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 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

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Paso la escoba sobre el porche de madera, protegido de la lluvia por el saliente. 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

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  She said it was better for our posture and easier on our spines, but there was no way we kids were going to be caught dead walking through Welch with laundry bags on our heads. We followed Mom with our bags over our shoulders, rolling our eyes when we passed people to show we agreed with them: The lady with the bag on her head looked pretty peculiar. The Laundromat, with its windows completely steamed up, was as warm and damp as a Turkish bath. Mom let us put the coins in the washers, then we climbed up and sat on them. The heat from the rumbling machines warmed our behinds and spread up through our bodies. When the wash was done, we heaved the armfuls of wet clothes into the dryers and watched them tumbling around as if they were on some fun carnival ride. Once the cycle was over, we pulled out the scorching-hot clothes and buried our faces in them. We spread them on the tables and folded them carefully, lining up the sleeves of the shirts and the seams on the pants and balling the paired-up socks. We never folded our clothes at home, but that Laundromat was so warm and cozy, we were looking for any excuse to extend our stay. • • • A warm spell in January seemed like good news, but then the snow started melting, and the wood in the forest became totally soaked. We couldn’t get a fire to do anything but sputter smoke. If the wood was wet, we’d douse it with the kerosene that we used in the lamps. Dad was disdainful of a fire starter like kerosene. No true frontiersman would ever stoop to use it. It wasn’t cheap, and since it didn’t burn hot, it took a lot to make the wood catch fire. Also, it was dangerous. Dad said that if you got sloppy with kerosene, it could explode. But still, if the wood was wet and didn’t want to catch and we were all freezing, we would pour a little kerosene on it. One day Brian and I climbed the hillside to try to find some dry wood while Lori stayed in the house, stoking the fire. As Brian and I were shaking the snow off some promising branches, we heard a loud boom from the house. I turned and saw flames leap up inside the windows. We dropped our wood and ran back down the hill. Lori was lurching around the living room, her eyebrows and bangs all singed off and the smell of burned hair in the air. She had used kerosene to try to get the fire going better, and it had exploded, just like Dad had said it would. Nothing in the house except Lori’s hair had caught on fire, but the explosion had blown back her coat and skirt, and the flames had scorched her thighs.

• 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.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  When it got really cold, the water froze anyway, and we’d wake up to find a big icicle hanging from the faucet. We tried to thaw the pipe by running a burning piece of wood along it, but it would be frozen so solid there was nothing to do but wait for the next warm spell. When the pipe froze like that, we got our water by melting snow or icicles in the tin pan on the potbellied stove. A couple of times when there wasn’t enough snow on the ground, Mom sent me next door to borrow a pail of water from Mr. Freeman, a retired miner, who lived in the house with his grown son and daughter, Peanut and Prissy. He never turned me down outright, but he would look at me for a minute in silence, then shake his head and disappear into the house. When he passed out the bucket, he would give me another disgusted head-shake, even after I assured him that he could have as much water from us as he wanted come spring. “I hate winter,” I told Mom. “All seasons have something to offer,” she said. “Cold weather is good for you. It kills the germs.” That seemed to be true, because none of us kids ever got sick. But even if I’d woken up one morning with a raging fever, I never would have admitted it to Mom. Being sick might have meant staying home in our freezing house instead of spending the day in a toasty classroom. • • • Another good thing about the cold weather was that it kept odors to a minimum. By New Year’s we had washed our clothes only once since that first November snowfall. In the summer, Mom had bought a wringer washing machine like the one we’d had in Phoenix, and we kept it in the kitchen. When we had electricity, we washed the clothes and hung them on the front porch to dry. Even when the weather was warm, they’d have to stay out there for days, because it was always so damp in that hollow on the north side of the mountain. But then it got cold, and the one time we did our laundry, it froze on the porch. We brought the clothes inside—the socks had hardened into the shape of question marks, and the pants were so stiff you could lean them against the wall—and we banged them against the stove, trying to soften them up. “At least we don’t need to buy starch,” Lori said. Even with the cold, by January we were all so rank that Mom decided it was time to splurge: We would go to the Laundromat. We loaded our dirty clothes into pillowcases and lugged them down the hill and up Stewart Street. Mom put the loaded bag on her head, the way women in Africa do, and tried to get us to do the same.

