Alysse Aallyn

Category: Soulmates

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 34. The Detective

    As they selected cheeses, cake, apples, biscuits and the components for what Pom described as a “strengthening soup”, Pom remarked, “I adore old-fashioned places like these. All the grapes and calves’ foot jelly.”


    “Thanks for reminding me,” said Scarlet, adding grapefruit marmalade and fish fingers to their hoard.


    “Fish fingers?” Pom questioned.


    “Everyone needs a fast, easy dinner,” said Scarlet. “That’s what freezers are for.”


    “I don’t have a freezer.”


    “But Miss Bottomley does. Quite an up to date one.”


    “And then there’s the problem that fish have no fingers.”


    “We call them ‘fish sticks’ in America.”


    “My, that does sound irresistible. A stick of fish. Such cleverness you Yanks have. I wonder what is the correct wine with “sticks”? Allow me to purchase for you a nice rosé. Or would you prefer champagne?”


    “No wine at work, thank you,” said Scarlet. “I need to keep my wits about me.”


    As soon as the grocer heard it was for Fourteen Norfolk Crescent he insisted on delivery.


    “She’s our landlady,” he told the astonished pair. “She owns everything round here.”


    Pom kept an admirably straight face during this disclosure.


    Scarlet carefully set up her own account and stressed that it was her responsibility alone.


    “Don’t be in such a hurry to pay for everything,” said Pom when they were safely back inside the Dorset. “Sounds like she’s rich as Croesus, much as she doesn’t look it.”


    “All the other interviewees thought she was the housemaid,” admitted Scarlet. “It just makes me all the more determined to do my very best for her. Those books of hers are just plain wonderful, and where else in the world would I ever get such a perfect job?”


    And she shared with him the dramatic tale of Miss Bottomley’s late-acquired wealth.


    “Please don’t tell anyone,” she begged. “I didn’t even tell Ian.”


    Pom’s eyes widened. “I can keep a secret. Honored that you chose me. But are you certain the pair of you don’t need live-in bodyguards as well?”


    “I’m sure we do,” said Scarlet. “And heaven knows there’s room. Are you offering?”


    “I don’t think I’d be any good at that particular role,” said Pom.


    “I think you’ll find Miss Bottomley very averse to strangers,” said Scarlet. “Maybe as time goes on I’ll be able to talk her round. I’m currently in favor because I was the only one who’d actually read her books. She’s not used to money and she doesn’t like solicitors. I hope Pelham D’Arcy might offer assistance but we’ve got to give it time.”


    It turned out the grocer’s van had gone around to the kitchen entrance. Off the kitchen was a scullery with new-looking washer and drying machines.


    “They’ve got me running off my feet answering doorbells here and doorbells there,” complained Miss Bottomley as they brought the groceries in. “First it was that strange friend of yours -“


    Scarlet seated Miss Bottomley to toast her toes by the gas fire. Pom almost sat on the King of Wessex.


    “Meet Ceawlain,” Scarlet explained.


    “Sue-Allen?”


    “No,” said Miss Bottomley and Scarlet both together, “Ceawlain, King of Wessex.”


    Scarlet inquired, “What strange friend was it that came to the door?”


    Miss Bottomley considered. “Well, he was quite silly. He certainly didn’t guess he was speaking to an authoress of detective novels, because he used quite a transparent ruse to try to get into the house.”


    Scarlet and Pom stared at each other, appalled.


    “What did he say?” asked Scarlet while Pom said, “He could have simply thrust you aside!”


    “I’d like to see him try,” grumped Miss Bottomley. “I’d have skewered him with a hatpin and summoned help with my police whistle.”


    And she displayed these items for their inspection.


    “This is ghastly,” said Pom and Scarlet asked, “Doesn’t that door have a chain?”


    “Obviously one must take the chain off when one answers the door,” said Miss Bottomley.
    “And a peephole?” wondered Scarlet.


    “I’m too short for the peephole,” sighed Miss Bottomley. “The peephole is too tall for me.”


    “Here’s an idea,” suggested Pom, “An intercom. You won’t be run off your feet that way. You’ll be able to ask who it is and get them to describe themselves. Tell them to put a letter requesting an appointment in the mail slot.”


    “Oh, I do like that idea,” gushed Miss Bottomley. “Takes a man to look at problems from the engineering point of view.”


    “I’ll look into it for you, shall I?” offered Pom, and Miss Bottomley seemed relieved.


    “But what did he look like?” Scarlet poured a tin of vichyssoise into a saucepan while Pom sliced cheese and pears.


