Alysse Aallyn

Tag: Writing Community

  • Embattled Love – the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Wed 16 Dec 81 – 1 PM


    Baby’s eyes slowly closing in his rocker – thank Goodness. I am ready for a nap. Finished Hope Cooke’s fascinating Time Change (I can read while I breastfeed.) Certainly takes courage to write about one’s life that way. How I would love to! Must get free of this money question. I used to be obsessed with sex – then love – now it’s money. Would like to get my press money together. Always something.


    Last night Lois and Toss came in to dinner together – they had been at a mortgage bank in Irvington, NJ where they met with some sympathy.


    Baby sleeping 2 hrs! Put aside my John Anderson mystery and find myself opening rejected poetry mss. I am too “ornamental.” Not “formal” enough but these poems “kick up their heels” says the Quarterly Rev of Literature. “Originality & gusto.” Does seem as if every day I have a little more energy.

    Man O’War – Abaco – The Bahamas – Hummingbird House – 21 Dec 81 – 3:30 PM
    Rare minute’s peace. The children screaming all day, except Shane, who did his screaming on the plane. Almost screamed me into a post-partum depression. I was too upset to speak for 45 mins. Toss is fixing a broken lamp, niece Tremayne is reading to other niece Lylo who is tearstained from an encounter with local cat. Mom looking for a Band-Aid for Lylo, Genevieve and Dad trying to determine if second boat is usable.


    Island not what I expected. I expected New Yorker style resort instead of bidonville out of a Graham Greene novel. Hummingbird House buried in foliage – wild poinsettia & succulents. 5 minute walk to the beach; a very nice beach and deserted. Unfortunately, windy today and it took some nerve to decide to go in. Water seems cool, then you get used to it.


    Shane snoozling next to me. Just put aside Mary Chesnut’s Civil War which I am enjoying tremendously.


    Our Pan Am flight was late which made us miss our Air Florida flight to Marsh Harbor and had to put everyone up at local hotel. Not too bothersome although we saw way too much of the Miami airport.


    Sisters are in 2 little houses I haven’t seen yet on Dickie’s Cay. Avril says they are nothing to write home about and their advertised “view” is simply a lie. Avril seems happy but her skin very bad – trying to talk her into seeing a dermatologist before wedding. Glad this trip is only a week – tough being in such close quarters with family. Friday I had a very bad day – too many errands to run – had to take Shane in a rush to doctor who fortunately was calm. He’s VERY healthy in the 90th percentile of EVERYTHING. Weight 11 lbs and has grown ½ inch. I am tired of being fat but my discipline is good so it should GO.


    Thurs Toss had a wonderful meeting with Central Mortgage – looks like they’ll loan all monies if T raises $50,000 on his stock which he would get back the moment loan goes through. Daisy came over to go over my poetry! I was resistant! With a “view to publication” is just more of the same problem I’ve been having. Screw publication or anyone’s views about this but my own. This is like girls “fixing themselves up” so some man might “have” them.


    5 PM – God – it’s all I can do to get Toss to take Shane – now he’s got him and I can write 5 sentences.


    Next few years a voyage of discovery – figure out how to please MYSELF.
    11:30 PM – Very agreeable evening. Mom & Dad & Toss & I have been drinking & talking & reminiscing for the past 3 hrs. Good relationship with M & D – Dad talks about how I challenge them.


    T. just finished reading this diary! (With my approval.) Mostly he’s Ok with it – minor reservations – sort of like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern – he sees things differently from Hamlet. It was painful to have him read my resolution to concentrate on work and say to hell with money – I feel like I’ve tried but I don’t want him to think badly of me. I want to write ghost stories! Lead a subterranean life. Answer no phones between Jan and March. I could always write the story of the way things OUGHT to be – Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

    5:15 PM Tues 22 Dec 81
    Very erotic night – Toss delicious. A lovely lazy day – took baby to the beach –parked him in the shade & swam in the surf. Slept 2 hrs in the afternoon – tonight ham dinner & Christmas celebration!

    Wed 23 Dec – 3:30 PM
    So much to write I’m scared to get started – Shane could interrupt at any moment. He gave me a fairly rough night – been sleeping only 45 mins – needs to be fed every hour and a half – felt I’d gone several rounds with Sonny Liston. This AM at the beach he needed constant holding. During lunch he slept ½ hr – up 2 hrs – now sleeping again. Do I want to sleep? Read? Write about money or sisters?


    9:30 PM – Very pleasurable evening. Read thru NY Times – review of Adrienne Rich’s Wild Patience making me feel human again. A little privacy to chew intellectual meat brings me out of any downspin. To write poetry of the most important simplicities individual to our era suddenly seems of maximum importance.


    Just fed S – he sleeps very sweetly in his “Little Jogger” outfit – Xmas gift from Avril.
    “To assemble Japanese bicycle one must have peace of mind.” If you accept the slavery of Zen does it make you free?

    11:30 PM – Christmas Eve
    Firecrackers…and they’ll probably go off all night. Feeling well rested – 2 extra hours sleep at breakfast (Shane’s fussiest period) while T took him, then lay around till 2 when I went swimming. Expressed 2 bottles milk.


    Played cards – wild, vulgar Michigan – WON. Shane sleeping since 9. Tomorrow – snorkeling!
    I part company with Mary Chesnut – it’s a valuable historical document BUT her tirades on slave-owners going bankrupt through their “charity” makes you puke. She regards herself as quite an authority on slave behavior! I’d say the reverse is likely true. (Why do they keep singing “Massa’s in de Cold Cold Ground”? Hmm.) Reminds me of that bizarre man who studied homosexuals to find out what men are really like! Weird.


    Thinking of Lois’ reaction to my press idea – that I am neither a good writer nor a good businesswoman. I refuse to look at my press as a business but operating a philanthropy at this stage of our lives too insane. Third way – seeding the ground? The Literary World is a malignant casino where the statistics are against you.


    Start a vigorous exercise plan when I get home – right now I’m lying around worrying. Can I afford BOTH cleaner and therapist? Cleaner DEFINITELY more important! Was Guilders College a senseless detour? Made me a bit sad to see how proud it made T.


    Concentrate on being a good mother to Shane – not making others’ mistakes. T thinks he will have financing for project in Jan. Priorities are family and writing – friends & school just have to wait. I want to be known as having a valuable contribution to make.

    2:30 PM – Mon 28 Dec 81
    Interesting and FAIR article on Plath in the New Republic. Since I wrote the above I have taken Tylenol for atrocious headache and put Shane in the Swing-o-matic to stop his screaming. First he didn’t like it at all, then sat with a hurt and insulted expression throughout – finally fell asleep. It’s not moving any more but I refuse to touch it and wake him.


    Feel like I’m in an inescapable maze! MUST surmount this. Shane awake, so swinging again. Still looks far from happy but at least I get to write this.


    Yesterday draining – up at 6:15 to catch 8 AM ferry to Marsh Harbor – traveling, airports, taxis and trains all day toil 8:15 PM – lucky to get home THAT early – caught the 7 PM train at Penn Station by 12 seconds. When we finally got home, Shane went on a shriek – I was numb just wanting to retreat into Times Book Review. Then all night long he needed nursing at hour and a half intervals – till I finally had T give him sugar water so I could get some sleep.


    He’s now lying so beautifully – magnificent legs extended – I feel dumb & stupid. Rejected romance novel – they liked love scenes but want less barter. Agent asks do I want to revise. HELL NO. Plath needed to stay alive & keep working, article concludes!


    10 PM – feel much better. Some food – 20 min nap – good hour reading NY Times. News: the Blands divorcing. I realize with such thankfulness my luck in having Toss – intellectual yet sentimental (in the best sense!) humorous but passionate, sexy but monogamous!


    The baby, after being a wild man all day, has been asleep 2 hrs! Think I’ll try to stay up.


    1:45 AM – I am a new woman! T and I have been bouncing around – wrote my thank you notes, wrapped 3 presents, packed one, sorted through oddments preparatory to cleaning bedroom. T has mounted phone cord to avert trip & falls, now mounting heating pad controls so they won’t get lost in Dusty Under-bed Darkness. The only solution to babydom is to do without sleep. God, I’m in a good mood. Still plan to do my nails & read a little.