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

  But before we did, I dismantled the giants, stuck the card with the shopping list in my back pocket and, on the back of the other, scribbled down this story. Calling AroundThere are an enormous number of people out there with invaluable information to share with you, and all you have to do is pick up the phone. They love it when you do, just as you love it when people ask if they can pick your brain about something you happen to know a great deal about—or, as in my case, have a number of impassioned opinions on. Say you happen to know a lot about knots, or penguins, or cheeses, and the right person asks you to tell him or her everything you know. What a wonderful and rare experience. Usually what happens in real life is that people ask you questions you can’t remember the answer to, like what you came into the kitchen to get, or what happened on the Fourth of July in 1776, and you sit there thinking, “God, I knew that; it’s right there on the tip of my tongue, let’s see—Okay, wait, the Constitution? No, wait, shit, I used to know …” When you do actually know a bit about something, it is such a pleasure to be asked a lot of questions about it. This is one great reason to call around. Another is that if you make the phone call while sitting at your computer, you can consider it part of that day’s work. It’s not shirking. Being a writer guarantees that you will spend too much time alone—and that as a result, your mind will begin to warp. If you are in a small workspace, your brain will begin breathing and contracting like the sets in Dr. Caligari .

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I have a good feeling about this one." Mom had been going into the city a lot ever since we had moved to Lost Lake, a little town in the Colorado Desert of southern California. Usually she was gone for only a night or two, never this long. We didn't know exactly when she'd be back, and since the telephone had been turned off—Mom was arguing with the phone company about some long-distance calls she said she didn't make—she had no way of calling us. Still, it didn't seem like a big deal. Mom's career had always taken up a sizeable chunk of her time. Even when we were younger, she'd have a sitter or a friend watch us while she flew off to some place like Nashville. Liz and I were used to being on our own. Liz was in charge, since she was fifteen and I'd just turned twelve, but I wasn't the kind of kid who needed to be babied. When Mom was away, all we ate was chicken potpies; I loved them and could eat them every night. Liz said that if you had a glass of milk with your chicken potpie, you were getting a dinner that included all four food groups—meat, vegetables, grain, and dairy—so it was the perfect diet. Plus, they were fun to eat. You each got your very own pie in the nifty little tinfoil pie plate, and you could do whatever you wanted with it. I liked to break up the crust and mush it together with the bits of carrots and peas and the yellow gunk. Liz thought mushing it all together was uncouth. It also made the crust soggy, and to her, what made the chicken potpies so appealing was the contrast between the crispy crust and the goopy filling. She preferred to leave the crust intact, cutting dainty wedges with each bite. Once the piecrusts had turned that wonderful golden brown, with the little ridged edges almost but not quite burned, I told Liz they were ready. She pulled them out of the toaster oven, and we sat down at the red Formica table. At dinnertime, when Mom was away, we liked to play games Liz made up. One she called Chew-and-Spew, where you waited until the other person had a mouthful of food or milk, then you tried to make her laugh. Liz pretty much always won, because it was sort of easy to make me laugh. Sometimes I laughed so hard the milk came shooting out of my nose. Another game she made up was called the Lying Game. One person gave two statements, one true, the second a lie, and the other person got to ask five questions about the statements, then had to guess which one was the lie. Liz usually won the Lying Game, too, but as with Chew-and-Spew, it didn't matter who won. What was fun was playing the game.