Grief

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.

Page 27 of 263 · 20 per page

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Kitty started in my arms as if a pistol had been fired, and took a half-dozen steps, very rapidly, away. A woman - Esther, the conjuror’s assistant - appeared on the other side of the open doorway. She was pale, and looked terribly grave. She said: ‘Kitty, Nan, you won’t believe it.’ She reached for her handkerchief, and put it to her mouth. ‘There’s some boys just come, from the Charing Cross Hospital. They are saying Gully Sutherland is there’ - this was the comic singer who had appeared with Kitty at the Canterbury Palace - ‘they are saying Gully is there - that he has got drunk, and shot himself dead!’ It was true - we all heard, next day, how horribly true it was. I should never have suspected it, but had learned since coming to London that Gully was known in the business as something of a lush. He never finished a show without calling into a public-house on his way home; and on the night of our party he had been drinking at Fulham. Here, all hidden in a corner stall, he had overheard a fellow at the bar say that Gully Sutherland was past his best, and should make way for funnier artistes; that he had sat through Gully’s latest routine, and all the gags were flat ones. The bar-man said that when Gully heard this he went to the man and shook him by the hand, and bought him a beer, then he bought beer for everyone. Then he went home and took a gun, and fired it at his own heart ... We didn’t know all of this that night at Marylebone, we knew only that Gully had had a kind of fit, and taken his life; but the news put an end to our party and left us all, like Esther, nervous and grave. Kitty and I, on hearing the news, went up to the stage - she seizing my hand as we stumbled up the steps, but in grief now, I thought, rather than anything warmer. The manager had had all the house-lights lit, and the band had lain their instruments aside; some people were weeping, the cornet-player who had tickled me had his arm about a trembling girl. Esther cried, ‘Oh isn’t it awful, isn’t it horrible?’ - I suppose the wine made everybody feel the shock of it the more.

• From City of Night (1963)

  At first the day was beautiful, with the sky blue as it gets only in memories of Texas childhood. Nowhere else in the world, I will think later, is there a sky as clear, as blue, as Deep as that. I will remember other skies: like inverted cups, this shade of blue or gray or black, with limits, like painted rooms. But in the Southwest, the sky was millions and millions of miles deep of blue—clear, magic, electric blue. (I would stare at it sometimes, inexplicably racked with excitement, thinking: If I get a stick miles long and stand on a mountain, I’ll puncture Heaven—which I thought of then as an island somewhere in the vast sky—and then Heaven will come tumbling down to earth....) Then, that day, standing watching Winnie, I see the gray clouds massing and rolling in the horizon, sweeping suddenly terrifyingly across the sky as if to battle, giant mushrooms exploding, blending into that steely blanket. Now youre locked down here so Lonesome suddenly youre cold. The wind sweeps up the dust, tumbleweeds claw their way across the dirt.... I moved Winnie against the wall of the house, to shelter her from the needlepointed dust. The clouds have shut out the sky completely, the wind is howling violently, and it is Awesomely dark. My mother keeps calling me to come in.... From the porch, I look back at my dog. The water in the bowl beside her has turned into mud.... Inside now, I rushed to the window. And the wind is shrieking into the house—the curtains thrashing at the furniture like giant lost birds, flapping against the walls, and my two brothers and two sisters are running about the beat-up house closing the windows, removing the sticks we propped them open with. I hear my father banging on the frames with a hammer, patching the broken panes with cardboard. Inside, the house was suddenly serene, safe from the wind; but staring out the window in cold terror, I see boxes and weeds crashing against the walls outside, almost tumbling over my sick dog. I long for something miraculous to draw across the sky to stop the wind.... I squeezed against the pane as close as I could get to Winnie: If I keep looking at her, she cant possibly die! A tumbleweed rolled over her. I ran out. I stood over Winnie, shielding my eyes from the slashing wind, knelt over her to see if her stomach was still moving, breathing. And her eyes open looking at me. I listen to her heart (as I used to listen to my mother’s heart when she was sick so often and I would think she had died, leaving me Alone—because my father for me then existed only as someone who was around somehow; taking furious shape later, fiercely). Winnie is dead.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Te lo garantizo chica, ver películas no sería todo lo que haríamos si nos quedáramos en cama todo el día. Desenrollo otro. Subir a un globo aerostático. Mi respiración se acelera mientras sigo abriendo papeles, uno detrás del otro. Adoptar un perro. ¿Cómo haces tu propia cerveza? Me gustaría intentar eso. Llevar a mis hijos a paseos al lago en los veranos. Instalar un tendedero en el jardín de mi futura casa. ¡Ya nadie hace eso! Parpadeo. Acabo de instalar un tendedor. Ella lo tiene ahora. Continúo. Correr un maratón. Tener una cobija en la cajuela para picnics espontáneos. Ver un desfile. Aprender a hacer chili. Ir en cuatro ruedas. Nadar en el océano. Llenar la camioneta de Pike con mantas y almohadas e ir a mirar las estrellas. Sigo leyendo papel tras papel, finalmente sin ser capaz de leer más y alejándolos. —Mierda. —Respiro, mis ojos ardiendo. Puedo darle todo esto. Cada una de esas cosas, sus sueños, la vida que desea, puedo dárselo. Todo eso. ¿En qué pensaba? ¿Qué ella quería poder, dinero, y fama? ¿Qué dijo en una de sus primeras noches aquí? No me importa la boda. Yo solo quiero la vida. Ella quiere un hogar. Quiere que las personas se amen. Quería que la quisiera. Es todo lo que quería. Lágrimas que no dejaré caer brotan de mis ojos. —¿Qué demonios hice? Respiro profundamente y lo sostengo mientras tomo la perilla de la puerta de