Disappointment

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 Martin Luther (2016)

  9 But loyalty to the emperor, who so often protected those rights, ran in the bloodstream of towns: Nuremberg housed the jewels of the Reich, Augsburg had close financial ties to the empire, and imperial cities gloried in hosting the splendid Diets. — A D IET at Augsburg had been called for 1530, which the emperor would himself attend. Here Charles was going to allow the evangelicals to set out their position in a confession of faith, in a final attempt to restore religious concord in the empire and create a united front against the Turkish threat. Meetings were held at Torgau to devise a Saxon strategy, and Melanchthon, ever the systematizer, was entrusted with the task of finalizing the confession. 10 It was decided that Luther himself should travel only so far as Coburg, still within Saxon territory, and not attend the Diet itself, to avoid provocation. There could hardly have been a greater contrast with his heroic appearance at the Diet of Worms nine years earlier, and he chafed at the prospect of being sidelined. How he would have liked to be there, Luther now wrote, alongside Melanchthon, Spalatin, Jonas, and Johann Agricola, who made up the Saxon delegation. But he would only be told, like the poor chorister, “Be quiet! You have a bad voice!” 11 Once the band of Wittenbergers arrived in Augsburg, they initially wrote regularly to Luther, who was marooned in the castle at Coburg, some 125 miles to the north. Here, Luther joked, he had his own Diet, a parliament of birds: “You people, of course, go to Augsburg, [but] you are uncertain when you will see the beginning [of your Diet]; we came here right into the midst of a Diet….All are equally black, all have dark blue eyes, all make the same music in unison. I have not yet seen nor heard their emperor.” He regularly signed his letters as from “the kingdom of the winged jackdaws.” 12 Nor was Luther the only one to talk about birds. Soon Agricola wrote from Augsburg, describing a dream of Melanchthon’s. An eagle had appeared, which was magically transformed into a cat. Immediately the cat had been stuffed into a sack. But then Luther arrived, and had called for the screaming cat to be let out; it was freed. The evangelicals were agog with possible interpretations. One of their number was called Caspar Aquila, or “eagle,” so perhaps the dream foretold disaster for his house. Others were convinced the eagle represented the emperor, and the practice of sorcery meant the evil machinations of the godless sophists and cardinals, who were preventing the emperor from understanding the truth.

• From Shunned (2018)

  This feeling isn’t about being run down. Weren’t you just telling me how much energy I have when my heart’s engaged? Just a minute ago you were calling this a ‘crisis of faith.’” “Which is exactly why you should go to the elders. That’s what they’re there for.” We continued sipping our beers, feigning interest in the gnats swarming around the cattails. My relief turned to disappointment. I’d put off this conversation because I’d never really believed Ross had the capacity to help me sort this out. All he could offer were trite solutions. On the one hand, I was grateful that he hadn’t overreacted to my confession. On the other hand, he didn’t seem to grasp the magnitude of my anguish. To be fair, I’d done a good job of hiding it. It was then I knew I would not share the final part of my confession. I had already sought help—not from the elders, but from a psychologist. I had seen her four times and planned to continue. My inner conflict had been so intense—and its potential ramifications so life-altering—I wanted the impartial reality check of a mental-health professional. My closest confidants were all Witnesses whom I couldn’t possibly count on for unbiased listening. I’d kept my therapy a secret, making weekly visits on my lunch hour, no one the wiser. If anyone in the Witness community knew I was seeing a therapist, it would raise a red flag. Therapists could not be relied upon to give me the “proper” spiritual perspective. I’d considered a meeting with the elders but dismissed it early on. As my new, fuller self emerged, I sensed I could trust it to explore answers unfettered by the elders’ influence. I’d swapped Bible study and prayer for the private sanctuary of my therapist’s office and found it an ideal place to chip away the carapace around my doubts. There I dared to utter my skepticism, safe in the knowledge I would not be judged as “ailing.” “Are you ready to eat?” I asked Ross. “Starved,” he said. “Let’s move closer to the water.” As we stood to relocate, I felt vulnerable and weak, like my knees might give out. “Rossman, please don’t worry about me. I’ll figure this out.” He gave me a big bear hug. “I know. You’ve always been strong. It will all work out.” He seemed to be reassuring himself. It gave me little comfort. We enjoyed our lakefront picnic, and later that night we went to the movies, captivated by Harrison Ford as The Fugitive. My troubles seemed minor in comparison with grappling with murder, prison shackles, and betrayal. And I took consolation from the ending: after weeks of relentless struggle, the lead character proved his innocence, made peace with his captors, and secured his freedom. Maybe I could do the same. Chapter 4 You will not be punished for your anger.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  62 By setting his face against a communal Reformation, and siding with the authorities, Luther had also cut himself off from what was going on in the rest of the empire. During his time in the Wartburg, he had lost his networks beyond Saxony and Mansfeld. He would have difficulty in gaining any lasting foothold in major towns like Augsburg or Strasbourg; even Nuremberg, nominally Lutheran, did not seek his advice on a regular basis, relying instead on their own local preachers. The issues that animated the Reformation in towns throughout the empire—the tyranny of confession, the opposition to images, the demand for immediate liturgical change—all these Luther had taken off the agenda at Wittenberg. He did not understand communal values or communal politics, and ideals of “brotherhood” and compromise were alien to him. There was no compromising with the Devil, and, as he reiterated in his Invocavit Sermons, each one of us must face death and the Devil alone. He returned from the Wartburg a more forthright preacher, secure in his role as pastor of his flock. What had given him this increased confidence was both his appearance at Worms and his isolation in the Wartburg. But that had been won at the cost of dangerously narrowing his vision. While he had begun the Reformation for his “dear Germans,” and had faced down all the princes of the empire, the world he now seemed to care about most was the small backwater where he lived. 