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  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. Aguanté tanto como lo hice porque Cole era un amigo y no solo un novio. La mayoría de las chicas, si son más inteligentes que yo y eso no sería difícil, creo, se cansan de los holgazanes realmente rápido. Saber que él y Elena probablemente no durarán es el único consuelo para el dolor. Saltó de mi cama inmediatamente a la suya, ¿verdad? Pero quizás me hizo un favor. ¿Lo querría que regreso? No. No quiero odiarlo y sé que es mejor que esto, pero lo forzamos porque necesitábamos aferrarnos a algo por una vez en la vida. Forzamos lo que no estaba allí, no porque nos necesitáramos el uno al otro, sino porque necesitábamos a alguien. Siempre fuimos mejores amigos. Siento que ahora puedo respirar. Y si él tiene un problema conmigo por estar aquí, dejaré que su papá lidie con eso. Frente a la habitación de Cole, abro la puerta de la otra habitación de invitados, mi nueva habitación, y saco mi cesta plegable para la ropa sucia de la esquina. Amo mi nuevo espacio. Ya había una cama aquí, así que simplemente fui y compré un nuevo juego de sábanas. Pude haber traído mi viejo juego de sábanas de la cama de Cole, dado que es mío de cualquier forma, pero quise empezar de nuevo. Nada que me recordara quién había sido con él. Moví el resto de mis cosas, cerré su puerta y no he vuelto a entrar. Pike y yo fuimos a IKEA y compramos un tocador, por el cual pagué, pero necesitábamos su camioneta para traerlo, una mesita de noche y un sillón acolchado. Me divertí un poco decorando, dado que no necesité considerar a nadie más que a mí. Hay luces parpadeantes ondeando en la cabecera de hierro forjado de mi cama, algunos cojines divertidos, una lámpara y una pintura que le compré a un vendedor ambulante en Nueva Orleans cuando fui con mi hermana. Incluso Dutch, el amigo de Pike, me trajo su vieja radio casetera Panasonic vintage que encontró limpiando el garaje de sus padres un par de días atrás. Supongo que Pike le contó sobre los casetes. —¡Jordan! —Llega un bramido desde abajo. Dejo caer la camiseta blanca que estaba acomodando y sacudo mi cabeza, escuchando la puerta mosquitera cerrarse de golpe contra el marco en el piso de abajo. Mi corazón late un poco más fuerte. Saliendo de la habitación, bajo rápidamente las escaleras. Pike está en la puerta principal sacando su chaqueta del armario. Agua cae por su rostro y la piel dorada

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Si no hubiera estado despierta, probablemente no habría pensado en pedirle a Cole que viniera a ayudar, pero la oportunidad de pedir el favor por medio de ella era demasiado buena. Si pregunto, lo enojaré. Si ella pregunta, podría ir mejor. Y, además, él sabe que esto es parte del acuerdo. Él y Jordan limpian lo suyo, ayudan con la cocina, hacen el trabajo de jardinería y hacen otras cosas que puedan necesitarse, y yo pago las cuentas. No es pedir demasiado. Arreglo la tapa de mi taza para llevar y pongo dos capsulas más para llenar mi termo antes de ir a la puerta donde están las botas de trabajo. Sentado en el banco junto a la puerta, dejo mis cosas y me pongo los zapatos, tomo mis llaves, y saco mi chaqueta negra para la lluvia del armario de la entrada, poniéndomela. Recojo mi taza y el termo. —¡Cole! —grito, listo para irme. El techo sobre mí cruje, y escucho pasos rápidos. Luego se produce un ruido sordo antes que una puerta se cierre de golpe, y puedo decir que finalmente está bajando las escaleras. Agarro la manija de la puerta y miro por encima del hombro. —Tengo café extra. Podemos ir a comprar algo de desayuno si quieres algo para comer rápidamente. Pero no es él quien rodea la esquina. Jordan está vestida con unos vaqueros ajustados de color azul oscuro, enrollados en la parte inferior, con Chucks, y se está recogiendo el cabello en una coleta mientras intenta sostener un impermeable amarillo bajo su brazo. Estrecho mis ojos hacía ella. —¿Dónde está Cole? —Está, eh... no se siente muy bien —responde, poniéndose la chaqueta—. Sin embargo, iré y te ayudaré. No se siente bien. ¿Código para resaca? —No, está bien —le digo—. Quédate aquí. Es más seguro. Aunque, gracias. Alza los ojos, se concentran en mí y luego se estrechan. —¿Más seguro? —pregunta como si acabara de decir que saldré a hacerme la pedicura—. ¿O simplemente te preocupa que pases más tiempo sosteniendo mi mano que haciendo algo del trabajo? Intento mantener una expresión seria. Es muy inteligente.