Alysse Aallyn

Category: Confessions

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 11. The Guests

    Ian continued to surprise her. He stood looking down on her humorously, but distantly, as if he were visiting from somewhere else. He had a long smooth patter prepared about how he had occupied himself while in London: cultivating television executives, meeting the right people, offering services, making pitches, being…himself.


    Scarlet found this naked pursuit of cash so repellant that she asked no questions, accepting it at face value. What else could she do? They needed money to live. She had agreed to live in this house, she had willingly added an extra mouth to feed. He was her husband, the father of her baby and she needed to accept and support his ideas. In aid of this charm offensive, Ian informed her that he had invited weekend guests.

    “Show off your accomplishments,” he oozed, “Let them see we’re a package deal.” To Scarlet it seemed strangely as if his sudden need of her hostessing shifted the power balance between them.


    Scarlet wished he’d waited for Nicholas to recover from night-screaming colic before entertaining. She also knew he didn’t want her to become the kind of woman who talked endlessly about baby’s digestive and bowel complaints. Ian had planned a life above the muck and so far she had failed him. But muck was artist’s fertilizer! For the first time in her marriage she felt the need to learn negotiation; or at least some basic bargaining skills.


    “If I can have some help with the food,” she requested. “I don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen while you entertain the guests.”


    He was smart enough to realize that it was his own insistence on keeping the dining room separate from the kitchen had let him in for this so he capitulated almost immediately.
    “What kind of help?”


    “Remember those dreamy trifles Pom served? They were made by Mrs. Ryquist over at the pub.”
    “I like your cooking,” he complained, his argument weakened by the fact that this was the first she’d heard it. She pushed her advantage.


    “I’ll be doing plenty of cooking. Let’s order fill-ins, say, a ham, some soup, a trifle and a cake for starters. Think how helpful that will be.”


    Ian knew when he was beaten. “Whatever you want”.


    David and Candianna Pourfoyle were the very couple to whom they’d sublet their tiny flat – Scarlet felt at first relieved when Ian mentioned their names. At least it was someone she knew!


    “A practice run,” said Ian, “Polishing our routine before inviting The Big Guns.”

    The more Scarlet thought about this, the more unsettled she felt. She even had the paranoid thought: What if the subletting happenstance was planned behind her back and not, as she had assumed, random?


    Was this sense of having undergone a radical sea-change what being a new young mother was all about? Scarlet shuddered at even trying to find her sea-legs in this new world when she felt so personally raw and physically overwhelmed.

    She had met the Pourfoyles only once it and they seemed so nice – he taught literature and she had some kind of art gallery job – a sublet was all they could afford. Newlyweds are foreigners to each other anyway and these two had been born in different countries. The similarities to Scarlet’s and Ian’s background only made them more simpatico.


    David was younger than Candianna and Canadian – they’d actually met on an Atlantic crossing – she was from one of those Balkan countries perpetually at war and seemed in need of a safe harbor. David seemed like a sweet, gentle man ready to be a hero – in this case rescuing Candi from a dreadful marriage with a violent man. Candi had actually been married three times previously – Scarlet assumed that to women of Candi’s birth culture marriage was simply an escape.


    “Candi” wasn’t even her real name – she had re-named herself but didn’t Americans love re-invention? Scarlet thought she could have picked a better name. But if English wasn’t your first language, wouldn’t you make just that type of error?


    Eventually she discovered a way to look forward to the weekend, singing as she planned guest room drapes, cushions and bedcoverings. Deep plum crewel work on a rough, almost canvas backing – courtesy of Tatiana Designs, another little shop she had discovered in Oakhampton. She’d coveted everything there but she couldn’t afford the clothes – the furnishings were being sold off cheap so Tatiana could concentrate on fashion. “We sell direct to Montcalm Clothiers,” Tatiana had bragged.


    This emporium seemed good place to guide Ian to when he was looking for a present. He had previously revealed a boring tendency to settle for ho-hum gifts like perfume and necklaces purchased at jewelry stalls. He couldn’t go wrong at Tatiana Designs and even Tatiana herself was interesting, although her Russian accent might be as fake as her Egyptian makeup. But why quibble with poseurs if they made life more fun? They were artists mastering their material.


    Candi and David arrived on a Thursday night. They expressed satisfactory appreciation of the house, oohing and aahing at just the right moments and David, thankfully, was a non-smoking light drinker.


    “You’re very brave, bringing children into the world, what with the bomb and all,” said Candi.
    Scarlet, who smiled encouragingly, privately dismissed her as not very bright.


