Guilt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Pisces (2018)

  “He’s been staying with me for the past two days. And I know what you’re thinking! Bad idea, he’s just going to hurt me again. But this time something truly seems different. He still isn’t ready for marriage or an engagement or even to call me his girlfriend or commit to monogamy, but he’s showing up for me in a way that he never has before. He’s truly present.” “I see,” said Dr. Jude. She was wearing what looked like a pair of silk pajamas. “What do you think was the impetus for the change?” “I think he realized I was serious this time. That I wasn’t going to take him back.” “But you did take him back,” said Chickenhorse. “No, I know. I mean before that. I think he realized the gravity of his error,” she said. “Also, he lost his job at the hospital and has nowhere else to go. He’s been living in his car.” “What?” We all balked. I struggled to keep from laughing. Compared to the rest of them I was actually doing well. “I can’t forbid you from seeing him,” said Dr. Jude. “But I want you to remember the state you were in when you came in here, how much you were suffering. In my experience these sorts of relationships only get worse, never better.” “I know.” Sara sniffed. “And I know you’re all going to judge me. And Dr. Jude, I know I broke our deal. But he needs me. At the ‘Opening the Heart’ workshop they said that we can only recover from the past by coming to terms with our core truths. Well, he’s been sleeping on a mat in the resting area of the Korean spa. And I’m a compassionate person. And I want him to be with me. So that’s my core truth.”

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  We can reschedule, I hope, but if you don’t want to, I get it,” I say, so afraid of rejection that I try to beat him to the punch. “I have an idea,” he says brightly. “What if I meet you in the city? My friend has an apartment I can stay in.” “You would drive into the city to see me?” I ask, moved and astonished. “Yes, why not? I want to see you and a night in the city will be fun.” I’m not sure how to respond. I am scared that I am failing in my most important role – as a mother. But now that I’ve had a taste of what it feels like to be seen as a woman again, I’m reluctant to turn my back on it. Is it ever going to be possible to be both, an attentive mother and a woman with a fulfilling romantic relationship? My going on a date will not have a direct impact on Hudson, since he will be on an airplane anyway, but I am afraid that acting on my own needs will inadvertently take away from him in ways I can’t yet fathom while rewarding me, when what I deserve is punishment for falling down on the job and allowing Hudson’s predicament to even exist. Regardless, I accept #3’s generous offer, hoping I can sneak in this one last hurrah before settling in for the long haul on my own again. CHAPTER 9Comfort ZoneI was a month shy of five years old when my father died. My mother had subsequently refused to go anywhere without me and my sister, worrying that we would be further traumatized by her leaving us for even one evening, so she toted us along on dates friends arranged for her. I recall curling into a booth at a Japanese restaurant with my sister while my mother and Larry got acquainted, her soulful blue eyes flickering back and forth from her date to her children. She brought us coloring books and invisible ink pads, and if we were well-behaved, saucer-sized black and white cookies from Zaro’s Bakery, leading me to believe that her dating life was a fortunate turn of events for me personally. The first man she conceded to go alone on a date with was reluctantly invited inside our apartment to await the arrival of our always-late grandmother, who was to babysit. She had warned him that we might ignore him, that we weren’t used to having men in the apartment with us, but within minutes, we had marched out our ample collection of stuffed animals to put on a play for him and sobbed when our grandmother showed up and they left for their adult-only date. We had given our immediate approval, which was the incentive my mother needed to take us downtown a few weeks later to jump on his waterbed while they packed up his studio apartment so that he could move in with us.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I don’t know how to pretend I’m one of the divorced moms’ crew while also maintaining the steadfast belief that I am not, that if one of them would just give me a map back to the road I had been on, I would gladly stay on the recommended route forever. A memory comes back to me in a painful flash. Months earlier, in the spring, when I was at Georgia’s school selling tickets to the talent show I was organizing, a mother approached with her daughter. When I realized that she was the mother of the one child from whom I did not yet have music, I asked her to please get it to me right away. She dramatically rolled her eyes and shook her head at me, saying, “That’s her father’s job.” “OK,” I said, “well then can you tell him I need it today?” “We’re divorced,” she said. “I feel your pain, I’m going through it myself right now. I just need the music though,” I said. She became animated then, leaning across the table toward me conspiratorially as she asked, “Who’s your judge?” “What do you mean?” I asked, confused. “There are only two judges at the court who handle divorce. I’m curious if you have the good one,” she said. “Oh, no, we’re not up to that yet,” I said. “Who’s your lawyer?” she asked as I continued to shake my head. “We’re not up to that yet either,” I said. “Anyway, I just really need the music.” “I’ll tell him, but I can’t promise that he’ll send it,” she said brusquely, while her daughter stood next to her, silently listening to our interaction. I wanted to reach over the table and hug her, reassure her that we would make this work for her no matter what, but