Savage Grace - Natalie Robins (36 page)
Brooks Baekeland
The fourth and last time Barbara “committed suicide” was signalized to me at the Hotel Excelsior in Rome, where I was stopping on my way out to the Far East with Sylvie in February 1968. Barbara had thought I was still in Paris and would rally round quickly as I had always done before. That did not work this time partly because I was not there and partly because Sylvie called up the H
tel-Dieu and spoke to the physician in charge and discovered that Barbara was out of danger, though I knew there is always a risk of permanent brain damage. Later Jim Jones told me over the phone, “She’s been in a coma for thirty-six hours.” But it was Gloria, who took the phone away from him, who told me that I
had
to come back and to whom I said that I would never reply to that blackmail again and that this time I was never coming back.
Dr. Jean Dax
She was in a deep coma for twenty-four hours, and I think gradually pulled out of it—within the next twenty-four hours, roughly. There was no evidence of brain damage.
Letter from Brooks Baekeland to Gloria and James Jones, February 27, 1968
Jaipur & Udaip
Rambagh Palace
India
Dear Jim & Gloria—
I called up the H
tel-Dieu before leaving Rome on Sunday. The head nurse gave me a good report on Barbara’s condition, assuring me that there was practically
no
danger now at all. From this dose anyway.
I am writing to say three things. (A) My thanks to you and Gloria, who are somewhat saner and a great deal more sophisticated than Barbara’s other friends in Paris—all mostly female and therefore and to that extent somewhat hysterically delighted, I am sure, in the TV-drama aspect of this thing. Barbara has just about drained all there is to drain out of romantic (and not-so-romantic) violence where I am concerned, as I told you. And that is the second thing: her belief in force to get her way is fundamental in all things great and small, as everybody from waiters to prime ministers have experienced, and I have had to deal with that constantly for 25 years. Although the “provocation” this time may be judged great, there have been other times when even greater violence threatened over (as a start) where we planned to have dinner. I am to an astonishing and astonished degree unmoved, loving her no less than ever for all that. I would not probably feel that way had it not been for certain proofs of other things that indicate quite clearly to me that I am not the “only man there can ever be in my life”—i.e., that her hang-up on me is nowhere near so deathless as she will maintain to her girlfriends.
Third, Barbara never tells her TV audience the whole truth about her situation (or anything) and she has no doubt also failed to tell you that on top of the other funds she gets regularly from me she also gets $850 per month for the rental of the New York flat—i.e., another $5,100 between my decision about this thing and my return from this trip. She can (and does) piss away the funds I give her, but she is never as short as she pretends. She has a lot of dough to spend just on food, liquor, and play—nothing else to pay for, as I take care of all the basics myself. Because she is almost pathologically incapable of ordinary cost accounting (and hence any sort of planning also) she has no idea how much she blows on clothes and other things far and above any reasonable budgetary allowance. Her lack of realism in all things, a sort of fundamental inability to separate wish from fact, “what ought to be” from “what is,” “what can be” from “what might be” (important in
any
partnership) has (partly) accounted for a good deal of the sense of mutual paralysis in our lives, of which she herself sometimes complained. It has caused in me a deep reluctance to plan anything seriously with her—even a feeling that whatever I did with her would
somehow
simply be bungled or warped around again to suit the same old parade—but I don’t want to dwell on that. I am no saint myself.
I am not “abandoning” Barbara. I am just not making myself available anymore for her particular scene (any scenes), as I have perhaps 10 more years of non-senile life ahead of me, and I want now to think of myself a little, too. I am being selfish. That does not mean that “life is over” for her by any logic that I can see. Other men have lives to lead and many also have mistresses. If all the wives gobbled pills every time Dagwood took off on his own, America would soon be depopulated.
Finally, as I said to you on the phone, I am rather sick of the atomic fly swatter. I suppose when you first start using atomic weapons—even if only to slay a fly—and since there are no stronger resorts to force, then you can hardly think or fight in lesser terms. That is the trouble with melodrama—the climaxes are all used up in Act I.
I know Barbara is in danger (if not now, then later) because of that. But what the hell can I do about it, short of being her butler/gigolo or taking
myself
out of the scene in a sort of preemptive strike? But why should I?