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Abby DURING HER PARENTS’ annual visit her mother says, You look happy, Abby darling. You know that’s all we want for you ... to be happy. Thank you, Mother ... I am happy. But we don’t understand why that friend of Caitlin’s is still living with you. Do you think that’s wise? Wise? Yes. Having a beautiful young girl in the house is tempting fate. You’ve got a good thing going. Why risk it? Remember what happened to Dory Previn when she let Mia Farrow into her life? Goodbye Andre! And don’t forget Cousin Elinor! Cousin Elinor sponsored an au pair from Norway and two years later watched as her husband and the au pair drove off into the sunset to live happily ever after, leaving Elinor with the children. She tries to explain how different it is with Vix. Vix is the daughter I never had, Mother. The daughter I’ve always dreamed of having. Then, to assuage her mother’s fears, she adds, Besides, she’s in love. It’s serious? her mother asks and she can hear herself asking Vix the same thing. Yes ... I’m afraid so. Her mother breathes a heavy sigh. Well, I’m certainly relieved. Just make sure it stays that way.

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

  My friend Carpenter talks about the unconscious as the cellar where the little boy sits who creates the characters, and he hands them up to you through the cellar door. He might as well be cutting out paper dolls. He’s peaceful; he’s just playing. You can’t will yourself into being receptive to what the little boy has to offer, and you can’t buy a key that will let you into the cellar. You have to relax, and wool-gather, and get rid of the critics, and sit there in some sort of self-hypnosis, and then you have to practice . I mean, you can’t just sit there at your desk drooling. You have to move your hand across the paper or the keyboard. You may do it badly for a while, but you keep on doing it. Try to remember that to some extent, you’re just the typist. A good typist listens. I sometimes imagine that instead of a little kid, there’s a long-necked, good-natured Dr. Seuss character down there, grim with concentration and at the same time playing. He cranes his head toward the sound of the characters talking, but not like a court reporter, more like somebody sitting alone at an adjacent table, trying not to pry but wanting to take it all in. You may want to come up with an image or a metaphor for this other part of you that is separate from your rational, conscious mind, this other person with whom you can collaborate. This may help you feel less alone. One last thing: dialogue that is written in dialect is very tiring to read. If you can do it brilliantly, fine. If other writers read your work and rave about your use of dialect, go for it. But be positive that you do it well, because otherwise it is a lot of work to read short stories or novels that are written in dialect. It makes our necks feel funny. We are, as you know, a tense people, and we have a lot of problems of our own without you adding to them. (However, someone behind me in line at the market last week, during a storm, said, after smiting her own forehead, “Oh, vat vader,” and then pointed outside to the rain. I was tempted for the rest of the day to write an entire novel about her, in dialect.) Set DesignSometimes you may find it useful to let your characters huddle in the wings without you, preparing for their roles, improvising dialogue, while you set the stage for their appearance. Imagine yourself as the set designer for a play or for the movie version of the story you are working on.

