Disappointed by mail – no acknowledgement by agent of MSS. Sunk in hopeless apathy, I refuse to speculate on how long it will take her to read the book. However, some good things are happening. Phyllis Chesler’s Women, Money & Power really excellent. Like all these women in the book I am just attempting to survive. The best I can do is keep an eye on commerciality. Maybe I can teach.
Toss sold his Suburban Propane during a brief market rally and got $6000. This weekend heavy socializing. The Plattens over for drinks Fri, the Weiners dinner Sat. Duke Droyer & his new wife Muffy for lunch Sun. This entailed quantities of clearing, cleaning & cooking. As a result, house in great shape. Toss a big help , thoroughly scoured the kitchen & bathrooms while yelling how dirty I am. That made me sad. Chesler is right – don’t ever get cast in the role of having more than 50 percent responsibility for housework. Never accept blame.
Women who do housework are so abused the only reason to do it is because you enjoy it or you don’t want the baby to slip in the slime. Today only empty & reload dishwasher, make bed, vacuum rug.
Spent 4 full hours on poetry only interrupted by phone calls from Toss & Dom. Received International Directory of Little Mags so mailing out droves of material. It has taken me 6 yrs to get 30 acceptances. My aim is 100, but I may get disgusted sooner. No decent relationships result. Seems like a great reason for having your own press. Now I love my Siddall poem which I almost threw away. You never know.
Need to buy nightgowns for my hospital kit but that will have to wait for tomorrow – we took the depressing tour yesterday.
At 6:30 make hamburgers, meet Toss at the train, drive to Bradley class – an important one – Adair explains Caesareans.
Sat 31 OCT 81 Met a woman named Daisy at Trinity Church yesterday – she has 3 kids, plastic surgeon husband, hopes to write for money. I showed her my poems – she has never been published. She admired them, pulled out hers – wish I hadn’t shown my poor, thin, stuff! (I am a late as opposed to early Eliot.) She is a natural poet – use of language acute, original and free. She doesn’t k now how good she is. On the other hand, her fiction is a mess – classic poet’s fiction – everything happening at once. A novel in 3 single-spaced pages! It’s a curable condition but her forte is poetry.
She’s coming for dinner (with husband) Sunday. Now I am faced with the difficulties of getting up when I don’t like being vertical.
Rewrote my Mansfield essay & shipped it off to new journal. Last night couldn’t sleep – woke Toss at 2 AM to make love to me – he was very good-natured about it.
3:20 PM Already exhausted with much left to do. Finished the ironing. Unfortunately mail brings rejection of my romance novel. They liked the writing, said the characterization “strong” but narrative “diffuse.”
3 PM Mon 2 Nov 81 Good intense work on the accounts but can’t wash the dishes till I write here. At dinner Daisy asked me if I wanted REAL criticism of my poetry – her tone full of warning. I steeled myself & said yes. She said I don’t write about the subject I write AROUND it using words as defenses & shields.
I am particularly vulnerable to such criticisms right now. I am escapist. The uncomfortable truth is I will never be as good a poet as Daisy because I am a “literary” poet who should be writing fiction. Toss told me afterward he likes my poems better than Daisy’s because they “get richer with every reading.” He never criticizes just to make me feel good so there must be some truth in this.
I contemplate the shocks of the past few months. Feels like all my props have been taken away. Feels almost spiritual, as if God is hammering on me. Seems like time to start building afresh. But I’m not yet ready to repudiate my dream of writing a commercial novel. I don’t need to get rich, I just need a grubstake. Do I even believe in myself? I think I don’t (it’s too hard) but I do believe in my work.
Guilders has the nerve to ask me to take classes THERE for my degree – I don’t burn that bridge – but I don’t want to. They are not emotionally supportive. They are preparing me for a world I don’t believe in. I can do better.
Starting to come to terms with the deep scars inflicted on me by my parents – I just wasn’t what they had in mind! Feel like I’m on my way to a workable life. Feeling my way. I want to be known. Spend my class time at Marycliff (Dr Jones’ college) trying to get closer to God. It’s a feminine voice that is speaking to me.
3 Nov 81 Discouraging letter from agent. She has sent Pinch out first time, still sending around Wolves & Blood. I need to get some hope going but nothing’s there. This is a life of slow starvation. Avril calls to say she & Karl are engaged! Will announce after his divorce (January) then marry in July.
Read 2 murder mysteries with fantastic openings & disappointing endings.
4 Nov 81 Pray have baby before Thanksgiving. Letter from agent saying my romance “very good of its kind.’ The SMALLEST encouragement helps but I needed it a month ago. Seems impossible to ever write another romance now. If my original editor hadn’t been fired, how different my career might be now?
Definite steps forward getting ready for Baby. Bought baby lotion, oil, talc, etc, made and froze 4 little meatloaves. Finished accts, cleaned the kitchen, read Agatha, brooding over what makes a good mystery.
Tomorrow sew, iron, clean study (soon to be baby’s room).Snap out of my stupor & fetch Toss from train.
10:45 PM Thurs 5 Nov 81 Always wonder how close I am to THE BIRTH, as I write the date. Don’t pick T up at train for one hour; can I stay awake? I finished cleaning kitchen, freezing two lasagnas; not in the mood for all the virtuous things I MIGHT be doing. Painted my toenails over my vast belly for what I hope is LAST TIME.
A little ironing this AM before time to rush off to Women’s Group.
Rather terrified to face Daisy! I very unwillingly discover I do have a rather large fund of self-contempt. Makes me sad, I don’t like admitting I’m so cruel to myself. I thought my parents were full of contempt for me and “transferred it.” Every time I exposed my aspirations they made me burn with shame. Feel Daisy has “exposed” me as a “non-poet.” Pregnancy causes loss of identity and her strong personality moves in.
Excellent Women’s Group with a beautiful communion which I think Daisy – lapsed Catholic – really enjoyed. Woman who contracted cerebral palsy from a riding accident in midlife (and then her husband dumped her!) wrote book & spoke about it.
Afterwards lunch with Fran Drevers & Daisy. Why be in such a rush? Everyone asks me. Have to get it done before my nervous breakdown! Pity my family took no interest in my writing. My role was “needy”. They threw money & food at us and fled.
