Embattled Love – the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

StormFall – 4 Aug 80

Familiar feeling of depression. More wedding invitations – Granma’s list and Sutton’s list. Poor Sutton – I feel so sorry for him even though he jokes about missing Val: “I got rid of the last gardener I had.”

The only bad night was engagement party – Mom and Dad chose a reel of slides and I sat there stunned at the genesis of all my stories. Ocean, lake, dolls’ cottages – happy healthy smiling people – whence comes all this pain? Dad looks at pictures of the Gryphon tooling through Europe and says, “I’d do it all again.” Would he? I wouldn’t! That pain comes from somewhere deep, deep inside me. Makes me feel like they’ve been right all along – there’s something wrong with ME. Luckily Toss backs me up – he says he “feels 13 years old” around them. Fortunately, I had one “flying high” day on Shadowe Island – with Gretchen Fuchs, the poet. Oh, her library! We soared together in a conversational ecstasy. I saw us deep in the future, two old ladies in an English garden. Talking forever. Lovely woman.

Champagne & steamers with Sutton – then home.

Grover’s Mill – 10 Aug 80
Unpleasant shock in the mail today – Guilders demanding transcripts. Naïve me – I thought only the writing sample mattered for the writing program! Wait till they cock a snook at my record! Will I be exposed as an unqualified adventuress? Would it be so bad if they withdrew their offer? Then I could go someplace else – Marymount maybe. How I loooooong to be pregnant!

StormFall – Tues 19 Aug 80
My last entry? I absent myself from family discussions saying I’ll go to bed to read – really want to write here. Just taken my last Birth Control pill maybe EVER – only 13 pills into the packet. Feeling amorphous. Borderless. The aspirations of adolescence fading.
What were the aspirations of adolescence? I can barely remember. To be admired, chiefly. By “others”. And now I’ve ditched the “others” and I’m alone on a vast plain – trying to steady a tipping world. Listening.

Are inner imperatives enough for a whole self? What about love? But love is a term like “weather” – describes infinite mutability.

Need to finish the goddam wedding maps & directions & walk them to the Post Office.

2:15 PM – Thurs 21 Aug 80
Period started! Shouldn’t be surprised – been having a brief period in the middle of my cycle since I started these damned pills – probably they’ve been making me sick.
Thinking about the relationships between parents & children – how avoid the miseries? Poor Mom! She felt like a “loser”. Dangerous not believing in an “eternal force” because then all there is is YOU. To BLAME.

Poor Mom! Preferred to housekeep alone – but wanted us to “help” when she wasn’t there – but do it “her way.” Fated to eternal disappointment!

Wedding programs – copy the service in a book for T’s friend Bracket – the gay Baptist preacher – to use.

Weirdly dark cold day. Shakespeare play at Edith Wharton’s tonight is open air – I just hope it doesn’t rain!

Toss’s out driving around with Cousin Wolf in the ancient Chevy they resurrected.
Studying the Marymount catalogue and reading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet – hadn’t realized he was so young when he wrote them! Should be called Letters FROM a Young Poet! May have to switch to Agatha Christie – she’s the sugar taken for “shock”.

Grover’s Mill – 7 Sept 80

A week since our wedding so this must be our honeymoon. I feel perfectly balance on a tightrope – drinking vodka & lime while studying Woolf’sBooks & Portraits, Sayers’ Mind of the Maker. Toss struggling with his additions to our thank you notes. Tomorrow off to Guilders College for a “teachers organizational meeting” so they must be sufficiently desperate if they don’t mind my lack of a degree. Should be interesting.

Chaotic summer swallowed up by the wedding – ended up costing $7000 total. Facing winter with confidence – pregnant in 2 months! If Guilders doesn’t work out enroll in Marymount get my degree one class at a time.

Last night we had bridesmaid Trish Lambert to dinner – husband Noah coming to lunch today – their marriage breaking up so we try to counsel. Looks hopeless – Noah chooses his pride over Trish every time – she says she’s not going back to a situation where she was made so physically ill. What was she allergic to all the doctors wanted to know? Turned out to be him.
Try to write here more regularly. These pages are a bank account. Save, save save.

Mon Sept 8 – 80 – Train from NYC – 4 pm
What I thought would be a “teachers meeting” turns into a disgusting “registration” process – running from one building to another, paying fees, filling out forms – I am seriously allergic to bureaucracy and the tears are starting to leak. Feel like a person wearing an ill-fitting disguise. However, I believe I carried it off. Just act like you’re entitled and no one questions you. I just don’t want to live in this world. I doubt poor Toss caught in the maw of Beginning Law can provide much sympathy. He is dotting I’s and crossing t’s with a vengeance.