Grounders. Intenté llamar a Cam, e incluso volví a The Hook pero no pude encontrarla. Entonces, Shel es, supongo. Estoy seguro que es una pérdida de tiempo, la mujer me ha odiado desde que me conoció, pero estoy desesperado. Abriendo la puerta, entro, la música y el olor a comida frita me atrapan inmediatamente. Shel está detrás del bar con solo tres clientes frente a ella, y miro alrededor, viendo algunas mesas llenas pero la mayor parte vacías. Es un lunes por la noche bastante tranquilo. Trueno mi cuello, preparándome mientras me acerco al bar. Ella me ve de inmediato y deja de secar el vaso mientras endereza su espalda. —Cam, ¿puedes servirle a ese hombre? —dice. Miro al otro extremo y observo a la hermana de Jordan inclinándose sobre éste. Debe estar cubriendo los turnos de Jordan mientras no está. Su cabeza descansa en sus manos mientras habla con un cliente, pero en cuanto sus ojos se encuentran con los míos, se endereza y su sonrisa se desvanece. Shel comienza a alejarse. —Espera —digo, deteniéndola—. No voy a quedarme. —Bien. —Yo solo… —No voy a decirte dónde está —me interrumpe. Veo a Cam observándonos, y respiro profundamente una vez más, dejando caer mis hombros. —Solo necesito saber que está bien. —Ella está bien —responde cortantemente—. Y estará mucho mejor si permanece alejada de ti y este pueblo. Me muevo, dejando caer mi voz. —Necesito verla. Por favor. —Tú la tuviste. Sus ojos están casi cubiertos por su largo fleco negro, pero puedo ver el rencor en ellos bastante bien.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Once, yes, there had been a warmth toward that strange red-faced man—and there were still the sudden flashes of tenderness which I will tell you about later: that man who alternately claimed French, English, Scottish descent—depending on his imaginative moods—that strange man who had traveled from Mexico to California spreading his seed—that turbulent man, married and divorced, who then married my Mother, a beautiful Mexican woman who loves me fiercely and never once understood about the terror between me and my father. Even now in my mother’s living room there is a glasscase which has been with us as long as I can remember. It is full of glass objects: figurines of angels, Virgins of Guadalupe, dolls; tissuethin imitation flowers, swans; and a small glass, reverently covered with a rotting piece of silk, tied tightly with a fadedpink ribbon, containing some mysterious memento of one of my father’s dead children.... When I think of that glasscase, I think of my Mother... a ghost image that will haunt me—Always. When I was about eight years old, my father taught me this: He would say to me: “Give me a thousand,” and I knew this meant I should hop on his lap and then he would fondle me—intimately—and he’d give me a penny, sometimes a nickel. At times when his friends—old gray men—came to our house, they would ask for “a thousand.” And I would jump on their laps too. And I would get nickel after nickel, going around the table. And later, a gift from my father would become a token of a truce from the soon-to-blaze hatred between us. I loathed Christmas. Each year, my father put up a Nacimiento—an elaborate Christmas scene, with houses, the wisemen on their way to the manger, angels on angelhair clouds. (On Christmas Eve, after my mother said a rosary while we knelt before the Nacimiento, we placed the Christchild in the crib.) Weeks before Christmas my father began constructing it, and each day, when I came home from school, he would have me stand by him while he worked building the boxlike structure, the miniature houses, the artificial lake; hanging the angels from the elaborate simulated sky, replete with moon, clouds, stars. Sometimes hours passed before he would ask me to help him, but I had to remain there, not talking. Sometimes my mother would have to stand there too, sometimes my younger sister. When anything went wrong—if anything fell—he was in a rage, hurling hammers, cursing. My father’s violence erupted unpredictably over anything. In an instant he overturns the table—food and plates thrust to the floor. He would smash bottles, menacing us with the sharpfanged edges. He had an old sword which he kept hidden threateningly about the house.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  through the School Volunteer Program, vowed not to waste her introductory membership at Crunch. She met Jocelyn for lunch a couple of times and confessed she’d never experienced the creative high of Five Minutes in Heaven in the real workplace. They talked about doing a documentary together, forming their own production company. “You have to keep chasing your dreams,” Jocelyn said. A postcard from Caitlin, dated December 20, 1989, Zacatecas, Mexico. I’ve seen death and it’s ugly. Ugly and frightening. No mention of James or Donny. Vix called the Seattle number, was told it was disconnected at the customer’s request. She called Abby, trying not to show her concern, and told her she’d misplaced Caitlin’s number. Abby said, “She’s in Mexico, Vix. At a monastery. You can’t call. None of us can.” New Year’s Eve. They decided to stay at home—Maia, Paisley, and Vix— to celebrate together. They ordered in, rented Annie Hall, and Vix laughed, then cried, remembering the night Lamb had taken Caitlin and her to see it. And after, how they’d begged to ride the Flying Horses but instead had found Von in the alley with some girl’s hand wrapped around his Package. By ten, friends began to drop in—Jocelyn, Earl, Debra. Each of them brought a few of their friends. They sent out for more food. Abby and Lamb called from Mexico City to wish Vix a happy New Year. They were on their way to the monastery, hoping to see Caitlin. “Send her my love,” Vix said. “Wish her a happy New Year for me.” Daniel and Gus phoned from Chicago, where Gus was visiting his family. They sounded smashed. So what? It was New Year’s Eve. They’d thought of her, just as she’d thought of them. Old friends. Coming of age together. The end of one decade, the beginning of another.