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.”
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Alysse Aallyn
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