Your Own, Sylvia
Page 12
white, nests into her home.
She tells me Ted often stops by.
Her voice on the phone tight as a fist
when she intones his name. She tells me
she is not alone. She has friends.
But I hear in her voice a hollow,
solitary note. A quiet cry for help
beyond what I'm able to provide.
Susan O'Neill Roe attended nursing school in January 1963 in London. Susan and her boyfriend, Corin Hughes-Stanton, treated Sylvia to the movies in mid-January.
At the Zoo
Ted Hughes
December 12, 1962
I pick Sylvia and Frieda and Nick
up from the Fitzroy Road flat,
steer Nicholas's pram
over to the London Zoo.
Frieda hunches over, scratches
her armpits in front of the ape house.
I storm her, the daddy gorilla,
hoot in front of the glass cage.
Sylvia's eyes burn crimson,
no tears, but she looks like she might cry.
We play family. Sylvia dances, then fumes.
One moment her hand on the pushchair
with mine, the next she jerks it away
and refuses to speak to me.
Mad as a feral cat caught in a trap,
she straightens Nick's stocking hat,
looks up at me. Frieda kicks, perched
on top of my shoulders. And then I see it,
desire floods Sylvia's cheeks.
Alvarez warned me about Sylvia's desperate
wish for reconciliation.
Like a burned-out bulb, she tries
but can't flash light. Her need flickers,
betrays her safety-pinned lips.
In part of her introduction to Letters Home, Aurelia offers that in letters and phone calls Sylvia conveyed to her that she was both furious with Ted and wanted a reconciliation. It is unclear what the actual legal status of her marriage/separation/ divorce with Ted was at this time and up until Sylvia's death. In a letter to her mother dated October 12, 1962, Sylvia writes, “… Ted does want the divorce, thank goodness, so it shouldn't be difficult.” And according to Clement Moore (Warren's friend and old roommate at Exeter), in Butscher's Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness, Moore's stepfather called Sylvia in late October to make sure that Sylvia had legal advice, and at that time a formal divorce was presumably planned. No paperwork has surfaced pertaining to the divorce.
Ted was with Assia in December 1962 but was also dating a few models. By most accounts both Ted and Sylvia considered themselves legally separated.
Temptation
A. Alvarez, poetry editor of the Observer
December 1962
She visits my studio Thursday afternoons
the last couple months. She fills her
cocktail glass a few too many times,
crouches on the red carpet,
smokes her cigarettes
without inhaling, a neophyte
to the art. Eventually, she opens
her black portfolio and reads her work.
Languorous, deliberate, her words
ax and burn. They sound
smooth and pointed, icicles
on the roof's ledge.
Sylvia drops tears from the edge,
I am mesmerized by her.
But she mistakes admiration
for something more,
places her hand on my inner thigh,
tests how warm my water runs.
I don't tell her that I'm loyal
to friends, or that I have met
a new woman who stops my pulse.
I just ignore Sylvia's unspoken proposal,
play ignorant. I long,
like a moth, to fly
from Sylvia's space,
out the glass window. But I hit
the pane, bounce back into the room,
summoned by the light of her poetry.
I circle her beacon voice.
I can't help myself. She is that
raw, that good—her bold bee
series dazzles.
The poem she reads today,
“Daddy,” breaks me apart
like eggshell. It's obvious
that Ted shattered Sylvia,
that she'll never be whole again,
that he played her daddy, let her down
hard as stone. I refuse to involve myself
in the muck of their affair.
I sip my bourbon, keep my hands
folded over my lap,
and try not to look at her
full red lips.
Sylvia probably considered the “Bee” poems her best work, placing them near the end of Ariel. If the importance of the “Bee” sequence was once overlooked, it may be partly because Hughes moved the poems to the middle of Ariel when he put together his version for the book's initial publication. Sylvia wrote the five “Bee” poems between October 3 and October 9, 1963, during the breakup of her marriage.
The “Bee” poems are connected not only by their subject matter, but also by their five-line stanza pattern. They deal with Sylvia's father and Sylvia's ascendance as her family's queen bee, but also with the relationship between the poems' narrator and her world.
Professor Karen Ford of the University of Oregon explains: “The sequence moves from community, in ‘The Bee Meeting,’ to solitude, in ‘Wintering,’ as the speaker settles her relations with others and with her own former selves.”
Inconsiderate
Trevor Thomas, Sylvia's downstairs neighbor at Fitzroy Road December 1962
Ill and ill-mannered,
she stole the second-floor flat
from me and my sons
with her green American dollars.