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Bueno, no creo que sea correcto por mi parte tener que prescindir de esto todos los días —bromea con una sonrisa engreída mientras me acerca a él y me rodea con sus brazos. Suelto la lámpara y sonrío, complaciendo su alegría a pesar que me siento mal. Ha pasado mucho tiempo desde que me sentí a gusto el tiempo suficiente para olvidarme del estrés que nos golpeaba en todo momento. No hemos sonreído juntos desde hace tiempo, y está empezando a no ser algo natural. Pero en este momento, tiene ese brillo infantil en sus ojos como si fuera el tornado más adorable y dijera “¿no me amas?”. Planta su frente en la mía, entrelazo mis dedos a través de su cabello rubio y miro sus ojos azul oscuro que siempre dan la impresión de que acaba de recordar que tiene un pastel entero esperando en el refrigerador. Tomando mi mano derecha en la suya, levanta ambas entre nosotros, y estrecho la suya en la mía, sabiendo lo que está haciendo. Nuestros dedos se envuelven alrededor de la mano del otro, nuestros pulgares uno al lado del otro, y sostiene mi mirada, mientras los mismos recuerdos pasan entre nosotros. Para cualquier otra persona, parece un agarre de lucha libre, pero cuando miramos hacia abajo, vemos nuestros pulgares uno al lado del otro y la pequeña cicatriz del tamaño de un guisante que ambos tenemos y compartimos solo con una persona más. Es tonto cuando le contamos a la gente la historia: El arma de balines del hermano pequeño de un amigo, que era demasiado pequeña para nuestras manos, y nos lastimamos la piel cuando tratábamos de usarla, los tres nos reímos cuando nos dimos cuenta que teníamos la misma cicatriz en el dorso de nuestros metacarpianos. Ahora solo somos Cole y yo. Apenas los dos. Dos cicatrices, ya no somos tres. —Quédate conmigo, ¿de acuerdo? —susurra—. Te necesito. Y por un extraño momento, veo vulnerabilidad. También lo necesité una vez, y él estuvo allí. Hemos pasado por muchas cosas, y probablemente sea mi mejor amigo. Por eso soy demasiado indulgente con él. No quiero que sufra. Y es por esa razón que permito que me convenza de esto. Realmente no quiero mudarme con mi papá y mi madrastra, y es solo hasta el final del verano. Una vez que reciba mis préstamos estudiantiles para el otoño y haya ahorrado dinero por trabajar este verano, puedo pagar mi propio apartamento nuevamente. Creo. Cole me abraza y se queda callado. Sabe que todavía estoy enojada con él por haber sido arrestado y por el daño al apartamento, pero sabe que me preocupo. Estoy comenzando a preguntarme si es una de mis fallas. Definitivamente mi debilidad. Se inclina y ahueca mi trasero, se zambulle en mi cuello y me besa. Jadeo cuando se presiona contra mí, y me río, retorciéndome en sus brazos.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  que haya una emergencia, e incluso entonces tengo que pasar por la Cruz Roja para localizarlo. Mierda. Siento que estoy en Twilight Zone en este momento. Él se fue. Sin forma de contactarlo inmediatamente durante ocho semanas. No hemos pasado mucho tiempo juntos los últimos años, pero todavía estaba a solo una llamada de distancia. No puedo dejar que las cosas se queden así durante dos meses. Busco la estación local de reclutamiento en el área y llamo a la oficina. Podría conseguir su dirección una vez que reciba su asignación. No hay respuesta, así que lo rastrearé mañana y descubriré cómo encontrarlo. Maldita sea. —¡Mierda! Me siento tan impotente. Sabiendo que su teléfono celular probablemente ha sido confiscado por ahora, lo llamo de todos modos y sostengo el teléfono en mi oreja. Va inmediatamente al correo de voz. —Cole —digo, tragando algunas veces para mojarme la garganta—. Yo... yo... Sacudo mi cabeza, cerrando los ojos. —Te amo —le digo—, y siempre estaré aquí para ti. Sé que... sé que no tengo excusa. Yo solo... —Lágrimas brotan de mis ojos y no sé qué más decir, excepto la verdad—. Traté de no enamorarme de ella. Lo intenté. Lo siento. Cuelgo y tiro el teléfono, sintiéndome vacío. No quiero a ninguno de los dos fuera sin que sepan que los amo. Estoy solo otra vez, y solo los quiero de vuelta. Ellos son todo. Jordan tenía razón. Debí habérselo contado, acabar con ello y procurar que lo aceptara. Yo nunca iba a dejarla de buen grado. ¿Cuánto tiempo pensaba mentirle? Incluso si ella y yo no terminamos las cosas, habría tenido que decírselo en algún momento. Enciendo el motor y cambio a reversa, retrocediendo fuera del estacionamiento y saliendo a toda velocidad. Volviendo a la carretera, me dirijo a la ciudad, revisando periódicamente mi teléfono en busca de mensajes. Jordan dejó casi todo en mi casa. Tomó algunas ropas, sus libros y algunas cosas personales, pero sus modelos, su cama, muebles y la pintura todavía están allí.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  She’d be eating a burger in some joint on the highway and it would start out of nowhere, tears flooding her eyes, a lump in her throat making it impossible to swallow. Or she’d be brushing her teeth before bed in some motel and catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror, just as her face contorted and the tears began. She wept for Nathan, for Lanie, for her father, and maybe for herself. She no longer knew her family, and they certainly didn’t know her. At first Bru was sympathetic. He held her that first night, until she was able to fall asleep. But the following night, when he began to stroke her thigh and she didn’t respond, he turned away, hurt. He didn’t get it. He thought it had to do with him. The next time the tears began they were in the truck, just crossing into Virginia. “Here we go again …” he said, pulling off at a rest stop. He jammed on the brakes. “You want anything?” She shook her head. He was gone for a long time. When he came back he handed her a cranapple juice and a bag of pretzels. “Whatever it is, get over it, Victoria … just get over it, okay?” By the time they got to Boston and she was still at it he was angry. “I don’t know you anymore.” “Maybe you never did.” “Yeah, right … but either way this is getting …” He turned away from her. “I think we need a break.” If he expected her to argue he was mistaken. She nodded her head calmly and just like that, with no discussion, no questions, no anything, they separated. BruHE’S ALWAYS WAITING and worrying she’s going to end it. Always looking for signs, expecting the worst. So he jumps the gun, says it out loud before she can. She doesn’t even cry. Nothing. That proves it, doesn’t it? Jeez … she cries all the way home, then he tells her he needs a break and she just sits there like she’s made of stone. After he drops her off he’s shaking so bad he has to pull off the road, afraid he’ll plow into somebody if he doesn’t. Back on the Vineyard he has a beer with his uncle. Unloads his problems with Victoria. His uncle keeps nodding. Tell me about it , he says. They say one thing, they mean another. No way to understand them. I know it hurts but there’s other fish in the sea. And they’ll be jumping for you before long . Star comes on to him, suggests they get together. So they do. In the storeroom of her shop, on the floor, between cartons of chewable vitamin C and ginseng. Her breasts are small and lopsided. She makes animal sounds as she comes. There are other fish in the sea , he keeps telling himself. Do me again , Star says, an hour later. So he does her again.