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 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?

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  That day John had to see a customer, and Jean had to feed her dogs, and so I was to be deprived temporarily of my friends’ company. The dear people were afraid I might commit suicide if left alone, and since no other friends were available (Miss Opposite was incommunicado, the McCoos were busy building a new house miles away, and the Chatfields had been recently called to Maine by some family trouble of their own), Leslie and Louise were commissioned to keep me company under the pretense of helping me to sort out and pack a multitude of orphaned things. In a moment of superb inspiration I showed the kind and credulous Farlows (we were waiting for Leslie to come for his paid tryst with Louise) a little photograph of Charlotte I had found among her affairs. From a boulder she smiled through blown hair. It had been taken in April 1934, a memorable spring. While on a business visit to the States, I had had occasion to spend several months in Pisky. We met—and had a mad love affair. I was married, alas, and she was engaged to Haze, but after I returned to Europe, we corresponded through a friend, now dead. Jean whispered she had heard some rumors and looked at the snapshot, and, still looking, handed it to John, and John removed his pipe and looked at lovely and fast Charlotte Becker, and handed it back to me. Then they left for a few hours. Happy Louise was gurgling and scolding her swain in the basement. Hardly had the Farlows gone than a blue-chinned cleric called—and I tried to make the interview as brief as was consistent with neither hurting his feelings nor arousing his doubts. Yes, I would devote all my life to the child’s welfare. Here, incidentally, was a little cross that Charlotte Becker had given me when we were both young. I had a female cousin, a respectable spinster in New York. There we would find a good private school for Dolly. Oh, what a crafty Humbert! For the benefit of Leslie and Louise who might (and did) report it to John and Jean I made a tremendously loud and beautifully enacted long-distance call and simulated a conversation with Shirley Holmes. When John and Jean returned, I completely took them in by telling them, in a deliberately wild and confused mutter, that Lo had gone with the intermediate group on a five-day hike and could not be reached. “Good Lord,” said Jean, “what shall we do?” John said it was perfectly simple—he would get the Climax police to find the hikers—it would not take them an hour. In fact, he knew the country and— “Look,” he continued, “why don’t I drive there right now, and you may sleep with Jean”—(he did not really add that but Jean supported his offer so passionately that it might be implied).

