Desire

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 This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Mormon families. When they weren’t being instructed in their own faith, which was a lot of the time, their parents liked to have them close by. Most afternoons I wandered around in the trance that habitual solitude induces. I walked downtown and stared at merchandise. I imagined being adopted by different people I saw on the street. Sometimes, seeing a man in a suit come toward me from a distance that blurred his features, I would prepare myself to recognize my father and to be recognized by him. Then we would pass each other and a few minutes later I would pick someone else. I talked to anyone who would talk back. When the need came upon me, I knocked on the door of the nearest house and asked to use the bathroom. No one ever refused. I sat in other people’s yards and played with their dogs. The dogs got to know me—by the end of the year they’d be waiting for me. I also wrote long letters to my pen pal in Phoenix, Arizona. Her name was Alice. My class had been exchanging letters with her class since school began. We were supposed to write once a month but I wrote at least once a week, ten, twelve, fifteen pages at a time. I represented myself to her as the owner of a palomino horse named Smiley who shared my encounters with mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and packs of coyotes on my father’s ranch, the Lazy B. When I wasn’t busy on the ranch I raised German shepherds and played for several athletic teams. Although Alice was a terse and irregular correspondent, I believed that she must be in awe of me, and imagined someday presenting myself at her door to claim her adoration. So I passed the hours after school. Sometimes, not very often, I felt lonely. Then I would go home to Roy. ROY HAD TRACKED us down to Salt Lake a few weeks after we arrived. He took a room somewhere across town but spent most of his time in our apartment, making it clear that he would hold no grudges as long as my mother walked the line. Roy didn’t work. He had a small inheritance and supplemented that with disability checks from the VA, which he claimed he would lose if he took a job. When he wasn’t hunting or fishing or checking up on my mother, he sat at the kitchen table with a cigarette in his mouth and squinted at The Shooter’s Bible through the smoke that veiled his face. He always seemed glad to see me. If I was lucky he would put a couple of rifles in his Jeep and we’d drive into the

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  She had told Halston that she was in the midst of rereading the great German novelists—Mann, Kleist, Böll—and that very day had purchased a copy of the new translation of Musil’s The Man Without Qualities. Because of Halston’s increasing suspiciousness, Ernest eased off—lest at any moment his patient might say, “Look, you want her address and phone number?” Which, of course, was precisely what Ernest did want. Would save him a lot of time. But he now had enough to begin. Bright and early one morning a few days later, Ernest drove to Mill Valley, parked, and walked into the Book Depot. He looked around the long, narrow bookstore, once a train depot, and then checked the cheery café attached to it and the dozen outdoor tables warming in the morning sun. Finding no woman resembling Halston’s description of Artemis, he went to the counter and ordered an extra-seedy bagel from the waitress, whose nose and lips were lavishly beringed. “Bagel with what?” she asked. Ernest scanned the menu board. No avocado. Was Halston fabricating? Finally he decided to put himself at an advantage by requesting a double order of cucumbers and sprouts with his herb-and-chive cream cheese . As he settled himself at a table, he saw her enter. Flowered bulging blouse, long plum-colored skirt—his favorite hue—beads, chains, and all: it had to be Artemis. More beautiful than he had imagined. Halston hadn’t mentioned, perhaps had not even noticed, her lustrous golden hair, which she wore Middle European style, swept into a coil and held firm with a tortoiseshell clasp at the back of her head. Ernest melted: all his lovely Viennese aunts, the first objects of his pubescent erotic drive, had worn their hair in that very fashion. He took her in quickly as she ordered and paid at the counter. What a woman—lovely in all ways, penetrating turquoise-blue eyes, heavy lips, finely dimpled chin, about five feet four inches tall in her flat sandals, a stirring, rippling, perfectly proportioned body. Now came the part that always flummoxed Ernest: How to begin a conversation with a woman? He took out Mann’s The Holy Sinner, which he had bought the day before, and laid it open on the table, the title clearly visible. Perhaps it would provide the opening gambit in a conversation—if, that is, she chose a table nearby. Ernest glanced nervously around the half-empty café. Plenty of free tables. He nodded when she passed, and Artemis nodded in response as she made her way to an empty table. But then, mirabile dictu—a couple of seconds later she backed up. “Oh, The Holy Sinner ,” she, incredibly, remarked. “What a surprise!” A bite! A bite!

