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 The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  At inspection stations on highways entering Arizona or California, a policeman’s cousin would peer with such intensity at us that my poor heart wobbled. “Any honey?” he would inquire, and every time my sweet fool giggled. I still have, vibrating all along my optic nerve, visions of Lo on horseback, a link in the chain of a guided trip along a bridle trail: Lo bobbing at a walking pace, with an old woman rider in front and a lecherous rednecked dude-rancher behind; and I behind him, hating his fat flowery-shirted back even more fervently than a motorist does a slow truck on a mountain road. Or else, at a ski lodge, I would see her floating away from me, celestial and solitary, in an ethereal chairlift, up and up, to a glittering summit where laughing athletes stripped to the waist were waiting for her, for her. In whatever town we stopped I would inquire, in my polite European way, anent the whereabouts of natatoriums, museums, local schools, the number of children in the nearest school and so forth; and at school bus time, smiling and twitching a little (I discovered this tic nerveux because cruel Lo was the first to mimic it), I would park at a strategic point, with my vagrant schoolgirl beside me in the car, to watch the children leave school—always a pretty sight. This sort of thing soon began to bore my so easily bored Lolita, and, having a childish lack of sympathy for other people’s whims, she would insult me and my desire to have her caress me while blue-eyed little brunettes in blue shorts, copperheads in green boleros, and blurred boyish blondes in faded slacks passed by in the sun. As a sort of compromise, I freely advocated whenever and wherever possible the use of swimming pools with other girl-children. She adored brilliant water and was a remarkably smart diver. Comfortably robed, I would settle down in the rich postmeridian shade after my own demure dip, and there I would sit, with a dummy book or a bag of bonbons, or both, or nothing but my tingling glands, and watch her gambol, rubber-capped, bepearled, smoothly tanned, as glad as an ad, in her trim-fitted satin pants and shirred bra. Pubescent sweetheart! How smugly would I marvel that she was mine, mine, mine, and revise the recent matitudinal swoon to the moan of the mourning doves, and devise the late afternoon one, and slitting my sun-speared eyes, compare Lolita to whatever other nymphets parsimonious chance collected around her for my anthological delectation and judgment; and today, putting my hand on my ailing heart, I really do not think that any of them ever surpassed her in desirability, or if they did, it was so two or three times at the most, in a certain light, with certain perfumes blended in the air—once in the hopeless case of a pale Spanish child, the daughter of a heavy-jawed nobleman, and another time—mats je divague.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot.” Eliza yawns loudly. “Will everyone be there?” “I hope so.” Miri doesn’t ask who Eliza means by everyone. Maybe the boys and their friends. Silence. “Eliza...are you still there?” “Where else would I be?” “Okay, then,” Miri says, trying her best to keep it upbeat, positive. “Take care and I’ll see you soon. Bye, honey.” Eliza shouts, “You know I don’t like goodbyes!” She slams down the receiver. How is it that Miri, who longed for a daughter after two sons, has wound up with an angry, sullen child like Eliza? She’s still trying to figure out where it went wrong but can’t put her finger on it. She unpacks, hanging up her suit for tomorrow, and sets her toiletries on the little shelf above the bathroom sink. She studies herself in the mirror. It’s unsettling how different she looks away from home, away from the familiar reflection in her bathroom mirror. Last time she looked at herself in a mirror in Elizabeth she was fifteen and growing out her Elizabeth Taylor haircut. Now she’s fifty. Jesus, fifty! And her hair is long, lightly permed, with golden highlights. An improvement, she thinks. She’s in good shape, runs five miles a day, but instead of running from someone—Rusty, Mason, Natalie—the way she did that year, she runs to clear her head, to give herself a burst of energy that carries her through the day. Christina has been trying to prepare her for seeing Mason tomorrow by dishing out small bits of information—his wife, Rebecca, will be visiting her ailing parents in Sarasota, his daughter and twin sons are all at college—but Miri hasn’t been willing to talk about it. “Please...” she said to Christina. “That was so long ago. We were just kids.” She knows Christina doesn’t buy her nonchalance but she lets it go. Miri can’t admit she’s nervous about seeing him. Come on, who wouldn’t be nervous about seeing her first love? Who wouldn’t want her old boyfriend to find her attractive? If you don’t want that, you don’t go to high school reunions, you don’t go to the thirty-fifth commemoration of the worst year of your life. Besides, she’s not fifteen anymore. She’s not that girl whose heart was broken on a sunny afternoon in May. She’s a woman, married with three children and a career. She’s responsible, dependable, mature. Right? she asks herself. Right, she

