Contentment

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 Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Nos quedaremos aquí, en este fabuloso vecindario, imagínate, libre de alquiler. Lo menos que puedo hacer es asegurarme de mantener nuestro acuerdo. Limpiamos y compartimos algunos de los deberes de la cocina. Eso es todo. Arquea con severidad la ceja derecha y se cruza de brazos, sin creérselo. Oh, por todos los santos. De hecho, creo que estamos obteniendo la mejor parte de este trato que Pike Lawson, después de todo. Aire acondicionado, televisión por cable y Wi-Fi, un armario-vestidor... Extiendo la mano por encima del mostrador y tiro de las persianas, espetando para que deje de molestarme. —¡Tiene una piscina, Cam! Quiero decir, por favor. Abre los ojos de par en par. —¿De verdad? Se levanta de la silla y se acerca, mirando hacia el patio trasero. La piscina es perfecta. Con forma de reloj de arena, las baldosas multicolores en la cubierta son de estilo mediterráneo, y tiene una entrada con un piso de mosaico. El padre de Cole todavía debe estar trabajando en eso porque hay una pantalla en el otro extremo de la piscina con macizos para flores sin flores y picos para mini cascadas que todavía no están instalados. Hay una mesa y sillas colocadas al azar alrededor del perímetro, y el resto del patio trasero cubierto de hierba tiene varios muebles de jardín que aún no están acomodados de manera discernible. Una sombrilla de mesa se encuentra a la derecha, al lado de la manguera, y una parrilla de barbacoa está cubierta con una lona a la izquierda. Mi hermana asiente con aprobación. —Esto es bonito. Siempre quisiste vivir en una casa como esta. —¿Quién no? —respondo. Todos deberían ser tan afortunados. Aunque todavía se siente mal estar aquí. Sin embargo, me preocupo mucho por Cole, y prefiero estar con él que en casa de mi padre. Termino las hamburguesas, mientras ella se da la vuelta, agarrando ambos costados del mostrador y mirándome. —¿Estás segura que lo único que quiere es que limpies y cocines un poco? — insiste—. Los hombres, sin importar la edad, son todos iguales. Yo debería saberlo. Sí, puedes callarte ahora. Puedo cuidar de mí misma. Si los novios de la escuela secundaria y trabajar en un bar no me han enseñado eso hasta ahora... Pero vuelve a hablar, entrando en mi espacio y deteniéndome.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  El aire es agradable y espeso, mi piel se siente húmeda aun cuando la lluvia no me está golpeando bajo la marquesina. Mi camiseta se pega un poco a mi estómago y pongo mi cabello detrás de mi oreja porque me está haciendo cosquillas en los brazos. Levantando la mirada, veo a Kyle Cramer estacionando su BMW en su entrada, cubriéndose la cabeza con su maletín mientras corre hacia su porche delantero. Me nota y muestra una sonrisa. Lo saludo con la mano. Me pregunto por qué él y Pike no se llevan bien. Desaparece en el interior de su casa y termino de limpiar la pequeña cantidad de tierra y maleza sobre el porche antes de dejar el tapete de bienvenida de regreso en su lugar. Adicional a las facturas del gas y de los víveres, he tomado la responsabilidad de la planta baja de la casa: Limpiar el polvo, pasar la aspiradora, barrer, trapear, mantener la cocina ordenada, aunque él tiene que encargarse de los platos cuando cocino, y yo solo tengo que hacerlo cuando cocina. Lo cual, en realidad, no ha hecho para nada durante los últimos tres días desde que regresé aquí. En algún punto de las pocas últimas semanas, me di cuenta que realmente solo prepara cenas de la sección de comida congelada del supermercado o sopas y guisos de lata, así que me he encargado completamente de las comidas y él de los platos y estoy muy bien con eso. También arreglo el jardín, mientras él se encarga del césped, la piscina y los rociadores. Nuestras habitaciones son nuestra responsabilidad, pero limpio mi baño y él mantiene el sótano en orden. Establecer las tareas individuales de la casa fue casi demasiado bueno para ser verdad. Di por hecho que él fallaría y yo terminaría limpiando las porquerías que dejara en las áreas que yo tenía asignadas a mantener ordenadas. Pero no ha sucedido. Lanza sus botas en el closet después del trabajo, recoge las camisetas que descarta si tiene mucho calor y nunca tengo que molestarlo para que saque su ropa de la secadora. Reconozco que nunca he vivido con un hombre que haya vivido solo antes de mí. Hasta ahora, eso es todo. Pike está acostumbrado a cuidar de sí mismo y de sus cosas, porque no hay nadie más que lo haga por él. Es todo un mundo nuevo. Caminando de regreso al interior de la casa, meto la escoba en el armario y me dirijo arriba para ordenar mi ropa sucia. La antigua habitación de Cole, nuestra antigua habitación, sigue vacía, dado que no ha regresado desde que se fue. No estoy segura de lo que ha estado vistiendo en los últimos días y no sé si ha hablado con su papá, pero estoy segura de algo, con el tiempo, volverá.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  interesado en saber cómo estoy. Supongo que salir juntos, también arruinó cualquier tipo de amistad que teníamos. No sé por qué me importa. Mi papá, mi mamá, mis exnovios... Lo que dice mucho a favor de mantener tu círculo social pequeño, supongo. Tengo a Cam y a Shel. Damos la vuelta en Owens e inmediatamente vemos la calle adelante bloqueada por un par de barricadas. Pike gira a la derecha y se estaciona a lo largo de la curva. Es solo un poco después de las dos de la tarde, y aunque la fiesta empezó hace un par de horas, la esposa de Dutch dijo que duraría hasta tarde, así que los niños podrían tener algo de diversión con los cohetes. Nos bajamos y lentamente apilamos la comida en nuestros brazos, Pike toma sus preciosas bandejas de rollitos de jalapeños envueltos en tocino y salsa de tacos, mientras yo hago rodar la pequeña nevera con bebidas en el interior y la ensalada de papa apoyada en la parte superior. —Hola, hombre —dice Dutch, dirigiéndose hacia Pike con una cerveza metida en un Koozie 10 que tiene escrito YO ORINO EN LAS