Alysse Aallyn

Author: alysse

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 8. The Help

    Fern revealed herself to be young & friendly, garnished with many local references Scarlet resolved to check. Scarlet doubted she’d hear anything against this fresh new face, as she could sense that the country people closed rank against city folk. But she also couldn’t prevent the mounting of a slow, inexorable excitement. Wouldn’t it be heavenly to get back to her desk, especially now that she had such a glamorous new desk to get back to? Did that mean she was a bad mother, failing to bond with her child?

    Back when she was a young teenager, shuffled off to a distant and disapproving male psychiatrist for “adjustment issues”, Scarlet grew a very healthy skepticism of mental health practitioners. They all seemed intent on fitting everyone into some grey flannel or Betty Crocker slot no artist could possibly accept. She wanted to get to know and to feel confident in taking care of her new baby, but certainly a couple silent, sacred hours to herself every day was not too much to ask. A bigger problem was feeling well enough to climb those stairs. She wasn’t there yet, and Ida had refused to clean “Up beyond” because “I don’t trust Rocco’s jury-rigged steps.”


    Scarlet promised to take care of that part of the house herself. It was better to never need worry about moved or missing papers. Until then she could use her two or three hours a day for a walk and a nap. That sounded luxurious enough.


    She needed peace and privacy to think about the novel she might write, something publishers might buy. So far, her only subject was Ian’s courtship of the shy American girl, heart bruised from oppressively football and career-oriented boyfriends searching for “the perfect wife” and subjecting all comers to a gamut of contortionist sexual and social auditions.


    This had been followed by an Atlantic crossing with too much alcohol and too many foreign males in “smash and grab” modality. If young men were “angry” about women who expected commitment to fatherhood, didn’t young women also have grounds for rage at their predicament? The problem really was the “happy ending” every woman Scarlet knew of was seeking; a safe place to raise her children. But those “happy endings” only occurred in “Romantic novels”, something Ian refused to ever acknowledge. “Happy endings are unrealistic.” He insisted important literature had always been written by and for males. No Charlotte Bronte, no Virginia Woolf; he wouldn’t even accept Jane Austen.


    Now Scarlet was finding herself increasingly bemused by Ian’s rather strange reaction to the birth of his son. He definitely seemed to consider Nicholas a competitor, even if he wouldn’t admit it – and also that Scarlet had been somehow tarnished by this birth. If she could rise above her kneejerk reaction of anger, pain, and revenge, couldn’t some great subject be unearthed? It seemed reminiscent of the ancient Greeks, really, some plot worthy of Aeschylus and Euripides. Ian couldn’t sneer at that!

    Well, Freud said life’s not about “finding” yourself but “creating” yourself and about this Scarlet agreed wholeheartedly. Fern’s references in hand, she phoned the Rector’s wife; first name on the list.


    “A thoroughly no nonsense girl, very dependable”.


    Wasn’t this enough? Why even bother to call the other people? What made Scarlet hesitate?
    The problem was that Fern was just too pretty. Some might even have called her beautiful, though probably not Ian, who disliked what he called “fat cheeks” on a woman. She was very dark with a lovely high color and those Elizabeth Taylor-like violet blue eyes sometimes found in black haired girls. Fortunately, she didn’t act like a pretty girl. Perhaps she was still too young, or Wyvern-on-Wye just too out of the way of the rest of the world. Was Scarlet afraid of the comparison, especially now, while she was “hors de combat”? Wasn’t the question really, did she trust Ian, or didn’t she? She would have trusted the old Ian, but this new situation seemed to offer some ineluctable yet terrifying new vision of the universe.


    She was still undecided when Ian called but she heard herself telling him she’d found somebody local and wanted to give her a trial. Hearing the anxiety in her own voice made her realize she needed that she appeared to need to offer Ian an “accomplishment”, since giving birth to his son hadn’t seemed to be enough.


    “Thank God,” said Ian. “I’ve discovered nannies are the most expensive servants in a servantless world. Seems they don’t know they are servants, and their employer is expected to keep the secret. I’d say it’s more like hiring a gang boss. They want to know who beside the parents and baby they’ve got to order around. It’s a status thing.”

    Scarlet laughed with relief. Wasn’t this the old Ian back, the two of them strategizing as a couple confronting a dangerous world? It was always like her to panic too soon; she’d been doing that all her life.


    Fern certainly displayed her best behavior. She congratulated Scarlet on the house perhaps a little too much, saying, “Lovely. Lovely, lovely, lovely.” And she was more than willing to give Nicholas a bottle so that Scarlet wouldn’t be interrupted. Bliss.


    Driving her back and forth was a bit annoying – Scarlet resolved to unload that job on Ian – if he ever came home. Fern didn’t live with her grandmother but actually at the furthest edge of Oakhampton – and then she needed to be dropped at the Oakhampton library – but she was so cheap Scarlet recklessly hired her four days a week.


    Fern’s first day went fine – it was a unseasonably warm day so Scarlet took a long walk – but Fern said Nicholas hadn’t even cried. Driving her home Scarlet happened to mention that she was expecting Pom for dinner and was startled to see the disapproval on Fern’s face. “All by yourself?”


    “He wants to greet the new baby,” Scarlet hastened to add. It did make her feel funny – guilty almost, but eventually she engineered a way to feel better about it. If Fern had strong old fashioned rules about marital conduct, so much the better. Safer, certainly in a such a pretty girl.

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 7. The Baby

    Ian had a sweet tooth and so Scarlet suddenly found herself baking sand tarts, apple pies and lemon cake pudding in readiness for Nicholas’ birth. And that turned out to be a lucky thing, because the moment the last pie was set cooling on the wide kitchen windowsill her water broke. Ian rushed to fetch the midwife and at a quarter to midnight on Nov. 10, Nicholas was born.

    He was a long, thin, bright red, squally baby. Scarlet was feeling a bit squally herself because the gas had given out at the end, right when things were at their worst and Scarlet’s confidence in the little midwife – who acted surprised at this apparently impossible eventuality – was seriously shaken. It didn’t help that Ian left immediately – saying he would bury the placenta for luck – and then the midwife forbade bathing but gave Scarlet a very unsatisfactory sponge bath.


    Scarlet came down with fever and couldn’t nurse Baby Nick for two days. She couldn’t help feeling he acted a bit repulsed by the smallness and shortness of her nipples – not a problem Scarlet had even heard of before – but he did finally seem to “latch” and agree to accept nourishment and stay alive. It wasn’t until the evening of the twelfth, when Nicholas was finally quiet and Scarlet had a proper bath, a piece of pie, a glass of wine, that she was feeling more herself again.


    Ian, on the other hand, wore a strangely unfamiliar expression Scarlet couldn’t parse. She chalked it up to a suddenly overwhelming realization of his increased responsibilities, plus that unwelcome existential conundrum: “This baby will bury me.”


    When his wife gurgled “Isn’t he sweet?” over the sleeping baby, Ian refused to play along.
    “I think he’s more like a noisy drunk we can’t get rid of,” said her husband, “Constantly throwing up and needing everything done for him.”


    “It’ll get better and better from here on out,” insisted Scarlet, feeling a bit angry that she had to produce all the cheer and positivity for the entire family after what she’d been through. “In a month or two you’ll be glad to have him.”