    “Very smartly dressed, I must say. Bowler hat and all found. He said he was from an architectural publication and he wanted to take pictures inside the house. He asked to see the Missus. I didn’t tell him I was the Missus, I just said no, no, and no.”


    “Did he give up?”


    “He most certainly did not. Tried slipping me a five-pound note!”


    “He really did mistake you for the housemaid,” laughed Scarlet and Miss Bottomley laughed with her.


    “I rejected it. Played along. Told him I valued my “position”. But he wouldn’t leave. He had his foot in the door.”


    “But this is a horror story!” Pom gasped and Scarlet said, “You should have used your police whistle.”


    “Perhaps I should. But then he started asking questions about you.”


    “Me?”


    “Yes. Wasn’t there a young lady in the house and when was she due back. I said, “Here she comes!” and when he turned to look, I shut the door!”


    “That was clever,” said Pom, and Scarlet said, “Worthy of Miss Clew.” And Miss Bottomley reddened with pleasure.


    “But who could it have been?” asked Pom. “It doesn’t sound like Ian.”


    “It’s that detective of his,” said Scarlet. “He took pictures of us last week and Ian threatened me with them. I explained to him that we’re only friends.”


    “Utterly uncompromising pictures,” Pom assured her but Miss Bottomley was nonchalant.


    “I should have known there would be a detective or two hanging about any modern girl,” she remarked. “Keeping me up to date!”


    Pom refused to shake off his anxiety.


    “You be sure to tell your solicitors,” he suggested. “Both of you.”


    “I’ll tell Pelham,” agreed Scarlet, thinking how lucky she was that Miss Bottomley wasn’t sufficiently intimidated by all this bother to choose another assistant, but Miss Bottomley scoffed.


    “Oh, my Mr. Inkum, he’s a perfectly dreadful man! Always trying to get me to sign documents and when I said, “Don’t I need a solicitor?” he answers, “I’m your solicitor. This is for your OWN GOOD.”


    “Funny how when people say that it’s never true,” mused Pom, as they settled at the table for a delicious meal.


    “That’s what I thought,” said Miss Bottomley. “I told him to leave the papers with me so I could think about them and he said, “Don’t think too long!”


    “Sounds like a threat!” gasped Scarlet.


    Nick’s cry made them all jump.

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 32. High Tea

    While feeding Nicholas in the “ladies’ retiring room” Scarlet read in the available pamphlet all about the antique pub. “Lady Catherine’s Garden” was named after a character in Pride & Prejudice and was originally built by a fan of Jane Austen’s work. Chawton, the author’s last home, was situated nearby. Today the weather was too cold to sit in the garden but the glass tearoom built almost to the river’s edge offered a suitable summer illusion of swans and willows. From his collapsible stroller, an alert and cleaned up Nicholas seemed riveted by the sunlight playing on the tile floor.


    “It’s just good pub food,” Pom apologized in advance, “Though of course some people say that’s the best English cooking. But look at this view!”


    Scarlet looked. A snow-free water meadow spread out endlessly before them.


    “Seems like it’s always spring around here,” she agreed.


    They ordered tea and ham salad sandwiches. The waitress was very young and did not recognize Pom. He breathed a sigh of relief.


    “Well, there’s one fear that didn’t come true,” he said.


    “Tell me about the last time you visited,” Scarlet prompted.


    “Three years ago. There are charming rooms upstairs. We made use of every one of them but not – I hasten to add – on the same day.”


    “Mr. and Mrs. Pomeroy Bronfen?”


    “Mr. and Mrs. Pomeroy Bronfen.” He did not blub.


    “So, you thought she was a wolf and she turned out to be a dog.”


    “That’s not it. Because she was cheating on her husband I knew she was a dog. I just tried not to care.”


    “But you did care.”


    “I wanted what I wanted and I ignored every warning until finally I got a warning I couldn’t ignore.”
    “Was it a “shop closed” sign?”


    “Oh no. She was willing to continue after her wedding – which, by the way, she invited me to. I don’t know what I would have said during the, “Speak now or forever hold your peace” part, because I didn’t go.”


    ‘Did you try talking her out of it?”


    “Oh, yes. She tried completely humorlessly to clue me in on the deadly importance of cash and titles.”


    “Sounds like she’s some kind of third animal in your bestiary. The sharing kind? Or the devious kind? Maybe a cuckoo?”


    “She certainly took me for a cuckoo. She offered possibilities like the plot of a Henry James novel. “He can’t last forever! We could enjoy his money together.”


