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.

Page 174 of 501 · 20 per page

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  At 10 Killer Street, a tenement house, I interviewed a number of dejected old people and two long-haired strawberry-blond incredibly grubby nymphets (rather abstractly, just for the heck of it, the ancient beast in me was casting about for some lightly clad child I might hold against me for a minute, after the killing was over and nothing mattered any more, and everything was allowed). Yes, Dick Skiller had lived there, but had moved when he married. Nobody knew his address. “They might know at the store,” said a bass voice from an open manhole near which I happened to be standing with the two thin-armed, barefoot little girls and their dim grandmothers. I entered the wrong store and a wary old Negro shook his head even before I could ask anything. I crossed over to a bleak grocery and there, summoned by a customer at my request, a woman’s voice from some wooden abyss in the floor, the manhole’s counterpart, cried out: Hunter Road, last house. Hunter Road was miles away, in an even more dismal district, all dump and ditch, and wormy vegetable garden, and shack, and gray drizzle, and red mud, and several smoking stacks in the distance. I stopped at the last “house”—a clapboard shack, with two or three similar ones farther away from the road and a waste of withered weeds all around. Sounds of hammering came from behind the house, and for several minutes I sat quite still in my old car, old and frail, at the end of my journey, at my gray goal, finis, my friends, finis, my fiends. The time was around two. My pulse was 40 one minute and 100 the next. The drizzle crepitated against the hood of the car. My gun had migrated to my right trouser pocket. A nondescript cur came out from behind the house, stopped in surprise, and started good-naturedly woof-woofing at me, his eyes slit, his shaggy belly all muddy, and then walked about a little and woofed once more. 29I got out of the car and slammed its door. How matter-of-fact, how square that slam sounded in the void of the sunless day! Woof, commented the dog perfunctorily. I pressed the bell button, it vibrated through my whole system. Personne. Je resonne. Repersonne. From what depth this re-nonsense? Woof, said the dog. A rush and a shuffle, and woosh-woof went the door. Couple of inches taller. Pink-rimmed glasses. New, heaped-up hairdo, new ears. How simple! The moment, the death I had kept conjuring up for three years was as simple as a bit of dry wood. She was frankly and hugely pregnant. Her head looked smaller (only two seconds had passed really, but let me give them as much wooden duration as life can stand), and her palefreckled cheeks were hollowed, and her bare shins and arms had lost all their tan, so that the little hairs showed. She wore a brown, sleeveless cotton dress and sloppy felt slippers.

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

  If the structure of the American family required a woman to stay home, acting in a support role to her male, breadwinning partner, then “homemaker” should be considered her job—and thus, she was entitled to benefits. Friedan wanted these wives, after a divorce, to get severance pay, as well as Social Security payments reflecting the time they’d put in. She also thought husbands should be on the hook to cover their ex’s post-split educational needs, to give them a shot in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Finally, Friedan supported the idea of mandatory marriage and divorce insurance, which would guarantee child support and other monthly payments in case a union splintered. Unlike some more radical feminists—“Until all women are lesbians, there will be no true political revolution!” declared Village Voice writer Jill Johnston in a 1971 debate moderated by Norman Mailer, commemorated in the 1979 documentary Town Bloody Hall —Friedan, a divorcée herself, still believed in the institution of heterosexual marriage. She also bristled at the accusation that feminism was to blame for the cascade of nationwide breakups. To her, the rising divorce rate was a clear-cut reflection of gender inequality, and it would stabilize as soon as the problem of women’s systemic oppression was solved. After that, legal partnerships would look different, and better, for everyone. “Our movement to liberate women and men from these polarized, unequal sex roles might save marriage,” she wrote. “And marriage is probably worth saving. The intimacy, the commitment—the long-term commitment of marriage—is something we still need.” The feminists hoped that their work would one day make life better for their daughters and granddaughters. They wanted young girls to grow up expecting more than they did from their marriages, and from their lives. And in many ways, Blume’s books chanted from that same pulpit. From the very first line of It’s Not the End of the World , Karen tells us that she hasn’t bought into the fairy tale. “I don’t think I’ll ever get married,” she says. “Why should I? All it does is make you miserable.” Are we meant to believe her? Maybe. But what’s clear is that she’s rejecting doing things her parents’ way. Blume understood that divorce introduced kids to serious worries. Throughout the novel, Karen struggles with the idea of her mom and dad dating new people. She’s very anxious about money, even though she knows nothing of the family’s finances. “My mother has no money that I know of,” Karen thinks to herself after a friend suggests that Ellie must have “plenty” of it if she’s getting divorced. “It’s scary to think about my mother with no money to feed us or buy our clothes or anything.” Later on in the book, the kids complain about going to Howard Johnson’s for dinner with Ellie. Amy, the youngest, whines that “Daddy always takes us out for steak.” “Daddy can afford to,” Ellie tells her—a sharp and surprising reaction that Karen immediately clocks.