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “It’s ... personal.” “I see.” She paused and Vix imagined her chewing on her pencil, the way she did when she was talking to a dissatisfied client. “Well, if you change your mind give me a call. I’ll always have a job for you.” “Thanks.” Vix dragged her duffel halfway out the long dock, to Trisha’s boat, and caught her just before she left for work. When she explained that she’d left Lamb’s, that she had a job waiting tables at the Homeport and needed a cheap place to stay, Trisha said, “You’re looking at it, honey.” Trisha tossed her a key to the hatch lock, told her to take either of the berths in the main cabin, then left for Vineyard Haven. “I should be back around seven, unless I meet Arthur, my new squeeze, for dinner.” The second Vix was alone, she crumpled. She wept, she wailed, she soaked her T-shirt with her tears, sobbing until she gagged. She was not an emotional iceberg! Then she lay down in the tiny berth and fell into a deep sleep. She’d have slept all day if she hadn’t heard banging on the hatch and voices calling her name. She jumped up, disoriented, needing a minute to figure out where she was and why. When she finally opened the hatch and squinted in the bright sunlight, she saw Lamb and Abby. “Vix,” Abby began, “we were so worried!” “Didn’t you get my note?” “Yes ... but you didn’t say where you were going, or why.” “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure where I was going when I wrote it.” How had they found her? Had Trisha called them already? “Look ...” Lamb said, “whatever happened between you and Caitlin I know she regrets it.” “All friends have disagreements from time to time ...” Abby added. “It’s only natural ... it’s like a marriage ...” She looked at Lamb, then back at Vix. “Oh, Vix ... no boy is worth this kind of grief.” How did she know there was a boy involved? How much exactly had Caitlin told them? Abby came toward her, steadying herself as the boat rocked in the breeze. “Come home,” she said, hugging Vix. “We’re family. You belong with us.” “I can’t ... please ...” There was no way for Vix to explain. Finally Lamb said, more to Abby than to her, “If Vix needs some time

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  noche con unos cuantos pares de ojos más sobre mí de lo que estaba acostumbrada, sonrío para mí, pensando en el montón de propinas en mi bolsillo ahora mismo. No es de cerca lo que Cam consigue o lo que podría conseguir trabajando en la barra en The Hook, pero es más de lo que normalmente consigo en una semana, así que... Y no puedo mentir. En parte me gustó la atención. Supe el momento en que sus ojos estuvieron sobre mí esta noche cuando entró y yo estaba junto a la rocola. También pude verlo por el rabillo mi ojo cuando caminé hacia la barra y conozco esa mirada. Posesiva. Bloqueo la puerta de la camioneta, el corazón me late con fuerza de nuevo mientras me dirijo hacia la casa. Necesito hablar con Cole. Necesito mirarlo a los ojos y tomar su mano en la mía, bajar la mirada a nuestras pequeñas cicatrices a juego y ver si todavía siento que esto va a alguna parte. Hace unos meses, siempre tenía su brazo a mi alrededor. Ahora, no puedo recordar la última vez que me tocó. Entrando a la casa, cierro la puerta, dejo caer mi bolso y me quito los zapatos. Curvo los dedos de los pies, el dolor en mis pies se eleva hasta mis pantorrillas. La sala de estar está a oscuras y camino hasta la oscura escalera y me detengo, escuchando. Ningún ruido proviene de la parte de arriba, así que Pike y Cole probablemente estén dormidos. Intentando ser lo más silenciosa posible, camino de puntillas hasta la cocina y tomo un vaso de la alacena, colocándolo bajo el dispensador de agua del refrigerador. Pero cuando levanto la mirada, veo a Cole en el patio trasero y me quedo inmóvil. Aparto la mano del dispensador, el vaso volcándose y el agua en él salpicando todo el suelo de madera. El calor sube por mi cuello, mis pulmones se quedan sin aire y no puedo apartar la mirada. Todo me golpea a la vez y siento como si estuviera fuera de mí, observándome mirándolo. Cole. Trago dos veces, apenas capaz de humedecer mi garganta. Elena Barros está en la piscina con él, sus codos apoyados detrás de ella sobre el borde, mientras él se inclina sobre ella, su frente apoyada sobre la de ella como hace conmigo. El cuerpo desnudo de ella brilla con el agua y se mueve en una ola, igualando el ritmo de él mientras la toma del trasero y la folla, sus pechos rozan el pecho de él una y otra vez.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  And what of those left in life? Emily shrieked. Palamon howled. Theseus led his sister-in-law, swooning, from the deathbed. There is no point spending more time recounting how her night and morning were spent in tears. In such cases women feel more sorrow than I can relate; when their husbands are taken from them they are consumed in grief, or become so sick that they must surely die. The people of Athens, too, were distraught. Infinite were the tears of old and young, lamenting the fate of Arcite. The death of Hector himself, when his fresh corpse was carried back into Troy, could not have caused more sorrow. There was nothing but pity and grief. The women scratched their cheeks, and rent their hair, in mourning. ‘Why did you die?’ one of them cried out. ‘You had gold enough. And you had Emily.’ There was only one man who could comfort Theseus himself. His old father, Aegaeus, had seen the vicissitudes of the world and had witnessed the sudden changes from joy to woe, from woe to happiness. ‘There is no man who has died on earth without having first lived. And so there is no one alive who will not at some point die. This world is nothing but a thoroughfare of woe, down which we all pass as pilgrims -’ ‘So are we all here.’ The Franklin had interrupted the Knight’s tale. ‘The whole world is an inn,’ our Host said. ‘And the end of the journey is always the same.’ ‘God give us grace and a good death.’ This was the Reeve, crossing himself. ‘Amen to that,’ the Knight replied. And then he continued with his story. As Aegaeus told Theseus, death is an end to every worldly disappointment. He said much more in a similar vein, and in the same way he encouraged the people of Athens to take heart. So Theseus was comforted by his words, and busied himself in finding the best place for the tomb of Arcite to be raised in honour of the fallen knight. He finally came to the conclusion that the most appropriate site would be the wooded grove in which Palamon and Arcite had fought their duel for the hand of Emily. In this place, ever green and ever fresh, Arcite had professed his love and uttered his heart’s complaints. So in this grove, where all the fires of love had been kindled, Theseus would light the fire of Arcite’s funeral pyre. Fire would put out fire. So he commanded that his men cut down the ancient oaks and lay them in a row; then he ordered that the trees should be piled up so that they might burn more easily. His officers swiftly obeyed his commands.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  She and Gus have been talking about moving to the island full time if only they can figure out a way to support themselves doing what they want. Daniel is still single, still waiting for the perfect woman to show up. Abby has asked him to please turn off his cellular phone during the dedication. Phoebe sent regrets. She’d be out of the country. Dorset can’t make it either, but promises to think of them from her home in Mendocino, where she moved following Grandmother’s death, just shy of her ninety-ninth birthday. Abby starts off by reading from Shelley. Wren, who is so shy she makes Sharkey seem gregarious, surprises all of them by singing the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” in a clear, beautiful soprano. Sharkey loses it halfway through the song. Lamb embraces him, his own face streaked with tears, the two men comforting one another. Didn’t she know how much she was loved? Didn’t she care? Vix wonders if somewhere in Tuscany a handsome man who also loved her is grieving. Or was he another of Caitlin’s fantasies? Vix planned on reading the essay she’d written for her college application—Caitlin Somers, the Most Influential Person in My Life —but realizes at the last minute she can’t, so Gus reads it for her while Vix holds their baby, Nate, who tries to shove the turquoise beads Vix wears around her neck into his mouth. Maizie, who is five, skips up and down in a floral pinafore, scattering rose petals into the wind. She says she remembers Caitlin but Vix doesn’t think that’s possible. What she remembers are the stories Vix has told her, the stories Maizie calls Caitlin Summers , and the albums of photos she and Vix pore over whenever she visits. Caitlin is just a fantasy figure to Maizie, someone to dream about, someone from another time and place. She doesn’t really understand what they’re doing here, except that it’s some kind of party, a party for Caitlin, her birth mother. Vix doesn’t understand either. She’s tried to make sense of it but she can’t. No one can explain what happened that day. There was no storm in the area. Winds were moderate. They found her boat two days later, drifting, but there was no sign of trouble. There isn’t any evidence she was lost at sea, except for the little boat and her plan to go sailing. There’s no way Vix or anyone else will ever know the truth. The truth is with Caitlin, wherever she is. Sometimes Vix hears Caitlin reminding her, No matter how many guys come and go we’ll always be together . She hears her infectious laugh or that seductive voice, whispering, I’ll always love you. Promise you’ll always love me? Two days later Vix rides her bike out to the wildflower meadow by herself. She kneels at the stone, which they have all been careful to call commemorative rather than memorial . She runs her fingers over the engraved letters.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  According to Kristeva, the act of giving birth does not successfully reestablish that continuous relation prior to individuation because the infant invariably suffers the prohibition on incest and is separated off as a discrete identity. In the case of the mother’s separation from the girl-child, the result is melancholy for both, for the separation is never fully completed. As opposed to grief or mourning, in which separation is recognized and the libido attached to the original object is successfully displaced onto a new substitute object, melancholy designates a failure to grieve in which the loss is simply internalized and, in that sense, refused. Instead of a negative attachment to the body, the maternal body is internalized as a negation, so that the girl’s identity becomes itself a kind of loss, a characteristic privation or lack. The alleged psychosis of homosexuality, then, consists in its thorough break with the paternal law and with the grounding of the female “ego,” tenuous though it may be, in the melancholic response to separation from the maternal body. Hence, according to Kristeva, female homosexuality is the emergence of psychosis into culture: The homosexual-maternal facet is a whirl of words, a complete absence of meaning and seeing; it is feeling, displacement, rhythm, sound, flashes, and fantasied clinging to the maternal body as a screen against the plunge … for woman, a paradise lost but seemingly close at hand.10 For women, however, this homosexuality is manifest in poetic language which becomes, in fact, the only form of the semiotic, besides childbirth, which can be sustained within the terms of the Symbolic. For Kristeva, then, overt homosexuality cannot be a culturally sustainable activity, for it would constitute