The Men in My Life

by Patricia Bosworth

  Luckily Grandma was usually dozing when I emptied her bedpan. Then I’d tiptoe out of that smelly little room of hers and hurry back to see what Jason was doing. He always maintained he’d been painting for hours, and he’d show me his latest attempts. He was experimenting with form and color. Most of the sketches were done on heavy paper. I did like the way he used colors—mauves, blues, yellows, and greens—with bold structures. Lush coloring, delicate hues, but the work was abstract and, I felt, derivative—in no way was it original—but I said nothing.

  He started talking about painting my portrait; indeed, in those early months he made some preliminary sketches that I privately thought were cartoony at best. Sometimes when he was sketching me he’d order, “Get me a beer,” and I’d obediently run into the kitchen for a Bud. When I returned, he’d be lounging on the bed in an old paint-splattered shirt and underpants—he loved showing off his legs. Then he’d pull me next to him and give me a wet tongue kiss. As he did, our bodies would be pressed close and I could feel he had an erection. He’d grin and ask me to tell him about my latest booking.

  Over these first few months in our marriage I’d graduated to a full-page spread in Seventeen magazine promoting Helena Rubinstein lipstick. I was also featured in a Prell shampoo ad that appeared in Good Housekeeping. But I was still on the lowest rung of the modeling ladder. I never got much beyond doing catalogue work and on occasion some editorial work in Glamour and Charm. However, Jason was proud of my small success as a model and wanted to share it with the relatives. Whenever they dropped by, he’d drag me out to the living room to show my portfolio and brag about the assignments I was getting.

  Wally and Grandma weren’t impressed. They were in fact quite suspicious of me, since after all I was the daughter of “Bartley Crum, a commie lawyer.” No matter how much I denied that my father was a communist, none of them believed me. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s influence was on the rise; the fear of communists taking over America was extreme. Not only had J. Edgar Hoover’s army of FBI agents been haunting our family for years, but in 1951 after Rita Hayworth became my father’s client, Hoover stepped up the pressure on him to “name names” in order to prove his patriotism. Apparently, while Rita was still married to Orson Welles, she had lent her name to all sorts of left-wing causes. Hoover had a big fat file on her he marked X, meaning security risk. Now my father had to deal with the FBI on her behalf.

  MY THIRTY-YEAR-OLD SISTER-IN-LAW, Faith, advised me to “fuck politics.” She was the one member of my new family who not only accepted me as I was but seemed to enjoy my company. We were both huge movie fans. We used to trade back issues of Photoplay and Modern Screen. Faith loved the idea that I’d actually met Rita Hayworth and Montgomery Clift. “Tell me everything,” she’d beg as I prepared supper in the Alger Court kitchen, the flickering fluorescent lighting casting a ghastly glare on the veal cutlets I was simmering in white wine and butter.

  So I’d show her Monty’s cigarette butt, which I’d preserved in waxed paper, and I’d assure her that, yes, Rita’s favorite nail polish was Revlon’s Fire & Ice, and her hair was dyed red.

  Then I’d ask Faith questions I didn’t dare ask anyone else, such as why did I burn and itch so much “down there”?

  “Too much screwing,” she’d answer promptly. “But it’ll let up.” Eventually she accompanied me to the drugstore and helped me buy a douche and a saline solution. “Douche, but don’t douche too often. You’re gonna feel better though.” And she was right.

  IT WAS EARLY spring. I’d been married about four months when I received the first of many letters from my mother. Mama had refused to see me because she was too angry, according to my father, but she couldn’t keep from writing to me. I wasn’t surprised. She wrote compulsively, kept a journal, and carried on a correspondence with scores of friends and ex-lovers. It was her way of releasing her pent-up energy and her emotions. The letters were typed on pale blue paper engraved with her initials in red: GBC.

  Darling girl: Don’t think because I am writing you I am still not furious with you. I am livid. WHY ARE YOU THROWING YOUR LIFE AWAY BEFORE YOU HAVE STARTED LIVING YOUR LIFE? WHY ARE YOU TURNING YOUR BACK ON US? & You have been given everything—a beautiful home, beautiful education, a family who adores you . . .