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  That night Miri wrapped the copy of Seventeenth Summer and tied it with one of the ribbons from Irene’s collection. “She doesn’t know you’re coming,” Corinne said on the drive to Watchung. “She doesn’t want anyone to see her in this place but the doctors think it might be good for her to begin to reconnect to the outside world.” “Is she coming home soon?” “Maybe in time for graduation. Just act as if nothing’s changed. As if you’re still best friends.” Aren’t we still best friends? Miri thought, though she didn’t say it aloud. The Watchung Hills Children’s Home, a big white house, sat on a hill surrounded by tall trees. The azaleas were in bloom. The grass was very green. Inside, the halls were filled with music and children’s laughter. Corinne stopped outside Room 218. She knocked on the door before turning the knob. “Everyone decent?” She didn’t wait for a reply. Miri hung back, anxious, not sure what she’d find inside the room. “Nat…look who’s here!” Corinne called, stepping back to make room for Miri. “I’ll leave you two alone to catch up,” she said brightly, as if there were nothing unusual about Miri visiting Natalie in this place. Then she disappeared. From the look on Natalie’s face, first surprise, then anger followed by disgust or maybe embarrassment, Miri could see Natalie didn’t want her there any more than she wanted to be there. “Hi,” Miri said, trying to make her voice sound as bright as Corinne’s. “Hi.” “I’m glad you’re feeling better.” “I’m alive, if that’s what you mean.” Natalie’s voice had an edge to it. In the other bed someone was sleeping. She had the covers pulled up so high almost her whole head and face were covered. One arm lay outstretched, attached to tubes. Natalie was wearing regular clothes—dungarees, a shirt and a bulky cardigan sweater. She didn’t look any different to Miri than she had that day she went cuckoo in the basement. Well, maybe a little better than that, but not much. “You were there that day, right?” Natalie asked. “Which day?” “That day I went to the hospital.” “Oh, that day.” “You’ll never believe who my nurse was.” “Who?” “Phyllis Kirk’s mother.” “Phyllis Kirk, the actress?” “Yes, isn’t that something? And she told me Phyllis is up for a big part in a Vincent Price movie. And it’s going to be in 3-D.” “What does that mean?” Miri asked. “I’m not sure.” Now the figure in the other bed sat up. She was so thin Miri was sure she’d been in a concentration camp. Next to her Natalie seemed almost healthy. Natalie, at least, had some color in her cheeks. The skeleton said, “You have to wear special glasses and it looks like things are jumping out at you.” “How do you know?” Miri asked. The girl shrugged. “Lulu knows a lot,” Natalie said. So, the skeleton had a name. “How come they let you see a friend?” Lulu asked Natalie.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Instead, she tries to convince Miri to fly home with her and Jack today. The plane is waiting at Teterboro. But Miri says she’s staying another night. “Fine,” Christina says. “I’ll stay and fly back commercial with you tomorrow.” Miri looks at her. “No.” “No? What do you mean, no ?” “I mean that’s crazy. Fly back with Jack and I’ll see you day after tomorrow. I still need to talk to Natalie, away from her adoring fans, and I want to stop by the cemetery on the way to the airport tomorrow.” “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she tells Miri. “Never,” Miri tells her. “Is that a promise?” Miri hugs her. “Don’t worry.” But that’s a phrase that’s always worried her, even coming from Miri, her dearest friend. —CHRISTINA IS RETRIEVING her coat from the cloakroom when an attractive silver-haired man says, “Hello.” “Hello,” she answers. “I went to school with your sister…” He doesn’t have to finish. It’s the Sewing Machine Man’s son, Zak Galanos. He seems nice enough, still teaching, though not in Elizabeth. His wife is an elementary school principal. They have two children. This was the life her mother wanted for her. A decent Greek husband, a couple of kids, a house in Cranford or Westfield. She never dreamed her life would turn out so different. A life of such wealth it embarrasses her. It’s laughable how her family’s attitude toward her changed as her fortunes grew. She’s heard her nephews refer to her as their rich aunt Christina from Vegas—and sure, she helped put them through college, helped Athena open a new store at the Short Hills mall. She made sure her parents were comfortable at their retirement home, and when it was needed, she paid for round-the-clock care. She came for her mother’s funeral three years ago, and her father’s, a year later. Even her parents accepted having an Irish son-in-law. They couldn’t resist their four beautiful granddaughters, the oldest, Nia, named for her mother, born when Christina was just nineteen, the bundle of joy who kept Jack out of Korea. It wasn’t until five years later that they were ready for more children, three more girls in a row. She convinced Mama and Baba to come to Las Vegas for Nia’s eighteenth birthday. Sent the plane for them, with IRISH JACK painted on the side. They were impressed. She took them to see their favorite entertainers—Dean Martin, Liberace and the Greek chanteuse Nana Mouskouri—made sure they had ringside tables, everyone making a fuss over Irish Jack’s in-laws. And when her mother needed an emergency root canal, Dr. O was there to hold her hand as the young, gifted Dr. Kyros, a Greek dentist, Mama, performed the procedure. Dr. Kyros was married to a former chorus girl and together they made tall, beautiful children with perfect teeth. Okay, she’ll fly back with Jack today but that won’t stop her from worrying about Miri.