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Unpacking the Affair On some level, I think Doug would like me to confirm that indeed he has done something terribly wrong. He has betrayed his vows, a moral offense in black and white. But wholesale condemnation too easily distracts us from the real issues behind his behavior. I prefer a morally neutral stance that leaves us free to explore the meaning of the affair rather than the ethics of it. Once Doug understands the motives that drove him into Naomi’s arms, he’ll be able to draw his own conclusions, both about what he did and about what he wants to do henceforth. People stray for many reasons—tainted love, revenge, unfulfilled longings, plain old lust. At times an affair is a quest for intensity, or a rebellion against the confines of matrimony. Transgression is an aphrodisiac, and sometimes secrets are a source of autonomy, or a backlash against lack of privacy. What could be more titillating than a whispered phone call in the bathroom? Finally, the harried mom can feel like a woman again; her lover knows nothing about the broken Lego set or the plumber who failed to show up for the second time. An illicit liaison can be catastrophic, but it can also be a liberation, a source of strength, a healing. Frequently it is all these things at once. When the intimacy is gone, when we no longer talk, when we haven’t been touched in years, we are more vulnerable to the kindness of strangers. When the kids are young and needy, extramarital appreciation can feel like a tonic. When they’re older and gone, empty nesters may seek replenishment elsewhere. If our health fails us, or if we’ve just been visited by death, we may experience outbursts of dissatisfaction, a cry for something better. Some affairs are acts of resistance; others happen when we offer no resistance at all. Straying can sound an alarm for the marriage, signaling an urgent need to pay attention. Or it can be the death knell that follows a relationship’s last, gasping breath. I question the widespread view that infidelity is always a symptom of deeper problems in a relationship. Affairs are motivated by myriad forces; not all of them are directly related to flaws in the marriage. As it happens, plenty of adulterers are reasonably content in their relationships. So was Doug. But he wanted more. He couldn’t articulate what it was exactly, only that it had something to do with more frequent sex. Together, Doug and I explore the anatomy of his passion, and I come to understand what needs are met in his tumultuous relationship with Naomi. For him, sex is a place of emotional nourishment and a sanctuary. It is love incarnate.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I couldn’t imagine the months it must have taken him, patiently carving with a Swiss Army knife while all the bombs blasted around him. I liked the order of chess, the coolness of reason, the joy of its patient steps. We played most nights when Starr was at AA or CA meetings or at Bible study, while the boys watched TV. Uncle Ray kept a little pipe of dope next to him on the arm of the chair to smoke while he waited for me to make my move. That night the boys were watching a nature show. The littlest one, Owen, sucked his thumb, holding his stuffed giraffe, while Peter twined a bit of his hair around his finger, over and over again. Davey narrated the show for them, pointing to the screen. “That’s Smokey, he’s the alpha male.” The light from the screen reflected in his glasses. Uncle Ray waited for my move, looking at me in a way that made my heart open like a moonflower—his eyes on my face, my throat, my hair over my shoulders, changing color in the TV lights. On TV I saw the white of snow, the wolves hunting in pairs, their strange yellow eyes. I felt like an undeveloped photograph that he was printing, my image rising to the surface under his gaze. “Oh, don’t,” Owen said, clutching his giraffe with the broken neck as the wolves leapt on their deer, pulling it down by the throat. “It’s the law of nature,” Davey said. “There, look at that.” Ray pointed with the black bishop he was moving. “It’s like, if God saved that deer, he’d starve the wolf. Why would he favor one person over another?” He had never quite resigned himself to my becoming a Christian. “The good don’t get any better a break than anybody else. You could be a fucking saint, and still, you got the plague or stepped on a Bouncing Betty.” “At least you have something larger to fall back on,” I said, touching the cross around my neck, zipping it back and forth along the chain. “You have a compass and a map.” “And if there’s no God?” “You act as if there is, and it’s the same thing.” He sucked at his pipe, filling the room with its skunky smell, while I examined the board. “What does your mother have to say about that?” he asked. “She says, ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’” “My kind of woman.” I didn’t say that she called him Uncle Ernie. Through the screen door, the summer crickets sang. I flicked my hair behind my shoulders, moved my bishop to queen’s knight 3, threatening his knight. I sensed how he looked at my bare arm, the shoulder, my lips. To know I was beautiful in his eyes made me beautiful. I had never been beautiful before. I didn’t think it went against Christ. Everybody needed to feel love.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  You’re really putting me on the spot. How come? What’s your payoff for that? What’s going on inside, Myrna?” “But aren’t I doing what you’ve said I should be doing, Dr. Lash? Talking about our relationship, about the here-and-now?” “I agree. No question, things have changed here—and for the better. I feel better about the way we’re working, and I hope you do too.” Silence. Myrna refused to meet Ernest’s gaze. “I hope you do too,” Ernest tried again. Myrna nodded, ever so slightly. “You see? Your nod, that microscopic, that embryonic nod! Three millimeters at best. That’s what I mean. I could hardly see it. It’s as though you want to give me as little as possible. That’s what puzzles me. It seems to me that you’re primarily asking, not talking, about our relationship.” “But you said—and said it more than once—that the first stage of change was getting feedback.” “Getting and assimilating feedback. Right. But in our last few hours you’ve just been collecting feedback—more of a question-and-answer format. I mean, I give you feedback, and you then proceed to another question. ” “Rather than?” “Rather than a lot of things. For example, rather than turning inward to consider and discuss and digest the meaning of the feedback. How it felt, whether or not it rang true, what it stirred up inside, how you felt about my saying it to you.” “Well, okay. To be honest, I’m really surprised to hear you say you find me attractive. You don’t act that way toward me.” “I do think you’re attractive, but here, in this office, I’m more interested in a deeper meeting with you: with your essence, with your—I know it sounds corny—but with your soul.” “Maybe I shouldn’t persist”—Myrna felt the energy going out of her question—“but my physical appearance is important to me, and I’m still curious about how you experience me—what features about my appearance are attractive to you, and that other question about what might have happened if we had met socially rather than professionally?” I’m being crucified, Ernest whimpered to himself. His worst nightmare about the here-and-now had come to pass. He had played out all his options. He had always feared that one day he would be cornered like this. The typical therapist would, of course, not answer the question but would reflect it back to her and explore all its implications: Why do you ask this question? And why now? And what were your underlying fantasies?

