Embarrassment

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 Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  It was a great shock to the girls. They are not used to such things. And if the good gentlemen will be so kind as to remember the femme de chambre . … It is not so pretty for the femme de chambre —that mess, that ugly mess. She shrugs her shoulders and winks her eye. A lamentable incident. But an accident. If the gentlemen will wait here a few moments the maid will bring the drinks. Would the gentlemen like to have some champagne? Yes? “I’d like to get out of here,” says the Hindu boy weakly. “Don’t feel so badly about it,” says the madam. “It is all over now. Mistakes will happen sometimes. Next time you will ask for the toilet.” She goes on about the toilet—one on every floor, it seems. And a bathroom too. “I have lots of English clients,” she says. “They are all gentlemen. The gentleman is a Hindu? Charming people, the Hindus. So intelligent. So handsome.” When we get into the street the charming young gentleman is almost weeping. He is sorry now that he bought a corduroy suit and the cane and the fountain pens. He talks about the eight vows that he took, the control of the palate, etc. On the march to Dandi even a plate of ice cream it was forbidden to take. He tells me about the spinning wheel—how the little band of Satyagrahists imitated the devotion of their master. He relates with pride how he walked beside the master and conversed with him. I have the illusion of being in the presence of one of the twelve disciples. During the next few days we see a good deal of each other; there are interviews to be arranged with the newspaper men and lectures to be given to the Hindus of Paris. It is amazing to see how these spineless devils order one another about; amazing also to see how ineffectual they are in all that concerns practical affairs. And the jealousy and the intrigues, the petty, sordid rivalries. Wherever there are ten Hindus together there is India with her sects and schisms, her racial, lingual, religious, political antagonisms. In the person of Gandhi they are experiencing for a brief moment the miracle of unity, but when he goes there will be a crash, an utter relapse into that strife and chaos so characteristic of the Indian people. The young Hindu, of course, is optimistic. He has been to America and he has been contaminated by the cheap idealism of the Americans, contaminated by the ubiquitous bathtub, the five-and-ten-cent store bric-a-brac, the bustle, the efficiency, the machinery, the high wages, the free libraries, etc., etc. His ideal would be to Americanize India. He is not at all pleased with Gandhi’s retrogressive mania. Forward , he says, just like a YMCA man.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Some afternoons were eye-opening adventures for me, and I soaked up every detail of what I could absorb about the outside world—the particulars of clothing and hairstyles and handbags I encountered as we made our way along the streets of nearby towns. On one occasion, Father brought the six oldest of us Little Sisters to the home of an elderly Yankee woman he had befriended, a widow named Trudy Byrd. The startled look on her face as we barged into her small, wood-paneled living room made it clear that we’d arrived uninvited. Father never made an appointment to visit with anyone—he simply showed up. On this occasion, he promptly seated himself in one of her chairs. “Trudy,” he said, “I have a special treat for you.” Father motioned to the six of us to gather in a semicircle in front of Mrs. Byrd and said in a cheerful voice, “Little Sisters, recite the twenty-nine Doctors of the Church for Trudy.” In unison we began: “Athanasius, Basil, Cyril of Jerusalem….” and on through the list to Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, number twenty-nine. No sooner had we finished than Father, without a moment’s hesitation, said, “Now, dears, sing a song for Trudy. How about the ‘Te Deum’?” I cringed. The “Te Deum” was the longest piece of Gregorian chant, all in Latin. Poor Mrs. Byrd sat patiently as we sang away, falling farther and farther off-key without the benefit of an accompanying organ. When we reached the end of the hymn, Father stood up and with a quick goodbye, we left as abruptly as we had entered. Embarrassed by our rudeness, I turned to Mrs. Byrd and gave her a small wave and a tiny bow. As we drove away, Father rubbed his hands together in excitement, saying, “Trudy Byrd will become a Catholic one day, I promise you. She received a grace today when you recited the Doctors of the Church and sang the ‘Te Deum.’ You just wait and see. God and Our Blessed Mother work in wonderful ways.” Father’s mood was lifted when he was doing what he most loved to do—trying to convert non-Catholics. Barging in on unsuspecting Protestants was part of his sacred mission to save souls. Sometime later when Mrs. Byrd died, Father announced her death from the altar. “Trudy, our dear friend Trudy Byrd, has died. She is now enjoying the beatific vision.” He paused and then went on. “I am sure that on her deathbed she made an act of contrition and that her soul has been saved.” I was stunned. How could this Protestant lady be seeing God for all eternity, while all the Catholics who lived out in the world, the pious frauds as Father referred to them, were going to land in hell? But Father was infallible within our midst, and if he said that Mrs. Byrd was in heaven, I had to believe it.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  He’s a barbarian... he’s a pig... he’s a...!” My companion is standing behind her, in the doorway, a look of utmost discomfiture on his face “What did you do?” I ask. “What did he do?” yells the madam. “I’ll show you. ... Come here!” And grabbing me by the arm she drags me into the next room. “There! There!” she screams, pointing to the bidet. “Come on, let’s get out,” says the Hindu boy. “Wait a minute, you can’t get out as easily as all that.” The madam is standing by the bidet, fuming and spitting. The girls are standing there too, with towels in their hands. The five of us are standing there looking at the bidet. There are two enormous turds floating in the water. The madam bends down and puts a towel over it. “Frightful! Frightful!” she wails. “Never have I seen anything like this! A pig! A dirty little pig!” The Hindu boy looks at me reproachfully. “You should have told me!” he says. “I didn’t know it wouldn’t go down. I asked you where to go and you told me to use that.” He is almost in tears. Finally the madam takes me to one side. She has become a little more reasonable now. After all, it was a mistake. Perhaps the gentlemen would like to come downstairs and order another drink—for the girls. It was a great shock to the girls. They are not used to such things. And if the good gentlemen will be so kind as to remember the femme de chambre. ... It is not so pretty for the femme de chambre—that mess, that ugly mess. She shrugs her shoulders and winks her eye. A lamentable incident. But an accident. If the gentlemen will wait here a few moments the maid will bring the drinks. Would the gentlemen like to have some champagne? Yes? “I’d like to get out of here,” says the Hindu boy weakly. “Don’t feel so badly about it,” says the madam. “It is all over now. Mistakes will happen sometimes. Next time you will ask for the toilet.” She goes on about the toilet—one on every floor, it seems. And a bathroom too. “I have lots of English clients,” she says. “They are all gentlemen. The gentleman is a Hindu? Charming people, the Hindus. So intelligent. So handsome.” When we get into the street the charming young gentleman is almost weeping. He is sorry now that he bought a corduroy suit and the cane and the fountain pens. He talks about the eight vows that he took, the control of the palate, etc. On the march to Dandi even a plate of ice cream it was forbidden to take. He tells me about the spinning wheel—how the little band of Satyagrahists imitated the devotion of their master.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Hi,” she peeped, uncomfortable. I’d forgotten that dopey part of teenage girls: the desire for love flashing in her face so directly that it embarrassed me. “And Sasha,” Julian said, “this is—” Julian’s eyes struggled to focus on me. “Evie,” I reminded him. “Right,” he said, “Evie. Man.” He drank from his beer, the amber bottle catching the blare of the lights. He was staring past me. Glancing around at the furniture, the contents of the bookshelves, like this was my house and he was the outsider. “God, you must’ve thought we were like, breaking in or something.” “I thought you were locals.” “There was a break-in here once,” Julian said. “When I was a kid. We weren’t here. They just stole our wet suits and a bunch of abalone from the freezer.” He took another drink. Sasha kept her eyes on Julian. She was in cutoffs, all wrong for the cold coast, and an oversize sweatshirt that must have been his. The cuffs gnawed and wet looking. Her makeup looked terrible, but it was more of a symbol, I suppose. I could see she was nervous with my eyes on her. I understood the worry. When I was that age, I was uncertain of how to move, whether I was walking too fast, whether others could see the discomfort and stiffness in me. As if everyone were constantly gauging my performance and finding it lacking. It occurred to me that Sasha was very young. Too young to be here with Julian. She seemed to know what I was thinking, staring at me with surprising defiance. “I’m sorry your dad didn’t tell you I’d be here,” I said. “I can sleep in the other room if you want the bigger bed. Or if you want to be here alone, I’ll figure something—” “Nah,” Julian said. “Sasha and I can sleep anywhere, can’t we, babe? And we’re just passing through. On our way north. A weed run,” he said. “I make the drive, L.A. to Humboldt, at least once a month.” It occurred to me that Julian thought I’d be impressed. “I don’t sell it or anything,” Julian went on, backpedaling. “Just transport. All you really need is a couple Watershed bags and a police

