Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  In capital cases, a motion for a new trial is routinely filed but rarely granted. But if the defendant alleges new evidence that could lead to a different outcome in the case—or that undermines the reliability of the trial—there is typically a hearing. After speaking with Darnell, I thought about refiling his assertions before the case went up on appeal and maybe, just maybe, we could persuade local officials to retreat from the case against Walter. I made a motion to reconsider the denial of a new trial for Mr. McMillian. I immediately got an affidavit from Darnell stating that Hooks’s testimony was a lie. I took the risk of talking to a few local lawyers about whether the new prosecutor might acknowledge that the conviction was unreliable and support a new trial if there was compelling new evidence. Several people had suggested that Tom Chapman, the new Monroe County district attorney and a former criminal defense attorney, would be fairer and more sympathetic to someone wrongly convicted than lifelong prosecutor Ted Pearson. After Pearson’s long tenure as D.A., Chapman’s election represented something of a new era. He was in his forties and had talked about modernizing law enforcement in the region. Some said that he was ambitious and might want to run for statewide office someday. I also discovered that he had represented Karen Kelly in a prior proceeding, which told me that he was already familiar with the case. I was hopeful. I was still sorting out how to proceed when Darnell called me at my office. “Mr. Stevenson, you have to help. They arrested me this morning and took me to the jail. I just got out on bond.” “What?” “I asked them what I had done. They told me I was being charged with perjury.” He sounded terrified. “Perjury? Based on what you told Mr. McMillian’s lawyers a year ago? Have they come to interview you or talk to you since we got your statement? You were supposed to let me know if you heard from them.” “No, sir. I haven’t heard from any of them. They just came and arrested me and told me I had been indicted for perjury.” I hung up with Darnell, shocked and furious. It was unheard of to indict someone for perjury without any investigation or compelling evidence to establish that a false statement had been made. Police and prosecutors had found out that Darnell was talking to us and they decided to punish him for it. A few days later, I called the new D.A. to set up a meeting.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  We had been contacted by a white man who seemed intensely interested in the case. He would call wanting to talk at length about what we were investigating. He would hint at having information that could help us, but he was coy and slow to share anything concrete. He repeatedly told us that he knew that McMillian was innocent and he would help us prove it. Eventually, after several calls and hours of conversation, he claimed to know where the murder weapon, which had never been recovered, might be located. We tried to get as much information out of him as we could. We also checked his background. He told us that he’d had some conflicts with another man in town and that the more he talked the more he blamed this other man for the shooting death of Morrison. When we investigated this theory, we weren’t impressed. The other man didn’t match the eyewitness descriptions of the person seen leaving the cleaners, and he didn’t have our caller’s history of stalking, violence against women, and preoccupation with the Morrison murder. We began to think that our caller could be the person who had murdered Ronda Morrison. We had dozens of phone conversations with him and even met him a couple of times. We were less and less convinced that the man he was accusing of committing the crime was involved. At some point we asked him some direct questions about where he was on the day of the murder, which must have alarmed him because we heard from him less often after that. Before I could tell any of this to the ABI investigators, Taylor said, “We think you may have interviewed our suspect and may have collected a good bit of information from this guy. We were hoping you might allow us to have access to that information and those interviews.” He named our suspect. I told them we would give them access to the information we had collected. None of it was protected by attorney-client privilege; we had never represented this man or obtained anything confidentially. I told Taylor and Cole to give us a few days to organize the information, and then we would turn it over. “We want to get Walter out of prison as soon as possible,” I insisted. “Well, I think the attorney general and the lawyers would like to maintain the status quo for a few more months, until we can make an arrest of the actual killer.” “Right, but you do understand that the status quo is a problem for us? Walter has been on death row for nearly six years for a crime he didn’t commit.” Taylor and Cole looked at each other uncomfortably. Taylor responded, “We’re not lawyers so I can’t really understand where they’re coming from. If I was in prison for something I didn’t do and you were my lawyer, I hope to hell you’d get me out as soon as you could.”