    “Will I?” asked Ian. “When do they talk? Four to five years more likely.”


    The doctor came by in the morning to forbid them from sex. No sex for six weeks. Scarlet thought she could live without it – she needed to heal and was grateful not to have stitches – but she didn’t care for Ian’s reaction. It wasn’t long after that he announced a trip to London.


    “Should I bring it up?” she wondered. If you outright ASK someone to be faithful, are they more likely to be? Or LESS likely?


    “I don’t think I want you gadding around London on your own,” she temporized.


    “Oh? You’ve got two babies now? I was running my own life perfectly well a couple days ago.”
    She reached for his hand.


    “I’m worried – I don’t want – it’s just that I’m so desperately hors de combat.”


    “Whore what?” he teased. “I can see the way your mind is working.”


    She flushed a deep red she was certain was hideously unbecoming. “I can’t love you the way I want to and I don’t want anyone else to try.” And she burst into tears. He kissed her forehead very tenderly.


    “Don’t worry,” he told her. “You’ve given me impossibly high standards. I’ll interview nannies, shall I? Then we’ll soon be back to normal. ”


    But she did worry. The night before he left for London she did her very best to satisfy him and it seemed like a difficult and endless chore. Things were hardly improved by the stack of pound notes he left on the dresser in the morning – not even ironically!

    “Just in case,” he said.


    In case of what? In case you never come back? She wondered dispiritedly.


    That very evening – the twenty-ninth – she found a witch doll on the hearth. Sooty, as if it had fallen from the chimney.


    She asked the midwife about it on her next visit.


    “It’s a corn dolly!” said the woman. “Supposed to be lucky! Someone put it up the chimney for good fortune when you moved in. Why didn’t it burn up, I wonder.”


    “We haven’t used that fireplace,” Scarlet admitted. But they had used all the others. Who would do such a thing? It didn’t seem like Pom’s kind of idea at all and why would the movers bother? She found herself thinking about it so much she phoned him.


    “Sounds like Hedrigger to me,” said Pom. “The estate agent. I know he was desperate for the property to sell. When he took over the job from his late father – the first estate agent that we used – he told me he was willing to try anything.”


    “Well, it worked,” said Scarlet and they both had a good laugh over it. When Pom heard she was alone he offered to bring dinner and Scarlet bravely took him up on it.


    “Give me a chance to take a gander at the new heir,” suggested Pom.


    Why did talking to Pom always make Scarlet feel so relaxed and hopeful? There was something about the way that he treated her that made her feel special and desirable without any concern she’d be forced to repel inappropriate advances. An old-fashioned relationship? Here was a true gallant, a cavalier servant, her father would have said. A gentleman, her mother would correct, because that marital pair always argued and one-upped each other. Sometimes she feared their behavior would curse her into unhappy marriage, despite all her hope and prayer and effort. Could you ever have a happy marriage if you’d never actually seen one?


    Frankly she was glad neither parent had been around for Ian to meet. If girls became like their mothers…oh well. Her mother was gone forever, and besides, thought Scarlet, I was a Daddy’s girl anyway.


    She mentioned the corn dolly to the cleaner, Ida, when she came in for her half-day.
    “Oh, I did that,” said Ida casually. “A corn dolly in every chimney for luck. So we’d get nice people. And it worked.” She chucked Nicholas under his chin and he turned blindly towards her hand. Nicholas had no standards. At this stage, he would accept anyone.


    “My granddaughter Fern would love caring for a new baby,” Ida offered. “She’s just out of school – they gave her afternoon hours at the library but she wants more. She needs a ride, is all. Frankie from the garage could bring her when he’s free.”


    A teenage girl living “out” would be so much cheaper than a nanny! And much less bossy. Scarlet’s American spirit rebelled at the thought of being dominated by some know-it-all woman and her catechism of antique superstitions. She resolved to make an afternoon trip to the library her first foray as a new mum into the outside world.

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 6 – Ian VS Poetry

    It wasn’t till the day the spiral stair was installed that Scarlet finally began to feel better. Maybe this was all she’d required: a positive personal accomplishment. Now the Tower was finally accessible! And then there was more. Ian came home whistling, saying, “Wait till you see what I’ve got for you.”


    What a wonderful gift, a glorious nineteenth century lady’s desk – a mass of pigeonholes and drawers like a huge jewelry box. “There’s probably a secret drawer but nobody knows where,” said Ian.


    The wood was in poor shape – covered with ink stains – but Scarlet was dazzled. “Oh, Ian!” she gasped. “It’s the best present ever!” When she commented on other people’s desks it was always the storage that she envied – give every idea its own resting place. It was a deeply flattering gift. He really had paid attention to her all these years! She hugged him breathlessly.


    “Is it possible -?” she wondered, gazing upwards, but Rocco the Enabler was way ahead of her.


    “We could winch it up,” he promised and a pulley was installed at the top of the house. The fine new desk, two Windsor chairs, a bookcase and a table were winched up to the tower room. Scarlet made one awkward trip upwards to supervise their installation. The small Tower room had windows on all four sides looking out over every bit of their property.


    “Oh, this is beautiful,” agreed Ian and even Rocco seemed impressed. “You could fit a slipper chair right here,” he offered, “A real lady’s chair – they’re selling one down at the church. Do you like purple?”


    Scarlet did – especially the chintz pansy print in which that chair was covered. There were other items at the church sale that she coveted – gorgeous copper pieces to cheer the many fireplaces. When the tower room was finished with the addition of a purple rug carried up by Ian himself it seemed a magnificent eyrie and retreat. Not just deep poetry but magnificent plays – possibly even novels – could be written here.


    “It’ll be cold,” warned Ian, and that was probably true. But “heat rises” said Scarlet and surely it must. And then she wrote a poem about it – one she could actually share.

    Heat rises
    From our marriage bed
    Powers up this house
    Summons up a cradle, fills the
    Varicolored jars of
    Seasoned fruit
    Museums of ripeness
    Captured – just
    As we –
    Fresh from the city were
    Caught and
    Prisoned.
    Belonging –
    Attempting to foreclose
    A Future.

    Of course there marriage bed was a decidedly less sexy place so long as Scarlet was a pregnant whale. And, It didn’t end right. She knew that, before Ian pointed it out. “You can’t say “prisoned”; he quibbled. “Surely “reveling’s” the word? Isn’t “future” just “the unforeseen”? Scarlet was annoyed – he usually right more than he was wrong, but he was still wrong about many central things. He always accused her of easy sentimentality and so she’d tried for a more evocative, ambiguous even threatening ending –the way Ian ended his own work, yet he still he wasn’t satisfied.


    She looked up “sentimental” in the dictionary and saw it described as “an appeal to tender feelings.” It couldn’t be that all “tender feelings” were inherently degrading, could it? But in England, they seemed to be! Scarlet and Ian had a child to raise.


    Scarlet wondered if it was even possible to satisfy these fussy men, determinedly hardening in their defenses. Ian was always talking about “toughening up” males – usually while wearing the latest fashion in gents’ bespoke suits – so that said males could “slay the dragon” as if modern educated people were still cave-dwellers. She took another look at her poem and decided “attempting to foreclose a future” was her favorite line.