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen lifted troubled eyes to her face: ‘I want very much to be your friend if you’ll have me,’ she said; and then she flushed deeply. Angela held out her undamaged hand which Stephen took, but in great trepidation. Barely had it lain in her own for a moment, when she clumsily gave it back to its owner. Then Angela looked at her hand. Stephen thought: ‘Have I done something rude or awkward?’ And her heart thumped thickly against her side. She wanted to retrieve the lost hand and stroke it, but unfortunately it was now stroking Tony. She sighed, and Angela, hearing that sigh, glanced up, as though in inquiry. The butler arrived bringing in the tea. ‘Sugar?’ asked Angela. ‘No, thanks,’ said Stephen; then she suddenly changed her mind, ‘three lumps, please,’ she had always detested tea without sugar. The tea was too hot; it burnt her mouth badly. She grew scarlet and her eyes began to water. To cover her confusion she swallowed more tea, while Angela looked tactfully out of the window. But when she considered it safe to turn round, her expression, although still faintly amused, had something about it that was tender. And now she exerted all her subtlety and skill to make this queer guest of hers talk more freely, and Angela’s subtlety was no mean thing, neither was her skill if she chose to exert it. Very gradually the girl became more at her ease; it was up-hill work but Angela triumphed, so that in the end Stephen talked about Morton, and a very little about herself also. And somehow, although Stephen appeared to be talking, she found that she was learning many things about her hostess; for instance, she learnt that Angela was lonely and very badly in need of her friendship. Most of Angela’s troubles seemed to centre round Ralph, who was not always kind and seldom agreeable. Remembering Ralph she could well believe this, and she said: ‘I don’t think your husband liked me.’ Angela sighed: ‘Very probably not. Ralph never likes the people I do; he objects to my friends on principle I think.’ Then Angela talked more openly of Ralph. Just now he was staying away with his mother, but next week he would be returning to The Grange, and then he was certain to be disagreeable: ‘Whenever he’s been with his mother he’s that way—she puts him against me, I never know why—unless, of course, it’s because I’m not English. I’m the stranger within the gates, it may be that.’ And when Stephen protested, ‘Oh, yes indeed, I’m quite often made to feel like a stranger.