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  If they weren’t going to be in the room then they needed to somehow bear witness to the conversation so that if Paul Accerbi changed his story later, it would be my word against his. “Ooh, I’ve got it!” Addie says. “He can come to the house, in the living room, and we’ll put your boom box with a blank cassette tape behind the chair he’ll sit in. Then, when he’s walking up to the front stoop, we press Record!” Addie’s relishing our sleuthing strategy. “Pete and I will busy ourselves in the garage or outside in the garden! This way, we won’t impose, see . . . that will allow you and Paul to speak freely.” Our plan is in place . . . but he never calls the next night. Or the night after that. Then, on Thursday night the phone rings. This time, Pete answers and hands the phone to me. In my ear, Paul reiterates what an “uproar” I’ve created in his home and how disrespectful it was for me to have done such a thing. Then, after his lecture, he calms down and says, “I’ve decided I’d like to meet you.” When I remind him of the conditions, he raises his voice in anger. “Regina, what I wanted to tell you is that you are probably not my daughter. Your mother was promiscuous; she slept around a lot and was sleeping with many men all the time. She had quite a reputation for being—you know—you know what I mean. You’re old enough to understand what I’m saying, right?” “What, that my mother was a slut?” I ask him. “Yes, Paul. I am well aware of my mother’s behavior and so are all my siblings. But when it came to who our fathers are, we were able to tell when she lied and when she told the truth. But when she would say the same story over and over again—the way she did about you, whether she was straight or sober—we knew that to be the truth. When her stories would change, that was the lie. She never changed her story about you, Paul. And she still hasn’t.” “Your mother and I had a one-night stand and that was it,” Paul said. I note an emphasis in order to satisfy what seems like an audience on his side of the phone. “A one-night stand. You are saying that you were a one-night stand of my mother, and that based on that, she thinks you’re my father. Really, Paul? Well, if you were a one-night stand, then how come she told me that you were in the Korean War, wanted to be a paratrooper, own a fence company, grew up in Lindenhurst, have an ex-wife named Carol and a daughter named Barbara? Frankly, Paul, you’re full of shit. If you were just a one-night stand, then you certainly talked a lot for one night!” The call goes dead. I slam the yellow phone back on Addie’s wall.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  I want to see the baby!” Rosie says. I lace my arm through hers and pull her onto my lap on the porch step. “I’m not coming back here after,” Cookie says. “You can meet him after Cherie takes the baby home to her in-laws’.” Cookie stumbles through the front door one afternoon in early November, holding a box of macaroni and cheese and a half-gallon of milk. “What’s going on?” I ask her, meaning, What are you doing here? “Well, by the looks of it, I’d say I’m a single woman again,” she slurs. “You could thank me for bringing home dinner. I’m in a shitty mood. Stay away from me.” Lacking the care and the energy to carry the food to the kitchen, she plops down on the couch and promptly passes out—her new pair of clogs falling to the floor with a crack. Rosie and Norm burst into giggles as Cookie’s snoring rattles the room. I hush them, stifling my own laughter, and watch her. I thought men liked women who are sweet and attractive, but Cookie’s just swollen and angry. We eat the macaroni and cheese in the living room while Cookie’s splayed unconscious on the couch. Together we stand to carry our dirty dishes to the kitchen, careful to be quiet. Rosie rises last, balancing her empty glass on her plate, trailing behind Norm and me. I’ve just stepped into the kitchen when Rosie’s glass falls and shatters on the living room floor, inches from Cookie’s ear. No! My instinct moves me to her as Cookie jolts from the couch. This will not be pleasant. “You stupid little whore!” Cookie shouts, grabbing Rosie’s hair in her fist. Rosie staggers and drops the plate, which falls and cracks in half. Before I can stop her, Cookie slams Rosie’s body to the floor, inches from the shards of glass. Instantly Rosie wails—first out of total shock at being pummeled, then as the pain shudders through her body. Instinctively I jump on Cookie’s back, clawing her skin with my fingernails. “You’re not her mother anymore,” I scream in her ear. “Let go of her! LET GO!” My blind rage has filled the room, the entire floor of the house. It’s so fiery and fierce I’m sure the entire street can feel its quake. I fight hard to bring her to the ground—if I can just get her down, Rosie can climb away. Instead, she lies stunned and crying on the floor beneath us. Norm sprints over and pulls Rosie toward the bottom of the stairs away from Cookie. There they both stand, screaming at me. “Stop, Gi, stop!” But my mother will not hurt my baby, who’s finally thriving under my care. And she isn’t going to beat me into submission either, the lunatic! I hardly flinch when Cookie flips me over her back onto the floor, on top of the broken shards of glass. “You stupid little bitch,” she grunts through her teeth, landing her first kick.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  Nancy explains that the court only wants Cookie to take care of a few kids at a time, and if she proves she can, then we can return to her, too. “We’re not in a rush,” I tell Nancy. “Trust me.” Our summer’s been filled with inground swimming pools, Slip ’N Slides, and water balloons. Frank takes us to the community celebration parade and shares our amazement over a fourteen-year-old Romanian gymnast named Nadia whose score showed up as 1.00 because the Olympic scoreboard makers never imagined that they would need room to post a fourth digit, since before her routine, no one had ever scored a perfect 10.00. As our summer of Olympic-size fun comes to a close, so does our stay with Nancy, Frank, Nancy, and Frank. With a new school year coming, the court has ruled it’s time for us to return to our mother . . . or, as we’ve made a pact to refer to her from now on: to Cookie. Deanna and I hatch a plan to write a letter to the court, asking