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  She found it complicated and messy. First you had to put in the jelly and rub it around, making sure you got enough over the rim, then you had to squeeze it together and insert it into your vagina, getting it up far enough. She’d been practicing in her room at night. When she pulled it out she had to wash it, pat it dry and store it in its case, something else she’d have to hide, or maybe Jack would keep it. Yes, that would make sense. She supposed she’d get used to it. She supposed it would get easier. They were going to be married for a long time and she didn’t want to be pregnant every year like Mrs. O’Malley’s daughter, who’d already had five babies. But she still wasn’t relaxed about going all the way. She supposed she had to give it some time. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00038.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00038.jpg] ROSENBERGS GET PASSOVER VISITAPRIL 9 (UPI) — Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, sentenced to die for transmitting A-bomb secrets to the Soviet Union, received a pre-Passover visit at Sing Sing prison from their 5- and 9-year-old sons. Meanwhile, following today’s denial of their last plea to the Court of Appeals, the couple’s lawyer said that he would be filing an appeal with the United States Supreme Court. 29 [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] [image file=Image00005.jpg] MiriTwice a week Miri sent a card to Natalie at the Watchung Hills Children’s Home. Heard you were under the weather. Well, come on out! Miri wasn’t sure Natalie would find any of the cards funny. Half the time she wasn’t sure they were funny. Sometimes she’d include a little note, trying to keep it light, something about school, or about a TV show. Uncle Miltie dressed as Carmen Miranda Tuesday night. He wore a hat loaded with bananas, pineapples and grapes. My mother laughed so hard she almost didn’t make it to the bathroom in time. She’d bought all the cards at once at the Ritz Book Shop, along with a copy of Seventeenth Summer. She and Natalie had read it together, at the beginning of eighth grade, and Miri hoped when and if she had the chance to give it to her, it would remind Natalie of their friendship, because Natalie didn’t answer any of Miri’s cards or notes. Irene suggested inviting Mason to their Seder on the first night of Passover, surprising Miri. Miri wore her new patent-leather slingbacks. Mason brought lilacs for Irene. They all missed Henry and Leah, who had gone to visit Leah’s parents. But Miss Rheingold was there and Blanche Kessler from the Red Cross with her family and Ben Sapphire. Corinne called a few days later, another surprise, saying if Miri would like to see Natalie she would pick her up at school the next afternoon, if that was convenient for her.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “Fred!” MiriMiri awakened to the sound of thunder, but thunder in February? She ran into Rusty’s room, gently shook her. “Mom…did you hear that? What was it?” “What?” Rusty said, taking off her sleep mask, pulling out her earplugs. “Hear what?” “I don’t know. It sounded like thunder.” “It’s nothing, honey. Go back to sleep.” Miri padded down the hall to her bedroom, telling herself it was nothing. She was safe, Rusty and Irene and Uncle Henry were safe. Mason was safe. Safe from his crazy father, who’d chased him with an ax. At the sound of a car starting up, Miri pulled back the curtain of her front window in time to see Henry peeling out of the driveway, taking the corner so fast he skidded, the tires screeching. Something wasn’t right. She felt it in her gut. She picked up the kaleidoscope from the top of her dresser and got back into bed, holding it first to her right eye, then to her left. Was there a difference? Not really. It was beautiful and calming either way. MasonMason sat on his bed, facing the windows of the senior boys’ dorm, thinking about Miri. He’d had an early supper with Jack. Burgers at Mother Hubbard’s, then apple pie. Jack wanted to know about him and Miri. Wanted to make sure he wasn’t moving too fast, that he knew the rules. He more or less told him he’d never known anyone like her, so sweet, so trusting. He didn’t say anything about their game of Trust. That was private, between him and Miri. He still couldn’t believe he’d told her about his mother and about his father chasing him with an ax. Until now, only Jack knew. But it was his idea to play Trust, wasn’t it? He must have known he’d tell her, must have wanted to tell her, to prove he trusted her, the way she trusted him. And now, as he sat at his window in the dorm at Janet, that was what was killing him. Because all the time he was living a lie. What if she found out about Polina? What was he supposed to do then? Polina had volunteered to keep Fred overnight back in September, before he’d ever met Miri. She took him and Fred home with her to the two rooms on Williamson Street where she lived with her three-year-old kid, saying Fred could stay there. She unbuttoned her dress, showed him her breasts. You like? she asked. You think I’m pretty? Yeah, and yeah. You like to touch? Oh, yeah. Keep asking. Please don’t stop. But she stopped when the kid came in and Fred barked. And the kid, who hardly spoke English, laughed. Doggy? No, that’s a story he’d never tell. A story that has no end, because every week he’d gone to her place until the crash destroyed their house. Every week. And sometimes he was thinking of Miri when he did it.