    “Those novels always end badly,” she agreed, feeling illiterate in Pom’s presence. Which James novel could he be referring to? The Golden Bowl?


    “I can’t rid myself of the idea that I should have warned the poor old thing,” Pom said seriously.


    “The Catholic peer? Surely not.”


    “But what if he ends up dead? What if she gets her next teddy boy to kill him?”


    “Oh, Pom! I’m starting to appreciate your interest in Hitchcock. But do people really do those things?”


    “Yes, Scarlet,” he said seriously. “They do. I actually don’t know of a single aristocratic family without a murder in its history.”


    “Good God!” Why was she surprised? Miss Clew wouldn’t have been! She brought herself into the conversation. “Very Turn of the Screw. Reminiscent of my situation, that temptation. Why couldn’t having a castle and a flat in town compensate me for losing my husband’s fidelity?”


    “Oh, Scarlet, you American girl,” he said it admiringly. She felt a gush of gratitude. Was this the first time in England that “being American” hadn’t seemed a social liability?


    “How much were you actually tempted?” she asked him.


    “I’ll never know. I might have considered it if she hadn’t started going on about how much she “loved’ me. It was the first time she’d ever used that word.”


    “Traitor!”


    “Exactly how I felt. Stomped away in a wounded huff. That sort of thing.”


    “Haven’t contacted her since?”


    “I have not.”


    “And she?”


    “Total silence. I’m sure she replaced me. I did read about Her Ladyship’s wedding in Country Life. Couldn’t resist that.”


    “I can see it would be difficult.”


    Their food arrived.


    “In the spring they have watercress,” sighed Pom nostalgically.


    “This looks nice.”


    Nicholas’ eyes had drifted shut.


    “They’re very easy at this age.” said Pom.


    “He’s being particularly good today. I’ve heard they like traveling in cars. It’s the motion.”


    “So,” said Pom, “Now you owe me a story. You’re really going to have to tell me about how you and Ian met.”


    How long ago it seemed! Four whole years. How different she felt now from that long-ago girl.
    “I too ignored all the warnings. Ian was considered the prize at Oxford, a real heartbreaker.”


    “But you thought you’d be different.”


    “He told me I’d be different. And then he married me so I thought I must be. I was so proud of having bagged him.”


    “One does tend to think in these big-game metaphors.”


    “It would be good to get over that,” she reflected. “And stop trying to “capture” people. It turned out he assumed I came from a rich family!”


    “Brits think all Americans are rich.”


    “It must be because we try to pretend we are. Everything new. We call it, Keeping up With the Joneses.”


    “There’s another thing we all have to get over,” agreed Pom. “This competitive furor.”
    “We call it the capitalist fervor.”


    “Obviously that has to go!” agreed Pom. They both laughed. Pom went on, “This is exactly why friendship is so important. Why I’m willing – I hope this won’t embarrass you – to wait for you.”
    It did embarrass her. She blushed the color of her name.


    Pom went on smoothly, “You know, I never had any female friends at college. Coming out of an all boys’ school of course it’s different. Girls seem so exotic. Did you and Ian share a tutor? Or did he see you from afar and think – rare species? I’m sure the big game metaphor operates here as well.”


    “I doubt it. He made me work for it. We shared editorship of a student literary publication – lasted a mere three issues – the St. Euphrosyne Review.”


    “Good Lord! There was a Saint Euphrosyne?”


    “It’s a bad joke. I think the joke was on us female students – apparently St Euphrosyne disguised herself as a man to become a monk. That’s the legend.”


    “Irksome.”


    “I’ll say. We Americans don’t put up with that sort of thing. We’re coeducational all the way. I was always wrestling with Ian to get him to respect my poetry – we just didn’t have the same taste. He really felt “female poet” was a contradiction in terms.”


    “But suddenly he stopped wrestling?”


    “Suddenly he let me win. I should have known.”


    “I’m sure he was in love.”


    “As much as he could be, I think, which isn’t enough, I’m afraid.”


    “They do say people can only respond to another’s depth to the extent of their own.”


    “Meaning there’s a lot of shallow people in the world.”


    They smiled at each other.


    The sandwiches were delicious. Scarlet produced the advertising brochure she’d been reading.


    “Know what it says here?”


    “Remind me.”


    “Jane Austen’s house is nearby and I’ve never been.”


    “Must you arrive in London at any specific time?”


    “No. How about you?”


    “Never anyone to please but myself.”


    “What a fortunate state of affairs!”


    “It has its highs and its lows. Shall we go then?”


    “Do let’s.”