41. This woodcut shows Karlstadt and Luther on either side of a wagon in which Christ sits, driving toward salvation, while Ulrich von Hutten in armor leads the chained clergy of the old church, Murner visible as a cat. Luther and Karlstadt both hold palms of salvation, but Karlstadt is almost more prominent than Luther. The woodcut is reminiscent of Karlstadt’s Wagon, illustrated by Cranach, the first visual propaganda for the Reformation (see this page ). It folds out of a pamphlet by Hermann von dem Busche, Trivphvs veritatis. Sick der warheyt, a long poem in praise of the Reformation published in Speyer in 1524. T HE LONG-AWAITED DEBATE with Johannes Eck, which had been brewing since the spring of 1518, was finally arranged for June 1519 at Leipzig, in the territory of Georg of Saxony. The meeting was another of the dramatic intellectual set pieces that pushed the Reformation forward, and was a decisive step in the movement reaching a wider public beyond an academic audience. But while it saw the emergence of a pro-Luther party, it also gave rise to the beginnings of a coalition against him. Moreover, it marked yet a further radicalization of Luther’s theology; indeed, the older Luther would date his Reformation “breakthrough” to around this time.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The visionary excitement of the Wittenberg movement, the sense of the great things that could be done with the funds liberated from Masses and monasteries, the feeling of evangelical power as thousands of citizens took Communion in both kinds—all this was lost as Luther insisted on his leadership, not collective action. It is unlikely that a communal Reformation would ever have had much chance in Wittenberg. The town was simply too small to support it, and its reliance on the Elector, with so many in the town’s political elite close to the court, meant that it had no tradition of independence. The tinder of economic and political grievance among large numbers of artisans was also missing. The other great institution in the town, the university, was not likely to risk alienating its founder, and the students, who did have a tradition of activism, had little loyalty to Wittenberg, especially since many of them were beginning to question the point of academic studies altogether. Once Duke Georg had secured the imperial mandate that enabled Catholic bishops to roll back the Reformation, the Elector had no choice but to knuckle under—or risk losing his power and title. Had Luther, ever the realist, not reversed the changes of December and January, as the mandate required, the Reformation in Wittenberg is unlikely to have survived. But the idea of a communal Reformation made by the people was not dead. In town after town—Zwickau, Augsburg, Nördlingen, Nuremberg, and Strasbourg—popular movements would bring in the Reformation, as crowds attacked clergy and petitioned their town councils, and evangelical preachers gave their listeners a glimpse of what a reformed commune could mean. All the actions that had galvanized the Wittenberg populace were repeated across the empire, with evangelicals interrupting sermons, destroying altarpieces, tearing up Mass books, urinating in chalices, or mocking the clergy—and they drew on the same repertoire of carnivalesque ritual and comedy that the Wittenberg students had developed. 61 Nor was Karlstadt forgotten. In Riga and Livonia it was his ideas, not Luther’s, that were picked up and put into practice by local reform movements; in Oldersum and other parts of East Frisia, his views about the sacrament were taken up, while Luther’s seemed superstitious; the town of Magdeburg adopted features of the Wittenberg reform movement; and as late as 1524, a pamphlet published in Speyer could depict Luther and Karlstadt leading the Reformation together.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  Since I’d decided to try to come down a weight class and give Shute a go, I thought I’d consult a specialist about my chances of losing twenty-nine pounds while still retaining enough strength to shake hands before Shute osterized my body. So I made an appointment with a nutritionist. His office was in a huge old house on the Southside near where Mom’s naturopath had had his clinic. An old Mercedes 190 SL sat halfway in the garage. I couldn’t tell what year it was. If it was the doctor’s, he sure had good taste in autos. If the guy did his own decorating, he also had good taste in furnishings. The place was paneled in brown leather, carpeted wall to wall in a dark wine color, and filled with black crushed-leather chairs and davenports. It was also filled with some very svelte ladies and a few hog bodies. I was the only guy. I was surprised when I got to see him—he looked like a regular young doctor. He asked what it was he could do for me. “Consultation,” I said. He looked at me as though I’d called him a chiropractor. He said he didn’t hand out pills. I told him I didn’t take pills, except vitamins. He thought I was after some speed. I told him how much weight I needed to lose, the length of time I had to lose it, and why. I explained that I thought I could do it if I kept to one thousand calories a day and kept my nitrogen balance positive. I described my workout and my diet, relating the luck I’d had in the past with vitamins E and B12 . He grimaced when I mentioned Adelle Davis. Before I could ask his opinion he was up and out the door. I sneaked a look at the chart he’d written up on me. After my name it said, “Hippie health nut; hard drug symptoms.” I’d put it down and was puzzling over some possible “hard drug symptoms” when he came back with a vial of Gaudium and told me to eat, even if I wasn’t hungry. Then he walked into the next examining room, where reclined the sveltest of the svelte. I was so stunned I missed what was surely a terrific shot at her pudenda. Driving home, I regained my composure enough to be pissed off. I gave the capsules to Otto. He loves that shit. Pops those things like Life Savers and still he eats like a catfish. I’d figured I would hit it off with a nutritionist, that I’d develop some rapport and go back to him for the two physicals I’d need for the season. You have to get one before the first league match, and then you have to get another one if you plan to drop down a weight when the classes come up.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  36 Lake-Effect Humor The smiles of the bathers fade as they leave the water, And the lover feels sadness fall as it ends, as he leaves his love. The scholar, closing his book as the midnight clocks strike, is hollow and old; The pilot’s relief on landing is no release. These perfect and private things, walling us in, have imperfect and public endings… —Weldon Kees, “The Smiles of the Bathers” S o we move to upstate New York, into a house on a leafy block with a skylit master bedroom off which is a balcony so buried in branches that it feels like a tree fort where you can smoke cigars and shoot off a pop gun. Is it Warren’s August birthday or Christmas when I get him a golden retriever puppy from Deb’s dog’s new litter? Grace, we call her. There’s a park two blocks away we go to every day and a pond with ducks and a trail in the woods. Dev walks to kindergarten in the frosted mornings with his backpack on. Warren and I keep differing orbits and finally start sleeping in separate rooms. I whipsaw back and forth on whether to stay or go, but no solid message shows up, as if the magic 8-ball’s still saying, Ask again later . Otherwise, the landscape seems less blunted and monochromatic. Stepping outside some mornings, it’s like that instant in the optome trist’s office when the right lens clicks over, the letters on the chart sharpening. There are individual leaves on trees where once was a lime smudge. The writing has come