    Read wonderful Plath poem Child’s Park Stones. Different from her best-known stuff, yet excellent. Wrote a letter to Barry about my press. I need an upswing.

  • Embattled Love – the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    12:45 PM Sun 8 Nov 81


    This AM Toss told me that putting my name on his accounts makes him 50% poorer in the eyes of those who read his financial statements. I cold say the same, except that I am worth nothing right now. I want this marriage to work. Men contribute money and women contribute the bodies of children which are both everything and nothing under their ancient laws.


    Everything outside God is imperfect. All my life I’ve been battling this undertow – a sense of being pulled in a direction I don’t want to go. If I quit fighting I’ll be sucked away. Would like to reduce my sense of confusion & division. I will negotiate & re-negotiate.


    4:20 PM – Fri difficult therapy day. Dr Jones trying to get me to see similarity between my lack of acceptance in writing and my lack of acceptance by parents – I can write about it now but was shaken at the time. I think it cannot compute. After all, you have a good chance of being loved by parents but always a small chance of acceptance you’re your original ideas in a buyers’ marketplace. But what would happen if I believed her and translated my search for an income into an effort to be loved? Surely that way madness lies. Is it the goal of therapists to make clients crazier (maybe so they can help them more?) Feel naïve that I expected her to “cure” me. But very attracted to her intellectual world.


    T’s brother Dom is coming to dinner. He’s only staying an hour and a half but I hate my solitude being broken. I want to write an essay on Muriel Spark, work out my ideas.


    Hoped to have the baby tonight. Thumpings and soundings on my pelvic floor. Braxton-Hicks contractions – reputed to be ‘nothing” – are actually rather painful. Housework hangs heavily over me – Toss does nothing, won’t even pick up his towels off the floor – when I speak to him he apologizes profusely and pledges to change. Doesn’t. I’m boggled by this. I told him I don’t believe in his “as soon as I finish x-y-z” any more I want cleaning person NOW. He purposely arranges his life so he can’t meet his deadlines.


    He usually does housework once a week – scrubs kitchen & bathrooms and sweeps breakfast room but he missed this week. I wonder if one of the privileges of motherhood will be my increasing sense of my own power. I hope so. Been difficult up till now.

    2:30 PM Mon 9 Nov 81
    This world just too crazy for me. Silhouette says my love scenes “lack fire.” Really the funniest part of this is how undiscourageable I am. Better off with a flat turndown than a false carrot. Lavallee writes to say Pinch turned down by Coward & St Martins.


    The thing I really hate is how this looks to others – I am sick of being a deadbeat non-person. One needs talent, persistence, application & breaks. I got the first 3!


    Managed to find a cleaning woman! I hope this will make it easier to turn to my desk with a sigh of relief. I think freedom is the key to great writing and I’ve been constrained by these petty editors. Miracles occur! T. very nice about my rejections, no “Maybe you should just try harder to please them” thank God. Plan to go on working endlessly without pay, support or recognition – to please myself, while the mystical brass ring floats alluringly by.


    Last night Dom said he hopes Sutton is leaving us some money in his will. Toss said when their dad dies we’ll be so wealthy we won’t care! I regard such prognostications with the utmost cynicism. I suppose I’m technically better off than in my working dancer days when I owned a paid off car, an unpaid for house and $300 in bills but it doesn’t feel like it.

    9;30 Am Tues 10 Nov 81
    Cleaning lady half hour late. So she is probably lost. Yesterday I drove my car out and drove ahead of them to show them the house but she speaks barely any English. On the phone her son says she left to come here “a long time ago.”


    Last night read Phantom Prince about Ted Bundy written by his girlfriend. One of the best crime books I’ve ever read! Bundy was like Lizzie Borden in that he ran counter to police theories on crime. They kept letting him go because he “couldn’t” be the guy they were looking for. If he’d known how to STOP he would never have been caught, but he got addicted. Intrigued by the atmosphere of pizza joints & rafting as counterpoint to this couple’s lives. Reminded me of old boyfriend Kyro!


    This is a really a whole book about female helplessness and dependency. Women have been trained to act like this to provoke protectiveness in their menfolk – but it often has the exact opposite result! He needed her to protect him from the knowledge of his own monstrousness.


    Granma woke me from a nap – still tormenting us about a palace oriental the Schulz Foundation is giving us for reasons that are obscure. Why the principals can’t deal with each other I can’t comprehend. Nap & then try Mrs. Rozo the Lost Cleaning Woman again.

    “Memory is our private literature” – Aldous Huxley

    11:30 PM Sun 15 Nov 81
    Getting lots of sleep hoping a beautiful angel will be born tonight. I’d like to have the house clean. First cleaner doesn’t want to do it, found a new cleaner Margaret who’s coming tomorrow. Washed the white dog in the bathtub and it was really too much for me, can’t bend over at all. Read Lynne Wiley’s Abigail Adams with interest. I enjoy the sweep of a life.


    I wasn’t to review Spark’s Loitering With Intent but it’s too thin. Enjoyed the first 7/8 but when it’s over, impossible to say why it was written. She really writes too many books. The transplantation to Rome has not agreed with her.


    Yesterday Toss & I drove to Wyomissing to get used (family) crib & car seat. New relationship combustion. I am very emotional right now – told him I don’t want to be solely responsible for harmony in the relationship. In a marriage, there has to be some way to disagree without slipping the rug of love out from under the relationship.


    Had Toss to myself all day – an ideal day – reading NY Times in bed.

    6;25 PM We 18 Nov 81
    Good visit with midwife. She assured me baby will be on time and I will have it at birthing center. Relief. Blood pressure nicely down.


    Finally talked Toss into open a housekeeping money market acct with $3500 (and hopefully writing money). Margaret worked hard all day, house looks great. Sat down to write – to my surprise got 8 pages.

    4:30 PM – 27 Nov 81
    Well it’s all over – my 8 ½ pound baby boy sleeps beside me. Labor was both more and less bad than I expected – I had dysfunctional labor – 2 days’ worth – exhausting & discouraging but I was only able to get to 3 cm dilation myself by noon Wed after having contractions since Mon. The actual contractions were not hard to deal with although they could be painful lying down. Adair transferred me to the hospital after 13 hrs at the birthing center where my contractions finally spaced out to 10-15 mins apart. At the hospital they gave me Demerol – heavenly – enough for 5 hrs sleep then I was ready again. Jane my labor coach showed up and I was refreshed enough for Pitocin at 6.


    We were lucky to be in a birthing room with a borning bed – as I discovered later when I got back labor. (Baby high & posterior.) I did all right for 2 hrs then the back labor became so intense I couldn’t tell when I was having a contraction any more. It was torture to be touched. Finally, I asked for more Demerol – Adair didn’t want me to have it because she feared it would increase the need for Pitocin but the Demerol relaxed me between contractions – my eyes became blurry and couldn’t focus. Toss said contractions continued as usual.

    The pushing stage I remember well – I enjoyed it – the baby didn’t feel too big & I could feel him moving along. Crowning was a little painful and I got annoyed at everyone shouting “Push! Push” when I wanted the doctor to stretch my perineum a little more. Thankful for the tiny episiotomy they gave me.

  • Embattled Love – the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Mon. 26 Oct 81


    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.

  • Embattled Love – the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    22 Sept 81


    Black depression. Hasn’t been this bad since summer – maybe I should schedule an apt with Dr Jones. Silhouette & Harlequin sending me such bad books and unrealistic editorial demands I can’t make myself go to the mailbox. Paradise Postponed made every mistake there is and they are offering it up as a model. So – anybody rather than them. Can’t wait to be my own publisher! The hell with all of them!


    Toss missed the 6:30 and isn’t coming till 9 PM and I need the comfort of his presence. Suffering through the letters of Hemingway won’t help. I need Trollope novels to cheer me up.

    StormFall Farm, Fri 25 Sept 81
    Sitting before a sluggish fire – Toss off on a tractor-buying expedition with his Dad. Gives him a feeling of belonging. Sutton not accepting the Faircross Development idea – thinks Toss should go with a firm. Calls Lois a “terrorist.” Let’s hope she won’t be that way with her son. Finished Symons’s Poe and tackling M Gordon’s Final Payments.


