stared vacantly straight ahead.

  We proceeded to eat supper in silence, feeling shy and uncomfortable with one another. Nine months had passed since we’d been together as a family. How could we possibly catch up? Were our phones still being tapped? Was Daddy still on pills? Was Mama seeing Saul?

  Bart barely touched his food. “Not hungry,” he mumbled.

  Of course we avoided our pain. We could not, nor did we want to, explain ourselves.

  Bart bolted from the table before dessert was served.

  After supper Daddy brought up the subject of my expulsion. He thought it was preposterous, but he knew that if it was on my school record, it might be harder for me to get into college, so he subsequently called some high-powered friends in Geneva and the expulsion was expunged from my record.

  But I remained in disgrace all that summer. I was not allowed to date; I was coached in math and science, my worst subjects. Most of the time I sat in my room writing in my diary or writing long letters to Raymond in my imperfect French. He’d answer in his even more imperfect English. It was hard to communicate. As the weeks went by, we wrote fewer letters, and then we stopped altogether.

  THE WORST PART about being home again was that I seemed to have lost my brother. He had no desire to talk to me or spend time with me. He was no longer my mocking confidant; now he existed in stony silence, rarely leaving his room. I’d bring him his favorite ice cream and he’d refuse to eat it. I’d plead with him to come to the movies, take a walk in Central Park, go off to the American Museum of Natural History—his favorite place was the Planetarium. He’d always shake his head. And when I tried to speak in our private language, he’d clap his hands over his ears.

  I was very upset; in the past we’d always helped each other. Now he was resisting me. I felt as if I was starting to lose him.

  Mama arranged for Arthur Mehija to make special visits, hoping they’d be a comfort but also hoping that Bart might finally communicate—something, anything. We’d wait while Arthur walked up to the fourth floor; an hour would go by and Arthur would come back down to the living room, shrugging his shoulders. Apparently they barely spoke. Bart would be lying facedown on his bed while Arthur tried to talk to him. Once or twice they played chess.

  “But he was practically catatonic,” Arthur admitted. “He is going through such agony and shame inside himself.”

  Soon after Arthur’s visits, Mama sought psychiatric help for Bart. She saw three doctors; she wanted to find someone who would treat her son gently, who wouldn’t be judgmental. As usual, she took notes. She shared them with me later, confiding that she’d been brave enough to mention the phrase “homosexual tendencies” in regards to Bart and his friend at Deerfield. That’s how delicate a matter it was in those days to suggest that anyone would have the bad luck to be gay. At that point, I certainly didn’t want to consider the possibility. I refused to believe that my brother might be gay.

  One therapist went off on a rant, saying that homosexuals were “dangerous.” Another doctor used the word “unstable.” The lack of sensitivity and knowledge about homosexuals was total. Mama told me, “These men were unenlightened and downright ignorant.”

  Mama knew because Mama had done her homework. In 1948 she’d read and reread two books that had begun to change the public’s perception of sexuality. One was Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey and his col
leagues, a scientific treatise based on thousands of interviews, which revealed that many Americans had a “strong erotic interest in their own sex.” The other was a novel called The City and the Pillar by a twenty-six-year-old named Gore Vidal. It was the coming-out story of a man who was completely comfortable making love to another man.

  Mama underlined passages in Vidal’s novel such as “Everybody is by nature bisexual. Nothing is ‘right’; only denial of instinct is wrong.” She thought a lot about the importance of Vidal’s words, but she didn’t speak of them to Daddy. My father had a “thing about pansies,” as he put it. He felt uncomfortable around them.

  THROUGHOUT THAT HOT, muggy summer of 1950, Bart remained in his room listening to music. Mahler’s Eighth Symphony would be on full blast, the sound turned on so loud the floors would literally vibrate and the bare empty spaces would resound with choral pronouncements of revelation and redemption while trumpets and trombones blared.

  I would tiptoe in and sit next to him.