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  At the Gare du Nord, I find a telephone and try to place a person-to-person call. But I’ve forgotten every word of French I ever knew and the operator’s English leaves much to be desired. After an absurd dialogue, many mistakes, bleeps and wrong numbers, I am put through to my own home number. The operator asks for “le Docteur Wing,” and far off, as if under the whole Atlantic Ocean, I hear the voice of the girl who has sublet our apartment for the summer. “He’s not here. He’s in Vienna.” “Madame, le Docteur est à Vienne,” the operator echoes. “Ce n’est pas possible!” I yell—but that’s the extent of my French. As the operator begins to argue with me, I become increasingly tongue-tied. Once, years ago, when I traveled here as a college student, I could speak this language. Now I can hardly even speak English. “He must be there!” I shout. Where is he if not at home? And what on earth will I do with my life without him? I quickly put through a call to Bennett’s oldest friend, Bob, who has our car for the summer. Bennett would be sure to contact him first. Surprisingly, Bob is home. “Bob—it’s me—Isadora—I’m in Paris. Is Bennett there?” Bob’s voice comes back faintly. “I thought he was with you.” And then silence. We’ve been cut off. Only it is not quite total silence. Is that the sound of the ocean I’m hearing—or do I imagine it? I feel a tiny rivulet of sweat trickle down between my breasts. Suddenly Bob’s voice surfaces again. “What happened? Did you have a…” Then gurgling interference. Then silence. I envision some giant fish gnawing on the Atlantic cable. Every time the fish chomps down, Bob’s voice goes dead. “Bob!” “I can’t hear you. I said: did you have a fight?” “Yes. It’s too hard to explain. It’s awful. It’s all my…” “What? I can’t hear you…. Where’s Bennett?” “That’s why I’m calling you.” “What? I didn’t catch that.” “Shit. I can’t hear you either…. Listen, if he calls, tell him I love him” “What?” “Tell him I’m looking for him.” “What? I can’t hear you.” “Tell him I want him.” “What? I can’t hear you.” “Tell him I want him.” “What? Would you repeat that?” “This is impossible.” “I can’t hear you.” “Just tell him that I love him.” “What? This is a horrible conn…” We are cut off for the last time. The operator’s voice intervenes with the news that I owe 129 new francs and 34 centimes. “But I couldn’t hear anything!” The operator insists that I owe it anyway. I go to the telephone cashier, look in my wallet and find I have no francs at all, old or new. So I have to go through the hassle of changing money and fighting with the cashier, but finally I pay. It’s just too much trouble to protest further.

• 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 A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  (I liked that we .) “But she’s got us pegged all wrong.” He raced about the room turning off lights and saying over and over again. “Ooh-la-la,” as though sexual adventure must be French. In the past, whenever the Scotts had come close to a decisive action, they’d annihilated it through paralyzing discussion. That’s what kept them together, I imagine, their Sisyphean talk. He’d annoy her, she’d lapse into ponderous, savage silence, he’d cajole her out of it, she’d tongue-lash him, he’d whimper, then cringingly strike back, she’d retreat, he’d pursue—and all these feints and thrusts they simultaneously analyzed from so many angles and with such a strange blend of vanity, self-hatred, Christian moralizing and cross-cultural reference that finally nothing took place. Rachel didn’t walk out on DeQuincey. DeQuincey didn’t burn his poems, his “life work,” as he threatened to. She didn’t send Tim off to her monster father in Miami (“At least he’s a real man, and absolute evil is preferable, far preferable to your mauvais foi ”). He didn’t run away to become an Augustinian. She didn’t turn on the gas to asphyxiate them all. None of this happened. They outsat each other, the air turned blue with tobacco smoke, irony and exhaustion. Dawn made its killjoy appearance, like a parent returning home to halt the children’s party, by now a seedy, nearly comatose event. But tonight talk wasn’t sapping resolve. In fact tonight the Scotts seemed in collusion, as though they’d decided in advance to seduce me. Given my failure with the black prostitute, I feared I wouldn’t be able to get it up for any woman, much less a teacher’s wife. But I didn’t want to be the one to back down. When we all three finally got into bed, DeQuincey kept the wisecracks coming. He was the eternal kid who’s forgotten to change his underwear, who keeps his socks on and can hardly wait to dive in (“Oh boy, oh boy”). Rachel, however, lost her bravado. She wasn’t frightened or ashamed but she was shy, even a little romantic. She lay between us. DeQuincey took no interest in me; perhaps Christ really had driven out all his homosexual devils. As it ended up, he mounted her while I stroked her face. When we were all dressed again, the Scotts seemed exhilarated—too much so, to my mind, considering how little had happened. Only gradually did I come to understand that whereas the Scotts certainly did have a serious Anglican admiration of sin, they had an equally strong horror of seeming to themselves bourgeois. Their desire to be bohemian outweighed their resolve to be good. Our “orgy,” as they called it, reassured them that their morality must be of a higher sort, no mere suburban primness.