a breaking of the incest taboo in an unmediated way. And yet why is this the case? Kristeva accepts the assumption that culture is equivalent to the Symbolic, that the Symbolic is fully subsumed under the “Law of the Father,” and that the only modes of nonpsychotic activity are those which participate in the Symbolic to some extent. Her strategic task, then, is neither to replace the Symbolic with the semiotic nor to establish the semiotic as a rival cultural possibility, but rather to validate those experiences within the Symbolic that permit a manifestation of the borders which divide the Symbolic from the semiotic. Just as birth is understood to be a cathexis of instinctual drives for the purposes of a social teleology, so poetic production is conceived as the site in which the split between instinct and representation exists in culturally communicable form: The speaker reaches this limit, this requisite of sociality, only by virtue of a particular, discursive practice called “art.” A woman also attains it (and in our society, especially) through the strange form of split symbolization (threshold of language and instinctual drive, of the “symbolic” and the “semiotic”) of which the act of giving birth consists.11

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  It revealed horrors. The letter stated that Constance had been delivered of a fiend, an unnatural monster bred out of the devil. No one in the castle could endure the sight or sound or smell of it. It was agreed by all that its mother was a witch, sent to the castle by means of spells and sorcery. No one would go near her. The king’s grief, on reading this letter, was overwhelming. But he said nothing. He kept his sorrow secret, and wrote to the governor of the castle. ‘Let the providence of Christ be my guide. I am now converted to His cause, and must abide His will. Oh Lord, I will obey your commands in everything. Do with me as you wish.’ Then he added, to the governor, ‘Keep this child safe, whether it be foul or fair. And safeguard my wife, too, until I return. Christ will grant me another child, fair and wholesome, when He deems it right.’ Weeping, he sealed and dispatched this letter to the messenger. There was nothing else to be done. Yet how false a messenger! You are a drunken sot. Your breath is foul, and your limbs are weak. You falter on your legs. You betray every secret entrusted to you. You have lost your mind. You chatter like a parrot. Your face is distorted and awry. Wherever there is a drunk, there is also a loud mouth. You can be sure of it. Oh Donegild, evil queen mother, I have no words to describe the malice of your wickedness. I give you over to your companion, the foul fiend. Let him record your treachery. I defy you, unnatural creature - no, you are yourself a fiend. Wherever your body wanders, your spirit dwells in hell. So the messenger left the presence of the king and returned to the court of Donegild. She was delighted to see him again, and offered him all the hospitality she could possibly provide. He drank himself close to bursting. Then he passed out, and spent the night snorting and farting like a swine in its sty. In the meantime, of course, Donegild had stolen the letter from the king and forged one in its place. ‘The king,’ she wrote, ‘commands the governor, on pain of death, to make sure that Constance is banished from the realm of Northumberland. She may remain only for three days. After that time, she must be gone. ‘Place her in the same ship in which she arrived here. She must take her infant son and all her possessions. Then push the ship out to sea. And forbid her ever to return.’ Oh Constance, well may your spirit tremble. Well may your dreams be sorrowful. Donegild intends to strike at you.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  No, she thought, shaking her head. That would be too personal. That would have to wait until they were together again. Vix helped her father dispose of Nathan’s clothes, his toys, the contraption for his bath, his wheelchair. When she said she would like to keep Nathan’s books for herself—Green Eggs and Ham, Stuart Little, The Great Brain —her father broke down and sobbed, the only time she’d ever seen him cry. She tried to console him but he bolted, unable to share his feelings. If Lewis or Lanie were sad about Nathan’s death they didn’t say. They went on with their lives as if nothing had happened. Vix sometimes thought they were relieved. What kind of family were they? she wondered. What kind of family isn’t able to comfort one another? When Caitlin returned from the Vineyard she hand-delivered a sympathy card from Bru, stiff, formal, with some bullshit message that began In your time of need ... It was signed, I’m sorry. Bru. She sent an equally formal card, thanking him for his expression of sympathy and signed it Victoria. At Christmas he sent a card showing a snowy Vineyard scene. Hoping to see you next summer. Bru. She sent him a card showing a Santa Fe scene. Hoping to see you, too. Victoria. The Countess asked Tawny to accompany her on a trip to Europe. Tawny went and stayed away almost three months. When she returned she had very little interest in anything or anyone. Lanie was running wild and Lewis was sullen at home, when he was home, which wasn’t often. Caitlin decided men were too much trouble. “I’m applying to Wellesley,” she told Vix at school. “I think I’ll do better without men around to distract me. Besides, I’m thinking of becoming a lesbian ... to make a statement. Are you interested?” “This is a joke, right?” “It’s whatever you want it to be.” Vix laughed uneasily.