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

  There are a number of things that help when you sit down to write dialogue. First of all, sound your words—read them out loud. If you can’t bring yourself to do this, mouth your dialogue. This is something you have to practice, doing it over and over and over. Then when you’re out in the world—that is, not at your desk—and you hear people talking, you’ll find yourself editing their dialogue, playing with it, seeing in your mind’s eye what it would look like on the page. You listen to how people really talk, and then learn little by little to take someone’s five-minute speech and make it one sentence, without losing anything. If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days—listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you’ve taken in, all that you’ve overheard, and you turn it into gold. (Or at least you try.) Second, remember that you should be able to identify each character by what he or she says. Each one must sound different from the others. And they should not all sound like you; each one must have a self. If you can get their speech mannerisms right, you will know what they’re wearing and driving and maybe thinking, and how they were raised, and what they feel. You need to trust yourself to hear what they are saying over what you are saying. At least give each of them a shot at expression: sometimes what they are saying and how they are saying it will finally show you who they are and what is really happening. Whoa—they’re not going to get married after all! She’s gay! And you had no idea! Third, you might want to try putting together two people who more than anything else in the world wish to avoid each other, people who would avoid whole cities just to make sure they won’t bump into each other. But there are people out there in the world who almost inspire me to join the government witness protection program, just so I can be sure I will never have to talk to them again. Maybe there is someone like this in your life. Take a character whom one of your main characters feels this way about and put the two of them in the same elevator. Then let the elevator get stuck. Nothing like a supercharged atmosphere to get things going. Now, they both will have a lot to say, but they will also be afraid that they won’t be able to control what they say. They will be afraid of an explosion. Maybe there will be one, maybe not. But there’s one way to find out. In any case, good dialogue gives us the sense that we are eavesdropping, that the author is not getting in the way.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  sock she’d safety-pinned to her bra. Then we all scurried around to the power company and the water authority and the landlord, paying off our bills with tens and twenties. The clerks averted their eyes as Mom fished the sock out of her bra, explaining to everyone within earshot that this was her way of making sure she was never pickpocketed. Mom also bought some electric heaters and a refrigerator on layaway, and we’d go to the appliance store and put down a few dollars every month, figuring they’d be ours by wintertime. Mom always had at least one “extravagance” on layaway, something we really didn’t need—a tasseled silk throw or a cut crystal vase—because she said the surest way to feel rich was to invest in quality nonessentials. After that, we’d go to the grocery store at the bottom of the hill and stock up on staples such as beans and rice, powdered milk, and canned goods. Mom always bought the dented cans, even if they weren’t marked down, because she said they needed to be loved, too. At home, we’d empty Mom’s purse onto the sofa bed and count the remaining money. There’d be hundreds of dollars, more than enough to cover our expenses until the end of the month, I thought. But month after month, the money would disappear before the next paycheck arrived, and once more I’d find myself rooting in the garbage at school for food. Toward the end of one month that fall, Mom announced that we had only one dollar for dinner. That was enough to buy one gallon of Neapolitan ice cream, which she said was not only delicious but had lots of calcium and would be good for our bones. We brought the ice cream home, and Brian pulled apart the carton and cut the block into five even slices. I called dibs on first choice. Mom told us to savor it because we had no money for dinner the next night. “Mom, what happened to it all?” I asked as we ate our ice-cream slices. “Gone, gone, gone!” she said. “It’s all gone.” “But where?” Lori asked. “I’ve got a houseful of kids and a husband who soaks up booze like a sponge,” Mom said. “Making ends meet is harder than you think.” It couldn’t be that hard, I thought. Other moms did it. I tried quizzing her. Was she spending the money on herself? Was she giving it to Dad? Was Dad stealing it? Or did we go through it quickly? I couldn’t get an answer. “Give us the money,” I said. “We’ll work out a budget and stick to it.”