back—with a polished quiet around it. Somehow I feel freer to fail. But the work mortifies me. Previously I’d seen the poems as adorable offspring, but they’ve become the most pathetic batch of little bow-legged, snaggle-toothed pinheads imaginable. Even the book I published with such pride a few years before—eager to foist it on anybody who’d read it—now seems egregiously dull, sophomoric, phony. If the pages were big enough, I might well use them to wrap fish. In the past, I strafe-bombed poetry editors with pages, the old insatiable-for-praise ego desperate to carve my name on any vacant surface. Now my instinct is to rathole. Just before Christmas, the publisher I most admire—an aging patrician I’ve never met—writes me the only fan letter I ever got. James Laughlin from New Directions published and palled around with titans like Pound and Williams, plus Trappist monk Thomas Merton, whose spiritual books I’ve fallen for. Laughlin wonders do I have a second collection, adding cautiously they hardly ever take anybody on. Usually, I’d have retyped everything with a watchmaker’s precision before mailing it off in a fancy binder. But so certain am I that the rejection letter’s going to wing back like a homing pigeon, I just jam what I have in an envelope with an apology for how cobbled up it is.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  The very idea of a religious revolution, like that of a modern Islamic government, seemed a contradiction in terms. But Westerners had to face the fact that most Iranian people did want Islamic rule. The “moderates” whose emergence many American and European observers had confidently predicted did not arise to oust the “mad mullahs.” Those nationalists who wanted a secular and democratic republic in Iran found themselves in a minority after the Revolution. There was no agreement about what form an Islamic government should take, however. Western-educated intellectuals, followers of Shariati, wanted a regime governed by laymen, with reduced clerical rule. Mehdi Bazargan, Khomeini’s new prime minister, wanted a return to the 1906 constitution (without the monarchy), with a council of mujtahids with the power to veto un-Islamic parliamentary legislation. The madrasahs of Qum pressed for Khomeini’s Velayat-e Faqih, but both Ayatollah Shariatmadari and Ayatollah Taleqani were vehemently opposed to this vision of a mystically inspired cleric ruling the nation, since it violated centuries of sacred Shii tradition. They saw great dangers in such a polity. By October 1979, there was serious conflict. 3 Bazargan and Shariatmadari attacked the draft constitution drawn up by Khomeini’s followers, which gave supreme power to a faqih (Khomeini), who would control the armed forces and could summarily dismiss the prime minister. The constitution also made provision for an elected president and parliament, a cabinet, and a twelve-man Council of Guardians with the power to veto laws that contravened the Shariah. Opposition to the draft constitution was strong. The left-wing guerrilla movements, the ethnic minorities within Iran, and the influential Muslim People’s Republican party (founded by Ayatollah Shariatmadari) were all adamantly against it. The liberals and the Western-educated middle classes now became increasingly depressed by what they regarded as the religious extremism of the new regime: it seemed to them that they had fought bravely to free themselves from the tyranny of the former shah only to find themselves subject to Islamic despotism. They noted that in the draft constitution, freedom of the press and liberty of political expression (for which the liberals had fought the Pahlavi regime) were guaranteed only provided that they did not contravene Islamic law and practice. Prime Minister Bazargan was particularly outspoken. He was careful never to attack Khomeini himself, but was sharply critical of what he called the reactionary clergy in the Islamic Revolutionary Party who were responsible for the proposed constitutional clauses which, he claimed, violated the whole purpose of the Islamic Revolution. Khomeini faced a crisis. On December 3, 1979, the people were due to vote on the draft constitution in a national referendum, and it seemed likely that the Velayat-e Faqih would be soundly defeated.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It numbered between 8,000 and 9,000 at the start of the sixteenth century; Dülmen, Reformation als Revolution, 238; an estimated 2,500 Anabaptists arrived in the town (275). 18. He took over from Jan Matthys, who was regarded as a prophet and had established community of goods in the town: Dülmen, Reformation als Revolution, 208–336; Kerssenbrock, Anabaptist Madness (ed. and trans. Mackay). 19. See Newe zeytung von den Wydertaufferen zu Münster, Nuremberg, 1535 [VD 16 N 876], which included a preface by Luther and propositions against the Anabaptists by Melanchthon; Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, “Münster and the Anabaptists,” in Hsia, ed., German People . 20. WT 5, 6041. Part of the reason for polygamy may also have been that with the town’s menfolk decimated, the women left behind needed to be organized into households under male headship; see Hsia, “Münster and the Anabaptists.” 21. Greschat, Bucer, 96. 22. WB 6, Jan. 22, 1531, 24–25:40–44. 23. But soon Luther was hearing rumors that Michael Keller and his supporters in Augsburg said that the Wittenbergers had gone over to the Zwinglian view of the sacrament; WB 6, 1799, March 28, 1531. In Augsburg, there were renewed and very bitter disputes between the pro-Bucer and the Lutheran preachers, with Frosch and Johann Agricola refusing to meet their new colleagues from Strasbourg, Bonifacius Wolfart and Wolfgang Musculus. The following year, Luther was warning the Augsburgers that they faced the same fate as Müntzer and Zwingli; WB 6, 1894, Jan. 3, 1532 (Caspar Huber), 244:3–5; he also exclaimed, “Watch out Augsburg!” in his letter to Linck. In January 1533, he published a warning to the city of Frankfurt not to be fooled by the sacramentarians who were pretending to teach, like the Wittenbergers, that Christ was truly present in the bread and wine but who actually meant spiritually and not physically. This was playing with words according to Luther: Ein brieff an die zu Franckfort am Meyn, Nuremberg, 1533 [VD 16 L 4164]. 24. Kolde, ed., Analecta Lutherana, 216–30, Musculus; and 214–16, correspondence; Friedrich Myconius, EPISTOLA SCRIPTA AD D. Vitum Theodorum…DE CONCORDIA inita VVitebergae inter D. D. Martinum Lutherum, & Bucerum anno 36 (Leipzig, 1581); Walch, XVII, 2090–99. Representatives from Augsburg, Memmingen, Ulm, Reutlingen, Esslingen, Fürfeld, and Frankfurt also attended but were not admitted to the key intimate discussions. 25. Walch, XVII, 2093, 2094, 2096 (Myconius). Whether Christ was present to unbelievers, or whether they received just bread and wine, was left undecided. Greschat, Bucer, 132–39. 26. Walch, XVII, 2098–99. 27. WB 8, 3191, Dec. 1, 1537, in response to a letter he received on Jan. 12, 1537; Bucer had written begging him to reply; WB 8, 3192, Dec. 3, 1537. 28. The man Luther recommended, Johann Forster, was impossible, according to the Augsburg council: He attacked the other pastors, drank to excess, and alienated people; WB 8, 3250, Aug. 19, 1538, 3251, Aug. 29, 1538; WB 8, 616, 3418, Dec. 1, 1539. Blaurer was eventually also forced to leave; Köhler, Zürcher Ehegericht, II, 318–19.