Writing requires an extensive underground existence. Probably neither romance nor mystery will be accepted. (Fatalism, let’s blame that.) And I will have to start over as I’ve done oh so many times. Children will be different! Look forward to this labor as a watershed.
First article about psychoanalysis (New Yorker) much better than second one. If only one had endless money & time! Think about Avril’s fear – that pain exhumed will rise up and annihilate us. Neglect PLUS fear of abandonment are Mom & Dad’s legacy!
So many unanswered questions. When Mom seemed not to hear us was she really in a trance or just pretending? Dissociative state from childhood abuse? Genevieve and I have discussed this – we were completely unable to get her attention. She seemed frozen. Didn’t even flicker. Where’d she go? She was raised in isolated conditions with no Mom, (not allowed to have friends over or bring them to her house.)
She was always “overwhelmed” and could alleviate her guilt by smothering Avril. She clings to Daddy like a lifebuoy, like she’s HIS child.
Telling his children we were going to be “poor” when we moved to Africa was probably a mistake. He just wanted to instill frugality but it was a bombshell in a child’s world and certainly not accurate. NOT told about Uncle Charles’ inheritance or Dad’s portfolio. In Brockton public school my experience with poverty was intimate & scary. That friend who slept on the floor, whose parents had beer but no furniture. It hurt physically, like hunger.
I dealt with it by sleepwalking & hypochondria about blindness & disease (not too paranoid in Africa.) Parents Victorian in their ability to refuse information. Avril’s isolation from the rest of us almost too painful to recall.
Dad sneered at and made fun of our schooling, friends, religion, parents. No system was “good” enough for us. He said news & history was lies & propaganda. TV & movies were crass manipulation and teachers were ignorant. You can’t just say that and then send kids back to school! No expertise allowed or acknowledged. Parents always mildly surprised when we got jobs.
I recall my religious longings quite clearly. First I thought ‘God’ was a dirty word because people acted so weird about it. Brockton had no Friends meeting and the Methodist Sunday School we attended a few times (Mom and Dad dropped us off, didn’t attend the church) was confusing and meaningless. When Mom read us the 23rd psalm, we jeered at it the way we’d been taught and she cried! Then of course Dad yelled at us!
Being unwillingly in “the vanguard” certainly feels like being an outcast! Don’t know how to help Avril’s depression – my badgering psychoanalytic/spiritual letters aren’t welcome. We were fated to follow the pattern of Dad’s growth, whatever that might be.
Last Thanksgiving when we played the game “psychiatrist”. Mom said the year she’d like to live over was the summer of 1958, cruising the Georgian Bay. The closest we got to perfect family happiness. A weirdly frozen unchangingness. Isolated from everyone! Produces an anguished Sisyphean yearning that’s with me still.
I did better with the loneliness. Avril fears to re-live it. Mom actually carries it around inside her like a dead baby!
My curiosity: what future did they envision for us? They acted so weird about basic mental health – “too bad you’re that way” instead of encouraging “good” choices. Because there was no good path? When we followed their with husbands, children, they didn’t react with any particular glee. Julio & Kent were run through the wringer and would state right now Mom and Dad loathed them. Both my weddings were icy, much as I tried to rewrite the family. I think they worked out the personal animosities of their relationship over our quivering live bodies.
Dad’s insistence that the only college possible was Chevenix, the only belief system acceptable was Quakerism so weirdly rigid. We could never “discover” anything, it had already been discovered. I think our efforts at crawling into adulthood were actively repulsed. We clocked in, admiring of them and their “success”, allowing things to be done for us. Behind the pain lies rage; both endlessly intensifying. Gen & I fought back – Avril & Merrill endlessly victimized.
Don’t want to see Ezra today, don’t feel I have anything new to talk about. I could discuss his book – if I’d read it.
4 more days of school. Tolerable, definitely. Think I’ll start a conscious course of praying for Avril – see what happens.
10:25 AM Thurs 18 Dec 80 Should be correcting papers but can’t face it yet. Looking forward to a breather from school. Wish I could go to church every day but there’s nothing nearby. Hoping it will be different when I go to Fordham. Paulist church too big – I liked Church of the Resurrection on E 77th.
Pretending to look at the floating countryside I eavesdrop on conversations behind me – art dealers: “Are you ever asked about your credentials?” Answer, “No, never. They only ask about credentials when you’re applying for low-paying jobs.”
Christmas shapes up interestingly. Caroling in Haverford Sun, Christmas eve with the Brintons till 4, then dinner with Louise. Christmas Day with Lois. Avril 26th and Genevieve 27th. Douglas cocktail party 28th. Shawn Kobler to dinner sometime after that.
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
Get up earlier, go running with T
Write in diary every day – match flow of life to flow of thought.
Go to church oftener
Christmas Day, noon – 80 An extravagant morning of love with my honey brings me out of the depression I’ve had since Mon. Came back from an awful day of school to hear about Toss’s interview with his father’s lawyer friend – no dice. T comes from the wrong law school, nobody’s hiring. They won’t even hire from Temple – they recruit at “premier” schools in junior year. T. feels certain he wants to start out soloing. I’m scared of the insecurity but I’m not pregnant and we have no rent – it’s the perfect time. Then T said he wanted to buy a word processor which we fought about for the rest of the night with T becoming so angry he almost strangled me. Nightmare visions of my first marriage kept floating in front of my eyes.
Capital can only be spent on state of the art equipment to impress everyone – then we sit back and wait for the money to roll in. Which it never does. Why not rent a word processor?
He plans to open his office in his mother’s house. I think we ought to wait till he has some business first. I offered to help. “No, Alysse,” he said coldly, “I’m not going into law partnership with you.” Whew!
He pointed out the “thousands” we’re losing because I’m going to school, not working – dirty pool! Took it back later. If Mom & Dad weren’t paying for school HOW would I justify it to myself?
He says that makes him feel like shit – i.e he wishes I was POORER. I said he really needs to settle something with Lois about the rent – nothing’s formalized. If the plan is free-lancing and risk, she’s an investor in his future. God, to have $8,000 a year of my own it seems so MINGY. Why can’t I bring that in from writing? Why do I always end up in these trackless wastes?