she turned, shoulders drooping, and went into the school building while her mother strode purposefully down the sidewalk. I watched her until she turned the corner, absorbing the critical information I had just unwittingly received: this is what bitterness and anger look like after years of unchecked growth. If I buy into the negative behavior I’ve read about in newspaper accounts of ugly divorces or in dramatic retellings on TV or in books – or in live exchanges like the one that just took place – I will soon be a hostile, spiteful shadow of myself. Standing now at Georgia’s camp, having rejected Michael’s hug, I know I have to do better. If I am resolute that I want to move forward in my life without him, I have to find a way to soften my anger so that my kids are not in the line of fire – or better yet, so there is no line of fire, just a soft dissolution. I won’t be hugging him any time soon – after all, I’m still working on making eye contact – but the venom inside me has to be treated before it poisons me.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  “OK, well we have been, which I had thought was pretty noticeable and we decided that we need some time apart, temporarily, to try to fix things between us,” I said. “Are you getting divorced?” Hudson asked, panic rising in his voice. “No, but we’re separating. We need some time apart,” I said. What I wouldn’t have given to be airlifted out of this disaster zone, the agonized and confused expressions on my children’s faces. Was it too late to backpedal and assure them we would be in tiptop form in a week and not to worry? “One of you is having an affair,” said Daisy, suddenly and pointedly. “There is no other possible explanation for this. It’s too quick. Why isn’t Dad here talking to us too?” I had already decided that I wouldn’t lie to the older kids if they asked. I recalled having been cornered like this years earlier when the kids demanded to know if Michael and I were Santa, and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and Cupid and Petal, their special summer fairy, knowing that the second I confirmed it the sweet, innocent chapter of their childhoods that I had so assiduously protected would come to a swift conclusion. Now I was going to close yet another chapter with the information that their parents were not indomitable and that the safety of the family life they had known and relied on was gone, just like that. My silence spoke volumes before I could summon the courage to respond. “Oh my God, Mom. Just tell us,” Daisy cried. “It wasn’t me,” I said quietly. Mayhem ensued. If I had thought my life had already fallen apart, this moment proved to me that I was in fact just in the introductory phase. The panicked reactions of my kids were devastating on a whole new level than I had yet experienced. Daisy sobbed, Hudson quietly raged. They asked me questions I could not answer about what had happened and what would happen next. Daisy called Michael, who could barely hear her as he was pulled over on the side of the road with a flat tire, and screamed at him until she exhausted herself and hung up. Watching my kids suffer this way was brutal, the fury I felt at Michael all-consuming. My friend Sarah came to my rescue, offering her mother’s pied-à-terre around the corner for Michael to stay in for a few weeks to give us a chance to regroup. He was angry that I wouldn’t let him return home, but now even if I could bear it, I had the additional rage of the children to manage. Daisy was like an erupting volcano, her fury and grief a molten lava that could burn anyone in her path. Michael and I had given her a happy family and he had single-handedly taken it away, and now she understood that trust – even in her parents – was conditional.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  All I hear is blame for a situation I didn’t cause and an acknowledgement of the obvious fact that I can’t make it better. Fixing things has always been one of my most important roles as a mother: problems with friends, problems at school, problems sleeping or eating or with health – fix, fix, fix. Without my maternal superpower, I am unrecognizable to him and to myself. But is our separation the cause of his ruin or is it an easy excuse? I am incensed, but I refuse to be the only one carrying the burden of responsibility. When I get home an hour later, I chug the remains of an open bottle of white wine straight from the bottle and get to work, calling the airline – which I learn is now closed for Shabbat – and the mothers of the other boys. I am usually the take-charge mother, the one who easily manages logistics, and I’m attempting to do so now but without grace or presence of mind. The other mothers beseech me to calm down, reminding me that the boys are safe and there’s no need to panic. I don’t know how to relay the root of my hysteria, that my beautiful family is crumbling before my eyes and I am powerless to stop it. Getting him home from Israel? That’s the easy part, requiring phone calls and money. Getting him out of this vast pit of unhappiness? No phone calls or handfuls of money will help. I text #3 to tell him I have to cancel our weekend plans as I will be returning to the city to receive Hudson, who will arrive at 5am on Sunday. As angry as I’ve been at Michael these past months, it’s got nothing on the fury I’ve turned toward myself. I have been foolishly pouring time and effort into rebuilding my life. What right did I have to turn any of my attention away from my kids? I believed I might have a relationship? Find love again? What a joke. I need to be a mother right now, nothing more and nothing less. The idea that I thought I might be entitled to my own personal life is at best laughable and at worst tragically unrealistic. #3 calls me immediately. He says that in his limited experience with teenage boys, smoking weed is quite common and that the extenuating circumstance of his being in a foreign country makes it more complicated, but not necessarily a more heinous offense. I explain that Hudson has been in trouble at school before for this same reason and that I am terrified we are on our way down a slippery, dangerous slope. Being a single mother to an angry teenage boy who despises me for being the parent he is stuck with feels way beyond my pay grade. “I’m sorry that I have to cancel. I suspect I’m more trouble than I’m worth.