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  A good war story, he thought, but it was not a war for war stories, nor for talk of valor, and nobody in town wanted to know about the terrible stink. They wanted good intentions and good deeds. But the town was not to blame, really. It was a nice little town, very prosperous, with neat houses and all the sanitary conveniences. Norman Bowker lit a cigarette and cranked open his window. Seven thirty-five, he decided. The lake had divided into two halves. One half still glistened, the other was caught in shadow. Along the causeway, the two little boys marched on. The man in the stalled motorboat yanked frantically on the cord to his engine, and the two mud hens sought supper at the bottom of the lake, tails bobbing. He passed Sunset Park once again, and more houses, and the junior college and the tennis courts, and the picnickers, who now sat waiting for the evening fireworks. The high school band was gone. The woman in pedal pushers patiently toyed with her line. Although it was not yet dusk, the A&W was already awash in neon lights. He maneuvered his father's Chevy into one of the parking slots, let the engine idle, and sat back. The place was doing a good holiday business. Mostly kids, it seemed, and a few farmers in for the day. He did not recognize any of the faces. A slim, hipless young carhop passed by, but when he hit the horn, she did not seem to notice. Her eyes slid sideways. She hooked a tray to the window of a Firebird, laughing lightly, leaning forward to chat with the three boys inside. He felt invisible in the soft twilight. Straight ahead, over the take-out counter, swarms of mosquitoes electrocuted themselves against an aluminum Pest-Rid machine. It was a calm, quiet summer evening. He honked again, this time leaning on the horn. The young carhop turned slowly, as if puzzled, then said something to the boys in the Firebird and moved reluctantly toward him. Pinned to her shirt was a badge that said EAT MAMA BURGERS. When she reached his window, she stood straight up so that all he could see was the badge. "Mama Burger," he said. "Maybe some fries, too." The girl sighed, leaned down, and shook her head. Her eyes were as fluffy and airy-light as cotton candy. "You blind?" she said. She put out her hand and tapped an intercom attached to a steel post. "Punch the button and place your order. All I do is carry the dumb trays." She stared at him for a moment. Briefly, he thought, a question lingered in her fuzzy eyes, but then she turned and punched the button for him and returned to her friends in the Firebird. The intercom squeaked and said, "Order." "Mama Burger and fries," Norman Bowker said. "Affirmative, copy clear. No rootie-tootie?" "Rootie-tootie?" "You know, man—voot beer." "A small one."

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  I did not look on my work as therapy, and still don't. Yet when I received Norman Bowker's letter, it occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain. In any case, Norman Bowker's letter had an effect. It haunted me for more than a month, not the words so much as its desperation, and I resolved finally to take him up on his story suggestion. At the time I was at work on a new novel, Going After Cacciato, and one morning I sat down and began a chapter titled "Speaking of Courage." The emotional core came directly from Bowker's letter: the simple need to talk. To provide a dramatic frame, I collapsed events into a single time and place, a car circling a lake on a quiet afternoon in midsummer, using the lake as a nucleus around which the story would orbit. As he'd requested, I did not use Norman Bowker's name, instead substituting the name of my novel's main character, Paul Berlin. For the scenery I borrowed heavily from my own hometown. Wholesale thievery, in fact. I lifted up Worthington, Minnesota—the lake, the road, the causeway, the woman in pedal pushers, the junior college, the handsome houses and docks and boats and public parks—and carried it all a few hundred miles south and transplanted it onto the Iowa prairie. The writing went quickly and easily. I drafted the piece in a week or two, fiddled with it for another week, then published it as a separate short Story. Almost immediately, though, there was a sense of failure. The details of Norman Bowker's story were missing. In this original version, which I still conceived as part of the novel, I had been forced to omit the shit field and the rain and the death of Kiowa, replacing this material with events that better fit the book's narrative. As a consequence I'd lost the natural counterpoint between the lake and the field. A metaphoric unity was broken. What the piece needed, and did not have, was the terrible killing power of that shit field.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Mark Fossie would nod at this, even smile and agree, but it made him uncomfortable. He couldn't pin it down. Her body seemed foreign somehow —too stiff in places, too firm where the softness used to be. The bubbliness was gone. The nervous giggling, too. When she laughed now, which was rare, it was only when something struck her as truly funny. Her voice seemed to reorganize itself at a lower pitch. In the evenings, while the men played cards, she would sometimes fall into long elastic silences, her eyes fixed on the dark, her arms folded, her foot tapping out a coded message against the floor. When Fossie asked about it one evening, Mary Anne looked at him for a long moment and then shrugged. "It's nothing," she said. "Really nothing. To tell the truth, I've never been happier in my whole life. Never." Twice, though, she came in late at night. Very late. And then finally she did not come in at all. Rat Kiley heard about it from Fossie himself. Before dawn one morning, the kid shook him awake. He was in bad shape. His voice seemed hollow and stuffed up, nasal-sounding, as if he had a bad cold. He held a flashlight in his hand, clicking it on and off. "Mary Anne," he whispered, "I can't find her." Rat sat up and rubbed his face. Even in the dim light it was clear that the boy was in trouble. There were dark smudges under his eyes, the frayed edges of somebody who hadn't slept in a while. "Gone," Fossie said. "Rat, listen, she's sleeping with somebody. Last night, she didn't even ... I don't know what to do." Abruptly then, Fossie seemed to collapse. He squatted down, rocking on his heels, still clutching the flashlight. Just a boy—eighteen years old. Tall and blond. A gifted athlete. A nice kid, too, polite and good-hearted, although for the moment none of it seemed to be serving him well. He kept clicking the flashlight on and off. "All right, start at the start," Rat said. "Nice and slow. Sleeping with who?" "T don't know who. Eddie Diamond." "Eddie?" "Has to be. The guy's always there, always hanging on her." Rat shook his head. "Man, I don't know. Can't say it strikes a right note, not with Eddie." "Yes, but he's—" "Easy does it," Rat said. He reached out and tapped the boy's shoulder. "Why not just check some bunks? We got nine guys. You and me, that's two, so there's seven possibles. Do a quick body count." Fossie hesitated. "But I can't ... If she's there, I mean, if she's with somebody—" "Oh, Christ."