PISCINAS. —¡Hola, Pike! —dice alguien más desde el interior de las barricadas. Pike saluda con la cabeza a quien sea que lo haya saludado, y me detengo junto a ellos con Dutch lanzándome una sonrisa. Dios sabe qué conclusión está sacando sobre el por qué estoy aquí con Pike. Por qué siempre estoy con Pike. No estoy segura si sabe que Cole y yo rompimos. Una hermosa mujer con cabello castaño oscuro se acerca y toma las bandejas de Pike, inclinándose para besarlo en la mejilla. —¿Cómo estás? —pregunta, sonriéndole. Él se agacha y levanta la ensalada de papa de la nevera por mí. —Bien. ¿Cómo estás tú? —Oh, lo estamos pasando genial —bromea, mostrándonos el camino al interior de la fiesta—. Aunque, éste —dice, gesticulando hacia Dutch—, tuvo que beberse una cerveza cada vez que se vio obligado a mover una mesa para picnic esta mañana. Pike se ríe en voz baja, y me doy cuenta que esta es la esposa de Dutch. —Esta es Jordan —me presenta, Pike—. La... amiga de Cole. Él no pudo venir. 10 Porta latas fabricado con una goma sintética de neopreno.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Pongo mi mano sobre la suya, sintiendo la pequeña cicatriz en su pulgar, e inhalo su aroma limpio. Se ve fresco y guapo, mucho mejor que esta mañana. Nadie puede librarse de una resaca como él. —Sabes, es malo para los negocios si el novio anda por ahí —advierte Shelley, acercándose al frente de la barra y dejando una bandeja con vasos. Shel se imagina a sí misma como la dueña del bar en la película Coyote Ugly. “Debes parecer disponible, pero nunca estar disponible” o algo así. El problema es que este es un pequeño bar en un pueblo pequeño, por lo que, de cualquier forma, las propinas no establecerán ningún récord. Ya sea que mi novio esté aquí o no. Cole acaricia mi cuello, y sonrío, sintiéndome segura contra la pared de su cuerpo. Las voces de sus amigos llegan a medida que el nivel de ruido aumenta en la sala, y miro el reloj, viendo que es casi medianoche. Y es miércoles. Cole tiene trabajo por la mañana. Tomo aliento, girando la cabeza para mirarlo. —Sabes, realmente no podemos permitirnos perder esas horas hoy —le digo. Y si sale esta noche, es probable que no vaya mañana y pierda más dinero. Aún tenemos facturas del antiguo departamento que deben pagarse, y haré mi parte justa, pero más le vale que ayude. Si falta otro día, me pondré furiosa. Pero solo me mira pensativo. —No soy estúpido, cariño —me asegura—. Ya sé todo lo que quieres decirme, ¿de acuerdo? —Y sabes que tienes mucha suerte de tener tu licencia, ¿verdad? —Lo molesto más. Lo último que necesitamos es un accidente estando ebrio en su historial, y tienta al destino constantemente. Especialmente después de todo lo que sucedió. ¿Cómo puede ser tan descuidado? Bajo la mirada a nuestras cicatrices de nuevo, recordando. —¿Qué haría sin ti? —dice, su aliento me hace cosquillas en la oreja.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The Nun’s Priest’s Prologue The prologe of the Nonnes Preestes Tale ‘Hey!’ the Knight called out. ‘That is enough, sir Monk. You have spoken justly, I am sure. It was all very true. But a little sorrow goes a long way. People cannot bear too much tragedy. As for me, I hate hearing about the sudden fall from fortune into sorrow. I prefer to look on the bright side. I like to hear of those poor folk who have attained great riches or happiness, climbing up the ladder from low estate to wealth. That cheers me up. That is the story I wish to hear.’ ‘I agree with you,’ Harry Bailey said. ‘One hundred per cent. This Monk has spoken at length about the tragedies of various people. How did he put it? Fortune is covered with a cloud? Something like that. But there is no point in wailing and lamenting. What is done is done. As you said, sir Knight, it is not an exciting subject.’ Our Host then turned to the Monk. ‘So, sir, no more, if you please. You are annoying the entire company. Your little homilies are not exactly entertaining. There is no fun in them. Wherefore good Monk - Peter is your name, isn’t it? - wherefore, Peter, I beg you to tell us something different. Something amusing. If it were not for the clinking of the bells on your bridle, I would have fallen asleep listening to you. I would have slipped from my horse and sunk in the mud. Who cares about Holofernes? Or Croesus? There is an old saying used by preachers and teachers. “If a man has no audience, he had better stop talking.” Of course I am always ready to listen to a well-told tale. Why not a story about hunters and hunting?’ ‘I’m afraid not,’ the Monk replied. ‘My heart would not be in it. Let somebody else tell the next story.’ So the Host spoke out boldly and rudely. ‘Come towards me, you, the Nun’s Priest over there! Tell us something that will lift our spirits. Be merry. Be daring. I see that you are riding on a poor nag of a horse, but that should not stop you. As long as it can carry you, it has my blessing. So. Make us laugh.’ ‘Willingly, good sir,’ the Nun’s Priest said. ‘I will be as cheerful as you could wish.’ So then this sweet Priest began his story to the company of pilgrims.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  And then I tell my students that the odds of their getting published and of it bringing them financial security, peace of mind, and even joy are probably not that great. Ruin, hysteria, bad skin, unsightly tics, ugly financial problems, maybe; but probably not peace of mind. I tell them that I think they ought to write anyway. But I try to make sure they understand that writing, and even getting good at it, and having books and stories and articles published, will not open the doors that most of them hope for. It will not make them well. It will not give them the feeling that the world has finally validated their parking tickets, that they have in fact finally arrived. My writer friends, and they are legion, do not go around beaming with quiet feelings of contentment. Most of them go around with haunted, abused, surprised looks on their faces, like lab dogs on whom very personal deodorant sprays have been