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I liked the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories and the We Were There series about kids who lived at great historical moments, but my very favorite was Black Beauty . Occasionally, on those nights when we were all reading together, a train would thunder by, shaking the house and rattling the windows. The noise was thunderous, but after we’d been there a while, we didn’t even hear it. MOM AND DAD enrolled us in the Mary S. Black Elementary School, a long, low building with an asphalt playground that turned gooey in the hot sun. My second-grade class was filled with the children of miners and gamblers, scabby-kneed and dusty from playing in the desert, with uneven home-scissored bangs. Our teacher, Miss Page, was a small, pinched woman, given to sudden rages and savage thrashings with her ruler. Mom and Dad had already taught me nearly everything Miss Page was teaching the class. Since I wanted the other kids to like me, I didn’t raise my hand all the time the way I had in Blythe. Dad accused me of coasting. Sometimes he made me do my arithmetic homework in binary numbers because he said I needed to be challenged. Before class, I’d have to recopy it into Arabic numbers, but one day I didn’t have time, so I turned in the assignment in its binary version. “What’s this?” Miss Page asked. She pressed her lips together as she studied the circles and lines that covered my paper, then looked up at me suspiciously. “Is this a joke?” I tried to explain to her about binary numbers, and how they were the system that computers used and how Dad said they were far superior to other numeric systems. Miss Page stared at me. “It wasn’t the assignment,” she said impatiently. She made me stay late and redo the homework. I didn’t tell Dad, because I knew he’d come to school to debate Miss Page about the virtues of various numeric systems. • • • Lots of other kids lived in our neighborhood, which was known as the Tracks, and after school we all played together. We played red-light-green-light, tag, football, Red Rover, or nameless games that involved running hard, keeping up with the pack, and not crying if you fell down. All the families who lived around the Tracks were tight on cash. Some were tighter than others, but all of us kids were scrawny and sunburned and wore faded shorts and raggedy shirts and sneakers with holes or no shoes at all. What was most important to us was who ran the fastest and whose daddy wasn’t a wimp. My dad was not only not a wimp, he came out to play with the gang, running alongside us, tossing us up in the air, and wrestling against the entire pack without getting hurt.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I have a good feeling about this one." Mom had been going into the city a lot ever since we had moved to Lost Lake, a little town in the Colorado Desert of southern California. Usually she was gone for only a night or two, never this long. We didn't know exactly when she'd be back, and since the telephone had been turned off—Mom was arguing with the phone company about some long-distance calls she said she didn't make—she had no way of calling us. Still, it didn't seem like a big deal. Mom's career had always taken up a sizeable chunk of her time. Even when we were younger, she'd have a sitter or a friend watch us while she flew off to some place like Nashville. Liz and I were used to being on our own. Liz was in charge, since she was fifteen and I'd just turned twelve, but I wasn't the kind of kid who needed to be babied. When Mom was away, all we ate was chicken potpies; I loved them and could eat them every night. Liz said that if you had a glass of milk with your chicken potpie, you were getting a dinner that included all four food groups—meat, vegetables, grain, and dairy—so it was the perfect diet. Plus, they were fun to eat. You each got your very own pie in the nifty little tinfoil pie plate, and you could do whatever you wanted with it. I liked to break up the crust and mush it together with the bits of carrots and peas and the yellow gunk. Liz thought mushing it all together was uncouth. It also made the crust soggy, and to her, what made the chicken potpies so appealing was the contrast between the crispy crust and the goopy filling. She preferred to leave the crust intact, cutting dainty wedges with each bite. Once the piecrusts had turned that wonderful golden brown, with the little ridged edges almost but not quite burned, I told Liz they were ready. She pulled them out of the toaster oven, and we sat down at the red Formica table. At dinnertime, when Mom was away, we liked to play games Liz made up. One she called Chew-and-Spew, where you waited until the other person had a mouthful of food or milk, then you tried to make her laugh. Liz pretty much always won, because it was sort of easy to make me laugh. Sometimes I laughed so hard the milk came shooting out of my nose. Another game she made up was called the Lying Game. One person gave two statements, one true, the second a lie, and the other person got to ask five questions about the statements, then had to guess which one was the lie. Liz usually won the Lying Game, too, but as with Chew-and-Spew, it didn't matter who won. What was fun was playing the game.