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 21. Voyeurs

    So that’s where they went. She felt relieved that he didn’t suggest that they could have coffee just as well at his place; this was all coming at her too fast as it was. They sat in the window looking out on the darkened street. He chose espresso. For her it would always be “café americaine.”


    “I liked that man’s helplessness,” she said finally. “It’s the exact opposite of every other movie.”


    “Well, he has to trust his girlfriend to do what he can’t do.”


    “Trust her not to get herself killed, you mean? They share an unbearable curiosity. Audere scire, that’s my real motto. Dare to know.”


    “What a perfect phrase! Family?”


    “Hardly,” said Pom. “I think they chose some scrap of boilerplate that meant “Toady like your life depends on it.” Picturing a toad rampant.”


    She laughed until his tense face relaxed.


    “The camera’s like the wheelchair, in a way,” she suggested.


    “How do you mean?”


    “Well, he’s at one remove from the action. At a distance, always.”


    “A voyeur, you mean,” agreed Pom. “That’s what they say about Hitchcock, that he turns us all into voyeurs.”


    ‘And he wants us to be both intrigued and ashamed.”


    “I suppose our hero was so eager to find out if he was right about his neighbor being a killer that he didn’t mind putting Grace Kelly in harm’s way,” Pom suggested. “Pretty unforgiveable, really. They needed three scriptwriters to figure a way out.”


    “She was brave, I thought. She really went in without his permission.”


    “But knowing she was doing what he wanted.”


    “He’s still helpless at the end,” said Scarlet. “Breaking the other leg.”


    “He needs a special manager,” Pom agreed.


    “And then Hitchcock makes fun of our happy ending by showing she’s already bored by his life before they’re even married.”


    “Perhaps he’ll realize he must always find – and film – mysteries that keep her interested. Apparently Hitchcock’s real wife always wrote his screen treatments. He thought in pictures, working the film out in storyboards and then she’d write the first script.”


    “What a perfect combination of skills,” said Scarlet. Like our movie tonight – he’ll be curious about the neighbors and she’ll investigate, and that’s what happily ever after is.”


    “For their sake I hope so,” said Pom. A little sadly.


    Scarlet realized with a start that Pom must always be looking from his lonely life into the brightly lit windows of others’ married bargains. But she couldn’t think of any polite way to broach the subject.


    Pom drained his espresso, then effortlessly became very personal indeed. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”


    She panicked as she realized two things – both that it was possible to have too good evening and secondly that she needed to put a stop to this very agreeable fantasy right now.


    “I want to thank you for such a pleasant evening,” she began formally.


    “Oh no…” he supplied. “I can feel the disclaimer coming. I brace myself.”


    Could she explain, “I’m especially vulnerable right now -“ no, that was a mistake. Putting poor Pom in the wrong. Best come clean. “Ian and I have been having trouble.”


    “I hope it’s not the house. I’m afraid I’ve sold you a permanently sinking ship.”


    “No. No.” In a way it was, but nothing specific to Pom’s estate. She had assumed the “trigger” was her pregnancy but maybe the truth was even worse. Had Ian always been mistress as well as house shopping? “It’s his – attitude. As a country gentleman.”


    “I begin to see,” Pom supplied. “The “girlfriend” thing?”


    “Yes. He’s separating himself from us, as if he’s fulfilling some kind of ancient pattern that I thought we’d both rejected. It closes him off to me and to the baby.” Really, this conversation was getting too intimate. It proved that she was desperate for a friend. But could Pom – could any man, much less an Englishman – ever be that?


    “Tell me,” she hazarded, “When English men go shopping for a country house are they really looking for an excuse to be unfaithful?”


    She was trying to lighten the desperate moment but Pom gave the comment deep consideration.
    “I suppose so,” he said finally. “It’s the nest thing. You’re asking, does “nest” mean “harem” to an Englishman?”


    “Am I?” She felt stunned. She gave a gasping, nervous laugh but neither that nor her stricken face intimidated him.


    “I’m imagining things I haven’t experienced,” he went on. “That’s my voyeurism for you right there. It’s been my perpetual difficulty because I’ve always been considered such an odd duck. Ian blocks you off so you open yourself up to me and I don’t want that to stop because I’m feeling something I’ve never felt before, something that I’d given up expecting to ever feel – something I assumed would always be impossible for me.”


    Blood flooded her face; she couldn’t speak. She was grateful for his calm. Was this something adults who’d just met could discuss? He kept his voice level and his eyes serious. “I put a curse on you by selling you that house. Sadly, you can’t have the money back.”