them if we can please stay with the Nancys and Franks, but we finally reason that Cherie will need our help taking care of Norm and Rosie until her lungs get better. September 1977 THE MONTH BEFORE fifth grade starts, Cookie and Karl reunite. They find a nice two-story home to rent, directly across the street from the Saint James Episcopal Church. “Does this mean I’ll get to go back to Saint James Elementary?” “No, Regina,” Cookie says. “I’m gonna send you to school in Timbuktu.” The house is nestled off of busy North Country Road, surrounded by dense woods that hide a secure tree house built high into a group of trees. Norm and Cherie are settled in bedrooms on the second floor by the time Deanna and I arrive. Cookie puts me in a bedroom on the first floor with Rosie, right next to the bedroom she shares with Karl. “I remember your little tendency to run away,” she explains. One night, very late, when I hear strange noises coming from Cookie and Karl’s bedroom, I knock on the door. “Is everyone okay in there?” I yell. Instantly the noises cease, and the next day Cookie tells Camille—whose new name was dropped the day we arrived here—to help me move my things to the spare room upstairs. I’m excited when I return to Saint James Elementary, the school I loved attending from kindergarten to the middle of second grade. My fifth grade teacher, Ms. Van Dover, is known for being nice, and my old friend, Beth Nadasy, sits in the desk right next to me. “I’m sorry I never got to say good-bye to you in second grade,” I tell her on the first day of school. “That’s all right.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  Accerbi find my attempts to contact Paul quite upsetting physically and emotionally and that I have no legal grounds to bring suit; and if I do, that I can expect an “aggressive counterclaim for abuse of action, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.” As I’ve presumed all along, from that first phone call back in August, Paul’s been planning to countersue me if I bring a claim for paternity—this is why he keeps playing the “physical and emotional stress” card. “It’s a measly swab test!” I tell Ralph. “Just a second.” I rise from my desk to close my office door so as not to disturb my coworkers. Taking the phone again I tell him: “There’s nothing invasive or physically stressful about this!” “Regina, I spoke to his counsel,” Ralph advises me. “Paul is ready to fight hard if you proceed with a paternity claim. Our problem is that this is a case of first impression. You have absolutely no other case in the U.S. to rely upon, so if you sue him for DNA, he will argue that you are using the courts to harass him. Trust me, this is exactly how it will go. Do you follow?” “Yes. Keep going.” “The good news is, it’s likely his counterargument will be dismissed since you have proof that you tried to resolve this outside of the courts. I can’t promise that he won’t be successful and demand that you pay his attorney fees and additional damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress. And consider, on top of this you only have affidavits of your sisters and foster mother that reiterate what your deceased mother has told you. If Cookie were still alive, at least she could provide an affidavit claiming that he was the father . . . but she’s dead.” Dammit. I never thought I’d have any reason to wish that my mother were still here. “So your failure to obtain an affidavit from someone who can confidently state that your parents had a sexual relationship around the time you were conceived is problematic.” He goes on to explain what I already know: Paternity tests are DNA tests. The taking of someone’s DNA, regardless if it’s by a blood test or a simple mouth swab, is protected by the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure and the right to privacy . . . However, an exception to the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment is made if there is a compelling government interest for the courts to rule otherwise. The courts will make exceptions if a crime has been committed or a child is in need of support, so that if there is a father, he’s to be held responsible for the costs of raising that child. “Regina, you’re an adult in your thirties and it’s going to be hard for us to demonstrate that getting Paul’s DNA is necessary to your well-being,” Ralph says.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I’m still surprised that he was willing to forgive us after all that we said and did to him. I really appreciate all that he did for us.” There is great advantage in allowing natural maturation to take its course and to avoid overzealous intervention to break these alliances, which are usually strengthened by efforts to separate the allies. In this, the alliance may be akin to a moderate case of flu that mobilizes the immune system and generates antibodies. It is not a fulminant cancer requiring radical surgery or limb amputation, especially by poorly trained surgeons. However, where violence is concerned, children do need help in understanding what is wrong with such behavior. They need to be told that violence not only hurts the victim physicially but hurts people’s feelings and that the damage can last a lifetime. This is not self-evident to a child who has been raised in a family where a parent has been violent. After all, children model their own behavior after the model their parents provide. They need guidance in learning alternative ways for resolving conflict. Indeed, there are many ways that these ethical ideas can be taught. A good curriculum would include games and videos that help children learn how to deal with their own anger and how to control their impulse to hit people or destroy property. The important thing to remember is that the divorce itself has no impact on these critical issues for the child. Moreover, it’s difficult for parents to deal with these issues during and after the breakup without professional guidance. Parents and children both need help. We as a society have an obligation to provide it. When There’s No Escape BEFORE GETTING TO Larry’s adult life, I want to return to Carol and her adolescent years to help hammer home a major point about being raised in chaotic intact families. As we have seen, divorce was never an option for this family. The parents had no desire to stop their destructive behaviors. And if they had divorced, nothing would have changed for Carol and her siblings. Divorce is only a “solution” for people who want and have the ability to change. For the Carols of this world, there is far less opportunity to escape from the madness that surrounds them because there are no true adults to give them a helping hand. Carol’s voice was low and angry. “When I was a teenager, my mom would listen in on my phone calls and she’d go through my stuff. She’d ask nosy questions about me and boys. She accused me of hanging out with a bad crowd at school. All she could think about was that I was in trouble.” “Were you?” “Not really. Certainly not in the way she thought. Compared with some of my friends I wasn’t bad at all.