• From The Girls (2016)

  — The party ended after dark. A few of the tiki torches stayed lit, sending their bleary flames streaking into the navy night. The vivid oversize cars lumbering down the driveway, my father calling out goodbyes while my mother stacked napkins and brushed olive pits, washed in other people’s saliva, into her open palm. My father restarted the record; I looked out my bedroom window and saw him trying to get my mother to dance. “I’ll be looking at the moon,” he sang, the moon’s far-off face the focus of so much longing back then. I knew I should hate my father. But I only felt foolish. Embarrassed— not for him, but for my mother. Smoothing her full skirt, asking me how she looked. The way she sometimes had flecks of food in her teeth and blushed when I told her so. The times she stood at the window when my father was late coming home, trying to decode new meaning out of the empty driveway. She must know what was going on—she had to have known—but she wanted him anyway. Like Connie, jumping for the beer knowing she would look stupid. Even Tamar’s boyfriend, eating with his frantic, bottomless need. Chewing faster than he could swallow. He knew how your hunger could expose you. The drunk was wearing off. I was sleepy and hollow, cast uncomfortably back to myself. I had scorn for everything: my room with my childhood leftovers, the trim of lace around my desk. The plastic record player with a chunky Bakelite handle, a wet-looking beanbag chair that stuck to the backs of my legs. The party with its eager hors d’oeuvres, the men wearing aloha shirts in a sartorial clamor for festivity. It all seemed to add up to an explanation for why my father would want something else. I imagined Tamar with her throat circled by a ribbon, lying on some carpet in some too-small Palo Alto apartment. My father there—watching her? sitting in a chair? The perverse voltage of Tamar’s pink lipstick. I tried to hate her but couldn’t. I couldn’t even hate my father. The only person left was my mother, who’d let it happen, who’d been as soft and malleable as dough. Handing money over, cooking dinner every night, and no wonder my father had wanted something else —Tamar’s outsize opinions, her life like a TV show about summer. It was a time when I imagined getting married in a simple, wishful way.

• From The Girls (2016)

  the bumbling encounter. Through the thin wall, I could hear the sounds of Sasha and Julian settling into the other room. The floor creaking, the closet doors being opened. They were probably putting sheets on the bare mattress. Shaking away years of accumulated dust. I imagined Sasha looking at the family photographs on the shelf, Julian as a toddler holding a giant red telephone. Julian at eleven or twelve, on a whale- watching boat, his face salt lashed and wondrous. She was probably projecting all that innocence and sweetness on the almost-adult man who eased off his shorts and patted the bed for her to join him. The blurry leavings of amateur tattoos rippling along his arms. I heard the groan of mattress. I wasn’t surprised that they would fuck. But then there was Sasha’s voice, whining like a porno. High and curdled. Didn’t they know I was right next door? I turned my back to the wall, shutting my eyes. Julian growling. “Are you a cunt?” he said. The headboard jacking against the wall. “Are you?” — I’d think, later, that Julian must have known I could hear everything. 1969

• From The Girls (2016)

  the lip of tape but never finding it. There were no seams, no interruptions —just the landmarks of your life that had become so absorbed in you that you couldn’t even acknowledge them. The chipped willow-print dinner plate I favored for forgotten reasons. The wallpaper in the hallway so known to me as to be entirely incommunicable to another person—every fading copse of pastel palm trees, the particular personalities I ascribed to each blooming hibiscus. My mother stopped enforcing regular mealtimes, leaving grapes in a colander in the sink or bringing home glass jars of dilled miso soup from her macrobiotic cooking class. Seaweed salads dripping with a nauseating amber oil. “Eat this for breakfast every day,” she said, “and you’ll never have another zit.” I cringed, pulling my fingers away from the pimple on my forehead. There had been many late-night planning sessions between my mother and Sal, the older woman she had met in group. Sal was endlessly available to my mother, coming over at odd hours, impatient for drama. Wearing tunics with mandarin collars, her gray hair cut short so her ears showed, making her look like an elderly boy. My mother spoke to Sal about acupuncture, of the movement of energies around meridian points. The charts. “I just want some space,” my mother said, “for me. This world takes it out of you, doesn’t it?” Sal shifted on her wide rear, nodded. Dutiful as a bridled pony. My mother and Sal were drinking her woody tea from bowls, a new affectation my mother had picked up. “It’s European,” she’d said defensively, though I had said nothing. When I walked through the kitchen, both women stopped talking, but my mother cocked her head. “Baby,” she said, gesturing me closer. She squinted. “Part your bangs from the left. More flattering.” I’d parted my hair that way to cover the pimple, gone scabby from picking. I’d coated it with vitamin E oil but couldn’t stop myself from messing with it, flaking on toilet paper to soak up the blood. Sal agreed. “Round face shape,” she said with authority. “Bangs might not be a good idea at all, for her.” I imagined how it would feel to topple Sal over in her chair, how her bulk would bring her down fast. The bark tea spilling on the linoleum.