    Uncle Avery drunk dialed Toss twice last night – kept calling Sutton “Your brother.” “No, he’s your brother.” “Well, who am I?” Who indeed? Bad Ionesco play or alcoholism? He tortures himself both for having inherited money and for being too poor! There’s more than one double standard.
    Toss expects to feel completely different when he’s a father himself. Managed a new poem about Heloise & Abelard: From the Flame to the Flame. Don’t know what I think about it yet.

    28 Sept 81
    Couldn’t get to Bradley class (I’m hedging my bets) last night because car broke down in Cranbury. Had to call a wrecker. Then the Chrysler wouldn’t start either. Had it towed to Reed’s. Faced with $150 gas bill and $180 electricity bill – doesn’t seem possible. Plus, the house is a mess and I have sciatica.


    Toss walked to the station this am – luckily only a 20 min walk.


    Reading about Harold Nicolson’s “jobless” phase when no one liked him – I can identify.
    Working on poetry submissions for Watermark I hear dogs bark – I stagger to the door in my torn caftan to see Miriam from women’s church group; baby on hip. She drinks coffee and tells me our private and marital lives are completely destroyed by children. Thanks! Also new way to clean kitchen floors. We set up a new date to go strolling in New Hope – she won’t have her kid and I won’t look like Godzilla goes to Oz.

    5 Oct 81
    Bad phone call with Mom – she acted like seeing a therapist is an admission that “something’s wrong with me.” She kept asking “why “– so I made up a coherent reason – my crying jags. Realized after I should have said pregnancy. Every conversation seems to slam a door.
    Wolf’s late wedding present was a black cat in severe need of some kind of vet treatment (eczema?) Taking him to vet then home to make dinner. T promised to stay home Thurs to help me clean.


    Feeling better about our midwife Adair. I’m sure I made the right decision even though Lois is trying to scare me about “lack of anesthesia.”

    7 Oct 81
    This depressing book is making things worse! Should I give up diarizing? Bad session with Dr. Jones yesterday. She says numbing oneself to the pain leaves one in a drugged state without energy to break the deadlock. And yet I must keep going. Dr. J thinks I deliberately chose writing because being ignored and rejected is just the way my parents treat me! “What am I trying to prove?”


    My natural optimism asserts itself – I don’t think I’m trying to prove anything! I’m not that involved with other people but with myself and my own capabilities. You can imagine what Dr. J says about that! According to her the world only exists to bring us to life.


    T. outside mowing. Housework is my #1 complaint right now. If I could just get this place tolerable the next few weeks will be more bearable.

    8 Oct 81
    Forced myself to attend Women’s Group after only 5 hrs sleep – I really enjoyed it. Miriam then asks me, “What are you doing after?”


    Stupidly I said, “Nothing” and she said, “Me, too, let’s do it together.” We visited Lamplighter Books where I bought a couple of CS Lewis paperbacks and a book on the Inklings.


    I invented an after lunch appt so the whole day wouldn’t be blown but I find myself disliking her. She’s exhaustingly competitive. She wants to complain about her husband and she wants me to complain about my husband. I have plenty of complaints about T – he probably has just as many about me – but why repeat them? It just solidifies them when I feel the whole situation could change overnight.


    She was pretty shocked that we don’t have insurance. The midwife is $500 but what about complications if I have to go to the hospital? Not my favorite subject for discussion. (She says a Caesarean is $4000!)


    Came home and immediately fell into a deep sleep – woke up just in time to get Toss and now I’ve set him to making a soufflé.


    He had bad news on his day – he and Lois had lunch with President of the Spring Garden civic association who is going to fight them on parking. Force them to build fewer units. T. also upset about Lois’s close-mouthedness about her financial status – she had two margin calls last month!

    He’s been up front with her about his. Now she wants to use the architect as a straw man to buy two more buildings but T says smarter to develop the one they’ve got. Conflict. He suspects her of “borrowing” Mother Louise’s money which she’s technically not supposed to do.


    10:30 PM – Devastated. Over dinner (my salad and his very respectable soufflé) T. very critical of how poorly I keep this place – how little I do. I tried talking about the danger to our love of these kinds of fights – got nowhere. Now he’s driven off to Hightstown. I don’t recover from these things as fast as he does. I have tremendous faith in our future. Maybe I should try to get him in to see Dr. Jones. Or she could suggest someone who’s a stranger to us both.

    Fri 9 Oct 81
    Terrible nightmare because of our fight – T throwing all our furniture out of the house, me fleeing to a motel. Got lost, came home and crawled in through the garage window to find the place burgled. Loneliness, confusion, desperation.


    He apologized thoroughly and sincerely.


    I really need the 11th hr cavalry – good news about my career – but I’ve forgotten what that feels like. If I finished MFA could teach writing but that seems a horrible life when it’s unresolved in my own mind.

    Sat. 10 Oct 81
    A much better day. Walking around New Hope with Miriam – lots of beautiful things to look at. Found a wonderful place selling inexpensive Indian clothes that are perfect for maternity wear which I can take in when the baby is born. I need to feel beautiful & confident again; not deprived. “I can do it.”


    Yesterday Lois came to our Lamaze class and acted if this is all a personal insult directed at her. I feel so sorry (and embarrassed) for her sometimes. She’s not very flexible, that’s for sure. She made fun of the concept of “enjoyable childbirth.” I tried to explain instead it’s a rite of passage – needs to have some meaning. The first question you ask about football is not “does it hurt?” Even though it often DOES hurt! Kills people sometimes (“and there’s ways to prevent that.”) She can’t follow analogies.


    Some change taking place in me – not sure what. Burst into tears over Jaffee’s Adult Education: thinking, “At last a woman’s point of view is emerging.”


    Inspired, I managed 600 words on novel. Must beard Toss about $. He won’t like it but we’ll see. I need a cleaner even if I have to sell my Computervision.


    Bored by Alice Ellis’ Birds of the Air I paint fanciful Pennsylvania Dutch designs on baby’s furniture.

    14 Oct 81
    Should pregnancy be this traumatic? Midwife says baby is enormous, could be twins. My blood pressure is too far up – need to rest an hour a day and meditate 15 mins. Maybe I WAS unwise to get pregnant this fast but for me the time was right.


    I am now ready to write 6 romantic novels a year if that’s what it takes. Anything for the dignity of privacy. Hideous silence from agent – God knows what Silhouette thinks of my proposal.

    10:10 PM 15 Oct 81
    Day started taking a turn for the better at Women’s Group where one of the women gave me an exercise GUARANTEED to bring my blood pressure down. Worth a try. Now I’m re-reading The Book of Hope and it’s giving me hope anew.


    Attack of crying after the mail came – no word from Silhouette of course – I re-examine my depression and 2 factors emerge. #1 what a fighter I’ve been – I’m still unresigned and I don’t seem to care about encouragement and #2 if depression is justified is it really depression? I mean, things are rough! In spite of all that I got a lot done – 3 poetry contests entered. All I can do is continue to gamble on myself.


    Wrote to Mom: since I decided against diaper service, would she give me the same $ for cleaner?

    Sat 17 Oct 81
    Letter from Guilders rejecting me as an “exceptional student!” I was surprised and Ezra said it was outrageous and he will fight for me, but I told him how can I want them if they don’t want me? They’re entitled to their opinion – I’ll find someplace where I’m appreciated. When he’s been so helpful I couldn’t just tell him I don’t like the type of fiction they teach there anyway! I think it’s primarily a place to find mentors.


    Mom astounded me by saying I have one of the sweetest natures she knew of! I wanted to say, then how come you treat me with cruelty & hostility but my sweet nature wouldn’t let me! I mean if that isn’t a declaration of “Let’s start over” I can’t think of a better one! So maybe she’s right.
    “Get strong” I think is the lesson here.


    Toss had 4 wisdom teeth removed – kept saying he wasn’t in pain but seemed jumpy & bothered. Couldn’t eat – his sudden frailty made me realize how much I love him. He decided not to go to the farm (thank God – I can’t keep up with the housework HERE much less there) so we went to the movies instead. (So Fine. Forgettable.)