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  “By the way,” she suddenly confided rather knowingly, “let me congratulate you. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Ginou talk like that about any boy. She’s a reasonable girl, and one who is well aware of her own charm. That’s why she never does anything silly. Well, she mentioned your name to me six times in six days of summer camp, and even told me all about how she had dreamed about you. I think she would be ready to allow you to sit in the front row, just beyond the footlights of the stage where she gives her personal appearances.” I knew how much Mina enjoyed all kinds of go-between business. It gave her a chance to exercise her catty tongue and her foxy mind. That was why everyone was a bit scared of her but quite willing to use her services once in a while. So although I only shrugged my shoulders, I decided that she couldn’t be inventing all of it. True, she helped people to fall into each other’s arms, but she never brought couples together at random. Anyhow, I was too much interested and flattered by what she hinted at, and that alone excited me, though I tried to force myself to act as if I didn’t care much. So I threw the ball back toward her, carelessly at that, so that it fell without much of a splash on the crest of a lazy wave, borne almost to the shore, and then immediately lost again in the light foam. The sea was like us, content to play languidly with the tips of its fingers. But Mina insisted: “Still, Ginou’s a wonderful kid. You know, she’s my best friend, and she really dreamed about you.” Ginou, also called Jeannette, was playing ball over the breakwater just beyond ours; she was the only girl there, in a crowd of five boys. She was petite, plump, as perfectly proportioned as if an artist had created her, bursting with health, her cheeks rosy, her lips red, eyes blue, almost like a celluloid doll. Whenever she won a point in the game, she shouted out her joy; but when her opponent scored she threw the ball right at his head, splashed around in the water, clapped her hands, put on a real three-ring circus with all her excitement and byplay, a show indeed for the boys who were with her. “She’s a bit of a minx,” added Mina. “Watch her now! You had better be careful, boy. Anyhow, good luck!” I pretended to be surprised and annoyed: “What on earth do you think you’re talking about? You’re even crazier than usual.”

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  By the time I started my first year at Concrete High School, I had over eighty dollars squirreled away in the ammunition box. Some of it had been given to me by customers on my paper route, as tips for good service; the rest I’d stolen from other customers. Eighty dollars seemed a lot of money, more than enough for my purpose, which was to run away to Alaska. I planned to travel alone under an assumed name. Later on, when I had my feet on the ground, I would send for my mother. It was not hard to imagine our reunion in my cabin: her grateful tears and cries of admiration at the pelt- covered walls, the racks of guns, the tame wolves dozing before the fire. Our Scout troop went to Seattle every November for The Gathering of the Tribes. In the morning we competed with other troops. In the afternoon all the Scouts converged on Glenvale, an amusement park reserved that day for our use. Dwight always went drinking with some other Scoutmasters, then picked me up outside Glenvale for the drive home. This year he would have a long wait. He would have a long wait, and a long drive home alone, and a long explanation to make to my mother when he pulled up to the house without me. I told no one but Arthur, who kept my secrets even when I betrayed his. He liked the plan. He thought so highly of it that he asked to be included. At first I said no. Being on my own was the whole idea. And Arthur had no money. But a few days before The Gathering of the Tribes I told him I’d changed my mind, that he could come along after all. I gave Arthur this news with a show of reluctance, as if I were doing him a favor, but really I was just afraid to be alone. ARTHUR’S FATHER, CAL, worked on the turbines in the powerhouse. He thought I was a great wit because I could always tell him a new joke. I got the jokes from “Today’s Chuckle,” a filler they ran on the front page of the paper. Whenever I visited Arthur, Cal said, “Well, Jackaroony, what’s the word?”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Of all the hucksters, only “Birdie” managed, in all seasons, to achieve the miracle of bringing us real goodies at a reasonable price. He was a tiny man of no specific age, who had adopted as his dress for all times an ancient pair of tuxedo pants, a jacket that had a patch over the left elbow, and a cap of Persian lamb that seemed to overwhelm his birdlike head. He owed his nickname to the sweets of the “Bird” brand that he sold in a biscuit box. This tin box could easily be concealed whenever the cops turned up, as the police, God alone knows why, seemed to be intent on mercilessly pursuing all the little hucksters; so Birdie’s biscuit box was his stroke of genius, his secret weapon of defense that allowed him to remain invulnerable, whereas all his colleagues were sooner or later arrested. This miracle box always contained a few defective candies from one or the other of the better makers, some excellent pastries that had been spoiled in the process of baking, or some candied almonds that had failed to acquire the right color while cooking, all of this stock having been sold to Birdie for next to nothing. Even if we failed to get any of these treats, we found at least some cakes made of heavy semolina that were full of bits of straw and somehow numbed our stomachs that were always underfed. For some time Birdie had been offering us flat Nestlé chocolate bars, together with a colored card. The Nestlé firm was launching a very successful commercial campaign: in the wrapping of each bar they put one or two of these picture cards of which a complete set would fill an album. The prize, for whoever turned in a full album by a certain deadline, was something pretty serious: a bicycle, if I remember right. Each one of these chocolate bars cost seven pennies, but since I had only two pennies a day to spend, I was disqualified from the start. However, I was not aware of this handicap and, as the Nestlé firm gave its albums away free, I went to collect one too. Every Friday, on the morning before Sabbath, classes began and finished an hour earlier, which seemed to us to be a considerable gain. For this reason, among others, I particularly enjoyed my Fridays, whereas my mother could never get accustomed to this interruption of our daily routine. Harried by her responsibilities in preparing the three Sabbath meals, she never made a success of the first one, actually the least important one.