Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [142]
What happened next reveals Rand’s mixed reaction to her fans in the 1940s. After introductions and a few eager exchanges about The Fountainhead, Hill disclosed that she had not only memorized The Fountainhead but had also memorized Anthem, and that she liked to give dramatic recitations from the novels to garden clubs and civic groups. Rand was astounded. “What else have you memorized?” she asked. “Plato,” Hill answered, dishonestly, and then realized that she had made a big mistake. The author narrowed her eyes and asked, “Plato? The father of Communism?” In truth, Hill had only wanted to impress her hostess and had racked her brain for the loftiest writer she knew. O’Connor broke the menacing silence. He said, “What Ruth probably means, Ayn, is that she was required to memorize passages from Plato and other philosophers in college.” Then he walked over to Hill, who was sitting on the floor, took her hand, drew her to her feet, and led her to a chair near the fire.
Rand accepted this explanation, and the two women quickly hit it off. Since Hill had grown up near Lorain, Ohio, and her husband, Buzzy, loved to garden almost as much as Frank did, the Hills and O’Connors became friends. During the next two years, until October 1951, the transplants often drove seventy-five miles from their house in Newport Beach to Chatsworth to dine and converse with the O’Connors.
Ruth Hill glimpsed Rand in moods and postures few others did. Rand rarely dressed up, but when Hill invited Ayn and Frank to dinner shortly after the couples met, Ayn wore a black silk evening gown designed by Adrian, embossed with planets, moon, and stars and trailing a twelve-inch fan-shaped train. Over cocktails she twirled and posed, laughed and showed off, as she had done with her new mink coat at the Herald Tribune. Hill sometimes spotted a radiant little girl inside the formidable writer—when she found Rand listening to her “tiddlywink” music, for example, and once, during a conversation Hill no longer recalled, when Rand made such a sweet remark that Hill rose and patted the novelist on the head. One night Rand spilled salt on a restaurant table and surprised the Hills by throwing a pinch of it over her left shoulder, an ancient rite to blind the devil. Most uncharacteristically, Hill also observed her in the role of witness to a UFO. One Saturday afternoon, Rand greeted the Hills by beckoning Ruth upstairs, into the immense master bedroom, where tall glass windows lined a wall to the left of the bed. “Do you see those junipers?” she asked, pointing to a row of twelve-foot bushes about half an acre from the house. “A UFO came by there last night.” Stunned, Hill asked for details. “It was hovering just above the junipers and then flying in slow motion,” she said. It was round and its outer edges were lighted, she continued, and it made no sound. By the time she woke Frank and led him to the window, it had moved out of sight. “Did you really see this?” Hill asked. “I saw it,” said Rand. The story seems to demonstrate her confidence in the ability of her mind to interpret the evidence of her senses. As the years went by, this particular confidence would not always serve her well.
Then, suddenly, Barbara and Nathaniel were leaving. The philosophy major earned her bachelor’s degree in the spring of 1951 and enrolled in the master’s degree program at New York University. Nathaniel, about to be a college junior, decided to go with her and study psychology at NYU. In later years, he could hardly reconstruct his reasoning, so astonished was he at his readiness to leave the most significant relationship of his life. But with Rand’s encouragement, Barbara and he had become lovers again and were committed to making it work.
In late June, the two stood in the O’Connors’ driveway and told their older friends good-bye. Everyone promised to call and write. Ayn, her arm entwined in her husband