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Little Boy LostMY THIRD INTERVIEW with Larry took place shortly after the episode in the police station when he was seventeen years old. The little master of the house had grown into a tall, slender young man with reddened eyes and a sallow complexion. Chain-smoking Marlboros, face fixed in a scowl, he spat out his feelings: “The last five years have been a total bummer. My mom gets on my nerves just like she always got on my dad’s nerves. She wants me to be responsible.” He threw back his head and laughed. “Christ, I come home every night bombed out of my head. I drink more than my dad did when he was a kid. Except for all the Russian crap, I think I’m going to live a lot of my life just like my dad. It helps me solve my problems to drink. A couple of weeks ago I hit my girlfriend in the face.” He seemed proud. “I guess I’m going to live my life like my dad.” I was deeply dismayed by his words and hostile manner. “Tell me,” I said, “how much do you feel in control of your life?” Larry’s shoulders sagged as he answered truthfully, “About three-quarters. I’m maybe three-quarters in control.” And then he described how disappointed he was in the father who seemed no longer interested in him. “Do you know that when my dad got remarried, I didn’t find out for four months! When I talk to him, it’s always by phone. I guess he’s pretty busy.” Then Larry hastily pulled back, regained his scowl, and returned to the familiar theme. “My life is a lot worse because of their divorce. Not having a father was hard on me. My mom pushed him out. I’ll never forgive her for that.” After I left Larry sitting at his kitchen table that day, I had the sense of seeing a lost child who had advanced in years but who had hardly matured since his mother took him and his sister to a motel in the middle of the night. It was as if he had remained fixated developmentally from that time on. As an adolescent, he was just beginning to face the pain of his increasing distance from his father. He continued blaming his mother for all his suffering. I was reminded of a sketch Larry did for me at our first meeting, showing a little gunboat bristling with cannons. It had been prophetic but not, I’m happy to say, fated.

• From Untrue (2018)

  Our contemporary use of the term “jezebel” to mean “an impudent, shameless, or morally unrestrained woman” demonstrates not just our indebtedness to the notion that monogamy is a sacred covenant that flourished in religious soils tilled by the plough. It also shows the fates of women who upset the order of things—religious, dynastic, political—in settings where agriculture was doing its earthly and conceptual work. Debased like Jezebel, women who do not toe the line will share her legacy: their grandest, most ambitious acts will be associated with and reduced to unseemly sexual appetites. It is telling that Jezebel’s punishment for her assertion of power resulted not only in her death but in the defilement of her reputation and hence her authority: her very name came to be associated with prostitution (in which a woman is for sale) and false prophesy (in which a woman cannot be trusted). Her story dramatizes how, once anxieties about inheritance and paternity took hold in plough-centric contexts, authoritarian versions of possessive husbands were deified, and deities began to draw their conceptual power from what husbands felt compelled and emboldened by a newish world order to be. Female autonomy became ever more linked to cultural disorder and ever more perilous for its individual practitioners.

• From Untrue (2018)

  How free and enlightened are we? Not so much. It may not surprise us to learn that, during World War I, the British and US governments had a second war on their hands, on the domestic front, when they formed the Women’s Land Army in an attempt to replace male farmworkers who had enlisted to fight overseas with women. There were angry denunciations in opinion columns and among farmers, economists, and everyday citizens. In spite of the desperate need for agriculture workers, crops that needed tending if the nations were to be fed, and thousands of women ready and able to do the job, public outrage was pronounced and difficult to turn. It seemed that, given the heritage of plough agrarianism, many would rather see food wither and spoil and risk starvation than see women crossing the line from home to field. A public education (read propaganda) campaign was quickly undertaken, based on the primary objection of farmers who turned eager female workers away: they were wearing pants. Thousands of US and British government pamphlets and posters were put into production; they showed women in skirts and dresses ploughing fields, with messages beneath such as “God Speed the Plough and the Woman Who Drives It” and “Get Behind the Girl He Left Behind Him,” with the ghostly outline of a soldier behind a woman standing in a field (she was wearing trousers, but perhaps as a concession to male outrage, she was yielding a “womanly” hoe, rather than “manning” a plough). After the world wars, a genre of jokes about “farmers’ daughters” flourished. The farmer’s daughter as a stock character was dumb and sexy. But she was less dumb than she looked when it came to sex; in fact, she was often “promiscuous,” indulging with traveling salesmen and others who visited the farm. The conceptual punch line of the farmer’s daughter joke as a category is always that when it comes to farm work, a woman’s place is on her back. And that women are for reproduction and recreation, not production. They are also sexually bold and indiscriminate, and so in need of precisely the kind of controls that agriculture allowed men to exercise over women. Let them out of your sight, the jokes imply, and they will confound paternity faster than you can say “Daisy Dukes” or “Elly May Clampett.” Gendered hierarchy and paranoid laughs courtesy of the plough.