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  But after listening to the prosecutor’s version of events, the judge shook her head grimly: “Bail is denied.” In the hallway, Lori and Dad got into a loud argument over who was responsible for pushing Maureen over the edge. Lori blamed Dad for creating a sick environment, while Dad maintained that Maureen had faulty wiring. Mom chimed in that all the junk food Maureen ate had led to a chemical imbalance, and Brian started yelling at them all to shut the hell up or he’d arrest them. I just stood there looking from one distorted face to another, listening to this babble of enraged squabbling as the members of the Walls family gave vent to all their years of hurt and anger, each unloading his or her own accumulated grievances and blaming the others for allowing the most fragile one of us to break into pieces. The judge sent Maureen to an upstate hospital. She was released after a year and immediately bought a one-way bus ticket to California. I told Brian that we had to stop her. She didn’t know a single person in California. How would she survive? But Brian thought it was the smartest thing she could do for herself. He said she needed to get as far away from Mom and Dad, and probably the rest of us, as possible. I decided Brian was right. But I also hoped that Maureen had chosen California because she thought that was her true home, the place where she really belonged, where it was always warm and you could dance in the rain, pick grapes right off the vines, and sleep outside at night under the stars. Maureen did not want any of us to see her off. I rose just after first light the morning she was scheduled to leave. It was an early departure, and I wanted to be awake and thinking about her at the moment her bus pulled out, so I could say farewell in my mind. I went to the window and looked out at the cold, wet sky. I wondered if she was thinking of us and if she was going to miss us. I’d always had mixed feelings about bringing her to New York, but I’d agreed to let her come. Once she arrived, I’d been too busy taking care of myself to look after her. “I’m sorry, Maureen,” I said when the time came, “sorry for everything.” AFTER THAT, I HARDLY ever saw Mom or Dad. Neither did Brian. He had gotten married and bought a run-down Victorian house on Long Island that he restored, and he and his wife had a child, a little girl. They were his family now. Lori, who was still living in her apartment near the Port Authority, was more in touch with Mom and Dad, but she, too, had gone her own way. We hadn’t gotten together since Maureen’s arraignment.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  She had picked out all the hymns and prayers, chosen her favorite funeral home, ordered a lavender lace nightgown from JCPenney that she wanted to be buried in, and selected a two-toned lavender casket with shiny chrome handles from the mortician’s catalog. Erma’s death brought out Mom’s pious side. While we were waiting for the preacher, she took out her rosary and prayed for Erma’s soul, which she feared was in jeopardy since, as she saw it, Erma had committed suicide. She also tried to make us kiss Erma’s corpse. We flat out refused, but Mom went up in front of the mourners, genuflected with a grand sweep, and then kissed Erma’s cheek so vigorously that you could hear the puckering sound throughout the chapel. I was sitting next to Dad. It was the first time in my life I’d ever seen him wearing a necktie, which he always called a noose. His face was tight and closed, but I could tell he was distraught. More distraught than I’d ever seen him, which surprised me, because Erma had seemed to have some sort of an evil hold over Dad, and I thought he’d be relieved to be free of it. As we walked home, Mom asked us kids if we had anything nice to say about Erma now that she had passed. We took a couple of steps in silence, then Lori said, “Ding-dong, the witch is dead.” Brian and I started snickering. Dad wheeled around and gave Lori such a cold, angry look that I thought he might wallop her. “She was my mother, for God’s sake,” he said. He glared at us. “You kids. You make me ashamed. Do you hear me? Ashamed!” He turned down the street to Junior’s bar. We all watched him go. “You’re ashamed of us ?” Lori called after him. Dad just kept walking. • • • Four days later, when Dad still hadn’t come home, Mom sent me to go find him. “Why do I always have to get Dad?” I asked. “Because he likes you the best,” she said. “And he’ll come home if you tell him to.” The first step in tracking down Dad was going next door to the Freemans, who let us use their phone if we paid a dime, and calling Grandpa to ask if Dad was there. Grandpa said he had no idea where Dad was. “When y’all gonna get your own telephone?” Mr. Freeman asked after I hung up. “Mom disapproves of telephones,” I said as I placed the dime on his coffee table. “She thinks they’re an impersonal means of communication.” My first stop, as always, was Junior’s. It was the fanciest bar in Welch, with a picture window, a grill that served hamburgers and french fries, and a pinball machine. “Hey!” one of the regulars called out when I walked in. “It’s Rex’s little girl. How ya doin’, sweetheart?” “I’m fine, thank you.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  The rendition of Lacan that understands the prediscursive as an impossibility promises a critique that conceptualizes the Law as prohibitive and generative at once. That the language of physiology or disposition does not appear here is welcome news, but binary restrictions nevertheless still operate to frame and formulate sexuality and delimit in advance the forms of its resistance to the “real.” In marking off the very domain of what is subject to repression, exclusion operates prior to repression—that is, in the delimitation of the Law and its objects of subordination. Although one can argue that for Lacan repression creates the repressed through the prohibitive and paternal law, that argument does not account for the pervasive nostalgia for the lost fullness of jouissance in his work. Indeed, the loss could not be understood as loss unless the very irrecoverability of that pleasure did not designate a past that is barred from the present through the prohibitive law. That we cannot know that past from the position of the founded subject is not to say that that past does not reemerge within that subject’s speech as fêlure, discontinuity, metonymic slippage. As the truer noumenal reality existed for Kant, the prejuridical past of jouissance is unknowable from within spoken language; that does not mean, however, that this past has no reality. The very inaccessibility of the past, indicated by metonymic slippage in contemporary speech, confirms that original fullness as the ultimate reality. The further question emerges: What plausibility can be given to an account of the Symbolic that requires a conformity to the Law that proves impossible to