    Trying to come to terms with the uncooperative nature of art. Even when I’m “approved of” it brings no satisfaction. There’s only the work itself. Continue struggling with silly Tarnished Vows – making it “different.”


    Asked the obstetrician if you can take a 3 week old baby to the Bahamas. I was certain he’d say yes! HE SAID NO – airports are full of diseases! The hell with him! I’m going!

    2:15 PM Mon 19 Oct 81
    Just came in from Dr. Bran. Baby’s gigantic – “at least 9 lbs”. He tried to talk me into going to the hospital by telling me what a rough time his sister had. (Baby’s brain hemorrhaged.) My cervix totally closed has 4 weeks to go. I managed not to cry, said I would discuss it with my husband.
    Everything’s wrong – weight up another 6 pounds. The only good thing is I have brought my blood pressure down.


    What is all this? I was so confident. Human mind very serious. I had thought at least THE BABY is a success. Can’t seem to get notice of my existence on any level – no word from agents or publishers. Feel numb. Make myself feel better reading Sheila Kitzinger – she gives examples of big babies born “without tearing.” There’s a woman in our Bradley class who’s over 35 and her hips & thighs are enormously swollen.


    9 days to lose 4 lbs. Plainly it can’t hurt the baby any longer!


    11:20 Am 20 Oct 81
    Read yet another book on compulsive eating. Compulsive everything. Good book makes me ask the question: what am I afraid of?


    Pain?


    One of my fantasies was to have the light job of caretaking a house so I could write. As housekeeper, I have that. Plus, the love of my “dream man.” He’s usually supportive, although over-critical of me in some departments. So why cry last night for 2 hrs before going to sleep?
    Things would be worse if I had writer’s block. Managed 5 p. on my disgraced virgin story, Tarnished Vows. My block is of a different kind. It’s a “meaning” block.


    In an attempt to comfort me Toss said that if his business takes off we will be able to start the press. I felt obligated to be the Voice of Doom and said, “No business takes off as expected” but didn’t ask him how he would feel about “wasting” money on a totally philanthropic enterprise (all “outgo”) but I know he would call that “planning to fail.” So, I take it as the nice gesture it is. He said we might be so rich we won’t have to worry. I would LIKE to be that rich but it seems impossible. This place needs $40,000 of work immediately. I do believe that inner success attracts outer success. What I need is to be able to relax and enjoy life again and figure out how to mix a baby in with that. I do admire myself in spite of all outward appearances.

    4 PM – 21 Oct 81
    Interesting afternoon discussing writing with Charlene. She takes a very black and white view of my situation – I should take a waitressing job so I can write “serious” not “sleazy” things. I don’t dare curl my lip – she works as a waitress! But I do say some of my sleazy stuff is important to me. My Tarnished Virgin quite the sociological treatise. Plus, “sleaziness” shouldn’t be anything that makes the pulse pound!


    Was Louisa May Alcott better off with Under the Lilacs or her blood & thunders? Which was more fun to write? (Her era had no doubts.)


    Definitely over-obsessed right now with money & security. I refuse to get stuck in the housewife rut with this baby – I have to contribute – want every step I take towards “freeing” myself.


    (Cat sprawls over the page, her black paws like giant caterpillars.) Need to take my bike to the library. Glorious day.

  • Embattled Love – the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    28 Feb 81


    Party went well – bathroom finished, house stunningly clean & orderly. I got a bit snarly with Toss because he has literally no idea how to fit tasks into a time frame – whatever he chooses to do takes forever. He can’t prioritize, either. But the food was good, and I could tell Genevieve and Brett had a good time.


    Toss and I got up early and dressed in our dowdiest clothes to go to New Brunswick and breach IRS. T and I did research – who knew I kept an 1978 expense diary? We bristled with estimates & documentation – T said he could get me a refund! I begged him not to even TRY. Called for directions – our contact not even there so a new time set up. Annoying jerk-woman! Spend the day reading Shana Alexander’s Anyone’s Daughter and reflecting on the general weirdness of Mom & Dad.

    Fri 6 Mar 81 -11:15 PM
    Toss is in DC for an attorney fees conference so I am all by myself. Tried calling him an hour ago but I think they went out to dinner; now I’m too tired.


    Exhausted after doing all the work I can stand – letters to everybody. Lots of good news – Toss admits he’s worth a quarter million so he can afford to put another $900 into our account. It also explains why he doesn’t want to take a job he hates! I wouldn’t either! In fact I have a little more money than usual because the fellows were included in the general raise at Guilders. And Toss DID get a refund for me from the IRS which frankly I think was a miracle. I immediately buy $100 worth of spring clothes and sign up for dance class ($65/month.) Where they yell at me for my style (which was to be expected. They were NOT impressed by the likes of Martha Graham.)


    The best news of all is that Lois won her long-running case against her mother’s self-serving trustees – the bank has been officially chastised and DUMPED. Now Lois can develop the property – work for Toss & money for everybody. Unfortunately her first action is to get her sons to sign off on any interest they had in the trust – sign it over to her. This raised my eyebrows but T trusts her.


    Good conversation with Mom & Dad – I hadn’t actually looked at their blueprints for the new island house but I didn’t let on. Invited Mom to study in England with me three weeks this summer – she says she can’t take that much time away from Dad – he would just drink orange juice & sherry & sob.

    Sun 8 Mar 81
    April isn’t the cruelest month – Feb & March are. Oh for it to be over. Depressed phone call from Avril – I told her how much reading theology had helped me. Suffering isn’t purposeless; it’s the beginning of everything. The wake-up call. She was depressed enough to listen.


    Read Beryl Bainbridge’s disappointing Quiet Life and am now plunged into Pearson’s Life of Ian Fleming. There’s a cautionary tale for you. Can it on the gin & cigarettes.

    Wed. 11 Mar 81
    So tired all the time I am DRAGGING myself around. Lois is angry that we’re not paying rent – Toss trying to negotiate “work he does around the place” which keeps him away from writing & the law. Sutton calls to say he’s marrying Pansy.


    Lois demands a “pow-wow” about “the unresolved state of this family” which I think will be more screaming about Sutton and all the Hideous Wrongs he did her long, long, long ago. While we sit there pie-eyed.

    12 Mar 81
    I was right about the pow-wow. She wanted to read us a long letter she’s writing to Sutton about how he’s a bird who fouls his own nest. We know but don’t say this is in response to his marriage announcement. I do tell her she’s acting like they got divorced YESTERDAY and she tells me I DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING. Gives more examples from the ancient past of what an awful father Sutton was, abandoning his children etc. etc. I say she should be GLAD SHE’S RID OF HIM if all these things are true. Her argument sounds like he was too awful to be “allowed” to leave her but isn’t she really saying she deserves better?


    Slowly it emerges that she’s really depressed because her advisors tell her she needs a partner with a track record to develop Grover Mill property (not to mention the one she wants to buy in Phila.) Toss says he will be her attorney. My hackles rise. This is a woman who calls black white and praises herself for her honesty all in one breath.


    I tell Toss privately we need to get the HECK out of her house but he’s loving being involved with his grandparents’ stuff.

    Sat 21 Mar 81
    Hoping I’m pregnant. Just don’t want to focus on anyone else. Reading advice book for writers it occurred to me I’ve heard ALL THIS BEFORE – in women’s mags telling girls how to attract men. “Find out what he likes and be that” ;“Careful not to turn him off” ;“Smile” ; and “Be cheerful NO MATTER WHAT.” Also how to get hired in Domestic Service circa 1800. There’s the truth about buyers’ markets.


    I need a press of my own.

    24 Mar 81 (Tues) In the train
    Good day yesterday – I typed 20 p of novel – Toss got a Kidder Peabody check. Determined to send novel to my agent for her opinion NO MATTER WHAT my class says. Made the 9:30 dance class.


    Reading a history of the Alcott family. Pretty sure I’m pregnant – breasts enlarged and period 10 days late! And all this exhaustion!! I’ve been too tired for sex! Also depressed at living in a cramped ancient house full of ugly broken down furniture.

