Alysse Aallyn

Tag: Writing Community

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 6 – Ian VS Poetry

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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


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


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

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


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

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 5. Pregnant Brain

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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


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


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

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

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


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


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

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 3. Ian

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


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


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


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


    “He said six.”


    “Better and better.”


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


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


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


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


    He took it like a man.

    Another man showed at eleven to install the phone.


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


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


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


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


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

    Chapter 4. The Battery

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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 2 – The Undercroft – 1959

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

  • Embattled Love: the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    1 May 80


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


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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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


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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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

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

    Let’s hope it’s in New Jersey!

  • Embattled Love: the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    11:30 Am 14 Ap 80 MON


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


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


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

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


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


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

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


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


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

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


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


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

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


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


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

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


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


    He thinks we should disguise that!


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


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


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


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

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


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


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


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

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


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

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


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


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


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


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


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

  • Embattled Love: the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Princeton Jct Station – Wed 12 Feb 80


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


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

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


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


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

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


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


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

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


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


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


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

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


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

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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

  • Embattled Love: the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Mon 11:30 AM – 18 Feb 80


    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.

  • Embattled Love: the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    3:10 PM – Feb 6 – 80


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


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


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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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


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

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


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


    Meditation, exercise, bath, dinner with friends.

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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

  • Embattled Love: the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    1 am Thurs 10 Jan 80


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

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

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


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


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


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


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

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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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


    Are my points even worth making? I wonder.


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


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


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

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

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