tested. My students do not want to hear this. Nor do they want to hear that it wasn’t until my fourth book came out that I stopped being a starving artist. They do not want to hear that most of them probably won’t get published and that even fewer will make enough to live on. But their fantasy of what it means to be published has very little to do with reality. So I tell them about my four-year-old son Sam, who goes to a little Christian preschool where he recently learned the story of Thanksgiving. A friend of his, who is also named Sam but who is twelve years old and very political, asked my Sam to tell him everything he knew about the holiday. So my Sam told him this lovely Christian-preschool version of Thanksgiving, with the pilgrims and the Native Americans and lots of lovely food and feelings. At which point Big Sam turned to me and said, somewhat bitterly, “I guess he hasn’t heard about the small-pox-infected blankets yet.” Now, maybe we weren’t handing out those blankets yet; maybe we were still on our good behavior. But the point is that my students, who so want to be published, have not yet heard about the small-pox-infected blankets of getting published. So that’s one of the things I tell them. But I also tell them that sometimes when my writer friends are working, they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time. And sometimes when they are writing well, they feel that they are living up to something. It is as if the right words, the true words, are already inside them, and they just want to help them get out. Writing this way is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it. I want the people who come to my classes to have this feeling, too.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  I pay through the nose for these moments, of course, with lots of torture and self-loathing and tedium, but when I am done for the day, I have something to show for it. When the ancient Egyptians finished building the pyramids, they had built the pyramids . Perhaps they are good role models: they thought they were working for God, so they worked with a sense of concentration and religious awe. (Also, my friend Carpenter tells me, they drank all day and took time off every few hours to oil each other. I believe that all my other writer friends do this, too, but they won’t let me in on it.) The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion—not to look around and say, “Look at yourselves, you idiots!,” but to say, “This is who we are.” In this dark and wounded society, writing can give you the pleasures of the woodpecker, of hollowing out a hole in a tree where you can build your nest and say, “This is my niche, this is where I live now, this is where I belong.” And the niche may be small and dark, but at last you will finally know what you are doing. After thirty years or more of floundering around and screwing up, you will finally know, and when you get serious you will be dealing with the one thing you’ve been avoiding all along—your wounds. This is very painful. It stops a lot of people early on who didn’t get into this for the pain. They got into it for the money and the fame. So they either quit, or they resort to a type of writing that is sort of like candy making.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  When we finished, our bunk beds looked sort of plain, so we spray-painted the sides with ornate red and black curlicues. Dad came home with a discarded four-drawer dresser, one drawer for each of us. He also built each of us a wooden box with sliding doors for personal stuff. We nailed them on the wall above our beds, and that was where I kept my geode. The third room at 93 Little Hobart Street, the kitchen, was in a category all its own. It had an electric stove, but the wiring was not exactly up to code, with faulty connectors, exposed lines, and buzzing switches. “Helen Keller must have wired this damn house,” Dad declared. He decided it was too convoluted to bother fixing. We called the kitchen the loose-juice room, because on the rare occasions that we had paid the electricity bill and had power, we’d get a wicked electric shock if we touched any damp or metallic surface in the room. The first time I got zapped, it knocked my breath out and left me twitching on the floor. We quickly learned that whenever we ventured into the kitchen, we needed to wrap our hands in the driest socks or rags we could find. If we got a shock, we’d announce it to everyone else, sort of like giving a weather report. “Big jolt from touching the stove today,” we’d say. “Wear extra rags.” One corner of the kitchen ceiling leaked like a sieve. Every time it rained, the plasterboard ceiling would get all swollen and heavy, with water streaming steadily from the center of the bulge. During one particularly fierce rainstorm that spring, the ceiling grew so fat it burst, and water and plasterboard came crashing down onto the floor. Dad never repaired it. We kids tried patching the roof on our own with tar paper, tinfoil, wood, and Elmer’s glue, but no matter what we did, the water found its way through. Eventually we gave up. So every time it rained outside, it rained in the kitchen, too. • • • At first Mom tried to make living at 93 Little Hobart Street seem like an adventure. The woman who had lived there before us left behind an old-fashioned sewing machine that you operated with a foot treadle. Mom said it would come in handy because we could make our own clothes even when the electricity was turned off. She also claimed you didn’t need patterns to sew, you could get creative and wing it. Shortly after we moved in, Mom, Lori, and I measured one another and tried to make our own dresses. It took forever, and they came out baggy and lopsided, with sleeves that were different lengths and armholes in the middle of our backs. I couldn’t get mine over my head until Mom snipped out a few stitches. “It’s stunning!” she said.