• From The Girls (2016)

  Christmas, she had once sent Connie a compact of cracked blush and a Fair Isle sweater that was so small neither of us could squeeze our head through the hole. “The colors are nice,” I said hopefully. Connie just shrugged. “She’s a bitch.” Peter crashed through the front door, dumping a book on the kitchen table. He nodded at me in his mild way and started making a sandwich— pulling out slices of white bread, an acid-bright jar of mustard. “Where’s the princess?” he said. His mouth was chapped a violent pink. Slightly coated, I imagined, with pot resin. “Getting a jacket.” “Ah.” He slapped the bread together and took a bite. He watched me while he chewed. “Looking good these days, Boyd,” he said, then swallowed hard. His assessment knocked me so off balance that I felt I had almost imagined it. Was I even supposed to say anything back? I’d already memorized the sentence. He turned then at a noise from the front door, a girl in a denim jacket, her shape muffled by the screen. Pamela, his girlfriend. They were a constant couple, porous with each other; wearing similar clothes, silently passing the newspaper back and forth on the couch or watching The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Picking lint off each other as if from their own selves. I had seen Pamela at the high school, those times I’d ridden my bike past the dun-colored building. The rectangles of half-dry grass, the low, wide steps where older girls were always sitting in poor-boy shirts, pinkies linked, palming packs of Kents. The whiff of death among them, the boyfriends in humid jungles. They were like adults, even in the way they flicked the ashes of their cigarettes with weary snaps of the wrist. “Hey, Evie,” Pamela said. It was easy for some girls to be nice. To remember your name. Pamela was beautiful, it was true, and I felt that submerged attraction to her that everyone felt for the beautiful. The sleeves of her jean jacket were bulked at her elbows, her eyes doped looking from liner. Her legs were tan and bare. My own legs were dotted with the pricks of mosquito bites I worried into open wounds, my calves hatched with pale hairs.

• From Notes of a Native Son (1955)

  In those days my mother was given to the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies. As they were born, I took them over with one hand and held a book with the other. The children probably suffered, though they have since been kind enough to deny it, and in this way I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and A Tale of Two Cities over and over and over again; in this way, in fact, I read just about everything I could get my hands on—except the Bible, probably because it was the only book I was encouraged to read. I must also confess that I wrote—a great deal—and my first professional triumph, in any case, the first effort of mine to be seen in print, occurred at the age of twelve or thereabouts, when a short story I had written about the Spanish revolution won some sort of prize in an extremely short-lived church newspaper. I remember the story was censored by the lady editor, though I don’t remember why, and I was outraged. Also wrote plays, and songs, for one of which I received a letter of congratulations from Mayor La Guardia, and poetry, about which the less said, the better. My mother was delighted by all these goings-on, but my father wasn’t; he wanted me to be a preacher. When I was fourteen I became a preacher, and when I was seventeen I stopped. Very shortly thereafter I left home. For God knows how long I struggled with the world of commerce and industry—I guess they would say they struggled with me —and when I was about twenty-one I had enough done of a novel to get a Saxton Fellowship. When I was twenty-two the fellowship was over, the novel turned out to be unsalable, and I started waiting on tables in a Village restaurant and writing book reviews—mostly, as it turned out, about the Negro problem, concerning which the color of my skin made me automatically an expert. Did another book, in company with photographer Theodore Pelatowski, about the store-front churches in Harlem. This book met exactly the same fate as my first—fellowship, but no sale. (It was a Rosenwald Fellowship.) By the time I was twenty-four I had decided to stop reviewing books about the Negro problem—which, by this time, was only slightly less horrible in print than it was in life—and I packed my bags and went to France, where I finished, God knows how, Go Tell It on the Mountain. Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent—which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it. On the other hand, it is only because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important.

• From Notes of a Native Son (1955)