10:15 AM Fri Dec 26 – 80 Excellent Christmas. Part of what made it so good was limited time with everyone except Lois! Wednesday spent one hour with Brintons, one hour with Lois! Then a long scary ride home with a blowout – but it didn’t happen on the ice and Toss was able to change it in record time.
Yesterday at Brandywine with Lois 3:30-7:30 then again 10-11:30. (A bit much.) Intervening time helping Granma in Haverford put up tree & exchange gifts. T was a perfect love, a divine angel. Much cleaning of the house now to get ready for Avril.
12:45 AM 30 Dec 80 – Tuesday Shouldn’t be joyous about my vacation’s end but I am eager for 81!
Read Mary Hoxie Jones’ Mosaic of the Sun with a curled lip. Reminds me of Eliz Gray Vining – holier than thou. I think Christians should be spiritually barefoot – ready to shed baggage – test the rope themselves instead of whining about Unwashed Youths and Angry Blacks. Such authorities on other people’s “place”!
Turned to Wm Pitt Root’s The Storm – excellent, a born poet but heavy going – reading him too fast would give you the bends.
Now into Emily Dickinson thank GOD. What a joy. You can read her at any pace you choose – she’s available at every level. Her organization is so original, wouldn’t translate at all. What did V. Woolf think? Should have liked & claimed her.
This burst is result of trying to prepare definitive vol of my own stuff. Sickened by my publications – 25 in 5 years!
New Year’s Eve 1980 Tonight incomplete without “last entry.” Last time I tried to write T pulled me away and made love to me.
This holiday would be unalloyed happiness if it weren’t for the night of the 26th when I drank too much Jack Daniels and threw up. Stupid. Thought I was past that! Kept Avril & T from going to the film we’d planned. But we’ll see it tonight. Somehow makes it less shameful. Glorious private evening – Convict’s Last Meal of roast beef, potatoes au gratin, chestnuts, peas, salad, champagne, coconut custard pie.
2nd bottle champagne after film if we have stamina.
1 Jan 81 Resolution; keep better track of my life in this diary but wish I had a better life to keep track of. Particularly grim holidays while Lois repeatedly attacked Ricardo in front of everyone – people afraid to intervene because she’ll attack THEM (my ideas were called “foolish” and “romantic.”) I tried teasing her by accusing her of “escort beating” while Ricardo murmurs from the corner of the room “I forgive her – She’s been so hurt.”
Guess what? Lois has no sense of humor. This is my landlady. She wants to rent the Little House at highest dollar – since that’s where our washer/dryer is we need a washer/dryer here.
No. Just no.
She’s a weird one. When I suggested taking down a mirror so blotchy you can’t see yourself in it (it needs to be resilvered) she burst into tears and Toss attacked ME. She said she was willing however to rebind the first editions – I had to point out that destroys their value!
So there’s nothing I can say. My job is to clean (and then be criticized for it.) Toss has taken over cleaning the silver because I can’t be bothered to do it “properly”.
To NYC for preview of Frankenstein – awful – we missed dinner because our train stalled in snow. Playwright overly wedded to novel – death after ludicrous death – not even rescued by special effects. Off to empty little bar Vintages for late supper ruined by Seth who teases Toss mercilessly. It’s the apparent goal of this family to get a scapegoat and ride them to death. Starting to see why Sutton got the hell out – who would stick around for this abuse?
Ricardo, it seems. And Lois doesn’t respect him one bit for it.
Boring New Year’s Eve party in Merion – I had high hopes (they were all psychiatrists) but all they talked about was heating bills.
Got rid of Seth & Susie 4 pm – pizza and wine dinner – delicious lovemaking. Read The Poet – most poems shockingly bad – but there was one poet I liked – Katherine Hanley – so I wrote her a fan letter.
On the good side: almost finished Pinch of Death. T. is my soul – so good & calm & not provoked at all by Seth who raged against Lois. Ugh. Exams next week.
Bored to shriek point by Trent’s Last Case.
2 Jan 81 One final entry waiting for Sue & Seth to come so we can all catch the 4:25 to NYC.Thinking about male violence. Interesting that Toss doesn’t “realize” he threatens me physically. He says I must know he’d never hit me but when he’s angry he breaks things or grabs me by the throat. I point out I don’t do that! But most men regard women’s statement that they are continuously reminded of the threat of male violence as feminist cant!
4 Jan 81 Weather so cold it’s hard to breathe. Toss’s Reed roommate to dinner – watched Murder Once Removed over chestnuts roasted in the hibachi & 2 bots white wine. Struggling with Life & Letters of John Galsworthy.
5 Jan 81 To Princeton to do laundry. Bought life of Dorothy Kilgallen and have been glued to it all day. Wretched woman. Hypnotic erosion of all her values.
Toss confides out checking acct is down to $200. Complete refusal to dislodge capital. Fortunately, I’m expecting $120 this week. NJ Bar prep starts 12th – not soon enough for me.
6 Jan 81 Taught my class for the last time. I hate review – it’s hell. Sweating so hard I was afraid to lift my arms. Maria asked good questions – James said he didn’t know anything about writing before – now he does.
Had to rush to the Whitney to meet Toss & Sutton. Met Sutton’s new flame, widow Pansy Burke – seems nice. She does drop a lot of names.
Sutton dislikes Hopper. Weird! I feel it’s because Hopper is not romantic enough for him. We had an uproarious dinner at The Palms – nothing “mignon” about my filet – it weighed at least 11 lbs. Wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t eat it. Then brandy at brother Dom’s.
Get into Princeton 3 AM and our car won’t start. Wrecker (“Mother’s Recovery”) comes at 3:45. Sleep till 1 PM then have to rush to catch the 3:05. Did a good story in Writer’s class. I am despised for my “upbeat ending” – feel mistaken for Aurelia Plath: “Keep a song in your heart.” Professor says there are NO happy endings in Great Literature? I say what about Shakespeare’s comedies. He says comedy is not drama by definition. I say what about Jane Austen? His face tells me what he thinks of HER.
On the train home I reflect on the mysteries of talent. At least 4 in class VERY talented – what will become of us? Possibly: nothing.
