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.

Page 184 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  Like how people north of Pennsylvania say “the city” like there was only ever one and it is, of course, New York. No Newark, no Hoboken, no New Haven, no Boston, no Providence, no Portland. Just New York, dressed in its sparkling lights and beautiful people, its bright red scarves and head wraps and food carts recklessly jettisoning the aroma of gyro and bagels and tacos and pad thai across it all. “I hate New York,” I usually say, when the subject comes up, meaning, maybe: How could any city that flaunts its beauty like that let this happen to me? Though I know all cities eat their own. And this is not about the city. 2. “You’re so lucky you weren’t killed,” the first person I tell tells me. I am a sophomore in high school, and she is an English teacher and my advisor. I have moved to Manhattan from Nashville. I want to go home to my grandparents and my cousins, to the city whose heartbeat and language I know. My teacher is still talking; there is a bug in her hair. I watch the bug slowly climb the mousy blond strands and wonder how I am supposed to respond to her comment. I am silent. The bug inches on. That evening, in line at the grocery store, I watch the slim, middle-aged white man in front of me calmly hand his Brie to the cashier. I imagine tapping his shoulder and saying, Oh, what luck! It’s wonderful that you’re not dead. When I laugh at my own thought, it sounds like I’m trying to dislodge a stone from my chest. The Brie buyer looks at me. I become engrossed in the gum beside the register. You’re so lucky you weren’t killed. The words feel slender and sharp as the blade that was pressed against my neck that night—stroking a border so fine you can touch it and touch me at once with each of its cool metal faces. You . . . killed. 3. At least you weren’t killed. At least you have access to medical care. At least you have insurance. At least you have wonderful friends. Because the ones who tell me this are my friends and my teachers and the social worker and the doctor, I hold their words and outstretched hands even though my anger is mounting and I want not to be touched. These days, I speak few words, and I certainly don’t have the vocabulary to dismantle what’s been forced on me by people called safe. I don’t have breath to say: No, I will not be grateful for my rights. I will stand with two feet on this earth and I will always say thank you when someone does something kind and sorry when I’ve done something wrong and never outside of that. And, yes, I am furious that I am pulled between poles of gratitude and apology—both of which are violent erasures. Thank goodness I wasn’t killed.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  So downstairs I went clearing my throat and holding my heart. Lo was now in the living room, in her favorite overstuffed chair. As she sprawled there, biting at a hangnail and mocking me with her heartless vaporous eyes, and all the time rocking a stool upon which she had placed the heel of an outstretched shoeless foot, I perceived all at once with a sickening qualm how much she had changed since I first met her two years ago. Or had this happened during those last two weeks? Tendresse? Surely that was an exploded myth. She sat right in the focus of my incandescent anger. The fog of all lust had been swept away leaving nothing but this dreadful lucidity. Oh, she had changed! Her complexion was now that of any vulgar untidy highschool girl who applies shared cosmetics with grubby fingers to an unwashed face and does not mind what soiled texture, what pustulate epidermis comes in contact with her skin. Its smooth tender bloom had been so lovely in former days, so bright with tears, when I used to roll, in play, her tousled head on my knee. A coarse flush had now replaced that innocent fluorescence. What was locally known as a “rabbit cold” had painted with flaming pink the edges of her contemptuous nostrils. As in terror I lowered my gaze, it mechanically slid along the underside of her tensely stretched bare thigh—how polished and muscular her legs had grown! She kept her wide-set eyes, clouded-glass gray and slightly bloodshot, fixed upon me, and I saw the stealthy thought showing through them that perhaps after all Mona was right, and she, orphan Lo, could expose me without getting penalized herself. How wrong I was. How mad I was! Everything about her was of the same exasperating impenetrable order—the strength of her shapely legs, the dirty sole of her white sock, the thick sweater she wore despite the closeness of the room, her wenchy smell, and especially the dead end of her face with its strange flush and freshly made-up lips. Some of the red had left stains on her front teeth, and I was struck by a ghastly recollection—the evoked image not of Monique, but of another young prostitute in a bell-house, ages ago, who had been snapped up by somebody else before I had time to decide whether her mere youth warranted my risking some appalling disease, and who had just such flushed prominent pommettes and a dead maman, and big front teeth, and a bit of dingy red ribbon in her country-brown hair. “Well, speak,” said Lo. “Was the corroboration satisfactory?” “Oh, yes,” I said. “Perfect. Yes. And I do not doubt you two made it up. As a matter of fact, I do not doubt you have told her everything about us.” “Oh, yah?”