  Thus the sight of a face from home is not invariably a source of joy, but can also quite easily become a source of embarrassment or rage. The American Negro in Paris is forced at last to exercise an undemocratic discrimination rarely practiced by Americans, that of judging his people, duck by duck, and distinguishing them one from another. Through this deliberate isolation, through lack of numbers, and above all through his own overwhelming need to be, as it were, forgotten, the American Negro in Paris is very nearly the invisible man. The wariness with which he regards his colored kin is a natural extension of the wariness with which he regards all of his countrymen. At the beginning, certainly, he cherishes rather exaggerated hopes of the French. His white countrymen, by and large, fail to justify his fears, partly because the social climate does not encourage an outward display of racial bigotry, partly out of their awareness of being ambassadors, and finally, I should think, because they are themselves relieved at being no longer forced to think in terms of color. There remains, nevertheless, in the encounter of white Americans and Negro Americans the high potential of an awkward or an ugly situation. The white American regards his darker brother through the distorting screen created by a lifetime of conditioning. He is accustomed to regard him either as a needy and deserving martyr or as the soul of rhythm, but he is more than a little intimidated to find this stranger so many miles from home. At first he tends instinctively, whatever his intelligence may belatedly clamor, to take it as a reflection on his personal honor and good-will; and at the same time, with that winning generosity, at once good-natured and uneasy, which characterizes Americans, he would like to establish communication, and sympathy, with his compatriot. “And how do you feel about it?” he would like to ask, “it” being anything—the Russians, Betty Grable, the Place de la Concorde. The trouble here is that any “it,” so tentatively offered, may suddenly become loaded and vibrant with tension, creating in the air between the two thus met an intolerable atmosphere of danger. The Negro, on the other hand, via the same conditioning which constricts the outward gesture of the whites, has learned to anticipate: as the mouth opens he divines what the tongue will utter.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  The program was a catastrophe. I was on first with Linda Lovelace, who explained that she had done what she did in Deep Throat only because her then lover had put a revolver to her head and threatened to pull the trigger. I can remember none of the questions I was asked, but recall vividly the lurid set and my stunned horror at the unfolding nightmare. During the interval a scantily clad band played a song called “I Wanna Spend the Night with You!” Then Oliver Reed joined us, but he was so drunk by this time that he had to be almost carried onto the stage by the fourth guest, a hefty woman whose Mills and Boon best-sellers had made her a multimillionaire. Once settled in his chair, Reed was uncontrollable, and embarked on a fifteen-minute rant, which lasted until the show mercifully came to an end. The critics panned it, of course, and the BBC was forced to cancel the series after the second sin, which, I think, was covetousness. I particularly remember the brilliantly funny piece written by Nancy Banks-Smith in the Guardian, because her only kind word was for me: “a relatively sane ex-nun.” She noted her bewilderment that all the members of the studio audience had Scottish accents. Did the BBC think that lust was a peculiarly Scottish vice? If so, that would put an entirely new slant on the song “The Campbells Are Coming.” She concluded that she had always maintained that the sins of any show should be forgiven if it was live. But that was before she had seen Sin on Saturday. The experience convinced me that I could not make a career out of being a former nun—even a relatively sane one. I would have to find something else to write about. But what? After its demise, Sin on Saturday achieved a posthumous fame. Periodically, during a holiday season, it appears regularly in programs that show clips of the worst television programs ever made. And there I am, in a green silk dress, twenty years younger, walking onto the set behind Linda, with no means of knowing what was about to happen. A fortnight later, I was sitting in my flat desultorily reading Little Dorrit. My former colleagues had all returned to school, and though I did not really wish to join them, it was hard to find anything truly constructive to do. My current project was to reread the works of Charles Dickens, but it was difficult to work up any enthusiasm for the task. I still had no inkling of how I was going to spend the rest of my life, and knew that sooner or later I would have to find some kind of job. And then, as if on cue, the telephone rang, and yet again my life took a new turn.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  As I pushed back the heavy glass door, I was confronted with a very different scene from the one I had just been imagining. The noise alone was an assault, as the unrestrained, babbling roar of four hundred students slapped me in the face. To encourage constant prayer and recollection, our rule had stipulated that we refrain from speech all day; talking was permitted only for an hour after lunch and after dinner, when the community gathered for sewing and general recreation. We were trained to walk quietly, to open and close doors as silently as possible, to laugh in a restrained trill, and if speech was unavoidable in the course of our duties, to speak only “a few words in a low voice.” Lent was an especially silent time. But there was no Lenten atmosphere in college tonight. Students hailed one another noisily across the room, yelled greetings to friends, and argued vigorously, with wild, exaggerated gestures. Instead of the monochrome convent scene— black-and-white habits, muffled, apologetic clinking of cutlery, and the calm, expressionless voice of the reader—there was a riot of color, bursts of exuberant laughter, and shouts of protest. But whether I liked it or not, this was my world now. I am not quite sure of the reason for what happened next. It may have been that part of my mind was absent, still grappling with my essay, or that I was disoriented by the contrast between the convent scene I had been envisaging and the cheerful profanity of the spectacle in front of me. But instead of bowing briefly to the principal in mute apology for my lateness, as college etiquette demanded, I found to my horror that I had knelt down and kissed the floor. This was the scene with which I opened Beginning the World, my first attempt to tell the story of my return to secular life. I realize that it presents me in a ridiculous and undignified light, but it still seems a good place to start, because it was a stark illustration of my plight. Outwardly I probably looked like any other student in the late 1960s, but I continued to behave like a nun. Unless I exerted constant vigilance, my mind, heart, and body betrayed me. Without giving it a second’s thought, I had instinctively knelt in the customary attitude of contrition and abasement. We always kissed the floor when we entered a room late and disturbed a community duty. This had seemed strange at first, but after a few weeks it had become second nature. Yet a quick glance at the girls seated at the tables next to the door, who were staring at me incredulously, reminded me that what was normal behavior in the convent was little short of deranged out here.