I implore her thrice to keep
the entranceway clean, not clogged
with baby toys and debris.
I know she stuffs my bin with her rubbish.
Under her breath she calls me ill-tempered.
The hall is not a garage, I say to her.
If she finds me unkind for pointing this out,
then her manners need mending.
What kind of mother taught her
to abuse her neighbors like this—taught her
to be a rude American, thinking a smile
and a plea will get her out of anything.
Trevor Thomas was an artist who worked as a fine arts editor at the Gordon Fraser Gallery. Trevor was divorced and the father of two sons. He had wanted to move into the upper flat, but Sylvia offered more money and beat him out. Relations between Trevor Thomas and Sylvia improved somewhat when he discovered that she was Sylvia Plath, the poet. Also, as Sylvia slipped further into depression and despair, Trevor softened and took pity on her.
Victoria Lucas
Trevor Thomas, Sylvia's downstairs neighbor at Fitzroy Road January 1963
A strange bird, a regular
toucan. When she refuses
to answer the front bell,
I howl wind and wolf up the stairs.
She flies open the door,
yells louder than any polite woman,
“Can't you see I'm ill? I want to see
no one. I have so much to do.”
A few days later, Sylvia pounds
on my door. I see her through
the peephole and almost pretend
to be away, but she's crying.
My heart's no boulder, so I unlatch
the door. She melts onto the sofa.
She says she's going to die,
and who will mind the children?
She blubbers and fumes, gives me
a blushworthy account
of her marriage's dissolve.
Her anger smokes the parlor,
“That awful woman, that Jezebel.
” Sylvia steams, blames them both.
I stare at the grandfather clock
behind her head, wonder how
many minutes more this will last,
what excuse I might proffer
to escape? Sylvia flips open
the Observer, points to a poem
her husband wrote, then to a review
of a new book, The Bell Jar.
Mrs. Hughes claims she wrote it
under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas.
The name was all Ted. Victoria for Ted's
favorite cousin, Vicky Farrar, and Lucas
for that bastard friend of Ted's, Lucas Myers.
Lucas never did like her, never gave her
a chance. She rocks on the davenport,
whispers that her name
is Sylvia Plath. I choke on my tea—
I recognize that byline—
who knew that Mrs. Hughes was Miss Plath?
I digest this as she bursts tear balloons,
shivers and quakes on my sofa.
She is a curious bird indeed—
a cuckoo, a dodo, a peacock
just now fanning open her feathers.
She looks entirely different to me
now. I reach out and touch her hand.
This incident is recorded in the unpublished memoirs of Trevor Thomas and in Paul Alexander's Rough Magic.
Apparition at Window
Valerie St. Johnson, across-the-street neighbor,
her son plays with Frieda and Nick
January 1963
She stands, no motion
in her limbs, looking for him.
Hours before he comes,
hours after he leaves.
He haunts her. His dark figure
turns the corner of her
mind black and blank. He
freezes her feet to the floor.
He disappears. Her
husband, black-scarved. She
starves for him. Perhaps I should
say something to her, but
what? Ask her to step
away from the window, stop
longing for a ghost?
Valerie St. Johnson's account can be found in Paul Alexander's Rough Magic and is based on his interview with the St. Johnsons.
Friends who were close to both Ted and Sylvia generally tried to not actively take sides during the separation. But from most accounts, those who came in contact with Sylvia during this time felt sympathy for her and her predicament.
Letter for the Future
Aurelia Plath
February 4, 1963
Sivvy catalogs
her future, writes that friends will
visit, and she has
summer travel plans,
work on the BBC. She
admits she's grim as
London rain. That her
marriage is dead as winter trees.
But I dare not fret,
Dr. Horder found
her a therapist, prescribed
her new pills. Things will
improve. By spring we'll
giggle over this winter's
cold. Things will be fine.
I balance myself, one
hand on the frosty windowpane.
Something in Sivvy's letter
knocks out my breath.
My lungs can't hold air, my exhales
don't register on the window's glass.
The letter dated February 4, 1963, is the last included in Letters Home. While not exactly chipper, the letter does discuss Sylvia's plans for the next several months as though things were improving for her. The letter ends: “I am going to start seeing a woman doctor, which should help me weather this difficult time. Give my love to all. Sivvy.”
Breaking Point
Sylvia's London au pair
February 1963
Crazy, that's what she is,
knocks me down
with the back of her hand,
demands I leave
without goodbye to the little ones,
without my pay.