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  THE TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER How the death of the Asse, and the Gentlewoman was stayed. After supper they began to talke, and declare unto him the going away of the Gentlewoman, and how I bare her upon my backe, and what death was ordained for us two. Then he desired to see her, whereupon the Gentlewoman was brought forth fast bound, whom as soone as he beheld, he turned himselfe wringing his nose, and blamed them saying: I am not so much a beast, or so rash a fellow to drive you quite from your purpose, but my conscience will not suffer me to conceale any thing that toucheth your profit, since I am as carefull for you, howbeit if my counsell doe displease you, you may at your liberty proceed in your enterprise. I doubt not but all theeves, and such as have a good judgement, will preferre their owne lucre and gain above all things in the world, and above their vengeance, which purchaseth damage to divers persons. Therefore if you put this virgin in the Asses belly, you shall but execute your indignation against her, without all manner of profit; But I would advise you to carry the virgin to some towne and to sell her: and such a brave girle as she is, may be sold for a great quantity of money. And I my selfe know certaine bawdy Marchants, amongst whom peradventure one will give us summes of gold for her. This is my opinion touching this affaire: but advise you what you intend to do, for you may rule me in this case. In this manner the good theefe pleaded and defended our cause, being a good Patron to the silly virgin, and to me poore Asse. But they staied hereupon a good space, with long deliberation, which made my heart (God wot) and spirit greatly to quaile. Howbeit in the end they consented to his opinion, and by and by the Maiden was unloosed of her bonds, who seeing the young man, and hearing the name of brothels and bawdy Merchants, began to wax joyfull, and smiled with herself. Then began I to deeme evill of the generation of women, when as I saw the Maiden (who was appointed to be married to a young Gentleman, and who so greatly desired the same) was now delighted with the talke of a wicked brothel house, and other things dishonest. In this sort the consent and manners of women depended in the judgement of an Asse. THE TWENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER How all the Theeves were brought asleepe by their new companion.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “You are a puritan,” he said, “and of the worst sort. You do what you like but you feel so guilty that you don’t enjoy it. What, actually, is the point?” During his London exile, Happe had picked up some Englishisms. I remembered that he loved the word “actually.” “That’s what I want to know,” I said. “But the worst thing is how you always insist on normalizing your life. Even if you’re analyzed, your life may not be simple. Why do you expect it to be? Maybe this man is part of it. But why do you have to throw everything away before you give yourself time to decide? Can’t you wait and see what happens later?” “I could wait if I were cautious—but I’m afraid I always have trouble being cautious.” “Except with writing letters,” he said. “There you were very cautious.” “Not anymore,” I said. Then the meetings began letting out and we got up, shook hands, and said goodbye. I was left to sort out my dilemma by myself. No good Daddy to rescue me this time. — Bennett and I spent a long night of mutual recrimination, wondered whether to attempt a trial separation or a double suicide, declared our love for each other, our hatred for each other, our ambivalence for each other. We made love, screamed, cried, made love again. There is no use going into detail about all this. At one time I may have aspired to a marriage as witty as an Oscar Wilde farce with brittle, cleverly arranged adulteries out of Iris Murdoch, but I had to admit that the quality of our fights was more like Sartre’s No Exit—or still worse, As the World Turns. In the morning, we haggardly made our way to the Congress, and listened to the closing remarks on aggression by Anna Freud and the other dignitaries (among whom Adrian was included, reading a paper I had written for him a few days earlier). After the meeting, while Bennett talked to some friends from New York, I went into a huddle with Adrian. “Come with me,” he said, “we’ll have a great time—an odyssey.” “You tempt me, but I can’t.” “Why not?” “Let’s not go into it again—please.” “I’ll be around after lunch, ducks, if you change your mind. I have to speak to some people now and then get back to the pension and pack. I’ll look for you after lunch at about two. If you’re not there, I’ll wait an hour or so. Try to make up your mind, love. Don’t be scared. Bennett’s welcome to come too, of course.” He smiled his antic smile and blew me a kiss. “Bye, love,” and he hurried off. The thought of never seeing him again made me weak in the knees. Now it was up to me. He’d wait. I had three and a half hours to decide my fate. And his. And Bennett’s.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  4When, through decorations of light and shade, we drove up to 14 Thayer Street, a grave little lad met us with the keys and a note from Gaston who had rented the house for us. My Lo, without granting her new surroundings one glance, unseeingly turned on the radio to which instinct led her and lay down on the living room sofa with a batch of old magazines which in the same precise and blind manner she landed by dipping her hand into the nether anatomy of a lamp table. I really did not mind where to dwell provided I could lock my Lolita up somewhere; but I had, I suppose, in the course of my correspondence with vague Gaston, vaguely visualized a house of ivied brick. Actually the place bore a dejected resemblance to the Haze home (a mere 400 miles distant): it was the same sort of dull gray frame affair with a shingled roof and dull green drill awnings; and the rooms, though smaller and furnished in a more consistent plush-and-plate style, were arranged in much the same order. My study turned out to be, however, a much larger room, lined from floor to ceiling with some two thousand books on chemistry which my landlord (on sabbatical leave for the time being) taught at Beardsley College. I had hoped Beardsley School for girls, an expensive day school, with lunch thrown in and a glamorous gymnasium, would, while cultivating all those young bodies, provide some formal education for their minds as well. Gaston Godin, who was seldom right in his judgment of American habitus, had warned me that the institution might turn out to be one of those where girls are taught, as he put it with a foreigner’s love for such things: “not to spell very well, but to smell very well.” I don’t think they achieved even that. At my first interview with headmistress Pratt, she approved of my child’s “nice blue eyes” (blue! Lolita!) and of my own friendship with that “French genius” (a genius! Gaston!)—and then, having turned Dolly over to a Miss Cormorant, she wrinkled her brow in a kind of recueillement and said:

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I felt thirsty by then, and walked to the drinking fountain; there Red approached me and in all humility suggested a mixed double. “I am Bill Mead,” he said. “And that’s Fay Page, actress. Maffy On Say”—he added (pointing with his ridiculously hooded racket at polished Fay who was already talking to Dolly). I was about to reply “Sorry, but—” (for I hate to have my filly involved in the chops and jabs of cheap bunglers), when a remarkably melodious cry diverted my attention: a bellboy was tripping down the steps from the hotel to our court and making me signs. I was wanted, if you please, on an urgent long distance call—so urgent in fact that the line was being held for me. Certainly. I got into my coat (inside pocket heavy with pistol) and told Lo I would be back in a minute. She was picking up a ball—in the continental foot-racket way which was one of the few nice things I had taught her,—and smiled—she smiled at me! An awful calm kept my heart afloat as I followed the boy up to the hotel. This, to use an American term, in which discovery, retribution, torture, death, eternity appear in the shape of a singularly repulsive nutshell, was it. I had left her in mediocre hands, but it hardly mattered now. I would fight, of course. Oh, I would fight. Better destroy everything than surrender her. Yes, quite a climb. At the desk, a dignified, Roman-nosed man, with, I suggest, a very obscure past that might reward investigation, handed me a message in his own hand. The line had not been held after all. The note said: “Mr. Humbert. The head of Birdsley (sic!) School called. Summer residence—Birdsley 2-8282. Please call back immediately. Highly important.”