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  “The first showdown in our marriage came because Sara was so close to her family. Early in our marriage she had a bad fall on a ski run and got a compound fracture in her right leg. That’s extremely painful and she had to be on drugs, in a cast, and on crutches. Anyway, during the first week of her injury her mom came and took her home to take care of her. I got home and Sara wasn’t there. Instead I found a note from her mom saying that Sara would stay with her folks until she got better and that they hoped to see me often. I was so mad I could have torn the place apart. I called Sara and said, ‘What the hell is going on?’ She said her mom had insisted and she had agreed. I said to hell with that, I was her husband and she was married to me and this was her home. I called my dad to help me run the store for a few weeks so I could run back and forth and take Sara her lunch and check out how she was feeling. Let me tell you, I got Sara back so fast she didn’t know what hit her. She was very quiet when I brought her home. A few days later we had a long and very useful talk in which I made it clear that she is first a wife and only second a daughter. She belongs with me just like I belong with her. Whatever care was needed we would provide for each other. She was subdued but didn’t raise a single objection. Actually I think she was pleased that I fought for her. I think she knew that a separation from her family was overdue. Anyway, I won that battle hands down.” I think it would be fair to say that Gary’s battle established the marriage as the top priority for himself and Sara. He understood the importance of what he had done when we discussed the episode. “I was fighting for my marriage,” he said. “These are exactly the values I got from my folks. They taught me that marriage comes first. I realized that if I didn’t do something drastic, our home would end up as a satellite to her parents’ home.” It is, of course, impossible to compare particular incidents in one marriage with what occurs in other marriages. But in looking through the stories of children of divorce, I noted with dismay how passively these young men and women addressed their marital difficulties. During crises in their relationships, the men typically waited on the sidelines for the woman to make a decision. They’d accept her behavior as a given, essentially unmodifiable by anything they said or did. It was as if the trouble they dreaded had come to be and there was nothing they could do to change things.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I see in The Times today that Sir Denis Beckwith, following calls in the House for the reform of sexual offence law, is to leave the DPP’s office and take a peerage. Oddly typical of the British way of getting rid of troublemakers by moving them up—implying as it does too some reward for the appalling things he has done. Perhaps I will have the opportunity to argue with him over law reform in the House—perhaps the only occasion in Hansard when a Noble Lord will have challenged another such who more or less sent him to prison. And he is a man I could hate, the one who more than anybody has been the inspiration of this ‘purge’ as he calls it, this crusade to eradicate male vice. Though one always treated him with contempt, he will now be a powerful voice in the Lords, with others like Winterton and Ammon—though beside their ninnyish rant he will be the more powerful in his cultured, bureaucratic smoothness. I have the image of him before me now in the courtroom at my sentencing, to which he had come out of pure vindictiveness, and of his handsome suaveté in the gallery, his flush and thrill of pride as I went down … It was Graham who answered the phone. ‘Oh Graham, it’s Will Beckwith—is Lord Nantwich there?’ ‘I’m sorry, sir, he’s dining at his Club this evening.’ ‘At Wicks’s? When will he be back?’ ‘I don’t expect him until late, sir.’ ‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’ But tomorrow was too far away. I was so confused by this digest of disasters, I felt so stupid and so ashamed that I walked around the flat talking out loud, getting up and sitting down, scratching my crew-cut head as if I had lice. It was impossible so quickly to formulate a plan, but I felt the important thing was to go to Charles, to say something or other to him. It took me ages to get a cab, and as at last it locked and braked its way through the West End closing-time crowds, I found all my ideas of what I might do rattling away, leaving me in a queer empty panic. I left the cab in a jam a block from the Club and ran along the pavement and up the steps. The porter emerged from his cabin with an expression of moody servility and told me Charles had left quarter of an hour before. I hardly thanked him, but dawdled out again, realising that at this moment he was probably roaring along the Central Line on his way home. I drifted around in front of the Club as if waiting for somebody, hands in jacket-pockets, chewing my lip. Between the high neo-classical façade and that of the adjacent office block was a narrow chasm, gated from the street.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  “You should’ve never been born, slut! You were my biggest mistake, you stupid little motherfucker.” She’s barefoot, but all the weight of her body lands in the small of my back, then on my ribs and pelvis and elbows. I roll on my side, trying to get out from under her. Instead she brings her heel down into the side of my waist, then grabs me by my hair and slams my face into the floor. Blood flows out of my nose, and I can feel it seeping from my back from the broken glass. I roll over on my side into a ball—it’s a short opportunity to catch my breath before I use what little energy I have left to stand up and face her one more time. As I turn to rise, her foot slams me full-force in the stomach and sends me flying to the floor again. “You little fucking slut!” she screams, puffing hard and finding another burst of energy to kick me again. I stagger to stand up, about to run at her, when she grips me around the neck and shoves me