You see, B.D., ever since we were children I've known that Bette was the important one. Mother geared our whole lives to my sister. Bette came first and I was just a tagalong. I never got new clothes, just my sister's hand-me-downs. I was told that she had to have new clothes because she was going places in the world. Bette was temperamental even when she was little.

A few years after my divorce, when Fay was still a little girl, I married David Berry. You were too young to remember him but he was a wonderful man. He was a reformed alcoholic and very open about it. He was a wonderful man. Well, when we got married Bette was angry because she said she needed me and I was letting her down. To get even, I assume, she sent us a wedding present of a dozen cases of liquor, which were waiting for us in the foyer of our house when we returned from our honeymoon. When I confronted her with it, she pretended that she had forgotten about David's problem. Don't ever underestimate your mother, B.D. She's got a mean streak a mile wide when she's crossed. by Anonymous When the third box arrived, despite my best efforts to head it off, I phoned her without opening it and said, 'Mother, I really do appreciate your kind thoughts and the fact that you love me, but I've nowhere to put all this stuff. The closets and drawers are jammed full and I can't wear it all as it is.' I still had no idea what she meant but, all these years later, I still have a hunch that it was not so much another swipe at my father as an expression of her wish that she could have conceived me without undergoing the degradation of the sexual act. She wrote in her autobiography that sex was God's joke on humanity, a grotesque anachronism and an outdated testament to man's waning power, whatever that may mean. Why don't you sit with me for a while?' she whined. 'Or don't you have time for your poor old mother anymore?' Her pathetic routine set my teeth on edge and I blurted, i had plenty of time for you at dinner but you ended that rather abruptly, didn't you?' I knew a great deal about Joan, none of it good, and was curious myself to see how this was going to work out. It certainly was stirring lots of publicity even before shooting began.

Huge boxes of clothes began to arrive from Bergdorf Goodman. I kept the first two, not because I needed the clothes but because I knew that refusing them would upset Mother. I made a great point of finding them lovely and thanking her but I also asked her to stop sending them. Tennessee Williams was in San Francisco for a meeting with Mother concerning the possibility of her doing The Night of the Iguana on Broadway. His go-between was a lady by the name of Viola Rubber. Viola was as aware of the situation between Gary and Mother as must have been everyone else in the hotel and she was nice enough to take Michael and me on outings to Fisherman's Wharf and Top of the Mark and on as many cable-car rides as we wanted. I don't know what you mean, Mom,' I finally confessed. 'It can't be that everybody's miserable. We know lots of people who are happy together. Look at the Henreids . . . you don't mean to tell me they're pretending, do you?' Mother wanted to put Margot in a hospital but Gary wouldn't hear of it. 'You do what you please with your daughter but not with mine! Margot will not be shut away in a mental home!' Things got worse and worse but Gary, despite his continual protestations of dislike for children in general, felt very paternal toward Margot. There finally came a time when Mother was unable to keep a nurse for more than a week or two at a time and the strain became enormous. Mother and Gary began to have vicious fights over who was to blame for Margot's condition, and although Michael and I saw little of our sister, we constantly felt the effect of her presence. by Anonymous

The actress took the news in stride and dialed her son Michael and attorney Harold, but she never forgave B.D. or tried to get in touch with her. I was wandering in the garden and came upon Mother sitting alone in the gazebo and crying quietly. She hadn't heard me approach and I stood for a few moments, listening to her weeping and wondering whether to withdraw in silence or go to her and try to be of some comfort. I couldn't ignore her unhappiness and continued the last steps to the gazebo. 'What's the matter, Mom?' I asked gently, putting a hand on her shoulder. 'Is there anything I can do to help?' At first Mother seemed to be able to spare the rest of us the worst of it by containing the raging battles behind the closed doors of their suite, but, as the struggles became fiercer and the anger more intense, it must have been that only her own survival was on her mind.I looked in the direction in which she was pointing and saw two girls about my age, dressed in identical corduroy overalls and middy blouses, matching shoes and even the same hairstyle and color of hair ribbon. They were both knitting, and, even though they were close enough to hear the conversation, neither of them looked up when their mother spoke about them. I don't know why you're going on about it. I've already told you it's all right with me. If you want to marry a homosexual, it's entirely up to you. Maybe it'll work out.'