The Morgan Bank will keep me in touch if there are any new developments, but as B’s friends I hope you will make it plain to her that nuclear disarmament is now in order and that this sort of thing drives any man sooner or later to profound indifference. She claims, when that has sentimental social value, to be a Catholic born and bred. What she needs is some self-examination not with a shrink but with a good old-fashioned Irish priest, who will ask her “What about it?” in those old-fashioned ethical terms that she understood (perhaps) before she went out to Hollywood in 1940, with John Jacob Astor hot on her lovely tail. It’s been show and little substance ever since. I helped in that, of course.
Yours ever and to Gloria—
Brooks
Gloria Jones
When she came to, Virginia Chambers and Ethel de Croisset and I were with her, and Dr. Dax, Jean Dax, who was the doctor for all of us. About a week later Virginia and Ethel and I took her to the American Hospital, which is way the hell across town, and she stayed there for six weeks. She was really in terrible shape. “I want my husband”—that’s the first thing she said in the American Hospital. She kept saying that to anybody who would listen to her—“I want my husband.” The bastard. Where
was
he? She was writing him letters—letters, letters, letters all the time. She used to always get him back with letters.
Letter from Brooks Baekeland to James Jones, March 12, 1968
Dear Jim—
It is exactly two weeks since I spoke to you on the phone from Rome.
In India I received some of the most pathetic letters I have ever seen from Barbara. They were written from the H
tel-Dieu and from the American Hospital where she went afterward. These letters were forwarded to me via Morgan’s. I have heard nothing since, because my itinerary had a rather large gap in it and I have not yet been able to close it—moving too fast. But I worry a whole lot about B, and I would be glad to have an encouraging word from you and Gloria—something objective that I can feel is accurate and written by someone who knows her and loves her. I admit to having been terribly affected by what she wrote. Of course I was meant to, but that makes no difference to me. I love her very much.
The next forwarding address that Morgan’s has for me is an airport departure (date, air and flight no.) on March 31—so you can write to me care of them and I will get your news then.
I am very grateful to you both for the trouble you have taken.
Love—
Brooks
Gloria Jones
Barbara was also writing letters to President de Gaulle and Mrs. de Gaulle—Mrs. de Gaulle especially, because Barbara said she knew she would understand. All of us, you know, spent time with her—Ethel and Virginia and I. She had a very nice private room. The American Hospital’s very fancy, you know.
Letter from Barbara Baekeland to Gloria and James Jones, Undated
The American
Hospital Neuilly
Darling Gloria—and Jim—
How can I ever thank you enough? When I’m really glad to be alive I’ll find some way. To get me out of the H
tel-Dieu—that monstrous place—saved my sanity. I want to find or write Brooks and tell him how sorry I am I’ve caused so much anxiety & pain to people I love. I haven’t the right to hold him if he wants to go but I wanted to see him once more as he left me with such anger. So much of our problems have been my fault. I realize it now. Perhaps if he does come back I can prove it and I would never reproach him.
How glad I am that with your worries and concern for me you came to see how I was. It’s enough to see the blue sky and the tree outside my window to begin to feel like being a part of it all. As much as I love Brooks I did not love him enough to let him go with a chance to be happy and that is what I reproach myself for.
Dax won’t let me even wear my own nightgowns—or have calls. Thank God I can still write or I would go crazy! Maybe this isolation is good for some people, but it leaves me with my thoughts, which are not happy ones, and is a kind of punishment.
Thank you for everything you’ve done for me over the years. There’s been so much kindness from you both and I have been so hateful. But I mean to study “How to Win Friends and Keep Them”—indeed cherish them—joke—but I
am
going to try to correct my very grave failings of character.
Come and see me when you can. I need an antiperspirant, hair rollers, and a
soin de peau
—Carolina has all this.
It’s much better here than the H
tel-Dieu!
Quelle
irony! But nurses aren’t very gentle people. I suppose if we were jabbing people with needles all day long & wiping their behinds & watching them die we wouldn’t be, either.
Neither doctor spends more than 5 min. with me & one a psychiatrist. How I’m going to pay for it all, God alone knows.
Come soon—
XX B