Oh, she'll regret it,
that Mrs. Hughes. She thinks
I do nothing.
She'll see
when her hands are deep
in nappies,
her fingers frozen by
the faucet's cold drip.
She'll see all I do for her.
She rings me,
begs me to return.
Please, she needs help.
True as night
she needs help,
but she'll not get it from me,
she can drive herself
straight to hell
as far as I'm concerned.
Sylvia told two separate stories about this incident with the au pair; one was that the au pair quit for no reason, and the second was that Sylvia fired the au pair because she had left the children alone. Sylvia related the incident in which she refused to pay the au pair and assaulted her to her friend Jillian Becker.
Dysfunction
Jillian Becker, a writer and friend of Sylvia's
February 8, 1963
Hysterical at
my doorstep, no coats on the
children. No clothes, no
bottles. She melts, hands
me little Nick, will I help
her, watch them, she's sick,
she can't eat or sleep.
The children will die. Please help,
please let her lie down.
I tuck her in like
a child, wait until the
pills carry her off
to sleep, to Lethe, past
the kill hours, the clock just
before dawn. Sleep saves
her, she gorges my
toast and eggs. Frieda tugs at
her sleeve. But Syl can't
see her. I phone Syl's
doctor, what should I do? He
says there are no beds
in the hospital—
that she is wait-listed, that
I should force her to
care for her children,
that her love for them will save
Sylvia. But when
I hand her Nick, the
nipple in his mouth, Syl drops
the bottle, glass shards
the tile. Nick in tears.
Frieda bites her thumb. My kids
retreat, silenced. They
puzzle over this
woman of cardboard, too weak
to feed her baby.
Now I need help, my
husband at work, my floor drenched
with spilled milk. My hands
shake. I don't know how
to help her. She asks me to
fetch her party dress.
She has a date that
night, don't wait up for her. She
takes the keys. She's gone!
Jillian Becker wrote a book about Sylvia's final few days called Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath.
Saturday Night
Ted Hughes
February 9, 1963
Was I dreaming, did
Sylvia meet me dressed
in her silver skirt, curled
hair, lips righteous red
with the stain of her blood?
Did she bite my neck,
ask to start over
like that day she first
drew my blood?
Did I tell her
that Assia is pregnant?
Did I tell Sylvia
that I no longer loved her,
that she'd best move on?
Or did I enter her flat,
remove my soaked scarf,
and ask about Frieda and Nick?
Did Syl say she
had an engagement
and had to depart
as she examined my face
and her hand hovered
above my thigh?
Why did we meet? What did I
say? Where was the woman
I once called wife?
Did I whisper to a ghost?
&nbs
p; Did I even see Sylvia at all?
Purportedly, Assia miscarried the child she was carrying at this time. Other accounts claim that she had an abortion shortly after Sylvia's death. This night was the last time Ted saw Sylvia alive.
Taxi Driver
Gerry Becker, friend of Sylvia's, Jillian's husband
February 10, 1963
I slide into my donkey jacket,
adjust my fur hat, tie a butcher's
apron round my waist to protect
my clothes from the unwanted grease
of the steering wheel. I tuck
Sylvia, Frieda, and Nick into the backseat,
plant their meager bags at their feet.
This is what I do,
shuttle people place to place,
amuse them with friendly talk,
point out local sites of interest.
The glass between front and backseat
is thick, but cracked today,
so the kids feel more heat.
The twenty-mile drive is silent
as snow. But when I pause
at a red light, muffled over
the rough engine rumble I hear her,
weep and weep and weep.
I tell myself I am not a zookeeper,
no tamer of wild things.
Drivers don't ask why, you know,
we just take you where you want to go.
But Sylvia is my friend,
not a fare.
I pull the black cab over,
open the passenger door. The bitter wind
is a knife, but Sylvia doesn't flinch.
Her hands barely keep her head
from falling through the floorboards.
The little ones erupt into crying,
tears hard as diamonds.
I hold them on my knees,
plead with Sylvia, “Let me
take you back home with me.”
She snaps out of her trance,
out of her teary-eyed jag.
She is resolved to return home,
says Jillian, and I have been more
than gracious. Our Irish nurse, Phyllis,
has tended Frieda and Nicholas long enough,
tonight they need their own beds.
I return to my position
as chauffeur. When we arrive
at the Fitzroy Road flat,
Nick snores soundly. Frieda and Sylvia
sit on top of each other
like a Madonna and Child marble frieze,
red-eyed, tearstained, stone tangled with stone.
I do not want to leave them,