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Donny Kellen and his brothers were their usual obnoxious selves, steering their sleds into the girls, trying to knock them to the ground, where they would wash their faces with snow if they got the chance. Miri hated the Kellen boys. She hated them even more since she’d read Ethan Frome in English class. Suppose they forced her to crash her sled into a tree and she wound up like Mattie Silver in the book? What would Rusty do then? Quit her job and spend the rest of her life taking care of Miri, or would Irene have to “step up to the plate” again? Both scenarios filled her with dread. But Miri and her friends survived and arrived cold, wet and happy at Miri’s house, where Natalie joined them. They changed into their nightgowns, leaving on their underwear since they weren’t going to sleep for hours, and enjoyed pizza from Spirito’s, thanks to Uncle Henry, who brought three large pies home for them. Only Natalie resisted. She’d given up sweets and bread for dancing. “Something every dancer has to do,” she told them. “And I don’t mind. I’ve never had a sweet tooth and bread just leaves me feeling bloated.” Robo told them her mother goes to a diet doctor every week, Dr. Kalb, who gives her pills. “It’s like a candy shop at his office. Except instead of candy the bins are filled with different-colored pills. He scoops them into a brown paper bag and tells my mother how many she should take a day, and what colors. Some of them give her diarrhea.” “Ew…” Suzanne said. “Not while we’re eating.” “I don’t need pills,” Natalie said. “I have willpower.” “Too bad you can’t bottle that,” Eleanor said. “You could make a fortune.” “Mmm…” Natalie said, concentrating on her salad of iceberg lettuce and green grapes. Miri prayed Natalie wouldn’t act weird tonight, and she didn’t, except for not even tasting Irene’s delicious birthday cake, Miri’s favorite, dark chocolate with mocha frosting. Miri wrapped a piece for Mason. She would bring it to him Monday after school. Later, they went down to Irene’s to watch Your Hit Parade. Eddy Howard sang the number three song, “It’s No Sin.” “Now, that’s a beautiful song,” Natalie said. “If we’re lucky we won’t have to hear ‘Slow Poke’ or ‘Shrimp Boats’ again.” Miri agreed. She imagined dancing with Mason to “It’s No Sin.” The thought was enough to give her shivers. Back upstairs in Miri’s room, the girls gave her their present. Her first cashmere sweater from the cashmere sweater lady, in a beautiful shade of aqua. “It’s from my mom, too,” Natalie said. Miri understood. Corinne had shelled out whatever extra the sweater cost after the girls had pooled their money. “Try it on,” Robo told her. “Now?” Miri asked. “Yes, now!” the other girls sang.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  And your Yaya and Papou—they would kill me for letting you have an Irish boyfriend.” “His mother wasn’t Irish.” Christina blurted this out, digging herself in deeper and deeper. “She was Greek?” “She might have been. She had dark hair and dark eyes. And I think her name was Eleni.” Lies and more lies. She had to stop. “Eleni,” her mother said quietly. Christina knew Jack’s mother’s name was Elaine but that was close enough. She was probably Italian. Didn’t Jack once tell her his mother made spaghetti sauce from scratch? Christina’s anxiety was showing up not just at home, where she left the cap off the toothpaste, and one time forgot to flush the toilet, leading Athena to give her hell, calling her disgusting —but at work, where she tried to be extra careful, not letting her mind wander. Still, Daisy sensed something was wrong. “Whatever it is, if I can help in any way, let me know.” “Thank you, Daisy.” “You know you can trust me.” “I do know. It’s just that…” She was that close to confiding in Daisy. “You’ve been through a terrible time,” Daisy said. “The death, the destruction—once was bad enough, but you’ve seen it twice, Christina. That would be hard on anyone. Dr. O has a friend, a patient, you’ve probably met him…Dr. Reiss?” “Yes, I’ve seen him at the office several times.” “You could talk with him. I know Dr. O would be glad to set it up for you.” “I don’t think…not now, anyway…but thank you.” Every time she passed the lab down the hall she looked in and saw the fat white rabbits in their cages. She could have a urine test to see if she was pregnant but she didn’t want to be responsible for killing a rabbit, and the rabbit died whether or not you were pregnant. A lot of people thought it only died if you were pregnant. Ha! How did they think the technicians checked the rabbit’s ovaries? No, she couldn’t do that. Besides, she couldn’t just walk in with a cup of urine and ask for the test. They knew her family from the luncheonette downstairs. They knew she worked for Dr. O. She would have to wait a few more weeks, wait for her period to come. She wasn’t nauseous, though she was sometimes dizzy. She didn’t crave certain foods—in fact she had very little appetite. And she didn’t think her breasts were swelling, though Jack did. She would not have sex with Jack, no matter how many times he said, “But, honey, if you’re already pregnant it doesn’t matter.” “And if I’m not?” “Either way, I’ll be more careful. I’ll use a rubber until we know for sure.” “I can’t, Jack. Please don’t push me.” He was frustrated but not angry. He taught her how to give him a hand job. At first she didn’t think she could touch it. But now she was more comfortable.