Alone with You in the Ether: A Love Story

“She wondered what she was doing out there in all the mirror-shards of lives unlived.”

After meeting Aldo, Regan starts to think about the nature of time, emphasizing the theme of The Passage and Consequences of Time, as well as the idea of a multiverse and multiple versions of herself. This concept opens her mind to the idea of endless possibilities or reversing past mistakes, as well as the notion that she could one day be somebody different.

“Emptiness repulsed Regan, filling her with abject terror, but the concept of zero was something that Aldo had come to accept.”

Aldo and Regan are in many ways opposites, which is what draws them to one another as they each complete a part of the person that was missing in the other. Regan fills the void in Aldo’s life, and Aldo helps Regan accept that the void, or the universe itself, is a lonely place. Their connection becomes like a spark in the darkness of space.

“She reminded him of the buildings that had been constructed along the river. They were mirrors of the landscape, beautiful and sleek and discreetly reflective of the water itself.”

Through Aldo’s eyes, Regan is composed of the universe itself. She’s everything all at once: night and day, good and bad, love and hate. He’s also drawn to her appearance, which is ironically graceful and soft despite her personality. Additionally, he admires how Regan sees the world through a unique lens and soaks up everything around her.

“Curiosity or no, Regan had no plans to speak to Aldo Damiani again.

THE NARRATOR, CHARLOTTE REGAN: Though if he speaks to me first, it would probably be rude to refuse.”

In Part 1, the narrator occasionally interjects to provide context or humorous asides. The narrator changes with each interjection, and in this case, it’s Charlotte (Regan) herself, contradicting her thoughts and breaking the fourth wall, the wall that separates a story from the real world.

“‘It wasn’t a scheme.’ It was definitely a scheme.”

What Regan says aloud often directly contradicts her thoughts. She’s known to struggle with honesty, largely because of the shame she feels about who she is. The more Regan is around Aldo, who loves and accepts her as she is, the more she can be honest with herself and others. This is part of how Regan grows as a character, supporting the theme of Navigating and Accepting Mental Illness.

“Mostly, Aldo was waiting for an epiphany of some sort. He felt confident that there would be a moment when all the disjointed parts that made Charlotte Regan so incomprehensible to him would form a recognizable shape, and then he would understand the basis of the problem.”

Aldo’s naivety about Regan is clear early on, as he expects to figure her out in only six conversations. Aldo assumes he’ll only need to go around the hexagon once, but by the time the story ends, both he and Regan know that they’ll be going around the hexagon forever.

“Other people tended to treat the resurrection of his mental stability as some sort of dramatic event, but for him, it was simply historical.”

Aldo isn’t like most people. He thinks and acts differently, and his priorities are different. When Aldo reflects on his own mental illness and how he managed to recover from a low period in his life, he doesn’t see it as some sort of accomplishment or rung on a ladder. Instead, it’s just something that happened along the course of time.

“She made her surroundings part of her dominion, her atmosphere bending to the strike of her stride. Aldo, on the other hand, was typically subjected to the laws and customs of the room.”

The love between Aldo and Regan is based on their opposing natures, and Regan’s entering Aldo’s life causes everything in his world to shift. Regan is a presence and a force, while Aldo usually blends in with his surroundings, and the two challenge each other in this way.

“He took another long drag, letting it out. They don’t tell you how close smoking is to setting yourself on fire. Some days, he enjoyed the act of it more than the outcome. The sense that he could burn something, trap the smoldering of ash inside his chest, and then breathe it out like some sort of omnipotent god. Fires, floods. Plagues and locusts.”

Aldo has a strong imagination and a deep knowledge of history, and these skills often combine when he’s reflecting. His thoughts often wander to concepts of time, the universe, or the void, and since he often feels so insignificant in light of it all, he enjoys occasionally entertaining the idea of being something greater.

“There was wonder here, even if Regan no longer saw it. Even if she no longer felt it, he would feel it for both of them, He would translate it for her later […] Yes, he would draw it for her, and then she would see it. She would watch it take shape and he would know he’d said it in a way she could understand, and then she would know that even this, with its ordinary features, was wonder and glory, too.”

Aldo’s love for Regan extends in all directions, and he hopes that together they can rediscover what it means to be alive and to be curious. His thoughts, which were once logical and predictable, have started to become more whimsical and wandering like Regan’s.

“You’ve always understood, above everything, that what makes beauty is pain.”

Regan knows that most of the best art was inspired by some sort of suffering, longing, or pain. She gradually starts accepting this reality and craves the highs and lows that her medication has long since numbed.

“She opened his door, everything went wrong, he died in his sleep, it’s over.

She opened his door, everything went right, he died in her arms, it’s over.

She opened his door,

She opened his door,

She opened his door,”

After being rejected by Aldo at her parents’ house, Regan considers all the possible paths and outcomes that may have occurred. The repetition of the phrase “She opened his door,” as if into eternity, implies endless ways that the scenario may have played out. This reflection illustrates one of the book’s main themes: The Passage and Consequences of Time.