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I now think it was a great mistake to move east again and have her go to that private school in Beardsley, instead of somehow scrambling across the Mexican border while the scrambling was good so as to lie low for a couple of years in subtropical bliss until I could safely marry my little Creole for I must confess that depending on the condition of my glands and ganglia, I could switch in the course of the same day from one pole of insanity to the other—from the thought that around 1950 I would have to get rid somehow of a difficult adolescent whose magic nymphage had evaporated—to the thought that with patience and luck I might have her produce eventually a nymphet with my blood in her exquisite veins, a Lolita the Second, who would be eight or nine around 1960, when I would still be dans la force de l’âge; indeed, the telescopy of my mind, or un-mind, was strong enough to distinguish in the remoteness of time a vieillard encore vert—or was it green rot?—bizarre, tender, salivating Dr. Humbert, practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad. In the days of that wild journey of ours, I doubted not that as father to Lolita the First I was a ridiculous failure. I did my best; I read and reread a book with the unintentionally biblical title Know Your Own Daughter, which I got at the same store where I bought Lo, for her thirteenth birthday, a de luxe volume with commercially “beautiful” illustrations, of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. But even at our very best moments, when we sat reading on a rainy day (Lo’s glance skipping from the window to her wrist watch and back again), or had a quiet hearty meal in a crowded diner, or played a childish game of cards, or went shopping, or silently stared, with other motorists and their children, at some smashed, blood-bespattered car with a young woman’s shoe in the ditch (Lo, as we drove on: “That was the exact type of moccasin I was trying to describe to that jerk in the store”); on all those random occasions, I seemed to myself as implausible a father as she seemed to be a daughter. Was, perhaps, guilty locomotion instrumental in vitiating our powers of impersonation? Would improvement be forthcoming with a fixed domicile and a routine schoolgirl’s day?

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

  Right before the controversial books were unshelved from all four high school libraries in the district, Pico said that board members had traveled upstate to attend a conference hosted by the conservative group Parents of New York United. The list of “objectionable” titles came directly from there. “They [the members] did not read the books in their entirety,” Pico explained. “They used a handful of excerpts, a handful of words, a handful of vulgarities to make these books look bad.” Pico, who was lead plaintiff, was deeply invested in the case, but aside from his four co-plaintiffs, his peers weren’t nearly as moved by the issue. The vast majority of his classmates were more concerned about getting into college than they were in taking up the anti-censorship mantle. Even his own family “had a lot of doubts,” he told CNN. “They were not particularly supportive of the lawsuit because they thought it was perceived as troublemaking and that I might not get into college.” But Pico felt like the suit was a calling. He did, in fact, get accepted to Haverford College. And over the next few years, he appeared on Phil Donahue’s show and spoke on panels with Vonnegut and Alice Childress, whose 1973 novel A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich , about a thirteen-year-old getting hooked on heroin, was also being challenged. Initially, a federal district court ruled in favor of the board’s prerogative to remove books on moral or political grounds. Then, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed that decision. The issue went all the way up to the Supreme Court in the early 1980s, with Pico shoring up continued legal support from the New York chapter of the ACLU. In June 1982, the Supreme Court ruled for Pico, with the 5-4 majority arguing that elected school boards do not have the authority to remove books from circulation simply because they dislike