    She hadn’t been able to lighten the moment but he certainly could. She laughed to the point of tears.


    “In America, we call that “no backsies”, she said.


    “No backsies,” he agreed. “I’ve spent most of it anyway.”


    When she raised her eyebrows – he shared, “Debts. I bought an annuity with the rest. Keep a little money coming in.”


    So he was careful! A cautious, forward planning man. Ian was the one equating masculinity with carelessness, Ian, who enjoyed recklessness for its own sake. To such a man, thoughtful Pom seemed a “poofter.”


    Pom said, “So what are your plans, if I may ask?”


    “I’m going to confront him with what I’ve found,” she allowed. “We have to start telling each other the truth. So really it’s about what HE will do.”


    “Or?”


    She pulled away. He was too persistent.


    “There is no “or.”


    “I’ve got a lot riding on it,” he admitted.


    Once again, she was wrong. Pom was, in his own way, a reckless man.


    “I can’t go that far. Yet.”


    Truthfully, she had imagined so many possible scenarios. She wanted to pray, to hope, even to pretend. Anything rather than dwell upon the ugly possibilities. She knew she couldn’t live with a liar and continue to seek the truth in art. One of those devotions must be sacrificed. She had never imagined Pom stepping in to fill her husband’s place.


    He squeezed her hand. “Keep in contact,” he said. He stood up over their empty coffee cups.
    Their ride to the hotel was silent. She wondered if his mind was as busy as hers. He seemed to concentrate on the route.


    “Don’t come up,” she said at the hotel. “I can only repeat what a wonderful time I’ve had.”
    “Are you going back tomorrow?”


    She nodded. “First train.”


    “I’m driving down tomorrow night and I can give you a lift if you can wait.”


    She couldn’t wait. She couldn’t bear to be parted from Nick for an extra moment.


    “You won’t cut me off?” he requested anxiously.


    She was touched – a little scared – to have so much power over this wonderful man so recently encountered.


    “Of course not.”


    In the elevator, she reflected on the oddness of their exchange. What kind of man made overtures to a woman who had just borne a baby to another man? It made him sound so awful. She heard herself trying to explain to anybody – India perhaps – that he “wasn’t like that”. But where honesty and directness stopped and fantasy took over in either of their hearts and minds she really couldn’t say. She didn’t know him that well, and it was beginning to seem like she didn’t know herself either.

  • 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?

  • 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.

  • Embattled Love: the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    3:10 PM – Feb 6 – 80


    Trying to write a new novel plan with a migraine. My writing must never be pedestrian. Calculate I’ll be done Feb 17 so I can leave. 1 week ago I flew to DC to comfort Avril’s depression. Her therapy raises the problem that she feels “worthless”. That’s Quaker schools for you was my comment – they don’t WANT you to feel worth anything! We are particularly Worthless Worms because we were born with So Many Privileges and we STILL refuse to Give our Lives in Service.


    We agree on need to sell the house. (And so I get some much needed cash.) Every night I was gone T called. Moving from here will be the best thing that could happen to our relationship.
    9PM – Bad bad BAD day. Did my exercises – took bath – nothing helps. I seem to have a fever but am afraid to tell T (he called my PARENTS about the pain in my chest! “We’re getting it checked out.” Doc says “Beats me.”)


    Tried reading AWFUL Margery Allingham. That woman is excruciating. Turn to Austen with relief.

    Thu Feb 7 – 80 :9;40 PM
    Good day so far. Wrote 5 letters, cleaned study, reorganized MSS Ophelia Was A Man. Joined the Authors League even though I usually hate things like that. Cut my own hair saving myself at least $50.

    10 PM – the worst happened. T upset that I ate dinner without him, upset that I want to diet “You didn’t get fat eating dinners with ME” (manifestly false) upset that I don’t want to take care of his house “You think you’re too good for housework” and especially upset about the upcoming Mar 3-23 plan (me going east to see agent & publishers) although he DID KNOW. I’ll stay in Grover’s Mill to save cash. I’m not sure he’s heard me even now – he keeps talking about being “separated for a month” and I proved its two weeks to the day. His anger makes me shiver and shake all over. Plus cramps. (Period alas.) He feels all this is a “slap” at his love and care! I thought we weren’t supposed to “lie” but he gets too upset to be truthful to! Thank God my day was a good one or I don’t know how I would bear up. His anger makes me want to scream too but my throat was locked long ago. (See Speechless.) “Go on and let him have it!” eggs on Psychology Today but I think it would be more likely to end a relationship that would be a good one if we could just get back to civilization. Jane Austen a lot more help than Psychology Today.

