MORE THAN A LITTLE TAKEN

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

A journal which is not kept with a desire, even a secret one, toward publication is the surest revelation of the inner mind. That of Vivian Ahern, from which excerpts are now available dealing with a visit to her first serious boyfriend’s parents’ home in Minneapolis almost a half-century ago, seems to fulfill the necessary conditions. It was written hastily, in a blank book sheathed in a handmade cover of plain brown paper, and then forgotten in a desk drawer, until it was discovered after her death by her daughter and brought out into the light. In it, we can fairly expect to find the honest reflections of an educated, opinionated, and (if we are to be honest) at times difficult mind upon the manners and customs of an average Minneapolis family. Readers will enjoy the sharp observations in this first set, as when Ahern retails the first moment of stepping inside her boyfriend’s parents’ house (where she did not find “a table set with a giant pig, apple still in mouth,” as she had feared) and the first, somewhat glacial dinner conversation, filled with “Midwestern lacunae broken only by Midwestern stammers.” That her judgment is always sound is by no means the case. History belied her assurance that “this boy, Arthur, will be my one and only; for all my outward cynicism and occasionally harsh tone, I love him and him alone, and cannot imagine another man ever unbuttoning a garment and putting me flat as a horizon, sunlight rising up.” In fact, history belied it several times through the decade following the Minneapolis visit; Ahern famously conducted affairs with such neighbors and co-workers as Neil Kapper, Howard L’Agostino, and even Catherine Garrick before returning to Arthur, marrying him, and starting a family. And a better acquaintance with the realities of emotional demographics would have kept her from reflecting that “for all my making sport of this place, I am more than a little taken with it, and would not mind setting down here and living within walking distance of Arthur’s parents.”  Indeed, there is reason to believe that she changed her mind on this point even before the end of her visit. The final extract from this initial batch ends with a touching rumination on age: “I see Arthur young and imagine him old, imagining me old, and everything will have changed but the look in our eyes.”