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  You just move on,” she says. I demur, saying I don’t want to hurt his feelings. “Do you owe this man something that I don’t know about?” she asks, knowing I do not. I confess that I’m feeling too wimpy to call him so she tells me not to, that a text will suffice and that ghosting under these circumstances would even be fine. I call her a bully, but thank her for the pep talk and write him a brief text: “It’s been great getting to know you, but I feel like you’re looking for a relationship while I want something more casual, and our different intentions make me feel like this isn’t going to work. I wish you all the best in finding the special someone you’re looking for, she will certainly be lucky to have found you.” I feel a load off my shoulders after I hit the send button and walk out into the cold, bright day to see if my favorite baker is at the farmers’ market so I can treat myself to the sourdough bread that I will likely eat in its entirety, slathered with salted butter, by tomorrow to celebrate my extrication from #7. By the time I hit the market, there is a text from him. “This is the first time I’ve been dumped by text,” he writes. I blanch at having been called out for something I have to agree wasn’t the best choice to begin with. “Sorry,” I write back, pulling up short next to a pile of carrots at a tented stall so that I’m not in the flow of foot traffic. “I find it easier to be clear in writing. I trip over my words when I’m nervous and I really wanted to explain.” He asks me to clarify, asking bluntly if what I’m saying is that I don’t want to see him again because I think he’s more into me than I am into him. “Well, more into the idea of me perhaps than the actual me. I just don’t think our feelings align,” I write, but he wants further clarification, asking why I would think that. “Maybe when you whispered in my ear on Saturday night that Jill thinks you and I should get married,” I respond. “What? I never would have said anything like that!” he writes back. “I promise, you said it. You’d had a lot to drink so maybe you don’t remember. But I was pretty shocked, so I am certain of what I heard. You also think you don’t snore. Just something to think about.” He seems angry in a passive-aggressive way and won’t let the subject go, so I wish him well again and abruptly end the conversation. I text Dr. B, aka Jill, right away: “Thanks so much for setting me up with Brooklyn Lawyer. He’s a good guy, but not for me. Also, just out of curiosity, did you tell him that you hoped we would get married?” “What?

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  For now Stephen knew the cause of their quarrels, and she recognized the form of the shadow that had seemed to creep in between them at Christmas, and knowing, she stretched out her arms to Morton for comfort: ‘My Morton, where are you? I need you.’ Grim and exceedingly angry grew Puddle, that little, grey box of a woman in her schoolroom; angry with Anna for her treatment of Stephen, but even more deeply angry with Sir Philip, who knew the whole truth, or so she suspected, and who yet kept that truth back from Anna. Stephen would sit with her head in her hands. ‘Oh, Puddle, it’s my fault; I’ve come in between them, and they’re all I’ve got—they’re my one perfect thing—I can’t bear it—why have I come in between them?’ And Puddle would flush with reminiscent anger as her mind slipped back and back over the years to old sorrows, old miseries, long decently buried but now disinterred by this pitiful Stephen. She would live through those years again, while her spirit would cry out, unregenerate, against their injustice. Frowning at her pupil, she would speak to her sharply: ‘Don’t be a fool, Stephen. Where’s your brain, where’s your backbone? Stop holding your head and get on with your Latin. My God, child, you’ll have worse things than this to face later—life’s not all beer and skittles, I do assure you. Now come along, do, and get on with that Latin. Remember you’ll soon be going up to Oxford.’ But after a while she might pat the girl’s shoulder and say rather gruffly: ‘I’m not angry, Stephen—I do understand, my dear, I do really—only somehow I’ve just got to make you have backbone. You’re too sensitive, child, and the sensitive suffer—well, I don’t want to see you suffer, that’s all. Let’s go out for a walk—we’ve done enough Latin for to-day—let’s walk over the meadows to Upton.’ Stephen clung to this little, grey box of a woman as a drowning man will cling to a spar. Puddle’s very hardness was somehow consoling—it seemed concrete, a thing you could trust, could rely on, and their friendship that had flourished as a green bay-tree grew into something more stalwart and much more enduring. And surely the two of them had need of their friendship, for now there was little happiness at Morton; Sir Philip and Anna were deeply unhappy—degraded they would feel by their ceaseless quarrels. Sir Philip would think: ‘I must tell her the truth—I must tell her what I believe to be the truth about Stephen.’ He would go in search of his wife, but having found her would stand there tongue-tied, with his eyes full of pity. And one day Anna suddenly burst out weeping, for no reason except that she felt his great pity. Not knowing and not caring why he pitied, she wept, so that all he could do was to console her. They clung together like penitent children. ‘Anna, forgive me.’