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The Nun’s Priest’s Tale Heere bigynneth the Nonnes Preestes Tale of the Cok and Hen, Chauntecleer and Pertelote Once upon a time a poor widow, somewhat stooped by age, was living in a tiny cottage; it was situated in a valley, and stood within the shadow of a grove of trees. This widow had led a simple existence ever since the death of her husband; she had few cattle, and fewer possessions. She had two daughters and, between them, they owned three large sows, three cows and a sheep called Molly. The walls of her little house were thick with soot, but this is where she ate her simple meals. She had no use for spices or dainty food. Since her modest repast came from the produce of her farm, she was never flatulent from overeating. A temperate diet, physical exercise and a modest life were her only medicines. She was never hopping with the gout, or swimming in the head from apoplexy. She never touched wine, white or red. In fact her board was made up of black and white - black bread and white milk, with the occasional rasher of bacon or new-laid egg. She was a dairywoman, after all. Her small farmyard was protected by a palisade of sticks, with a ditch dug all around it. Here strutted a cock called Chanticleer. There was no cock in the country that crowed louder than this bird. His voice was more impassioned than the organ that is played on mass days in church. His crow was better timed, and more accurate, than the clock on the abbey tower. By natural instinct he knew the movements of the sun; whenever it covered fifteen degrees across the sky, he began to crow as mightily as he was able. His comb was redder than the coral of the sea, and it had more notches than a castle battle- ment; his legs and toes were a beautiful shade of azure, just like lapis lazuli, and his nails were as white as the lily flower. His feathers were the colour of burnished gold. Chanticleer had seven hens in his household. They were his companions and his concubines, devoted to his pleasure; they were as brightly coloured as he was, and the brightest of them was a hen called Pertelote. What a gentle, kind and attentive bird she was! She carried herself so nobly, and was so affectionate, that Chanticleer had loved her ever since she was seven days old. He could not get enough of her. You should have heard them crowing together at dawn, harmonizing on the words ‘my love has left me’. In those days, of course, the birds and the animals could all speak and sing. So it happened that, one morning at dawn, Chanticleer sat on his perch among his seven wives; beside him was sitting Pertelote. Suddenly he began to groan and moan, just like someone who is having a bad dream. When she heard him, she became alarmed.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  It was Brian, eating the ice. • • • The doctors said I was lucky to be alive. They took patches of skin from my upper thigh and put them over the most badly burned parts of my stomach, ribs, and chest. They said it was called a skin graft. When they were finished, they wrapped my entire right side in bandages. “Look, I’m a half-mummy,” I said to one of the nurses. She smiled and put my right arm in a sling and attached it to the headboard so I couldn’t move it. The nurses and doctors kept asking me questions: How did you get burned? Have your parents ever hurt you? Why do you have all these bruises and cuts? My parents never hurt me, I said. I got the cuts and bruises playing outside and the burns from cooking hot dogs. They asked what I was doing cooking hot dogs by myself at the age of three. It was easy, I said. You just put the hot dogs in the water and boil them. It wasn’t like there was some complicated recipe that you had to be old enough to follow. The pan was too heavy for me to lift when it was full of water, so I’d put a chair next to the sink, climb up and fill a glass, then stand on a chair by the stove and pour the water into the pan. I did that over and over again until the pan held enough water. Then I’d turn on the stove, and when the water was boiling, I’d drop in the hot dogs. “Mom says I’m mature for my age,” I told them, “and she lets me cook for myself a lot.” Two nurses looked at each other, and one of them wrote something down on a clipboard. I asked what was wrong. Nothing, they said, nothing. • • • Every couple of days, the nurses changed the bandages. They would put the used bandage off to the side, wadded and covered with smears of blood and yellow stuff and little pieces of burned skin. Then they’d apply another bandage, a big gauzy cloth, to the burns. At night I would run my left hand over the rough, scabby surface of the skin that wasn’t covered by the bandage. Sometimes I’d peel off scabs. The nurses had told me not to, but I couldn’t resist pulling on them real slow to see how big a scab I could get loose. Once I had a couple of them free, I’d pretend they were talking to each other in cheeping voices. The hospital was clean and shiny. Everything was white—the walls and sheets and nurses’ uniforms—or silver—the beds and trays and medical instruments. Everyone spoke in polite, calm voices. It was so hushed you could hear the nurses’ rubber-soled shoes squeaking all the way down the hall. I wasn’t used to quiet and order, and I liked it.