Anxiety

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 A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I went to the headmaster’s secretary to make an appointment. “I must see him now.” “What is it exactly?” she asked. “Do you want to argue over a grade? It’s too late for that—” “No, no,” I said disdainfully. “It has nothing to do with me personally. It concerns the reputation of the school and it can’t wait a moment.” She nodded and went into the headmaster’s paneled, carpeted office for a moment. When she emerged she told me to come back at four. I was agitated. I knew I was doing the right thing and yet I feared what Chuck would say when Mr. Beattie was fired. Would Chuck drop me, persecute me, organize a cabal against me, tell everyone I was a hateful little prig? I knew I wouldn’t be able to face Mr. Beattie. I’d never spoken out against anyone before. Would his wife and children go hungry? Would he ever find another job? Never before had I wielded so much power over an adult man; the power excited and scared me. Paradoxically, I who didn’t much like Eton, I who concealed sexual longings most Etonians would have condemned far sooner than dope peddling, I who had rejected the school’s religion and slept with a master and his wife, I who had once bought a hustler ten years older than I and last summer had slept with a boy three years younger, I who’d serviced Ralph, the special camper—paradoxically I was the one whom circumstance had chosen to defend this institution I despised. I was to be the guardian of public morality. Anxiety swept through me. Like most of the other students I refused to wear an overcoat even on the coldest days. Now I was trembling as I hugged myself and hurried down the brick walkway toward the music building. My teeth were chattering by the time I ducked in the door. There was Mr. Beattie picking out chords on the piano. No one else was around. “Hi,” he said. He stood and gave me his limp hand, a courtesy that puzzled me. No other master routinely shook hands with students. I felt shame rise to my face. I looked at the clock: it was three-fifteen. He asked me if I played the piano and I said just a bit. He surrendered the instrument to me. I played a recital piece from long ago, something simple by Brahms my father used to like. “Hey, Mr. Beattie,” I said, “Chuck tells me some famous jazz guy’s coming to visit you this weekend.” “Bugs Tice,” he said.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X V I I As Phaëton came to Clymene to have his doubts resolved, so, encouraged by Beatrice, did Dante turn to Cacciaguida to learn from him the meaning of all the dark hints as to his future lot which he had heard in the three realms. Cacciaguida, not in oracular ambiguities but in plain speech, tells how contingency is but relative to material and human limitations (though free will is an absolute reality), and therefore he already sees, as a harmonious part of the blessed whole, the future that as a fragment of Dante’s experience shall be so bitter. Florence shall accuse him of that treachery of which herself is guilty, and shall do it as at the instigation of the Pope. Slandered, exiled, and in penury, he must go his way, in evil company, till he isolates himself from all, and is justified in so doing by the event. His first refuge shall be in the court of the Scaliger who will anticipate all his requests by granting them, and with whom he shall find the now youthful hero who shall give proof of his worth before Henry VII’s mission, and shall at last do deeds which even they who see them shall not credit. He further bids Dante not envy the wrong-doers, whose downfall he shall long outlive, and in answer to the timid suggestions of prudence urges him to reveal to the world the whole content of his vision. AS CAME to Clymene, to have assurance as to that which he had heard uttered against himself, he who still maketh fathers grudging to their sons; 1 such was I; and such was I felt both by Beatrice and by the sacred lamp which had already, for my sake, changed its position. Wherefore my Lady: “Let forth the heat of thy desire,” she said, “that it may issue, struck aright with the internal stamp; not that our knowledge may increase by thy discourse, but that thou mayst learn to tell thy thirst, that men may mingle for thee.” “Dear turf, wherein I root me, who art so high uplifted that even as earthly minds perceive that two obtuse angles may not find room in one triangle, so thou dost see contingent things, or ere themselves exist, gazing upon the point whereto all times are present; 2 whilst I was companioned by Virgil along the mount which cureth souls, and down-going through the world defunct, heavy words were said to me anent my future life; albeit I feel me squarely set against the blows of fortune; 3 wherefore my will were well content to hear what the disaster drawing nigh to me; for the arrow seen before cometh less rudely.” So spake I unto that same light which had before addressed me, and, as Beatrice willed, was my wish confessed.