    3:40 PM Sun 10 Feb 80
    How true it is – if you want to get something you first have to figure out what it is. As these frenzied Newport Days draw to a close I give thanks they are not to be extended. At least Toss has agreed to sell this house (helps that I’m selling mine.)

    Traveling relatives of T’s (a pair of married doctors) looked us up and I could tell they were shocked by the frat house nature of the place as T proudly showed off holes he’d pounded through the walls with a sledgehammer (“real brick!”) I resent doing decorator work to someone else’s taste for no money in the wreck of a rooming house whose nearest neighbor is named “Booger” (I kid you not). Before the arrival of the dogs kids broke in and stole constantly. The dogs slow them down a little but now I worry about the dogs’ safety.


    An old girlfriend of T’s (married) invited us to the Covington House last night – had a marvelous time. She said we look like brother and sister! What a compliment! He looked particularly beautiful last night in his tux – a Greek idol. Sigh.


    Reading Better than Rubies a wonderful book about women’s education.

    Tues 12 Feb 80
    Listening to Scarlatti. My tolerance for winter is definitely over. Feeling at the nadir of my stored-up strength – a bear forced to hibernate overtime. Had the clever idea of inserting short story Erin into Summer as a flashback. I think it works.


    Waiting for T to get there – he’s reading slowly. Another bad fight. When I made the comment that the Grover’s Mill house could be made so nice he looked around his hell hole and snorted incredulously. How could that possibly be when I’m such a bad housekeeper? I reminded him how wonderful MY house in DC was (and is.) Unable to argue with this he made fun of my voice! Low blows. I asked him if I REALLY sounded like that – abashed, he admitted I didn’t. The problem is “Women”. He fears women are manipulative, demanding and illogical. Hard to blame him for thinking so if you’ve met his mother (and his girlfriends.) But he’s not willing to listen to criticism of his mother yet. She’s “losing” him to me. She’ll have to meet his father at graduation.

    (They were divorced six years ago and separated eight before that.) The last time they saw each other was by chance in the Uffizi and she refused to shake his hand. Toss is in a misogynistic panic – I feel like I have all the duties of an old-fashioned wife and he has only as many husbandly duties as he cares to assume. He thinks he’s just “hitting back” against my “slights” which he refuses to acknowledge as the unfortunate honesty he claims to value. Oh well. I haven’t figured out how to explain my viewpoint without unleashing his hostility.


    I look forward to the day when we can talk honestly about this. But we will need some emotional security for that to happen and emotional security means financial security. Let’s just hope one of my book projects pays off.


    Meditation, exercise, bath, dinner with friends.

    11:30 AM – Wed 13 Feb 80
    T. apologizes by bringing me breakfast in bed. Tomorrow is Valentines Day. I have a hangover but last night was worth it – found out some interesting things about T. He was a half hour late, very angry because he’d scratched his car against a stone wall and not pleased when I said I didn’t think expensive bodywork was necessary on a 70,000 mile car. After the guests left he went for me. Said I talk too much and no one else can talk because I’m cooped up all day and that makes me a liability at dinner parties. He said, “I think it’s better to tell you now than say “Shut Up” in public.”
    I said you bet it’s better! If you say “Shut up” to me in public there won’t be a marriage! He says there you go again with the ultimatums. I asked him how he’d feel if I said, “Shut up” to HIM in public! He hadn’t even considered such an awful, unimaginable thing.


    I said I didn’t think my perceptions were so totally askew – I hadn’t “dominated” the discussion or squelched other people’s ideas trying to get them to agree with me the WAY HE DOES. He apologized later and said he fears me being lionized at parties.


    I said it doesn’t look like he has much to worry about yet. Besides, I’m a natural recluse. But so far I’m needing to muster every philosophical, theological and psychological aid I can come up with to deal with my stunning LACK of success.


    I said to Toss I thought the real problem is we are too much alike.

    11:30 PM – End of a long difficult day. I managed my 10 p. but novel is too short and I can’t think of anything more to say. Novella no good! Maybe T will have ideas.

    He came home depressed at getting a D+ in Corporations – I made him a BLT and a Bloody Mary – he ate the sandwich but refused the drink because he still had a Law Review meeting. At 7 PM! When he finally came back we made up entirely for our fight and I was once again thinking, This is the man for me. He said he was upset because I’d commented on how handsome Peter Martins is! I’ve never even met the man! I said I’m jealous of the Playboy magazine in his top left desk drawer!

