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49 pages 1 hour read

Olivie Blake

Alone with You in the Ether: A Love Story

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Parts 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4: “Firsts” - Part 5: “Variables”

Part 4, Chapter 6, 203-209 Summary

The first time Aldo and Regan make love, she shows up to his apartment unannounced while he’s cooking pasta, and they make love on the kitchen counter. No words are spoken. They make love four more times, once on the roof, and each time is different from the last. Aldo feels totally consumed by Regan and now feels a constant need for her, and Regan has moved on from Marc and fully allowed Aldo into her life. When they make love the sixth time, Aldo has given himself over to Regan completely.

Part 4, Chapter 6, 219-224 Summary

Aldo starts to find that Regan is changing his thought patterns and his perception of the world. He even thinks of her in class, which reminds him to slow down and provide examples for the students. He invites Regan home to meet his father, and she’s nervous that Masso won’t like her. Aldo assures her that Masso loves everyone and will definitely love her, and after some intimate touching and kissing, she agrees to go.

Part 4, Chapter 6, 224-229 Summary

Aldo knows some aspects of quantum physics, mathematics, and Regan. He knows her body, her likes and dislikes, and how he fits with her. He knows her secrets and what torments her, including her mother’s criticisms, which ring through her mind, and her reluctance to take her medication. He doesn’t know, however, that she’s ignoring all her texts and voicemails, including from her family, her psychiatrist, and her work. At the airport on the way to meet Masso, she reveals that she hasn’t told her parents about Aldo. A wave of doubt washes over him as he wonders if she really isn’t serious about him after all. She assures him that she is, adding that she hopes to have his future as well.

Part 4, Chapter 6, 229-238 Summary

In Los Angeles, Aldo takes Regan to his house first, while Masso is still at work. He shows her his bedroom, and they make love there as Regan proclaims that she’s replacing his past memories of that space. When they go to meet Masso for lunch, he’s beyond thrilled to see them both and offers to make Regan whatever she likes. Aldo basks in the warmth of the air between Masso and Regan, who talk for an hour about various things. That night, Masso shows Regan pictures of Aldo when he was a child. Later, Regan and Aldo make love in a new, softer way, and she asks him about his mother. He explains that she never tried to find him, so he never really had an interest in finding her. Regan tries to say that she loves Aldo, but he says it first, and she asks him why he overdosed and whether he was trying to hurt himself. He admits that he often feels like he’s nothing and that only his obsessions, like Regan or the theory of time travel, give him a purpose to continue.

Part 5, Chapter 7, 241-244 Summary

Regan and Aldo attend Masso’s yearly celebration at his restaurant to honor his employees and continued success. Regan feels completely overwhelmed by Masso’s kindness and the love that pours out of him, and it makes her love Aldo in a new way. She pulls him into the bathroom to make love to him, feeling vast and split into a million pieces during the moment. Afterward, she thinks to herself about how she has “outgrown her container” (243) and has nowhere to go but forward.

Part 5, Chapter 7, 244-249 Summary

Aldo’s father takes him aside and regretfully warns him that Regan is too impulsive and too fast for Aldo. Masso tells Aldo that he’s worried that Regan will wear him out and that even though he likes Regan, he thinks Aldo needs someone who is stable and predictable. Masso believes that Regan is like Aldo’s mother and worries that Regan will leave Aldo the same way. Aldo defensively disagrees, declaring that Regan is really his only reason to continue living and that Regan will prove Masso wrong.

Part 5, Chapter 7, 249-259 Summary

Regan returns to Chicago a week before Aldo, allowing him and his father to have time together. She finds that she’s totally lost without him and doesn’t feel motivated to do the things she normally does. She considers creating some sort of medical emergency to get him home early and prove that he really does love her, but rationalizes against it. Aldo occupies all her thoughts, and Regan hates how needy she feels. She goes out alone on New Year’s eve and runs into Marc, who again tells Regan that Aldo will grow tired of her and see through her act eventually. Feeling as though she’s going to drown in her own emotional state, Regan calls Aldo, who calms her and assures her that he misses her. On the phone, Regan asks what ether is. Aldo explains that people used to think the universe was made of a substance called ether, and that being “alone in the ether” (258) means to be alone in the vastness of space, time, and everything.