“Art, a voice buzzed in her ear, was creation. It was dissecting a piece of herself and leaving it out for consumption, for speculation. For the possibility of misinterpretation and the inevitability of judgment. For the abandonment of fear the reward would have to be the possibility of ruin, and that was the inherent sacrifice. That, her mind whispered, was art.”

Regan’s greatest passion in life is art, but she has never felt able to create it herself. She starts to realize that part of what makes art, art, is that it carries some risk of exposing oneself or of upsetting the order of things.

“She slithered away in a rapid moment, rising to her feet and picking up her sketchbook, her pencils, throwing them in her bag and heading for the door. He sat up but didn’t move, didn’t follow, didn’t say a word. Her hands were shaking, and she darted out his door, into the hallway, you you you in the pace of her feet.”

This passage metaphorically compares Regan to a snake that nervously slithers out of sight when threatened. Both she and Aldo experience multiple moments of hesitation before finally submitting to one another. Her footsteps personify her thoughts as she walks away.

“His forehead presses to hers as her hips lift from the countertop that might be marble, might not, he’s never been an expert in materials but he knows that she feels soft and smooth, like velvet.”

This scene exemplifies how the novel’s narrative style creates imagery out of Aldo and Regan’s thoughts. By describing them second to second, and including multiple sensory access points (the touch of marble and velvet, the visual), Aldo’s thoughts become visceral and almost real.

“Oh, you love my brain? Well, do you love it when it does this thing, or this thing? Do you love it when it means I’m lifeless on the floor, curling my tongue around a pill or a stranger’s dick? Can you love my brain even when it is small? When it is malevolent? When it’s violent? Can you love it when it doesn’t love me?”

Regan has always wrestled with her own thoughts and emotions, and she therefore struggles to imagine anyone else accepting her as she is because she has never experienced that before. This thought makes it clear that Regan’s self-image is tarnished and low, and that she doesn’t trust herself.

“Maybe that’s the big secret, that even though she hates her feelings, she’d still rather have them than not. Maybe the enormity of it all is that she hates the highs and the lows and she knows they’re Bad, that they’re Not Supposed to Happen, but she is not herself without them. She misses herself.”

The use of capitalization to emphasize certain words and phrases conveys sarcasm, as though Regan has heard these sentiments all her life but knows somewhere that they’re not really true. She feels more real and closer to the truth when she can experience her highs and lows.

“Afraid, always afraid, that this was still some splintered version of pretend, that she was only crafting a new version for him when she wanted to believe she was really herself. Afraid that she was Aldo’s Regan, which meant that Aldo’s Regan could fade into obscurity, that her honesty with him was just another version of a lie.”

The franticness of Regan’s panicked thoughts is clear in their repetitiveness, as well as in the intensity of their content. Regan catastrophizes and worries that she’s still somehow living a lie. In addition, this passage conveys a realness and candidness to Regan’s thoughts that brings out her vulnerability and her humanity.

“On the inside I just feel like, I don’t know, Nothing. Like I’m just an algorithm that someone put in place.”

Aldo’s routines, structure, and inner ability to use logic have always defined his life, but he has come to find that life restrictive. Regan opens up possibilities for Aldo, and the fact that their love is based on their opposing characteristics forces them each to grow while finding something to live for.

“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.”

In this metaphor, Regan remembers her day at the beach with Aldo and uses it to explain how she often feels like she’s one step away from being sent adrift forever. Aldo’s presence keeps her grounded and secure, and when she begins to panic in his absence, all she needs to do is call to him.

“Aldo believed I was an artist, so I made it true. He believed I was an honest person who lied from time to time instead of a liar who sometimes told the truth, so I was. He believed I could love him and so I did, I do.”

Regan and Aldo occasionally discuss the importance of truth, and Regan realizes through their relationship that the truth can be altered by one’s own perception of it. Regan used to be someone who lied and didn’t believe she could create art, but being motivated by love transformed her into something closer to what she hoped to be.

“How can you stand there as if nothing has changed when either you are not alive at all or all of what you are is now inconceivably different?”

Regan’s thoughts often having a rolling and occasionally confusing structure, requiring a second glance or thought in order to understand their meaning. Her mind is full of contradictions that make sense to her but that appear illogical to others. When she starts to become more erratic and stops sleeping, her philosophical quandaries begin to exhaust Aldo.

“It was a mistake she only registered in retrospect, seeing things more clearly once her mother’s voice had faded from her thoughts.”

The novel often illuminates Regan’s thoughts and how they can quickly change shape or mood in a somewhat unpredictable way. When Regan is feeling particularly low, she sometimes hears in her mind her mother’s voice criticizing her life choices and her personality. This clouds her thoughts and makes it more difficult for her to see things clearly, which is part of Regan’s journey in learning to live with mental illness.