backward. First I feel my head meet the floor, then my back—my legs and arms had no chance to stretch out and break the fall. I feel the sting of the glass sticking in my head and the blood trickling out of my scalp. But I fight to scramble up fast, knowing that if I stay down, her feet will start kicking blows to my head and ribs. My will is stronger than hers, but she’s drunk and more than twice my body weight. The force of her arms sends me into the railing, where the kids are standing on the other side. I slide to the floor, stunned. When her leg comes in again, I swing at it to trip her, surprised she stumbled. Then I scramble to my feet and dart past her, out the front door. She turns around just as I make it to the porch, her voice thundering after me. “Get your ass back in here now! I’m not finished with you yet!” Somehow I’ve made it across the yard. She can still see me, but so can the neighbors if they choose to open their blinds to the commotion. I slip into the darkness and press myself against the chain-link fence. I hear her voice echo in the cold air. “You get back in here so I can finish what you started. You’re gonna get what you deserve, you little bastard!” Four months earlier, I would have obeyed her and gone back inside to take the rest of my beating, especially knowing that if she hadn’t exhausted her anger yet, she may take it out on Rosie. But something keeps me from listening this time. She continues to loom a few yards from me. My hair and face are caked with blood, my back stinging from the cuts and aching from the pounding.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  In Larry’s story, we talked about fathers and how their role changes after divorce. Here I want to focus more deeply on one aspect of that change—the nature of visiting and how it can both help and hinder parent-child relationships. One important influence on a father’s visiting pattern over time is the attitude of his second or third wife and her interest in the children of the first marriage. I’ll describe the stepmother’s role at length in Chapter 20 , but for now I just want to note that generally the man is eager to please the new woman. He has sustained one failure already and is likely to yield to his new wife in setting rules for the children’s visits. In many homes, she calls the shots that determine whether visiting is a happy or dreaded occasion. Another factor in visiting patterns is the father’s overall sense of well-being. When a man changes his life and increases his self-confidence, his desire to visit his children can skyrocket. This is what happened with Paula’s father, who reentered her life after a four-year absence. Like so many other men who are physically ill or psychologically depressed during and immediately after divorce, he was uncomfortable about visiting. “I felt I had nothing to offer them,” he said a year after the breakup. But when he felt better, he wanted to initiate contact. Such factors also explain the tremendous instability and fluctuations in how many fathers visit their children in the years after divorce. In short, as the man goes up and down, the visiting goes up and down. When Paula’s father reappeared, both the children and their mother were surprised. Their lives had been based on his absence, and now, like Lazarus, he was back. The children missed him but they had given up expecting him to be an important part of their daily lives ever again. In some families, the father returns after the mother has remarried—and this poses a threat to the emerging role of the stepfather. Whatever the circumstances, the father’s reentry opens a new chapter in family life, which is plagued by an unhappy question in the children’s minds: since he disappeared once, will he disappear again? Paula’s father was now managing a large variety store and living in one of his family’s apartment buildings in Santa Rosa, a city about an hour to the north. Almost immediately the two parents resumed fighting. They could not agree on a visiting schedule, and years of unpaid or poorly paid child support remained a bitter, unresolved issue. Anger arose with new vigor. When Paula’s mom threatened to block their visits Paula’s dad took her to court, whereupon a judge set child support and a visitation schedule. Paula’s dad was to have the children for two weekends each month, from Friday after school until Sunday night at six o’clock.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  Don’t you think saying good-bye could give you some closure?” Apparently Cookie told my sisters that everything we believe happened to us was in our imaginations. “I did a fine job raising you girls!” she said. “Look how well you turned out.” Disregarding her denial and my loathing of her, I indulge Camille by seeing our mother one last time. My siblings and their kids crowd around me and my sister’s dining room table as I share pictures from my Ireland trip. Cookie sits in the living room, watching television by herself. “Gi,” Camille says, “it’s getting late. Should Cherie and I get you to the rail station?” “Sure.” I close my album slowly and kiss each of the kids good-bye. After I put on my coat, I turn and whisper to Camille: “Just a minute.” In the living room, I leave a wide space between myself and the recliner where Cookie’s sitting, knowing that distance from her is the only thing that has kept me both physically and emotionally safe. Wearing a blue flannel shirt, black stretch pants, and a scowl, she slowly meets my eyes. The TV’s reflection flashes off the lenses of her huge, shaded eyeglasses. “Good-bye,” I tell her. It comes out cold and flat. When she responds with silence, I nod. This is all I’ll get. Cherie opens the front door, and Camille and I exit with her. When the three of us get to the train station, we all break down in tears. It’s a cry of anger for our mother’s failure to take responsibility, for the unfairness of having had no say in choosing who brought us into this world . . . and for our relief knowing that soon she’ll be gone, for good. IN THE SPRING of 1999, I receive a call from Camille at work. “Gi, I have some wild news for you. It’s something that you’d think could never happen to Frank and me.” “You . . . won the lottery?” “No! Think of the thing that wasn’t supposed to happen.” “You’re pregnant?” “Yes! We’re having another baby!” I feel her beaming on the other end of the phone. In 1996, Frank was diagnosed with a cancer that the doctors said would affect their ability to have any more children. Camille stayed with me in Manhattan while her mother-in-law took the kids so that Frank could receive treatments at Sloan-Kettering. “But after the cancer, the doctors told you it wouldn’t be possible to have more babies.” “Well, God thought differently,” Camille says. “We’re expecting Baby Number Four in October.” As Camille’s belly blossoms, so does my relationship with Julia. I receive handwritten notes from her at least monthly, and anytime I travel from Manhattan to Long Island, I make a point to see her. We’re both discreet in keeping our relationship from her daughters and her extended family, but Julia’s genuine interest in my life has prompted her to become reacquainted with Camille.