    “Submit it to The Renegade,” suggested Ian, “I’ll write Nigel if you like.”


    She prayed she wouldn’t need his help. She wrote to Nigel herself.

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 5. Pregnant Brain

    Grimly Scarlet launched an enormous push to have everything ready for the baby. The nearest big town – Oakhampton’s – merchants – though pricier than those in London – were willing – thrilled, in fact – to open charge accounts and to deliver. The deliverymen seemed very interested in the ongoing Wyvern House rehabilitation and expected a generous cuppa and a gossip in the kitchen. With Ian sealed off importantly in his “office”, there was no one to gossip with but Scarlet.


    “All the latest labor saving conveniences,” said one as he delivered a Bendix washer and drier to a corner of the capacious scullery. “Anybody can tell you’re American.” Scarlet was afraid this meant he thought she was rich but knew it would be insane to actually inform him just how poor they were.
    “New baby crib – how my missus would envy you. Ours has been passed down for a hundred years at least.”


    Scarlet couldn’t think how to warn him that crib slats had to be an exact distance to keep from catching baby’s head. Here in England, Science never had the last word. Next it turned out the spiral stair she’d ordered was four feet too short.


    “No problem,” said the washer deliveryman, who’d come upstairs to help, “My mate Rocco can build you a platform.”


    When that was undertaken, what with workmen marching in and out over the just-fitted carpet and filling the house with the sound of hammering – it was not at all the atmosphere Scarlet had hoped for in the days approaching the birth of her first child. She wrote a despairing poem “Future Blank” with the chorus “Nowhere to get to” and, ashamed of her own emotions, stored it at the very back of a pile of unsatisfactory work sheets.


    Fortunately, the midwife paid a cheering visit. She was revealed as a small, withered-looking Pakistani woman in a sari who promised a tank of “gas” in case the contractions became “too fierce”. Scarlet was grateful for any promise of pain relief; Ian appeared to think all “women’s problems” required was the application of masculine mind over feminine matter but Scarlet felt she couldn’t trust her gravid brain, and she certainly wasn’t going to listen to people telling her to “Buck up.”


    Ian himself had suddenly acquired a new passion for old furniture and began haunting estate sales. Soon he was dragging home settles, bureaus and tables.
    “How are we going to afford all this?” wailed Scarlet.


    “My folks have a lot of retirement cash just sitting idle in the bank,” said Ian confidently. “Proceeds from selling the shop. They’ll want to invest it here when they see what a fine place we’re creating.”
    But wouldn’t they expect income? That was the way things worked in America. “As long as they don’t expect to move in,” sighed Scarlet, but she was too exhausted to argue. Instead she sketched out yet another unsatisfactory poem: this one about how old houses were only walls of corpses holding up the ceilings. This too, must be hidden.


    What kind of home was she preparing for this baby? Was she herself putting a curse on the whole enterprise? Was this some grenade from the depths of her subconscious as Ian had always insisted, comparing her lack of a father to the United States’ “lack of history”? She usually fought back with the a fierce explication of the collective European unconscious whose “ancien regime” was obviously rotten with envy over the New World’s youthful potential?


    What awful obligations poetry placed on people! Every word, every idea had to be catalogued, organized and defended to the last ditch. Should she give it all up and become an interior designer instead? Why not concentrate on life’s beauties, opportunities and perfections, instead of digging about in universally discarded psychic muck?

    But employment required sucking up to people – something she’d never been good at. She felt far too old and tired to start now.


    If she died in childbirth Ian would read these abortive poems and draw entirely “the wrong conclusion” – that his wife had been miserable. But she was too committed a poet to destroy them. Poetry ideas – “seeds” – held a sacred, central importance in a poet’s life. You denied them at the peril of losing access to your deepest self. And that would be the worst fate of all.


    So she was conflicted. Contrasted with their life in London where they lived in such a small flat they had to take turns at the desk, wasn’t this existence wildly superior? She always felt less grounded when she “gave in” to Ian’s ideas – yet the wife’s job seemed to be all about “giving in”.

    Ian always seemed so confident, the opposite of the way she felt. It was what made him so attractive. But something in this new life went against her grain. Was it just the reckless expenditure? Key was her embarrassed silence with her sister India, usually her lifelong confidant. Was it simply embarrassment over confessing indebtedness? Was it disloyalty or pride that kept her from complaining about the man India warned her not to marry?

    How about the anguish of being suddenly the underdog when all her life she’d been on top, the prize-winner, the golden girl who could do anything and go anywhere. Both she and India had good brains – but she had looks as well. Here in Britain women were nothing, artists were nothing and Americans were less than nothing. Yet here she was, putting down roots as deep as they could go.


    For her letters, she’d have to construct an entirely false self, one she knew wasn’t fooling India at all. She couldn’t risk India despising her brother-in-law.


    Ultimately she felt she was producing the kind of nonsense you would send a stranger. She’d finally seized on the difficulties of moving as an excuse to let the whole mess go. How could she ever start the dialogue again? This was the first “secret” they’d ever had. It seemed far too big ever to surmount.

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 3. Ian

    It was their first morning in the house and the moving van was expected by noon. Scarlet was excitedly making measurements and notes about where everything should go.


    Lacking a butler, the butler’s pantry became a “buttery” in Ian’s terminology, a “bar” in Scarlet’s. It had such wonderful oak-shuttered pass-throughs on either side. Did she dare set up barstools? She knew she would have to handle Ian tactfully. Their English friends would be appalled. Bringing the pub home would be so “American” – which was their automatic euphemism for “lower class” as Scarlet had sadly discovered.


    “Pomeroy Bronfen invited us to dinner,” said Ian. “The unlucky heir. I can call him from town. Is it a yes?”


    “It’s a yes,” said Scarlet. “I just hope it won’t go late. You know I pass out at ten.”


    “He said six.”


    “Better and better.”


    “I may have mentioned that you were a prisoner of early nights.”


    A prisoner. Scarlet didn’t like that at all. Hadn’t her sister India warned her: “Beware the house in the country. That’s where Englishmen stick the wives and kids so they can lead a bachelor life in town.”


    But Ian wouldn’t be like that! Would he?


    “Are you going out? Here’s a list of things you ought to get,” said Scarlet, tearing a sheet from her pad.


    He took it like a man.

    Another man showed at eleven to install the phone.


    “That was fast”, said Scarlet. “I’m impressed.” Rumor was, it took simply forever, my dear – to get a telephone installation in the country.


    “I heard it’s both a business and a residence,” said the man in a thick country accent. “New businesses get precedence – there’s not much investment hereabouts.”


    So that was Ian’s game! Well, Scarlet could play. ““We’ll be needing one phone in the buttery, one in the upstairs hall and a ringer in the garden,” she directed.


    He studied his work order. “The mister requested an office phone.”


    Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Well, I suppose he must have one then.” She showed him to the library.

    Chapter 4. The Battery

    What a strange name Pomeroy Bronfen had selected for his new residence, a low mews house located behind the business square – but Pomeroy – “Call me Pom, everyone does” – offered a ready explanation: “This place was first a chicken coop, and then a garage. Part of it is still garage. Battery’s the shared motif.”