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  συμφορά, Ion. -ρή, 7, (συμφέρω) a bringing together, collecting, βε- λῶν Polemo 4.12: a conjunction, νούσων Aretae. Caus. M. Diut. 2. 11: —pedantically for συμβολή, a contribution, Luc. Lexiph. 6. II. commonly (from συμφέρω A. 111. 4, and B. III), ax event, circumstance, chance, hap, wav ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος συμφορή Hdt. 1. 32; αἱ o. τῶν ἀνθρώ- πων ἄρχουσι, καὶ οὐκὶ ὥνθρωποι τῶν o.1d.7.49,1; συμφόρας βίου Aesch. Eum. 1020, cf. 897; ἔν τε συμφοραῖς βίου Soph. Ο. T. 33; αἱ ξ. τῶν βουλευμάτων their results, issues (τὰς συντυχίας καὶ ἀποβάσεις Schol.), Ib. 44; ξυμφορᾶς ἵν᾿ ἕσταμεν in what a hazardous state we are, Id. Tr. 11453 ξυμφορᾶς τινος κυρῆσαι Eur. lon 536; πρὸς τὰς ξ. καὶ τὰς γνώμας τρέπεσθαι Thuc. 1. 140; aé ξ. τῶν πραγμάτων Ibid. 2. ἴο denote a mishap, mischance, misfortune; earlier writers often add an epith., σ. ἄχαρις Hdt. τ. 41., 7. 1903 οἰκτρά, κακή, τάλαινα, etc., Pind. O. 7. 141 ;—but the word came to be used alone in a bad sense, συμ- φορᾷ δεδαιγμένοι Id. P. 8. 125; ὑπὸ τῆς o. ἐκπεπληγμένος Hat. 3.64; συμφορῇ χρῆσθαι to be unfortunate, Id. 1. 42, cf. Antipho 122. 2; ἐπὶ συμφορὴν ἐμπίπτειν, of a hurt ora disease, Hdt. 7. 88, cf. Soph. Ph. 885; so of overpowering passion, Xen. Cyr. 6. 1, 37:—euphem. for ἄγος, Soph. O.T. 99; for ἀτιμία, Andoc. 11. 41; for banishment, Xen. Hell. 1. 1, 27; for condemnation, Isocr. 94 A; so also, rarely, in a moral relation, an offence, trespass, Plat. Legg. 854 Ὁ, 934 B:—ouppophy or μεγάλην σ. ποιεῖσθαί τι to look upon or consider a thing as a great misfortune, Hdt. 1. 83., 4. 79.» 5. 35, etc.; foll. by ὅτι, Id. 1. 216, etc.; so, o. vopl- ζειν, κρίνειν, ἡγεῖσθαι Xen. Ages. 7, 4., 11, 9, Plat. Phaedo 84 E:— proverb., πῖνε, mv’ ἐπὶ συμφοραῖς Simon. (7) ap. Ar. Eq. 406 :—of a person, μηδὲ συμφορὰν δέχου τὸν ἄνδρα, i.e. ds ὄντα a., Soph. Aj. 68; τὸν ἄνθρωπον .. κοινὴν τῶν “Ελλήνων σ. Aeschin. 89.39; σ. τῆς πόλεως Dinarch. 98. 24. 3. rarely in good sense, good luck, a happy issue. Aesch. Ag. 24, Cho, 1064, Eum. 1031, Soph. El. 1230; σ. ἐσθλαί, εὐδαί- μονες Eur. Alc. 1155, El. 457; σ. ἀγαθή Ar. Eq. 655. συμφοράζω, to bewail one’s ill-luck, like συμφορὰν ποιεῖσθαι, Schol. Soph, Ant. 528, Eccl.: so, συμφοραίνω, Vit. Hom. 14. συμφορεύς, 6, in Xen. Hell. 6. 4, 14, a Lacedaemonian officer, a sort of atde-de-camp or lieutenant. P

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ouvTvxta, Ion. -(y, ἧ, az occurrence, a hap, chance, event, incident, its nature being often marked by an epithet, ἀγαθή Theogn. 590, Solon 13. 70; σ. κρυόεσσα Pind. I. 1. 54; δεινὴ καὶ μεγάλη Hdt. 3. 433 κατὰ o. ἀγαθήν Ar. Av. 544; καλὴ ἡ €. the conjuncture is fair, Thuc. 1. 33; épa- Tun ξ. an incident of a love-affair, Id. 6. 54 :—then without any qualify- ing word, μεταλλαγαὶ ξυντυχίας changes of fortune, Eur. H. F. 766; σ. τις τοιαύτη ἔγένετο Hdt. 3. 121; συντυχίῃ ταύτῃ χρᾶσθαι Id. 5. 41; θυμοῦμαι τῇ ξ. Ar. Ran. 1006; ὡς ἑκάστοις τῆς ξυντυχίας .. ἔσχεν ac- cording to the chance or circumstances of each party, Thuc. 7.57; ἅμα τοῦ ἔργου τῇ &. at the very moment of action, Id. 3. 112; ἀπὸ τοιαύτης f. Id. 5. 11; κατὰ συντυχίην by chance, Hat. 3.74.5 9. 21; κατά τινα σ. Polyb. 10. 32, 3 :—in pl. the chances or incidents of life, circumstances, Thue. 3. 45. 2. absol. also, acc. to the context, of good or evil chances, a. a happy chance, happy event, success, Pind. P. 1.70; συν- Tuxin χρᾶσθαι καὶ σοφίῃ Hdt. 1. 66; θεῶν ἐπὶ συντυχίαις the happy issues due to them, Soph. Ant. 158. b. a mishap, mischance, mis- fortune, ξυντυχίᾳ βαρυνόμενοι Cratin. Πλοῦτ. 7, cf. Eur. Tro. 1119, ΕἸ. 1358, H. F. 766, Plat. Phaedr. 248 C. II. later, conversation, acquaintance, Synes. Ep. 100, etc. συντῦὔχικός, ἡ, dv, accidental, Plut.2.611 A. Δάν. - κῶς, Greg. Nyss. συνυβρίζω, to injure along with, Plut. 2.631 F, Eccl. συνυγραίνομαι, Pass. to be wet along with or together, Galen. συνυθλέω, to chat together, Luc. Lexiph. 14. συνὕλακτέω, to bark together, Nonn. D. 3. 176, etc. συνὕμεναιόω, to join in the bridal hymn, Plut. 2. 138 B. συνυμνέω, to sing hymns together, Clem. Al. 92, Schol. Theocr. το. 24. συνύμνῳδος, 6, a fellow-singer of hymns, Ο. 1. 3170. 16. συνυπάγω, to bring under together: Pass. to be subject together, Cy- rill. II. to make dependent together, Schol. Eur. Or. 854. συνυπᾶκούω, fut. σομαι, to obey together, τινί Polyb. 5. 56, 9, etc. ; πρός τι in a thing,Id.1. 66,7. II. to comprehend under the mean- ing of terms, Stob. Ecl. 2. 120:—to understand [a word] together, Gramm. ; so verbal συνυπακουστέον, Strab. 431. συνύπαρκτος, ov, coéxistent, Epiphan. συνύπαρξις, ἡ, coéxistence, Sext. Emp. P. 2. 199, M. το. 267, Eccl. συνύπαρχος, 6, a fellow-governor; among the Romans, a joint-prefect. συνυπάρχω, 10 exist together, coexist, Arist. Eth. E. 7.9, 3, Polyb. 12. 18, 3, Arr. Epict. 2. 1, 2; τινί with one, Philo 2. 620. συνύπᾶτος, 6, a colleague in the consulship, Dion. H. 6. 22, Dio C. 78. 14:—Verb. συνυπατεύω, Plut. Poplic. 1, Fab. 25, etc. συνύπειμι, (εἰμί sum) to be in or under together, Ocell. Luc. 3. συνυπεξούσιος, ov, subject to authority also, Theophil. Instt.2. 10, 246. συνυπερβάλλω, to pass over together, τὸν Ταῦρον Polyb. 4. 48, 6.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  χάσκω, Anacr. 