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

  Roe was one of the feminist movement’s flashiest victories, representing years of grassroots activism and advocacy to shore up public support for the procedure. The decision was controversial, but not among the justices. The court ruled 7-2 that from a constitutional standpoint, a woman’s right to an abortion was justified by her well-established legal right to privacy. Another landmark case, decided less than a year earlier, had a major impact, too. Eisenstadt v. Baird declared that unmarried people should have access to contraception. Until this ruling in 1972, the Pill—which came on the market in 1960—was only available to married women. Eisenstadt v. Baird changed sex for the Michaels and Katherines of the world. For the first time, a young woman could be completely in control of her fertility. After Katherine makes the choice to have sex and receives guidance from Diana and Hallie, she calls Planned Parenthood in the city to schedule an appointment. She’s nervous, and when the medical receptionist on the other end of the line asks her age, she answers, “Does it matter?” The Planned Parenthood rep assures her that she doesn’t need parental permission to come in, but they have “special sessions” for teenagers. Katherine is just shy of eighteen, which qualifies her for a group chat with a doctor and social worker. Blume devotes an entire chapter to Katherine’s Planned Parenthood visit, as if she’s making a point of showing readers how nonthreatening an appointment like this can be. After the group session, Katherine meets with a social worker for private counseling, during which she answers questions about her sex life and her menstrual cycle. Then it’s on to the exam, where the male gynecologist patiently walks her through the steps, showing her the speculum and letting her see her own cervix. She’s nervous but still confident enough to advocate for herself. When the social worker suggests that a diaphragm might be the best birth control method for her, Katherine firmly states her preference: “I’d rather take the Pill.” The office respects her wishes and gives her a two-month supply of birth control pills, plus a prescription. She hasn’t yet told Michael about the Planned Parenthood visit and she can’t wait to surprise him with the news. For a girl like Katherine, there’s nothing wrong with indicating that she intends to have sex with him again. The dance is over—as is the phase in which Michael is clearly taking the lead. Unbeknownst to him, Katherine is setting the stage for a whole new act. What’s amazing about Forever , Rachel Lotus said, is that it foregrounds Katherine’s enthusiastic consent. “Katherine absolutely wants it and is in touch with her own desire and feels ready,” Lotus said. “They both are going into this situation knowing that that’s what they want… and how refreshing. To have her take ownership of her own experience in that way.” The next week, Michael invites Katherine to his house.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Saturday. For some days already I had been leaving the door ajar, while I wrote in my room; but only today did the trap work. With a good deal of additional fidgeting, shuffling, scraping—to disguise her embarrassment at visiting me without having been called—Lo came in and after pottering around, became interested in the nightmare curlicues I had penned on a sheet of paper. Oh no: they were not the outcome of a bellelettrist’s inspired pause between two paragraphs; they were the hideous hieroglyphics (which she could not decipher) of my fatal lust. As she bent her brown curls over the desk at which I was sitting, Humbert the Hoarse put his arm around her in a miserable imitation of blood-relationship; and still studying, somewhat shortsightedly, the piece of paper she held, my innocent little visitor slowly sank to a half-sitting position upon my knee. Her adorable profile, parted lips, warm hair were some three inches from my bared eyetooth; and I felt the heat of her limbs through her rough tomboy clothes. All at once I knew I could kiss her throat or the wick of her mouth with perfect impunity. I knew she would let me do so, and even close her eyes as Hollywood teaches. A double vanilla with hot fudge—hardly more unusual than that. I cannot tell my learned reader (whose eyebrows, I suspect, have by now traveled all the way to the back of his bald head), I cannot tell him how the knowledge came to me; perhaps my ape-ear had unconsciously caught some slight change in the rhythm of her respiration—for now she was not really looking at my scribble, but waiting with curiosity and composure—oh, my limpid nymphet!—for the glamorous lodger to do what he was dying to do. A modern child, an avid reader of movie magazines, an expert in dream-slow close-ups, might not think it too strange, I guessed, if a handsome, intensely virile grown-up friend—too late. The house was suddenly vibrating with voluble Louise’s voice telling Mrs. Haze who had just come home about a dead something she and Leslie Tomson had found in the basement, and little Lolita was not one to miss such a tale. Sunday. Changeful, bad-tempered, cheerful, awkward, graceful with the tart grace of her coltish subteens, excruciatingly desirable from head to foot (all New England for a lady-writer’s pen!), from the black ready-made bow and bobby pins holding her hair in place to the little scar on the lower part of her neat calf (where a roller-skater kicked her in Pisky), a couple of inches above her rough white sock. Gone with her mother to the Hamiltons—a birthday party or something. Full-skirted gingham frock. Her little doves seem well formed already. Precocious pet!