    The place didn’t resemble either a chicken coop or a garage any longer. A series of low-ceilinged, agreeably furnished rooms rambling around to a picture-window view of rolling hills. The whole town revealed itself as a Potemkin village one-house-deep.


    Pom himself was very thin and tall, with prematurely silvered hair. His deep-set eyes and close-cropped hair gave him the look of an overgrown Dickensian orphan. He seemed eerily fine-tuned to Scarlet in a way that unsettled her. He would be a difficult man to think private thoughts around.

    Ian’s other friends never guessed what she as thinking; her mind, assured of complete freedom, could range anywhere in their company. By contrast, Pom noticed her eying his trouser stains immediately.


    “Battery acid,” he said. “So you see.”


    “You seem to have got some there, too,” she gestured at his leather vest. Pom didn’t cock so much as an eyebrow, but regarded the stain thoughtfully. “I’m sorry. I think that might be roofing tar.”


    “I can’t figure out why you stay here now that you’re rich and can travel the world,” said Ian, with no apparent realization of the rudeness or even illogic of his statement.


    Pom swept the faux pas effortlessly away. “The bank got most of the money,” he said. “This residence at least is still family property.” Ian should understand; the Bronfens once owned everything. Pom smiled at Scarlet as if effortlessly reading her thoughts.


    “And one doesn’t need proper clothes but can muck about with cars all day. Drink?”


    “Pregnant ladies can’t drink,” said Ian at the same moment that Scarlet answered, “It’s my last trimester, I can have a glass.”


    She gave Ian a “married look” which, if he bothered to interpret it, said, “Weren’t you the one begging me to loosen up last night?”


    “As long as you’re sure,” said Pom, pouring. “I only have white.”


    Scarlet was sorry about that – till she tasted it. Then she was sorry she could only have one glass.


    “What flavor!” She gasped. “What do they make it from?”


    “Grapes,” said her husband flatly, but Pom replied politely enough.


    “Tastes like artichokes, don’t you think? It’s Gruner Veltliner.”


    “And peppers,” said Scarlet. “And apricots.” It was simply delicious.


    Pom guided them to the terrace where a platter of cheesestraws and apple slices lay underneath a bell jar, like a museum presentation piece.


    “Still think I should move?” Pom asked, gesturing toward the seemingly endless swath of green hills. “Selling – if I could even find a buyer – wouldn’t compensate me for losing a view like this.”
    “I agree that nature is very healing,” said Scarlet. “That’s why we came.”


    Ian agreed, “I take it all back. I just thought for an artist, London –“


    “I get as much London as I want,” said Pom. “I only want it about once a month.”


    Scarlet was thinking that her husband had buried the lead. “You’re an artist?” There wasn’t a single painting in any of his rooms. “Why don’t you display your work?”


    “I’m shy,” said Pom, and instantly Scarlet began constructing a mind’s eye version of Pom’s history where this was true, seeing the fair-haired boy with the wide forehead and the olive-green eyes always standing at a cautious distance from his peers.


    “Well, I for one would love to see anything you’d like to show,” said Scarlet. “We’re both writers – we need to get out of our heads. We live in the world of ideas.”


    “Not perhaps so much while you’re gravid,” offered Ian. What an irritating thing that was for him to say! She refused to breach the uncomfortable silence while Pom regarded Ian with unflattering solicitude.


    “I think the life of the mind is even more powerful now,” Scarlet rebutted finally. “I’m living entirely in the future.” Her eyes dared her husband to reveal how little writing time she’d actually managed while packing and moving house.


    “It’s the thinking that’s so important I find,” said Pom. “That’s where the work is. It’s really why I became an abstract painter.”


    His work wasn’t mentioned for the rest of the evening because Scarlet didn’t want to see it in front of Ian, and Pom, she recognized, didn’t want to show it to him. Instead they discussed London over a delicious platter of rare roast beef and salad, and gushed appreciatively over the individual trifles offered for dessert.


    “Mrs. Ryquist’s work from over at the pub,” said Pom, referring to the Cat and Corncrake, centerpiece of town. “She’ll cook anything for you so long as you don’t expect delivery. You take your glasses and she fills them for you.”


    The trifles were particularly wonderful and Scarlet most appreciated the enjoyment of penetrating the perfect layers. She thought she tasted limoncello in the ladyfingers and crème de menthe liqueur at the heart, but she chose not to mention it and the others didn’t either. Was that what contributed to her blissful sense of well-being at the conclusion of the meal? Would she suffer for that, later? Or was it the realization, entirely unexpected at the very end of an exhausting nine-month pregnancy – that another man – a nice man – found her attractive and her husband felt it and was jealous? And would she suffer for that, too?

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 2 – The Undercroft – 1959

    She felt a gush of relief at the first sight of what was to be her new home. Perhaps she could participate in Ian’s fantasy after all. This gate, massive and rusty, had fallen back against its stone surround and was an open invitation to a fairy tale. She saw something she knew Ian could never have resisted: this twisted iron was surmounted by a pair of stone wyverns. Ian had always claimed the wyvern as his “power creature”. Anything for sale in the town of Wyvern-on-Wye would be of interest to Ian. Was the town named after the house or the other way around?

    Whichever was true, she knew he’d claim the whole town as his by right. When she gasped out loud at the sight of their new castle Ian rippled with the same lordly pleasure he demonstrated on skillfully dispensing an orgasm. There it was, at the end of a curving drive, Wyvern House, miniature alcazar toppling on its hill, as if the earth itself would sink beneath its weight.


    “My goodness,” she muttered, thinking, as she knew he did, how impressed future guests would be, especially if they could clear away the brambles, re-paint the gates and set the slipping wyverns more solidly, less threateningly aloft.


    Up close, the “castle” proved considerably less commanding, revealing unpointed brick, mucky stucco, bleeding windows and muddy drive. Over the double front doors was carved a date which threw it completely out of the running for any claim to aristocracy: “1892: Magnus Bronfen”.


    “Soap manufacturer,” said Ian. “All soap manufacturers dream of castles, apparently. How else could you get a castle and six acres for nine thousand pounds?”


    She shuddered at the sum. Neither his family nor hers had ever seen so much money. In their five years together they had barely cleared a thousand pounds, and owed more than that. If she succumbed to this place what time would be left for working out her complex themes of literature? She had seen nothing encouraging, so far, about the financial viability of her productions in general.


    Ian himself was not doing much better with his proposal for a “modern mythology” TV series. They would be thrown back on Ian’s first idea: using his supernatural “imp” to win a football pool. Or her secret, most private fancy; writing an explosive novel that told the truth about women’s experience. The one time she had mentioned it Ian had been very clear that he considered “women’s fiction” a literary disgrace.


    “Plus, the novel’s dead. Plays are the thing, Angry Young Men and all that. Look! There is a garden. You could start a market garden. I’ve heard these roses were famed far and wide.”


    What had she ever done to make him think she longed to garden? But “rosarian” certainly was a better title than “hausfrau.” Much better. At this time of year, the overgrown garden offered nothing to see, but it was walled; the walls covered with the same brambly vines that were eating up the gate. They should be replaced with, say, espaliered fruit trees. By somebody. Someday.