    “They’re hard to avoid,” said Ian with unnecessary gloom.


    “I’d love having kidlets someday,” David contributed. Poor David. There was something so pathetic about him. Why was Scarlet so certain he never would have kidlets, or really, much of anything at all? He was such a follower.


    Scarlet waved a hand at the spiral staircase. “My study’s up there,” she said. An irresistible brag.
    Candi became goggle-eyed. “I’d love to see it.”


    “It’s not fit to be seen.” Truth was, it was just too private. But why did she feel so uncomfortable declaring it off-limits? Because hostesses were obligated to throw open all the doors and welcome anybody in? Scarlet shuddered at the thought of other people’s hands touching sheets of her half-baked ideas – those ideas would be blighted forever. She would never be able to get back to them. It was like people asking you to bathe in front of them. “Don’t mind us!”


    “Oh, please,” said Candi and David took her arm restrainingly. Did it come from being foreign, this cluelessness? English as a seventh language?


    “At least tell me the color scheme,” said Candi. “I’m psychic about colors.”


    “Red and purple,” said Scarlet, suddenly deciding that she really quite disliked this woman. Who wouldn’t be repulsed by her strange trick of bugging out her eyes like a starving Pekingese? It was so corny, so fake, reminiscent of bad hypnotists and unpersuasive stage magic. Did men really fall for this kind of thing? And yet both David and Ian looked at her as a mongoose might gaze at a snake.


    “Red for Scarlet,” said Candi. “How unexpected.” Perhaps she wasn’t clueless after all.


    A dinner out, a dinner in, two breakfasts, one lunch and another at the station in Oakhampton – Scarlet had never realized how much trouble guests really were. Their small London flat had prevented them from ever having company.


    Candi claimed to eat “nothing” yet she was a fount of complaints and requisitions: “China tea, never Indian,” “Can’t abide garlic”; “No tree nuts”; “Cucumbers don’t agree with me” – it would be easier to just show her the kitchen and tell her to forage. Scarlet refrained from pointing out that she must partake occasionally – you didn’t get substantial hips and breasts like those without tucking in. It did turn out that she was very fond of scones with Devonshire clotted cream. Starches and sweets! So that was the secret!


    David at least ate heartily, behaving as if he was on a gastronomic vacation, and assisted with the washing up while Ian, who pretended to assist, regaled them with his stories. Candi watched him with overly shiny eyes. She must spruce up her makeup every twenty minutes, thought Scarlet.


    The red wine vanished immediately; Scarlet had reason to be grateful for the Grüner Veltliner. She made a mental note to thank Pom again. He would never get any other benefit – Ian accepted all the credit and relished the opportunity to show off his knowledge of Austrian wine.


    “I usually buy Traminer but this is drinkable,” he opined. It was all Scarlet could do not to roll her eyes. Fortunately, Candi picked up any and all conversational slack, talking endlessly about her gallery job. She passed around tickets and cards to multiple openings and receptions – painters – all male of course – who seemingly enjoyed picturing women as corpses, robots and birds of prey. Scarlet began to feel the pressure that had triggered some of Pom’s re-envisioning. Moving with the herd was deadly.


    On their guests’ last night Scarlet was yawning and ready for bed at eight o’clock. With monumental effort, she held out till eight-thirty.


    “I think I’ll feed Nick and turn in myself,” she suggested.


    Candi said, “You must be very devoted to risk spoiling your figure.”


    “And a lovely figure it is,” David toasted her “To the cook!”


    None of it felt complimentary.


    Would Ian EVER come to bed? She awoke at two o’clock with a sense of dread. He wasn’t there, and though his side of the comforter seemed disturbed she could have done that herself, tossing and turning while escaping The Dark Tower. At last she rose, donned a pink paisley wrap and drifted downstairs with the excuse of re-filling her hot water bottle.

    She could hear whispering but couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. She took advantage of the time the kettle took to boil to wander from room to room and as she moved the whispering stopped. Could it be coming from the undercroft – the “crypt” in Pom’s parlance? But it was so cold and uncomfortable down there. If they were getting wine why didn’t they come back? And who required wine at breakfast? Maybe it was just the wind she was hearing.


    But Nick’s cry was unmistakable – she filled her bottle and rushed to feed and change him before he woke the house. As if the house had ever been asleep!

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 10. The Bookshop

    Scarlet was rather hoping Ian would be jealous when he found out about her dinner party, but sadly, she turned out to be the jealous one. She could hear him whistling as he came in the front door and she rushed in to meet him so he wouldn’t wake the baby.