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  When we finally let Stephen catch his shoe, Matt nudged him on the shoulder and told him he was a good sport. Stephen, crouched on the ground and sliding his foot into his Nike, smiled up at us, his grin wide, his hair scattered across his head from all the jumping. I hated him, suddenly. I hated how small he was. I hated how willing he was to play along. I hated his weakness. Before I knew what I was doing, I shoved him hard against the concrete. I knelt on top of him, shouting, “Fucking pussy! Grow up, asshole!” I kept pushing him against the ground even as I heard him crying. I wanted to hear him squeal. Matt and Fred pulled me off him, shouting at me. “What the hell’s wrong with you, man?” they yelled as they threw me against the building. But I was gone, watching myself watch Stephen picking himself off the ground and wiping the tears from his eyes. The assistant coach came outside, surveyed the situation and, after Matt and Fred told him what happened, dragged me into his office. As he screamed at me, I started sobbing. I couldn’t explain myself because I didn’t understand: I had never felt that kind of rage before, I had no idea where it came from, I couldn’t comprehend what had happened. In between my tears I tried to apologize but it felt like my mouth was sewn shut. It felt like a hand was pressed over my lips; it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I prayed the coach would see, prayed that he’d hear the fireworks in my head, prayed that he’d take me in his arms and tell me everything would finally be okay. He looked at me and shook his head. “Pathetic,” he said. “Tell me, do you feel like a big man, now?” IN OUR JUNIOR YEAR, WE THREW A PARTY AT AARON’S HOUSE, just five of us with pizza and pay-per-view professional wrestling. We each brought a case of Natty Light and Josh brought his girlfriend, Kate. She stood two inches taller than him and wore a tight white tank top and jeans with ripped holes around the curves of her ass. As we drank and watched the steroids on display, he whispered in her ear and, when she laughed, he wrapped his arm around her waist and squeezed her breast, all while watching us watching him. Halfway through the night, the rain came. I could hear the wind blowing against the aluminum siding, a whistle without a discernible tune. Josh nudged Kate and pointed at Aaron. She looked and nodded, then moved next to Aaron and started licking his ear. Josh told Aaron to stand up and, as he did, Kate grabbed his crotch and rubbed. Josh had his hand in one of the holes in her jeans. She smoothed out Aaron’s khakis to show his erection, but she was watching me.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  In subsequent weeks, media analysis of the coverage of the sexual assault stories revealed not a systemic pattern of migrant attacks, but rather a preponderance of rumor-driven reports and hyperbole. The chivalric denouncement of migrant men, however, had less to do with the facts or protecting European women’s dignity than with reinforcing the cultural patriarchy undergirding it. The vilification of Muslim men, and criminalization of migration in general, in the Global North has proven profoundly destabilizing and alienating, resulting in, among other problems, a regressive gendering of resettlement and integration issues. The current policy discourse around migration policy tends to distinguish “women and children” as a separate category of victimhood (those deemed worthy of “rescue”) from men and boys (who are seen as potential perverts or terrorists). European aid and asylum regulations, for example, have typically excluded male Syrian refugees, with the exception of children, seniors, and people with disabilities, on national security grounds. But advocates say this division leads to dehumanization of all migrants. When women and children are exclusively prioritized in humanitarian resettlement, the government might end up unraveling the very social bonds that are integral to rebuilding their lives. Under conventional relocation programs, refugee populations are separated into one-dimensional portraits of public charges or criminals. Gender inequality is intensified, even for the “rescued” women and children, when host countries offer few opportunities for refugees to truly restore their social fabric as cohesive communities, with their own cultural and political integrity. The structural violence besieging refugees echoes the legacy of imperialism in the Global South: on the landscape of systemic mass dispossession, rape culture is not “foreign,” but rather, essential, to the Western worldview. Rape is integral to the cultures of war, colonization, and forced displacement that have turned gender oppression and sexual violence into a global currency of desperation. Noting the structural deficits in humanitarian resources for treatment and monitoring of refugee rape survivors, psychologist Katie Thomas wrote, “government and non-state actor combatants usually share a low valuation of women. No other physical wound with injuries as severe as those perpetrated by sexual violence could be ignored or deprioritized without international outcry.” We speak of rape in migration as an “unimaginable” experience, a transgression relegated to the margins of civilization. But we can’t make sense of rape culture more broadly, or the meaning of gender in migration, until we understand that both the social order within borders, and the chaos outside them, fold into a single binary that cannot hold. Refugees’ stories reflect the complexity of navigating the social vacuums between states. Yet the scourge of rape isn’t rooted in the culture that crosses the border, but the culture of borders themselves. The line separating one society from another—and “us” from “them”—is what we make of it. The border crossers’ never-ending quest for real security turns on the common ground we share—not the boundaries between us.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I put an end to this gibberish by suggesting Valeria pack up her few belongings immediately, upon which the platitudinous colonel gallantly offered to carry them into the car. Reverting to his professional state, he drove the Humberts to their residence and all the way Valeria talked, and Humbert the Terrible deliberated with Humbert the Small whether Humbert Humbert should kill her or her lover, or both, or neither. I remember once handling an automatic belonging to a fellow student, in the days (I have not spoken of them, I think, but never mind) when I toyed with the idea of enjoying his little sister, a most diaphanous nymphet with a black hair bow, and then shooting myself. I now wondered if Valechka (as the colonel called her) was really worth shooting, or strangling, or drowning. She had very vulnerable legs, and I decided I would limit myself to hurting her very horribly as soon as we were alone.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  A horn honked outside and I struggled to push the bureau away from the door and be quiet. But my footsteps were loud once they hit the hardwood floors in the living room. Then I heard the horn again, three times, more frantic. Time to go. “Where do you think you’re going, young lady?” The sound of his voice right after the horn made me jump. I knew if I got the door open and Robin saw me that I’d be safe. I just needed the door open. I rushed to unlock both the dead bolt and bottom lock and flung it wide. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said, as I stepped onto the porch. Just keep walking I said to myself. Ignore him, Sharisse. Just keep moving. But it’s impossible. “Leave me alone before I tell them what you just did,” I said, turning back. His secret was my one available weapon, and being outside gave me more courage. Our neighbor across the street was standing in his driveway; our next-door neighbor, Andy, was smoking on his porch; and the Mexican family two doors down was in their yard. “You better get your little butt back in this house.” Robin honked again. “Sharisse, c’mon,” she called. “Just get in the car!” “But he did it again.” I started to cry. I wanted her to understand why, safely outdoors, I couldn’t just walk away without him admitting it. My father insisted that I come back in the house, infuriated at me and embarrassed in front of our neighbors. “Tell them!” I shouted, suddenly brave with rage and a public audience. “Tell them how you tried to fuck me just now so I could drive your piece-of-shit truck!” He blinked in the sunlight, registering what I’d screamed in front of so many witnesses. “Be quiet, little girl,” he hissed. “Let’s go, Sharisse!” In all the noise I didn’t immediately hear my mother’s heels on the sidewalk. “What’s going on here?” she asked, taking in the scene in our driveway. I was angry at my mother for the look of surprise on her face. What did she expect, after all? It’s not like he changed the way he treated me after the incident. Nothing changed. “Ask your husband,” I said and got in the car. I lived with Robin for a short time but, as much as I’d always wanted siblings, her house was too busy. Brothers and bullies from school had free rein at her house, and some of Robin’s best friends were girls who had threatened to beat me up. I decided it was better to take my chances at home where I knew what to expect. Maybe my pulling a knife on my father showed him I wasn’t the one to be fucked with.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “Steve…I’d like to talk to you privately,” his father said. “Sorry, Dad.” He faced his mother. “I have some big news…” His mother’s face changed. Was she scared or expectant? “I’ve joined up.” His mother put down her needlepoint. “Joined what?” “You’re in the army now,” he sang, marching around the room. “You’re not behind a plow, you’ll never get rich, diggin’ a ditch, you’re in the army now.” Fern laughed. “What is he talking about?” his mother asked his father. “He enlisted,” his father said. His mother jumped up and lunged at his father. “You put him up to this!” “Corinne…” his father said, setting Fern down. “He’s supposed to go to college, not the army,” his mother shouted. Natalie appeared in the doorway. “This sounds interesting.” “Did you know?” his mother asked his father. “Did you?” “I just found out,” his father said. “He can’t do this. He’s a boy. He has no experience.” “Take another look, Mom,” Steve said, pulling himself up to his full six-foot height, shoulders thrown back, eyes straight ahead. “No!” Corinne cried. “I won’t have him throwing his life away.” She ran out of the den with Steve’s dad right behind her. A door slammed. Voices were raised. “Nice going, Steve,” Natalie said. “I figured you’d appreciate the drama.” “Will you wear an army suit?” Fern asked. “It’s called a uniform,” Steve said. “And yes, I will.” “Will we have a cake to celebrate?” “I doubt it,” Steve said. “How about a gun?” Natalie asked. “Will you get a gun?” “Everybody in the army gets a gun.” “Don’t bring it home.” —LATER, when he unwrapped Daisy’s graduation present he found something that looked like a handmade book, with long pages covered in red construction paper and black letters spelling out Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. Behind it was an old issue of The New Yorker magazine, dated January 31, 1948, with a paper clip marking a story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” by J. D. Salinger. He opened the card. Dear Steve, I convinced the manager of the Ritz Book Shop to give me these galley proofs of a book that will be published this summer. It is Mr. Vonnegut’s first novel. Something tells me you will like this writer. Congratulations on your graduation. Wishing you all the best, always. Daisy P.S. The Salinger story is one I recently came across while browsing through a stack of old magazines. For some crazy reason Daisy’s gift made him cry. Maybe because it meant somebody did know him, after all. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00044.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00044.jpg] A FAREWELL TO ELIZABETHBy Henry AmmermanJUNE 23 — It is with some sadness that I write this, my last story for the Daily Post. I have been privileged over the past six months to report for you on the terrible series of airplane tragedies that has brought this city so much pain and unwanted national attention.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I controlled my breath and said: “Dolores, this must stop right away. I am ready to yank you out of Beardsley and lock you up you know where, but this must stop. I am ready to take you away the time it takes to pack a suitcase. This must stop or else anything may happen.” “Anything may happen, huh?” I snatched away the stool she was rocking with her heel and her foot fell with a thud on the floor. “Hey,” she cried, “take it easy.” “First of all you go upstairs,” I cried in my turn,—and simultaneously grabbed at her and pulled her up. From that moment, I stopped restraining my voice, and we continued yelling at each other, and she said unprintable things. She said she loathed me. She made monstrous faces at me, inflating her cheeks and producing a diabolical plopping sound. She said I had attempted to violate her several times when I was her mother’s roomer. She said she was sure I had murdered her mother. She said she would sleep with the very first fellow who asked her and I could do nothing about it. I said she was to go upstairs and show me all her hiding places. It was a strident and hateful scene. I held her by her knobby wrist and she kept turning and twisting it this way and that, surreptitiously trying to find a weak point so as to wrench herself free at a favorable moment, but I held her quite hard and in fact hurt her rather badly for which I hope my heart may rot, and once or twice she jerked her arm so violently that I feared her wrist might snap, and all the while she stared at me with those unforgettable eyes where cold anger and hot tears struggled, and our voices were drowning the telephone, and when I grew aware of its ringing she instantly escaped. With people in movies I seem to share the services of the machina telephonica and its sudden god. This time it was an irate neighbor. The east window happened to be agape in the living room, with the blind mercifully down, however; and behind it the damp black night of a sour New England spring had been breathlessly listening to us. I had always thought that type of haddocky spinster with the obscene mind was the result of considerable literary inbreeding in modern fiction; but now I am convinced that prude and prurient Miss East—or to explode her incognito, Miss Fenton Lebone—had been probably protruding three-quarter-way from her bedroom window as she strove to catch the gist of our quarrel. “… This racket … lacks all sense of …” quacked the receiver, “we do not live in a tenement here. I must emphatically …” I apologized for my daughter’s friends being so loud. Young people, you know—and cradled the next quack and a half. Downstairs the screen door banged. Lo? Escaped?