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  She said it was better for our posture and easier on our spines, but there was no way we kids were going to be caught dead walking through Welch with laundry bags on our heads. We followed Mom with our bags over our shoulders, rolling our eyes when we passed people to show we agreed with them: The lady with the bag on her head looked pretty peculiar. The Laundromat, with its windows completely steamed up, was as warm and damp as a Turkish bath. Mom let us put the coins in the washers, then we climbed up and sat on them. The heat from the rumbling machines warmed our behinds and spread up through our bodies. When the wash was done, we heaved the armfuls of wet clothes into the dryers and watched them tumbling around as if they were on some fun carnival ride. Once the cycle was over, we pulled out the scorching-hot clothes and buried our faces in them. We spread them on the tables and folded them carefully, lining up the sleeves of the shirts and the seams on the pants and balling the paired-up socks. We never folded our clothes at home, but that Laundromat was so warm and cozy, we were looking for any excuse to extend our stay. • • • A warm spell in January seemed like good news, but then the snow started melting, and the wood in the forest became totally soaked. We couldn’t get a fire to do anything but sputter smoke. If the wood was wet, we’d douse it with the kerosene that we used in the lamps. Dad was disdainful of a fire starter like kerosene. No true frontiersman would ever stoop to use it. It wasn’t cheap, and since it didn’t burn hot, it took a lot to make the wood catch fire. Also, it was dangerous. Dad said that if you got sloppy with kerosene, it could explode. But still, if the wood was wet and didn’t want to catch and we were all freezing, we would pour a little kerosene on it. One day Brian and I climbed the hillside to try to find some dry wood while Lori stayed in the house, stoking the fire. As Brian and I were shaking the snow off some promising branches, we heard a loud boom from the house. I turned and saw flames leap up inside the windows. We dropped our wood and ran back down the hill. Lori was lurching around the living room, her eyebrows and bangs all singed off and the smell of burned hair in the air. She had used kerosene to try to get the fire going better, and it had exploded, just like Dad had said it would. Nothing in the house except Lori’s hair had caught on fire, but the explosion had blown back her coat and skirt, and the flames had scorched her thighs.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Heere endeth the Shipmannes Tale Bihoold the murie wordes of the Hoost to the Shipman and to the lady Prioresse ‘Well spoken, Shipman,’ Harry Bailey said. ‘By the body of Christ, I enjoyed that tale. May you sail around the coasts for ever and a day, master mariner! But may that false monk, cousin John, have nothing but bad luck for the rest of his life! Let this story be a lesson to all of us. A monk is nothing but an ape in a man’s hood. The monk made a monkey of the merchant, and of the merchant’s wife. Never let one of those rogues enter your house. ‘Now let us go on. Who is it to be? Who is going to tell the next story?’ He rode up to the Prioress and, with as much modesty as a young maid, addressed her. ‘My lady Prioress, by your leave - if it doesn’t offend you - I wonder if you would be so good as to entertain us all with another tale? Only if you wish to, naturally.’ ‘Gladly, sir,’ she replied. The Prioress’s Prologue The Prologe of the Prioresses Tale Domine dominus noster Oh Lord, oh Lord, how great is thy name! How thy marvels are spread over the world! The wise men of the earth praise you. The little children pray to you. The suckling infants proclaim you and your glory. I will praise you, too, out of my own poor mouth. I am a feeble woman, but I hope to find you in my heart. I hope to find words in honour of you, Lord, and of the purely white lily, blessed Virgin, who bore you. I will tell my story for her sweet sake. I cannot increase her honour, of course, since she is the root and source of all virtue. She and her blessed Son are the salvation of the world. Oh Mary, full of grace, the unburned bush burning in the sight of Moses, you who did receive the Holy Ghost descending from the seat of the Lord God. In humility of spirit you found the wisdom of God within you. Your heart was lightened by the weight of the Lord. Oh holy Virgin, help me to tell my story! Hail holy Mother, no one can express your magnificence or your modesty. Who can number your virtues? Who can measure your bounty? You guide men into the light of the Lord. You anticipate their prayers and plead for them before the throne of the Almighty. My learning and knowledge are so weak, holy Virgin, that I cannot express your mercy or your love. Your light is too bright for me to bear. I come to you as an infant, scarcely able to speak. Form my broken words uttered in praise of you. Guide my song.