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  In my choice of Beardsley I was guided not only by the fact of there being a comparatively sedate school for girls located there, but also by the presence of the women’s college. In my desire to get myself casé, to attach myself somehow to some patterned surface which my stripes would blend with, I thought of a man I knew in the department of French at Beardsley College; he was good enough to use my textbook in his classes and had attempted to get me over once to deliver a lecture. I had no intention of doing so, since, as I have once remarked in the course of these confessions, there are few physiques I loathe more than the heavy low-slung pelvis, thick calves and deplorable complexion of the average coed (in whom I see, maybe, the coffin of coarse female flesh within which my nymphets are buried alive); but I did crave for a label, a background, and a simulacrum, and, as presently will become clear, there was a reason, a rather zany reason, why old Gaston Godin’s company would be particularly safe. Finally, there was the money question. My income was cracking under the strain of our joy-ride. True, I clung to the cheaper motor courts; but every now and then, there would be a loud hotel de luxe, or a pretentious dude ranch, to mutilate our budget; staggering sums, moreover, were expended on sightseeing and Lo’s clothes, and the old Haze bus, although a still vigorous and very devoted machine, necessitated numerous minor and major repairs. In one of our strip maps that has happened to survive among the papers which the authorities have so kindly allowed me to use for the purpose of writing my statement, I find some jottings that help me compute the following. During that extravagant year 1947–1948, August to August, lodgings and food cost us around 5,500 dollars; gas, oil and repairs, 1,234, and various extras almost as much; so that during about 150 days of actual motion (we covered about 27,000 miles!) plus some 200 days of interpolated standstills, this modest rentier spent around 8,000 dollars, or better say 10,000 because, unpractical as I am, I have surely forgotten a number of items. And so we rolled East, I more devastated than braced with the satisfaction of my passion, and she glowing with health, her bi-iliac garland still as brief as a lad’s, although she had added two inches to her stature and eight pounds to her weight. We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour hooks, old tires, and her sobs in the night—every night, every night—the moment I feigned sleep.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  The sun made its usual round of the house as the afternoon ripened into evening. I had a drink. And another. And yet another. Gin and pineapple juice, my favorite mixture, always double my energy. I decided to busy myself with our unkempt lawn. Une petite attention. It was crowded with dandelions, and a cursed dog—I loathe dogs—had defiled the flat stones where a sundial had once stood. Most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons. The gin and Lolita were dancing in me, and I almost fell over the folding chairs that I attempted to dislodge. Incarnadine zebras! There are some eructations that sound like cheers—at least, mine did. An old fence at the back of the garden separated us from the neighbor’s garbage receptacles and lilacs; but there was nothing between the front end of our lawn (where it sloped along one side of the house) and the street. Therefore I was able to watch (with the smirk of one about to perform a good action) for the return of Charlotte: that tooth should be extracted at once. As I lurched and lunged with the hand mower, bits of grass optically twittering in the low sun, I kept an eye on that section of suburban street. It curved in from under an archway of huge shade trees, then sped towards us down, down, quite sharply, past old Miss Opposite’s ivied brick house and high-sloping lawn (much trimmer than ours) and disappeared behind our own front porch which I could not see from where I happily belched and labored. The dandelions perished. A reek of sap mingled with the pineapple. Two little girls, Marion and Mabel, whose comings and goings I had mechanically followed of late (but who could replace my Lolita?) went toward the avenue (from which our Lawn Street cascaded), one pushing a bicycle, the other feeding from a paper bag, both talking at the top of their sunny voices. Leslie, old Miss Opposite’s gardener and chauffeur, a very amiable and athletic Negro, grinned at me from afar and shouted, re-shouted, commented by gesture, that I was mighty energetic to-day. The fool dog of the prosperous junk dealer next door ran after a blue car—not Charlotte’s. The prettier of the two little girls (Mabel, I think), shorts, halter with little to halt, bright hair—a nymphet, by Pan!—ran back down the street crumpling her paper bag and was hidden from this Green Goat by the frontage of Mr. and Mrs. Humbert’s residence. A station wagon popped out of the leafy shade of the avenue, dragging some of it on its roof before the shadows snapped, and swung by at an idiotic pace, the sweatshirted driver roof-holding with his left hand and the junkman’s dog tearing alongside. There was a smiling pause—and then, with a flutter in my breast, I witnessed the return of the Blue Sedan. I saw it glide downhill and disappear behind the corner of the house. I had a glimpse of her calm pale profile. It occurred to me that until she went upstairs she would not know whether I had gone or not. A minute later, with an expression of great anguish on her face, she looked down at me from the window of Lo’s room. By sprinting upstairs, I managed to reach that room before she left it.

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