13.8, Ar. Vesp. 1493; subj. χάσκῃς Ar. Eq. 1018, 1032; inf. χάσκειν Xen. Eq. Το, 7, (¢y—) Ar. Vesp. 721; part. χάσκων Solon 12. 36, (dva—) Ar. Av. 502 :—the pres. xatvw occurs only in late writers, Anth. P. 9. 797., 11. 242, Diosc., etc. ; (ém—) Luc. Ὁ. Mort. 6. 2, (περι--) Ael.N. A. 3. 20:—but from this present the tenses are formed,—fut. yavov- μαι (@y-) Ar. Eq. 1313, etc.; (for the form χήσομαι, v. χανδάνω 5. fin.) : —aor. ἔχἄνον Hom., Att. Poets; aor. 1 ἔχᾶνα Aesop. 223 Halm. :—pf. κέχηνα Ib.; Dor. 3 pl. κεχάναντι Sophron 51 Ahr.; κέχαγκα only in A. B. 611 :—plapf. ἐκεχήνειν Ar. Eq. 651; Dor. and old Att. ᾽κεχήνη Id. Ach. 10.—Used by Hom. only in aor. 2 χάνοι, xavwy, and pf. part. κεχηνώς. (From 4/XA, lengthened XAN, come χά-ος, xd-oxw, χαν- εἴν, χαῦν-ος ; cf. Lat. hi-0, his-co; O. Norse gin-a; A.S. gin-an ( yawn); Ο. Η. α. gi-ém, gin-ém (gdhnen) ; Slav. zizati (hio).) To yawn, Kape, τότε por xavor εὐρεῖα χθών then may earth yawn for me, i.e. to swallow me, Il. 4. 182., 8. 150, cf. 17. 4173 esp. of opening the mouth wide, αἷμα ἀνὰ στόμα καὶ κατὰ ῥῖνας πρῆσε χανών τό. 350; EAK ἐκ δίφροιο κεχηνότα lb. 409; ἑάλη τε χανών, of a lion, 20. 168; πρὸς κῦμα χανὼν ἀπὸ θυμὸν ὀλέσσαι, of one drowning, Od. 12. 350; of a wound, Soph. Fr. 449; of shellfish, at ya μὰν κόγχαι .. κεχάναντι πᾶσαι Sophron 51 Ahr.; of a goose, πλατυγίζοντα καὶ κεχηνότα Eubul. Xap. 1; of fruit, to burst with ripeness, Geop. 10. 30. 2. after Hom., chiefly in Com. Poets, fo gape (in eager expectation), χάσκοντες κούφαις ἐλπίσι τερπό- μεθα Solon 12. 36; ὅτε δὴ ᾽᾿κεχήνη προσδοκῶν τὸν Αἴσχυλον when 7 was all agape, At. Ach. το; λύκος ἔχανεν the wolf opened his mouth (for nothing), proverb. of disappointed hopes, Id. Fr. 319, cf. Eubul. Avy. I. 11, Euphr. ’AdeA@. 1. 30 ;—so with Preps., πρὸς ταῦτα κεχηνώς Ar. Nub. 996 ; πρὸς ἄλλον τινὰ χάσκει Anacr. 13, cf. Ar. Eq. 651, 803; x. περί τι Jacobs Ach. Tat. p. 847; ἄνω κεχηνώς, of a star-gazer, Ar. Nub. 173, cf. Av. 51, Plat. Rep. 529 B; κεχηνότες gaping’ fools, Ar. Ran. 990, cf. Eq. 261, Vesp. 617, and v. Κεχηναῖοι. 3. to yawn from weariness, ennui, or inattention, Id. Ach. 30; ὅταν σύ που ἄλλοσε χάσκῃς Id. Eq. 1032, cf. Lys. 426; χάσκεις αὐτός are you yawning? paying no atten- tion? Mnesim. Ἵππ.1. 22. II. more rarely, to speak with open mouth, to utter, like Lat. hisco, c. acc., τὰ δεινὰ ῥήματ᾽... Ka” ἡμῶν -- χανεῖν ; Soph. Aj. 1227; τοῦτ᾽ ἐτύλμησεν χανεῖν ; Ar. Vesp. 3423 ὀϊζυρόν τι χανεῖν Call. Apoll. 24. III. in Paus. 6. 21, 13, if the text be correct, it must be trans., yaveiv.. τὴν γῆν -. τὸ ἅρμα opened and swal- lowed the chariot.—Used by Soph. alone of the Trag. Poets. χασκωρέω, = χασκάζω, Hesych. '

• From Shunned (2018)

  He looked at me, and I saw something in his eyes I’d never seen before. Was it resentment or disappointment? The father who raised me— the pragmatic, independent thinker who bristled at rules and resented fearmongering —he was gone. We’d switched places in the family dynamic. I rued the day he was baptized, and harbored a wish that he would be sensible and support me in secret. That he did not speak to me directly shattered that fantasy. Lory looked at me hard. “When you have children someday, I want you to promise you’ll tell them the truth about why we don’t talk to you.” She had done as I had done and mapped this out into the future, in which months or years would slip by without contact. “Do you plan to have children?” Mom asked. “Is the man someone you plan to marry?” As with the elders and Ross, I had chosen not to go into detail about “the man.” “No plans like that, no.” “What are your plans, then?” Lory challenged me. “What are your goals?” Ah, my goals. Any reply would sound feeble to their way of thinking. “I don’t know,” I said, feeling pressure to sound more “together.” The truth was, I didn’t have any clear, defined goals, spiritual or otherwise. I knew only that I was enjoying the freedom of not having all the answers, reveling in a state of curiosity and discovery about the world. I wasn’t certain that I even wanted to have children of my own. I knew I’d eventually wish to settle down with someone special but suspected that was years away. I’d been lucky enough to meet plenty of good men. I enjoyed dating for fun, unburdened from the Witness presumption of marriage. For the time being, I’d be happy to achieve some post- religious, post-marriage emotional stasis, to continue moving forward in my career, to become financially strong, and to travel. “I’d like to get in good physical shape and ride my bike around France.” It sounded trite, but it was an answer I could live with. “And what is your hope for the future, and for conditions to improve on the earth, if you don’t have The Truth?” Lory pressed. “If you don’t put faith in Jehovah or The Kingdom, then what? Your job? Your bank account? Your health?” Though I maintained a facade of confidence, inside I squirmed at these questions. I had no answers here, trite or otherwise. I was floating in a spiritual void, where existential questions about God and spirit swirled about me, unsolved, a far cry from the certainty of my whole life up to that point, the same certainty Lory still had.

• From Shunned (2018)