  When I was your age, I was living in Paris with a French family. I was studying art and attending the Cordon Bleu. I had already met your father and I was in love with him but he wasn’t ready for marriage. Sometimes I think he was never ready for marriage, but that is the subject of another letter.

  After I returned to California I became engaged to another man. It was to make your father jealous. Then I worked for two years at the Call Bulletin as a crime reporter. The happiest years of my life. That’s when I covered the Mail Order Bride Murder trial in Sonoma and your father came up to visit one weekend and we decided we’d get married. And I published my one novel, Strumpet Wind, which was based on the trial, and your father loved my success. He encouraged me to write more books and I tried and tried and tried and I couldn’t. I failed. But I never blamed your father. It was ME.

  Your father was the handsomest, dearest, most decent man I have ever known. He is still the finest man I have ever known. I had always been attracted to bastards. Men who weren’t good for me. So I understand the attraction you feel for (I cannot call him your husband). But what you feel is a primitive, sexual, throbbing hot feeling isn’t it? The sex will sour—it always does . . .

  WAKE UP! HE CAN’T POSSIBLY APPEAL TO YOU INDEFINITELY IF HE ISN’T BEING FINANCIALLY RESPONSIBLE.

  Maybe I should blame myself for your dilemma. After all, when you were growing up you had me to contend with, and your mother is a contradictory, troubled woman. I wanted more than anything to publish more novels. I kept writing them for years and I failed. My failure made me miserable and resentful and unfulfilled, and I took it out on you and Bart and didn’t pay enough attention to either one of you. I am sorry.

  What am I getting at? Above all I don’t want you to live a limited life and Jason, I’m afraid, will limit you. If I thought Jason was exceptional rather than hopelessly mediocre I wouldn’t be carrying on this way. If he was a genius or even a genuine eccentric I would even applaud your efforts to support him. Does this make any sense? . . . I am now exhausted so I will close. I think I will have a massage . . . But please, PLEASE think about what I have been saying to you. Your loving, concerned Mama

  I didn’t answer that letter or the others she sent me. I felt defiant; I couldn’t yet admit to myself that she might be right. But Mama of course would not be ignored. When I didn’t reply, she showed up, weeks later, at the Powers Agency on my birthday, April 24.

  I happened to be there in the lounge collecting my booking slips when I heard her call, “Lambie-pie, the receptionist said I could come in here.”

  That familiar, brisk voice, the way she clipped her words, the singular pauses—nobody took command of the language the way she did. Then I saw her standing before me in a bottle-green suit and bottle-green pie-shaped hat, flaunting her Bette Davis mannerisms, and my eyes filled with tears.

  “Well! Aren’t you going to kiss your mother?”

  She held out her arms and I ran into them.

  She enveloped me in a big hug, and I breathed in her wonderful fragrance. She didn’t cry, but I could tell she was fighting tears as well.

  “Let me see you.” She pushed me away so she could study my face, thick with pancake, eyebrows drawn on darkly, lipstick bright on my mouth.

  “You look like a chorus girl,” she chided. “Do you have to wear so much makeup when you’re modeling?”

  I drew away from her. “Yes, I do. The lights are very hot, you know.” I felt self-conscious as her eyes bored into me. “I have to go to work, Mama,” I said.

  “Oh, you can’t leave now! Please, please, my angel. I want to give you your birthday present.”

  With that she handed me a small box from Tiffany’s. I opened it. Hidden ins
ide the blue tissue paper was a gold ring with a crest on it. “It’s the Bosworth crest,” my mother said. “I want you to put on that ring and never take it off. You are a Bosworth, you know.”

  I obediently put the ring on, and she grabbed my hand. “Let me see,” she commanded. “Oh, dear, you are still biting your nails.”

  “I’m trying not to.” I sulked. I was filled with anger, remembering all the times when I’d felt diminished in my mother’s impeccably groomed presence. “Goddamn it, Mama, you are treating me like a child!”

  “Well, you are a child. You are my child, my little girl.” She reached out to embrace me, but I turned away. “I have to go to work,” I told her, and I picked up my tote bag and marched out of the lounge.