  “The personal parts about Margaret were true.” Judy turned eleven in the winter of 1949, four years after the war ended with a cataclysmic blast on the other side of the world and well into the Truman presidency, when everyone in America was just trying to go back to normal. Well, not exactly normal—the post-war economy was booming. The middle class had gotten a buff and a polish. Families of four or even five could thrive on one income, which meant kids were liberated from hovering psychic burdens like work and the draft and could concentrate on being children for a little bit longer than previous generations. That’s how the adolescent, focused on school and socializing, was born. As a child, Judy was daddy’s little girl. Her parents, Rudolph and Essie, both grew up in Elizabeth and met when they were finishing high school. They married young, him dark-haired and dapper, her slender, serious, and blond. They stayed in town, where they had lots of family living nearby. Essie, an introvert who loved books, was a guarded person, keeping her feelings under wraps. Rudolph, on the other hand, was dynamic—he was funny and charming. He owned his own dental practice and was widely admired within the community. Judy thought of him as a natural philosopher who just happened to fix teeth for a living. Her father was her go-to parent for comfort and affection, the one who indulged her in round after round of hide-and-seek, took her temperature when she was sick, and soothed her during thunderstorms (one boom was enough to send her leaping across the room). She rewarded him with a special nickname: Doey-Bird. Every night before bed, she gave him his “treatment,” which was a series of kisses and hugs, always doled out in the same pattern. Blume described it in her 1977 autobiographical novel, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself , as “a sliding kiss, three quick hugs… finished with a butterfly kiss on his nose.” The Sussmans were Jewish, so Margaret’s struggle with religion—in which she seeks out both Jewish and Christian experiences as part of a yearlong project to clarify her faith—wasn’t Judy’s. But when it came to Margaret’s secret, intimate relationship with God, that was all her. From the first page of the book, Margaret whispers a prayer, as if conjuring an imaginary friend. “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret,” she begins, as she does with every quiet appeal to God throughout the novel. “We’re moving today. I’m so scared God… Don’t let New Jersey be too horrible. Thank you.” Judy spoke to God, too, mostly as a way of coping with her anxiety about her father’s mortality. He was ostensibly healthy, but much of her childhood was shaped by illness and death. Not just the Holocaust, though whispers about the camps made her shudder. With many generations of family around, there were inevitably a lot of funerals, followed by intense, seven-day shivahs.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “We’re interviewing dentists and dental assistants every day,” Daisy told her. “All trained at the best dental schools in the country. General dentistry, orthodontia, oral surgery, periodontics, all in one section of the building. It’s going to be a big operation. The biggest and best in the area. And you, Christina Demetrious, are my second in command.” “McKittrick,” Christina said. “What?” Daisy asked. “Christina McKittrick. I’m married. Remember?” “Of course,” Daisy said. “Christina McKittrick.” There was no office furniture yet. But there were two card tables set up, each holding a typewriter. “This will be my station,” Daisy said, leaning against one of the card tables. “And the other will be yours.” “I have my own station?” Christina asked. “My own typewriter?” “You do.” “Can I try it?” Daisy passed her a sheet of paper. Christina removed the cover from the new Smith-Corona and rolled in the paper. She stood as she typed CHRISTINA MCKITTRICK. MRS. JACK MCKITTRICK. CHRISTINA AND JACK MCKITTRICK OF LAS VEGAS, NEVADA. She wasn’t alone, she reminded herself. She had Jack. She had Daisy. And Dr. O and his new family would be here soon. They would be her new family. Hers and Jack’s. It would be okay. Never mind that Mama had fallen to her knees, wailing, when Christina left. Even though she’d promised to come home for Christmas, just like a college student, Mama cried, “No...Christina... don’t go...” It took her father to get her mother to stop screaming. To get her back into the house. “I hope you’re happy,” Athena said, the new baby in her arms. “I doubt Mama will live to see Christmas.” “What do you mean?” “Did you ever hear of dying of a broken heart?” “Mama’s not going to die.” “But if she does, it’s on your head, Christina.” Athena turned and disappeared inside. When Baba came back, he hugged her. “I don’t know what you’re doing but I wish you Nase kala! S’agapo. I’ll always love you. You’ll always be my daughter.” “I love you, too,” she whispered into his neck. “Take care of Mama.” “Mama will be all right.” He pressed five crisp twenty-dollar bills into her hand. She didn’t want to take them but he insisted. She longed to tell him she and Jack were married. But she couldn’t.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  FOREWORDIt’s very hard to write a foreword for a book that has shaped my life as much as it did my mother’s. Would either of us be anything without the incredible success of Fear of Flying? Would I have the career I have today, writing for Vanity Fair and punditing, if my mother had not become famous from a book she wrote before I was born? It’s an impossible question to answer, but one that I come back to again and again: how much of my success is due to hers? Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night haunted by just how much of my life is tied to her and to this book. I became a writer because I thought that was what people did. As a kid, I don’t think I even knew there were any careers besides policewoman and writer of autobiographical novels—and possibly communist who went to jail due to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Maybe I wanted to become a writer to get her to pay attention to me or to respect me or to just be interested in me. I am not sure why I fell down this very-hard-to-maneuver rabbit hole, but the minute I became a writer (I published my first book in 2000), my entire life became inextricably bound to a novel written in 1973, when I was negative five. There are many, many women (and men, too) who found themselves in the story of Isadora Wing, but I am not one of those people. When I was growing up, women my mother’s age would stop us in stores and restaurants, look earnestly into her eyes and tell her how the book had changed their lives. It changed the trajectory of my life, too, just in a completely different way. I do not have a normal relationship with the book or the author. I think of this book as the reason I have a career today but also as the anvil my mother could never get out from under. So you can see why I found this assignment very intimidating. It’s just a book, I told myself, but it’s a book that means very different things to me than it does to anyone else. I was not inspired to find sexual freedom by reading about Isadora’s adventures! In fact, I felt deeply uncomfortable with the content—but that was probably pretty healthy, since Isadora was basically my mother. On top of that, I knew many of the people the characters were based on, which adds a truly disturbing dynamic to the experience of reading such an explicit book.