• From The Pisces (2018)

  You could give him up just to give him up.” “Why?” “Well, for one thing, it might behoove you to sit with yourself for a while.” Who was this talking? “So that’s it? Just give him up and sit?” “None of these wankers are worth the pain,” she said. “You have to dump them on the roadside and let them rot there.” “You don’t understand,” I said. “He didn’t fuck me over. It was me who hurt him. It was me who lied to him, not the other way around. This isn’t like the other ones. This time I’m in control. Sort of.” “You asked my advice and I’m giving it to you.” “I can’t do that,” I said. “I need love. Or if it’s not love, then the power of that feeling. I love it. I love love. It’s the only thing I have.” “Oh, Lucy,” she said. “You have a lot. It’s like your tits.” “What?” “Your tits. You always say that you have no tits. But really, your breasts are ample. They’re more than enough.” “I want a D cup. Metaphorically.” “And I want a thousand giant cocks. Or I think I do. But it’s a lie. Because even a thousand cocks would never be enough. And it’s crazy to think that they would. The fantasy is a lie.” “But I am crazy. And I don’t want to live without the fantasy,” I said. “You can do it. We can do it together.” “I don’t want to.” “Suit yourself,” she said. “Can I just tell you one more thing?” “What is it?” “Jamie got that woman pregnant. They’re moving in together.” “No! The scientist?” “It’s true.” “How the hell did that happen?” “They were fucking.” “No, I mean—oh Lucy, I’m so sorry.” “I know. How can I go back to Phoenix and face them?” “You can and you shall. Let’s just pray it totally destroys her pussy.” “She better get fat as hell.” “Well, now he’ll really be pining after you.” “Yeah?” “Oh yes. Nothing brings out a man’s quest for escape like a lactating woman with somebody else doing the sucking.” 51. I got into the bathtub and ran the water, soaking and scrubbing away Chase’s semen, which had formed a crust on my thigh. I could see it leaking out of me too in the bathwater, like passing clouds. Really, what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I be a person who was content to just lie around and watch the clouds, without trying to consume anything? Was there something wrong with just being alive? Why was I so defective? Then again, it wasn’t my fault we were put on the planet and left to make our own meaning. I was making mine and doing the best I could. Drying off, I put on one of my sister’s silk kimonos, then went downstairs and got a glass of white wine. Was I cool?

