5:30 PM Fri Nov 26 -82
Dad announces he will give me $6000 of my stock but I can print his kid’s book out of that money! Never mind that it’s not really going to be $6000 – never mind that I am going to have to pay for his book – this is a substantial help to us right now and there really is no other way to GET the money since he is “trustee”. (Which he hated when HE had a trustee! He disguised Mom’s college bills as “dental expenses” to get HIS trustee to disburse! ) I can get a printing press for $700! Current problem: how to live like a poor person in the lap of rich people. 8 pm – Determined to end this struggle with T. He is such a beloved. All this anxiety about entertaining & money – I am just going to drop out of it. Marriage seems to be a cage in which one is “trapped” into giving an endless supply of “love” – milked like a cow. Clearly nonsensical! We have to say yes each time – if we can break the ice bond. My dissatisfaction treated as treason. Yet I certainly have a say in how we live! Simplify, simplify. T says there’s a press in the barn with type case – we are going to look at it to see what can be salvaged. Reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I like the right brain sense of endlessness – timelessness. When I get to the part about the childhood of an artist I feel myself come alive. Makes me want to take out books on children’s art. My parents saw me as a scary ocean of need of rechannelling. Not to make the same mistakes with S. 1 Dec 82– An exquisite day. Many phone calls about binding systems. T. wants to do it in the barn with wire & glue & rocks – I prefer a more modern method. The key is to be able to produce volumes instantly to match demand. T’s reaction is interesting – if I can step back from it. If I can’t I’m looking at cardiac arrest. No one in his family has any concept of how to be supportive It’s always competing ideas – even if its as pathetic as “I haven’t done any research yet because I’m too busy but if I did I’m sure I’d find a better idea than that!” It REALLY makes me want to withdraw MY support from HIS crazy ideas!!! He’d better learn how because I’m not going to stand by while he attacks & humiliates S – if he has to “learn” on me that’s OK. But I demand progress. At dinner I reminded T that my last batch of Corning paid off his margin call. He had “forgotten”. We’re down to our last $600 now. Let him worry about it says Granma. T. said he is utterly committed to my health, happiness & welfare. I had to point out that his actions say different. When I was so depressed I was borderline suicidal he did nothing and now that I’m happy & excited all he wants to apply is brakes. He wants to make me dependent on him – overworked as he is – to “come up” with a binding system. No thanks. I’ll do it. Shane is glorious, peaceful, sweet – brain expanding visibly like a sponge in water. Fri 3 Dec 82 – I hate to report – bad day. T and I fought on the way to Trenton – he got out of the car so angry he didn’t kiss me goodbye. I cried. But I always feel better after I share my feelings even if he doesn’t want to share them. Maybe I should struggle on alone. It’s what he seems to want. I explain no parties, entertaining for awhile – I am going into hibernation. T. takes an adversary position on everything – then denies we even had the conversation. Am I crazy or is he? Guess what? It’s him. He keeps dragging in entirely mythical beings – “the neighbors” - “girls I might have married” – “other men might say” . How about what WE think & feel & are trying to achieve? He ADORES tending S an hour a day – then he’s done! He thinks what I do is no biggie. Toss stayed home yesterday – the day I was going to work on my novel – using my typewriter, having me do things for him and complaining all the while that he doesn’t have a legal secretary to “show him the ropes.” If that doesn’t tell you all you need to know about the male/female differential you ain’t listening. Noon – 30 Nov 82 Most interesting AM watching salesman’s ThermaBind presentation. I am passionately in love with this system because it has the flexibility I require. Feel like I am setting out on a great odyssey here – learning how to be a flexible independent dependent… T’s atmosphere = crisis and frenzy (one day to file his amended complaint.) I must have serenity. I want harmony between us. Overwhelming similarities between T & M & D – not an accident…Pity he screams with wrath over every one of my ideas. I would rather work alone. He asked me what I want for my birthday. I said for him to do the dishes occasionally. The more fool me. 5 pm – Wrote a sobbing shrieking letter to T; a long catalogue of masculine idiocies & betrayals. I was upset by the religious fanatic who spanked his 2 yr old to death last week. The sins of the fathers are ENDLESS all from “being right.” Won’t send it. I was stopped by Mom’s story about Granny who always said she had “earned” their love. Mom said no one “earns” love! Instead I wrote the poem: “In photographs the ladies scream or laugh”. Confrontation In photographs The ladies scream or laugh It’s hard to tell Heads back they bare their grief In ecstasies of joy or Agonized relief It’s hard to tell. All that remains of them These withered icons growing ever dim. In that first winter When we thought the world was dead Cold crystal splintered up the sky In shafts; dogs barked We heard the devils laugh But stars came out The soil sprouts grain We saw the statues Move and speak again. The fountains of our fear Leap high at first, like dancers Frozen at first burst Of freedom Paralyzed abreast the arc We can’t see what These abstruse sign were meant to be. Somewhere a fetus twists and jerks Assemblage of dynastic quirks Waiting out this cycle’s spiral Pull to kingdom come. For nothing vain this world is born To bleed again. Lost in deep, deep prayer. So excited to find a copy of A Grief Observedat The Lamplighter. Read it while the baby sleeps.