Financial pressures create time pressures. Try to look for the meaning in all this.

2:30 AM Sept 9 – Worry and 2 double whiskies wake me at one and I can’t get back to sleep. Tried bath & reading, nada. Toss has been magnificent. I was able to present my worries without sounding like an idiot and he was able to identify with them without being dismissive. He says his uncle Avery gives Masters to people without BAs in Environmental Studies all the time. I say I really don’t need the degree it’s the experience I want and anyway I blame Plumly. And Chevenix. They ruined me for “degrees”. He always says Plumly was “not so bad” – and of course he loved Reed but they wouldn’t even let him SEE his grades! (They show everyone else!) and he needed an extra year – but he seems to accept my Kafkaesque emotions.

Sat 20 Sept 80 – Fortunately our weekend guest (Toss’s Reed roommate) not here yet. Cleaned & garnished house for 4 solid hours. Went shopping bought 14 meals for $60 – Toss went to Trenton then discovered he didn’t need to go. (Getting out of housework? Hmmm.)

He put a bookcase together and filled it with books (which helped) now he’s making peach butter.
What’s preventing me from pointing out to him that him doing all the work he LIKES and me doing all the work BOTH OF US DISLIKE is not a fair division of labor? Cowardice.

Then there’s the problem that this is his grandparents place filled with his grandparents furniture and he doesn’t want anything “changed.” My only satisfaction if making my study a feminine as possible (painting my file cabinets yellow.)

Reading Krumm’s Why I am an Episcopalian (he’s pro women’s ministry) and Hans Kung’s Signposts for the Future and struggling with what God I believe in. Not a subject for dinner party conversation. He will watch Presidential debate and I can opt out of that.

22 Sept 80
Lie in bed satisfied our entertaining’s over. It’s a “test” of our relationship to be around third parties. T always more critical of me in his anxiety that things go well – I am dreamy & slapdash by nature. Ended up watching the debate after all – much more fiery and vituperative than I expected – John Andersen an old-time preacher and Reagan sweetly vague and never finishing his sentences.

24 Sept 80 –Waiting to counsel Rose Love (!) but looks like she isn’t going to show. Lots of them don’t. I’m not the only one having trouble with this system. Horrors! I was “observed” in class – a teacher sneaking in while I was trying to teach probationary “backward” students (I.e. unprepared) how to write an essay and feel I made an idiot of myself. I sweat & tremble – am I only “a pack of cards” or are THEY only “a pack of cards!” Basic feeling of inadequacy – these kids deserve better than me! How did I ever think I could DO this!

Well if Rose isn’t showing up I can read Sackville-West’s magnificent Eagle & Dove.

Very depressing meeting with advisor Ezra Brent about my novel – asked how long I’d been working on it – I said 7 years and he was HORRIFIED. WAY too long for a project so short! But I am evolving as it’s evolving I splutter. Better write about your childhood instead, he counsels.
Of course, I can’t do that! Blah! Resolve to write a novel specially for his class – chapter a week. What interests me? Murder & nuns at present. Do I know anything about those? I admit I don’t but need to follow this trail. His obvious expression of disbelief is all the goad I need. Call it “Pinch of Death” from Shakespeare – a quote long in search of a tale to headline.

Train to NY 1 Oct 80
Class observer gave me a rave review! Made 4,000 copies because frankly, no one would believe it. I don’t believe it myself. Good meetings with students. Asked Brent what to do about lack of a BA – he said Do nothing yet. You are a “promising” student. I still feel uncomfortable – don’t even feel like a STUDENT. Feel bolstered up. Unfortunately, no one in fiction class likes my novel – they all think I’m “anti-modern”. I don’t like theirs either. I fire back by advising they read Krafft-Ebing – no “modernity” without him. I should have taken Carberry’s modern poetry – enjoying romantic poetry VERY much.

Fellow student Charlene Clark is teacher at a Catholic college (working on her SECOND masters) and can give me lots of advice about nuns.

I got a letter saying I am a member of the faculty so I get a 10% discount at the bookstore!!! They also have a very respectable library. Reading CS Lewis’s Letters to an American Lady. I CHERISHED his Letters to Malcolm. But 4 Loves very rough going. His anti-feminism somewhat mitigated by his late marriage. He was dragged into that the same way he was dragged into Christianity – kicking and screaming – “the sorriest convert you ever saw.” Interested in his “shameful” relationship with Mrs. Moore. Krafft-Ebing anyone?

Experimenting with prayer but it feels very unnatural. I like the mystic’s stillness – make yourself empty and “fill up.” Any kind of “intellectual direction” feels wrong.