them. After that, Long Island officials bickered about how exactly to reinstate the titles; board members tried out a system where the books in question were returned to the libraries but stamped with red ink that said “Parental notification required.” The New York attorney general disagreed with that practice, too, stating that it violated protections around the confidentiality of library records. In the meantime, Pico graduated and took a job in New York with the National Coalition Against Censorship, which was founded in 1974. Ultimately, in January 1983, the school board relented and voted to return the books to shelves without restrictions. But they weren’t happy about it. “Until the day I die, I refuse to budge on my position,” board member Christina Fasulo told the New York Times , representing the minority opinion in the proceedings. “Since when is it demeaning to take filth off library shelves?” The Island Trees school board didn’t go after Judy Blume’s books, but around the same time, in Loveland, Colorado, her novels caught the attention of another group of motivated conservative parents.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Long scrolls, rubbings from Han Dynasty tombs, pictured featureless warriors standing in tall, narrow chariots under stiff fans and drawn along by surprisingly small ponies twisting nervously in their traces—a whole traffic jam of military chariots describing interlocking curves, fan beside palmetto fan, one horse’s neck dipping behind and below another’s raised hoof. The artist had been at least as interested in the abstract pattern as in the subject and as a consequence had turned a dusty pandemonium into immaculate machinery. I studied these details because I had so long to wait (I’d arrived early and the doctor was running about an hour behind schedule). At last he emerged with a red-nosed woman in a green dress who was humble, even cringing. She slipped into a full-length black coat made of the wool of unborn lambs; once she’d extinguished the color of her dress she regained her composure and accomplished an unsniveling exit. Dr. O’Reilly smiled at me, teeth spaced and white, lips full and raw, gnawed raw, it seemed, under full mustaches, his hair white and to his shoulders—a startling length in those days. His costume also gave one pause: a piece of rope to hold up baggy, stained trousers, bare feet in hemp sandals, a great tent of a minutely and intermittently pleated lime-green Havana shirt containing his corpulence, and in the stubby fingers of his right hand a dirty hanky he kept pressing to his red, raw face, for though we were still in midwinter, sweat lent an incongruous dazzle to his face. “Come in, come in,” he said, stepping aside to usher me into the inner office, a soundproofed cube with one wall all glass looking out on a garden and a small replica of the Kamakura Buddha, gilt everywhere save for a lap full of new snow. “See that log and that hatchet?” the doctor said, pointing to a palisaded enclosure just to the right of the garden. “My patients dub the log Mom or Dad as the case may be, usually Mom, and then have a grand ol’ time hacking away at her.” His small blue eyes, veined in red, rotated dryly in their sockets to take in my reaction to the idea of murder—except his act of “observation” was so stagy it preempted the need for another response. There was nothing about this actor that couldn’t be read from the top balcony. I declined the analytic couch’s invitation to the voyage and chose an earthbound chair that faced the desk. Not that I wasn’t eager to test the couch’s splendors, which I instinctively (and I hazard astutely) equated with those of sexuality.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  We hurried up five flights of dirty, broken stairs, littered with empty pint bottles, bags of garbage and two dolls (both white, I noticed, and blond and mutilated), past landings and open doors, which gave me glimpses of men playing cards and, across the hall, a grandmother alone and asleep in an armchair with antimacassars. Her radio was playing that Negro music. Her brown cotton stockings had been rolled down below her black knees. Blanche we found wailing and shouting, “My baby, my baby!” as she hopped and danced in circles of pain around her daughter, whose hand, half lopped off, was spouting blood. My father gathered the girl up in his arms and we all rushed off to the emergency room of a hospital. She lived. Her hand was even sewn back on, though the incident (jealous lover with an ax) had broken her mind. Afterward the girl didn’t go back to her job and feared even leaving the building. My stepmother thought the loss of blood had somehow left her feeble-minded. In the hospital parking lot my father fussed over the blood on his suit and on the Cadillac upholstery, though I wondered if his pettiness wasn’t merely a way of silencing Blanche, who kept kissing his whole hand in gratitude. Or perhaps he’d found a way of reintroducing the ordinary into a night that had