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  But Lori loved seeing the world clearly. She started compulsively drawing and painting all the wondrous things she was discovering, like the way each curved tile on Emerson’s roof cast its own curved shadow on the tile below, and the way the setting sun painted the underbellies of the clouds pink but left the piled-up tops purple. Not long after Lori got her glasses, she decided she wanted to be an artist, like Mom. • • • As soon as we’d settled into the house, Mom threw herself into her art career. She erected a big white sign in the front yard on which she had carefully painted, in black letters with gold outlines, R. M. WALLS ART STUDIO. She turned the two front rooms of the house into a studio and gallery, and she used two bedrooms in the back to warehouse her collected works. An art supplies store was three blocks away, on North First Street, and thanks to Mom’s inheritance, we were able to make regular shopping expeditions to the store, bringing home rolls of canvas that Dad stretched and stapled onto wooden frames. We also brought back oil paints, watercolors, acrylics, gesso, a silk-screening frame, india ink, paintbrushes and pen nibs, charcoal pencils, pastels, fancy rag paper for pastel drawings, and even a wooden mannequin with movable joints whom we named Edward and who, Mom said, would pose for her when we kids were off at school. Mom decided that before she could get down to any serious painting, she needed to compile a thorough art reference library. She bought dozens of big loose-leaf binders and lots of packs of lined paper. Every subject was given its own binder: dogs, cats, horses, farm animals, woodland animals, flowers, fruits and vegetables, rural landscapes, urban landscapes, men’s faces, women’s faces, men’s bodies, women’s bodies, and hands-feet-bottoms-and-other-miscellaneous body parts. We spent hours and hours going through old magazines, looking for interesting pictures, and when we spotted one we thought might be a worthy subject of a painting, we held it up to Mom for approval. She studied it for a second and okayed or nixed it. If the photo made the grade, we cut it out, glued it on a piece of lined paper, and reinforced the holes in the paper with adhesive Os so the page wouldn’t tear out. Then we got out the appropriate three-ringed binder, added the new photograph, and snapped the rings shut. In exchange for our help on her reference library, Mom gave us all art lessons.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  22 THE HOMEPORT had a big, noisy dining room, where food was served family style. It was popular with tourists and locals alike, more for its location overlooking the harbor, the best place to view spectacular Menemsha sunsets, than for its food. It was impossible to get a reservation this time of year unless you called at least a week in advance. The menu was simple and never changed. Swordfish and lobster were the two most popular dinners. They came with baked potatoes, corn on the cob, and cole slaw. For dessert it was pie and ice cream. The blueberries in the pie were canned, not fresh. If anyone asked, Vix was supposed to tell them the truth. But no one ever asked. Because all the up island towns were dry, there was no bar. You could BYOB if you wanted beer or wine with your meal, but Vix wasn’t permitted to open it because she was under age. Tips ran the gamut from generous to pathetic. She always tried to guess at the beginning of a meal how much her table would leave, but more than half the time she was wrong. One night she was sure she saw Barbra Streisand, another, Mary Steen burgen. But neither sat at Vix’s tables. She did get to wait on a group from Saturday Night Live. They were loud and messy, dropping lobster shells on the floor, but they left her two twenties to make up for it. The staff got to eat free. At first it seemed like a great deal but after the first week she couldn’t look at another piece of swordfish, let alone eat it. She lived on corn, baked potatoes, cole slaw, and Trisha’s muffins. The manager considered her a hard worker but encouraged her to become more of a team player. She was always polite, always efficient, but she didn’t hang out with the other servers and they resented her. When one of the girls finally asked where Vix headed every night after

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Haven’t I? I certainly meant to mention that good hours at the desk are as wonderful as any I can imagine. But joy for me is Sam and my church and my buddies and family, and more often it is felt outdoors than at my desk. There is a part of me that resists saying that I love being a published writer, that it has been a dream come true, first of all because it is so much more complicated than that. And second, I don’t want unpublished writers to throw up their hands and say, “See? Okay? I rest my case: publishing is the great reward.” But the truth is that there can be a great deal of satisfaction in being a writer, in being a person who gets some work done most days, and who has been published and acknowledged. I carry this around in my pocket, touch it a number of times a day to make sure it is still there. Even though so much of my writing time is stressful and disheartening, I carry a secret sense of accomplishment around with me, like a radium pack implanted near my heart that now leaches a quiet sense of relief through my system. But you pay through the nose for this. No one has expressed it better than a great novelist I heard once on a talk show who said something like “You want to know the price I pay for being a writer? Okay, I’ll tell you. I travel by plane a great deal. And I’m usually seated next to some huge businessman who works on files or his laptop computer for a while, and then notices me and asks me what I do. And I say I’m a writer. Then there’s always a terrible silence. Then he says eagerly, ‘Have you written anything I might have heard of?’ “And that’s the price I pay for being a writer.” My own version of this is that the other day, Sam and I were at the mall. I had a big event coming up onstage at the Herbst Theater, because I had just had a book published that was getting a lot of attention. I had decided to buy a new dress for the evening. So the two of us were just innocently walking around the store when the owner came up to me. She said, “Are you looking for anything in particular?” I said, “Well, I have a special occasion coming up, and I need a new dress.” She said, “Is it for a dinner party?” I said, “No, actually, I’m doing something onstage.” She said, “Are you a singer?” and I felt the jungle drums start to beat, warning me to keep my mouth shut, warning me to send my ego to its room. But I had gotten used to the attention.