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  A few letters talked about an enduring anger at aging parents. One woman said, “My parents are getting old. My father is getting frail and my mother needs special attention from time to time. But I still feel so much anger because of their neglect of my feelings over more than 25 years. I am hardly capable of giving the attention that I would normally give. And when I do take care of them, it is without any pleasure at all, only a sense of duty.” One change that may come from these sentiments is that adult children of divorce are starting to speak out. Realizing that their contemporaries share many of the same feelings, they’re no longer ashamed to admit how much their childhood grievances and disappointments have endured. As they search for ways to help one another and put their fears to rest, we may see the rise of groups that focus on the experience of having grown up in divorced families. Another change is that many people are seriously considering the benefits of staying together for the sake of their children. They’re examining what they have as a family and are taking a more realistic look at what divorce entails. Combining a full-time job, courtship, and parenting requires the speed and agility of an Olympics champion but without the training that the champion brings to the race. We are also seeing a rise in interest in premarital education and marriage enrichment programs. Several states have enacted marriage license incentives that encourage people to take a four-hour class in marriage education for a reduced fee and immediate granting of the license. To cut down on impetuous weddings, Florida put in a three-day waiting period. Illinois has legislation to make people wait sixty days. Other states are considering legislation to improve preparation for marriage. There is greater community interest in marital counseling programs and conflict resolution courses that are aimed at teaching people to stay in the marriage and resolve the friction rather than turn to divorce. It is still far too early to know whether these or other education plans will be effective, but they reflect the rise in community concern about children and the search for new ways to improve marriage. When I have presented my findings to judges and attorneys at national conferences, many admitted that they were stunned to learn that highly educated, affluent parents were not sending their children to college, especially when a second set of children was born into a remarriage and children from the first marriage were pushed aside. They were also surprised to hear that many adolescents are furious at the court system for ordering strict visitation agreements with no options for adding flexibility or change down the road.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  well, I understand you have some emotional issues that might cause you to embellish certain accounts.” “Emotional issues?” “Your alcoholism,” he says. “And your . . . ability to tell outrageous tales that harm others. Ms. Calcaterra, you should know I’ve informed the local police, the school district, and the child welfare agency that any complaints we receive from New York are coming from an alcoholic, drug-addicted juvenile delinquent. Your mother told me you were permanently removed from your siblings because of your violent outbursts and promiscuous conduct.” Is this really happening? “I’m not any of those things!” I respond. It’s obvious that Cookie manipulated this social worker. Any further attempts I could make for Rosie will be hopeless. I hang up on him and run back to my room, digging into my dwindling laundry coin stash to call Cherie. I fill her in on what just happened with the social worker in Oakview. “You have to go back out there!” “Hang on!” she says. “Let me think a minute. Just make sure I can get through if I call you tonight.” I prop open my dorm room door and face my desk chair at the hallway, listening for the pay phone to ring. I calculate how effectively I’ll be able to keep others on my floor off the phone—it’s the middle of March, so most are using their free time having long conversations with girlfriends or boyfriends from home who they have not seen in months. “Didn’t you hear about the pending drug search?” I tell one unsuspecting neighbor as she approaches the pay phone, taking a quarter from her pocket. “I heard the R.A.’s going to pull the fire alarm and the police are coming into our rooms to search.” She stares at the phone in confusion, then slinks away. Around midnight, when KiKi brings a group of friends into our room, I slam our door shut behind me and take a spot on the hard couch in the common area near the pay phone. First I lie seething, then tears streak down my temples and into my hair. I think about Mr. Brownstein’s lectures on the role of government in our lives, how it needs to be there as a safety net . . . right now I’m the only one who’s been saved by any net, while my baby sister navigates a high-wire act with no protection whatsoever; no sisters or social workers there to defend her. Exhausted by my tears, I drift to sleep. I’m awakened by the sound of the phone. It’s rung four times when I’m finally within arm’s reach. Then, it stops. I slam my fist against the painted cinder-block wall and press my forehead against the phone. “Dammit!” Then it rings again. “Hello?” “Cherie is flying out to Idaho tomorrow,” Camille says. “And?” “She’s getting Rosie!” “How?” “We’ve got this whole plan. She’s flying into Boise and will rent a car, then she’ll stake out at Rosie’s bus stop.