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  My first movement was one of repulsion and retreat. My second was like a friend’s calm hand falling upon my shoulder and bidding me take my time. I did. I came out of my daze and found myself still in Lo’s room. A full-page ad ripped out of a slick magazine was affixed to the wall above the bed, between a crooner’s mug and the lashes of a movie actress. It represented a dark-haired young husband with a kind of drained look in his Irish eyes. He was modeling a robe by So-and-So and holding a bridgelike tray by So-and-So, with breakfast for two. The legend, by the Rev. Thomas Morell, called him a “conquering hero.” The thoroughly conquered lady (not shown) was presumably propping herself up to receive her half of the tray. How her bedfellow was to get under the bridge without some messy mishap was not clear. Lo had drawn a jocose arrow to the haggard lover’s face and had put, in block letters: H.H. And indeed, despite a difference of a few years, the resemblance was striking. Under this was another picture, also a colored ad. A distinguished playwright was solemnly smoking a Drome. He always smoked Dromes. The resemblance was slight. Under this was Lo’s chaste bed, littered with “comics.” The enamel had come off the bedstead, leaving black, more or less rounded, marks on the white. Having convinced myself that Louise had left, I got into Lo’s bed and reread the letter. 17Gentlemen of the jury! I cannot swear that certain motions pertaining to the business in hand—if I may coin an expression—had not drifted across my mind before. My mind had not retained them in any logical form or in any relation to definitely recollected occasions; but I cannot swear—let me repeat—that I had not toyed with them (to rig up yet another expression), in my dimness of thought, in my darkness of passion. There may have been times—there must have been times, if I know my Humbert—when I had brought up for detached inspection the idea of marrying a mature widow (say, Charlotte Haze) with not one relative left in the wide gray world, merely in order to have my way with her child (Lo, Lola, Lolita). I am even prepared to tell my tormentors that perhaps once or twice I had cast an appraiser’s cold eye at Charlotte’s coral lips and bronze hair and dangerously low neckline, and had vaguely tried to fit her into a plausible daydream. This I confess under torture. Imaginary torture, perhaps, but all the more horrible. I wish I might digress and tell you more of the pavor nocturnus that would rack me at night hideously after a chance term had struck me in the random readings of my boyhood, such as peine forte et dure (what a Genius of Pain must have invented that!) or the dreadful, mysterious, insidious words “trauma,” “traumatic event,” and “transom.” But my tale is sufficiently incondite already.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Christina Dr. O seemed tense at the office. Daisy was sweeping up more figurines than usual. Christina kept count of them. One day there were five dwarfs left on the shelf, and the next, only three. A few days later Daisy took her aside. “He can’t decide whether to take the offer to open a practice in Las Vegas or not. His friends are building a modern medical-dental center and they’re begging him to come. If he does, I’m willing to go with him. What about you, Christina—would you consider starting a new life after graduation?” “You mean move to Las Vegas?” “If he decides to go.” “I don’t know. Jack would have to want to go, too.” “You should tell him there will be great jobs for an electrician out there. Think of all the hotels they’re building.” “But it’s so far away.” “It is far away. I can’t deny that.” “My parents...” “I know. It’s hard to leave family behind.” “They’d never agree to let me go.” “But you’d have plenty of vacation time to come home and visit. And you could make it a two-year commitment, like going away to college, except instead of paying, you get paid. You’d make good money, too.” “But I wouldn’t know anyone.” “You’d know me. And Dr. O. And you and Jack would make new friends.” “Jack is 1-A. He could get called up at any time.” “Let’s hope that ridiculous war ends before then.” “Daisy—can I tell you something? You’d have to keep it to yourself. I mean it, no one can know. But if I don’t tell someone, I’m going to explode.” “You can trust me, Christina.” “I know I can.” Daisy waited for more. Christina finally bit the bullet and blurted out, “Jack and I are secretly married. We eloped to Elkton.” Daisy came out from behind her desk. “Oh, Christina.” She put her arms around her. “I hope you’ll be very happy.” Then, “You didn’t have to get married, did you?” Christina laughed. “No. And that doctor you sent me to...he fitted me for a diaphragm so I won’t have to worry.” “When are you going to tell your parents?” “I haven’t figured that out yet.” “Well, don’t say anything about Las Vegas yet. First, Dr. O has to make up his mind. But I have a feeling he’s going to do it, and I admit I’m kind of excited about going. I’m starting to feel like a pioneer.” A pioneer, Christina thought. The Wild West. She’d have to learn to ride a horse, she supposed. The idea of it made her giddy.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  The necessity of being constantly on the lookout for his little moustache and open shirt—or for his baldish pate and broad shoulders—led me to a profound study of all cars on the road—behind, before, alongside, coming, going, every vehicle under the dancing sun: the quiet vacationist’s automobile with the box of Tender-Touch tissues in the back window; the recklessly speeding jalopy full of pale children with a shaggy dog’s head protruding, and a crumpled mudguard; the bachelor’s tudor sedan crowded with suits on hangers; the huge fat house trailer weaving in front, immune to the Indian file of fury boiling behind it; the car with the young female passenger politely perched in the middle of the front seat to be closer to the young male driver; the car carrying on its roof a red boat bottom up … The gray car slowing up before us, the gray car catching up with us. We were in mountain country, somewhere between Snow and Champion, and rolling down an almost imperceptible grade, when I had my next distinct view of Detective Paramour Trapp. The gray mist behind us had deepened and concentrated into the compactness of a Dominion Blue sedan. All of a sudden, as if the car I drove responded to my poor heart’s pangs, we were slithering from side to side, with something making a helpless plap-plap-plap under us. “You got a flat, mister,” said cheerful Lo.