    Thoroughly discussed my “failure” to settle in here. Said I was subject to “strong loves and few” and it was time for me to love some other place. Made him an enormous dinner of hash browns & eggs and after 2 bourbons apiece we felt pretty good..

    6:10 PM Valentine’s Day – 80
    Great day. Wrote 13 p so I’m up to 156. T working at the paper till midnight. T gave me box of delicious candy & card. Reading Collegiate Women – depressing tale of how the doyennes of domesticity subverted female ed.

    10:20 PM Fri 15 Feb 80
    Wrote a whole chapter – got to stop now or madness will result. Reading magnificent Man Who Cried (Cookson.) Morally quite sophisticated. Cast Harvey Cox’ Seduction of the Spirit away in disgust. Should be called “Harvey’s Closet – here – you clean it.”


    T came home to spinach lasagna and letter from ex (the one he really loved and who didn’t believe in monogamy) that he described as “a howl of agony.” Said she will never get married or have children – spoke slightingly of her own work – and signed herself “love.” I feel for her. T was upset, angry and relieved all at the same time. The crap she put him through dragging home strange men!


    T asked if I would consider living “west of Phila.” I said Sure if it has city access. Hard to beat his old grandparents’ place at Grover’s Mill right between two major cities! (His father was a children’s publisher in the 30’s.) Trustees won’t let Lois sell the house till Mother Louise dies (she is in retirement home.) In the meantime they are letting everything go to hell while hiking their management fees – Lois is suing them – needs T to help.


    Can’t talk about this life to Avril – she is too naïve. If people say they love each other there shouldn’t be any problems is her theory. If there are, then it can’t be love. I feel we all have dragons and we’re going to have to meet – and slay – each other’s.

  • Embattled Love: the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    1 am Thurs 10 Jan 80


    My 29th birthday, enough to depress anyone. Awakened by call from – of all people, MY FIRT HUSBAND BRUCE. Says he’s married & happy. Good job with Charlotte Observer. Describes himself as “a nostalgia buff.” Does not want to lose touch, wonders what “our biographers” will make of our relationship. I feel as if it all happened to someone else. Friendly but keeping him at arm’s length – he always wants something.

    Crazy card from Devon saying “I love you madly”! Guess we all want what we can’t have. Also, good letter from Maureen. Blackberry accepts poem My Grandmother’s Ghost! T. teases that the $9 I made is “putting him through law school” (it’s cost him $10 so far. Scholarship.)

    I wish our families would JUST GO AWAY and leave us ALONE. Phone call from Avril – she’s definitely leaving D.C.so I put up our house for sale with the realtor who found it for us. Avril’s life still up in the air. Toss lecturing very unsympathetically about what she “should” do – I bit his head off. I don’t dismiss his mother’s problems with smug pronouncements! He apologized, asked if he should fly Avril out here – generous but we really can’t afford it. Mom and Dad are renting her a place in Augusta (Maine capital) which has LOTS of jobs.


    We’ll get through this. I’m making applesauce from dying apples. T’s friend had a paper that needed typing – managed to get it done in time. Itchy vagina/anus from reckless wild sex acting up. Made a delicious dinner – pork chops with my applesauce, green salad & sweet potatoes. Lie flat with yogurt in vagina reading Queen Victoria & Her Daughters. Not bad.


    Toss’s Granma called about family engagement party in March – now T has been on phone with his Mom the past 2 hours.


    Heard Toss yelling and cursing at his mother – then he comes up to tell me we have to “head off” Granma’s engagement party because his Mom doesn’t want to go to any party Granma throws. And she expects T to show “solidarity” with her by being unpleasant, stupid and cruel like she is. I try to explain to him that if she doesn’t want to go she doesn’t have to! She can throw her own party!


    Something is wrong with Rebecca West whose prognostications I can’t read – something distasteful. I just can’t put my finger on it.

    5:30 PM Fri 11 Jan 80
    Difficult, inconclusive day. Thank God for my mysticism – so necessary for an artist. I can just disappear into myself. Writing away to NJ Catholic colleges looking for a study of the mystics I can take this summer. My parents declare themselves appalled. “Mysticism doesn’t exist”. I’m making everything up, as usual.
    8 pages on novel. It is scaring me to death. Why can’t I relax? Be playful? Is it because of my mother’s anger over the father’s death? She really can’t forgive me for “killing” him! I’m so panic stricken over the ending I’ve decided NOT to make an outline.


    Toss got weird postcard from ex-girlfriend. Couldn’t even tell whether she’d received his card or what it meant. Standing outside of my own jealousy, I could see the game is to pretend not caring. Trying to accept his old relationships as a precursor to our love. He is filled with compassion for me over Devon’s weirdness.