dipped disturbingly below the normal temperature of tedium he worked so hard to maintain. Years later, when Charles died, my father was the only white man to attend the funeral. He wasn’t welcome, but he went anyway and sat in the front row. After Charles’s death my father became more scattered and apprehensive. He would sit up all night with a stopwatch, counting his pulse. That had been another city—Blanche’s two rooms, scrupulously clean in contrast to the squalor of the halls, her parrot squawking under the tea towel draped over the cage, the chromo of a sad Jesus pointing to his exposed, juicy heart as though he were a free-clinic patient with a troubling symptom, the filched wedding photo of my father and stepmother in a nest of crepe-paper flowers, the bloody sheet torn into strips that had been wildly clawed off and hurled onto the flowered congoleum floor.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “What music would you like to hear today, Miss Mirabelle?” Dr. O could whistle any tune, from the Top 40 to classical. Miri thought he’d surely win if he went on Arthur Godfrey’s talent show. “Surprise me,” Miri told him. And he did, whistling “How High the Moon.” Miri relaxed, closed her eyes and thought of Mason. She cringed a couple of times during the drilling of the small cavity but it wasn’t that bad. Just as Dr. O promised, she didn’t need Novocain. When the tooth was filled and Miri had rinsed, Dr. O said, “So how are you doing, Mirabelle?” “Okay.” “Not worried about anything?” “What would I worry about?” Only everything. Was he going to ask her about Natalie, and if so, what would she tell him? “Does your jaw ever ache in the morning?” “Sometimes.” How did he know? Please don’t tell my mother if I have a terrible disease. “Looks like you’re grinding your teeth.” Grinding? “Understandable, given what you’ve been through. We can make you a device to wear at night to prevent the clenching and grinding.” “What kind of device?” “Just something that fits over your teeth.” “Suppose I don’t want a device?” “Grinding can damage your teeth.” Damage? “We carry anxiety in different ways.” Anxiety? “Tell you what. We’ll recheck in a month to see how you’re doing. Okay with you, Miss Mirabelle?” “Okay.” “Good.” He smiled at her. “How come I haven’t seen you around our house lately?” “I was there on the day of…on the day of…” “Yes, I know.” He paused. “Well, I don’t want to spoil Natalie’s surprise. She’ll want to tell you herself. She’s in New York today, at dance class.” “But I’ll see her tonight at bowling.” “Since when does Nat bowl?” “She’s our scorekeeper.” Natalie couldn’t take the chance of dropping a ball, or having someone else drop a ball on her foot. “Ah, the scorekeeper,” Dr. O said. —AT THE BOWLING ALLEY that night, Mason was tender, making sure her shoes fit, squeezing to check for enough toe room, just like Mrs. Kolber, choosing exactly the right bowling ball for her weight. She’d always been hopeless at bowling but now, with a few pointers from Mason, she was improving. Robo was the best in their group, gliding to the line, right foot behind her left, with a follow-through every time. Miri was paying attention to Robo’s form, keeping a picture of Robo in her mind when it was her turn and it was starting to pay off. But soon Robo would be moving and Miri would have to find someone else to follow. When Mason stopped by their station he ruffled Miri’s hair, making the other girls sigh. Mason called her new haircut “cute” but Miri knew he didn’t really like it.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Christina goes, Jack will go, and if Jack goes...” He lifted her off the ground and swung her around. Then he turned serious. “So long as Jack doesn’t get called up. He says if he does, he could try to claim me as a dependent but he’s not sure if that’ll work or not. Christina wants him to try. We’d have to go to court.” “You mean Jack might have to go to Korea?” Mason nodded. “He’s 1-A.” “But Eisenhower says if he’s elected he’ll end the war.” “That’s only if he wins. We don’t even know if he’s running yet. The election’s not until November. He’s not sworn in until January. And it could be somebody else. Joey Pol says it could be Adlai Stevenson.” “Joey Pol?” “The guy from the bowling alley. Joey Politics. He says Stevenson’s an egghead. Who knows what he’d do?” “Uncle Henry says Stevenson is brilliant.” “Don’t take this wrong, but your family leans to the left.” “Are you calling my family Communists?” “Nothing like that. They’re the best family I know.” “Then please take that back, about leaning to the left.” “Okay. I take it back.” They were interrupted by a little boy who ran at Mason, grabbing hold of his leg. “Come see new house.” “I will,” Mason told him. “Later.” “No, now!” “Later, Stash. Okay?” The door to the apartment house opened, and Polina came out, holding Fred on a leash. “Sorry so late,” she told Mason. Her lipstick was bright red and her dress didn’t leave much to the imagination, as if she were trying to look like Marilyn Monroe on the recent cover of Life magazine, beauty mark and all, one she didn’t have when she was making pancakes for the kids at Janet. “We are very happy here,” Polina said. “A beautiful place.” “You should thank Miri,” Mason said. “It’s because of her you got the apartment.” “Mr. Ben’s granddaughter?” Polina asked.