    He was waving a thousand pound cheque from his father’s account. Scarlet caught a glimpse of Nicholas’ name in the memo line before Ian whisked it away.


    “For the baby?”


    “Of course, for the baby!” Ian seemed irked. “Everything’s for the baby, which is to say it’s for us.”


    Scarlet hoped Ian’s father wasn’t under the impression that he was starting some special bank fund for Nicholas but feared he probably did. Ian often misled people about the finer points of his spending, implying he was a saver and an investor when he most assuredly was not. However, protecting Ian’s parents could not be her concern when she had too much on her plate already.


    At exactly that moment, Ida and Fern – riding with her grandmother today, thank God – showed up and Scarlet made the introduction. An expression of coy simpering Scarlet had previously imagined and dreaded did appear on Fern’s face – reflecting her babysitter’s appraisal that Ian was a fine figure of a man. But even worse from Scarlet’s point of view was the expression on Ian’s face. In spite of the girl’s youth, he paid clear tribute to her beauty.


    “Challenging your game,” Ian murmured, digging an elbow into Scarlet’s side. She had to struggle to keep from rolling her eyes. In what universe could she and a rural seventeen-year-old school leaver ever be rivals? She tried telling him about her dinner with Pom but he yawned with boredom. She could only hope he wasn’t as mentally finished with her as he obviously was with Pom. Ian considered a case of wine no more than his due -“He owes us” and when she mentioned the cherry tart he poked her middle and said jestingly, “No more of that for you!”


    But he really got under her skin when he called Pom a “poofter.”


    “Surely you can tell,” he drawled. No hope making him jealous of Pomeroy Bronfen!


    She wanted to argue the point, but realized it made her ridiculous. She honestly DIDN’T know – the only “evidence” she actually had that Pom appreciated ladies was the way he had made her feel – beautiful, interesting and intelligent. She stomped away in a huff which all too obviously gratified Ian.


    With Fern present she could at least go to her tower room and write. But she didn’t want to. She needed to get out of this house. She resolved to visit the bookshop Pom had mentioned and locate a copy of Perrault’s fairytales.


    “The Fruitful Browser” turned out to be Scarlet’s favorite kind of shop – from the tray of books outside to the shelves inside it was crammed with interesting finds. Not for the first time Scarlet asked herself, ‘Why should I bother to write when there’s so much to read?”


    The only thing she didn’t like was that she was alone in the store. Usually bookshops swarmed with incompetent help, though in this case the lone leonine woman behind the desk asked, “Anything I can help you with?”


    She looked to be in her 60’s with a big blunt face, broad nose, no makeup, and curly grey streaked hair streaming out around her like a nimbus.


    “Perrault’s Fairytales?” Scarlet asked. “In English. Er – adult version.”


    The woman tossed up a corner of the countertop and hasted out to shake her hand.
    “Welcome,” she said. “I’m Francesca Joringel. Follow me.”


    Her broad, booted, stumpy body was swathed in shawls. As they walked, Scarlet noticed the shop was carefully arranged and labeled – “Poetry”, “Literature,” “Biography” and some unusual ones: “Bloody Mystery” “Bloodless Mystery” and “American Crime.”


    Bet she knows what a paradigm shift is, thought Scarlet.


    They had arrived at “Story Therapy.”
    “Story Therapy?”


    Francesca – “Call me Fran” – turned to face her.


    “You are perhaps familiar with Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning? No? Oh, every visitor to my shop who’s unfamiliar with that book gets a free copy. This shelf represents all my research for my forthcoming tome; Woman’s Search for Meaning.” She waved a hand. “I use folk-tales to back up my theories.”


    “Which is?” questioned Scarlet.


    “Frankl’s experience at Auschwitz convinced him that terrible experiences can be borne only when we comprehend the meaning that they have for us. Story therapy builds on that – it isn’t my own idea. Six years ago, I was living in London at the point of despair and I was fortunate to encounter a Hungarian psychoanalyst – she was a Jungian – who believed with stories we can foretell the future.”


    Scarlet was feeling a bit overwhelmed by this and found herself suddenly needing to sit down. Luckily benches, stools – and in this case an upright kitchen chair – were sprinkled around the store.


    “She taught me to apply these stories to the great question: how shall I live? Psychoanalysis is not only about coming to terms with the past, but planning for the future.” She dimpled unexpectedly. “Enjoy.”


    Scarlet was glad she needn’t suffer scrutiny as she opened book after book and studied their contents. She settled on Grimm’s Fairytales – faintly remembered, and a large version of Perrault, heavily illustrated.