I have an idea for a feminist lit mag when I get home; tell T. If we want to BE published we must publish others. My title is “The Feathered Violin” his is “The Burning Bush.” Ha ha.
8 JAN 81 I wake up early to study – making love luxuriously with T when he says “Could you tolerate coitus interruptus for once? I have to call my broker.”
I rush into class 20 mins late to administer my own exam. Kids not punished for that – what they ARE punished for is me being their teacher – graded by the one supervisor who dislikes me. She flunks all my doubtfuls and Maria who should have gotten through. Requesting retest for Maria.
Long argument over dinner about language requirements in schools. Toss says I am “hostile” to his ideas. I say women are supposed to empathize & sympathize and HE doesn’t do that to MY ideas so why not say what I really think? This evolves into criticism that I expect him to pay for my education. Why don’t I take out student loans. He can’t borrow on margin for me. I say I’m paying with family money (Capital!) feeling he really wants me to see that I’m not actually “making” money (incontestable.) Now he is rattling dishes angrily downstairs – his turn to wash them.
13 JAN 81 Off to Phila where T will request variance so he can have law office in his mother’s house. Says this will make him feel better and I am all for it.
Lois shows off a property she is longing to develop into an Italianate palace for herself. Warns me to SAY NOTHING about it – she is always worried people are gossiping about her. Came home to crisis – frozen water pipe dumps water into living room. T takes a steak knife to the hall ceiling to see where the backup is and finds it.
Afraid my class is right and my novel is hopeless and can never be shown to anyone: I wrote it “too fast” for it to be any good. 7 yrs bad, 3 months worse. Depression.
2 Oct 80 Not pregnant, alas. Period came two weeks late but it came. Hard to keep up with this level of disappointment. BA crisis solved – I can keep teaching as long as I’m WORKING toward BA which is all right with me. Investigating Fordham discover they have a “Math for Poets” class that gets me out of their science requirement! That’s the school for me! Been having good meetings with students lately – finally getting through to some of them. If they pass the essay they can stay in the school – they’re on trial, just like me.
5 Oct 80 – Lois upset with me because I want to sell the piano – I even found a buyer. We could really use the space. But she says she doesn’t want to sell – it’s a boring unspecial upright piano. But a reminder whose house this is. She also told me not to get pregnant before we have health insurance! I smiled and said it seemed my body IS waiting! Did not enjoy the evening so overdrank. Not too badly – just enough to be annoyed at myself.
Finished Marge Bacons’ Lucretia Mott. A charmed, serene life. More laundry, more writing.
6 Oct 80 – A good day – much accomplished. Ordered the most beautiful stationery in Princeton – had to pay extra for colored ink but it’s worth it.
Asked Toss over after-dinner cigars if he thinks this house will ever be his. He said he thought it was an excellent chance. After all, a farmer farms the land and the whole place desperately needs updating which his mother doesn’t want to pay for. I rhapsodized about adding a stone tower like the Brandywine Museum – he said we’re more likely to be cooking over a sterno pot in a field! Not very confident of his chances for passing the bar apparently! He needs a job because he’s driving me crazy.
He spent the afternoon rewiring the garage so it can be lit from the house. Anything rather than basic housework which he considers low on thrills. He doesn’t seem to understand how insulting that is to me! However, he’s fine with hiring a cleaning lady which I’ll do the minute I can afford it. Read Love & Work: The Crucial Balance. Distinguishes between “love” oriented people who want to love their work and task oriented people.
Wed 8 Oct 80 – All my emotional eggs are in one basket! Overwhelmed with love for Toss – don’t want anybody else. People come – and then they go – and I’m overjoyed to see the back of them. I’m not sure I even need friends. Disgusted by the world weariness of PD James’ Black Tower. I’ve given up on her. Pity. Everyone else likes her.
Sat 10 Oct 80 – StormFall Farm Absolutely exhausted. Next time Toss suggests coming here I’ll have to tell him my idea of rest & recuperation isn’t cleaning a 7 bedroom mansion! Toss is frenzied about the place. When I asked him who put him in charge he admits he just took over. He lashes himself constantly with imaginary humiliating words he assumes “everyone” is saying. Right now he’s yelling downstairs – some kind of breakthrough with the water system. I’m so tired I could just fall over.
5:30 PM – Thurs 15 Oct – 80 Can still be thrown by a bad day. Got so absorbed counseling a student I was 15 mins late to class – now I’m hiding in the library calming myself down with Mary Daly’s Beyond God the Father. Very interesting but kind of naive. Don’t reject airplanes because you hate bombers! How would most men score on the Sermon on the Mount test? But I certainly understand the hopelessness of “institutionalizing” emotionality. Supernature gets us off the gerbil wheel. Too much gerbilling here. Don’t see how I can handle more than a year of this place.
At least T & I see eye to eye about the housework. I got him to see everyone wants to do “executive” functions, no one wants to do grunt work so we have to share that out. An hour a day would be plenty!
Fri 17 Oct 80 – On the train Just finished May Sinclair’s 3 Sisters. Fascinating & beautiful feminist plot. Can’t think why she’s so forgotten – probably because she didn’t make a fuss of herself.
Managed to forget a teacher’s meeting this AM – another sign I’m trying to fit the round peg of my life into that square hole.
20 Oct 80 Staying home with an awful cold finishing Prelude so I can write my Wordsworth paper. Type tomorrow AM.
Difficult weekend with friends. Don’t know how to handle Toss’s anger in front of other people. Friday night was his night to cook – he made a wonderful boeuf bourguignon. But on my night (Sat) he was so interfering I just let him do it. He’s moved everything around in the kitchen so I can’t find anything – embarrassing.
He seems to be reproducing his mother’s ploys and tensions. Wish he had a little more of his laid-back father in him!
Read Jean Rhys’ Quartet and Smile, Please. What a writer! Such purity! I am really envious. Don’t agree she’s beyond self-pity however – the books pulsate with it. What a pity respect & love aren’t joined in the male as they are in the female.
Now reading Janeway’s Powers of the Weak. There’s a chapter missing! Interpersonal power politics between husband and wife!
Avril called tonight to say she got the Maine job – (domestic abuse shelter) $11,000 the first year! Bravo! Avril wants to open a bar in Hallowell called “So’s The Governor’s Sister.” Funny.