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Everyone knew Eleanor was the smartest person in their class. So when she said sabotage the rest of them went scrambling for the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Natalie watched but said nothing while the other kids went on and on, their stories of aliens, zombies and sabotage growing from possibility to probability. She shook her head once or twice as if to tell them they had it all wrong, but no one was watching besides Miri. What did Natalie know, or think she knew? They had another safety drill before lunch, proving Mr. Royer, the principal, also believed they were jinxed. A Condolence Call to Mrs. BarnesOn their way to pay a condolence call to Mrs. Barnes, Rusty insisted that Miri practice saying, I’m sorry for your loss. Mrs. Barnes lived in an apartment house on Elmora Avenue near Magie. I’m sorry for your loss, I’m sorry for your loss, Miri repeated. They’d left their house as soon as Rusty had come home from work, run a comb through her hair, freshened her lipstick and spritzed herself with Arpège. “If she offers her hand,” Rusty said, “you shake it.” “ ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ shake shake.” “This is not the time for sarcasm, Miri.” When is the time for sarcasm, Mom? Miri would have liked to say, but she knew better. Instead she said, “I’m not being sarcastic. It’s just…you’re treating me like a six-year-old.” “You’ve never been in this situation and I’m trying to help you through it.” “Nobody’s ever been in this situation.” “Not true, Miri. We’ve been through a war, remember? And we’re fighting another one now. Some mother loses a son every day.” “Can you fight two wars at the same time?” “You mean Korea and something else?” Rusty asked. “Yes, Korea and something else.” “I hope that’s never going to happen. Things are bad enough with Korea.” “So that means it’s a good time to attack us, because we’re busy fighting in Korea. Korea is a distraction, right?” “I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Rusty said. “Never mind,” Miri told her. She heard Eleanor’s voice in her head. Korea is a distraction. Corinne was at Mrs. Barnes’s apartment, but there was no sign of the rest of the family, which surprised Miri. The small living room was crowded with family and friends who had come to pay their respects to Mrs. Barnes. Mrs. Jones was in the tiny kitchen with her daughter Jamison, serving up plates of sandwiches and cookies. I’m sorry for your loss, Miri practiced inside her head. But it turned out she didn’t get to say it to Mrs. Barnes because Mrs. Barnes was in her bedroom and didn’t come out. The other son was there, so Miri said it to him. And the daughter from Pennsylvania with her husband and little girl. “I’m sorry for your loss.” She felt like an idiot saying it. Each of them took her hand and said, “Thank you.” It wasn’t as hard as she’d thought.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “I’m not exactly his granddaughter.” “But close to it,” Mason said. “Thank you and thank Mr. Ben,” she said to Miri, right before she threw her arms around Mason. “Oh, this wonderful boy. I don’t want to lose. I’ll miss too much. Maybe we should go, too. What you think, Stash? Should we go with Mason, far away?” She knew, too? Stash said, “No, Mama. I like it here.” “He loves new apartment. But I love this handsome boy!” She squished those big breasts against Mason and was headed for a kiss on his mouth, but Mason turned his head at the last minute and the kiss landed on the side of his face, leaving a big red lipstick splotch. Mason untangled himself, never taking his eyes off Miri, as if to say, It’s not my fault, I don’t know what’s going on here...don’t blame me... For a minute Miri’s eyes questioned him, while Polina went on and on. “This wonderful, strong, brave boy.” Polina must have noticed the look on Miri’s face because she said, “Oh no! Mason, you have girlfriend and you didn’t tell me?” She pretend-slapped the side of her head and tried to laugh, not a genuine laugh, a nervous laugh. “I love him like mother,” she told Miri, recognizing her mistake. She could probably get fired for having a thing with one of the boys at Janet. “You understand? Like mother loves son.” Miri never saw a mother kiss her son that way. “I hope my Stash grows up strong and brave like Mason.” Miri didn’t say anything. She and Mason just looked at each other while Polina dug herself in deeper. Stash tugged on Mason’s arm. “Come for sleepover so we can play. Mama has big new bed. I have new bed.” Come for sleepover? Mama has big new bed? Miri felt the panic rising, her heart pounding, the urge to run too strong to resist. She took off, running for her life, leaving her books behind, leaving everything behind. “Miri, wait!” Mason chased after her. “It’s not what you think.” She stopped abruptly and faced him, this boy she loved totally, absolutely, this boy she’d trusted with all her heart, with all her soul. She was crying now, she