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Noon 16 Nov 82
Sent Shane off for 2 hrs with Nancy while I work on Falsetto. Thank God. But instead I waste my time arguing with T. T says L’s going to pay his $3,000 debt to the bank in lieu of the salary she promised him. I say we can’t go on living here and it isn’t free. He can’t see how L is manipulating him. I talked him into at least a couple of days a week at Granma’s – she wants to help and she needs the help. Unfortunately L see her as her bitter enemy. 8:30 PM– QED Corresp – check – an hour’s cleaning in kitchen. Check. 9:30 AM Fri 19 Nov 82 Poor T feels so awful, so valueless right now. He keeps pouring money into this place without any appreciation from You Know Who. She had dinner here last night – me determined not to kowtow. T neds to be able to step back and LOOK, not fall victim to The Family Disease. T. promised me half a day today – he’ll be here by 1:15. He wants to drive to Lambertville to look up some court docs for our car mechanic, return some pipe & negotiate for a chainsaw. Tonight he & L have a pond committee meeting (trying to save Grovers’ Mill Pond) that at least is worth doing. There’s another mtg Dec 2. Starting to think Lois may be actually evil. She is fake fake fake. Good conversation with Dad when I offer to edit & print his kid’s book. 9:30 AM – Sat 19 Nov 82 Finished Ellen Goodman’s Turning Points. Interested in the questions they DON’T ask. They see themselves placed in the century, but how about eternity? What do we do if God speaks. Judging by the NT we wouldn’t even recognize it. Good talk with T last night – even though he was trying to argue me out of GC. “Why don’t you go to Princeton? You have a good brain.” (I actually don’t have THAT kind of “good brain.”) I pointed out Princeton doesn’t take part-time students (which is automatically cruel & unusual.) He says why not go full-time? Because I want BALANCE in my life. (Not that they’d have me.) I tried to get him to see that his snobbism is PUNISHING HIM. I need to rescue this man. He woke up at 3:30 and worked in the kitchen till 6 because he felt guilty about not helping with housework – but as soon as he makes breakfast it’s all a mess again! Mon 22 Nov 82 Up against the problem of forgiveness. Granma scotches our current plan and T frantically disassociates himself from it. He can’t admit things aren’t going well with Faircross: “I might need her to invest!” So Granma hears a “marriage division idea” where she is being asked to side with ME against her grandson! Guess what she said! So THAT exit’s been sealed! Then Granma challenged the very idea of my going to school: why do I need a job? Do volunteer work like she does! I got a long lecture during which T not only DID NOT HELP (he wants me to work more than I do) he heaped a spare coal or two on my head when the diatribe showed signs of winding down: “Alysse thinks in absolutes!” Granma then told the most hilarious story about all the difficulties at the start of her marriage when her husband had no patients and SHE was absorbed in “dishes and diapers.” (She had a staff of six NOT COUNTING the chauffeur.) Some country doctor referred a few patients to Dr. Sheffield and he had to have the chauffeur drive him ALL THE WAY OUT THERE. Now, really! I tried to explain some of our financial problems but T just denied the whole thing and Granma said “Let Toss worry about it.” Not once did he defend anything about me; in fact, when I staggered upstairs he told Granma I was “unhinged” by the cavalier treatment I’d received from editors & agents! So now I’m in the position of having to watch this whole thing fail – presumably so I can have the hollow victory of “I told you so.” (They’ll still be mad I didn’t save them. “You WANTED us to fail.”) In the car T pleads the Racehorse Haines defense; he didn’t say It and if he did say it he didn’t mean it! Women are supposed to make their husbands look good and to hell with their sense of self worth or pride. He’s mad at me because Granma DID offer him money, but in the most humiliating way! She could add him to her list of Supported Hangers On! Of course he had to reject THAT and it’s MY FAULT that avenue got closed. Granma annoyed that she lost the chance to gang up on Lois! I naively never thought it could get this bad. And yet I “forgive” T – automatically and instantaneously – because he’s just scared and lying. It’s rarer NOT to throw your beloved out of the boat the minute your ego’s threatened – it’s a reflex! I’m not superior enough to “forgive” him. I am considering demanding marriage counseling so we can just get some agreement on the way we talk in front of others. Shouldn’t there be rules? But do I want to put our time & money there when lack of both is a large part of what’s killing us? I feel neatly caught in a cleft stick. I think I have to really study T and find out who he really is separated from my fantasies about him. He commits lip service to justice: what does that mean? I actually feel he’s been possessed by a demon. First he was “possessed” by me, now he’s “possessed” by his mother. Maybe someday he’ll be possessed by himself – if we can figure out who that is. I think if you have no concept of Eternal Love you are forced to carry around all your sins forever – have to close your “moral pores” eventually in sheer self-protection. T. said I was a “cheap conniving, slovenly slattern and a groveler.” So when we got home I stomped upstairs whereupon T threw himself on the floor sobbing that if I refused to cook his dinner he had nothing left to live for. Might as well blow his brains out! (He has a rifle, too.) I think they’re a whole family of moral barbarians. So I heated up some soup for the father of my child. Then last night he dreamed that we were driving and I kept saying we were in danger so we stopped the car to investigate and found we were on the edge of a cliff! He knows I’m right! I dreamed about a monster pile of shit that would NOT go down the toilet. Obviously I have to stop worrying about HIM and start thinking about ME! #1 is to stop doing all the money grubbing pursuits I don’t enjoy. Oooooo! Excited over the prospect of disconnecting the phone in the AM! #2 step back out of family junk. It is the Wife’s Christian Duty to Suffer Fools Gladly – fools usually interprets as relatives – Why? I refuse to patch and lubricate their spiderweb any more. It occurs to me that T feels about me the way I feel about Shane – insane with love also fears of imprisonment. Trying to be honest about our mutual sense of betrayal. “We shall overcome.” |
Alysse Aallyn
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