My family seems to me the personification of these qualities. Both my parents were exceptional in ordinary ways: they were attractive, intelligent, and well educated. It was the scope and sweep of their talent and success that made them distinctive. My mother was an actress, Margaret Sullavan, and my father a theatrical producer, Leland 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 uniquely to the haphazard slew of catastrophes, looking for a means of escape.