  It was obvious he was still grieving, still caught up in the nightmare of what had happened at Deerfield. I imagined he would finally rage and cry in my arms and explain why his friend had hanged himself. But my brother never moved, and when he finally spoke, his voice was muffled by pillows. “If you care about me at all, you will leave me alone. Go away, please.”

  I think he would have stayed forever in that room, enveloped by music, but Daddy insisted he leave the house and “get some air.” He took us both down to Penn Station the day the Hollywood Ten were sent to prison. “You should see this. It’s historical,” he said.

  I have a vague memory of joining a jostling, respectful crowd of more than a thousand people, some holding signs proclaiming the Ten’s innocence. A few people recognized my father and ran over to shake his hand.

  When we returned home there was a sedan parked outside with FBl agents in it. Daddy rushed us inside and bolted the door. We peered out a few moments later and the sedan was gone.

  BY THE END of the summer it occurred to us that Daddy was spending an awful lot of time at home. Then Mama explained that while we were away in school he’d been asked to leave the Roosevelt firm—no explanation given, but he suspected his politics were the reason. He didn’t put up a fight, but after he walked out of his office, he took his third overdose of sleeping pills.

  But it hadn’t been fatal, Mama rattled on; she obviously thought we were old enough to hear the truth. His stomach had been pumped out and a few days later he was back hustling for new clients and making speeches for Israel.

  This last suicide attempt didn’t seem to affect him, but it affected Bart. After listening to Mama tell the story, he ran to the toilet and vomited. It was weird. Daddy was almost radiant and full of crazy energy; I realize now he was probably back on uppers.

  My brother, however, never took medication for his depression. So he endured it and it must have been hell.

  THAT FALL, BART and I were both enrolled in the same progressive coeducational boarding school in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, set on a rambling estate of nine acres of rolling green hills. I was a senior, he was a junior (Bart had skipped a grade). For the first time in my life I buckled down and studied hard because I did want to go to college and I wanted to prove to my parents that I could achieve academically.

  During those months at Stockbridge, Bart and I barely communicated. He’d become involved with a group of rebellious students who seemed disenchanted by everything. Bart followed the lead of a strange boy with a thin, sharp face named Tobias. Late that winter the two of them ran away from the school and were gone for two days, hiding out in Pittsfield where they slept overnight in a movie theatre and then tried to thumb a ride to Boston. When they were brought back to Stockbridge by the police they were sullen and uncommunicative. I tried in vain to get my brother to tell me why he’d worried everybody so, and he just glared at me and then cupped his hand over his ear as if he hadn’t heard me and murmured, “Eh wot?”

  In the past Bart had always helped me in math and science, in which he excelled. He did coach me while we were at Stockbridge, but he seemed resentful. Then the mood passed. He even seemed briefly happy when I was accepted at Sarah Lawrence. I told him I wouldn’t have gotten in if it hadn’t been for his help. “That’s ridiculous,” he said.

  EASTER VACATION OF 1951, Bart sank into a deep depression. Mama took him to another psychiatrist. After a couple of sessions with my brother, the doctor met with my parents and told them their son was “clinically depressed” and so despairing he could be suicidal. He rarely spoke in session and often fell asleep. When he did speak, however, he never mentioned his family; he never mentioned having a sister. The doctor concluded that Bart should go to the Austen Riggs Center for more complete evaluation.

  My father refused to send Bart to Riggs. “My son is not crazy,” he declared. “He will get over this.”

  As if to prove it, and to get his mind off his troubles, Daddy drove Bart up to see a house in Garrison he had decided to buy as a weekend getaway. It was high on a hill with windows overlooking the sweep of the Hudson River. Bart loved the house and the view. He tramped around the grounds with Daddy and together they discovered, half a mile away, an unfinished castle. It had been built in the early 1900s by a man called Dick. He never had the money to finish it, so it was called “Dick’s Folly,” but it was famous in the area, taking its place with other historic Gothic castles like Castle Rock, which stands above a steep hill opposite West Point.