    To her relief, inside she saw an ordinary house without the unlivable discomforts of an actual castle. The front hall was rather splendid with a huge creaky oak staircase that shed sawdust (deathwatch beetle!) when walked upon but the large rooms were blessed with electric light and there were four generous bathrooms: three second floor and one down.


    “I don’t think they spent a penny on the place after building it,” said Scarlet.


    “I’m sure they didn’t,” Ian agreed. “This Magnus guy died almost immediately. The current heir lives in town – I don’t think he has a sou but what I gave him. He says the place has been for sale – slowly dropping in price — his entire life.”


    It always impressed Ian to consult a “magic moment”. He was beginning to think he was a magic moment, himself. A fatalistic man, with a strong sense of “destiny”, he’d carefully consulted his horoscope before marrying Scarlet. The stars, and a general English misapprehension that all Americans were rich, had pushed him over the edge.


    “He only has what the bank gave him,” Scarlet longed to correct, but didn’t. Their marriage was the envy of their friends because neither of them – ever gave in to cracks like that. Ian had repeatedly stated his opinion that “money” was an imaginary concept anyway, created in the modern world by mere promises to buy and sell. Failing to leap aboard the mad carousel, you made certain of being left behind.


    Sixty-six years without improvements or upkeep should certainly give any buyer pause, thought Scarlet. What Horrible Secret – probably more than one – was this house hiding? Drains? Vermin? As if reading her thoughts – which he probably was, because marriage made a person good at that — Ian continued,


    “Apparently the problem is the railways – having to change trains from London only to arrive in the middle of nowhere with eight miles to go. But now that everyone has a car that will change. By road, the distance from London is two hours, tops.”


    No one in their London group really “owned” a car, but everyone aspired to, so why point out that the drive had taken them three hours? Ian would only say it as because his pregnant wife needed to pee every five minutes and maybe it had been. Ian had acquired the station wagon (third-hand) because he’d acquired the house, launching them to the summit of their particular clique. As they walked from room to room Scarlet felt herself warming to this unlikely residence – it certainly had potential – and feeling a lot more forgiving towards her improvident spouse.


    The rooms were big, well laid out, and the mullioned windows vast and wonderful. There was even a room of empty bookcases clearly meant to be a library – what more could writers ever require?
    The dining room was a bit dark but the scullery was enormous. “If we updated the appliances we could eat in here,” said Scarlet. “It would be cozy.”


    Ian made a moue of disagreement. “Why neglect such a magnificent dining room? I mean, we’ve got one, why waste it?”


    “Keep it for special occasions,” Scarlet murmured. Most of the time it would be just the two of them and a baby, because they’d never be able to afford live-in help. Anyway, what couple ever benefited from intrusion on their togetherness? “Pas devant les domestiques” was the English byword.


    Three large rooms beside a dining room, scullery and butler’s pantry Scarlet counted, then upstairs were six bedrooms laid out rather unimaginatively around a poorly lit central hall with bathrooms connecting between them. Scarlet suggested they each take for a study the smaller bedrooms. But Ian claimed the library.


    “Those are kids’ rooms, don’t you think?” he disparaged.


    Scarlet felt a thrill that he even contemplated extra children. He hadn’t seemed the least excited about her pregnancy until his flicker of interest when the doula suggested it might be a boy.
    She was too well-trained to argue. “If you prefer,” she agreed. “Why don’t you take the library for your office and I’ll take the odd bedroom. For now.” She was determined to have the baby with them in their bedroom for starters, requiring her do up just one guest room. Seemed a good way to keep out an overage of guests.


    There was no attic whatsoever and the stairs to the tower were barred with a handwritten “Danger” sign.


    “I haven’t been up there,” Ian told her. “Pomeroy the Heir pronounced the stairs unsafe. I think we must assume the whole Tower is a disaster area. He suggested just cutting them out altogether, getting rid of that weak flooring and making it sort of a skylight where you can look up.”
    Trust a man to come up with such an idiotic idea.


    “I’ll investigate spiral metal stairs,” said Scarlet. “They come in modular one piece units and I know where we can get one cheap.”


    Ian snorted, “The more fools they, then, lowering the price just because their Tower was a fake.”


    Since they couldn’t go up, they went down, down to the “undercroft”, as Ian called it, not a “basement” but a magnificently warm, low-ceilinged room with winking-eye lights to the outdoors, shelves of bottled fruit, an empty wine rack and a huge furnace. Purring away. The furnace clearly was newer than 1892 – and if that was the case, the situation might not be as desperate as Ian had painted it.


    “I wonder if any of that fruit is still good,” said Ian.


    Scarlet’s spirits lightened. She felt a poem coming on.

  • Devoured Heart: romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Scarlet – 1959

    Ian told Scarlet he bought the house as a gift. It was an apology for their cramped city quarters, compensation for Scarlet falling so heavily pregnant with their son. He, universally considered the ultimate bachelor, gave majestic permission for his wife to begin the nest-building and home-making he knew she had thirsted for ever since their hasty marriage.
    But as she sat beside him while he drove through the desolate winter countryside, she felt nothing but dread: how could he buy a house – reputedly for “her” – without her actual assistance? “Auction” was the answer.


    “Truth” presented by Ian seemed always subtly different from Scarlet’s apprehension of actuality, but in Scarlet’s youthfully cynical experience men never told the truth to women. It would be just like Ian to have purchased a ruin for the name alone. He was impulsive – act first, rationalize after – but he never thanked Scarlet for pointing it out. Women were supposed to be the impulsive, hysterical, emotional creatures, men were calm, rational, learned. Period. Scarlet had discovered there was even less room in England than in America for the sexes to locate the androgyny Virginia Woolf had so recently recommended.


    What was her fear, exactly? She felt for it nervously as if exploring a bad tooth. Would they be in hock to the moneylenders till kingdom come? The “big money” Ian assured her was right around the corner had yet to arrive, but he confidently continued to expect it. She wished Ian could see that auctions engineered participants into foolish decisions, but Ian considered himself above foolish decisions. In the early months of marriage, Scarlet had earned to pick her battles. Husbands didn’t welcome any overt attempts to “change” them.


    Unsaid between them, probably unremembered by him, was an episode early in their marriage where she’d suggested, “That will never work” to one of his passing fancies and he’d grabbed her by the throat. Made her shudder to think about it now. Clearly she should not think about it. Fetuses might be negatively affected by thoughts like those.


    After he’d cooled down – and apologized – she’d tried to get him to acknowledge that such behavior should never happen; his response was, “You shouldn’t taunt me.” So the blame was subtly – or unsubtly – placed on her. She was left with the unpleasant sensation that he’d somehow reserved the “right” to lose control – a right denied to her – but at least it had never happened again.


    Hadn’t he married her a brief three months after their first meeting, just to stop her returning to America? She’d been dazzled by his beauty, his gorgeous male power, glittering intelligence, tall wide-shouldered body, and those long-lashed blue eyes fixed so deliciously upon her. All Oxford considered him the matrimonial catch of the year – you could certainly claim she personally had benefited enormously from his hasty decision making. Everyone she met envied her; there was no one to whom could she confide marital difficulties.