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  “I’m hearing about all kinds of other books in our schools that I’d object to,” she said, including those that “sympathize with communism, encourage premarital sex or experimenting with drugs, take pro-abortion positions and stress evolution without teaching creationism, too.” George Wilson said that this was exactly why he rallied a team to fight on behalf of Deenie . His opponent’s point of view put her “in the same boat with fascism,” he argued. “If you give them Czechoslovakia, they’ll come back for Poland later.” The ACLU agreed. In December 1985, the Chicago Tribune published a follow-up that included results from a national survey showing an uptick in book challenges across the South, as well as data from affected librarians suggesting that more often than not, these challenges resulted in the books being removed altogether. A spokesperson for the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom added that while book banning efforts in the South tended to be more organized, the problem was bad in the Northeast, too. By then, the Gwinnett school board had agreed to restore Deenie to elementary school libraries, but only if it lived on a restricted shelf that students would have to avoid unless they had written permission from their parents. The ACLU didn’t like that so-called resolution, either. The Gwinnett case dragged on—as we know from recent national elections, Georgia is deeply divided when it comes to politics and its citizens are passionate. In 2006, an evangelical Christian mother of three landed Gwinnett back in the news when she demanded that the school system remove the Harry Potter books from libraries on account of their “evil themes, witchcraft, demonic activity, murder, evil blood sacrifice, spells and teaching children all of this.” The Gwinnett Daily Post covered the situation, noting that “book appeals have been fairly rare in the Gwinnett school system.” The article noted that before the Potter furor, the last challenge had been back in 1997, when some parents fought to remove two books: Ghost Camp by middle grade horror writer R.L. Stine, and Judy Blume’s It’s Not the End of the World . The school board examined these titles and voted to keep them on the shelves. And even the Deenie episode proved that book challenges had a tendency to backfire. In September 1985, a month after Teresa Wilson first set her sights on Deenie , the Associated Press reported that Gwinnett’s bookstores were experiencing an unprecedented run on the novel. “That’s what happens when they start banning books,” Bobbie Setzer, a local bookstore manager, told the AP. “Everyone wants to read them.” It was at least a partial victory for Blume—and by then, she commanded a cavalry. She donated money to the National Coalition Against Censorship in the early 1980s and by spring of 1983, she had joined their advisory council. In June 1984, she received a letter from a board member requesting a more substantial donation and offering a face-to-face meeting with Leanne Katz, NCAC’s executive director.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  But Alcinus, though he were a man of great enterprise, yet could he not beware by Lamathus, nor voide himselfe from evill fortune, for on a day when he had entred into an old womans house to rob her, he went up into a high chamber, where hee should first have strangled her: but he had more regard to throw down the bags of mony and gold out at a window, to us that stood under; and when he was so greedy that he would leave nothing behinde, he went into the old womans bed where she lay asleep, and would have taken off the coverlet to have thrown downe likewise, but shee awaked, and kneeling on her knees, desired him in this manner: O sir I pray you cast not away such torn and ragged clouts into my neighbours houses, for they are rich enough, and need no such things. Then Alcinus thinking her words to be true, was brought in beleefe, that such things as he had throwne out already, and such things as hee should throw out after, was not fallen downe to his fellowes, but to other mens houses, wherefore hee went to the window to see, and as hee thought to behold the places round about, thrusting his body out of the window, the old woman marked him wel, and came behind him softly, and though shee had but small strength, yet with sudden force she tooke him by the heeles and thrust him out headlong, and so he fell upon a marvellous great stone and burst his ribs, wherby he vomited and spewed great flakes of blood, and presently died. Then wee threw him to the river likewise, as we had done Lamathus before.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  “I tried to explain that there would always be mothers in my stories and that none of them were based on her,” she wrote in a 2004 introduction to Wifey . That didn’t help, either. “She said it didn’t matter, that everyone would think she was Sandy Pressman’s mother anyway.” But when it came to the sexual content of the novel, Blume said that her mother was less concerned. Essie typed out many of Judy’s manuscripts over the years and never said zip about the graphic scenes. She had learned a line from her former high school classmate, who happened to be Philip Roth’s mom, Bess. They ran into each other on the street one day and Bess Roth offered Essie the wisdom she’d acquired from being a parent to the author of Portnoy’s Complaint : the Oedipal, psychosexual 1969 literary sensation. “When they ask how she knows all those things,” Bess supposedly told her old friend, “you say, ‘I don’t know, but not from me!’ ” Chapter Sixteen Divorce “I don’t think we could have survived two more years together.” Even before it was published in the fall of 1978, Wifey caused drama. The racy novel wasn’t the right fit for Bradbury, which only handled books for children, so it was coming out with the Putnam imprint, under the eye of legendary editor in chief Phyllis Grann. Meanwhile, publicists at Blume’s paperback publisher, Dell, worried that Blume’s first book for adults would scare off her legions of loyal young readers. The trick was to herald Wifey properly but also make it very clear that this specific work was not intended for Blume’s typical audience. Judy wasn’t concerned about professional fallout. She was confident that kids would have the good sense to avoid Wifey , or at least put it down as soon as they scanned a page or two and realized the book wasn’t written for them. She brushed off any suggestions that she should publish it under a pseudonym. However, she was a little bit anxious about the impact the novel might have on her personal life. Since the story concerned a troubled marriage, she showed the manuscript to John before it came out, inviting his feedback. She assured him, “If there’s anything that really bothers you, I’ll change it,” as she told Bust in 1997. He handled it “brilliantly,” Blume said. “He didn’t say anything. He stayed out of it. I think that was really very smart.” As Wifey ’s publication date approached, the reviews started rolling in. Immediately, it was clear that the novel hit a nerve with the critics.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  torum nolentem puerum, sequentem tamen, et pudi- cissima illa uxore altrorsus disclusa solus ipse cum puero cubans gratissima corruptarum nuptiarum vin- dicta perfruebatur. Sed cum primum rota solis lucida diem. peperit, vocatis duobus e familia validissimis, quam altissime sublato puero, ferula nates eius obver- berans, “Tu autem," inquit “Tam mollis ac tener et admodum puer, defraudatis amatoribus aetatis tuae flore, mulieres appetis atque eas liberas et con- nubia lege sociata corrumpis et intempestivum tibi nomen adulteri vindicas?" His et pluribus verbis compellatum et insuper affatim plagis castigatum forinsecus abicit; at ille adulterorum omnium fortis- simus insperata potitus salute, tamen nates candidas illas noctu diuque diruptus, maerens profugit: nec setius pistor ille nuntium remisit uxori eamque pro- 29 tinus de sua proturbavit domo. At illa praeter genu- inam nequitiam contumelia etiam, quamvis iusta, tamen altius commota atque exasperata ad armillum revertitur et ad familiares feminarum artes accen- ditur, magnaque cura requisitam veteratricem quan- dam feminam, quae devotionibus ac maleficiis quid- vis efficere posse credebatur, multis exorat precibus multisque suffarcinat muneribus, alterum de duobus postulans, vel rursum mitigato conciliari marito, vel si id nequiverit, certe larva vel aliquo diro numine immisso violenter eius expugnari spiritum, Tunc ! Adlington's note to the passage is worthy of transcription : “Tn likesort do many nowadays-go to wise women which are 444 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK IX

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  The next day, I call my friend Anisha and tell her I will never go to therapy again. After a sleepless night fighting to keep the past from consuming my present, I am furious that everything I’ve worked so hard to rebuild seems to have crumbled. “It feels like I’m right back there, in the week after it happened. The stakes are too high,” I say. “I had it all under control. I can deal with this myself.” Anisha tells me, “A good therapist knows you have to live in the house while you remodel.” 18. I lay awake all night thinking about how I am completely exhausted, staving off sleep and trying to stop thinking about what might happen if I allow myself to close my eyes. I watch the sun rise, which tells me it’s time to start again. 19. I find H. on the Psychology Today website, a blog that also allows you to search for therapists. According to the site, H. is the only therapist in my area who has noted that he sees transgender clients (and whose description doesn’t strike me as completely disingenuous). I am cisgender, but I imagine a therapist who only sees cis clients has little understanding of gender and little recourse for facilitating healing. I call him. We set up an appointment. At the end of the session, I am amazed at myself for sitting in a room alone with a man for forty-five minutes. I tell H. so, and he nods. We talk during our sessions, or don’t. At the end of each meeting, I promise to come back next week. A therapist with an office down the hall from H. has a dog. I tell H. I saw the dog, and he is adorable. H. asks me if I’d like the dog to be at one of our sessions. I say, “Yes.” I am surprised when, the following week, the dog is in H.’s office waiting for me. I don’t want to thank H. Instead, I say, “I’ve never really said all of it out loud.” H. does not say, “What are you talking about?” He does not say, “Really, eight years later?” Or, “At least you weren’t killed.” H. says, “I’m here to listen if you want to tell me.” And then, “If you don’t want to speak, I am still here.” “Will it help?” I ask. I want a definitive answer, even as I suspect that men with definitive answers about my body have something to do with why I’m there in the first place.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  fear the metes and bounds of his land, to the end he might at least have so much ground of his father’s heritage as might bury him. Amongst whom he found these three brethren as friends to help and aid him as far as they might in his adversity and tribulation. Howbeit the presence of all these honest citizens could in no wise persuade or frighten this madman to leave his power and extortion, and though at the first he did shew temperance in his tongue, yet of a sudden, the more they went about with gentle words to tell him his faults, the more would he fret and fume, swearing all the oaths under God, and pledging his own life and his dearest, that he little regarded the presence of the whole city, and incontinently he would command his servants to take the poor man by the ears, and carry him out of his cottage and thrust him afar off. This greatly offended all the standers-by ; and then forthwith one of the brethren spake unto him some- what boldly, saying: “It is but a folly to have such affiance in your riches, and to use your tyrannous pride to threaten, when