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  He was a man of commanding presence and exceeding robust and having for some days let tend the lady excellently well and she being thereby altogether restored, he saw her lovely past all conception and was grieved beyond measure that he could not understand her nor she him and so he might not learn who she was. Nevertheless, being inordinately inflamed by her charms, he studied, with pleasing and amorous gestures, to engage her to do his pleasure without contention; but to no avail; she altogether rejected his advances and so much the more waxed Pericone's ardour. The lady, seeing this and having now abidden there some days, perceived, by the usances of the folk, that she was among Christians and in a country where, even if she could, it had little profited her to make herself known and foresaw that, in the end, either perforce or for love, needs must she resign herself to do Pericone's pleasure, but resolved nevertheless by dint of magnanimity to override the wretchedness of her fortune; wherefore she commanded her women, of whom but three were left her, that they should never discover to any who she was, except they found themselves whereas they might look for manifest furtherance in the regaining of their liberty, and urgently exhorted them, moreover, to preserve their chastity, avouching herself determined that none, save her husband, should ever enjoy her. They commended her for this and promised to observe her commandment to the best of their power. Meanwhile Pericone, waxing daily more inflamed, insomuch as he saw the thing desired so near and yet so straitly denied, and seeing that his blandishments availed him nothing, resolved to employ craft and artifice, reserving force unto the last. Wherefore, having observed bytimes that wine was pleasing to the lady, as being unused to drink thereof, for that her law forbade it, he bethought himself that he might avail to take her with this, as with a minister of enus. Accordingly, feigning to reck no more of that whereof she showed herself so chary, he made one night by way of special festival a goodly supper, whereto he bade the lady, and therein, the repast being gladdened with many things, he took order with him who served her that he should give her to drink of various wines mingled. The cupbearer did his bidding punctually and she, being nowise on her guard against this and allured by the pleasantness of the drink, took more thereof than consisted with her modesty; whereupon, forgetting all her past troubles, she waxed merry and seeing some women dance after the fashion of Majorca, herself danced in the Alexandrian manner.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  There was in Lunigiana, a country not very far hence, a monastery whilere more abounding in sanctity and monks than it is nowadays, and therein, among others, was a young monk, whose vigour and lustiness neither fasts nor vigils availed to mortify. It chanced one day, towards noontide, when all the other monks slept, that, as he went all alone round about the convent,[48] which stood in a very solitary place, he espied a very well-favoured lass, belike some husbandman's daughter of the country, who went about the fields culling certain herbs, and no sooner had he set eyes on her than he was violently assailed by carnal appetite. Wherefore, accosting her, he entered into parley with her and so led on from one thing to another that he came to an accord with her and brought her to his cell, unperceived of any; but whilst, carried away by overmuch ardour, he disported himself with her less cautiously than was prudent, it chanced that the abbot arose from sleep and softly passing by the monk's cell, heard the racket that the twain made together; whereupon he came stealthily up to the door to listen, that he might the better recognize the voices, and manifestly perceiving that there was a woman in the cell, was at first minded to cause open to him, but after bethought himself to hold another course in the matter and, returning to his chamber, awaited the monk's coming forth. [Footnote 48: Lit. his church (_sua chiesa_); but the context seems to indicate that the monastery itself is meant.] The latter, all taken up as he was with the wench and his exceeding pleasure and delight in her company, was none the less on his guard and himseeming he heard some scuffling of feet in the dormitory, he set his eye to a crevice and plainly saw the abbot stand hearkening unto him; whereby he understood but too well that the latter must have gotten wind of the wench's presence in his cell and knowing that sore punishment would ensue to him thereof, he was beyond measure chagrined. However, without discovering aught of his concern to the girl, he hastily revolved many things in himself, seeking to find some means of escape, and presently hit upon a rare device, which went straight to the mark he aimed at. Accordingly, making a show of thinking he had abidden long enough with the damsel, he said to her, 'I must go cast about for a means how thou mayest win forth hence, without being seen; wherefore do thou abide quietly until my return.'

