What looked like stupidity was only my determination. First I had a determination to get married, then when I discovered my husband was a casual liar (he lied to everybody) I was determined to get rid of my husband. He wanted to travel – I didn’t – I said “goodbye” and divided the assets. He always thought I would change my mind (though he never changed his behavior) and was surprised when I didn’t.
But Warriors are honest. Warriors are loyal. Warriors are committed to finding the truth and living in its light. So obviously I needed to find another Warrior.
Antioch Columbia decided it didn’t give grades, a fact my father, who was paying for it, found unsettling. They also told me if I wanted a class on Women’s Lit I would have to teach it myself. I could handle that, what I couldn’t handle was my writing teacher’s outspoken preference for and devotion to Bruce Vill. He ‘writes like an angel,” she said. He was also a successful musician and disturbingly handsome. Horribly, I married him. But nothing shapes a warrior like suddenly finding herself in the wrong camp.
I’ve always enjoyed being alone, where I can sort my thoughts and groom my feelings and arrange my objectives. This fact was startlingly obvious from the first, and later I found out that people like that are called “introverts’. We draw energy from being alone, whereas our energy is depleted by contact with others.
My most profound warrior resistance, so ancient I can’t recall its inception, is my allergy to being “directed.” For my poor parents it must have felt like their third daughter never emerged from ”the terrible twos.”
My father was a very self-directed man, happiest with just my mother for company, so I had a model of resistance to being “molded.” He explained that he never could work for anyone else because their management style always rubbed him the wrong way. He formed two companies that he directed, and towards the end of his life was the kingpin or a charitable organization with a religious bent. He was grateful to that religion since they’d helped him with his conscientious objection in World War II, but he was never a believer. My mother was more mystical, with a strong response to beauty and design, who felt the most important things in life cannot be expressed. A wonderful challenge for a writer.
I’m convinced the main attraction of the evangelical religious movement is that it offers the opportunity to be “born again.” But I believe that option is always available to you without the necessity of signing up to be a cog in a “movement.”
When I was twelve years old I read a James Bond novel in which he is washed up on a beach and needs to be nursed back into life without any of the previous appurtenances of his personality. I was very taken with this idea. Of course, it has literary antecedents in all the “castaway” and adventure stories of John Buchan and Robert Louis Stevenson. The question revolves around your essential self: do you have one? Or can even that be remodeled and rebuilt? This is the question warriors try to answer.
Warriors pare their needs down. We keep ourselves ready for action. We are shapeshifters and time travelers – if that sounds attractive to you, keep listening.
The first rebirth was rather brutal. At age 12, I was sent to live with my father’s sister and uncle and four boy cousins in Wayland, Massachusetts. Since these people didn’t believe anything my father believed I found this cross-training startling, and the more I behaved in my father’s image, the more I was punished. My uncle was enormously excited to have a pubescent girl in the household, snuck into my bathroom, groped and French-kissed me. I did my best to fend him off, while crushing on one of my cousins. In intervals, we exhibited social politeness. (I attended dancing class where white gloves were mandated for touching specimens of the opposite sex.) I also was taught to ski. Sort of. This hot-house atmosphere lasted only nine months.
My parents simply refused to listen to, believe in, or pay attention to any of this. I realized I needed to become a different person –the person I truly was, underneath, the person without all this reflexive training and behavior. And the question was, who was that?
My family typically spent a month each summer cruising on a thirty-seven foot sloop called the Phoenix. Four children and two adults relating in such a confined space shaped the warrior skills of my adult personality, including a taste for exploration, for reveling in the physical pleasures of water, wind, storm & sun, for the absolute dissociation of reading and thinking, and for reading aloud, also group card games such a Michigan and Oh Hell played during wild evening parties called “Phoenix A-Gogo.”
From the very beginning I didn’t like doing the same thing as other people. What was the point of that? If someone ordered the same food as me, I changed my order. I was surprised that people would want to do the same thing at the same time. As I grew older, enthusiasm was ruthlessly damped down and my possibilities seemed to harden. Who other people thought you were was “ego”. And they wanted you to stay in that place. Much as I wanted to be admired, maybe even cherished, I could see this categorizing was limiting. A very bad thing. But how to get out of it seemed a conundrum. How can you view the situation you’re in from a point of view you don’t actually have? Lucky for us, there’s imagination! If we are really lucky, imagination crystallizes into Art.
I discovered we don’t have to settle for Ego, for making ourselves distinct from other people. Artists are shape-shifters – they all the best lines, all the brightest colors, giving themselves the best possibilities.
When the “multiverse” became popular, I wasn’t surprised. I was used to living several lives at once.
She missed the first train; overslept as if resting up for coming trials. The simplest breakfast order (croissants and coffee) seemed to take this hotel forever; they couldn’t believe she didn’t want their “nice kippers” and “fried tomatoes”. Managing all her new boxes proved impossible until the concierge fetched twine and roped them together into a still threateningly unwieldy parcel. Why wouldn’t she have them sent? Impossible to explain that these clothes suddenly seemed more intimate, more “hers” than the pre-pregnancy and shabby maternity clothes awaiting her at that castle. She definitely required the services of a porter. Scarlet had come up in the world. Unfortunately, she missed the second train, too.
Sitting in the third train – it was lunchtime as this point – she felt dull, self-accusatory, downright stupid. Her buyer’s remorse was so severe she couldn’t even open Miss Clew. She’d managed everything so badly.