  And you know what to do to make that happen.” Disappointment rang through me, and my body felt flushed with heat as I pulled away from her. Even now, she was clinging to her conditions. This is wack! You look at the sky through a straw. This fanatical behavior is not worthy of you! You used to tell me Bible stories of pagan parents who sacrificed their children in the fires to Baal and shake your head in disgust. Now it is you who sacrifices a relationship with your daughter. And for what? For rules that cannot stand the test of logic or love. That was what I thought, but it was not what I said. I took a deep breath instead. I would launch into that tearful diatribe later, at the bar with my husband. I just needed to hold it together a few moments longer. I cupped Mom’s cheeks in both hands, aware of the needless fears she harbored for my everlasting life. I smiled and shook my head. Now I turned to my father, the parent who’d given me blue eyes, brown hair, and curiosity about the world. Even when I had my heels on, he loomed over me. He had the sweetest, most melancholy smile. He was just trying to get through this ordeal and squeeze out all the best parts. We would allow ourselves to fully experience our sadness later, in private. We embraced without saying a word. Then I stood in front of my brother and his family. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to spend much time together,” I said. “But I’m grateful for the time we did have . . . for me to see that you’re doing well.” Randy’s eyes were wide, his face animated with bright red patches on his cheeks, like sections of small countries on a globe. He was anxious for me to leave, to release him from this uncomfortable encounter. “Yes,” he said. Both hands were shoved into his suit pants pockets. Marlene stood near him, a protective sentry. Tyler was still wearing a suit coat and a shy, curious look. He’s heard stories about me, the worldly, renegade aunt who is to be avoided. I shook Tyler’s hand formally, then hugged Randy and Marlene. Bob slipped his shoes back on, and Ove handed us our jackets. I was too warm to cloak myself in wool. “It’s time for you to leave so we can talk about you,” Ove said, and giggled to press home the joke. Everyone else laughed awkwardly. Bob and I just looked at each other. What a jerk. “Until we meet again,” I said, keeping one hand on the doorknob and waving with the other. The night air gripped and soothed me.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  7 Augsburg was one of the foremost cities in the empire with a strong populist evangelical movement, so its theological orientation mattered. But by the summer of 1526, only Stefan Agricola, Caspar Huber, and Luther’s old friend Johannes Frosch, in whose monastery Luther had stayed during the discussions with Cajetan in Augsburg, were still persuaded by Luther’s position. Leadership of the evangelical movement in Augsburg had passed to men like Michael Keller, Johann Landsperger, and Urbanus Rhegius, who preached a more communalist model for the Reformation. Luther knew how dangerous this shift was. In the autumn, in what seems to be the first letter to his friend in many years, he wrote exhorting Frosch to “remain firm.” 8 In Nördlingen, Luther had relied on his solid ally Theobald Billican, but now Billican too was leaning toward the Swiss in some respects; 9 in Ulm, Conrad Sam switched to the sacramentarian position. At least in Schwäbisch Hall, Johannes Brenz remained loyal, while the Nurembergers also still held the Lutheran line. However, with the loss of the imperial cities of Augsburg, Ulm, Basle, Zurich, and Strasbourg—all major centers of printing—Luther was becoming increasingly detached from developments in the south. In Strasbourg, Otto Brunfels, the humanist and friend of the knight Ulrich von Hutten, spoke for many when he published a letter to Luther in which he expressed his sorrow at the rift with Karlstadt: He admired both, he wrote, and could not love Luther without also embracing Karlstadt. 10 Nor was dissent confined to the south. In Liegnitz, Conrad Cordatus had to be peremptorily ordered to leave the “opponents of Christ,” 11 and in other parts of Silesia the noblemen Caspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Crautwald were persuaded that there was no bodily presence in the Eucharist. Schwenckfeld traveled to Wittenberg in December 1525 to discuss the matter with Luther in person, but despite three days of argument, neither side convinced the other. 12 In the spring of 1526 Luther sent Schwenckfeld a bitter letter ordering him to desist from his errors. If he would not, “then God’s will be done. Although I am heartily sorry, yet I am not responsible for your blood, nor for the blood of all those whom you lead astray with [your teachings]. May God convert you. Amen.” 13 Nontheologians were inspired by sacramentarian ideas, too, because they chimed with a deep-rooted, commonsense anticlericalism. Rare surviving testimony of their beliefs came from Hans Mohr, captain of the foot soldiers at Coburg Castle in electoral Saxony, who thought that it “was wrong, that out of the created things, the bread and wine of the Lord, they want to make the Creator himself.” The common people were being piteously misled, he believed, and although he was happy to keep quiet about this, he would give his opinion if people asked him what he thought over meals or at the inn.