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  She hoped Mrs. Stein wouldn’t come over to their table. She didn’t want to have to introduce her to Rusty. She didn’t want to risk how Rusty might react—all that insecurity about not being a good enough mother. She didn’t have to worry. Mrs. Stein acknowledged her with a small smile and a slight gesture of recognition that could have been missed by anyone but Miri. She was grateful to Mrs. Stein for that. Sam Teiger sent over Champagne, as promised. “A magnum!” Ben Sapphire was impressed. “Sam Teiger is a real sport.” The waiter popped the cork and poured it, filling Miri’s glass halfway before he realized she was underage. But no one took it away from her. Irene made the first toast. “Thank you, Henry, for choosing Leah. I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather have for a daughter-in-law.” They all clinked glasses. “Thank you, Mother Irene,” Leah said. Miri had never heard Leah refer to Irene as Mother Irene, as if she were a nun. Or would that be Sister Irene ? She’d have to ask Suzanne, even though Suzanne was Protestant, not Catholic. “Please, call me Irene.” “Or Mama,” Henry said. “Because she’s a wonderful mama.” He leaned over and kissed Irene’s cheek. “There’s never been a better mama.” “Such a son!” She hugged Henry. Alma said, “My sister, Leah’s mother, is also a wonderful mother. It’s a shame she can’t be here today. But it’s such a long trip from Cleveland and with Sy’s arthritis…” “But they’ll come for the wedding,” Leah said. LeahShe was embarrassed her parents weren’t here, leaving Aunt Alma to cover for them. She knew darn well it had nothing to do with her father’s arthritis, which was mild, and everything to do with his pocketbook. He was such a cheapskate when it came to his wife and daughters. And not just with money, but with time, with affection. Now that he was retired it was all about playing the ponies at Thistledown, kibitzing at poker with his buddies or hanging out in the bookie’s room behind the paint store. His daughters never stood a chance with him. Girls, what good are girls? he’d supposedly said when she, and then her sister, were born. Her mother had no guts, never stood up to her father, kept her mouth shut to keep the peace. She’d had to scrimp and save out of her weekly allowance, serving hamburger instead of steak to buy her girls a pair of shoes. She felt sorry for her mother but she’d learned from her, too, learned to speak her mind, to make sure she would have a life apart from her husband’s. Sometimes she hoped her parents wouldn’t come to the wedding. Her father would only make trouble. She’d already told him they didn’t expect him to contribute to the cost, and he hadn’t argued. She and Henry were going to foot the bill and Irene was taking care of the liquor and the cake.

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

  Judy vented her frustrations with being a wife and mother in the early 1970s by putting it all into the mouth of a proxy: Ellie Newman. In the beginning of It’s Not the End of the World , mother of three Ellie is raging after Bill gets home late from work and then starts complaining that dinner is cold. The fight escalates, and Karen notes that they’ve been arguing a lot recently, including one time the previous week when Ellie baked a cake for the family and ended up smashing it on the floor. She’d frosted it with mocha icing instead of the usual chocolate. When Bill snipped that he hated mocha icing but would scrape it off, Ellie got livid and hurled the whole dessert—plate and all—to the ground. In the subsequent weeks and months, after Ellie and Bill announce their plans to split, Ellie starts opening up to Karen about why the marriage isn’t working for her. At first, she offers simple reasons: “Daddy and I just don’t enjoy being together,” Ellie tells her impatient daughter. “We don’t love each other anymore.” Soon, however, Ellie shares her intention to go back to school to study English Literature. “I had you when I was just twenty,” she says to her oldest child, Jeff, over a family dinner with the three kids. “I think I might like to get my degree. I never really had a chance to find out what I might be able to do.” The children—Jeff especially—are annoyed by this development, and even more so when Ellie changes her tune yet again and reveals that she’s taking a part-time job as a receptionist at an insurance company. At that point their aunt Ruth, who is Ellie’s overbearing older sister, questions Ellie’s judgment. “The children need you at home, Ellie,” Ruth tells her. “They’re in school all day,” Ellie assures her. “They won’t even know I’m gone.” Woven throughout the pages is the sense that Ellie is aching for purpose, a vocation to transport her beyond the walls of her home. It’s a quest that Judy—along with the feminists propelling the movement in general—knew particularly well. Writing cured Judy of the housewife’s blight. The constant buzz of ideas—which she jotted down in notebooks, on file cards, on tissues, and in the margins of old shopping lists—was better than any doctor’s prescription. A deep wound had been treated and cauterized: “It was like the bacteria, the bad bacteria was coming out that was making me sick,” Blume said at an event in 2015. “I never got sick again in the same way, that way. I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning and get going.” The transformation made her wonder what her life would have been like if she’d figured this all out sooner. Thinking about it, she simultaneously resented and got sad for her mom. Essie never had anything beyond a husband and kids to keep her busy.