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Now she thought of it as a friend. She liked the way it responded to her touch. Jack put her hand on his balls. “Feel how tight they get,” he whispered. “That’s because it feels so good.” Then he’d spurt, not on her if she was lucky. At first she wouldn’t let him touch her that way. “Are you sure I can’t get pregnant? That is, if I’m not already pregnant?” “Don’t worry.” But worry was her new middle name. When she let herself go, when she let him touch her there, she enjoyed it. She cried out when she got that good feeling. Why, oh, why hadn’t they done it this way in the first place? Then they wouldn’t be in this predicament. Now she was six weeks late. She wasn’t ready to be a wife and she certainly wasn’t ready to be a mother. There was talk of a doctor in south Jersey who could take care of it but it cost a lot of money and she wasn’t sure it was safe. One night when Jack met her after work he said, “How about a quick trip to Elkton?” “You mean elope?” Debbie Reynolds had eloped to Elkton. And Willie Mays, too. Everyone knew about Elkton. They called it Marry-Land instead of Maryland. Usually it was a joke but Jack didn’t sound like he was joking. Was he proposing to her? “I’ve got it all figured out,” he said. “We drive down early Saturday morning. Leave by six a.m. We get hitched, then drive back.” “You mean get married?” Christina had trouble getting out the words. Wasn’t this moment supposed to be romantic? “I can’t stand seeing you so unhappy.” “I’m not unhappy. I’m worried.” “That’s what I mean.” “I don’t know, Jack.” “We love each other, don’t we?” “Yes.” “We want to spend the rest of our lives together, don’t we?” “Yes.” “Then let’s do it. No one has to know. It’ll be our secret.” “But if I’m pregnant I’ll have to tell my family. There’s no way to keep that a secret. And when they find out they’re going to kill me. Or you. Or both of us.” “No, they won’t.” She looked at him. Did he really think this could be solved so easily? “We’ll tell them it’s because I’ve been called up.” She burst into tears. She’d prayed Korea would be over before Jack’s number came up, even though she knew very well he was 1-A. Jack tried to comfort her but nothing worked. “I haven’t been called up yet,” he whispered. “I was just saying it’s what you could tell your family.” “You’re saying I should lie to my parents?” He didn’t answer, which made her burst into tears again. Her life was turning into such a mess. —SHE HAD TO make up an excuse for not working on Saturday morning and felt guilty for lying to Daisy, telling her she was going down the shore for a family reunion.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  name for himself in forensic dentistry. She fought him on that one. She had enough disasters in her life. But he won, promising not to bring the details of his work to the dinner table. Her hotel room is nothing to write home about, but it’s clean and light, looking out over Jersey Avenue. Christina and Jack are staying in a suite at the Pierre in New York. They offered her an adjoining room, but she opted for Elizabeth, explaining she was having dinner with Henry and Leah, who would also be staying at the Elizabeth Carteret. And she’s been thinking about a story based on the thirties gangland slaying that took place in a suite on the eighth floor of this hotel. She’s never lost her fascination for the Jewish gangsters. She sits on the edge of the bed and dials Eliza at school. It’s midafternoon there so she’s surprised when Eliza answers in a sleepy voice. “Hullo?” She didn’t expect her to answer at all, thought she’d just leave a message on her machine, the way she had this morning. “Hi, honey. Are you all right?” “Why wouldn’t I be all right?” “I expected you to be at class. Or at the stables.” She means to sound soft, maternal, but knows she sounds judgmental. The school, in the mountains of Colorado, was highly recommended by the counselor they’d consulted. It was supposed to do wonders for children like Eliza, bright but unmotivated, who would rather shovel manure than read. “You’re calling to check up on me?” “No, I just wanted to tell you I’m at the hotel. In Elizabeth.” “I can’t believe you actually went.” “Well, I did.” “It just seems really stupid to me. It’s not like it’s your high school reunion or anything.” “No.” Miri resists a laugh. To Eliza a high school reunion must seem like one of life’s major events. “Well, it’s your dime and your time. Just don’t expect me to tell you to enjoy yourself.” “No, of course not.” Miri no longer expects anything from her daughter, except to be challenged, berated and humiliated. “So I’ll see you when I see you,” Eliza says. A statement, not a question. “President’s Weekend,” Miri reminds her. “Tahoe.”

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

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

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

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

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

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

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

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

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

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