perform and that makes no room for the flexibility of the Law itself, its cultural reformulation in more plastic forms? The injunction to become sexed in the ways prescribed by the Symbolic always leads to failure and, in some cases, to the exposure of the phantasmatic nature of sexual identity itself. The Symbolic’s claim to be cultural intelligibility in its present and hegemonic form effectively consolidates the power of those phantasms as well as the various dramas of identificatory failures. The alternative is not to suggest that identification should become a viable accomplishment. But there does seem to be a romanticization or, indeed, a religious idealization of “failure,” humility and limitation before the Law, which makes the Lacanian narrative ideologically suspect. The dialectic between a juridical imperative that cannot be fulfilled and an inevitable failure “before the law” recalls the tortured relationship between the God of the Old Testament and those humiliated servants who offer their obedience without reward. That sexuality now embodies this religious impulse in the form of the demand for love (considered to be an “absolute” demand) that is distinct from both need and desire (a kind of ecstatic transcendence that eclipses sexuality altogether) lends further credibility to the Symbolic as that which operates for human subjects as the inaccessible but all-determining deity.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  So she begged him to take up his sword and slay her softly. Then once more she fainted away. With sorrowful heart Virginius picked up his sword and cut off her head with one stroke. Then, according to the story, he picked it up by the hair and took it to the courtoom. There he laid it on the judge’s table. When Appius saw it, he ordered Virginius to be hanged immediately. But a thousand people gathered, in sorrow and pity for the knight. All of them knew, or suspected, that the judge had twisted and broken the law. They had noted the false demeanour of the churl Claudius, who had brought the charges. In any case, Appius was a notorious lecher. No one trusted him. So they marched against him, charged him, and threw him into prison; he killed himself in his cell. Claudius was sentenced to death by hanging, from the nearest tree, but Virginius pleaded his case so well that the churl was instead sent into exile. That is pity for you. Otherwise the villain would have died. All the other guilty parties were taken and executed immediately. This is how sin is repaid. We must all take heed. No one knows the course of God’s will. No one knows how, or where, He will strike. The worm of conscience may be nourished by a wicked life, and then bite. However secret, however well hidden, vice will get its reward. The simple man and the scholar have this in common: they do not know the time or the nature of their departure from this life. So be warned. Give up sin, before sin gives up you. Heere endeth the Phisiciens Tale The Pardoner’s Prologue Heere folweth the Prologe of the Pardoners Tale Our Host began to swear as if he had gone crazy. ‘My God!’ he shouted. ‘By the blood and body of Christ that judge was wicked! And so was the churl! They deserved to die, as do all false judges and plaintiffs. And the beautiful girl was murdered by her own father. Her beauty came at too high a price, that’s for sure. I know one thing. I will say it over and over again. The so-called gifts of Fortune, and of Nature, can be fatal. Her beauty led her to the slaughter. It is a most sorrowful story. We are the darlings of Fortune and Nature, as I said just now, at our peril. They cause more harm than good.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  We couldn’t afford wood any more than we could afford coal, and Dad wasn’t around to chop and split any, which meant it was up to us kids to gather dead branches and logs from the forest. Finding good, dry wood was a challenge. We trekked along the mountainside, looking for pieces that weren’t waterlogged or rotten, shaking the snow off branches. But we went through the wood awfully quickly, and while a coal fire burns hot, a wood fire doesn’t throw off much heat. We all huddled around the potbellied stove, wrapped in blankets, holding out our hands toward the weak, smoky heat. Mom said we should be thankful because we had it better than pioneers, who didn’t have modern conveniences like window glass and cast-iron stoves. One day we got a roaring fire going, but even then we could still see our breath, and there was ice on both sides of the windows. Brian and I decided we needed to make the fire even bigger and went out to collect more wood. On the way back, Brian stopped and looked at our house. “There’s no snow on our roof,” he said. He was right. It had completely melted. “Every other house has snow on its roof,” he said. He was right about that, too. “This house doesn’t have a lick of insulation,” Brian told Mom when we got back inside. “All the heat’s going right through the roof.” “We may not have insulation,” Mom said as we all gathered around the stove, “but we have each other.” It got so cold in the house that icicles hung from the kitchen ceiling, the water in the sink turned into a solid block of ice, and the dirty dishes were stuck there as if they’d been cemented in place. Even the pan of water that we kept in the living room to wash up in usually had a layer of ice on it. We walked around the house wearing our coats and wrapped in blankets. We wore our coats to bed, too. There was no stove in the bedroom, and no matter how many blankets I piled on top of myself, I still felt cold. I lay awake at night, rubbing my feet with my hands, trying to warm them. We fought over who got to sleep with the dogs—Tinkle, the Jack Russell terrier, and Pippin, a curly-haired mutt who had wandered down through the woods one day—because they kept us warm. They usually ended up in a heap with Mom, because she had the bigger body, and they were cold, too. Brian had bought an iguana at G. C. Murphy, the five-and-dime on McDowell Street, because it reminded him of the desert. He named the lizard Iggy and slept with it against his chest to keep it warm, but it froze to death one night. We had to leave the faucet under the house dripping or the water froze in the pipe.