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

  I was not yet thirty when I started the book, but I felt my options were already gone.” Judy had discovered that working on a novel—from the early stage, of making up the characters, to the final phases, of polishing it with Jackson—offered her a welcome reassurance: life could still surprise her. As she chipped away at Are You There God? , she found herself diligently taking notes on a yellow pad as new ideas and themes surfaced, working out Margaret’s unique relationship with God, for instance, and how the young character felt about her pubescent body. Margaret was quite a bit easier to evoke than Winnie. Maybe it’s because in Judy’s best moments of writing, Margaret was emerging, all but fully formed, from somewhere deep inside her own consciousness. And Jackson was shaping up to be the ideal literary midwife. By the time Judy was ready to share her draft of the novel— which she plunked out on her typewriter in a wildly creative six-week burst, in between cooking, cleaning, and playing rounds of golf—she and Jackson had already established their routines. Judy would come by the Bradbury Press office, where she’d ask him to open his windows to let in some air. Then they’d sit down at his desk and talk for hours at a clip. They’d lay out the printed manuscript between them and flip through the pages, one by one. Jackson, who would have already discussed the draft with Verrone, came armed with their combined thoughts and his pencil. As he and Judy chatted, he’d scribble and erase. By the time they finished, Judy would leave with her marked-up novel, the margins filled with Jackson’s handwritten notes. With Are You There God? , one of Jackson’s biggest concerns had to do with Margaret’s new best friend, Nancy. In one of the book’s most emotional moments, Nancy sends Margaret a postcard from Washington, DC, with just three words: “I GOT IT!!!” Margaret rightly understands this to mean Nancy’s first period: a milestone that’s taken a competitive turn for the PTS’s. Margaret, feeling left behind, is devastated. “I ripped the card into tiny shreds and ran to my room,” she says in the book. “There was something wrong with me. I just knew it. I flopped onto my bed and cried.” Here, Jackson didn’t worry about the subject matter. Instead, he wondered—is Nancy telling the truth? Judy, who had been preoccupied with Margaret’s internal experience, hadn’t even considered it. But sure enough, when she thought it over, she realized that yes, Nancy was lying. In the final draft of the novel, Margaret finds out Nancy lied when she spends the day in New York City with the Wheeler family. Nancy gets her first period in the bathroom of a steak house after a trip to Radio City, and—caught with her pants down, literally—begs Margaret not to expose her to the other girls.

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

  Ann is patient to a fault with her youngest son, barely cracking when he’s so rowdy around her husband’s biggest advertising clients that they flee the apartment, taking their account with them. Warren Hatcher, the dad, is a bit of a hothead, but Ann, a stay-at-home mom, remains steady throughout the book, at least up until the denouement when Fudge eats the turtle. “Oh no! My angel! My precious little baby!” she shouts when she realizes what he’s done. In the next book, Superfudge , Warren takes a leave from his job to write a book, and Ann considers what her life might look like after her kids are grown up. One evening, she tells Peter she’d like to go back to school and get a degree in Art History. The Hatchers have just had a third baby, nicknamed Tootsie, and Peter can’t understand why his mother would even be thinking about another major change. “Someday she’ll grow up and go to school and I’ll want to have a career,” Ann tells him. Peter is nonplussed. But by the time Superfudge was published in 1980, Judy’s own life had changed dramatically. Tales was a great success and some of her earlier novels, including Are You There God? , had found a slew of new readers after coming out in paperback. The freedom—financial, creative—emboldened her. In between Tales and Superfudge , Judy Blume became a star. Chapter Eight Mothers “One thing I’m sure of is I don’t want to spend my life cleaning some house like Ma.” Judy’s illnesses didn’t start with her marriage. She had always been a delicate kid. In seventh grade, she had a massive outbreak of eczema, worsened by an allergy to the ointment a doctor prescribed to soothe it. “This ‘flare-up,’ as the doctors called it, caused a disfiguring rash that covered my whole body,” Blume wrote in Letters to Judy . “My face swelled and my eyes shut… I felt very sorry for myself.” She got sick with mono her first semester in college and had to come home from Boston University to recuperate in New Jersey. She spent a month weak and glassy-eyed in bed, staring at the walls, and by the time she felt better, she was so embarrassed that she decided to transfer to NYU. “I never want to see Boston again,” she informed Rudolph and Essie. She needed a fresh start, somewhere she wouldn’t be the sickly girl who vanished after orientation. Her body had been uncooperative throughout much of her teens and twenties. Although there hadn’t been long-lasting repercussions of her various ailments, she could easily imagine what that might feel like for a junior high student. Deenie is the story of a thirteen-year-old aspiring model who gets diagnosed with scoliosis and has to wear a bulky back brace. But scratch the surface and you’ll see that Blume’s 1973 novel is also a story about mothers and daughters. Ellie Newman’s journey is about slow but steady self-actualization.