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I was wide awake now and could hear birds making a racket in the garden behind the hotel. At first they comforted me. Then I remembered that they were German birds and I got depressed. Secretly, I hate traveling. I’m restless at home, but the minute I get away I feel the threat of doom hanging over my most trivial actions. Why had I come back to Europe anyway? My whole life was in pieces. For two years I had lain in bed with Bennett and thought of other men. For two years I had debated whether to get pregnant or strike out on my own and see some more of the world before settling down to anything that permanent. How did people decide to get pregnant, I wondered. It was such an awesome decision. In a way, it was such an arrogant decision. To undertake responsibility for a new life when you had no way of knowing what it would be like. I assumed that most women got pregnant without thinking about it because if they ever once considered what it really meant, they would surely be overwhelmed with doubt. I had none of that blind faith in chance which other women seemed to have. I always wanted to be in control of my fate. Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life. I had been compulsively using a diaphragm for so long that pregnancy could never be accidental for me. Even during the two years I took the pill, I never missed a day. Slob that I was about everything else, I had never messed up on that score. I was virtually the only one of my friends who’d never had an abortion. What was wrong with me? Was I unnatural? I just hadn’t the normal female compulsion to get knocked up. All I could think of was me with my restlessness, with my longings for zipless fucks and strangers on trains—being tied down with a baby. How could I wish that on a baby? “If it weren’t for you, I’d have been a famous artist,” my furious redheaded mother used to say. She had studied art in Paris, learned anatomy and cast-drawing, water color and graphics, and even how to grind her own pigments. She had met famous artists and famous writers and famous musicians and famous hangers-on (she said). She had danced naked in the Bois de Boulogne (she said), sat in Les Deux Magots in a black velvet cloak (she said), driven through the streets of Paris on the fenders of Bugattis (she said), gone to the Greek islands three and a half decades before Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (she said), and then she had come home, married a Catskill Mountains comedian who was about to make a killing in the tzatzka business, and had had four daughters all of whom received the most poetic names: Gundra Miranda, Isadora Zelda, Lalah Justine, and Chloe Camille.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  21My habit of being silent when displeased, or, more exactly, the cold and scaly quality of my displeased silence, used to frighten Valeria out of her wits. She used to whimper and wail, saying “Ce qui me rend folle, c’est que je ne sais à quoi tu penses quand tu es connne ça.” I tried being silent with Charlotte—and she just chirped on, or chucked my silence under the chin. An astonishing woman! I would retire to my former room, now a regular “studio,” mumbling I had after all a learned opus to write, and cheerfully Charlotte went on beautifying the home, warbling on the telephone and writing letters. From my window, through the lacquered shiver of poplar leaves, I could see her crossing the street and contentedly mailing her letter to Miss Phalen’s sister. The week of scattered showers and shadows which elapsed after our last visit to the motionless sands of Hourglass Lake was one of the gloomiest I can recall. Then came two or three dim rays of hope—before the ultimate sunburst. It occurred to me that I had a fine brain in beautiful working order and that I might as well use it. If I dared not meddle with my wife’s plans for her daughter (getting warmer and browner every day in the fair weather of hopeless distance), I could surely devise some general means to assert myself in a general way that might be later directed toward a particular occasion. One evening, Charlotte herself provided me with an opening. “I have a surprise for you,” she said looking at me with fond eyes over a spoonful of soup. “In the fall we two are going to England.” I swallowed my spoonful, wiped my lips with pink paper (Oh, the cool rich linens of Mirana Hotel!) and said: “I have also a surprise for you, my dear. We two are not going to England.” “Why, what’s the matter?” she said, looking—with more surprise than I had counted upon—at my hands (I was involuntarily folding and tearing and crushing and tearing again the innocent pink napkin). My smiling face set her somewhat at ease, however.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  In these frightening places we paid ten for twins, flies queued outside at the screenless door and successfully scrambled in, the ashes of our predecessors still lingered in the ashtrays, a woman’s hair lay on the pillow, one heard one’s neighbor hanging his coat in his closet, the hangers were ingeniously fixed to their bars by coils of wire so as to thwart theft, and, in crowning insult, the pictures above the twin beds were identical twins. I also noticed that commercial fashion was changing. There was a tendency for cabins to fuse and gradually form the caravansary, and, lo (she was not interested but the reader may be), a second story was added, and a lobby grew in, and cars were removed to a communal garage, and the motel reverted to the good old hotel. I now warn the reader not to mock me and my mental daze. It is easy for him and me to decipher now a past destiny; but a destiny in the making is, believe me, not one of those honest mystery stories where all you have to do is keep an eye on the clues. In my youth I once read a French detective tale where the clues were actually in italics; but that is not McFate’s way—even if one does learn to recognize certain obscure indications. For instance: I would not swear that there was not at least one occasion, prior to, or at the very beginning of, the Midwest lap of our journey, when she managed to convey some information to, or otherwise get into contact with, a person or persons unknown. We had stopped at a gas station, under the sign of Pegasus, and she had slipped out of her seat and escaped to the rear of the premises while the raised hood, under which I had bent to watch the mechanic’s manipulations, hid her for a moment from my sight. Being inclined to be lenient, I only shook my benign head though strictly speaking such visits were taboo, since I felt instinctively that toilets—as also telephones—happened to be, for reasons unfathomable, the points where my destiny was liable to catch. We all have such fateful objects—it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another—carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of special significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane’s heart always break.