Pauline Kael - Brian Kellow [27]
Broughton had been staying in a small house at 60 Lower Crescent Avenue in Sausalito, and soon Pauline talked her way into moving in with him. His sister, Marjorie Broughton, recalled that Pauline lived by her own rules and sometimes shook up the neighbors: She had a habit of parading in front of the living room windows in her bra, and on one occasion, she removed her bra and waved it out the window at passersby. Still, her presence was a boon in many ways. She flew into a frenzy of cleaning and cooking and interior decorating, leaving Broughton somewhat puzzled by this burst of domestic attentiveness, but she was such vibrant company that it was easy enough to go along with her.
Then, in early 1948, she informed Broughton that she was pregnant. He was stunned, then angry: He believed that she had for some time wanted to have a child and had blatantly manipulated him into being the father. Pauline assured him that she would make no demands on him, of a financial or any other kind. But Broughton wanted nothing to do with the child. Although he claims in his memoir that he was not aware of its existence until many years later, he told a different story to Joel Singer, who remembered, “He ‘threw her out.’ I heard that phrase countless times over the years, and it was certainly related to her being pregnant. He felt deceived. He had no intention of being a father at that time.”
She broke the news of her pregnancy to her mother and to her siblings. Rose was shocked and disappointed, feeling that her sister was making a grave mistake, and several of Pauline’s friends felt that she never fully forgave Rose for not supporting her in a time of stress. Not surprisingly, it was Anne who responded with the greatest equanimity; “Pauline is Pauline” had long been her summing-up of the tumultuous events in her youngest sister’s life. She also had the support of many close friends. In the spring of 1948, she received a letter from Robert Horan, still residing at Capricorn, who expressed regret that “what sounded like such a solid thing for a while” with Broughton “had to explode into these fragments.” He also said that “excepting the fact that for a few infantile hours I even pretended the child was mine!, I couldn’t be happier about it.”
Pauline was happy, too. Decades later, while she was having dinner with the food critic Meredith Brody, the subject of abortion arose. Pauline was in favor of reproductive rights for women, but when Brody praised a mutual friend for her work on pro-choice issues, Pauline stiffened. “When it happens to you,” she said, “you will think of the child growing inside of you and the person that you were making love to—and I guarantee you, you won’t be able to do it.”
It was decided that Pauline would leave town to have her baby. She moved down to Santa Barbara, renting a place at 1108 Bath Street. At Santa Barbara’s Cottage Hospital on September 21, 1948, she gave birth to a five-pound, fifteen-ounce daughter whom she named Gina James. The birth certificate stated that the mother’s name was “Mrs. Pauline James” and the father’s,