22 Oct 80 – Train Creature from the Black Lagoon discussed in Eng class. I was too stupid to contribute. Brent criticized my story Travel Fever – bad ending – (fair enough) but he also said he was surprised at the cruelty in the family! (Katrina the scapegoat.) This from a man who admires Flannery O’Connor. Better off working on novel and NOT short stories. Don’t think I have the art.
26 Oct 80 Horrible fight with Toss began with my criticism of his old newspaper and rusty tobacco tin collections – do we really have to save all this moldering junk? He blames me for the “bad move” from KY in which he lost so much stuff. But I moved, too. (TWICE.)
He also had the nerve to say we “live like slobs” when he was supposed to clean the living room 2 days ago. (He’s doing it now.)
6:30 PM – He came upstairs and apologized – very sweetly. Lovingly, courageously and open-heartedly. So we did go for walk – gathering branches & berries to decorate house. Saw a beautiful dead bird with a black ruff around its neck – feathers green and black. Blissfully happy reading Rose Macaulay’s Letters. News that Commonweal will publish my poem Life of the Virgin!
30 Oct 80 Very interesting discussion with Toss – he cooked a fabulous leg of lamb (but still refuses to vacuum.) He said Henriette Wyeth not worth the ink she’s getting for her show – I said art is really lacking in feminine emotion (Rothko Pollock & de Kooning masculinity reduction ad absurdum) and a woman painter raised in a family of male painters is a “test” case. What’s the missing element? Supernaturalism! Since we borrow our bodies from earth our souls are our only true individuality.
I most mind the separation from Toss; our “togetherness” is an “affront” to his father’s loss he thinks. But it gives me more time for writing.
Today was the worst day – no, yesterday was pretty bad too. Long ordeal of preparing food and sitting around waiting for somebody to eat it. Awful. Toss keeps trying to take away jobs his poor father really wants to do – everyone wants the man to sit there stunned and feel his loss. Subtle struggle for power between Lew’s brother Avery & Toss. Toss wants to do everything and he’s physically angry with other people’s interference; locking his jaw, snapping his head and waving his fists. This makes ME angry!
Current thinking is its “good” to let your anger out but since anger is infectious this really is a stupid idea. I’m sure Toss is angry because he was raised by a really angry woman. Reminds me of my father’s anger – my mother’s response was to drift away, humming. It’s impossible to love a really angry person – anger is a rejection. Granma doesn’t help – tries to goad people into activities; sorting, cleaning fussing projects; busywork. Really annoying. We contemplatives get short shrift around her.
Sat 12 July 80 – Grover’s Mill A week since Val’s funeral. Toss forced me to buy horrible clothes – I thought since it was all his and his family’s affair I’d give in to his taste – results shockingly bad. Things I never wear: Khaki, stripes, constricting belts: Yuck! So much for his “You have no taste Alysse.” Now we know what he thinks taste is: BEIGE CANVAS. Comfort not only NOT a consideration, It’s an insult – to the universe apparently. Never again. Saw Val in her coffin – touched her rock-hard chest, her frozen face. Nothing more shocking than a dead person – it’s like any object. God!
Finished wedding invites, immediately invaded by terror. Why? Wish the wedding was tomorrow – wish I was pregnant – Is it because now I have to write? Probably. Other people don’t seek out electric jolts. Invaded by hunger which I tried to ignore by biking to Post Office. While riding, I think.
Sun 13 July 80 5:35 Finished sewing pearls on my wedding veil. A peaceful activity. Yesterday Seth (T’s brother) and his fiancé Sue came to dinner. Talk about Lois who is struggling to write a “You deserve it” letter to Sutton. Found pix to show of Sutton & Lois’ courting phase. Even when he’s smiling down at her (1949) he’s holding his body in an attitude of withdrawal. They married 2 months before Toss’ birth! But Lois looks happy.
When he failed to respond up to what she considered his romantic potential she began the punishments, the denigration, and when he turned away she acted so amazed! Her power, her charm, her luck – rushed out of her like air from a punctured balloon. What did she expect! “He’s so awful he doesn’t deserve to leave me?” When does THAT ever work? Doesn’t even work with kids! They flee at the first opportunity!
She received all God’s gifts – except…the one everybody wants. It’s more like a curse.
16 July 80 – 11:30 PM Retire with the rum, hot milk & honey I promised myself – this will do more for my headache than aspirin. Been stupid all day. Wrote a few pages on Prisoner – hope it goes better when I get to Labarraz. Villains always interesting.
Tried unsuccessfully to read Straub’s Ghost Story. How can something so coarse-fibred be so praised? Someday we’ll look back on him the way we look back on Ms Humphrey Ward. Clueless in Paradise.
Avril called – Daddy gets a million and a quarter from Corning or $55,000 year for the next 30 years. Says he hopes we won’t mind if he “squanders” it. Inzar kids get a million each. I admit it – I’m jealous. What would I do with it? Philosophy degree from Fordham?
Sat 19 July 80 Housework not finished – unfortunately. We have a guest interrupting my dreaming hours – Galaine – elderly cousin of T’s whom I politely asked to be my matron of honor takes it as an invitation to move in. Fortunately, she sleeps late. Horror stories about how her husband beats her – she used to flee her home to sleep in the church. They’re divorced thank God. Washed Weasel AGAIN – she tangled with a skunk and is stiff and pink from tomato juice.
Toss leaves Monday for 5 days in Kentucky studying with buddy Boone Macafee. In 5 days alone can’t I get 75 pages? We’ll see.
9:15 PM – 21 July 80 Light spatter of rain can’t break the heat – still in the high 90’s though it’s dark outside. Perfect half-moon burns a hole though the cloud cover. Strange gunpowder noises could be thunder or carnival a mile away. Dixie the Labrador very worked up.
Inside myself I grapple. Reading theology is a help. I feel people come into the world not blank but as coded entities. Trying to figure out the code. Reading Rosamond Lehmann – Swan in the Evening & short stories – it sends me into a Woolf frenzy. My psyche knows the vitamin it needs. Can’t write so I address wedding invitations – it’s like a dinner party – the more you can do in advance the better.