    Not even to the very close sister, her “best friend”, who considered marriage “surrender” and who had refused to attend the wedding. All acquaintances so far collected in England were Ian’s eager slaves. There were certainly trade-offs, in the business parlance of the day. Men might be demanding, self-involved, autocratic, but didn’t that make them better in bed? Wasn’t that the real reason Scarlet had married him, the secret she dared not confess but everyone suspected, that he had overwhelmed her with a display of sexual seduction just the memory of which raised every hair on her body to antennae? Now that she was nine and a half months pregnant it regrettably seemed as if she would never be svelte, or young, or even whole – again.


    That was not all that had changed. She didn’t like it when she overheard him describing her as a “born hausfrau” – was there an uglier word in ANY language? She felt misrepresented, as if he deliberately missed the evidence of her true nature and the meaning of her entire existence. Wasn’t such blindness a crime against love? Yet what had he “done”, besides purchase a castle for her? At the apex of pregnancy – you could also call it the nadir – she was willing to admit that possibly she misrepresented HIM.


    They needed a fresh start. But with a baby expected, wasn’t that the pattern of couples everywhere?
    She couldn’t silence her inner critic. She felt emotionally repelled by all the bluster he deemed necessary to “get ahead”. Maybe she didn’t like the concept of “getting ahead,” especially considering he was so disparaging of America’s “crass commercialism.”

    And what was that about, his peculiar reliance on the occult? It was almost a religion with him. He made a game of consulting his “imp” through Tarot cards – a funny party trick morphing into a disturbingly dissociative responsibility dodge. When she suggested as tactfully as she could that perhaps they should not expose a growing child to superstition he “doubled down” with outlandish “universal mythologies” of magic, nemesis, false birth and disguise. Jung, even Freud, was on his side. She had no one.


    He had convinced himself his parents were no relation; he translated his envy of the aristocracy into an unshakeable conviction that he belonged rightfully among them. The democratic American in Scarlet tried to show him the pride in becoming truly “free” and his own person, but the lure of imposture seemed too strong.


    Thank goodness for her diary – there was nowhere else to confide her unsettling thoughts. She disguised her journal as a “baby book” – a document she could feel certain he would never read. Her totally inadequate London doctor – whom she would be happy never to see again – had assured her that pregnant women were all prey to “nonsense fears” and she would feel completely different following delivery. Scarlet was hopeful that deep in the country – perhaps with a midwife – she could secure more enlightened care.


    So she sat beside him on the way to view this new acquisition. And smiled.

  • Embattled Love: the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    1 May 80


    T. still angry. Slamming doors and accusing me of “nagging.” I thought, boy will my children be lucky having me for a mother if this is the way some people are raised! Will he ever get over it? Time will tell – four months till the wedding.


    I remember when I stopped trying to fix my relationship with Bruce it immediately became broken forever. What I don’t understand is WANTING to be miserable. Seems like a phase T has to go through.


    7:05 PM – T came home whistling, walked upstairs, said, Forgive me. I hugged him and hugged him and tore his clothes off!!! Novel up to 240 p. Writing to the point of dementia.

    6 pm Fri 2 May 80
    Getting exciting! Two weeks! In this weather the city really presses in. Have started taking my walks in the eve. On draft 3 of that idiot blood novel. Too, too depressing. I need to cheer it up somehow but how? Literally do not know how to be literarily cheerful. A bad sign. Should I write a love story? But love is fraught with problems! Think I need to put it away, take another look this summer. Figure out how to saturate it with Colette luminosity. Send mystery to Lavallee for ideas.


    Last night I had to call the police about Booger kids throwing bottles at the house next door.
    God the last 6 mos has been difficult. I wanted to live here but I couldn’t. It’s more than the rights of wife vs live-in lover. T. can’t handle any mention that this house is less than ideal. But at least it’s been a good investment. I think he will be as glad as I am to leave.

    Sun 4 May 80 3:30 PM
    Now I am REALLY depressed. Tried to read An American Romance wanting to see what The New Yorker considers a good love story. Ghastly. Bad style. Literally unreadable. The sex scenes were at least interesting (he calls cunnilingus a “duty dance” with the hostess. Sounds like fun, right?) Starting to think alienation comes from Puritanism. Refusing to allow oneself to feel.


    Think I need to stop “Fitzgeralding” my novel (he always restricted his own choices out of second-guess self-hatred & panic.) The way people see themselves can save them or destroy them.
    God, I love Toss! He had excellent interview with Judge Ackerman who might take him for a clerk! $20,000 year. Reading Carole Klein’s Aline – Tom Wolfe would have published nothing without her. Feeling actually encouraged by Wolfe’s depression. Maybe a stage you have to go through.

    Wed 7 May 80
    Definitely a fish out of water at T’s compatriots’ “goodbye parties.” Guess I have the reputation of “dragging him away”. Rushed out to buy typewriter ribbon and who should I run into at the office supply store but T and 3 of his workmates who invited me to lunch.


    I find T’s work persona a bit of a strain. Felt I’d been dragged into the smoking room of a men’s club. He described my novel to them as “about incest.” Ho ho ho! Hysterical! And T wonders at my “rivers of blood.”


    I guess we haven’t grown together enough yet. Just hope we can fit into our new skin.


    I’m absolutely sick to death of this novel and very doubtful that this is the way to write but EVERYBODY says it is! Vomit it out and then lap it back up SLOWLY! Ugh. All these rejections really play havoc with your sense of accomplishment. Looking at Plath’s suicide in a new light. Taking my vitamins religiously. Doctor says I don’t have mono. I think I must be in some kind of mourning. Feel like my parents deliberately raised me to have no survival skills.


    6:45 PM – Just finished writing the damn book. Did feel some pleasure at the end. 302 p.

    Mon 12 May 80 – Clouded over day
    Just finished reading My Cousin Rachel – a man kills a woman out of overwhelming jealousy. Similar plot to Rebecca – poor old Daphne must have been in some kind of deep distress. Kind of reminded me of Jane Eyre: “psychic wish fulfillment.” Of course the gang likes that.


    What is the literary tradition of WOMEN tortured by jealousy? Hags & harridans. Prostitution is an interesting theme. Imagine having a “cash value” for everything.
    We’re going to have a real storm today.


    Fortunately Lois made graduation easy (not competitive with me as per usual) although when Sutton (T’s father) was here a certain threatening iciness warns us not to have TOO good a time. On Sunday we made love all afternoon till she finally called us down.


    Today I got an acceptance as a writing fellow at Guilders College! Doesn’t sound like much money but status, mentoring, help. Maybe. T. has faith in society: I sadly haven’t. Plumly exemplifies our experiences: he was praised and cossetted (teachers turned a blind eye finding him off bounds) my skirts were measured and I was forced to kneel. One needs courage even to believe in one’s own experiences. Still, it means I can’t go to Princeton Theological Seminary which I had been thinking of. Easier to spend than earn that’s for sure. What a joy is the intellect! I am a late starter but I have been distracted.


    Have to spend all tomorrow cleaning & packing. A whole new life beckons! Unfortunately Toss is vague about time which making planning difficult. I like planning every minute of every day to make sure of having “psychic refreshment” time. He doesn’t think he deserves psychic refreshment. My job is to convince him everyone does. Tonight a goodbye dinner at T’s editor’s house; I’ve been there before. His wife has a sign on the wall:

    “Happiness is where you find it
    Not where you seek it.”