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  “Looks like you hit the jackpot and got something extra,” she’d say with a wink. We always left the Owl Club so stuffed we could hardly walk. “Let’s waddle home, kids,” Dad would say. The barite mine where Dad worked had a commissary, and the mine owner deducted our bill and the rent for the depot out of Dad’s paycheck every month. At the beginning of each week, we went to the commissary and brought home bags and bags of food. Mom said only people brainwashed by advertising bought prepared foods such as SpaghettiOs and TV dinners. She bought the basics: sacks of flour or cornmeal, powdered milk, onions, potatoes, twenty-pound bags of rice or pinto beans, salt, sugar, yeast for making bread, cans of jack mackerel, a canned ham or a fat slab of bologna, and for dessert, cans of sliced peaches. Mom didn’t like cooking much—“Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour,” she’d ask us, “when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?”—so once a week or so, she’d fix a big cast-iron vat of something like fish and rice or, usually, beans. We’d all sort through the beans together, picking out the rocks, then Mom would soak them overnight, boil them the next day with an old ham bone to give them flavor, and for that entire week, we’d have beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If the beans started going bad, we’d just put extra spice in them, like the Mexicans at the LBJ Apartments always did. We bought so much food that we never had much money come payday. One payday Dad owed the mine company eleven cents. He thought it was funny and told them to put it on his tab. Dad almost never went out drinking at night like he used to. He stayed home with us. After dinner, the whole family stretched out on the benches and the floor of the depot and read, with the dictionary in the middle of the room so we kids could look up words we didn’t know. Sometimes I discussed the definitions with Dad, and if we didn’t agree with what the dictionary writers said, we sat down and wrote a letter to the publishers. They’d write back defending their position, which would prompt an even longer letter from Dad, and if they replied again, so would he, until we stopped hearing from the dictionary people. Mom read everything: Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Henry Miller, Pearl Buck. She even read James Michener—apologetically—saying she knew it wasn’t great literature, but she couldn’t help herself. Dad preferred science and math books, biographies and history. We kids read whatever Mom brought home from her weekly trips to the library. Brian read thick adventure books, ones written by guys like Zane Grey. Lori especially loved Freddy the Pig and all the Oz books.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Mom and Lori admired the wideplanked floorboards, the big fireplaces, and the ceiling beams made from locust posts, with gouge marks from the ax that had felled them. Mom’s eye settled on an Egyptian couch we’d bought at a flea market. It had carved legs and a wooden backrest inlaid with mother-of-pearl triangles. She nodded in approval. “Every household,” she said, “needs one piece of furniture in really bad taste.” The kitchen was filled with the smell of the roasting turkey John had prepared, with a stuffing of sausage, mushrooms, walnuts, apples, and spiced bread crumbs. He’d also made creamed onions, wild rice, cranberry sauce, and squash casserole. I’d baked three pies with apples from a nearby orchard. “Bonanza!” Brian shouted. “Feast time!” I said to him. He looked at the dishes. I knew what he was thinking, what he thought every time he saw a spread like this one. He shook his head and said, “You know, it’s really not that hard to put food on the table if that’s what you decide to do.” “Now, no recriminations,” Lori told him. After we sat down for dinner, Mom told us her good news. She had been a squatter for almost fifteen years, and the city had finally decided to sell the apartments to her and the other squatters for one dollar apiece. She couldn’t accept our invitation to stay awhile, she said, because she had to get back for a board meeting of the squatters. Mom also said she’d been in touch with Maureen, who was still living in California, and that our kid sister, whom I hadn’t spoken to since she left New York, was thinking of coming back for a visit. We started talking about some of Dad’s great escapades: letting me pet the cheetah, taking us Demon Hunting, giving us stars for Christmas. “We should drink a toast to Rex,” John said. Mom stared at the ceiling, miming perplexed thought. “I’ve got it.” She held up her glass. “Life with your father was never boring.” We raised our glasses. I could almost hear Dad chuckling at Mom’s comment in the way he always did when he was truly enjoying something. It had grown dark outside. A wind picked up, rattling the windows, and the candle flames suddenly shifted, dancing along the border between turbulence and order. Acknowledgments I’d like to thank my brother, Brian, for standing by me when we were growing up and while I wrote this. I’m also grateful to my mother for believing in art and truth and for supporting the idea of the book; to my brilliant and talented older sister, Lori, for coming around to it; and to my younger sister, Maureen, whom I will always love. And to my father, Rex S. Walls, for dreaming all those big dreams.