9:30 PM – 23 July 80 Excellent days I’ve had. Wise waiting to write till things fall into place inside. Thoroughly enjoyed (and mostly agreed with) Garry Wills’ Bare Ruined Choirs. Shouted & cheered my way thru the sex chapters. He was good, too on the Jesus freaks.
It hit me – here’s my Secaire. It’s my religious novel. I was dumb, I was slow but feel now I’ve got it. Up most of the night reading Greeley’s Making of the Pope 1978 – NOT an edifying story. We are all made in each other’s image.
Housework. Avril’s train 10:30.
The Barnacle Cabin – Shadow Island MAINE – 11:30 AM – Mon 28 July 80 Argument with Avril – can Mom & Dad change? Should we nudge them? She is hostile to the idea: don’t EVEN TRY!!! But last night at dinner I pointed out how Mom interrupts – won’t let us get a word out – she was flabbergasted!! She’d been completely unaware of it – and so’s Mom! And it goes against Mom’s philosophy etc. So, there’s a change we could make if we pointed it out. Genevieve did give me some support. Agreed Plumly made a mockery of religion for the students (which Mom & Dad did NOT want to hear).
Merrill very threatening and formidable – will not allow her schedule with Baby Barney to be interrupted. PERIOD. Whew!
When I asked what time I could come to the Periwinkle Cabin and make coffee she said NEVER.
The Barnacle needs hotplate!
Merrill NOT a good ad for pregnancy – her body looks collapsed like a beanbag chair. I remind myself – this is where all the gins & tons are tending.
Genevieve on the other hand looking particularly gorgeous – very challenging about my desire to go to Fordham; says “It’s CATHOLIC” the way you’d say “It’s fascist.” Wish I could have explained my emotional feeling that mysticism is “beyond all that.”
The Barnacle – midnight July 30-31 – 80 Talked to my sweetie on the phone and he read me some mail. Cindy thanks me for my note but “can’t face” the wedding. What did I say? Can’t remember.
He had a good day on his exams – felt excited and competent. But he feels utterly unprepared for tomorrow’s New Jersey exam.
Finished Jean Love’s Virginia Woolf – Sources of Madness & Art which I adored – can’t wait for the next volume. Especially interesting to read it “in the bosom of family” so to speak. Jean Love points out family members’ development is complementary to all others’ (family members’) development. Mom & Dad less insulting this time – they must be starting to think this wedding might really come off.
Rode my bike to Evening Prayer in Princeton. Perfect length (1/2 hr) 2 hills of equal size so neither direction is “harder”. Ordered more wedding invites, then discovered it was 5:23 so had to rush to intimidatingly big church.
7 people arranged around a side altar – my plan to go unnoticed conks out. What is my obsession with invisibility? Because parents were so agonized whenever I launched forward? Minister female, short, stocky. Daphne?
Turned out to be a healing ceremony! Quite beautiful! Lots of rising and standing. At some point I just burst into tears. Awful. Everyone asking if they could help but I don’t know what’s wrong so just slobbered away. I think now I was feeling “expulsion”, exclusion – “The gifts of God for the people of God” but I don’t really know. I may just be emotional as parents said; “we won’t let your peculiarities interfere with your health” direct quote.
I was so embarrassed leaving – apologized but the minister grabbed my hand and looked piercingly into my eyes.
GOD IT WAS POWERFUL! Said, “I’m Daphne Hawkes!” Wow!
She insisted she “knew me” and “recognized my name” (Reader of Devlyn? Impossible.)
She said she had time to talk, I said I DIDN’T and blundered away. She said, “You’re in my prayers, Alysse!”
I stagger off, exalted & terrified.
Bike conked out, I walked home.
On the Palmetto from Washington – Princeton Jct 10 PM Tues 17 Jun 80 I love trains. I like Arthur Conan Doyle because he loved them too. All his fuss over timing, carriages & tickets delicious to me.
Feeling bad about Avril – she says her life is suddenly empty. Her heart membrane as thin as a racehorse’s ankle.
We got her a cat and helped her pack – best way to free her I can think of. Bought my wedding lingerie, tried on the veil Maureen is making for me – STUNNING!
Avril & I saw 2 classics – The Empire Strikes Back and The Shining.
Missing my angelic male half.
House sale should net $5,000 – M & D giving me $3000 stock Nov 1. Relief to have SOME money coming in.
Thurs June 19 – 80 Letter from agent – Devlyn sold to Germans for $1000! (One edition – rights revert to me.) Der Todestrank or some such thing. “The Death Drink.” Maybe I don’t have to take a job this summer (fellowship starts Sept.)
Late again to Daphne’s service – this is awful but I had to drive T to pick up his car. Forgot to bring Kleenex – so sure I wouldn’t need it! Wrong!!!
Trying Zen breathing to control the sobs – zilch. Total humiliation.
Daphne hugged me said she was glad I’d come – I took the oil & communion although I’m “unbaptized.” Daphne said a different prayer for each of us. Lovely woman. The wine was real! (Unlike at Devon’s church.) Nice touch!
I think I’m crying about “losing control.”
Thurs 26 June 80 Writing wedding invites not as much fun as I thought it would be – can’t use my fountain pen (paper too absorbent) can’t get as good an effect with a felt tip. Oh well!
I’m up to 90. Can only do 20 per sitting because I become paralyzed with boredom.
Last weekend on Cape first time I felt I was “myself” around T’s family. Having a book out nobody read is not much to establish an identity.
T’s aunt Mimsey staying with us now – up late arguing with her about adopted cousin Katey. She argues – weirdly I think – against adopted children finding their biological parents! If they could just accept a Beneficial Social Fiction as reality wouldn’t we all be Fine? Where have I heard that before! I was so relieved Toss saw all the issues immediately – he’s so smart – the biggest one being TIMES CHANGE. (Often in ways we can’t imagine but since we know they do, why pretend? ”We’re gonna fix this for you kids right before we die and you’ll never have to address that problem again” is sheerest idiocy.) He really is a superior intellect. (He does have a flaw; sees abortion and adoption as similar! Typical male!)