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “I’d know you anywhere,” he says, “even with the hair. ” “I’d know you, too, even without it.” He’s not really without it, just has less on his head, more on his face. He laughs. And just like that, she’s fifteen again. Except she’s not. —THEY’RE SEATED at different tables at lunch. She’s with Christina and Jack, Henry and Leah, four others. He’s across the room with Gaby and her handsome husband, their grown children and young grandchildren, and two men who were boys at Janet then, boys who helped rescue the trapped passengers. None of her old crowd is here. Suzanne lives in Seattle, married to a neurosurgeon. Miri tries to see her every year. Robo is divorced and has a gift shop in Westfield. Aside from two years at Boston U, she’s never left New Jersey. Eleanor is a professor of mathematics at Purdue, married to an economist. She hasn’t won the Nobel Prize yet and didn’t laugh when, a few years ago, Miri mentioned the possibility. Some things aren’t funny, Eleanor told her. Miri and Mason steal looks at one another through lunch. Miri doesn’t blush the way Rusty does, but she feels her cheeks flush. She drinks two glasses of wine, too fast. It goes straight to her head. You go to my head… She must have sung that line out loud because the woman next to her, a daughter of the Secretary of War who was killed when the second plane crashed, says, “What?” Miri knows she sometimes sings a line from a song out loud when she means to sing it only inside her head. “I was just thinking of an old song,” she says. “Don’t you love the old songs?” “I do,” Miri says. “My daughter finds me hopeless that way.” “Mine finds me hopeless in every way.” “Yes, that, too.” They laugh. “My father was a wonderful person,” she tells Miri. “I’ve never stopped missing him.” “My uncle, Henry Ammerman, wrote about your family,” Miri says. “The young reporter?” the woman asks, eyeing Henry, who is seated on Miri’s other side. “I remember him. I was at the apartment the day he came to talk to my mother.” “Henry talked to everyone after the crashes. Everything I know about writing I learned from him.” “You’re a writer?” “Reporter, now columnist, for the Las Vegas Sun. ” “Las Vegas…” she says, in a tone Miri has heard a million times, as if ordinary people can’t possibly live there. The program begins as dessert is served, plates of cookies and some kind of mousse that Miri pushes away. The mayor introduces Henry Ammerman. Oh, god, it’s going to be in alphabetical order? She’s going to be next? She doesn’t want to go next. Doesn’t want to get up in front of these people at all, especially not in front of Mason. “He was a young reporter for the Daily Post then,” the mayor says. “Today, he’s a prizewinning journalist for The Washington Post.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  After lunch, my friend who suggested the HARD TO GET tattoo invites me to her office, where she offers to Google you on my behalf. She’s going to see if the Internet reveals a preferred pronoun for you, since despite or due to the fact that we’re spending every free moment in bed together and already talking about moving in, I can’t bring myself to ask. Instead I’ve become a quick study in pronoun avoidance. The key is training your ear not to mind hearing a person’s name over and over again. You must learn to take cover in grammatical cul-de-sacs, relax into an orgy of specificity. You must learn to tolerate an instance beyond the Two, precisely at the moment of attempting to represent a partnership—a nuptial, even. Nuptials are the opposite of a couple. There are no longer binary machines: question-answer, masculine-feminine, man-animal, etc. This could be what a conversation is—simply the outline of a becoming. Expert as one may become at such a conversation, to this day it remains almost impossible for me to make an airline reservation or negotiate with my human resources department on our behalf without flashes of shame or befuddlement. It’s not really my shame or befuddlement—it’s more like I’m ashamed for (or simply pissed at) the person who keeps making all the wrong presumptions and has to be corrected, but who can’t be corrected because the words are not good enough. How can the words not be good enough? Lovesick on the floor of my friend’s office, I squint up at her as she scrolls through an onslaught of bright information I don’t want to see. I want the you no one else can see, the you so close the third person never need apply. “Look, here’s a quote from John Waters, saying, ‘She’s very handsome.’ So maybe you should use ‘she.’ I mean, it’s John Waters.” That was years ago, I roll my eyes from the floor. Things might have changed. When making your butch-buddy film, By Hook or By Crook, you and your cowriter, Silas Howard, decided that the butch characters would call each other “he” and “him,” but in the outer world of grocery stores and authority figures, people would call them “she” and “her.” The point wasn’t that if the outer world were schooled appropriately re: the characters’ preferred pronouns, everything would be right as rain. Because if the outsiders called the characters “he,” it would be a different kind of he. Words change depending on who speaks them; there is no cure. The answer isn’t just to introduce new words (boi, cisgendered, andro-fag) and then set out to reify their meanings (though obviously there is power and pragmatism here). One must also become alert to the multitude of possible uses, possible contexts, the wings with which each word can fly. Like when you whisper, You’re just a hole, letting me fill you up. Like when I say husband.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  churchgoing people who did not endorse such behavior. If the women in curlers and the waitress boasting her tattoos reminded readers of trailer trash, the rioting rednecks were more like the wild-eyed, off-his-rocker Ernest T. Bass of The Andy Griffith Show . By 1959, the Times Literary Supplement acknowledged that it was the “ugly faces” of “rednecks, crackers, tar-heels, and other poor white trash” that would be forever remembered from Central High. 52 Despite the embarrassment he caused, Orval Faubus did not disappear. Freed from the national media spotlight, he secured reelection in 1958, and went on to serve three more terms. As a governor who refused to lay down his arms, he continued to portray himself as a staunch defender of white people’s democratic right to oppose “forced integration.” Praising his “doggedness,” one southern journalist traced Faubus’s characteristic strength to his Ozark mountain days, when he trudged five miles, dressed in overalls, to a dilapidated school. A hillbilly could get ahead down here. Thus Faubus strategically accepted a loss of support from among the better classes, who resented redneck power in any form. Like Mississippi’s Vardaman and his own state’s Jeff Davis before him, Orval Faubus used the threat of poor white thuggery to stay in power. And it worked. 53 In the same year that Little Rock consumed the news media, Hollywood produced a feature-length film that capitalized on the redneck image. Starring Andy Griffith and directed by Elia Kazan, A Face in the Crowd was a completely different vehicle for Griffith than his subsequent television role as the friendly sheriff. It was a dark drama that followed “Lonesome Rhodes,” a down-and-out man discovered playing guitar in an Arkansas jail, and traced his rapid rise into the national limelight as a powerful and ruthless TV star. For reviewers, Griffith’s performance was a cross between Huey Long and Elvis Presley—a hollering, singing “redneck gone berserk with power.” 54 The plot of A Face in the Crowd was only a part of its story. The surrounding publicity focused on Kazan’s directing technique. To get Griffith into character, he exploited the actor’s childhood memories of being called white trash. In this way, it was an unusual film, and it offered a two-part message about class. First, it reminded audiences of the danger in elevating a lower-class redneck above his accustomed station and giving him power—for the redneck personality on- screen was a volatile mix of anger, cunning, and megalomania. Second, Kazan’s exploitation of the backstory on Griffith delivered a stern rebuke of southern culture, where the poor were treated like dirt. 55 Kazan tried his hand at another southern story, this time set during the Depression. Wild River (1960) concerned the TVA, as the construction of a dam