• From The Historical Jesus (2000)

  5. When there appeared to be no hope, God would intervene once and for all. Christ would appear from heaven to overthrow the forces of evil and set up his kingdom on earth. C. Lindsey insisted that his portrayal of future events is rooted completely in the Scriptures, which accurately portrayed the future of our planet. 1. The problem, of course, is that this claim has been made by every Christian doomsday prophet from the beginning. As always happens, when the predictions do not occur, the prophets must go back to the drawing board. 2. What is most intriguing is that the evangelistic fervor never dies down with each successive edition. 3 When it appeared to Lindsay that it wasn’t going to happen as predicted, he wrote another book, 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon, arguing that everything was going according to plan. The book was on The New York Times bestseller list for 21 weeks. D. Evidently, Lindsey’s reputation has not been tarnished a whit by his failed interpretations or his more recent claims that UFOs are deceptive ruses by demons, who will soon stage a massive UFO landing to mislead earthlings into believing in life on other planets. His books and videos continue to be enormously popular. IV. If we had more time, we could detail other failed prophecies that have been made throughout the course of Christian history. It is worth noting, at least, that they seem to recur in almost every generation. I’ll mention a couple of striking examples, not even dealing with the massive concerns among some believers over the approach of the year 2000. A. Possibly the most well known American failed prophecy was experienced by the followers of William Miller. Miller was a New York farmer who predicted, on the basis of a careful study of his Bible, that the world would end in a cosmic blaze of glory in 1843. Some among his thousands of followers gave away everything they owned in expectation of the day; some went to court to get everything back later. B. Even more significant historically were the predictions of the Italian monk, Joachim of Fiore, who demonstrated that the anti- Christ would soon appear and the end of the age would arrive by ©2000 The Teaching Company. 157

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Around eleven, the door swings wide, and Warren lays Dev in my arms before tiptoeing downstairs to his pallet in the living room, where the white-fog machine throws up each night a wall of noise beyond which we don’t exist. He’s working, going to grad school full-time. I have to breastfeed anyway, the argument goes. Then Mother flies up to help, a sober mother who sees frying chicken and assembling lasagna as a way to mend all the chaos she’d brought in the thirty years prior. All my life, she lived in a state of irritation predicated on either drinking too much or not having drunk enough. Never (is this true?) did I lie in bed and have her cook for me. As a child, when I got measles and chickenpox, she’d announce, I just don’t like sick people, leaving me feverishly staring at the TV’s flickering grown-ups. On this trip, Mother is transformed. She goes with me to the clinic every day, helping me load the baby in the car. Most evenings she brings my dinner steaming from a tray—doughy dumplings in oniony broth, chicken collapsed off its bones, turnip greens with fatback. Afternoons, she lies in bed with me, the baby between us kicking his covers off as I gaze at him. Mary, I believe you’re gonna stare the skin off him, she says. Sober she might be, but she’s still capricious as a cat. After about a week, when I’ve gotten used to counting on her, she disappears one day. I’d run out of diapers, and she’d rushed heroically off to the store. Her first hour away, I figure she got lost. An hour later, I decide she’s had a car wreck. An hour after that, I know she’s dead or stopped at a bar somewhere, so I wrap Dev’s bare ass in a towel held together by duct tape and lug him to the market in a stroller, finding no sign of our car in the lot. Late that afternoon Mother prances in with brochures for tours of Russia and China. She is—miraculously enough—cold sober. But she met a man at a travel agency next to the grocery store, and he took her to lunch and to see the glass flowers at the Harvard Museum. By then she’s built up enough goodwill during the visit that I let it slide. My therapist later reminds me that, however sober, Mother will forever be a haphazard fetcher of necessary items. Treat her more like a five-year-old, the therapist says, which method starts shaping expectations to the right size.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  One of God’s little prototypes , Hunter Thompson once said of some ne’er-do-well pal— never even considered for mass production . I pore over books about getting knocked up as if it weren’t standard order for every creature from cat to cockroach. Warren knows I’m logging my morning temperature, a sharp rise being a sign that you’ve dropped an egg into the chute. The first slightly overheated morning, it so happens that Hurricane Gloria has ripped down the phone lines on our block and shut down the library. Warren takes the bus home early like a man summoned to battle, and a month later, I miss my period. Already? he says, staring at me across the huge steaks I’ve splurged on, the half-empty bottle of nonalcoholic wine. You’re not excited, I say. He considers the burgundy fizz in the glass. Tastes like grape syrup. Not about the wine, you bonehead, I say. About the bun in the oven . Baby Otis? Warren says. It’s great. Pouring him more nonalcoholic wine, I say, You’re upset. You’re not excited. He stares across the candlelit table. No, he says. I mean, yes. It’s just… I’ve Ziploc-bagged the telltale pregnancy thermometer and stuck it in a vase between us, tying it with a ribbon like a daisy. He touches it with a finger as if it might be hot, saying, How reliable is this? I mean, should you go to the doctor or something? Despite his slight remove, I think what a perfect dad he’ll make, tempered as he is by gentleness. He once quoted to me Henry James’s three rules: Be kind, be kind, be kind. I’ve observed him with his sister’s kids, patiently tossing the whiffle ball underhand. They climb into his lap for stories. But few men—no matter how tenderhearted—go so gaga over the unborn as an inseminated woman will. At night I read one baby book after another, and most spare weekend hours I spend pawing through garage sales for cast-off cribs and baby clothes. And so begins what I see as his slow fade from me. We talk less and less, and since we both grew up in houses schooled to letting people vaporize into their own internal deserts with alacrity, we each let the other get smaller. At Christmas, his father says he knew I was pregnant when I said no to wine, and many toasts are drunk to my health and the baby’s. My mother-in-law promises to ante up all the baby clothes and linens, and Mr. Whitbread says he’ll cover my half of the rent. But driving home, Warren’s silence fills the car. What is it? I say. Nothing, he says. It’s nothing. You’re looking at me so sternly, I say. And truly staring at him, I see in his green eyes that some metal doors seemed to have slid shut. Buckle your seat belt, he says. You need to start wearing a seat belt. The car continues down the snowy and narrowing road .