  “Wait!” Mama cried. “I still haven’t told you what I am about to do.”

  “What? Please tell me very quickly.”

  “You know how your father is always complaining I spend too much money? I decided I’d earn some myself.”

  “How?”

  “Bloomingdale’s has hired me as a food consultant for their Gourmet Shop. I’ll be interviewing celebrity chefs.”

  “That’s great, Mama.”

  “Do you really think so?” She was almost stuttering.

  “Yes, I do. You’ll be very successful, I’m sure.” I moved to go into the Dell studios.

  She put her hand on my arm. “It means a great deal to me that you think I can do this,” she declared with passionate intensity. “I haven’t worked for years, you know. I am not a young woman anymore.” She was then fifty-three.

  “You’re in terrific health and your mind is sharp as a tack,” I said. “You are going to be fine. Now I really have to go.”

  She clung to me. “Don’t be a stranger, please.” She paused. “Please come to the house. Please? Bart misses you. Your father misses you. I miss you.”

  “Okay, Mama,” I said.

  JASON NEVER KNEW, but from then on I periodically did go home. That part of my life, as a daughter and a sister, I couldn’t share with him.

  One evening I dropped by and discovered that my father had invited Lillian Hellman, the director Herman Shumlin (who’d directed Hellman’s The Little Foxes), and the composer Marc Blitzstein over for drinks. They were part of what Mama called Daddy’s “left-wing buddies.” They worked together on the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee organizing rallies at Madison Square Garden.

  But to me they were impressive figures in the Broadway theatre world, a world I dreamed of being part of. I felt shy and self-conscious around them, especially since Daddy always told them, “Patti wants to be an actress,” so I just sat and observed.

  I was especially in awe of Hellman, a feisty, combative woman—quite homely with an oversize head and a squat body. She dressed elegantly in Balmain, chain-smoked, and rarely stopped talking. That evening she and Shumlin began drinking heavily and shouting at each other. Mama had told me they were lovers. Shumlin had a terrible temper, which he unleashed that night in its full glory.

  Hellman seemed keyed up, but this was understandable. Days before, at the Ninety-Second Street Y, she had done the narration for a performance of Regina, an opera written by Marc Blitzstein that was based on her play The Little Foxes. When it was over the audience had given Lillian a standing ovation, my father explained. Hellman interrupted with “I was so fucking nervous a stagehand gave me a shot of bourbon, and that didn’t help, so he gave me another. He had red hair. I wanted to thank him afterward, but I could never find him.”

  The standing ovation was not just for the opera but for Lillian’s statement in front of HUAC, my father argued. He continued, “It was Lillian’s letter to the committee that did the trick . . .” and he quoted her now-famous phrase: “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashion.”

  “Oh, Bart, for Christ’s sake,” Hellman roared. “What I really liked was that guy in the press gallery who yelled out, ‘Finally someone had the guts to do it.’”

  All this time, composer Marc Blitzstein, a slight, dark-haired man, had been listening intently. He was famous for his opera about union busting called The Cradle Will Rock, which had been directed by Orson Welles. Late in the evening my brother wandered into the living room. He had heard voices and I suspect Mama had suggested that he meet Blitzstein, since Blitzstein was a musician and Bart loved music so.

  My father introduced them and they went off in a corner to talk. After the group left, Bart announced that Blitzstein had invited him to attend his two-week music workshop in the Caribbean. Samuel Barber would be there; so would Leonard Bernstein and Harold Schonberg. My father became agitated. “Well, you can’t go. We can’t afford to send you,” he said. My brother retorted quietly that it was by invitation; Blitzstein was to give him a fellowship. Still, my father argued, it wouldn’t be wise. “We don’t really know Blitzstein . . . he is not really a friend.” This wasn’t like my father, who seemed approving of most people, especially his “left-wing buddies.” He added that he would have to “think about it. I hope you didn’t tell him you were definitely coming,” to which my brother answered, “I told him I’d like very much to.”

  My mother was anxiously listening to all this. Bart’s expression was stony. “Just because you don’t appreciate classical music,” he muttered. And he left the living room.