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  —MASON IS HOSTING a small reception for Gaby and her family in his hotel suite, at 5 p.m. He invites Miri. She’s the first to arrive and is embarrassed. She’s changed into pants and a sweater, western boots, the cashmere shawl draped over her shoulders. She feels more like herself. She’s flossed, brushed her teeth and gargled with mouthwash. Ever the dentist’s wife. She checks out the room, looks out the window. Anything to avoid sitting down facing him. He can tell she’s uncomfortable and says, “I’m sure the others will be here any minute.” He smiles at her, looking into her eyes. But she quickly looks away. “Do you come to Elizabeth often?” she asks. “Almost never. It’s changed, and not for the better.” “I heard Janet closed.” “In ’62, when the state eliminated orphanages. End of an era. It’s been condemned since the seventies. Kids break in at night to party. Makes me sad.” He offers her a glass of wine. “Just water,” she says. “I read your piece on Longy,” he says, handing her the water glass. She laughs. “I was a senior at college. Sold it to the Las Vegas Sun. A heady experience. They hired me based on that story.” “I like your theory that he never would have hanged himself, that it was a gangland slaying disguised as suicide.” “I still believe that.” “Jack sent other stories, too. The one about the fire at the MGM Grand.” “I don’t really specialize in disaster, but when there’s a disaster, like my uncle Henry, I’m there.” That was the disaster that led Andy into forensic dentistry, but she doesn’t tell that to Mason. “Vegas must be a good place for stories,” Mason says. “If you like weird stories, it’s great.” “Well, I’m proud of you.” Again, he looks into her eyes. Again, she looks away. Gulps down the whole glass of water. She’s saved by a knock on the door. Gaby and her family, and a few minutes later, the boys from Janet. And Phil Stein. “Oh my god,” she says. “You’re Phil Stein, aren’t you?” “I am.” “I loved your mother.” “And she loved you. Never stopped talking about you, even after you moved away.” “Is she…” It’s awkward, asking if a parent is still living. He shakes his head. “She died years ago. Complications of diabetes and a stroke.” “I’m sorry. She was so kind to me.” “She was a good person. I’m still trying to convince my sister of that.” “Mother-daughter relationships can be difficult,” Miri says. “Tell me about it. I gave Mom a dog for her sixtieth birthday. My sister almost killed me. The dog reminded Mom of Fred. Remember Fred?” “We have a dog named Fred,” Miri tells him, “and another called Goldie.” “Goldie . My mother would have loved knowing that.” They both laugh. “Do you have a family?” she asks. “Divorced,” he says. “Like half our generation.” “Sorry.” “But I have two kids.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Then what?” “Suppose she does?” Gus laughs and pulls her closer. The rowdy cousins cheer when the band switches to rock. Abby hands out earplugs to anyone in need. The little children chase each other up and down the lawn. Von has too much to drink and rambles on toasting the bride and groom. Lamb comes to his rescue but Patti leaves in a huff anyway, taking the two little girls with her. Dorset moves in for the kill. She’s been eyeing him ever since the party last night. Late in the afternoon, after the cake has been sliced, after the requisite pictures of bride feeding groom and groom feeding bride, the cousins carry Bru down to the pond and throw him in. When one of them picks up Caitlin and slings her over his shoulder she pounds on his back and cries, “Not in my wedding dress, asshole … it’s an antique!” He puts her down and she steps out of it, leaving it on the grassy bank above the pond. They throw her off the dock wearing just her long ivory slip. Bru catches her in the water. They kiss. He wades out of the pond with her in his arms, as if he’s carrying her over the threshold. The photographer captures the moment. “You’re next, Victoria,” another of the cousins says, sweeping her up and tossing her in from the end of the dock. Then they all jump in, one after the other, the cousins, their wives and girlfriends, most of the young guests and some of the not so young, all in their finery. But not Sharkey, who has taken Wren out in the dinghy, and not Daniel or Gus, who wait for Vix to emerge. “You can’t stay in all day,” Gus calls, laughing. She feels awkward and self-conscious, like an unwilling contestant in a wet T-shirt contest. When she finally comes out, her arms folded across her chest, Gus wraps a beach towel around her. “You always were on the shy side, Cough Drop.” “Are you going to keep calling me Cough Drop?” “What should I call you?” “How about