as the law is common for the poor alike, and a redress may be had by it to suppress the insolence of the rich." These words made his harsh temper to burn more than oil on flames, or brimstone in a fire, or a Fury's scourge of whips, and he became furious to madness, saying that they should be all hanged and their laws too, before he would be subject to any person: and therewithal he called out his bandogs and great mastiffs that followed the sheep on his farm, which accustomed to eat the carrion and carcasses of dead beasts in the fields, and had been trained to set upon such as passed by the way. These he commanded should be put upon all the assistants to tear them in 457 ST LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Royer said to Uncle Henry was “I could expel her for this.” Expel? He’d actually said the word out loud. “She defied my orders. Mrs. Wallace told her the story was not appropriate and what did she do—made copies and handed them out at school. Have you read the story?” Mr. Royer asked Henry. “Yes, I have. I was impressed.” “It’s hogwash!” “Pardon me?” Henry said. “Would you want me to allow the young Adolf Hitler to express his opinions in our school paper?” Adolf Hitler! He was comparing her to Adolf Hitler? “You can’t be serious,” Henry said calmly. “I hardly think that’s a fair comparison.” Mr. Royer came out from behind his desk and began to adjust the bird prints on the wall, tapping the side of one drawing, then another. Miri was stuck on Adolf Hitler so missed whatever Henry said next except it ended in freedom of expression. Mr. Royer whipped around. “Don’t lecture me on free speech, young man.” Tiny began to cough, just as she had the last time they were in his office. “Do you need water, Mrs. Wallace?” Mr. Royer asked, annoyed. Tiny shook her head. Again, she dug out a cough drop and put it in her mouth. “I think the best thing for all involved would be for Miri to leave the school paper of her own free will,” Mr. Royer said. He was kicking her off the paper? Tiny held a tissue to her mouth, got rid of the cough drop and cleared her throat a few times. “She’s a good student,” Tiny managed to say. “And a fine young reporter. She’s never been in trouble. This would be very harsh punishment.” She eyed the pitcher of water on Mr. Royer’s desk. Uncle Henry poured a cup and handed it to Tiny. She drank it down. “You think this is harsh punishment, Mrs. Wallace?” “Yes, I do,” Tiny said with conviction, “and I’m concerned it will affect the morale of our other editors and reporters.” Henry said, “Why not give Miri another chance, Mr. Royer? I’m sure she understands now that your strong feelings come with serious consequences.” “I don’t want another chance!” Miri said. “What good is a newspaper when its reporters can’t write about what’s on the minds of its readers?” “That’s it!” Mr. Royer said. “You’re off the paper and you’re on probation for the rest of the school year. One more incident and I promise you, Miss Ammerman, you will be expelled.” He said the last few words very slowly, making sure they sank in. Tears stung her eyes but she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Henry reached for Miri’s hand. “Mr. Royer, with all due respect—” “I suppose you’re a bleeding heart, Mr.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “ ‘Feel free to consult a lawyer’?” Miri asked. “Feel free!” Rusty repeated. “Who does that bitch think she is?” Rusty went crazy, throwing her shoes against the wall. “He thinks he can walk into my life and destroy everything just like he did sixteen years ago? I’ll kill him first.” Miri was sure that at that moment, Rusty meant it. Her ferocity scared Miri. “Did you think I’d never find out?” she asked Miri. “Frekki fooled me. She never said he’d be at Gruning’s.” “Gruning’s! My god—you had ice cream with him?” “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t know what to do.” “You should have told me the minute you got home. I’d have stopped this immediately. I’d have warned Frekki and her brother, if they ever, ever contacted you again, I’d have them arrested. That’s what you should have done. You can’t trust him, Miri. Don’t let that smile fool you, those eyes…” “I don’t trust him. I don’t even like him. I never want to see him again!” This wasn’t completely true. She was curious about her mother and him. “What bothers me is you didn’t tell me. You kept it a secret and now Frekki is asking for a meeting. I trusted you to go to the Paper Mill Playhouse with Frekki. I trusted you, Miri.” “But, Mom, I didn’t know he’d be there.” “What’s going on?” Henry called from the foyer. They hadn’t heard him come in. “A situation,” Rusty called back. Henry ran up the stairs two at a time and burst into the kitchen. “Mama?” he asked Rusty, and Miri could read the fear in his eyes. “No,” Rusty told him. “Mike Monsky has surfaced.” “Mike Monsky?” Henry said this as if they were talking about Frankenstein. “And guess what?” Rusty said. “Miri’s met him but didn’t think she needed to tell me.” Henry gave Miri a questioning look but Miri didn’t say anything. “And now Frekki’s cooked up some mishegoss about getting together with a Rabbi Beiderman,” Rusty said. “To make a plan.” “A plan?” Henry asked. Miri handed him Frekki’s note. Henry read it. “I know a good lawyer,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll advise us as a family friend.” The lawyer, Gregg Bender, came over after dinner. He and Henry were old friends. They used to play basketball together at the Y. Rusty made coffee. “She doesn’t want to see him,” Rusty told Gregg Bender, offering cream and sugar for his coffee and a plate of store-bought cookies. “Isn’t that right, Miri? Isn’t that what you told me?” “I did say that.” “There!” Rusty said. “You see? If she never wants to see him again why should we agree to have this meeting? Can someone please explain that to me?” “Did you mean it?” Henry asked Miri. “Are you afraid of him?” “No, I’m not afraid of him.” And no, I didn’t really mean it but how am I supposed to let you know that without Rusty going crazy?