Part 5, Chapter 7, 259-269 Summary

While Aldo has always been a creature of habit and routine, Regan has lived each day uniquely, and meeting her has altered his habits forever. By living each day differently, he finds that time is more measurable than when he was living the same day over and over. One night, she suggests that perhaps he has been working toward happiness for several lifetimes and has finally found it with her. He knows he’ll never be the same person he was before meeting her and that she destroyed that old self forever. However, he worries that she may destroy this new self too. Aldo decides that if he’s going to keep Regan in his life, he must make her his unsolvable problem, and he asks her to move in with him.

Part 5, Chapter 7, 269-276 Summary

Regan moves in with Aldo, and everything seems easy and romantic at first. When she goes to see her doctor, the doctor presses her about her medication repeatedly and accuses her of not using the therapy sessions to be honest and investigate her problems. Regan makes a deal with her doctor to have six totally open conversations and hopes by the end to convince her doctor that she no longer needs her pills. She begins by explaining bees.

Parts 4-5 Analysis

Aldo and Regan’s relationship becomes sexual, seemingly in an instant but really after a buildup of several weeks of subtle advances, gazes, small touches, and verbal indications that the relationship would eventually lead to that. During this time, Aldo becomes utterly consumed by his love for Regan and vice versa: “Consumption, that’s what this is. He is being willingly eaten alive” (206). Aldo is happy but also terrified because he knows that Regan is unpredictable and doesn’t know how he would ever live without her now. She begins to occupy “all of his spaces and all of his thoughts” (208), as though her presence has left a permanent scar on his entire world. He no longer thinks the same way and is thrown in all directions by her impulses. During the height of their sexual experiences, the writing style becomes vulgar and gritty, illustrating the raw and almost animalistic desire they share. Aldo loves Regan’s highs and lows because he doesn’t have any of his own, and his love of her moods is part of what helps her learn to live with mental illness, thematically emphasizing Navigating and Accepting Mental Illness. In addition, her moodiness and his even-keeled personality exemplify the many ways they differ, alluding to the theme of Love as a Composite of Contradictions and Opposites: “She thinks her brain is some sort of problem? Fine, good, he loves problems” (216). The way that Aldo willingly opposes and contradicts Regan while respecting her opinions convinces her that he loves her, as opposed to Marc, who patronized and belittled her and seemingly just wanted to control her.

The more time Aldo spends with Regan, the more certain he becomes that she’s changing him, his perspective, and his universe. Masso calls Regan Aldo’s “provocateur” (221) because he can no longer think about time in the same way. His life has become chaotic and unpredictable, shaped entirely around her emotional state. Despite how difficult and complicated his life has become since meeting her, he considers her his reason for living and his source of hope. He feels this way despite his father’s warnings and concerns. Both Regan and Aldo feel a looming sense of nothingness or emptiness when they’re apart, which for her is a “vibrating sense of blankness” (249) that is especially unbearable while he remains in California after she returns to Chicago. Like Aldo, Regan realizes that she’s forever changed, and the only course is to continue moving forward.

In a particularly poignant metaphor of thought, Regan compares her emotional state when Aldo is away to being pulled into the ocean by the riptide: “I thought about how easy it would be to disappear, to get dragged under the waves and be lost forever, but you were standing right there, and I thought…all I’d have to do is reach out” (257). This metaphor acts as an overarching descriptor of their relationship by depicting how Aldo helps Regan stay grounded and gives her something to return to at the end of each day. Similarly, Aldo needs Regan because through her impulsiveness he’s certain that time is passing. The new self that arose in him because of her is entirely vulnerable, almost childlike, and he begins to feel fragile and terrified. At the same time, she becomes inspired to create art again and starts to view herself as the artist that he always saw in her. Her life improves while he falls into a state of confusion and fear of loss, which inevitably leads him to pull away for a time.

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