    Wed Ap 1 81
    Have to face it – I just HATE PD James. Why is she revered? Unsuitable Job for a Woman unsuitable for reading. I am very bothered by people’s bad taste. James’ attitude to humanity downright depressing. Guiltily enjoy Christie’s The Pale Horse instead. Wonderful book! Avril and I have long discussion about how impossible it is to diet when depressed. Food is not just love; it’s excitement, color, interest.

    7 Tues Ap 81
    Wonderful news! YES I am pregnant and Toss won prestigious IRE award (with Larry West) on their coal connection series. Just back from celebratory weekend in Kentucky. We’ll be going out to San Diego for awards dinner. Toss feeling elated & secure. Now if I can just make It through this semester…

    18 Sept 81 5:45 PM
    Diary goes to the wall as I grimly assemble a poetry collection for contest – for sacrificial reasons, knowing I won’t win – constant need for naps. Have I been awake at all today? Endless problems over Fordham Life Exp credits making me want to say The Hell With It. How do I get into these fixes – suddenly dependent for “approval” from bureaucrats I despise? There must be another way to live. Plumly’s ugly insistence on “appearance versus reality” raises its hideous head. I am an artist, most at home in the company of artists – but the financial picture cloudy. Still “finding myself” as they say.

    Learning not to care about $ could be tough when I am about to become a mother! Forced to conclude my timing has always been bad. T. unexpectedly inviting me out to dinner really helps with the gloom..

    12:50 AM Sun 20 Sept 81
    Hard day in NYC with Mom & Dad – when they heard my agent wants me to write a romantic novel they immediately began arguing on her side!!! If I had said I was GOING to do it they would have attacked ME! “How long would it take?” “Wouldn’t it be worth it to get out from under?”
    Then it was poor Toss’s turn to be grilled about his & Lois’ newly incorporated property development firm Faircross: “it can’t work.” Our unborn baby referred to as “another mouth in line for the swag.” Then they invited us to the Bahamas.


    Toss. was polite but handled it well. I could see he was offended. Afterwards he told me he didn’t WANT to go to the Bahamas but I DO. What other chance will I get? MY SISTERS ARE GOING!
    T wants me to promise him to never to ask my Dad for money again! (That would suit my Dad!) But there’s a problem. At least SOME OF IT is my money – they keep laying it aside in my name “for tax reasons” but they don’t give it to me to manage because I would spend it. (Which I would.) Toss gets to manage his own money and Faircross is what he’s doing with it. Deciding how to spend it is the whole point. Till then it’s Poor Little Rich Girl. According to their own statements they have 2 months to give me $4000.


    1:10 PM – Toss leaves with our housework half done – has to go to Phila to tell Lois’ frenemy Imogen that she can’t be part of Faircross. He wants her OUT. She has the track record but not the cash. I’m going to finish house and then work on my new, entirely cynical romance Tarnished Vows. I’ve got a whole series planned in my head called The Double Standard elucidating – guess what? If I wrote 5 of them I could make $40,000. Can always use a pseudonym.
    Last night’s Lamaze made me feel ebullient – confident – ready to go at any moment. Wash & brush dogs.

  • Embattled Love – the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    18 Sun Jan 81


    Up early to take Granma to Quaker Meeting. Very boring. Elder from my first wedding came up and spoke to me – I didn’t recognize her! It was Grandmother Day – spent the afternoon with Mother Louise who forgets who everyone is after 20 mins. In the evening long ecstatic phone gossip with Avril.

    Mon 19 Jan 81
    Jam packed day – filed grades at Guilders, Financial Aid lecture at Fordham then drinks at World Trade Center with T & Old roommate. Tues depressing orientation at Fordham – can’t get “life experience” credits till you have 20 Fordham credits! Decided to apply for guaranteed student loan – T will be happy. Considering Study Abroad in Eng! After I get pregnant that will be no longer possible. Letter from Book Forum asking me to come in – they might have something for me to do! That would be the first thing I haven’t had to claw for – its welcome. Set up apt for next Wed.
    Bad thriller by Stanton Forbes & good one by Anne Morice.

    22 Jan Thurs 81
    Wonderful women’s service at Trinity – new minister Joan Platt – like her very much. Completely relaxed about me sobbing my way through the Nicene Creed – “it gets some people that way!”


    Went to the Fordham party with Donna – Dr Dohrn seems to think I could be pulled out of the Excel program fairly soon. Introduced Donna to T’s old roommate – she was nervous and he was supercilious. I give up matchmaking. T (due in ½ hr driving the ’65 Chrysler Imperial from Phila) said people create their own hells of loneliness.

    Sat 24 Jan 81
    Off to Trenton library with T – he studies and I enjoy Caroline Gordon’s How to Read A Novel. We look at washers and driers – you really can’t get anything for under $700 so we buy a heated bed-pad instead. I read The Denatured Novel – then we have chicken soup in bed watching Desk Set.

    Thurs 29 Jan 81
    I like the women’s service even better than the discussion afterwards.


    Stress interview with Book Forum – wanted me to “throw out 1,000 ideas really fast.” Became completely tongue tied – hadn’t expected that – thought we’d talk about what THEY need. As a result I looked like an idiot. Could barely smile. Awful. I came up with my “Impure Women” concept – Mansfield, Plath, Woolf – that was it. Sounded tired even to me. Obviously never hear from them again. Imagine me being taken for an academic! Hilarious.


    Fast registrations at both Fordham & Guilders – only had to pay ½ when I said I was getting a loan.
    Dinner with Charlene but I rushed home missing T – it was 12:10 and he waited up for me. Delirious marital sex all over the place.

    Fri 30 Jan 81
    Terrible arguments with T about Episcopalianism vs Quakerism. He’s not looking forward to The Episcopalian dance.

    Sat 31 Jan 81
    T in his wedding tuxedo – me in a blue bridesmaid’s dress at the Episc. Dance. I especially enjoyed meeting Joan Platt’s husband Peter. Also the new curate – slight pretty girl. (The poor Catholics! We have a deep bench.) Connected with my parents’ old friends the Macdonalds. Bob McD hilariously funny. T had a great time; no fighting, no biting. We left at 11.

    Sun 1 Feb 81
    Met T’s brother Dom on train – T in “correction mode.” He never does this at home. I called him Mr. Persnickety.


    Wait a solid hr at Lois’ house till we can leave for Chadd’s Ford. I eat too many cookies while marveling at Lois’ ability to estrange people. She goes on and on about how the Garden of Eden is a birth myth – this has never been noticed in the history of time by anyone but her. We don’t argue because that would trigger an endless “scene” – she would make us sit there for an eternity unable to move while she beats us into submission.


    That’s the kind of audience she prefers – cowed. Ricardo wiggles his eyebrows at his behind her back, gesturing “Please don’t say anything so we can just get out of here and have a nice day.” She goes on and on in her baby-girl voice while batting her eyelashes until you want to smack her. The worst thing that could ever happen to her in life would be to meet herself – neither would ever give ground until they both died, like a Greek myth. If she read any actual books she would not be so impressed with her own ideas – she hasn’t gotten through a whole one the entire time I’ve known her. She’s still reeling from the Deep Truths of The Road Less Travelled – gave everyone copies so they can see how terrible others are – it’s never her.


    Finally we get out of there and take both grandmothers out to dinner in Chadd’s Ford to celebrate their birthdays and have a very nice meal. I’m bored solid so eat too much.


    Reading the last vol of Kathleen Raine’s autobio – she’s having a rough time with Christianity and there’s no comfort I can give her.

    Tues. 4 Feb 81
    First day of class both teaching & taking. Met with Fordham advisor who wants me to switch out of Excel and pursue a double major – maybe philosophy! Whoa there!


    My teaching class is all babies with glazed eyes – my fiction seminar wrangles about the Death of the Novel. Very dispiriting. They are excited by horrible shit sans character or plot. Plot is contrived and character is MUTABLE. I need to stop reading thrillers – must learn to like Robbe-Grillet.

    Wed 5 Feb 81
    Miss T – haven’t seen him since 9. Gave my class a really easy test they could pass they all failed. Blue, blue blue.


    Women’s group wonderful on the other hand – I adore Joan. Want to ask her to christen our children.