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  After a period of years, when by general consent the time of mourning was passed and the last tear shed for Arcite, Theseus called a parliament in Athens to deliberate upon certain matters of state - on treaties and alliances, that kind of thing. One debate concerned the allegiance of Thebes to Athens, according to the old agreement, and so Theseus summoned Palamon to attend the meeting. Palamon was not aware of the matter under discussion, but he came in due haste; he was still wearing the clothes of mourning for his dead comrade. When Palamon had taken his seat, Theseus called for Emily. The assembly was hushed and expectant, waiting for Theseus to speak. He stood before his throne and, before he said anything, he looked around at the company with an observant eye. Then he sighed and, with a serious countenance, began to speak. ‘It was the first mover of the universe, the first cause of being, who created the great chain of love. He had a high purpose and a strong intent; he knew what he was doing, and what he meant. He had foreknowledge of the consequences, too, for in that chain of love he bound together fire and air, earth and water. They are locked in an embrace that they can never leave. This same prince of being has established the rule of time in the restless world in which we dwell; day follows day, summer succeeds spring, and the span of life is finite. No one can surpass his allotted time, although he may abridge it. I need not cite authorities to prove my case. It is the common human experience. I will say only one thing. If men recognize the harmony of the cosmos, then they must conclude that the first mover is self-sufficient and eternal; only a fool would deny that the part emerges from the whole. Nature did not derive from some provisional or partial being. It is the offspring of eternal perfection that, by degrees, descends into the corrupted and mutable world. So in his wisdom the first mover, the great cause, has ordained that all species and all types, all forms and ranks, shall endure for a space upon this earth. Nothing may be eternal here.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  What I wanted to say was that I knew Eric would never try to steal my paycheck or throw me out the window, that I’d always been terrified I’d fall for a hard-drinking, hell-raising, charismatic scoundrel like you, Dad, but I’d wound up with a man who was exactly the opposite. • • • All my belongings fit into two plastic milk crates and a garbage bag. I hauled them to the street, hailed a taxi, and took it across town to Eric’s building. The doorman, in a blue uniform with gold piping, hurried out from under the awning and insisted on carrying the milk crates into the lobby. Eric’s apartment had crossbeamed ceilings and a fireplace with an art deco mantel. I actually live on Park Avenue, I kept telling myself as I hung my clothes in the closet Eric had cleared out for me. Then I started thinking about Mom and Dad. When they had moved into their squat—a fifteen-minute subway ride south and about half a dozen worlds away—it seemed as if they had finally found the place where they belonged, and I wondered if I had done the same. I INVITED MOM and Dad up to the apartment. Dad said he’d feel out of place, and never did come, but Mom visited almost immediately. She turned over dishes to read the manufacturer’s name and lifted the corner of the Persian rug to count the knots. She held the china to the light and ran her finger along the antique campaign chest. Then she went to the window and looked out at the brick and limestone apartment buildings across the street. “I don’t really like Park Avenue,” she said. “The architecture is too monotonous. I prefer the architecture on Central Park West.” I told Mom she was the snootiest squatter I’d ever met, and that made her laugh. We sat down on the living room couch. I had something I wanted to discuss with her. I now had a good job, I said, and was in a position to help her and Dad. I wanted to buy them something that would improve their lives. It could be a small car. It could be the security deposit and a few months’ rent on an apartment. It could be the down payment on a house in an inexpensive neighborhood. “We don’t need anything,” Mom said. “We’re fine.” She put down her teacup. “It’s you I’m worried about.” “You’re worried about me ?” “Yes. Very worried.” “Mom,” I said. “I’m doing very well. I’m very, very comfortable.” “That’s what I’m worried about,” Mom said. “Look at the way you live. You’ve sold out. Next thing I know, you’ll become a Republican.” She shook her head. “Where are the values I raised you with?” • • • Mom became even more concerned about my values when my editor offered me a job writing a weekly column about what he called the behind-the-scenes doings of the movers and shakers.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  The next day the saguaros and prickly pears were fat from drinking as much as they could, because they knew it might be a long, long time until the next rain. We were sort of like the cactus. We ate irregularly, and when we did, we’d gorge ourselves. Once when we were living in Nevada, a train full of cantaloupes heading east jumped the track. I had never eaten a cantaloupe before, but Dad brought home crates and crates of them. We had fresh cantaloupe, stewed cantaloupe, even fried cantaloupe. One time in California, the grape pickers went on strike. The vineyard owners let people come pick their own grapes for a nickel a pound. We drove about a hundred miles to the vineyards, where the grapes were so ripe they were about to burst on the vine in bunches bigger than my head. We filled our entire car full of green grapes—the trunk, even the glove compartment, and Dad piled stacks in our laps so high we could barely see over the top. For weeks afterward, we ate green grapes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. • • • All this running around and moving was temporary, Dad explained. He had a plan. He was going to find gold. Everybody said Dad was a genius. He could build or fix anything. One time when a neighbor’s TV set broke, Dad opened the back and used a macaroni noodle to insulate some crossed wires. The neighbor couldn’t get over it. He went around telling everyone in town that Dad sure knew how to use his noodle. Dad was an expert in math and physics and electricity. He read books on calculus and logarithmic algebra and loved what he called the poetry and symmetry of math. He told us about the magic qualities every number has and how numbers unlock the secrets of the universe. But Dad’s main interest was energy: thermal energy, nuclear energy, solar energy, electrical energy, and energy from the wind. He said there were so many untapped sources of energy in the world that it was ridiculous to be burning all that fossil fuel. Dad was always inventing things, too. One of his most important inventions was a complicated contraption he called the Prospector. It was going to help us find gold. The Prospector had a big flat surface about four feet high and six feet wide, and it rose up in the air at an angle. The surface was covered with horizontal strips of wood separated by gaps. The Prospector would scoop up dirt and rocks and sift them through the maze of wooden strips. It could figure out whether a rock was gold by the weight. It would throw out the worthless stuff and deposit the gold nuggets in a pile, so whenever we needed groceries, we could go out back and grab ourselves a nugget. At least that was what it would be able to do once Dad finished building it.