  Bart was excited about the castle. He told me he and Daddy were going to take sleeping bags and camp out there. I’m almost sure they never did.

  Chapter Three

  IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, Mama and Daddy drove me up to Sarah Lawrence College. They kissed me goodbye and left, and I was relieved to see them go. Though as I watched them drive away, I experienced the familiar feeling of being abandoned again. I felt the same way I had felt when I’d been sent to Switzerland, but then the feeling passed and I was glad I’d left home and was away from my extremely depressed brother.

  I’d been assigned to Westlands, a large Tudor-type dorm building complete with stained-glass windows, which housed the administrative staff and some boarders. It stood at the top of the tree-studded green hills that were part of the campus grounds rising above Bronxville.

  I loved the suite I’d been delegated to; it was huge, with a sloping floor and banks of windows that flooded everything with light. I liked my two roommates. They were also freshmen—decent, well-meaning young women who wanted to be friends. For a while they were patient and indulgent with me, but they ended up being exasperated because I could not finish unpacking. For the next three months, my suitcases lay open on the floor, most of my possessions scattered about: movie magazines, my baby pillow, a quilt. As soon as I took off an item of clothing, I’d drop it on the floor, and often I’d just push junk under my bed—old newspapers, candy wrappers, an umbrella. I even left half-drunk cartons of milk on the windowsill to sour.

  My lame excuse was that I had no time to clean up my portion of the room. In those first weeks at college I was running around the campus trying to absorb everything. I have a blurred snapshot of me in my black leotard and green jersey, vaulting up the hill to classes. I would often drop notepads and books in my eagerness to attend such and such a lecture or explore the new dance studio at Reisinger Concert Hall or audition for an upcoming play.

  Many of my fellow freshmen had vague notions about becoming successful as something—poets, doctors, journalists, painters—but I wanted to be both an actress and a writer. The creative ferment at Sarah Lawrence supported our dreams. There were jazz concerts in the student lounge, Norman Dello Joio was rehearsing his opera The Triumph of St. Joan, and Joseph Campbell was talking about heroes and myths and telling us to “follow your bliss.”

  I decided to major in dance. My don was a powerful outspoken woman named Bessie Schönberg, whose kinky hair was yanked into a topknot. Bessie was the head of the danc
e department at Sarah Lawrence; she’d been at the college since 1938 teaching dance and choreography, and she was a legend in the field. Jerome Robbins used to come up to campus to have lunch with her and so did Merce Cunningham. Bessie had been a member of Martha Graham’s original company. She lived and breathed Graham’s dictum: It was all about the integrity of the work, the process of work being as important as the work itself.

  As we stood doing our warm-ups before class, reflected in the mirrors of the dance studio, she would exhort, “Keep yourselves open and aware! Listen to your urges! Listen to what’s motivating you!”

  I wanted to lead a life dramatically different from my mother’s, who’d virtually given up her career to be in my father’s shadow. He called her “his little woman.” At our first conference I falteringly told Bessie I hoped to be like Colette, “an actress and a dancer and a novelist and a playwright . . .” (I didn’t add, “A woman who believed love and sex were the ultimate experience.”)

  Bessie smiled. “Your ambitions are very big,” she said briskly. “That’s all well and good, but first you must learn how to concentrate.”

  You must learn how to concentrate. I had no idea what she was talking about, but the phrase stuck in my mind. For the next four years I struggled to make sense of my ambitions and tried hard to figure out what the nature of my commitment was.

  I WAS DATING indiscriminately, going out with old boyfriends and collecting new ones. Nobody captured my fancy. I felt reckless and longed to be swept off my feet. And then one night, about three weeks after I’d begun classes at Sarah Lawrence, I went with some newfound friends to the favorite student hangout, a bar named the Greasy Spoon. It hung over a hill above the Bronxville railway station, and throughout the night you could hear the whistles and the chugging of trains right below the bar. The train tracks literally cut through the center of Bronxville’s Main Street.