    Sat 7 Feb 81
    Spent $359 on bathroom floor tiles. It had to be done.


    Dinner at the neighbors who wanted to show off their friend Jon Purvis a famous journalist. I got too drunk – T has forgiven me but I can’t forgive myself. Bad day all day. The sorrow of teaching English to the deprived – taking their money and flunking them – is always with me. Don’t like this system. Tried moving novel into first person voice – something my class can respect. Wonderfully cheering call with Avril – she is so good.

    Mon 9 Feb 81
    Off to library in Chrysler – got a flat tire – had to wait an hour for AAA – missed appt with man to hook up tiny washer dryer we are installing in dining room closet. Feel squeezed & helpless.

    Discouraged by mess in house. Frustration the most difficult emotion to deal with. Not impressed by Ross Macdonald: “There’s nothing worse than an ugly woman with a gun.” Really? Bid of $1000 for wiring & plumbing. We’re not paying Lois for rent, she’s not compensating us for improving her property. I try not to care or keep track. Bills bills bills and soon it will be tax time while every job prospect for T melts mysteriously away.

    18 Feb 81
    Coming out of depression. IRS is auditing me – Toss being completely calm and supportive. I have an attorney! He will represent me! Costume dinner at Snowbury was waste space but we had fun wearing the costumes & we met some interesting people. (Mayor & his girlfriend, a lawyer.)

    Weekend at StormFall where I officially give up on fiction and surrender to poetry. Offer to help Gretchen Fuchs find a publisher for her book. I can’t believe we won’t be successful, she’s so good. Toss pantingly bathroom.

    20 Feb 81
    My depression climaxes and I call in sick – feel like an ugly hopeless worthless slob. Housework all day until I become depressed over how ancient and broken everything is. So desperate I try prayer. The cure lies in orderliness I’m sure.

    Sun 22 Feb 81
    One cure for depression is reading my diaries – the horrors of Ryder, Devon, Jervaze. Toss so wonderful by comparison. More relief offered by Anne Sexton’s poems.

    Mon 23 Feb 81
    Feel so unequal to everything. Trying to please too many people with my writing – obvious cure: please only myself.


    T asked if I would mind him working for the govt – prosecutor or IRS. I said no – if he wasn’t bored. He said he’s never been as close to another person as he is to me – relief. I was considering myself a hopeless case. Dancing the only job where I didn’t have the fear of being “found out” because I knew I was good at it.

  • Embattled Love – the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    StormFall – 4 Aug 80


    Familiar feeling of depression. More wedding invitations – Granma’s list and Sutton’s list. Poor Sutton – I feel so sorry for him even though he jokes about missing Val: “I got rid of the last gardener I had.”


    The only bad night was engagement party – Mom and Dad chose a reel of slides and I sat there stunned at the genesis of all my stories. Ocean, lake, dolls’ cottages – happy healthy smiling people – whence comes all this pain? Dad looks at pictures of the Gryphon tooling through Europe and says, “I’d do it all again.” Would he? I wouldn’t! That pain comes from somewhere deep, deep inside me. Makes me feel like they’ve been right all along – there’s something wrong with ME. Luckily Toss backs me up – he says he “feels 13 years old” around them. Fortunately, I had one “flying high” day on Shadowe Island – with Gretchen Fuchs, the poet. Oh, her library! We soared together in a conversational ecstasy. I saw us deep in the future, two old ladies in an English garden. Talking forever. Lovely woman.


    Champagne & steamers with Sutton – then home.

    Grover’s Mill – 10 Aug 80
    Unpleasant shock in the mail today – Guilders demanding transcripts. Naïve me – I thought only the writing sample mattered for the writing program! Wait till they cock a snook at my record! Will I be exposed as an unqualified adventuress? Would it be so bad if they withdrew their offer? Then I could go someplace else – Marymount maybe. How I loooooong to be pregnant!

    StormFall – Tues 19 Aug 80
    My last entry? I absent myself from family discussions saying I’ll go to bed to read – really want to write here. Just taken my last Birth Control pill maybe EVER – only 13 pills into the packet. Feeling amorphous. Borderless. The aspirations of adolescence fading.
    What were the aspirations of adolescence? I can barely remember. To be admired, chiefly. By “others”. And now I’ve ditched the “others” and I’m alone on a vast plain – trying to steady a tipping world. Listening.


    Are inner imperatives enough for a whole self? What about love? But love is a term like “weather” – describes infinite mutability.


    Need to finish the goddam wedding maps & directions & walk them to the Post Office.

    2:15 PM – Thurs 21 Aug 80
    Period started! Shouldn’t be surprised – been having a brief period in the middle of my cycle since I started these damned pills – probably they’ve been making me sick.
    Thinking about the relationships between parents & children – how avoid the miseries? Poor Mom! She felt like a “loser”. Dangerous not believing in an “eternal force” because then all there is is YOU. To BLAME.


    Poor Mom! Preferred to housekeep alone – but wanted us to “help” when she wasn’t there – but do it “her way.” Fated to eternal disappointment!


    Wedding programs – copy the service in a book for T’s friend Bracket – the gay Baptist preacher – to use.


    Weirdly dark cold day. Shakespeare play at Edith Wharton’s tonight is open air – I just hope it doesn’t rain!


    Toss’s out driving around with Cousin Wolf in the ancient Chevy they resurrected.
    Studying the Marymount catalogue and reading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet – hadn’t realized he was so young when he wrote them! Should be called Letters FROM a Young Poet! May have to switch to Agatha Christie – she’s the sugar taken for “shock”.

    Grover’s Mill – 7 Sept 80

    A week since our wedding so this must be our honeymoon. I feel perfectly balance on a tightrope – drinking vodka & lime while studying Woolf’sBooks & Portraits, Sayers’ Mind of the Maker. Toss struggling with his additions to our thank you notes. Tomorrow off to Guilders College for a “teachers organizational meeting” so they must be sufficiently desperate if they don’t mind my lack of a degree. Should be interesting.


    Chaotic summer swallowed up by the wedding – ended up costing $7000 total. Facing winter with confidence – pregnant in 2 months! If Guilders doesn’t work out enroll in Marymount get my degree one class at a time.


    Last night we had bridesmaid Trish Lambert to dinner – husband Noah coming to lunch today – their marriage breaking up so we try to counsel. Looks hopeless – Noah chooses his pride over Trish every time – she says she’s not going back to a situation where she was made so physically ill. What was she allergic to all the doctors wanted to know? Turned out to be him.
    Try to write here more regularly. These pages are a bank account. Save, save save.

    Mon Sept 8 – 80 – Train from NYC – 4 pm
    What I thought would be a “teachers meeting” turns into a disgusting “registration” process – running from one building to another, paying fees, filling out forms – I am seriously allergic to bureaucracy and the tears are starting to leak. Feel like a person wearing an ill-fitting disguise. However, I believe I carried it off. Just act like you’re entitled and no one questions you. I just don’t want to live in this world. I doubt poor Toss caught in the maw of Beginning Law can provide much sympathy. He is dotting I’s and crossing t’s with a vengeance.


    Financial pressures create time pressures. Try to look for the meaning in all this.

    2:30 AM Sept 9 – Worry and 2 double whiskies wake me at one and I can’t get back to sleep. Tried bath & reading, nada. Toss has been magnificent. I was able to present my worries without sounding like an idiot and he was able to identify with them without being dismissive. He says his uncle Avery gives Masters to people without BAs in Environmental Studies all the time. I say I really don’t need the degree it’s the experience I want and anyway I blame Plumly. And Chevenix. They ruined me for “degrees”. He always says Plumly was “not so bad” – and of course he loved Reed but they wouldn’t even let him SEE his grades! (They show everyone else!) and he needed an extra year – but he seems to accept my Kafkaesque emotions.

    Sat 20 Sept 80 – Fortunately our weekend guest (Toss’s Reed roommate) not here yet. Cleaned & garnished house for 4 solid hours. Went shopping bought 14 meals for $60 – Toss went to Trenton then discovered he didn’t need to go. (Getting out of housework? Hmmm.)