Mon 30 Jun 80 Lethargy – extreme, prolonged, profound – the key to my personality these days. Fallow. Torpid. A little Teresa of Avila goes a long way – Elinor Wylie is fascinating & sad. Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s latest volume. of diaries is an irritant. I WANT to identify with but she’s too oppressively DIFFERENT.
Jonathan Valin’s Lime Pit ho hum, Eliz Cadell’s latest totally empty. A Marriage of True Minds had some interesting data.
Not finding what I want I reread Nancy Drew with an eye to a Modern Version. What would that look like? I sketch out a Mystery at Mirror Lake – trying to help a friend – it becomes Last Year at Marienbad pretty quickly.
Want to rewrite Prisoner of St Secaire & getting some good ideas. I don’t want the heroine to be “unsure”, that’s Nancy’s appeal in a nutshell. She’s so confident! She’s always being accused of being a spy and a snoop and it doesn’t faze her. Yes, she is! So there! She has no problem pocketing evidence and keeping it to herself.
Probably why Bobbie Mason (?) condemned her as “cold” and “calculating” in The Girl Sleuth. She NEVER solicits male help! (Asks Dad for a favor once in blue moon.) “Unfeminine”? But why then is she so popular WITH GIRLS? She represents an absent vitamin? Obviously. We’ll suck tree bark to get it if we have to (and you DO have to suck tree bark to read Nancy Drew.)
A possible direction for Fawn in Demon Roused?
11:AM – 3 July 80- StormFall Farm Toss’s father Sutton’s third wife Val died suddenly yesterday morning at 2:30 AM. T. was on the phone with his father about 11 PM when Sutton suddenly said – “there’s something wrong with Val.” And dropped the phone.
When he came back on he said they were calling Rescue.
Toss and I jumped into the car and drove straight up to Masschusetts arriving at the hospital where they said, “She expired.” Like a library card! Couldn’t understand it at first. She was only 46!
Back at Sutton’s house he was cold and grey still in a state of shock; “They couldn’t start her heart.” No one knew she had anything wrong with her heart! I don’t know who suggested birth control pills as the culprit – or smoking? She had decided to break her diet for a dish of ice cream and that was it.
Toss is with his father, I should be washing my hair; instead I write a poem for Val I can’t share but like better than anything since Alyssum.
At this rate I’ll have a volume in 20 yrs!
Sutton’s Place Everybody crying, Sutton on the phone with his sister Mimsey, Granma’s plane just landing, youngest brother Dom will be here within the hour. Minister came over to lead prayer service – did quite well – we discussed immortality & warmed to each other – I was stupid enough to say I’d written a poem – he said I could read it at the service Uh oh. Better come up with something for public disclosure.
2:10 AM – Grover’s Mill – New Jersey – Sat 24 May 1980
Here we are! Just finished painting the newly plastered wall, putting up a bookcase and most of my books in it. Bad moment when T. thought I was going to paint the wall yellow (I wasn’t.) The kitchen is done but this bedroom still looks like hell.
Wrote a 9 p letter to Devon when I was at my bluest. Probably shouldn’t send it! Sometimes life is too mysterious and T is too much of a stranger. Imagine making this move with Devon! (Or Bruce!) Or Ryder. UNIMAGINABLE!!!! Things are worse because we’re fasting till Mon AM. I use food to pep myself up but this summer I’m determined to get my greed under control. Hard accomplishing anything with T standing over me questioning every move I make.
Looking for a place to hang the Earl & Countess of Horton bas reliefs Mom gave me T said, “I won’t lie to you – I don’t like them.” I said, “I’ll put them in my study” but then I boiled. I don’t like ANY of his stuff – his horrible vintage Camel ads – it’s all hideous – but what if I said so? I took it for granted that if HE likes & wants it, end of story. Evidently, I need to recast my thinking! But that’s impossible – if I rejected everything I didn’t like we’d only have my stuff!
Memorial Day Our compromise is – he works in the barn, I work in the house. The barn is full of treasures that need to be appraised and catalogued and probably sold but he is wildly incensed when I say so! Everything must be saved till it chokes us to death. He is a very angry man and his anger makes me angry. Most unpleasant. He said Alysse, even when you’re angry you’re the person I love most in the world. I feel like I have T’s peace of mind in my care but he doesn’t have mine because he doesn’t know HOW to. Wasted time trying to get him to see praise & encouragement aren’t the same thing. He says, “At least when I praise you you’ll know I mean it.”
He thinks I love him because my “standards are low.”
4:30 AM Sat 31 May 80
Can’t sleep. Reading Helen Van Slyke’s hymn to the middle class but all her books are hymns to the middle class. People who think life is an Ionesco play crossed with Munch’s The Scream won’t like Helen Van Slyke.
Lavallee likes my rewrite “a lot” and is submitting it to Crown. I was sure she’d be able to tell I’m getting numb but apparently not. Sent my gothic The Bride & the Wolves to Tower. Now I have to take a serious look at St Secaire.
Had a little cry (private fortunately) over T praising my clothes, body & housework but not projects or ideas. Need to start a serious program of prayer & meditation.
Ackerman liked T but his CLERKS didn’t want him and Ackerman leaves it up to them! Too bad. Now he’s behind on his bar study schedule because of the move. Maybe self-study NOT the best pattern for a procrastinator?
I think men just aren’t bred to give encouragement.
7:15 PM Wed 4 June 80
“O Rose Thou Art Sick…”
The problem is T’s anger. When we are walking the dogs he says, “Keep to the road, dammit!” There is no point cursing at a dog! He says it makes HIM feel better. I say anger is corrupting – it just makes EVERYBODY angrier! How break an addiction that poisons our relationship? How is it women are called “strident” when men pullulate with such rage?
Forms arrived so I innocently shared my poems and he got jealous of RYDER!!! It never even occurred to me! (poem in question: Love the magician) Obviously, I should have kept these publications “secret” but how icky is that! Especially when the guy is lecturing me on “honesty” night and day. I’m going to have to start pleading the Fifth.
Set up a prayer desk in my study – books, candles, etc. I’m going to practice. I feel stupid asking for things – just try to get in touch with the Divine. But I also feel like God could “save” T! Flood him with light, etc.
Yesterday required interview with Eng Dept at Guilders College for teaching. They astonished me by saying “You’re hired”!