    We discussed our children and their allowances as we walked the dogs! Very sweet letter from Beales saying he remembered me more fondly than he remembered himself! Cheered up by a book called Womanpriest.

    Sat 12 Jan 80 – 3:30 PM
    Worked on poetry, (horrible metric problems) read the 12 pages I struggled through on Summer Before Spring – no good. Throws me into a deep depression. I need to expunge all “flowery” writing-class writing. Hemingway the perfect model. Beginning to feel this bombed out cavity of a house is cursed and no project can be completed here. And Toss badmouths my lovely, finished 5 bedroom 3 bath gas piped house in Safe Queens Chapel! But he refuses to move to D.C.


    Bad scene with T when I told him I’d already spent the money he gave me. He doesn’t think $35 necessary for groceries! What’s OK is astronomical long distance phone bills with his family. But I cook and shop! We aspire to high food standards! He would do everything differently – why can’t I learn? I am afraid the real problem is males have their temper tantrums encouraged while little girls’ are relentlessly quashed.


    Accused Toss of caring a lot more about my housework than my writing. He was surprised when I said he doesn’t respect my intellect! He said why not find mentor who DOES appreciate me. Hmm. Here?


    Plowing into Tudor Women. Webb is critical of Harriet Martineau’s “gossip” – he seems to see it as exclusively female. But Pope, Rogers and Jonson said the most awful things about EVERYBODY.


    Poor Dixie having trouble walking – now the dog needs x-rays!

    11:50 PM – Wed 16 Jan 80
    Just finished Bertrand Russell’s autobiography – a bizarre document! His description of dinner with the Stanleys (each member of the family adhering to a different religion) sizes up Victorianism perfectly.


    Got a letter from Guilders College (Brooklyn, NY) saying they would consider me for teaching fellowship in creative writing program is they could see a sample of my writing. Better that than my academic record!

    1:30 AM Sat Jan 19 – 80
    On p 54 of novel!!! T read first 47 p – cried during G’s death!

    5:30 Mon 21 Jan 80
    Fight with T when he suggested I see gynecologist over “my” fungus – like I came up with it all by myself! I’m not the one who’s been using Jock Itch spray for FOREVER. I went upstairs and typed – he came up yelling angrily that “the silent treatment” was “cheap and unfair.” I’m not allowed to think privately, apparently. Toss doesn’t seem to know how he insults people. No wonder, I guess, with a mother like that. For example, he says if we move to NJ how does he know I won’t “take a whim” to live somewhere else? Cried myself to sleep. I thought I’d be happy just living with Toss and writing but I’m not. Worried sick about money and his passion for this disintegrating housewife.

    24 Jan 80
    Problems. T. burst out last night, “I don’t believe in joint checking accounts.” Uh oh, since I have no money. I have to ask him for everything and we go over the receipts. My definition of marriage is total partnership. He also acts like his taste is God ordained; i.e. “Pink doesn’t look good with black” instead of “I don’t like pink with black.” I made notes of things I wanted to argue about (here’s the list: made on a copy of Tom Montag’s Letters Home:


    Our Relationship
    1) my powerlessness – ugly flashbacks of childhood
    2) timing of the wedding
    3) ignoring my needs
    4) my collusion with him – helping him ignore my needs
    5) this endlessly protracted limbo
    6) my humiliation at housecleaning (he bought “me” a vacuum cleaner!)
    7) tears are “an illegal weapon” ie my pain not “allowed”
    8) his anguish: “I’m doing my best!” my guilt
    9) his criticism of me – criticizer becomes “parent”
    10) bad comments on my “job” compared to his “job”
    11) living in Princeton in April?

    Try to make them comments about SITUATION not Toss himself but he refers to them as my “list of non-negotiable demands.” No. Negotiation necessary, I insist. His overstatements quite exhausting.


    Are my points even worth making? I wonder.


    Last night T said lovingly, “I think we’re over our problem.” He told me he was afraid he’d be too upset to study. Wish I could agree!


    Finished Aimee Liu’s devastating Solitaire. (Bad ending though.) But you have to forgive her for throwing her parents a sop at the end. They’re still alive!


    Reading about parent/child battles has lots of relevance to my ongoing struggle with Toss. Finish the poem collection tonight It’s Later Than You Think.

    Maybe I should discuss my current theory of development of love relationships?

    Being in love is “humiliating”, because “NO WAY OUT”. Reminiscent of parent/ child relationships, etc.