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  Even before she joined Jejah, I valued what clues I could find. I’d studied, for instance, the handful of old novels she’d brought from L.A. Soft with use, they proved Phoebe’s claim that she used to love reading. She’d underlined words, filled margins, the penciled notes fading. I asked why she’d stopped; I lost interest in it, she said. I’d examined the glyphs as I might have a coded map, directions to Phoebe’s shining, inmost psyche, that visible opacity, which showed itself in allowing me to sight it hiding. Privation is lust; isolation, desire. I craved what she withheld. I always wanted to know more about how it felt, being Phoebe. Then, Phoebe took up Jejah, and I sat in the circle while she divulged secrets: more, often, than she’d let slip with me. He raised questions; obedient, she replied. I tried to believe she was also talking in my direction, but it was obvious she wasn’t. If, alone, on the way home from a meeting, I alluded to what she’d said, she’d give me a quick kiss, a laugh. No, let’s talk about you, she said. I haven’t had a minute with you all night. Tell me about the lunch shift. Did you find out who hid the pipe in the trash? – In the Seoul before you and I lived, John Leal told us, a unified land, everyone learned the same songs. It wasn’t unusual, he said, in this city of Phoebe’s birth, to have one person begin singing a ballad in public. Others would join in. He loved to picture it, the heads lifting to sing in chorus. If this Seoul hadn’t existed, he still wanted to think it had. Korea dispatched more Christian apostles abroad than any nation but the U.S. Per capita, it placed first. It could well take the lead. The next fount of revival, he called it. No one was more spiritual than Koreans could be; no believers, more devoted. It was a land of purists. He talked about present-day Seoul, where lit-up, blinking signs jutted out like flags on a pole. You’ll have to see it, he said. –

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Evaluating the scene would give him a cue to Roger’s emotional status. “I don’t feel too good about the way the scene ended,” he lied. “Maybe that kid really wanted to be a slave. If he just wanted to be dominated, I should’ve pushed his limits.” The master waved a dismissive hand. “You were damned good to that kid, better than he deserved. Nothing wrong with what you gave him. He got exactly what he asked for, with bells on.” “Maybe. I haven’t had this whip for very long. I have a lot to learn about how to use it.” “Didn’t look that way to me.” “Well, somebody like you ought to know. But I wonder if I was hitting him too hard. Do you think you could help me figure it out? I really like this quirt a lot. Makes my arm feel so good. I want to use it again, but I’m afraid the same thing will happen.” The specter of that brutal length of braid never biting flesh again made the master blanch. “Of course. Of course. But what exactly do you need to know? You don’t have much choice about the amount of force it takes to crack it,” he said. “Once you flick your wrist the speed is standard.” He was leaning on the pillar. The spoiler put his untasted beer down against the wall and came up to him, carrying the quirt coiled in his right hand. He touched his arm deferentially and said, “You could tell me how you think it feels.” Oh, why the hell not? It was the kind of thing you would do for a friend who wasn’t sure he wanted to buy something he’d just spotted at The Noose, let him try out a few licks on your thigh, then take it out of his hand and whack his ass with it. “Sure,” the master said, turning around, doffing his jacket and the khaki police shirt underneath it. The spoiler took his clothing, hung it up (there was no shortage of hooks), and returned to run his fingertips across the bare, heavy shoulders. He palpated the skin, gauging its thickness, the ratio of fat to muscle beneath it, the placement of shoulder blades and spine. And, since he did not know if he would be allowed to touch this man intimately again, he tried to memorize every pore and freckle. “If you could watch in the mirror,” he suggested, “just to check my form.”

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  It was unnerving. Really, that itch was getting worse. She smothered an image of Clarissa slowly lifting her short, black skirt and slowly pulling down her damnably tight silk panties and firmly bending her over the counter for a vigorous spanking. Then Clarissa would take one of the long wooden spoons and … oh, she had been kept waiting for so long. Would Berenice ever take pity on her, perhaps today? “Tell me about you and Mother and how she enslaved you and you lost her and found her and laid your fortune at her feet so you could wear a maid’s uniform every day and she had me, and you both decided to bring me up without any of the flaws that were present in your early education and—” “Oh, that’s quite a long story!” Elise laughed. “You won’t have time to hear all that before you leave for the train.” “I’ll eat two waffles, at least, and we will too have time, if you start now while everything’s cooking. I must have a story, Elise, please, I was so good last night and they probably won’t tell the little girls any stories at this dismal place you’re shipping me off to.” “You know perfectly well that Hightowers is a fine institution, the very best finishing school we could find for you, and you will hardly suffer any—” “Elise,” wailed Clarissa, “pleeeease!” “Well! Yes, if you promise not to interrupt.” “Goody!” Clarissa wielded the silver strawberry huller with enthusiasm, making a small mountain of green tops, and plopped berry after berry into the colander. “Come on, tell me, tell me!” “I’m pouring. Don’t distract me.” Elise held the bowl over the hot waffle iron. She ladled batter onto the black teeth, then closed the lid and turned over her timer. The timer was a small sculpture: