Free My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation Hardcover by Molly Haskell Page A

formatting, the screensaver, hit the wrong key and brought down
    havoc, couldn’t find the Gmail “Away” message (Google had changed
    the setting), and somehow he managed to fix it over the phone.
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    My Brother Advertises for a Secretary and Reels in a Wife
    At one point, much later, my right arm is in a sling and I’m trying
    to write a review. I think of it not as my arm but The Arm, an append-age hanging from my shoulder with no relation to me. While I’m talk-
    ing on the phone, The Arm lands on the backspace key and continues
    to backspace until the whole document is erased.
    “First take your hands off the computer and sit back,” he says when
    I call him. (It’s already too late for that.) “Then go get a cup of coffee.
    What’s important is not what you just did, but what you do next!” And
    he gives me instructions for rescuing the document, which of course
    I’ll forget and have to call him again the next time it happens.
    He wasn’t always so indulgent, and one of the very few times of
    real acrimony between us was over money. I had moved to New York
    and gotten a job and Mother was helping me financially. He was out-
    raged, and wrote me a letter so blistering that it practically burned the skin off my hands. In his eyes, I was nothing more than a pampered
    princess who didn’t have to prove myself by making my own way fi-
    nancially.
    Back in 1978 he had just started his own company and called it
    The Argonaut Company, based on the famous myth of Jason and the
    Golden Fleece. I thought it might have something to do with Jason
    being a nontraditional sort of guy, less the masculine warrior- hero
    than a manager, more democratic, more uncertain with his crew of
    proven heroes. But Chevey says it was simply the idea of a quest, the
    search for the Golden Fleece, which could be retirement wealth, life-
    long striving.
    Our Jason hung out his shingle, and in answer to the ad, there on
    his doorstep, braving a busy intersection in Richmond’s West End, ar-
    rived the heaven- sent helpmeet Eleanor. There may have been other
    candidates, but he hired her immediately. She began on the first work-
    ing day of January 1983. A former high- school English teacher and a
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    My Brother My Sister
    divorcee (and, as it happened, several years younger than her new
    boss), she had the typing, shorthand, and fire- building skills required, plus the unspoken credentials of attractiveness, intelligence, and a
    laid- back, no- nonsense attitude. There were a few more pluses (or mi-
    nuses) that weren’t in the job specs even in Chevey’s head: Eleanor had two small children, was a deeply religious Christian conservative (Baptist), and, to counterbalance any alarms this might raise, a sense of
    humor that was on the wild side. His occasionally dark humor coin-
    cided with hers; her quickness and common sense gave him every-
    thing he needed in a secretary . . . and a great deal more.
    They worked side by side, a mom- and- pop operation soon literal-
    ized and sanctified by marriage in 1985. Her children— Barbara, an
    eleven- year- old girl, and her five- year- old brother, Adam— soon warmed to him completely and permanently, as did her mother, Rose.
    Mary, my own mother, was predictably less enthusiastic. A Baptist!
    And coming after I had married a Greek. But she came to love her, as
    how could she not have? They had bought a rather plain ranch house
    in a woodsy neighborhood near the University of Richmond, and ren-
    ovated it into something beautiful. The architect they hired walked in
    and immediately saw the possibility of a house in the Frank Lloyd
    Wright style: they covered the façade with stone, landscaped the slop-
    ing front lawn, and added a high- arched sunroom with skylight and a
    reflecting pool in back. They continued to work together, travelled as
    often as they