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Brian woke me up with a bang in June. I’m not exactly sure when the onset of it was, but sometime in mid-June, I noticed that he had become more manic than usual. He had stopped sleeping entirely. He wanted me to sit up all night with him and discuss heaven and hell. Not that this was so unusual for Brian. He’d always been extraordinarily interested in heaven and hell. But now he began talking about the Second Coming quite a lot and he talked about it in a new way. What if (he asked) Christ came back to earth as an obscure market research executive? What if nobody believed Him again? What if He tried to prove his identity by walking across the water on Central Park Lake? Would CBS Evening News cover the occurrence? Would it be billed as a human interest story? I laughed. Brian laughed too. It was only an idea for a science fiction novel, he said. It was only a joke. In the days that followed, the jokes multiplied. What if he were Zeus and I were Hera? What if he were Dante and I Beatrice? What if there were two of each of us—matter and antimatter, three-dimensional and no-dimensional? What if the people on the subway were really communicating with him telepathically and asking him to save them? What if Christ came back and liberated all the animals in the Central Park Zoo? What if the yaks followed Him down Fifth Avenue and birds sat and sang on His shoulders? Would people believe who He was then? What if He blessed the computers and instead of spewing out printed sheets about which housewives buy the most detergent, they suddenly started spewing out loaves and fishes? What if the world was really controlled by a gigantic computer and nobody knew it except Brian? What if this computer ran on human blood? What if, as Sartre said, we were all in hell right now? What if we were all controlled by complex machines which were controlled by other complex machines which were controlled by other complex machines? What if we had no freedom at all? What if man could only assert his freedom by dying on the cross? What if you walked across the streets of New York against red lights with your eyes closed for a whole week and you weren’t even grazed by a car? Did that prove you were God? What if every book you opened at random had the letters G O D somewhere in every paragraph? Wasn’t that proof positive? Night after night the questions continued. Brian repeated them at me like a catechism. What if? What if? What if? Listen to me. Don’t fall asleep! Listen to me! The world is ending and you’re going to sleep through it! Listen to me!

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Miri, would you like a glass of milk or orange juice?” “No thank you.” Gregg Bender helped himself to a cheese Danish and a cup of coffee. Henry did the coffee thing, too. Rusty fidgeted with her pocketbook, pulling out a linen handkerchief, embroidered on one corner. She was probably hoping Frekki and Mike Monsky wouldn’t show up. But as the church bells chimed ten times, Frekki strutted in arm and arm with Mike Monsky, and another man behind them. Frekki said, “Hello, Rabbi. I’m Frekki Strasser and this is my brother, Mike Monsky, and my husband, Dr. J. J. Strasser.” Her husband, not her lawyer. Miri was surprised. She was sure Frekki would bring a lawyer. Miri tried not to look at Mike Monsky, who was focused on Rusty, who was picking nonexistent lint off her skirt. Only then did Miri notice that Rusty was wearing her new peep-toe pumps and the pale-green sweater dress that made her eyes look even more green. Her hair was loose, down to her shoulders. She looked especially pretty, though tense and unsmiling, twisting the linen handkerchief in her hands. Frekki wore a stylish wool skirt and matching sweater set in spring colors—navy and white. Miri was almost sure it was cashmere. A matching silk scarf was draped around her neck. Miri wondered how she got the scarf to stay in place. Her doctor husband checked his watch, explaining he was on call and might have to leave early. He hoped they would understand if he did. “Let me begin by stating the obvious,” Rabbi Beiderman said. “This isn’t an easy situation for any of you. Miri, you’re the one caught in the middle…” Frekki interrupted. “She’s not caught in the middle, Rabbi. She’s the one who will benefit most from this arrangement.” The rabbi said, “Emotionally, Miri is in the middle.” Maybe this rabbi was smarter than she’d thought. “Can we cut to the chase, please?” Rusty said. “Rabbi, if I may…” Mike Monsky looked to the rabbi for permission to continue. “Please…” the rabbi said, signaling for Mike Monsky to speak. “We made a mistake