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  But since the house had no chimney, the stovepipe vented out a back window. Someone had replaced the glass in the upper part of the window with plywood, and wrapped tinfoil around the opening to keep the coal smoke from leaking into the room. The tinfoil had not done its job too well, and the ceiling was black with soot. Someone—probably the same someone—had also made the mistake of trying to clean the ceiling in a few spots, but had ended up only smudging and smearing the soot, creating whitish patches that made you realize how black the rest of the ceiling was. “The house itself isn’t much,” Dad apologized, “but we won’t be living in it long.” The important thing, the reason he and Mom had decided to acquire this particular piece of property, was that it came with plenty of land to build our new house. He planned to get to work on it right away. He intended to follow the blueprints for the Glass Castle, but he had to do some serious reconfiguring and increase the size of the solar cells to take into account that since we were on the north face of the mountain, and enclosed by hills on both sides, we’d hardly ever get any sun. • • • We moved in that afternoon. Not that there was much to move. Dad borrowed a pickup from the appliance store where Uncle Stanley worked, and brought back a sofa bed that a friend of Grandpa’s was throwing out. Dad also scavenged a couple of tables and chairs, and he built some makeshift closets—which were actually kind of nifty—by hanging lengths of pipe from the ceiling with wires. Mom and Dad took over the room with the stove, and it became a combined living room, master bedroom, art studio, and writer’s study. We put the sofa bed there, though once we opened it, it never went back to being a sofa. Dad built shelves all along the upper walls to store Mom’s art supplies. She set up her easel under the stovepipe, right next to the back window, because she said it got natural sunlight—which it did, relatively speaking. She put her typewriters under another window, with shelves for her manuscripts and works in progress, and she immediately started thumbtacking index cards with story ideas to the walls. We kids all slept in the middle room. At first we shared one big bed that had been left by the previous owner, but Dad decided we were getting a tad old for that. We were also too big to sleep in cardboard boxes, and there wasn’t enough room on the floor for them, anyway, so we helped Dad build two sets of bunk beds. We made the frames with two-by-fours; then we drilled holes in the sides and threaded ropes through. For mattresses, we laid cardboard over the ropes.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Brian and I could fill our pockets with it until the weight practically pulled our pants down. You could also find arrowheads and fossils and old bottles that had turned deep purple from lying under the broiling sun for years. You could find the sun- parched skulls of coyotes and empty tortoise shells and the rattles and shed skins of rattlesnakes. And you could find great big bullfrogs that had stayed in the sun too long and were completely dried up and as light as a piece of paper. On Sunday night, if Dad had money, we’d all go to the Owl Club for dinner. The Owl Club was “World Famous,” according to the sign, where a hoot owl wearing a chef’s hat pointed the way to the entrance. Off to one side was a room with rows of slot machines that were constantly clinking and ticking and flashing lights. Mom said the slot players were hypnotized. Dad said they were damn fools. “Never play the slots,” Dad told us. “They’re for suckers who rely on luck.” Dad knew all about statistics, and he explained how the casinos stacked the odds against the slot players. When Dad gambled, he preferred poker and pool—games of skill, not chance. “Whoever coined the phrase ‘a man’s got to play the hand that was dealt him’ was most certainly one piss-poor bluffer,” Dad said. The Owl Club had a bar where groups of men with sunburned necks huddled together over beers and cigarettes. They all knew Dad, and whenever he walked in, they insulted him in a loud funny way that was meant to be friendly. “This joint must be going to hell in a handbasket if they’re letting in sorry-ass characters like you!” they’d shout. “Hell, my presence here has a positively elevating effect compared to you mangy coyotes,” Dad would yell back. They’d all throw their heads back and laugh and slap one another between the shoulder blades. We always sat at one of the red booths. “Such good manners,” the waitress would exclaim, because Mom and Dad made us say “sir” and “ma’am” and “yes, please” and “thank you.” “They’re damned smart, too!” Dad would declare. “Finest damn kids ever walked the planet.” And we’d smile and order hamburgers or chili dogs and milk shakes and big plates of onion rings that glistened with hot grease. The waitress brought the food to the table and poured the milk shakes from a sweating metal container into our glasses. There was always some left over, so she kept the container on the table for us to finish. “Looks like you hit the jackpot and got something extra,” she’d say with a wink. We always left the Owl Club so stuffed we could hardly walk. “Let’s waddle