two women, one upside down, bound together by their hair. The sand ran down a crystal column, which they were also bound to by their long, flowing locks. “Your grandmamma—my mother—was an opera singer,” she began. “We never stopped traveling, and we never knew what the next train stop would bring. Sometimes Mamma was a success, her role would be all the rage, she would be the most fashionable woman in town. Then we were well received. We would stay in expensive hotels and life would be a mad whirl, a series of gala events. Mysterious messengers would deliver letters, flowers, perfume, and even more exotic gifts. We would receive a constant stream of visitors—millionaires, society matrons, opium-eaters, pretty young men who would eye Mamma’s paint-pots and costumes with thinly concealed longing. There were always conspiracies, music, candy, wine, new sights to see, a blooming passion or a plot to crush some enterprising social climber’s hopes.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I felt the radiant heat of him across the narrow gap between us in the darkness. We had never stood so close. “You and Starr having a beef?” he asked me softly. I exhaled vapor, imagined I was smoking, like Dietrich in The Blue Angel . “What did she say?” “Nothing. She’s just been acting funny lately.” Shooting stars hurled themselves into the empty places, burned up. Just for the pleasure of it. Just like this. I could have swallowed the night whole. Ray toked too hard, coughed, spat. “Must be hard on her, getting older, pretty girls coming up in the same house.” I gazed up as if I hadn’t heard, but what I was thinking was, tell me more about the pretty girls. I was embarrassed for wanting it, it was base, what did pretty matter? I had thought that so many times with my mother. A person didn’t need to be beautiful, they just needed to be loved. But I couldn’t help wanting it. If that was the way I could be loved, to be beautiful, I’d take it. “She still looks good,” I said, thinking that it wouldn’t be so hard on her if he didn’t follow me out into the star-filled night, if he didn’t watch me the way he did, touching his mouth with his fingertips. But I didn’t want him to stop. I was sorry for Starr, but not enough. I had the sin virus. I was the center of my own universe, it was the stars that were moving, rearranging themselves around me, and I liked the way he looked at me. Who had ever looked at me, who had ever noticed me? If this was evil, let God change my mind. Dear Astrid, Do not tell me how much you admire this man, how he cares for you! I don’t know which is worse, your Jesus phase or the advent of a middle-aged suitor. You must find a boy your own age, someone mild and beautiful to be your lover. Someone who will tremble for your touch, offer you a marguerite by its long stem with his eyes lowered, someone whose fingers are a poem. Never lie down for the father. I forbid it, do you understand? Mother. You couldn’t stop it, Mother. I didn’t have to listen to you anymore. IT WAS SPRING , painting the hillsides with orange drifts of California poppies, dotting the cracks in gas stations and parking lots with poppies and blue lupine and Indian paintbrush. Even in the burn zones, the passes were matted with yellow mustard as we jounced along in Ray’s old pickup truck. I told him I wanted to see the new development up in Lancaster, the custom cabinetry he’d been working on. Maybe he could pick me up after school sometime. “You know how funny Starr’s been,” I said.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  He had changed out of his church clothes, back into his regular T-shirt and jeans. We played Chinese checkers with the boys and avoided each other’s glances, but it was work, being in the same room without touching, especially with Starr sitting next to him, one hand up high on his soft-washed jeans. I couldn’t stand it. After Davey won, I went outside and walked around down in the wash. All I could think of was her hand on his jeans. I was bad, I had done bad things, I had hurt people, and the worst of it was, I didn’t want to stop. Blue shadows climbed the tawny round slopes of the mountain, like hands modeling the shape of a lover’s thighs. A lizard perched on a rock, thinking he was invisible. I threw a pebble at him, watched him dart away into the chaparral. I tore up a leaf of laurel sumac and held it to my nose, hoping it would clear my head. I smelled him first, the smell of dope wafting on the twilight air. He was in the yard, sunlight striking his face and warming it like a stone. The sight of him caught in my throat. Now I knew I’d been waiting for him. I climbed onto a rise so he could see me, to the east, on the blind side of the trailer, then descended into a bowl of sand between the boulders. A minute later, I heard him walking up the riverbed, dry already though it was only April. I knew Davey would read all this tomorrow in our tracks. But the moment I touched Ray, I knew we could never be apart, no matter how much we wanted to, no matter who we hurt. His lips on my neck, his hands under my shirt, pulling my pants open, peeling them down. My thighs craved the naked touch of his hips, we fit together like magnets as we sank into the sand. I didn’t care about scorpions or the western diamondback. I didn’t care about rocks or who might see us. “Baby, what are you doing to me,” he whispered into my hair. THE LAST TIME I had heard two adults fight was the night my mother stabbed Barry in the hand. Smashing, crashing. I covered my head with the pillow, but I could still hear every word through the thin walls, Starr’s drunken screeching, Ray’s murmuring rebuttals. “You used to get it up fine, before you started fucking that little bitch. Admit it, you bastard, you’ve been fucking her!” I crouched deeper into my sleeping bag, sweating, pretending it wasn’t me, it was some other girl, I was just a kid, I had nothing to do with this. “Fuck my sponsor!