  As soon as he was out of earshot, my father exploded. “I can’t let our son be alone with those guys. They’re all fairies.”

  My mother whirled around. “Those ‘fairies’ happen to be extremely talented musicians. It could be a very rich experience for Bart. Music is the one thing that interests and pleases him now.”

  “Well, I am not going to allow it,” my father told her. He poured himself another drink. That’s when Mama began talking about the two books she’d been reading, Kinsey’s report and Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar. “It’s quite wonderful to read them side by side. My eyes have been opened,” she said intensely to my father. “Vidal implies that there is nothing abnormal in having romantic feelings for the same sex.”

  My father listened but couldn’t be swayed on account of his Catholicism. His puritanical repressed temperament was too ingrained. “I’m sorry, Cutsie, but I can’t accept what you are saying.”

  The following morning when Blitzstein phoned to invite my brother to the music workshop, Mama explained that Bart already had other vacation plans. Indeed, he’d been enrolled in a Quaker work camp in Missouri, and he went off tight-lipped. When he returned a couple of weeks later, tanned and very fit, he seemed more depressed than ever. He wouldn’t speak to my father for a long time and he confided to me he’d renounced Catholicism. “I’m an atheist now,” he told me. “I do not believe in God. I never did. I only pretended to for Daddy’s sake.”

  Chapter Six

  JUNE 1952—HOT, STICKY weather in Bronxville. There was no air-conditioning at Alger Court. Jason would wrap ice cubes in a dish towel and he’d rub my naked body with the cloth until my skin felt cool and wet, and then we’d make love. The ice would melt and the sheets would be soaked by the time we fell asleep.

  Sometimes we’d escape to New York. As soon as we arrived in the city, we’d climb onto a double-decker bus and ride down Fifth Avenue to the Village. We’d get off at Eighth Street, which was then a marvelous thoroughfare engulfed by swarming crowds often pushing to get into the Art Theater. I saw my first foreign films there with Jason, The Bicycle Thief and Brief Encounter. Afterward we might drop by the Eighth Street Bookshop and buy some paperbacks—J. D. Salinger, a collection of Fitzgerald short stories. Then we might end the evening at the Five Spot listening to jazz.

  But such pleasant interludes were few. Jason was often in an ugly mood because his paintings weren’t going well and Grandma was feeling poorly. Once Faith and I had to give her an enema—an experience I tried to forget.

  Then brief excitement: I was chosen to be a Camay Beauty Bride. It would be my biggest break as a model. I was to be pai
d thousands of dollars and my picture would appear in every women’s magazine, including Ladies’ Home Journal and McCall’s, for an entire year. John Robert Powers personally congratulated me and my rate went up to $60 an hour. For the next weeks I was fussed over by ad execs and stylists, I was given a new hairdo, and I tried on an endless array of lacy white bridal gowns. Then I posed, clutching a big bouquet of flowers, a diamond sparkling on my hand. My bitten nails were hidden by fake red ones.

  I posed for three entire days. Close-ups, profiles, and long shots. I noticed the ad execs huddling. There was a problem. I simply could not muster even the ghost of a smile. The stylist whispered, “You’re supposed to look happy. Don’t you remember how you felt on your wedding day? Think about that.”

  I stood there sweating under the hot lights clutching my long white veil. One of my fake red nails popped off and everybody stared at it. How could I explain that I was utterly miserable with my husband and trying to figure out a way to leave him?

  Eventually the ad with my woebegone face on it appeared in Good Housekeeping. It ran only once in that magazine and then the entire campaign was pulled. I did get paid and was also presented with twelve cartons of Camay soap. I handed that soap out to everyone I knew. Jason used the money to buy a sleek dark green Jag. But he never allowed me to drive the car.

  BY NOW I knew I’d made a terrible mistake marrying Jason, but I was too proud to admit it to anyone. Mama sensed I was in a quandary, so she made an appointment for me to see a stately middle-aged therapist named Dr. Aviva, who had a home office in her apartment on Fifth Avenue. I’d go there once a week and try to make sense of my marital problems.