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  . tione irrepit cubiculum et pyxidem depromit arcula; quam ego amplexus ae deosculatus prius, utque mihi prosperis faveret volatibus deprecatus, abiectis pro- pere laciniis totis, avide manus immersi et haurito plusculo uncto corporis mei membra perfricui. Iam- que alternis conatibus libratis brachiis in avem si- milem gestiebam : nec ullae plumulae nec usquam pinnulae, sed plane pili mei crassantur in saetas, sed cutis tenella duratur in corium et in extimis palmulis 134 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK III I shall become a bird, I will take heed that I come nigh no man’s house: for how prettily and wittily would these matrons handle their lovers if they were owls: for when they fly into any place by night and are taken, they are nailed upon posts, and so they are worthily rewarded with torment because it is thought that they bring evil fortune to the house by their ill-omened fight. But I pray you(which I had almost forgotten) tell me by what means, when I am an owl, I shall return to my pristine shape and become Lucius again ?" “ Fear not for that,” quoth she, “ For my mistress hath taught me the way to bring all to pass, and to turn again the figures of such as are transformed into the shapes of men. Neither think you she did it for any goodwill or favour to me, but to the end I might help her and minister this remedy to her when she returneth home. Consider, I pray you, with yourself, with what frivolous trifles and herbs so mar- vellous a thing is wrought, for I give her nothing else, save a little dill and laurel-leaves in well- water, the which she drinketh, and washeth herself withal." Which. when she had often spoken she went all trembling into the chamber, and took a box out of the coffer, which I first kissed and embraced, and prayed that I might have good success in my pur- pose to fly. And then I put off all my garments and greedily thrust my hand into the box and took out a good deal of ointment, and after that I had well rubbed every part and member of my body, I hovered with mine arms, and moved myself, looking still when I should be changed into a bird as Pam- phile was; and behold neither feathers did burgeon out nor appearance of wings, but verily my hair did turn into ruggedness and my tender skin wore tough 135

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  And then my mother would turn her hardworking, always shifting, tumbling scrutiny on me. She and I enjoyed a perfect communication, or so she said. I was a man far more mature than the riffraff she was dating. I was beautifully sensitive to the slightest shift in her moods. If I weren’t her son, I’d be her best friend—or she’d marry me. And yet (the wheels whirred faster and faster) without a man to emulate I was in danger of developing abnormally. I mustn’t be a mama’s boy, I mustn’t become effeminate. I mustn’t lean on her too much. That was the real reason she was so eager to remarry, to provide me with a suitable male role model. Children of broken homes were known to grow up wounded, their sexuality damaged. “Are you developing normally?” she asked when I was ten. I told her something that astounded her, though I thought it would please her: “I don’t want to go through puberty.” I cited my sister. “She’s already acting like a nut. I see myself standing on a hill above a lonesome valley I’ll never be able to cross. I’ll probably never be this calm again.” My sister, my mother and I—three unhappy people, and yet my mother’s ceaseless optimism didn’t even grant us the dignity of suffering. “Kids,” she said, driving us away from school on a weekday, “we’re going on vacation. Isn’t that wonderful! We’re off to Florida! Isn’t that exciting?” In every way we had more fun than other people and were superior to them. At Christmastime Mother would count up her cards as though they were a precise numerical rendering of her worth; if someone neglected to send her a card, she’d worry about it, question herself, seem wounded—and then she’d dismiss the offender from her thoughts, even her life (“He wasn’t much of a friend. I don’t know why I hang around such crummy people”). My sister and I have been left alone in the hotel room all day. Mother is off on a date after work. We’ve been instructed to take our meals in the dining room downstairs (“I’ll be home when I’m home—don’t worry about me”). I’m ten, my sister is fourteen. She’s interested in being a nurse. She has “sterilized” Mom’s scissors and tweezers under hot tap water. Out of her allowance she’s bought some gauze in a long roll. She convinces me to lie down and play sick. “You poor guy,” she says in a sweet, unfamiliar voice, “just look at this burn!” She is the consoling, sympathetic nurse. “Yeah, it really hurts. You see, I was boiling some water—” “Sh-h-h!” she urges me. In real life she’s always shutting me up; in the fiction of the hospital she’s silencing me in the interest of my recovery. “You’ll feel much better once I change your dressing.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The Polynesians, especially those on the happy isle to which fortune had blown the good doctor, countered this insecurity by carrying their babies on their backs in a sling pitched so high that Baby’s eyes peered out over Mama’s head. This literally superior position insured the infant against all future anxiety and guaranteed him a life-long serenity. Eager to spread these advantages to America, O’Reilly insisted his patients emulate the Polynesian mode of transporting a baby. I saw those patients, men and women alike, all over town, sheepishly stepping over snowdrifts or gliding down supermaket aisles, their infants, petrified with fear, squawling and clutching locks of parental hair. But this practice figured as only one of the many ways in which O’Reilly reformed our lives. Unlike those tight-ass Freudians, he said, who never suggested anything, who judged silently and interpreted rarely, he quite cheerfully broadcast his wisdom by spilling handfuls into fertile minds he himself