sixteen years ago,” he began, looking directly at Rusty. He was calling her a mistake? Did she really have to sit here and listen to this? “But the result of that mistake,” he continued, “is a wonderful young girl who nobody in their right mind would ever call a mistake. I’m proud to call her my daughter.” “She’s no more your daughter than I’m the Queen of Sheba,” Rusty said. “She’s entitled to have a relationship with her father,” Mike said. “You call yourself a father?” Rusty asked. “I can show you fathers—responsible, loving men who are there for their families.” Henry leaned over and whispered something to Rusty. Rusty blew her nose in the linen handkerchief. Frekki said, “Nobody doubts you’ve done a wonderful job, Rusty. You’ve raised a lovely daughter. But you can’t deny her a father.” Rusty’s face turned red.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  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. “I don’t know,” Natalie said. “Friends can make you feel worse about yourself,” Lulu said. “I don’t want to do that,” Miri told her. “You don’t want to, but you might anyway.” “Should I go?” Miri asked, hoping the answer was yes. “Why don’t you just shut up for once, Lulu?” Natalie said. Lulu laughed. “So are you from Plane Crash City, too?” she asked Miri, swooping her free arm around like a plane taking off, then coming straight down, onto her bed. “Boom!” “Come on.” Natalie grabbed Miri by the sleeve and pulled her out of the room, then down the hall to a sunroom, where other kids had visitors, too. Many of the kids had braces on their legs. Some had crutches. Others were in wheelchairs, their legs straight out in plaster casts. “They had polio,” Natalie explained. “They’re learning to walk again. If you want milk and cookies they’re on a table over there.” She pointed across the room. “What about you?” “I don’t drink milk or eat cookies.” “Okay.” Miri helped herself to two shortbread cookies and a small cup of milk. She sat down on a sofa next to Natalie. “My hair is growing back,” Natalie said. “I didn’t know you cut it.” “I didn’t. It was falling out. From my condition.” Miri was dying to ask, What condition? But she was trying to act ordinary,

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  OK, let’s put the “mutilated genital” question aside. It’s a dead horse, anyway. And forget about your mother the oven and your analyst the pile of shit. What do we have left except the smell? I’m not talking about the first years of analysis when you’re hard at work discovering your own craziness so that you can get some work done instead of devoting your entire life to your neurosis. I’m talking about when both you and your husband have been in analysis as long as you can remember and it’s gotten to the point where no decision, no matter how small, can be made without both analysts having an imaginary caucus on a cloud above your head. You feel rather like the Trojan warriors in the Iliad with Zeus and Hera fighting above them. I’m talking about the time when your marriage has become a menage à quatre. You, him, your analyst, his analyst. Four in a bed. This picture is definitely rated X. We had been in this state for at least the past year. Every decision was referred to the shrink, or the shrinking process. Should we move into a bigger apartment? “Better see what’s going on first.” (Bennett’s euphemism for: back to the couch.) Should we have a baby? “Better work things through first.” Should we join a new tennis club? “Better see what’s going on first.” Should we get a divorce? “Better work through the unconscious meaning of divorce first.” Because the fact was that we’d reached that crucial time in a marriage (five years and the sheets you got as wedding presents have just about worn thin) when it’s time to decide whether to buy new sheets, have a baby perhaps, and live with each other’s lunacy ever after—or else give up the ghost of the marriage (throw out the sheets) and start playing musical beds all over again. The decision was, of course, further complicated by analysis—the basic assumption of analysis being (and never mind all the evidence to the contrary) that you’re getting better all the time. The refrain goes something like this: “Oh-I-was-self-destructive-when-I-married-you-baby-but-I’m-so-much-more-healthy-now-ow-ow-ow.” (Implying that you might just choose someone better, sweeter, handsomer, smarter, and maybe even luckier in the stock market.) To which he might reply: “Oh-I-hated-all-women-when-I-fell-for-you-baby-but-I’m-so-much-more-healthy-now-ow-ow-ow.” (Implying that he might just find someone sweeter, prettier, smarter, a better cook, and maybe even due to inherit piles of bread from her father.) “Wise up Bennett, old boy,” I’d say—(whenever I suspected him of thinking those thoughts), “you’d probably marry someone even more phallic, castrating, and narcissistic than I am.” (First technique of being a shrink’s wife is knowing how to hurl all their jargon back at them, at carefully chosen moments.)