• From Untrue (2018)

  When I ask her whether stigma against polyamory and against women like her who are autonomous and assertive is lessening, Jenkins gives a quick and definitive “No.” Sure, there are shows about polyamory, and terms related to “consensual non-monogamy” are being searched with such frequency on Google that it may indicate a new openness to the idea. But Jenkins isn’t buying it. She’s haunted especially by the overt racism of many of her critics, who have plenty to say about her being with two men of Asian descent. “There might be some TV series about it and a cultural conversation about it, but there are plenty of people for whom polyamory is not okay, especially for a woman to be with two non-white men,” Jenkins notes. She told me she uses comments she has received—taunts like “gook lover,” “Asian fuck whore,” and “Jap double penetration cum bucket”—projecting them in huge letters onto a large screen when she gives lectures to underscore the fact of their intersection. Invoking the work of bell hooks, whose writing she greatly admires, she says, “Anti-poly, misogyny, and racist commentary and beliefs are deeply tied to each other, and to other cultural prejudices.” In this context, other seemingly willful misconstruings of what Jenkins writes about and believes and how she lives seem almost quaint—or at least comparatively innocuous. Except they aren’t. One article about Jenkins and her book, published by New York magazine’s The Cut, went into great detail about her life with her husband and her boyfriend. The article headline suggested, “Maybe Monogamy Isn’t the Only Way to Love.” Next to it was a stock photo of a triad—a man with his arm around one woman while surreptitiously holding the hand of another. It doesn’t take a doctorate in cultural studies to read that message: “Even when our publication runs a story about a polyamorous woman, we will reassert that having multiple sexual partners is an essentially male privilege.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Larry was especially enraged at what he considered his mother’s outrageous decision. Shortly after the divorce, he told me that his father always said that women and girls were stupid and worthless. In his view, he had been left with an inferior being. Whenever Larry’s father visited, he told the boy, “You are my favorite.” He pointedly ignored his little daughter who tagged behind hoping, as she later told me, that she would at least be allowed to pet her father’s dog, Ivan. After the separation, Larry donned his father’s tie and marched around the house shouting obscene insults at his mother. He threw himself into the role of filling his absent father’s shoes, representing his father in the household and identifying with his attitudes and behavior. Years later Larry confessed to me, “I was infuriated with my mother and I wanted my dad to return home. I would regularly compile a list of my grievances against her and call up my dad on the phone and tell him what she had done wrong. He would then call her and yell at her and she would cry.” Larry continued to lead the charge against his mother for all kinds of real or imagined misdeeds, with his father acting as silent partner and sometimes coach. Sometimes Larry took the lead. At other times his father was chief inquisitor. Larry’s mother continued to feel as helpless as she had throughout the marriage. Indeed, all three protagonists—Larry, his mother, and his father—kept the interactions of the marriage alive as the boy assumed the father’s role and dominant influence in the home. In this way, the father’s departure from the home was symbolically undone. It was as if the divorce had never happened. At the same time that Larry filled the household with rude yelling his teacher told me that he was “an inhibited, anxious, withdrawn, sad child who had trouble making friends. He is a bright boy,” she reported, “but his capacity to learn has been impaired by his preoccupation with the divorce.” Larry’s academic and social learning came to a standstill for several years. His psychic energies were fully spent in frantic efforts to restore the marriage.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as House in IowaIn late October, she visits you in Iowa City and decides to be a Dalek for Halloween. You are confused by this, profoundly, because she scorns the most earnest bits of nerd culture for reasons that are never precisely clear. She’s never seen a single episode of Doctor Who. When you tell her you’re going to be a Weeping Angel (you found the perfect nightgown in a Mennonite thrift store; a heavenly, draping Grecian shift in a barely there baby blue), you have to explain the villain to her. But she wants to be a Dalek, and she wants to make the costume herself; when she gets to town she begins to buy and assemble the pieces. She cuts up cardboard boxes, slices craft-store foam balls in half for the Dalek’s signature texture. She buys gold spray paint. Your basement fills with fumes. The night of Halloween, your girlfriend insists on making an elaborate dinner—tuna steaks lightly seared on each side. Butternut squash risotto. Her costume is not done—the spray paint has only just dried, the foam pieces need to be glued to the torso. When you try to gently move her along, she snaps at you, so you begin to get dressed in your own costume: the nightgown, a pair of painted wings, and white and blue makeup on your face and chest and arms. This last part takes much longer than you anticipate—is it that you underestimated the surface area of human beings in general, or your body in particular? You stand in front of the mirror swirling color onto your face as she slams things and stalks around the house, angry that her costume is not finished. Every so often, you snarl soundlessly into the mirror. She yells questions at you every time she passes the bathroom door. Why did you insist on tuna for dinner? (You didn’t.) Why did you let her be a stupid Dalek? (You don’t answer.) What the fuck are you supposed to be again? (An ancient alien life force that disguises itself as the statue of a weeping angel. They send their victims back in time and feed on the potential energy of the life no longer lived in the present. A terrible undeath.) “A what?” “A statue,” you say. “Just a statue.”20 On your way to the party, it is an almost perfect night: a little nippy, the air smoky and sharp, the drag and slide of autumn leaves across your path. You show up so late that it’s moved past fashionable and full swing, and the party has entered a scarier, darker place. You walk past a friend who has combined alcohol with something else, and when you say hi to her she looks at you with the blankest, most dead-eyed stare you’ve ever seen.