DS fanfic ch. 1 cont...8/16/67
Sep. 4th, 2009 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
river_kateAugust 16, 1967
The northeastern United States is beautiful and I’ve been stopping the van to make quick sketches of scenes that really draw my interest. This is something that used to annoy Evan when we were married; he preferred me to use most of my attention on him. We should have never married. He is fourteen years older than I and we were very attracted to each other when we met in San Francisco. A fling would have been acceptable to me but he had never married, wanted to settle down and cared about his professional image. His idea of settling down turned out to be taking long, frequent business trips. I loved him and believed we could make the marriage work.
What is it about people who think they can change their partner after marriage? It’s that old story. Evan is very successful and wealthy. He loves accumulating money and making deals. He was free do as he pleased with that but I did not share his enthusiasm. Then there was the matter of my appearance. I love to dress in Victorian clothes, velvets, ruffles and vintage jewelry. I look good in them and wore them when we were dating. After our marriage the subtle remarks about my personal style began and then they became stronger and more frequent. I am an artist, writer and herbalist among other things and eventually those occupations became suspect and even ridiculed by my new husband. Willingly I attended business functions with him in attire he approved of but I was not agreeable to giving up my life and my style for him. Then there were my natural gypsy tendencies and my restlessness that complicated things.
When I want to feel invisible I wear gypsy style clothes. My other clothes tend to be shaded colors and I look beautiful in them. People actually see me. When I wear the gypsy clothes and jewelry, people see them and not me. They’re only aware of what I’m wearing and either hate it or love it. Mostly they dislike it. I am therefore rather invisible to them which is sometimes what I want to achieve.
The thing that finally finished our marriage was my refusal to have children. We had agreed on that before we married but then Evan changed his mind, wanting someone to leave his fortune to. I was willing to adopt to avoid the affliction that comes with my bloodline but that was not acceptable to Evan.
There is madness in his family also. Generations ago, his ancestors lived at Collinwood. The Collins that Evan is descended from was away at school with his siblings when they got word that their parents were dead. It was in the early 1800’s and their father, Gabriel, had murdered his own father, their mother Edith, his brother-in-law and who knows who else. It was all hushed up and covered over by the Collins fortune and the three children were removed as far as possible from Collinsport. They seemed to become obsessed with removing the taint from their lives. This has been passed down through the generations and has affected Evan’s business dealings. He is scrupulously honest and an overly law-abiding citizen and expects others to be so too. That was fine with me but after awhile, his being so uptight and rigid began to wear on me. We remain friends and he is mildly curious about what I might discover of his extended family in Collinsport.
The northeastern United States is beautiful and I’ve been stopping the van to make quick sketches of scenes that really draw my interest. This is something that used to annoy Evan when we were married; he preferred me to use most of my attention on him. We should have never married. He is fourteen years older than I and we were very attracted to each other when we met in San Francisco. A fling would have been acceptable to me but he had never married, wanted to settle down and cared about his professional image. His idea of settling down turned out to be taking long, frequent business trips. I loved him and believed we could make the marriage work.
What is it about people who think they can change their partner after marriage? It’s that old story. Evan is very successful and wealthy. He loves accumulating money and making deals. He was free do as he pleased with that but I did not share his enthusiasm. Then there was the matter of my appearance. I love to dress in Victorian clothes, velvets, ruffles and vintage jewelry. I look good in them and wore them when we were dating. After our marriage the subtle remarks about my personal style began and then they became stronger and more frequent. I am an artist, writer and herbalist among other things and eventually those occupations became suspect and even ridiculed by my new husband. Willingly I attended business functions with him in attire he approved of but I was not agreeable to giving up my life and my style for him. Then there were my natural gypsy tendencies and my restlessness that complicated things.
When I want to feel invisible I wear gypsy style clothes. My other clothes tend to be shaded colors and I look beautiful in them. People actually see me. When I wear the gypsy clothes and jewelry, people see them and not me. They’re only aware of what I’m wearing and either hate it or love it. Mostly they dislike it. I am therefore rather invisible to them which is sometimes what I want to achieve.
The thing that finally finished our marriage was my refusal to have children. We had agreed on that before we married but then Evan changed his mind, wanting someone to leave his fortune to. I was willing to adopt to avoid the affliction that comes with my bloodline but that was not acceptable to Evan.
There is madness in his family also. Generations ago, his ancestors lived at Collinwood. The Collins that Evan is descended from was away at school with his siblings when they got word that their parents were dead. It was in the early 1800’s and their father, Gabriel, had murdered his own father, their mother Edith, his brother-in-law and who knows who else. It was all hushed up and covered over by the Collins fortune and the three children were removed as far as possible from Collinsport. They seemed to become obsessed with removing the taint from their lives. This has been passed down through the generations and has affected Evan’s business dealings. He is scrupulously honest and an overly law-abiding citizen and expects others to be so too. That was fine with me but after awhile, his being so uptight and rigid began to wear on me. We remain friends and he is mildly curious about what I might discover of his extended family in Collinsport.