    Fran was waiting for her at the counter with a threadbare paperback of the Frankl book.
    “Would you like to be on our mailing list for future events?”


    “I certainly would,” said Scarlet, and entered name and address in a ponderous volume. It was a warm comfort knowing that Pom had been there before her.

    That night a poem came to her.

    Sister Anne in the Dark Tower

    How you jumped
    When I upbraided you!
    Your sightless spyglass – a
    Sham panopticon –
    Can’t answer Spirit’s Questions.
    Summon the Ouija board and
    Let’s play cards
    Toss the dice like lovers;
    If you win I’ll be
    Forever celibate;
    Prisoned in an oculus
    Heated by
    Rage and
    Prophecy.

  • 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

    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

    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

    Mon 19 Nov 79


    Mike & Lorraine Inzar killed in small plane accident Mom & Dad call to say. This makes Dad majority stockholder (Mike’s stock divided among 5 kids.) Painful thoughts. Lorraine so young! One of her daughters with them too! (Mike was the pilot.) Mom says salutary reminder how easily we can all be “snuffed out.” If I died now how awful!!! Dad wants to go look at Bennington airfield trying to find ANYTHING but pilot error – what could have happened?


    Try to make each day an entity in itself. Yesterday a good day reading V Woolf letters. Can read these again & again. Neither she nor Vita could truly appreciate themselves. But I appreciate them.
    Boiled diary into 5 pages for Yuna. I think we can call this a completely unsuccessful breast-beating exercise. Took dogs walking in park with T, bratwurst for dinner, fantastic lovemaking, sleep. Typical day.

    2 Dec 79
    Maddening depression. My precarious identity under permanent assault, only the cycle of achievement to carry me through. Bride rejected no note of any kind. Devastating. Thought I’d get some direction at least.


    Wrote 2 poems on Rossetti family – sent 40 poems out, wrote 15 family letters.Maybe I should hide my feelings from T. His suggestion I write magazine articles throws me into blacker depression because I would have to:

    1) Learn how to write magazine article
    2) experiment with same
    3) forge relationships!!!

    CRAZY time consuming plus new ways to fail!! Novels are BOILING inside me – can’t get over that THIS IS MY DREAM LIFE – writing full time at home while husband busy with important job. But part-time newspapering pays horribly and he looks forward to law job after graduation. So our timing is off. Let’s hope not FATALLY.

    Thurs. 6 Dec 79
    T compliments me on being “so female” (“in the Jungian sense”). He’s
    beautiful & supportive – he liked my Rossetti poems a lot. Feeling better carefully following my program; hoping I can be the person I want, follow the life I want.

    11:15 PM Thurs 6 Dec 79
    Everything looking up except this diary. Lavallee LIKES Bride and thinks we can sell it. Studying the lives of Saints makes me feel better, so I’m enjoying assembling a calendar of poems called The Spire. Does nothing for my career but provides relief. What if I learned how to pray? Assembling a Christmas wardrobe.


    T. annoyed when I trimmed my public hair! Since he goes down like Jacques Cousteau I should listen. Buying Sutton’s wife Val a sweater for Christmas from Brooks Brothers gives me & T a chance to rationally discuss our differing styles. He accedes to the more imaginative choice.

    11 Dec 79
    Finished Life of Raymond Chandler. Reading about Ottoline Morrell and Katherine Mansfield. Disgusted with poetry and taking a vacation. Bought T. the prettiest Pierre Cardin diamond cufflinks.

    5:30 PM 13 Dec 79 –Thurs
    A good day in spite of a weird pain between my breasts. Tension? Seems better when I move round so not incipient heart attack. Diet?

    Reading Lady Sackville & drinking tea. Phone call from beloved after his Commercial Paper exam. Getting a haircut then home in ½ hr. Mom called to apologize very nicely for sounding “disrespectful” about my work by dismissing it as “ghoulish” and “morbid.”


    We had a nice talk.


    Finished Xmas cards today – 172 cards! T & I had beautiful long talk last night of course followed by spectacular lovemaking. Confiding fears for our relationship. T doesn’t see how this relationship can last when everyone else’s falls off the cliff. I said I worry about hardening myself against him because it’s so difficult to be so open.
    Out shopping today got a flat tire changed by the grocery store employees! Free! Would that happen in the Northeast? Certainly not in DC. Very little sleep last night because of T’s studying – but I didn’t want him to leave the bed. It’s getting dark now – beautiful light over St John’s church. Submitting altered version of The Spire (leaving out sex poems.)