Vix?” “Vix …” he says, trying it out. Upstairs, Caitlin hands her a pair of shorts and a T-shirt so she can get out of her wet clothes. Caitlin has already changed into jeans. She’s zipping up her backpack, preparing to leave for her honeymoon, a camping trip to Maine. “Thanks, Vix … for being here with me.” She looks up at the photo of the two of them at twelve. “Who says a picture isn’t worth a hundred words?” “Thousand,” Vix says. “I think it’s a thousand words.” Caitlin laughs. “We were a great team, weren’t we?” “Yes.” Caitlin hugs her. “I’ll always love you. Promise you’ll always love me?” “You know I will.” And it’s true, Vix thinks, no matter what, she’ll always love Caitlin. Caitlin hoists on her backpack. “Did you ask Bru … about that summer?” “Yes,” she lies.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “Like seeing a long-lost friend,” Miri tells her. “Like seeing you.” “I saw your goodbye kiss. I doubt if that’s how you’d say goodbye to me.” Miri feels her face flush. “It didn’t mean anything.” “If you say so.” Change the subject before this escalates, Miri tells herself. “So, Warren Beatty?” “You like that story?” “It grabbed my attention.” “He was great.” “So, it’s true?” “Maybe yes, maybe no.” “We’re back to that?” “Ask me another one, Girl Reporter.” “How did you know Kathy Stein was on that plane?” Natalie pauses for just a moment. “Ruby told me.” “No, really…how did you know?” “Sorry if you don’t like my answer but it’s the truth. Next…” Miri reminds herself not to push it. “Corinne?” “She and her hubby spend winters in Palm Beach, summers on Nantucket. They play golf. I don’t know how they can stand it. But, then, I never understood my mother. I suppose you see a lot of Fern.” “I do. It’s nice for Dr. O.” “You still call him that, after all these years?” “I tried Arthur but it never felt right.” They get their coffees, carry them to a quiet corner, where Miri says, “He’s sick.” “I heard.” “We’re hoping you’ll come to see him.” “I was waiting for his eightieth birthday.” “You probably shouldn’t wait that long.” “August? Are you saying August is too long to wait?” Miri nods. “Shit.” “Yeah.” —ON THE PLANE Miri is seated next to a young girl. “I’m Lily,” she says. “I’m nine. My dad is a pilot.” “Is he flying this plane?” Miri asks, sure that if he is he’ll be extra careful with his daughter on board. “No. He flies to Europe,” she says, kicking the seat in front of her. “I just came back from Portugal. Have you been there?” She doesn’t wait for Miri to tell her she hasn’t been to Portugal. “You should go. They have a lot of tiles there. Do you like tiles?” “Yes.” “Everything is tiled except your toothbrush.” Miri laughs. “You think I’m joking but I’m not,” Lily says. “Are you going to Vegas to gamble?” “No,” Miri tells her. “I live there.” “Me, too. With my mother. My dad lives all over the place. Do you think it’s weird?” Does she mean weird that her parents live in different places? “Vegas,” she says. “Do you think it’s a weird place to live?” “I’ve lived there since I was fifteen. My children grew up there.” “And they turned out okay? Because my dad thinks it’s not a good place to grow up.” “They’re fine.” Well, she thinks, two of them are anyway, but she’s not getting into that. “What were you doing in New Jersey?” Lily asks. “Visiting old friends.” “Was it fun?” Miri thinks before answering. “In a way it was. Yes.” The flight attendant stands at the front of the cabin. “May I have your attention?” She demonstrates the proper way to fasten your seat belt.

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  One cringey memory that persists is when our leaders brought out large rolls of paper, which we spread out on the floor. The girls lay down on the paper, and our mothers traced the outlines of our bodies in marker. Then, together, as mother and daughter, we were supposed to draw the changes we'd expect on our bodies. Breasts on our chests. Armpit and pubic hair. I tried to be funny and made stinky green waves coming out of my armpits and a puka-shell choker around my neck, but there was no evading how abominable this entire exercise was. My future boobs didn't have nipples. Neither of us could bear to draw nipples. Just big, hulking, grape-scented, purple U's on my chest. [...] If it hurt her so much for me to grow up, I wouldn't. That moment determined my actions for the next few years: I did not tell her when I got my period and instead stuffed my underwear with toilet paper and hid my stained clothes in the attic. I bound my chest, wore baggy T-shirts, and hunched to keep my developing breasts from showing—even when she slammed her hand between my shoulder blades and snarled that I looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.