    Let’s hope it’s in New Jersey!

  • Embattled Love: the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    11:30 Am 14 Ap 80 MON


    Sitting to my typewriter trying to persuade myself that good things can be written by people paralyzed with boredom. T. doing his taxes. $9,900 he can’t find.


    He says I’ll have to get a job over the summer! Finished reading After Leaving Mr. McKenzie Superb! (Jean Rhys.) Fatuous intro by Ford Maddox Ford.


    Suddenly got a good poem last night. Surprised myself.Sickened by poor Sylvia Plath’s competitiveness in Johnny Panic & Bible of Dreams so reading KM’s stories. Very interesting. The moment she died Virginia Woolf started writing like her. T. bought his graduation cap & gown.

    11 AM Tues 15 Apr 80
    T says we need to stay till we sell this house. I said, YOU have to. He’s so worried I’ll go back to dancing. I think my body’s probably marshmallow by now. Feeling totally beaten down. I tried to tell him last night about Sylvia Plath beating herself up because she couldn’t write Lady’s Home Journal serials – he thought I was trying to say I’m Sylvia Plath and I got a full ½ hr on the glorious dignified hard work of writing for mags. Missed my point!!! Sylvia COULDN’T do it but WOULD HAVE LOVED TO.


    Got a good first draft of Blood Sacrifice. Feeling a little better. Chest doesn’t ache. My AMBITION – my ULTIMATE AMBITION – would be to write a novel in ONE DRAFT. Did my taxes. Refreshed myself with Bloomsbury Portraits. T thinks I’m trying to LEARN to be suicidal, broke, out of fashion and unsuccessful. But taste is honed. Very depressing April weather. Eliot was right.


    T finds perfect off the shoulder Mary McFadden wedding dress for me in keeping with our Greek theme. He orders it for immediate delivery. Uh oh. Groom has seen the gown. Bad luck?

    Fri. 18 Apr 80
    Living in the 20’s reading Holroyd’s Augustus John. Very pleasant. T’s house sold! $22,500! (He bought it for $9,000.) We can’t spend it, he says sorrowfully, eyes raised heavenwards. (Because one doesn’t spend Capital.) But he laughed when I laughed at him!


    Out to dinner tonight with the Wests at Les Palmiers (Larry always calls it “Les Palmer’s”).
    Thinking out a good ghost story.


    Uncharitable thoughts about Ts buddy Larry – who I can clearly see is jealous of me. Loves T more than he loves his wife!

    20 Apr 80
    Novel going horribly. Can’t conquer my absolute distaste for what I’ve set myself to do. Obviously gone wrong somewhere. But where? Wishing to give my life the proportion of myth? Should just make things up like everybody else. Fortunately the mystery is still fun. A little too crazy perhaps. Will Lois recognize herself and take umbrage?


    Re-reading Mes Apprentissages in a very bad translation reminiscent of Constance Garnett’s weirdly Bertie Wooster take on Dostoevsky. Americans don’t really like Colette – Gide of all people called her “contaminated.” Maybe that’s why they don’t like me.


    Letter from Merrill lectures me about pills – says Mom’s varicose veins shows we are susceptible to clotting. Says she’s sending me her old maternity clothes.

    5PM Tues 22 Ap 80
    In one hour have to dress for Goodbye Kentucky Newspapers party at downtown Cincinnati German restaurant. Spent 1 ½ hrs smoking in the sun in baby oil, then bathed. Wrote 8 p. Good? Not really. Sending it to Lavallee with my commentary. Maybe she has good ideas. Hideous Ann Beattie work in NY Review of Books very discouraging. I am out of step with THOSE times.


    Reading Colette’s Vagabond. The Crosland bio does not do her justice. She is encouragingly honest about her slow maturation, the humiliations of the music halls etc. She did get a lot of recognition, though, from the very beginning. Still, one would not wish to BE Colette (contrary to what I’m sure my mother thinks.)


    Trying to imagine what it would be like if T supported what I’m trying to do instead of acting like I’m attempting to “score” off him. I am not writing for him thank God.
    Publication vital. But recognition? It is the life that matters.

    23 Ap 80
    Reading Heartsounds which I want to give to Daddy I realize how barren life is without mysticism. If you put “self” first it turns out there is no “self” there. Brain damage from anesthesia the most horrifying detail – maybe Daddy can’t take it. His god is Science.


    Lovely evening at the restaurant. Afterwards T “critiqued” me. I talked a bit too much! When people ask questions, you don’t have to answer! Feels I “interrupted” him. I am aghast. I think he wants us to speak as a “unit” which is HIM. But we are not there yet I point out. We don’t agree about everything.


    He thinks we should disguise that!


    Mysterious bleedings. Just want to continue the pills FOR A FEW MONTHS. Then no nasty pills ever again! Maybe IUD between kids?


    Toss moans and groans about the summer like he will NEVER EVER GET A JOB EVER AGAIN. Weird. He seems so intelligent and desirable to me (and everybody else.)


    Put down Heartsounds for Celibate Passion which I am thoroughly enjoying.


    Novel going splendidly – E Bowen’s Heat of the Day confirming all my choices (though the Louie subplot was a mistake.) Today my wedding dress came. Fit perfect. T. dizzy with desire. Oh, this summer will be so exquisite! Only 3 more weeks!

    11:40 PM 27 Apr 80
    Blew up last night at T. We went to the movies with Larry and Suzy (saw Norma Rae) and I got another “critique.” Told him he can no longer criticize me on the basis of my behavior but only on his feelings. In the middle of our pitched battle brother Seth called from Colorado to read a 5 p letter he sent special delivery denouncing their mother. He is jealous of her “better” treatment of me, she is nice to me, never nice to his fiancé Sue. (She’s NOT nice to me but I don’t point it out. I don’t think she knows how to be nice to people. It’s almost funny. But she is offering us the house no one else can live in.)


    I ask T why Seth must attack his Mom six weeks before his own wedding? What good can THAT do? It’s crazy! I think he’s hoping to be publicly disowned.


    It all ended with T & me sobbing and kissing in each other’s arms. Suddenly get the idea for a second ghost story.


    Sitting peaceably over blonde chartreuse while T reads bulb catalogues and I skim Anais Nin diaries (No Good.)

    28 Apr 80
    Trying to assemble poetry MSS depressing the hell out of me. Who am I kidding? Ordered $63 worth of shorts. Baked honey bran bread and felt better. Need to take up bike riding when we get to Grovers’ Mill.


    Police cars assemble outside. Mr. Booger hopelessly drunk again.

    Wed 30 Apr 80
    T and I had our WORST FIGHT EVER last night – any fight I don’t dissipate rapidly becomes OUR WORST FIGHT EVER. I was so angry that it’s always my JOB to smooth things over. What if I don’t? Will he just explode and spatter the walls like John Cassavetes in The Fury? I get sick of being “blamed” for everything. I refused to let him off the hook.


    “Where did you put the car key?” What if I didn’t touch the car key? How about “The car key is lost. I can’t find the car key. Do you know where the car key is?” I’m starting to see why Seth is crazy. This kind of milieu would drive anyone crazy. Not one of them has any idea how to apologize. There is frenzied hysteria about “status” and “loss of face” that would fit right in in thirteenth century China.