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  After an initial failure in her exams, Ginou had made up her mind to come up again for the baccalaureate in October. She pretended to be very serious about it and I offered to coach her in literature, which she accepted vaguely, always postponing any action till the following week. As for me, I was beginning to be sick of all this comedy of hints and double meanings. Quite obviously, I was marking time, and I began to feel a bit foolish too, almost guilty about never having dared a more direct approach. All my classmates constantly talked of petting, of kissing, and even of other things that I disapproved of. Ginou, in my eyes, was more than a mere crush that one has to make the most of while it lasts. I respected her and I owed her a certain gratitude, though I might be able to allow myself more daring liberties within the framework of this respect. The very health of my love for her demanded more. Perhaps, after all, her new swim suit, a silver-colored knitwear model with red dots that revealed every contour of her exquisite figure, had something to do with it all. On one or two occasions, I had been ashamed of my own excitement and been forced to dive immediately under water in order to conceal my very obvious emotion. But now that I had decided to follow this line of action I couldn’t rest until I had worked out a plan. The most difficult step would be to get Ginou to agree that we be left alone together in a room, behind a closed door. On Saturday afternoons, my parents generally left our overheated apartment for a neighborhood beach. It never occurred to me that Ginou, too, had thought seriously of what I was about to propose to her. I can still remember every detail of that day and of the whole scene, though our days at the beach were so much alike that they now all melt into a single image in my memory. Ever since the morning, I had repeatedly failed in my attempts to drag her away from the rest of the crowd. Then the others all agreed to rent a rowboat, but Ginou felt tired and refused to join them. So we stayed alone, a real treat to be by ourselves. We lay together, face to face, on our stomachs in the sand. Ginou’s face seemed to fill the whole landscape ahead of me, spreading beyond the sky line of the hills, filling the whole sky, while the sunlight, reflected off her tousled hair, seemed to form a halo around her. I chose my words carefully as I suggested to her that she come and prepare her French literature exams with me at home; my excuse was that I would have all my books there. We would be all by ourselves in peace and quiet. This last I stressed carefully.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BEDE. Zacchæus is called the son of Abraham, not because he was born of Abraham’s seed, but because he imitates his faith, that as Abraham left his country and his father’s house, so he abandoned all his goods in giving them to the poor. And He well says, “He also,” to declare that not only those who had lived justly, but those who are raised up from a life of injustice, belong to the sons of promise. THEOPHYLACT. He said not that he “was” a son of Abraham, but that he now is. For before when he was the chief among the publicans, and bore no likeness to the righteous Abraham, he was not his son. But because some murmured that he tarried with a man who was a sinner, he adds in order to restrain them, For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) Why do ye accuse me if I bring sinners to righteousness? So far am I from hating them, that for their sakes I came. For I came to heal, not to judge, therefore am I the constant guest of those that are sick, and I suffer their noisomeness that I may supply remedies. But some one may ask, how does Paul bid us, If we have a brother that is a fornicator or covetous man, with such not even to take food; (1 Cor. 5:11.) whereas Christ was the guest of publicans? They were not as yet so far advanced as to be brethren, and besides, St. Paul bids us avoid our brethren only when they persist in evil, but these were converted. BEDE. Mystically, Zacchæus, which is by interpretation “justified,” signifies the Gentile believers, who were depressed and brought very low by their worldly occupations, but sanctified by God. And he was desirous to see our Saviour entering Jericho, inasmuch as he sought to share in that faith which Christ brought into the world. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. The crowd is the tumultuous state of an ignorant multitude, which cannot see the lofty top of wisdom. Zacchæus therefore, while he was in the crowd, saw not Christ, but having advanced beyond the vulgar ignorance, was thought worthy to entertain Him, whom he desired to look upon.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BEDE. (in loc.) Nor is it without some mysterious allusion, that the marriage is related as taking-place on the third day. The first age of the world, before the giving of the Law, was enlightened by the example of the Patriarchs; the second, under the Law, by the writings of the Prophets; the third, under grace, by the preaching of the Evangelists, as if by the light of the third day; for our Lord had now appeared in the flesh. The name of the place too where the marriage was held, Cana of Galilee, which means, desire of migrating, has a typical signification, viz. that those are most worthy of Christ, who burn with devotional desires, and have known the passage from vice to virtue, from earthly to eternal things. The wine was made to fail, to give our Lord the opportunity of making better; that so the glory of God in man might be brought out of its hiding place: And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto Him, They have no wine. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxi. 1, 2) But how came it into the mother’s mind to expect so great a thing from her Son? for he had done no miracle as yet: as we read afterwards, This beginning of miracles did Jesus. His real nature, however, was beginning now to be revealed by John, and His own conversations with His disciples; besides that His conception, and the circumstances of His birth, had from the first given rise to high expectations in her mind: as Luke tells us, His mother kept all these sayings in her heart. (Luke 2:51) Why then did she never ask Him to work a miracle before? Because the time had now come that He should be made known. Before He had lived so much like an ordinary person, that she had not had the confidence to ask Him. But now that she heard that John had borne witness to Him, and that He had disciples, she asks Him confidently. ALCUIN. She represents here the Synagogue, which challenges Christ to perform a miracle. It was customary with the Jews to ask for miracles. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? AUGUSTINE. (Tr. viii. c. 5) Some who derogate from the Gospel, and say that Jesus was not born of the Virgin Mary, try to draw an argument for their error from this place; for, how, say they, could she be His mother to whom He said, What have I to do with thee? Now who is it who gives this account, and on whose authority do we believe it? The Evangelist John. But he himself says, The mother of Jesus was there. Why should He say it, unless both were true. But did He therefore come to the marriage to teach men to despise their mother?