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “I understand how you feel, Rusty,” Gregg Bender said. “But this is about Miri’s future. As I see it, this could be an opportunity. Let’s say Mr. Monsky puts away a nest egg for her education—” “I’ve already started a savings account for her education,” Rusty said. “Every week since I started working I’ve put something into it.” “So have I,” Henry said, surprising Miri. “It’s not a lot but it’ll help pay for her tuition.” “Thank you, Uncle Henry,” Miri whispered, afraid if she said anything more she’d start bawling. “You see?” Rusty said to Gregg. “We have it all worked out. So why should we say yes to Frekki and her brother?” “For one thing, to avoid this matter going to court,” Gregg said. “To keep it friendly. ” “Friendly?” Rusty gave a false laugh. “That’s a good one!” “For another…” And now Gregg looked at Miri. “Because she has a right to know her father.” “He is no father!” Rusty turned on her heel and headed for her bedroom. She slammed the door like a frustrated, angry teenager. “This is very hard for Rusty,” Henry said. Gregg nodded. “I imagine so.” Miri wanted to say, What about me? Don’t you think it’s hard for me? But she didn’t. —RABBI BEIDERMAN’S HOUSE was on a quiet street in Maplewood in a neighborhood of pretty old houses with flowering trees and lawns that would soon be green. Daffodils and tulips were sprouting. Miri might have sat in the rumble seat today if Henry still had his old coupe. But he’d given that to Leah so she no longer had to take the bus to work and he drove a new Chevy. He’d gotten a good deal on last year’s model. Nobody wanted a maroon car. They passed a church as they turned onto the rabbi’s street. Wasn’t it strange for a rabbi to live near a church? The lawyer, Gregg Bender, was already there, parked in his car, waiting for them. The rabbi was clean-shaven, dressed in weekend clothes, a tweed jacket over a blue oxford cloth shirt, no tie. She’d never seen a rabbi out of his robes. She’d never thought of a rabbi having a nice house on a nice street in a good neighborhood, wearing regular clothes, having a wife and kids. He welcomed them into a book-lined room with a sofa and four club chairs around a coffee table. Photos of his children at different ages were scattered around the room. Henry made the introductions. “Glad to meet you, Rabbi,” he said, shaking hands. “I’m Henry Ammerman, this is my sister, Rusty Ammerman, my niece, Miri Ammerman, and Gregg Bender, our lawyer, who is here as a family friend.” “Welcome to all of you,” the rabbi said. “I admire your work, Mr. Ammerman. Please, make yourselves comfortable. We have coffee and Danish.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Bad things happen in threes, her cousin Belle reminded her, but Irene couldn’t say that Rusty having a baby at eighteen was a bad thing, or maybe it was, given the circumstances, but the baby herself was not. The baby, Miri, was a precious gift, with her grandfather’s high cheekbones and dimpled cheek. Not a beauty like Rusty, not yet, but growing into her looks. The eyes, she knew where they came from, but she kept that to herself. She hoped to god she would never again come face-to-face with the person responsible for those eyes. If she did she didn’t know what she might do. He’d better hope she wouldn’t have a carving knife in her hand. If she kept thinking of him she might need a nitro under her tongue. She brushed off her hands as if brushing away bad thoughts and poured herself a small glass of sherry. —RUSTY CAME DOWNSTAIRS to help at the open house. Irene looked smart in a simple gray wool dress with a white collar. She was at her most charming, chatting with her customers, offering a glass of sherry to the few husbands who’d accompanied their wives, and to the women, too. “It will warm you up,” she told them. Was anyone better at this than her mother? Rusty didn’t think so. Irene had once confided to Rusty she’d had the opportunity, when she was young, to marry into the family who’d started Volupté. But her parents thought Max Ammerman was a better catch. He was fifteen years older and already established in business. If she’d married the Volupté boy she’d be powdering her nose in the best clubs and restaurants, instead of selling compacts wholesale from home. It was still early but already it looked like Irene would get a good turnout. Rusty replenished the stock from Irene’s closet, handled the cash and the occasional check, and was available for gift-wrapping. When the phone rang Rusty excused herself and picked it up. “Irene?” “No, this is her daughter, Rusty.” “Oh, Rusty, dear, I haven’t seen you in ages. This is Estelle Sapphire from Bayonne. I can’t get to Elizabeth tonight. I’m busy packing, leaving for Florida in the morning, but I was hoping Irene could put away six compacts for me. My husband will pick them up tomorrow on his way back from the airport. He’s driving to Miami but I’m flying.” Lucky Mrs. Sapphire, Rusty thought, to be escaping this weather. She wouldn’t mind a trip to Florida, but she took her two weeks of vacation in the summer so she and Miri could spend time together down the shore. “Any special design?” Rusty asked. “No, dear. Whatever Irene thinks.” “Price range?” “Mid. Really, I’m just taking them in case I meet someone, a good hairdresser, a pleasant maid. You know. As a way to say thank you. So much nicer than giving money.” “Of course,” Rusty said. “I’ll get them ready for you right now.” “Thank you, Rusty.