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  So much for those special sensations, influenced, if not actually brought about, by the tenets of modern psychiatry. Consequently, I turned away—I headed my Lolita away—from beaches which were either too bleak when lone, or too populous when ablaze. However, in recollection, I suppose, of my hopeless hauntings of public parks in Europe, I was still keenly interested in outdoor activities and desirous of finding suitable playgrounds in the open where I had suffered such shameful privations. Here, too, I was to be thwarted. The disappointment I must now register (as I gently grade my story into an expression of the continuous risk and dread that ran through my bliss) should in no wise reflect on the lyrical, epic, tragic but never Arcadian American wilds. They are beautiful, heart-rendingly beautiful, those wilds, with a quality of wide-eyed, unsung, innocent surrender that my lacquered, toy-bright Swiss villages and exhaustively lauded Alps no longer possess. Innumerable lovers have clipped and kissed on the trim turf of old-world mountainsides, on the innerspring moss, by a handy, hygienic rill, on rustic benches under the initialed oaks, and in so many cabanes in so many beech forests. But in the Wilds of America the open-air lover will not find it easy to indulge in the most ancient of all crimes and pastimes. Poisonous plants burn his sweetheart’s buttocks, nameless insects sting his; sharp items of the forest floor prick his knees, insects hers; and all around there abides a sustained rustle of potential snakes—que dis-je, of semi-extinct dragons!—while the crablike seeds of ferocious flowers cling, in a hideous green crust, to gartered black sock and sloppy white sock alike. I am exaggerating a little. One summer noon, just below timberline, where heavenly-hued blossoms that I would fain call larkspur crowded all along a purly mountain brook, we did find, Lolita and I, a secluded romantic spot, a hundred feet or so above the pass where we had left our car. The slope seemed untrodden. A last panting pine was taking a well-earned breather on the rock it had reached. A marmot whistled at us and withdrew. Beneath the lap-robe I had spread for Lo, dry flowers crepitated softly. Venus came and went. The jagged cliff crowning the upper talus and a tangle of shrubs growing below us seemed to offer us protection from sun and man alike. Alas, I had not reckoned with a faint side trail that curled up in cagey fashion among the shrubs and rocks a few feet from us. It was then that we came closer to detection than ever before, and no wonder the experience curbed forever my yearning for rural amours.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “What?” “That you like me that way.” She put her bra back on, pulled on her sweater. “And now?” he asked. “Now I know you do.” She couldn’t tell Natalie or anyone how much she cared. Probably Rusty once loved Mike Monsky, or thought she had. And look how that ended. “What are the girls saying about me?” Natalie asked, bringing Miri back to the moment. “They hope you’ll get better soon.” “What do they think is wrong with me?” “None of us knows what’s wrong.” “Do they laugh when they talk about me?” “No! Why would they laugh?” She would never say that they hardly ever talked about her. She was as removed from their lives as Robo, living in her new house in Millburn. Even more removed. “Because it’s funny, isn’t it? I didn’t even see the crashes, but here I am. My mother says I’m just very sensitive. Do you think I’m sensitive?” “I guess. What about Ruby? What does she think?” “She abandoned me a while back. Didn’t even say goodbye. Didn’t even say I’d be okay without her.” “Are you...okay without her?” “What you see is what you get.” “Why are you talking in riddles?” “That’s not a riddle. A riddle would be more like, What’s soft and mushy and gray all over?” Miri didn’t have a clue. “I give up.” “Natalie’s messed-up brain. Get it?” Miri was growing more uncomfortable by the minute. How long did Corinne expect her to stay here? “Did you hear?” Natalie said. “My father wants us to move to Nevada. To someplace called Las Vegas.” “Nevada! But that’s so far away, isn’t it?” “Only two thousand, five hundred miles. It takes five days to drive there.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I went to the headmaster’s secretary to make an appointment. “I must see him now.” “What is it exactly?” she asked. “Do you want to argue over a grade? It’s too late for that—” “No, no,” I said disdainfully. “It has nothing to do with me personally. It concerns the reputation of the school and it can’t wait a moment.” She nodded and went into the headmaster’s paneled, carpeted office for a moment. When she emerged she told me to come back at four. I was agitated. I knew I was doing the right thing and yet I feared what Chuck would say when Mr. Beattie was fired. Would Chuck drop me, persecute me, organize a cabal against me, tell everyone I was a hateful little prig? I knew I wouldn’t be able to face Mr. Beattie. I’d never spoken out against anyone before. Would his wife and children go hungry? Would he ever find another job? Never before had I wielded so much power over an adult man; the power excited and scared me. Paradoxically, I who didn’t much like Eton, I who concealed sexual longings most Etonians would have condemned far sooner than dope peddling, I who had rejected the school’s religion and slept with a master and his wife, I who had once bought a hustler ten years older than I and last summer had slept with a boy three years younger, I who’d serviced Ralph, the special camper—paradoxically I was the one whom circumstance had chosen to defend this institution I despised. I was to be the guardian of public morality. Anxiety swept through me. Like most of the other students I refused to wear an overcoat even on the coldest days. Now I was trembling as I hugged myself and hurried down the brick walkway toward the music building. My teeth were chattering by the time I ducked in the door. There was Mr. Beattie picking out chords on the piano. No one else was around. “Hi,” he said. He stood and gave me his limp hand, a courtesy that puzzled me. No other master routinely shook hands with students. I felt shame rise to my face. I looked at the clock: it was three-fifteen. He asked me if I played the piano and I said just a bit. He surrendered the instrument to me. I played a recital piece from long ago, something simple by Brahms my father used to like. “Hey, Mr. Beattie,” I said, “Chuck tells me some famous jazz guy’s coming to visit you this weekend.” “Bugs Tice,” he said.