    I pointed out if he wants us to have a pleasant dinner with Judge Liebowitz he is going about it wrong. Why show up a party at each other’s throats? He suddenly confessed his parents ALWAYS started fights before a party and his mother ALWAYS began parties angry at her guests! He had never “seen” it before but he certainly agreed it’s mighty stupid. He smiled, shook his shoulders and said, “I know you’re going to be your effervescent self” and I said,
    “You better fucking hope so. Let’s hope I don’t vent my spleen on you the way you do on me.”


    The Liebowitzes came and I was very nice. The Judge and I got into a spirited conversation about Erle Stanley Gardner and the Judge said, “Of course he never practiced law.” I could see the alarm in T’s eyes that I would contradict him but I sweetly let it pass. Dangerous corner averted should be worth quite a few orgasms (Gardner did a lot of work for the Chinese community whom he saw as victimized.)


    Judge very impressed that I had read Clausewitz’ Art of War (his favorite book. It would be.) I told T later “You don’t want to clerk for this guy.” He is T’s “biggest connection.


    I try to discuss it after with T. He says I am “harping.” Anyone waiting for him to apologize about anything is going to wait a long time.

  • Embattled Love: the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Princeton Jct Station – Wed 12 Feb 80


    Trying hard not to be depressed. Almost had a breakdown on the highway driving here – imagining ice. Pulled over to the side of the road. Cop said roads were fine but he would lead me to a motel and in the AM everything would look different.


    Now I must jockey myself into a blithe, competent mood for seeing my agent but these phone calls with T are awful. He accused me of leaving to “punish” him for being “honest” about my book. I said isn’t he punishing me for being honest about Newport? That’s different he insists! He says he might not “take me back” if I’m going to be a “martyr”. I think he’s afraid of what I’ll say to people and when he catches himself being the bad guy he just doubles down. I cried for an hour. I asked to not speak on the phone any more. Let’s write. He & his family hang on the phones arguing for HOURS. I really can’t afford the bill.

    Grovers Mill NJ; Thurs.13 Mar 80
    Wow! Healed! Wonderful meeting with my agent Lavallee. I was so upset I didn’t notice a man stealing my purse off the back of the chair. Lavallee really took care of my feelings, understood the best things about the book – I had been afraid I would have a breakdown right in front of her but it didn’t come to pass. She was interested in T’s coal story too and thinks she can sell it if he writes a proposal. She said we need more plot and gave some intelligent suggestions. Joy!


    I called T right away and we had an hour’s wonderful conversation he didn’t misinterpret in the least. He said he can leave Tues night! God, I love that man. Snow was promised and that’s what it’s doing.


    T’s mother Lois not coming in this weather. So I can put off vacuuming till tomorrow – otherwise house is ”done”.

    My Old House – Queens’ Chapel Rd, D.C. -15 Mar 80 – Sat
    If I survived to this point I can survive ANYTHING. Snow melting fast in brilliant sunshine. Will finish the rewrite today and see what Lavallee thinks. Thank God for my writing fluency (T thinks it’s “too easy.”) ANY money would be good – it’s this period of NOTHING that’s so hard.


    Many plans to convert the smallest room in the Grover’s Mill house to my study.


    T called feeling romantic from a restaurant where we’d had a wonderful dinner. But he was with Larry West so he couldn’t talk. (He said all he talked about at dinner was me. Also, I have letter from Devon!) Avril arrives home about midnight. (Late shift)

    11 PM – 16 Mar 80
    What a day! Avril home in an hour and we can have a drink and talk. I was surprised this AM to wake in enough time for Unitarian service but I enjoyed it thoroughly. Their ”information” desk has a lot of counseling info. Good place to find a therapist.


    Happy drive to MD – no “hallucinations” as I had driving to NJ from KY (those damned tunnels.)
    Driving Riggs Rd I had the craziest desire to look up Ryder, ex boyfriend who tried so hard to torment & corral me. ! I remembered he was on Fox St – nobody knew where that was so I had to waste $5 on a map at the 7-11. Of course it was 2 blocks away! Right outside the apt building I saw his car! (Ghee in back seat) . I looked up his number on the mailboxes and knocked on his door! My heart was fluttering like mad but I knew I looked good.


    And there he was! He has DYED his hair brown (too many comments on his girlish beauty?) and he was festooned with crosses like he’s scared of vampires. He’s married and his wife (a nurse) was coming in later. Ho ho ho. We had a great talk. I told him the wedding is Sept because I didn’t think he would take an engagement seriously if we haven’t set a date. Wifey looked at me and said “THE Alysse?” Har har. She is sweet, intelligent and ROUND. So much for his ruthless attacks on my physical imperfections!


    T. angry that I spent $104 on a tune-up. Says I was “robbed.”

    Newport KY – 24 Mar 80
    Slicing tomatoes for our dinner. I can get through the next 6 weeks. Read Portrait of a Marriage for the 3rd time. The best books are different every time you read them. Reporting on one’s life even more difficult than living it. In 10 minutes I can call my angel. When I look at what’s available out there I feel so lucky! Having a horrible messy period – a solid week so far. Staying on the pill till our wedding.


    Trying to get to the point where I can face the novel again. Oh, to be Edith Wharton and just cast the handwritten pages to the floor for “someone else” to pick up and type!

    Thu 27 Mar 80
    First morning in the garden clutching Letters of Joseph Conrad. I’d like to outline a mystery story – think it would be fun. Another gothic: Blood Sacrifice.


    T and I “off” on our timing – I try to eliminate stress from my life – he deliberately ramps up his. He doesn’t think he’d accomplish anything if he wasn’t suffering and shrieking under the pressure. I keep explaining I can’t live like that! I think we can relax and be happy and enjoy the moment – don’t have to worry constantly about the future. He says that’s “lazy”.


    He literally screams about money. My parents were secretive fearful if we ever found out how rich they are we would grow up spoiled. NONE of us did. We are all frugal. T. says he’s spent $24,000 since last June – implication – ALL on ME. It does seem like a lot. I didn’t make that much dancing and I know I’m living more cheaply than I did then.


    Later, he admitted he’d made a math mistake – $7,000 went to pay margin debt!!! (Not mine.) Now he wants to buy me a Burberry. I don’t want. I PREFER thrift shop clothes. I can’t create good work in an atmosphere of hysteria and panic.


    Marcia Davenport’s Too Strong for Fantasy right on point.

    31 mar – MON – 80
    Thinking in the bathtub about elitism. Dancing separated me from my parents’ world. It didn’t bother me but it bothers EVERYONE else. Avril researching her past with therapist says all her childhood memories are negative! Parents wanted “unthinking docility.” And these were GOOD parents! T’s much worse.

    7:15 PM – Wed 9 Apr 80
    No sun today – sweater & jeans. T & I spent 2 hours at hospital trying to figure out pain in my gut. Right ovary “tender”. Must be psychosomatic – that I can get only 11 pages on Blood. Curing myself with Jane Austen’s Persuasion. To the symphony for Svoboda’s Seasons.

    Sun 13 Apr 80
    Wretched novel! What the hell’s it about? Answer came there none. T & I saw Coalminer’s Daughter Movie not as good as the music. Life, as Virginia Woolf used to say, is not like that.