    11:45 AM – Sun 16 Dec 79
    In 15 mins my angel will have been at work for six hours. That’s more than a half day! When he gets here he still has his packing to do. He asked me what about spending summer in Princeton then back here for a year? He knows he can get a job here – his friends have been working on him. I said I’d hate it. Want to get established somewhere before I get pregnant. I have a far better chance of getting a job there than here. He walked in – greeting noises from dogs!

    StormFall Farm – Wed Dec 19 – 79
    Unalloyed pleasure! Sitting at my desk in winter living room (table pushed up to window.) It’s been snowing since we woke up at 10. I saw my new house – where his mother grew up in Grovers’ Mill NJ – very low ceilinged antique farmhouse full of original furniture. Too outdated to rent but fine with me – a whole house of our own! We could have two kids there without being overcrowded! It has some unpleasant dark curtains we could just get rid of. T’s grandmother just went into nursing home for the second time. Looks like this is the last time.


    The only problem is it has no laundry room – perhaps adapt upstairs closet? (Very tiny closets too.)
    Trish & Noah (cousins) & Toss have gone to town – I will walk dogs and then be ALONE.

    Gloriously ALONE. Very close to becoming complete recluse. Just finished N Mitford’s Voltaire in Love. T enormously enjoying Perry Mason whom I read aloud on our long drives.

    Train from NYC 1:40 PM 27 Dec 79 –
    Alarms & Diversions – T & I have just had 2 very intense fights. Guess I didn’t realize the anger than was building up in me. His mother is just so RUDE – I cried in front of her last night for a solid hour feeling sheer helplessness! She is so awful! After she left we managed to come together much chastened. Yesterday we went into New York City to see costumes at the Met – got in an epic traffic jam outside Tiffany’s and could see we weren’t going to make it – got out of the cab and T bought me a ring! Eternity band of diamonds – very sweet. They say if a diamond ever falls out they replace it!


    Celebrated at Sherry Netherland with manhattans and duck pate in lingonberry sauce. Wrote four poems but too exhausted to know if they’re good.

    12:30 AM – Wed 9 Jan 80
    Battling with Byatt’s Virgin In the Garden. This woman asserts a Proustian compass but overwrites dreadfully. T due in ½ hr – at library studying as usual. We had a lovely dinner before he left – spinach soufflé, salad and wine. Took dogs for very pleasant walk.


    T says he loves me so much more every day he can scarcely comprehend it. He was so upset when I said I might not take his name – it was only because he’d been flippant about a previous girlfriend. We are both so sore. Trying to stay open and honest as the emotions blast through.

  • Embattled Love: The Diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Tues. 11 Sept 79 –
    Every day catalogue.
    Jan & Mary Ellen to dinner – she has black eye but otherwise seems no different. Does not disparage new house where they still plan to live.


    Mom sends separate letters to me & T. I feel she is on “his side” not mine. She thinks “living together” is at the heart of all our problems (secretly, she probably thinks it’s my “exhibitionism”. Me, the shy introvert!)


    Reading Self-Starvation about how children make enemies of their own bodies in reaction to growing up. Tremble with recognition. Mom said things in her letter she could only know from what I wrote to my older sister Genevieve. That outlet stopped. Feeling a rush of mature personal power – I’m moving beyond them.


    New novel Speechless is a bloody struggle. Writing about things too close to me. Wrote my first seriously bad scene – the adults all together.


    3:50 PM – too upset after letter from Genevieve to write. She has been robbed of her honest feelings – she is just pumping up and down on the merry go round. They obviously think T will get sick of me soon but can’t decide if that is good or bad. My insistence on having a “real relationship” means I’ll never have one! Silly me. Need to do housework – or something – till I feel better. Shouldn’t try to write when feeling so despondent.

    Midnight – Bath & Facial. Toss beautifully aroused – we made love TWICE. He says I am only girl he ever wanted to marry. Feel even our most terrible problems are being slowly overcome. Routine & diet coming under control. Dream of the Rood unsuccessful book.

    12 Sept 79 – Magnificent day only half over. Charting novel – seems “completeable.” Starting research for short story Demon. No bad mail – no guilt about housecleaning – send off Walt Whitman entry. Sylvia Plath provides poetic incentive – I can’t put her down.

    14 Sept 79 – Woke 4 am to tremendous whoosh – hackberry tree coming in window spreading shimmering shivering glass across floor. Went downstairs – more broken windows – tree leaning against house. Seemed to come out of nowhere. Put on coffee and called Toss at the newspaper where he works part-time.


    He came home looking so handsome in wheat jeans & fishermen’s sweater bringing a photographer from the newspaper to take pics. Started calling people at 8 am. Insurance doesn’t want to pay so he called his insurance law professor.