    He put a bookcase together and filled it with books (which helped) now he’s making peach butter.
    What’s preventing me from pointing out to him that him doing all the work he LIKES and me doing all the work BOTH OF US DISLIKE is not a fair division of labor? Cowardice.


    Then there’s the problem that this is his grandparents place filled with his grandparents furniture and he doesn’t want anything “changed.” My only satisfaction if making my study a feminine as possible (painting my file cabinets yellow.)


    Reading Krumm’s Why I am an Episcopalian (he’s pro women’s ministry) and Hans Kung’s Signposts for the Future and struggling with what God I believe in. Not a subject for dinner party conversation. He will watch Presidential debate and I can opt out of that.


    22 Sept 80
    Lie in bed satisfied our entertaining’s over. It’s a “test” of our relationship to be around third parties. T always more critical of me in his anxiety that things go well – I am dreamy & slapdash by nature. Ended up watching the debate after all – much more fiery and vituperative than I expected – John Andersen an old-time preacher and Reagan sweetly vague and never finishing his sentences.

    24 Sept 80 –Waiting to counsel Rose Love (!) but looks like she isn’t going to show. Lots of them don’t. I’m not the only one having trouble with this system. Horrors! I was “observed” in class – a teacher sneaking in while I was trying to teach probationary “backward” students (I.e. unprepared) how to write an essay and feel I made an idiot of myself. I sweat & tremble – am I only “a pack of cards” or are THEY only “a pack of cards!” Basic feeling of inadequacy – these kids deserve better than me! How did I ever think I could DO this!


    Well if Rose isn’t showing up I can read Sackville-West’s magnificent Eagle & Dove.


    Very depressing meeting with advisor Ezra Brent about my novel – asked how long I’d been working on it – I said 7 years and he was HORRIFIED. WAY too long for a project so short! But I am evolving as it’s evolving I splutter. Better write about your childhood instead, he counsels.
    Of course, I can’t do that! Blah! Resolve to write a novel specially for his class – chapter a week. What interests me? Murder & nuns at present. Do I know anything about those? I admit I don’t but need to follow this trail. His obvious expression of disbelief is all the goad I need. Call it “Pinch of Death” from Shakespeare – a quote long in search of a tale to headline.

    Train to NY 1 Oct 80
    Class observer gave me a rave review! Made 4,000 copies because frankly, no one would believe it. I don’t believe it myself. Good meetings with students. Asked Brent what to do about lack of a BA – he said Do nothing yet. You are a “promising” student. I still feel uncomfortable – don’t even feel like a STUDENT. Feel bolstered up. Unfortunately, no one in fiction class likes my novel – they all think I’m “anti-modern”. I don’t like theirs either. I fire back by advising they read Krafft-Ebing – no “modernity” without him. I should have taken Carberry’s modern poetry – enjoying romantic poetry VERY much.


    Fellow student Charlene Clark is teacher at a Catholic college (working on her SECOND masters) and can give me lots of advice about nuns.


    I got a letter saying I am a member of the faculty so I get a 10% discount at the bookstore!!! They also have a very respectable library. Reading CS Lewis’s Letters to an American Lady. I CHERISHED his Letters to Malcolm. But 4 Loves very rough going. His anti-feminism somewhat mitigated by his late marriage. He was dragged into that the same way he was dragged into Christianity – kicking and screaming – “the sorriest convert you ever saw.” Interested in his “shameful” relationship with Mrs. Moore. Krafft-Ebing anyone?


    Experimenting with prayer but it feels very unnatural. I like the mystic’s stillness – make yourself empty and “fill up.” Any kind of “intellectual direction” feels wrong.

  • Film Review: The Crown VS Saltburn

    Film Review – Scammers Get Scammed – Saltburn VS The Crown

    Well, it’s finally happened – The Crown has fallen in love with its subjects and a syrupy lot of over-privileged spoiled babies they are. When the nausea rises to projectile-vomiting level, try Saltburn, Emerald Fennell’s revenge on all twits everywhere.

    There’s an obvious reason Fennell can’t call this new enterprise Promising Young Man to remind us of her magnificent first outing, Promising Young Woman ,because its subject, Oliver Quick, is pure evil. And that, of course, is the problem with this movie. If there’s anything more sickening than the self-confident blathering of nitwits, it’s the triumph of evil. No thanks! Sadly, it ruins the film because it “jumps the shark” into unbelievability. The twits certainly can become silly enough to be overtaken by the more intelligent but the sad truth of reality is, there’s always someone smarter and meaner coming along.

    One of my great pleasures, as a Plot Maven, is re-writing bad endings and Saltburn’s is easy. Aristocrats of the Saltburn type are surrounded by servants whom they vigorously try not to see. But the servants see them. Try Joseph Losey’s magnificent The Servant as a helpful restorative.

  • Film Review – “Stoker” by Alysse Aallyn

    Stoker – Arche-tripe

    Stoker’s screenplay started out as fan-fiction to Alfred Hitchcock’s much more enjoyable Shadow of a Doubt, which has a moral center, plus victims we care about and characters we can root for.

    Stoker has a good, even beautiful movie buried in it but park Chan-Wook kept messing it up, very deliberately, probably under the pressure (and pleasure) of his personal fetishes. It starts WONDERFULLY – psychologically interesting, visually compelling, achieving an apotheosis of eidetic perfection hen a shot of hair dissolves into quivering grasses but jumps the shark on story sanity. Anyone who want to write about crime (and criminal psychology) need to STUDY it carefully or they risk sounding like nine year old girls guessing about sex – majorly clueless and missing all the real points – ultimately creating an uninteresting world too obviously made up.

    Subjects like mental illness, spies, the foreign service, rituals of different countries, etc., can’t be persuasively invented, and threadbare simulacrums relentlessly reveal unpleasant truths about immature people who just don’t want their fantasies interrupted.

    I used to write fantasies, too, until I began an in-depth study of crime. It changed what I wrote, how I think about the world, even how I live my life. Devlyn is a fantasy – but Find Courtney can actually happen. (Versions of it already have.) This is the reason I usually don’t like sci fi. It is possible to completely make up a world – for example Alice in Wonderland – but if it doesn’t satirize the rules of the real one it collapses like a bad soufflé. Michelangelo felt he couldn’t create a credible physicality of angels without studying dead bodies in morgues.

    I understand that in Stoker our “Oldboy” doesn’t want to be “bothered” by all that stuff – he’s an “artist” who wants to create visual poetry so hypnotic it gets away with breaking the rules and it almost works! But by the end of the film real life insistently intrudes with its message that the “impossible” is ultimately boring.

    The acting in Stoker is very good – especially Matthew Goode who seemed creepily young and was almost perfect – he would have BEEN perfect if the director had allowed him to be a little less vampiric and a little less “ka-razy” and a little more human. That would have made him more appealingly believable. But of course everyone has to submit to becoming an “archetype” to satisfy this director. India Stoker’s amoral, murderous sexuality has been a fetish for middle-aged men seeking to relieve their guilt (and excuse their behavior) for literally HUNDREDS of years. “Some girls” don’t have “proper feelings” so can be ruthlessly used and heartlessly exterminated.

    Poor Mia Wasikowska! I have admired her ever since In Treatment with Gabriel Byrne – she deserves better. That said, I have to admit a personal failing – Nicole Kidman’s frozen weirdness always gets my back up. I have been rolling my eyes over her rigidity since Cold Mountain.

    Mostly I feel sorry for actors who are talked into limiting the range of their gifts by these visual directors who set out to make a cohesive, visually stunning objet d’art, not a complex story about humans. As proud professionals they know how to give the director what he wants, thereby betraying their actual abilities which could create something much more intriguing, provocative and mentally long-lasting.

    I watch a fair amount of crime and it’s always entertaining for me to speculate about how people could have gotten away with it. In this case, easily with a modicum of adulthood & sanity which seemingly bores our first-time scriptwriter (Wentworth Miller) who needs to be more “in your face”. Too bad. But I did enjoy seeing it because I relish being given a puzzle mistakenly assembled – in my view. Then I have the mental fun of putting it together more effectively myself – an amusing occupation for a winter afternoon Ah.