Thurs 5 June 80 Yesterday so bad I threatened to give up and drive to Washington! I was almost in despair. He said I am preventing him from studying with my “demands” which means breathing, sleeping & eating apparently.
He apologized finally and said he’s just so upset about the bar exam! So, I try to relax him physically. Give up on dieting – alcohol & food accomplish what rationalizing & arguing won’t.
Sat 7 Jun 80 We’ve been here a little over 2 weeks and the place is beginning to look like ours. I’m sitting in the garden under holly, maple, lilacs and cypress – an English garden gone to seed. I see Toss’s light in the Little House (an outbuilding) where he is studying.
Tomorrow drive to Phila to celebrate T’s birthday then on Mon I plan to plunge into my study & redo Secaire. Mom & Dad called – I told them about Gilders College Writing Fellowship. They told me ForOptics merged with Corning Glass – up to 24 from 8. This would be good news for me if I could ever get hold of my stock but my “trustee” – Dad – won’t let me have it. He is considering a disbursement. He’d better since Gilders’ stipend is $60/week!
T & I had the usual fight last night but I am learning from them. He goes “negative” & combative very fast. I have to grit my teeth not to mushily give in – I don’t want to fight but APPARENTLY HE DOES – the trick is to get him to see it. He thinks I’m just “resistant” and “demanding.” Resolved to bring his unconscious processes into consciousness.
Reading PD James’ Innocent Blood – just awful. What bone does she have to pick, that’s the curiosity. Feels like she hates females. Probably thinks she must go “male” to write – or how can female “fluidity” direct a story?
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.”
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.
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.
Wonderful weekend in Horse Cave, Kentucky with our soon-to-be wedding officiant, T’s OTHER gay friend/Baptist minister. Came home to hear T’s grandmother Louise (whose house we will be living in) had a stroke in her nursing home. They are looking for blood in spinal tap but it seems her speech is returning. (She is 88 and very frail.) Hope this doesn’t cast a pall over our cork-popping evening with friends. A cup of leek & spinach soup then walk to library.
20 Feb 80 Feeling crazy – in potentially the worst distress of my life. T says he can’t leave before Ap 15 – Granma changing the date of her party – I get the creepy notion T doesn’t care how I feel as long as I get my housework done and shut up about everything. Last night – after 2 nights of dinner parties – he invited people over – I said I’d be upstairs. Couldn’t see anyone. He suggested I was “manic depressive” which I consider insulting. He said he can’t work worrying about what if I’m “committing suicide.” That I’m “undermining” him by leaving him alone with guests.
He said he will do all the cooking for tonight’s party and I can “do all the drinking”. I said No thanks. After guests left our worst fight so far. He asked me threateningly if I REALLY want to know what he thought of my novel. I said yes. He said my novel is terrible – for emphasis he shook a floor lamp at me and he set it down so hard, it broke!
Said the Erin part doesn’t work and I should read National Lampoon’s clever “takeoff” on a school girls’ diary where she discovers she has a penis – they captured “girlish chatter” perfectly in a way I could learn from. I stare at him ASTOUNDED.
I’ve got to get out of here before I become a basket case. As long as he insists my misery and fears are imaginary we are far, far apart. I shouldn’t have come here – should have stayed working in DC saving money till the wedding (and his MOVE.) But we were so I love and he didn’t want me to dance!
8PM Thu 21 Feb Last night we had it out – every last bit and he SAW. I worked hard all day rewriting the passages he objected to – I agree it’s too bumpy coming out of “nowhere” but taking National Lampoon’s advice on “schoolgirls” is OUT OF THE QUESTION.
I tried to get him to understand how INSULTING he is being – that he wouldn’t accept this behavior from me. First, he denied he’d said the things he’d said, then he denied being hostile and angry – all while shaking a chair over my head! It’s like he’s possessed! He says I make him “want to smash something”.
I asked him if I’m this crazy awful person that he says then how can he love me? NO NO he insisted – you’re wonderful! Finally he got tender and said, “You need a love-letter, don’t you?” And I answered, more than I need a broken chair!
He said what if things get worse this summer. I said they WON’T. You will have graduated and passed the bar! You’ll have the support of me and your family! EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE. We both fell together, relieved.
Fri 22 Feb 80 6:45 PM Dinner ready for T – he’s late as usual so I have a moment to reflect. Up to p. 200 – one scene to go.
Last night he asked about “the relentless floods of blood” in my work. I tackled his comment that I’m “suicidal”. First, he denied saying it – then eyes full of tears –admitted and apologized. He gets “so upset”. He reported an incident with a Reed college psychiatrist – it was an intervention – he was accused of being the college’s heartless heartbreaker and said he was so surprised. I said But I have the marks on my heart to prove it.
He admits he’s jealous of my writing because I can “write anything I want.” Tough to defend against that! I DO write anything I want and I expect to make it my life goal! But I absolutely accept that people don’t have to like it.
Parents offered to buy my car for a grand and give to Genevieve. But they would keep it in Mom’s name because insurance in Maine is cheaper! I can’t criticize a gift horse’s choppers.
Found Monica Dickens’ autobiography at library today – could hardly believe my luck. Reminds me of A. Christie’s however – seems bit muted. Most difficult thing of all is telling the truth about oneself. No doubt all the best story is left out.
12:50 PM Sun – 24 Feb 80 Toss sighing and groaning over my book like a martyr. Sounds like he hates it. I finished writing it yesterday in 4 glorious hours. Toss NOW angry because I won’t answer the phone when I’m working. We’re suffering from “Doll’s House Syndrome” – anything he wants to do is for US – anything I want to do is just selfishness.
He’s 21 p from the end. He says I “sneer” at his suggestions but I told him I’ve incorporated a lot of them.
T. says it’s “corrupt”. Uh oh. He means the teacher scene. I reminded him of the Professor Emeritus at Plumly who wanted to talk eagerly with the boys about how to get erections, what they looked like and how long they could stay up. “Corrupt”? Toss thought he was adorable!
Better prepare myself for the tirade. He says he’s the marketing expert and I won’t get published if I “dismiss” his ideas and he might be right. He yells, I cry and we’re both wounded.
Alysse Aallyn 