    Trying to read Robt Penn Warren – finished me for novels. The whole thing, after many premature burials, killed stone dead p. 300. Even there it didn’t stop. Can’t blame him for publishing it. It’s the publishers fault. If this was a woman’s novel they would flatten it. Never see the light of day. Retreat to Woolf’s diary where I plan to be for rest of week. Reading my diaries emotionally draining but inspiring. I’m up to 3 pages on The Repudiated Journals of Yuna Roe-Smith which is a lot of fun. The whole Ryder saga, though, is beyond depressing.


    I had forgotten Mom wanted me to marry Armon and cried over his mother’s mean phone calls! Horrible Armon! What ashram would I be suffering in now? O, for a trustworthy literary executor instead of more family myth victims.


    T. and I discuss travel – Portugal, Ireland and the literary tour of Eng. He prepares frightening presentation for Justice Goldberg. We will celebrate with Graves couple to dinner – turkey? My piece de resistance of hot, garlicky potato salad.

    Sat 15 Sept 79 –
    Insurance will pay. Celebrate one of our many anniversaries with muffins for breakfast. Nice cool fall day – I can wear a sweater! T says after Goldberg he will set up his new study and his old study becomes our dressing room. Good, I need closet space. Type 10 p without a break – T at library – do my exercises – hand laundry. Novel going uncommonly well except for constant awareness of what I cannot do. Tonight spaghetti & green salad. Didn’t realize I was clenching my jaw as I wrote. Sore.

    Sun 16 Sept 79 – T hands me his mother’s legal file – tells me I can read it! Found exactly what I need to portray Alva. She told her kids she was allergic to their father’s sperm!! Ask if I can incorporate T’s letter to his father about StormFall into Speechless.


    Can’t read African diaries. Forgot I threatened to kill myself. Needed child psychologist in a major way. Parents were always staggering around blindfolded. No map ever suits the new terrain.

    17 Sept 79
    Finished Part I, on to Part II. Looked everywhere for Generation of Millionaires – can’t find it. Rats. I was sure I could use almost all of it.


    Letter from oldest sister Merrill tells me I have to separate from M & D for my own emotional mental health. Can I do it AFTER wedding? Reading Women in Love. Think its wasted on me.

    18 Sept 79
    Up to p 145 but feel I am just beginning. I need to write another gothic – it would be easier. Dumped D.H. Lawrence’s Women In Love in favor of Hahn’s Lorenzo which I can actually enjoy.
    Useless trying to clean our room – T has nowhere to hang his clothes! We must construct a closet out of pass-through bedroom. This is a crazy place – longing for my own house. Yesterday such a magnificent dinner – chicken stew, wine, liqueur, pears, nuts & brie – we decided to skip dinner tonight. I love him so much but still feel like a wayfarer unrevealed. Sometime I wonder if 29 is too old to fall in love. M & D called – good conversation. To bed with History of Modern Poetry.

  • The Diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Queens Chapel Rd, Washington D. C. 3:30 Thurs 30 Aug 79


    Belongings packed. I’m in shock. Crawled into the bath with a vodka tonic and now I’m feeling better. Trying to figure out how to approach parents for money. Maybe they could give me my own stock as engagement present?


    My sense of helplessness is NOT a good sign for T’s and my relationship. He can’t “make” me independent! I have to do it myself. I’m doing this guy no favors handing him a woman on the edge of breakdown.

    4:25PM – My darling just called! Relief! He borrowed a truck from somebody so although we’ll have to drive separately we won’t have movers to cope with. He’s driving it out here so I can sleep as late as I like which I really need. Reading Robert Ludlum’s perfectly ludicrous Matarese Circle. In 100 yrs people will wonder how we stomached this stuff. Avril and I going to Olney theatre to see The Bat tonight.

    Newport Kentucky – Tues 4 Sept. 79
    Reading old high school loveletters for something I can use in Blood Memory now renamed Speechless.


    T. ebbs in and out of stranger-hood. He told his friends I used to be an exotic dancer – because he says he can’t “lie” but I think it was a bad idea. One obscene phone call so far. Don’t like the way they stare at me.

    Last night we made love twice. I especially like to watch him sleeping – the perfection of his profile is heart-rending. But his angers are so weirdly arbitrary. Not against me so far. I am divided on what to do – if I ignore it will it be somehow programmed that I’ll stay reasonable while he’s outrageous? But if I don’t “let it slide” it’s non-stop arguments. Went to a famous restaurant to drink mint juleps last night and ended up in a silly argument about whether he has any misogynistic ideas or not. I proved he did (he thinks women “act stupid”) but that didn’t make him happy!