  • Devoured Heart – romantic suspense by Alysse Aallyn

    Chapter 44. A New Life

    Candi admitted everything. According to the newspapers, who disclosed much more than the police, “Scorned Girlfriend Plots to Confront Wife.” Candi admitted only that her plan was to “get the truth out of Scarlet,” but Miss Bottomley started screaming when Candi entered the house – “I couldn’t shut her up and I just panicked.”


    Mrs. Pourfoyle was indicted for “Malice Murder” – a capital offense. The murder weapon – brought by Candi all the way up from Wyvern House – was a table leg she wielded as a club.

    Candi’s husband David announced he was standing by her. “Husband Claims Home-wrecking Cad Manipulated Lovelorn Girl.”


    Was Ian the one who really wanted Scarlet dead? That was David’s argument! Would Ian be indicted? And how long would the generous, the fantastical, the life-altering disposition of Miss Bottomley’s estate remain private knowledge?


    For these reasons and many more it was no surprise to receive a call from Scarlet’s solicitor, Pelham D’Arcy.


    “Ian agrees to sign the divorce agreement we propose, without changes.”


    “Well, that’s a relief.” Scarlet sighed.


    “He’s worried about being indicted for “transferred malice murder.”


    “You mean they think he suggested killing me to Candi? I’ll never believe that.”


    “The press is painting him as a lady-killer. He’s concerned about losing his job. A quick divorce removes his motive and makes him an eligible bachelor.”


    Eligible Ian. Didn’t women flock to “lady-killers”, no matter what devastating facts they knew? Perhaps, thought Scarlet with her newly-acquired cynicism, they flocked BECAUSE of the “devastating facts.” Doesn’t every woman long to reform a roué? Horribly, I did, thought Scarlet. I fell for that. But she was a different person now. Still, the world thronged with eager victims. Ian wouldn’t be alone for long.


    “When’s he going to sign?”


    “It’s contingent on meeting you alone. I told them it would have to be at our offices.”


    “All right. Let’s get it over with.”


    “I suggest you wear your police whistle.”


    Could Pelham be serious? Surely Ian wouldn’t try anything violent – but she knew he would expect to physically touch her and she shrank from the thought. She knew him that well.


    “Is that a serious suggestion?”


    “I’m very serious. If you don’t bring it, we’ll have to bell you like a cat.”


    “I’m sure Enid will let me borrow it. If he signs, then where are we?”


    “Then we get a decree nisi, which is provisional for one year. They usually rush these things through to get it out of the papers but it depends on the judge. Every now and then you get a Huey.”


    “What’s that?”


    “It’s Bob’s and my shorthand for an impossible judge. I must say the publicity makes this very unlikely.”


    “Why’s that?”


    “It’s an open secret that everyone hates our divorce laws. Literally everyone. They’re just on the verge of either breakdown or reform.”


    Scarlet shuddered. So many things you didn’t think of when you stood before the altar, wide-eyed and innocent!


    “I’ll bring the whistle,” she promised.


    She took care to wear it well-concealed. No point red-ragging Ian. She had never figured out his level of self-control. Was everything he did well-planned, or was he ruled by a raging id? Well, thought Scarlet, I don’t care. I don’t have to care. She imagined a future of trying to explain to Nick why Daddy did the things he did. Why he wasn’t like Pom. Adorable, sensitive, reliable Pom, who talked things out, who listened, who cared. Who changed, day by day, evolving to love better. To live better.


    Ian looked different. Older, battered, his eyes bloodshot. Scarlet thought she smelled whisky underneath the cigarettes. Was he drinking every morning now, or was it just because he was seeing her? His suit hung on him in a peculiar manner, as if he had given up on any real nourishment. He and his solicitor, Mr. Jellicoe, whose suit also was ill-fitting, could have been a vaudeville act – one so fat and the other starving-lean. Then again, perhaps Ian just wanted Scarlet to feel sorry for him.


    Mr. Jellicoe seemed very obliging and impressed by his surroundings. He shook damp hands all around.


    Ian looked at Scarlet with deep hunger. I’m the one who “got away”, she thought. The only one. She was glad of the whistle.


    They were guided to the Partners’ Room. At ten in the morning, no sherry was on offer. Ian refused everything, even water. Scarlet accepted a cup of tea to have something to do with her hands, until she noticed they were trembling. Then she set her teacup down hastily.


    Pelham made a point of seating them at opposite ends of the table. He closed the door softly.
    Ian began. “Scarlet, I want to let you know how sorry I am.”


    He waited for a moment as if to allow her to speak. But what could she say? She had already decided there was no point in being accusatory. When he was her ex-husband and the “occasional” father of her child perhaps they could concoct a relationship. At the moment, the situation was hopelessly fraught.


    He spoke again as if covering her silence. “I never guessed…what she’d do. I didn’t listen to her natterings.”


    There went her resolve about accusations. She was just too angry. The words boiled out of her.
    “You treated her like a joke, but the joke is on every one of us. Poor Candi wanted to be treated like a wife without realizing how cruel you are when you’re sure of someone. You ignore them, you devalue them. You fobbed her off with lies while you went your smug and merry way. I think you secretly enjoyed making her crazy. I think you wanted to see just how crazy she would get. Makes it easier to get rid of them, doesn’t it?”


    She half-expected him to fire up or at least smile that he’d gotten her goat but he hung his head like a shamed schoolboy. Scarlet struggled to contain herself. After a moment, he spoke.


    “Don’t compare yourself with her. You’re nothing like.”


    She could see the oil bubbling beneath his surface. Planning, planning, all along. He schemed to flatter her, fawn on her, throw himself on her mercy. He was testing, testing, for any way in. She should never have bothered giving him her honesty. It was all a game with Ian, and any game with Ian was just too dangerous. She summed up as best she could, “No one likes being lied to. A word of advice: it torpedoes relationships.”


    He rose.


    “You’re right, I’m wrong. I managed everything badly. I want to turn over a new leaf.”


    She rose as well, feeling a bit panicky. Was he planning to chase her around the table?


    “There’s Nick,” she said finally.


    “Of course, there’s Nick. But we won’t be together – with him – all the time.”


    Creepy! We’ll never be together with him at all. If I can help it. She summoned up her strength.
    “I don’t see that. I’m afraid we have little in common.”


    “How can that be? Don’t you remember the two young Oxford students working on St. Euphrosyne, with all our hopes and dreams and ambitions?”


    “I do,” she said. “I thought you didn’t.”


    He seemed calculating as to whether he could to rush her. He leaned forward, light on his feet.

    She pulled out the police whistle.


    At the sight of it he sat down heavily and put his head on the table.


    “Oh, Scarlet, Scarlet.” He began to weep.


    She felt stunned. She had never seen him cry. She was surprised it was even possible. Could he be faking this? Then she suddenly realized with a flash of insight that, from her point of view, the problem wasn’t that his emotions were false, but that they were ephemeral.


    “I’m sorry, too.” She advanced toward the door. “Haven’t we said everything?”


    He looked up, tear-streaked. “Do you hate me?”


    She was startled. She had hated him. That feeling was ephemeral. “No.”


    “Will you tell Nick to hate me?”


    Now she felt irked. “Of course not.”


    He gazed at her slyly.


    “Aren’t you afraid he’ll look on me as the fun dad, the devil-may-care seducer who knows how to get whatever he wants?”


    He’d been arguing inside his own head, cruelly mimicking her voice.


    “I’ll take my chances.” Nick would know Pom. He could choose; trustworthy love or untrustworthy disappointment. Choice – once well-informed – is up to each of us.


    “I’m forgiven?”


    This was strange. Odd word from a self-confessed unbeliever. The trial hadn’t even been held. Was he planning to call her as a character witness?


    “Not yet,” she said briskly. “You haven’t signed this document.”


    She put a hand on the doorknob. “Aren’t we done here?”


    He seemed almost confused, as if she’d spoke an unknown language. He rose awkwardly, holding out his hand. He had the sense to say nothing.


    She took his hand slowly and he immediately grasped it with his other one, as if he wanted her to feel his strength.


    She realized she just didn’t like the man.


    She turned away. She wrenched her hand back and, very unwillingly, he let it go and picked up the pen.


    Then she opened the door upon her new world.