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Was she just joking? An ominous hysterical note rang through her silly words. Presently, making a sizzling sound with her lips, she started complaining of pains, said she could not sit, said I had torn something inside her. The sweat rolled down my neck, and we almost ran over some little animal or other that was crossing the road with tail erect, and again my vile-tempered companion called me an ugly name. When we stopped at the filling station, she scrambled out without a word and was a long time away. Slowly, lovingly, an elderly friend with a broken nose wiped my windshield—they do it differently at every place, from chamois cloth to soapy brush, this fellow used a pink sponge. She appeared at last. “Look,” she said in that neutral voice that hurt me so, “give me some dimes and nickels. I want to call mother in that hospital. What’s the number?” “Get in,” I said. “You can’t call that number.” “Why?” “Get in and slam the door.” She got in and slammed the door. The old garage man beamed at her. I swung onto the highway. “Why can’t I call my mother if I want to?” “Because,” I answered, “your mother is dead.” 33In the gay town of Lepingville I bought her four books of comics, a box of candy, a box of sanitary pads, two cokes, a manicure set, a travel clock with a luminous dial, a ring with a real topaz, a tennis racket, roller skates with white high shoes, field glasses, a portable radio set, chewing gum, a transparent raincoat, sunglasses, some more garments—swooners, shorts, all kinds of summer frocks. At the hotel we had separate rooms, but in the middle of the night she came sobbing into mine, and we made it up very gently. You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go. Part Two1It was then that began our extensive travels all over the States. To any other type of tourist accommodation I soon grew to prefer the Functional Motel—clean, neat, safe nooks, ideal places for sleep, argument, reconciliation, insatiable illicit love. At first, in my dread of arousing suspicion, I would eagerly pay for both sections of one double unit, each containing a double bed. I wondered what type of foursome this arrangement was ever intended for, since only a pharisaic parody of privacy could be attained by means of the incomplete partition dividing the cabin or room into two communicating love nests. By and by, the very possibilities that such honest promiscuity suggested (two young couples merrily swapping mates or a child shamming sleep to earwitness primal sonorities) made me bolder, and every now and then I would take a bed-and-cot or twinbed cabin, a prison cell of paradise, with yellow window shades pulled down to create a morning illusion of Venice and sunshine when actually it was Pennsylvania and rain.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  At this point I have a curious confession to make. You will laugh—but really and truly I somehow never managed to find out quite exactly what the legal situation was. I do not know it yet. Oh, I have learned a few odds and ends. Alabama prohibits a guardian from changing the ward’s residence without an order of the court; Minnesota, to whom I take off my hat, provides that when a relative assumes permanent care and custody of any child under fourteen, the authority of a court does not come into play. Query: is the stepfather of a gaspingly adorable pubescent pet, a stepfather of only one month’s standing, a neurotic widower of mature years and small but independent means, with the parapets of Europe, a divorce and a few madhouses behind him, is he to be considered a relative, and thus a natural guardian? And if not, must I, and could I reasonably dare notify some Welfare Board and file a petition (how do you file a petition?), and have a court’s agent investigate meek, fishy me and dangerous Dolores Haze? The many books on marriage, rape, adoption and so on, that I guiltily consulted at the public libraries of big and small towns, told me nothing beyond darkly insinuating that the state is the super-guardian of minor children. Pilvin and Zapel, if I remember their names right, in an impressive volume on the legal side of marriage, completely ignored stepfathers with motherless girls on their hands and knees. My best friend, a social service monograph (Chicago, 1936), which was dug out for me at great pains from a dusty storage recess by an innocent old spinster, said “There is no principle that every minor must have a guardian; the court is passive and enters the fray only when the child’s situation becomes conspicuously perilous.” A guardian, I concluded, was appointed only when he expressed his solemn and formal desire; but months might elapse before he was given notice to appear at a hearing and grow his pair of gray wings, and in the meantime the fair daemon child was legally left to her own devices which, after all, was the case of Dolores Haze. Then came the hearing. A few questions from the bench, a few reassuring answers from the attorney, a smile, a nod, a light drizzle outside, and the appointment was made. And still I dared not. Keep away, be a mouse, curl up in your hole. Courts became extravagantly active only when there was some monetary question involved: two greedy guardians, a robbed orphan, a third, Kill greedier, party. But here all was in perfect order, an inventory had been made, and her mother’s small property was waiting untouched for Dolores Haze to grow up. The best policy seemed to be to refrain from any application. Or would some busybody, some Humane Society, butt in if I kept too quiet?