    He’s given me the entire third floor of his house with glorious views over the city – I spend most of my time up here. Total furniture so far: a desk and a lounge chair. It somewhat makes up for the fact that he presented me with a new vacuum cleaner – obviously thinking I’m going to clean for him. Uh oh! Misogynistic idea #763. Mostly I am incredibly happy. At about 8 I’ll start the casserole & set the table.

    Newport, KY: 10:15 AM Wed 5 Sept 79
    The electricians have been here for 2 hrs driving me insane. T ordered impossibly ugly furniture from Horchow catalog – luckily agreed to send it back. Enjoying A Certain Slant of Light. Point of view not a problem for this writer. Next Drabble’s The Ice Age. Project: The Contemporary Novel.
    The irrevocableness of marriage. My children mutely regard my choice. The hopelessness of explaining myself to any of T’s friends. Rain. Any excuse not to take a walk (T lives in bad neighborhood.) At least there’s a fenced yard for the dogs. Feel like a girl in a gothic novel except for the constant sex which makes it a different kind of novel. Break with the past.

    6 Sept 79 – 2 PM
    Impossibly intense happiness. Peace & joy. Feel we have been standing in a dinghy trying to balance. Equilibrium is everything.


    Toss suffering recurring nightmares that I leave him to go back to DC Can’t reassure him while I’m struggling to balance. Moves upset me to a terrifying degree. Let’s hope the next is last till kids are born. I recall when I got to Maine took me a full month to get my neuroses under control. 4 good pages on my latest novel. Molly Lefebrve’s book on Coleridge fascinating. T & I up at 8 AM to go shopping. Laid in a glorious supply food & drink – I gave him check for my ½. He is slightly alarmed I won’t open checking acct here. But he did say he can no longer afford the allowance he promised me and I’m too proud to complain. Must make money writing. Should take a walk right now – wake myself up. But light a little scorching – longing for fall.

    12:50 PM Fri Sept 8 – 79
    Long letter from Devon full of love and caring – his girlfriend sounds so wrong for him – she’s a prudish fundamentalist: what was he thinking? Must we marry our nightmares?


    Perilously close to a bad argument last night – somehow Toss & I got over it. Trying to treat his ideas with respect. Our family has a ban on displays of anger – his doesn’t! In Sheffield World the angriest person wins because they “care” the most. Or are just willing to behave worse, I suggest.
    I get angry when he postpones our wedding AGAIN. He thinks we can’t “raise the money”. I say just make it a family party on the lawn. He says “a piece of paper doesn’t marry us”. BUT IT DOES. Why does “piece of paper” make him a lawyer, I ask? “That’s different.”


    “Maybe next summer” does not sound good. Thanksgiving would be the easy thing – he says no – so I suggest spring vacation – he says Sept a year from now! Wants to have graduated into a law job. I think it is better to get wedding stuff out of the way. Now he’s trying to talk me into living near his mother in the city but I hate cities. Impasse. Seems I don’t need to cut very deeply to see pus.
    Can’t speed up the intimacy process much as I want to. Trying to detangle Mom & Dad’s puritanical creepers out of my own mind gives me a headache. At least T is making dinner tonight. If it weren’t for alcohol I don’t know if we’d pull through. Loving Christina Stead’s Miss Herbert.

    6:40 PM Long letters to Devon and Merrill, then when T came home I wept for an hour. Apologized. This is heavy work. T shocked me by suggesting we “spend the summer here”. My traumatized response showed how much I think I am “camping out.”

    Mon. 10 Sept 79 – Finished mad disturbing Miss Herbert then walk in dark with dogs. People’s complex rationalizations for the arcs, crests & troughs of their lives bear no actual relationship to what’s really going on says Stead, and I think I agree. Order & purpose come in a dream – then flash away again. I think I like Herbert even better than Dark Places of the Heart. Weird publishers’ blurb says they themselves don’t understand this novel! Poor Stead!


    War with my current novel struggles a snails’ pace 3 pages. Keep longing to write here like I’m on the verge of some great discovery. Want to read my old diaries – make notes – but that would be a massive undertaking. With NO effect on novel.


    In the meantime poor T and I continue our struggling course. On Friday his friend poor Mary Ellen was raped in her new house! I told T this was a bad neighborhood! I think I’d be scared if I didn’t have dogs. Jan and Mary Ellen left for their vacation early. Told T they should come here when they get back – she should not have to live in that house again. Great thing about this house is 3 floors and 4 bedrooms (2 bathrooms.)