Ian didn’t know when she was arriving. Oakhampton was too far to take a taxi. She’d have to call him from the station and hope he answered the phone. She was feeling nervous about all this shopping. London clothes in the country? What was the idea behind that? Was the best way to deal with Ian’s sudden aristocratic craziness to get crazy too? The Merry Widow was especially embarrassing.
It now seemed to her like angry, “revenge” shopping, which was exactly what it had been. She couldn’t forget that spectral look in the eyes of Stella, manager at Montcalm Ladies’ Clothiers, inciting her by acceptance and flattery into playing the “wealth game”. Scarlet had only been too glad to comply. Was that what it felt like being Ian, taken advantage of by all the broadcasters and auctioneers he hoped to impress?
Even the London flat seemed now more like a will o’ the wisp than a solid achievement. How had she let a giggly young estate agent maneuver her into the biggest place on offer, without getting any idea of its actual cost? If she was behaving just like Ian, then his behavior was hardly extraordinary. This is how people go bankrupt, she lectured herself. And how on earth could she ever explain any of it to India?
Ian had done all he could to make his new job sound big and important, but were new people really treated this way at the BBC? In her experience the English workplace was decidedly cheese-paring. She couldn’t help feeling there was something else on this table, something she wasn’t getting. What if everything was just another one of Ian’s rather terrifying but hopeful daydreams, like winning a football pool?
She calmed herself. She hadn’t signed for the flat. Jane was only “talking” to Margalo – surely you can’t accept responsibility for something so evanescent! If Ian’s employer didn’t give a green light, nothing would happen.
She found herself longing for the ordered world of Miss Clew who alone, it seemed, possessed the razor-sharp standards to brush all this confusion aside. The world of the Victorians was famous for its explosion of pretense, imposture and hypocrisy keeping right up with every new marvel of the technological world. But somehow, Miss Clew always saw through to real motives and intent. Eagerly Scarlet opened the next book in the series and prepared to disappear inside. After all, no amount of money could be considered “within their budget” because Ian staunchly refused to make one or even explain or plan his income.
Yet even this book flatly refused to come to life with her head in such a whirl. What were her exact fears? She looked blindly out the carriage window and resolved to list and face them. If leasing a tiny hole in the wall meant she’d be cheek by jowl with the man she was currently feuding with, that would certainly be money down the drain. But this selected flat could potentially be shared – one parent “up” and the other “down” – for the benefit of the children. It seemed like in many ways the best solution, she comforted herself.
The real question was, why did she feel so awful? Such a failure? Because of Pom, dammit! Why was this man so interested in her and why was so she so dependent on that fact? Because her own husband was ignoring her. Dammit, dammit, dammit.
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 nuns gave Jacquetta a party. They gave her the “special dispensation” to “step over the rail” and mill about the parlor with them. Sister Elgarde baked a cake, and if it was a little too dense and packed with raisins the frosting was a gustatorial delight as well as a thing of beauty.
They oohed and aahed over her business card for “A Sister in Need.” And it turned out each of them knew of a mystery; a dropped stitch from the skein of Time. Attics were stuffed and barns choked with the detritus and confusion left behind by the lost and missing.
“My aunt Cinderella was taken to the State Mental Home when I was just a child,” Mother Xavier reminisced. “But when we went to visit her, she wasn’t there, and they claimed they never knew her.”
Jacquetta produced a notebook and began to scrawl in the distinctive sketchy hand no one else could read.
“They do say she was raped by her own father,” Mother Xavier hissed.
“And Mrs. Molino, who helps out in the store, when she came to clear out her father’s house, it turned out the funeral director owned everything,” said Sister Hyacinth. “The funeral director!”
“That can’t be right,” said Jacquetta.
“And Reverend Cross’s nephew Bob went to Newark to take up a job and he was never seen again! His car gone and everything! Not a word and it’s been seven years,” complained Sister Philomena. “What did the police say?”
Philomena shrugged. “That a twenty-three-year-old man is welcome to go anywhere in life that he wants. But Bob Cross wasn’t the boy to ignore his parents and sisters! Never!”
The nuns were full of such stories. They took a card to put up on their bulletin board – a special sign of support and recommendation – and another to place by their phone. They toasted her in daffodil wine, and at the end of the party she knelt to receive their blessing.
“May the road rise up to meet you and the wind always be at your back”, said Mother Xavier.
“May it be a long road, a walkable road and not throw you off it,” quavered old Sister James-and-John.
“It will certainly be interesting, whatever else it is,” prophesied Mother Xavier.
“May the sun shine upon your face and all the little flowers,” said Sister Elgarde.
“May you see your children and your children’s children and may all God’s children be your children,” said Sister Philomena.
“And may God hold you in the Palm of His Hand,” blessed Mother Xavier.
“Or Her Hand,” said Sister Hyacinth. “Whatever the case may be.”
In 1979 I borrowed a dime And stepped out in my party-dress To make a call. I’d need a cell phone now. A careless man said, “Find your own way home.”
St Theresa cut in on our line – A sixteenth century nun pierced by light Reminded me while kneeling there To cut my anger with the sword of bliss And revel in the sacred music Anchor-less.
I still seek among the faces Grief unstrung, listen to their emptiness Of joy undone Amidst the rage, the blindness and the fear; Recognize magnificence She told me would be there.
Alysse Aallyn 