• From White Oleander (1999)

  Starr hated to even look at them, though now the riots were going on, she’d stopped asking him to get rid of them. He took a can of green Rust-Oleum and spray-painted a human figure on a board, and for fun made it carrying a TV. He set it up against an oleander at the far end of the yard. “He’s taking your TV, Astrid. Plug him.” It was fun, the little Beretta .22. I landed four out of nine shots. He put tape over the bullet holes so I’d know which were old, which were new. I got to try all the guns eventually—the rifle, the short-nosed .38 Police Special, Smith & Wesson, even the twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun. I liked the Beretta best, but Ray insisted the Smith & Wesson was the thing to shoot, it had “stopping power.” He’d put it in my hands, showing me how to sight it, how to squeeze the trigger with my mind. The .38 was the hardest of the four to shoot and be accurate with. You had to use both hands, and keep your arms very straight, or it came back and hit you in the face. Each gun had a purpose, like a hammer or a screwdriver. The rifle was for hunting, the Beretta for potentially touchy situations—a bar, a meeting with the ex, a date, what Ray called close-in work. The shotgun was for home protection. “Get behind me, kids!” he’d say in a grandmothery voice, and we’d all run behind him as he demonstrated, spraying the oleanders with buckshot. And the .38? “Only one reason for a thirty-eight. And that’s to kill your man.” I felt like an Israeli girl soldier, in shorts and the hot wind, sighting down the barrel of the rifle, holding the .38 with both hands. It was a strange feeling, him looking at me as I aimed. I found I couldn’t quite lose myself in the target. His eyes split my attention between the C in Coke and my awareness of him watching me. And I thought, this was what it was like to be beautiful. What my mother felt. The tug of eyes, pulling you back from your flight to the target. I was in two places at once, not only in my thought, my aim, but my bare feet on the dusty yard, my legs growing stronger, my breasts in the new bra, my long tanned arms, my hair flowing white in the hot wind. He was taking my silence but giving me something in return, a fullness of being recognized. I felt beautiful, but also interrupted. I wasn’t used to being so complicated. 7 [image "image" file=Image00003.jpg] IN NOVEMBER , when the air held blue in the afternoons and the sunlight washed the boulders in gold, I turned fourteen. Starr threw me a party, with hats and streamers, and invited Carolee’s boyfriend and even my caseworker, the Jack of Spades.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The maid comforted her and going in quest of Pyrrhus found him merry and well-disposed and said to him, 'Pyrrhus I showed thee, a few days agone, in what a fire my lady and thine abideth for the love she beareth thee, and now anew I certify thee thereof, for that, an thou persist in the rigour thou showedst the other day, thou mayst be assured that she will not live long; wherefore I prithee be pleased to satisfy her of her desire, and if thou yet abide fast in thine obstinacy, whereas I have still accounted thee mighty discreet, I shall hold thee a blockhead. What can be a greater glory for thee than that such a lady, so fair and so noble, should love thee over all else? Besides, how greatly shouldst thou acknowledge thyself beholden unto Fortune, seeing that she proffereth thee a thing of such worth and so conformable to the desires of thy youth and to boot, such a resource for thy necessities! Which of thy peers knowest thou who fareth better by way of delight than thou mayst fare, an thou be wise? What other couldst thou find who may fare so well in the matter of arms and horses and apparel and monies as thou mayst do, so thou wilt but vouchsafe thy love to this lady? Open, then, thy mind to my words and return to thy senses; bethink thee that once, and no oftener, it is wont to betide that fortune cometh unto a man with smiling face and open arms, who an he know not then to welcome, if after he find himself poor and beggarly, he hath himself and not her to blame. Besides, there is no call to use that loyalty between servants and masters that behoveth between friends and kinsfolk; nay, servants should use their masters, in so far as they may, like as themselves are used of them. Thinkest thou, an thou hadst a fair wife or mother or daughter or sister, who pleased Nicostratus, that he would go questing after this loyalty that thou wouldst fain observe towards him in respect of this lady? Thou are a fool, if thou think thus; for thou mayst hold it for certain that, if blandishments and prayers sufficed him not, he would not scruple to use force in the matter, whatsoever thou mightest deem thereof. Let us, then, entreat them and their affairs even as they entreat us and ours. Profit by the favour of fortune and drive her not away, but welcome her with open arms and meet her halfway, for assuredly, and thou do it not, thou wilt yet (leave alone the death that will without fail ensue thereof to thy lady) repent thee thereof so many a time thou wilt be fain to die therefor.'