had furrowed. He believed that since I’d missed out on a loving childhood I had to feel my way backward in time, to regress in order to be raised all over again by him. “An adult,” he said, “has no right to expect unqualified love, but a child does. That’s what I’m offering you: love with no strings tied.” He invariably made that mistake—“tied” not “attached.” Sometime during each session he would repeat this extraordinary assertion of his love, and each time I felt embarrassed, for I couldn’t help noticing how poorly he remembered the names of my parents and best friends and the major facts of my life. Perhaps foolishly, I thought of knowledge as a necessary if not sufficient condition for love. When I told him of my doubts about him he chastised me for being overly cerebral. “But you see,” he said, “that’s your unconscious pushing me aside because on some level you realize how much I love you. You’re afraid of intimacy. Real love would force you to discard the mother imago you’ve introjected.” Spring approached and the gold Buddha grew more resplendent as rain washed away winter smuts. Although we were hundreds of miles inland, on some days the air smelled of salt and I half expected to see a gull perching on the statue’s topknot like Maitreya, the Bodhisattva of the future.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Because I wouldn’t have known how to say it then, but Steve’s finger in my cunt felt good. At the same time, I knew that soft, mushy feeling to be the enemy. If I yielded to that feeling, it would be goodbye to all the other things I wanted. “You have to choose,” I told myself sternly at fourteen. Get thee to a nunnery. So, like all good nuns, I masturbated. “I am keeping myself free of the power of men,” I thought, sticking two fingers deep inside each night. Dr. Schrift didn’t understand. “Ackzept being a vohman,” he hissed from behind the couch. But at fourteen all I could see were the disadvantages of being a woman. I longed to have orgasms like Lady Chatterley’s. Why didn’t the moon turn pale and tidal waves sweep over the surface of the earth? Where was my gamekeeper? All I could see was the swindle of being a woman. I would roam through the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking for one woman artist to show me the way. Mary Cassatt? Berthe Morisot? Why was it that so many women artists who had renounced having children could then paint nothing but mothers and children? It was hopeless. If you were female and talented, life was a trap no matter which way you turned. Either you drowned in domesticity (and had Walter Mittyish fantasies of escape) or you longed for domesticity in all your art. You could never escape your femaleness. You had conflict written in your very blood. Neither my good mother nor my bad mother could help me out of this dilemma. My bad mother told me she would have been a famous artist but for me, and my good mother adored me, and wouldn’t have given me up for the world. What I learned from her I learned by example, not exhortation. And the lesson was clear: being a woman meant being harried, frustrated, and always angry. It meant being split into two irreconcilable halves. “Maybe you’ll do better than me,” my good mother said. “Maybe you’ll do both, darling. But as for me, I never could.” TENFreud’s House It is really a stillborn thought to send women into the struggle for existence exactly as men. If, for instance, I imagined my sweet, gentle girl as a competitor, it would only end in my telling her, as I did seventeen months ago, that I am fond of her and that I implore her to withdraw from the strife into the calm uncompetitive activity of my home. —Sigmund Freud

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  My father, who had attended only a year or two of school, or my mother, who has never learned to read or write any language? Our tribe, too busy with the daily preoccupations of its difficult life, had no knowledge of the passionate discussions of middle-class families concerning the future of their children. My immediate future, in school, was always far too uncertain to allow any long-term planning. So I quietly made the most of this honor of having to mark time for a full year and completed a second year of the same grade, winning all the prizes. These easy prizes indeed had more influence on my future, perhaps, than any precocious success at the school certificate might have had. Toward the end of my second year, Graziani, our Italian school porter, came into the classroom one day and said to Monsieur Marzouk that the school principal wanted to speak to me. To speak to me? Me, of all people? The principal? The school principal was in our eyes a very important person, so majestic and distant that he was almost a legend. His orders were abstract commands, impersonal, communicated to us by signs like the orders of a divinity. But why to me? I could see no connection. On one or two occasions a pupil had had some contact with the principal, but always as the result of a catastrophe or some grave misdeed. The principal had, for instance, broken the news to Nataf Pipo, in the fifth year, of his mother’s death, which had occurred suddenly at ten in the morning. And Brami Pinhas, in the third year, had also been summoned to the principal’s office, because he had thrown an inkwell against the wall; he had then been expelled and subsequently became insane. My heart beat so violently I could feel it thump beneath my ribs. The orders of the principal required immediate execution, so I stood up at once and left the room, my knees already weak. I walked across the yard that was strangely empty at this hour, though intensely alive with the concealed presence of a thousand silent children. This magic silence, the unbelievable concentrate of a thousand shouts, was ready, I felt, to explode in all directions as soon as Graziani’s bell should ring.