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  and ruining my life, my little sister’s life and my mother’s life.” “How am I supposed to do that? They’re grown-ups. They do what they want.” “Tell your mother she has to decide between you and my father.” Miri shook her head. She didn’t think she could do that. Suppose she came out the loser? “Two—refuse to go to Las Vegas.” “Las Vegas! What are you talking about?” “Don’t tell me you don’t know. They’re going to Las Vegas together at the end of the school year and you’re going with them.” “No I’m not.” “If you don’t stop them, you are. You’re going to Las Vegas and you’ll never see me or your boyfriend again.” “Stop!” “Tell your mother to stop, not me. And just so you know, my father begged my mother to go with him. He was practically on his knees begging her to go. He promised Fern and me our own horses. But she said no. So my father found someone else to go with him. Your mother!” “Why should I believe you?” “I really don’t care who you believe. I’m just telling you what’s going on. And here’s something else you should know. My mother’s at her lawyer’s office right now. She’s going to take my father to the cleaners if they get divorced. There won’t be anything left for your mother or you. I hope you’ll be happy living on spaghetti.” Miri liked spaghetti but she wasn’t getting into that now. “I hate them!” Natalie shouted, pressing the sides of her head with her hands as if she were in agony. “I hate my father, your mother and I hate you!” “What’d I do?” “You found them.” “Who told you that?” “My father came clean. He told my mother everything last night, and she told me. She says your mother is no better than a whore.” A whore! Her once-upon-a-time best friend was calling her mother a whore? Miri got a sharp pain in her chest. Maybe she was going to die, just like Lulu.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  She looked at me with contempt. “You don’t know a thing about having kids.” “And you don’t know a thing about writing.” I was really disgusted with myself for sounding so infantile. Randy always made me feel like five again. “But you’d love having kids,” she persisted, “you really would.” “For God’s sake, you’re probably right! But you’re enough of an Ethel Kennedy for one family—why the hell do we need any more? And why should I do it if I have so many doubts about it? Why should I force myself? For whose good? Yours? Mine? The nonexistent kids? It’s not as if the human race is about to die out if I don’t have kids!” “But aren’t you even curious to have the experience?” “I guess…but the curiosity isn’t exactly killing me. Besides, I have time….” “You’re almost thirty. You don’t have as much time as you think.” “Oh, God,” I said, “you really can’t stand anyone to do anything but what you’ve done. Why do I have to copy your life and your mistakes? Can’t I even make my own damned mistakes?” “What mistakes?” “Like bringing up your children to think they’re Catholics, like lying about your religion, like denying who you are…” “I’ll kill you!” Randy shrieked, coming at me with her arms raised. I ducked into the hall closet as I had so many times in childhood. There were days when Randy used to beat me up regularly. (At least if I have kids I’ll never make the mistake of having more than one. Being an only child is supposed to be such a psychological hardship, but it was all I ever wished for as a child.) “PIERRE!” I heard Randy screaming outside the door. I turned the lock and pulled the light cord. Then I backed into my mother’s sable coat (smelling of old Joy and stale Diorissimo) and sat beneath it cross-legged among the boots. Above me were two more racks of coats going up high into the ceiling. Old fur coats, English children’s coats with leather leggings, ski parkas, rain capes, trench coats, autographed slickers from our camp days, school blazers with name tapes in the necks and forgotten skate keys in the pockets, velvet evening coats, brocade coats, polo coats, mink coats…thirty-five years of changing fashions and four grown daughters…thirty-five years of buying and spending and raising kids and screaming…and what did my mother have to show for it? Her sable, her mink, and her resentment? “Isadora!” It was Pierre now. He rapped at the door. I sat on the floor and rocked my knees. I had no intention of getting up. Such a lovely smell of mothballs and Joy. “Isadora!”