    Last night we lay naked face to face kissing and talking about the amazingness of our love. It is astounding. We’re riding a tiger and trying to tame it.


    Saw Marquise of O – came home to delicious steak dinner – went a tour of restored houses after. Poor T trying to “sell” me on the area. I pine for our new Pennsylvania house just for us alone. So what is the answer? How does one give true weight to ideas & things?


    To conservatory to see plants – home for fabulous lovemaking. Good weekend.

  • The Pinch of Death – a mystery by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 35. Ricey

    A green Corvette parked a few slots down pulled out behind her but Jacquetta couldn’t see who was driving. Roxelle Shields – or her manager – drove a green Corvette. Coincidence? There were a lot of green Corvettes in the world. Speaking of coincidence, Rose-Alice Ramey could not POSSIBLY have the same name as the St. Barnabas churchyard baby. When a monster was close and about to surface, otherwise innocent ripples had one meaning and one meaning only.


    The apartment smelled horrible. Some kind of chemical smell suppressed the stench of spoiled food and an even nastier odor that could only be Death. Maybe I don’t want the clothes, thought Jacquetta. I’ve cleared out most of my stuff anyway. Make my phone call and get out.


    But as she entered the living room she was brought up short by the sight of Rose-Alice Ramey, aka Ricey Kleinemann, sitting in the rocking chair waiting for her.


    Caught by surprise Jacquetta knew she showed fear. She could tell that by the flicker of satisfaction on the other’s face. Damn! Now Ricey had the upper hand. How to win it back?


    ‘Who let you in?” She forced herself to advance far enough into the room so that she could sit on the sofa. Above all, she didn’t want Ricey standing up.


    “Your roommate gave me her key.” Ricey played with a lock of her own hair.


    “As well as her life,” said Jacquetta.


    “I needed to know what you knew,” said Ricey. “She was the weak link. If I wrapped a dishtowel around her neck and twisted it with a stick –“ She made a snapping motion with her hands. “But she wouldn’t tell me. She died too soon.” The murderer sound almost regretful. “I couldn’t bring her back.”


    Jacquetta was grateful for the apartment’s semi-gloom. Easier to conceal the blood boiling up her throat and into her face.


    “Why send those letters? You were safe until then.”


    “No one’s safe,” spat Ricey. “That’s why I sent them! People thinking they’re so safe!”


    “Who shared the Brooklyn apartment?” asked Jacquetta.


    “Oh, everyone.” Ricey shrugged. “No one. A girl’s got to live. You know what they pay nanny-girls? Next to nothing!”


    “So you preferred blackmail,” suggested Jacquetta. “But that didn’t work out either, did it?”


    “I preferred murder,” said Ricey, leaning forward. “I like finding the edge. I would have snapped that old woman’s neck if I could have gotten away with it. Pills in the milk. It’s so unsatisfying.” She laughed in a low, reminiscent chuckle, “Turns out I like shooting people and setting them on fire.”


    “You were smart to use so many different murder methods,” said Jacquetta, frantically thinking out her next move. The other girl’s cynical smile told her flattery wouldn’t work, so she desperately threw out her next idea. “What a pity you sabotaged your own work by wanting to be caught!”


    Wow! That got her! A little too much so – Ricey jumped to her feet while the rocking chair trembled.


    “I’m not going to be caught!” she snapped. “I’m never going back to prison. I can be anyone! I can go anywhere!”


    “Why tell me about the “commune” in upstate New York?” challenged Jacquetta. “You meant prison, didn’t you? You should have been worried, giving me so many clues!”


    The apartment door opened behind them and Ricey’s face changed. She seemed to back up, scared. Jacquetta twisted her head but was astonished by her rescuer – Roxelle. Carrying a gun.
    “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” said Roxelle. “For what you did to Granny. I brought you into this world and I can take you out.”


    The first shot went wild. Ricey ducked but her mother advanced on her, shooting, emptying the gun. The noise was deafening and the smell pungent. Jacquetta backed toward the kitchen and called 911.


    She dropped the phone when Roxelle appeared in the kitchen doorway.
    “She’s dead now,” she said. “Thank you.” And she was gone.


    Ricey was not dead. Jacquetta tried futilely to block the gushing blood with the spilled contents of Honey’s ironing basket, but there was too much. To the music of sirens the monster’s eyes refocused, unfocused, falling back in time to childhood, infancy, and ultimately to non-existence, to the time before all will and all suffering and the senseless destruction they perpetuate.