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I wanted to believe her. I kept trying to wriggle out of the reality of the situation, find some way to prove to myself that I wasn’t a dog killer. But no matter how I looked at it I was a murderer, third degree at the very least. I wanted to see myself the way Claire saw me. She was so nonjudgmental. But she only withheld her judgment of me so she didn’t have to judge herself. She couldn’t have me be a villain, or she would be one too. “What about your swimmer?” asked Claire. “Did he ever come back?” “Yes, he did.” “And?” “We’re going to run away together.” “To the desert?” “No,” I said. “To the depths of the ocean.” “Dark,” she said. “Like a suicide pact. So romantic, I love it.” “Sort of,” I said. “Sort of.” 55.Annika and Steve immediately got on a plane and headed home. I was terrified for their return. I sat on the white sofa, thinking of all that had gone on there, and dug my fingernails into my gums. When they bled a little, I imagined wiping the blood under the sofa cushions where my period bloodstains were. Now I understood the desire Claire had to hurt herself. I couldn’t drink anything or take a pill, because I needed to be clearheaded for their arrival. But the last thing I wanted was to be lucid. I needed an out, something to release me from the feelings of shame. So I took it out on my gums. When they pulled up in the driveway, Annika refused to get out of the taxi and only Steve came in. He had never liked me to begin with, but now he clearly hated me. I thought of his trench coat, covered in Garrett’s semen, in a dumpster somewhere. He issued a brusque hello and went into the pantry, where Dominic was still covered with the blanket. “Goddammit,” he said. He sounded angry. Then he went back outside. I crept over to the window and saw him talking softly to Annika, coaxing her out of the cab. But she refused to come. I heard her crying and saying, “No, no, no.” She looked up and our eyes met through the glass. She opened the cab door and came rushing into the house. I thought that she might yell at me, but she took me in her arms and hugged me. I sort of stood there as she cried on my shoulder, not knowing what to do. “I loved him so much, Lucy,” she said. “I know.” “He was the most special baby in the whole world. I just, I never loved anything like I loved him.” “Let’s sit down,” I said.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  “There’s a weekend in September when I have the whole weekend free. Maybe you can arrange not to have your kids that weekend and we can do something?” “Sure, great,” he says. “Hang on, let me see which weekend it is,” I say, scrolling through the calendar on my phone. When I give him the dates, he nods but doesn’t note it in his own calendar. “OK, we’ll figure it out,” he says. On the walk back to his car after dinner, I text #3 to tell him I am running late and will head over soon. #4 drives me back to his house, opens the front door and we head inside. I assume I am back inside for a quickie before I head out and I gather my long sundress in my hands and start climbing the staircase. “Oh sweetie, no,” he says, stopping me dead in my tracks. “I’m sorry, but it’s late and I have to be up early.” Luckily I am still facing forward and he is behind me, so he cannot see me wince in embarrassment at my overly forward misstep. His addressing me as “sweetie” is the worst part – condescending, like I’m a child trying to stay up past her bedtime. “Oh, OK, no problem, sorry, I just assumed,” I say, hastily thanking him for dinner before making my exit. Something between us just turned but I cannot figure out what exactly or why, and I’m distracted anyway by trying to assuage myself of the guilt I feel as I set my GPS to guide me the half-hour drive to #3’s house. Am I going to now sleep with #3 too? Is that obligatory? Two men inside me within hours of each other? I don’t feel dirty exactly – I mean, I did shower, after all, using copious amounts of #4’s daughter’s coconut body wash – but I do feel deceitful. I’m “all honesty all the time”, but I certainly can’t tell this kind, gentle man who I’ve been texting all day long for the past few weeks how bottomless I really am, how deep my need is right now that it can’t be met by just one man. What is too much? I wonder. Is this empowering or an indication that I’m unfillable, that the hole inside of me is so vast that I could throw more men into the mix and it would be like tossing Band-Aids at a life-threatening injury? I let myself in through the screen door and find #3 in his kitchen, cleaning up after a late dinner. I sit at the counter and we talk while his cats jump on the counter only to get gently nudged off, over and over again. He tells me about his day and a meeting he had with a client. I feel a twinge of sadness at the feeling of cozy domesticity this scene elicits, two adults catching up at the end of their day.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Stan had reached out with an apologetic one-thousand-word email declaring his love. He also sent her a bouquet of carnations. Of course, Sara was allergic to them and gave them to a neighbor, but that wasn’t the point. “He’s been staying with me for the past two days. And I know what you’re thinking! Bad idea, he’s just going to hurt me again. But this time something truly seems different. He still isn’t ready for marriage or an engagement or even to call me his girlfriend or commit to monogamy, but he’s showing up for me in a way that he never has before. He’s truly present.” “I see,” said Dr. Jude. She was wearing what looked like a pair of silk pajamas. “What do you think was the impetus for the change?” “I think he realized I was serious this time. That I wasn’t going to take him back.” “But you did take him back,” said Chickenhorse. “No, I know. I mean before that. I think he realized the gravity of his error,” she said. “Also, he lost his job at the hospital and has nowhere else to go. He’s been living in his car.” “What?” We all balked. I struggled to keep from laughing. Compared to the rest of them I was actually doing well. “I can’t forbid you from seeing him,” said Dr. Jude. “But I want you to remember the state you were in when you came in here, how much you were suffering. In my experience these sorts of relationships only get worse, never better.” “I know.” Sara sniffed. “And I know you’re all going to judge me. And Dr. Jude, I know I broke our deal. But he needs me. At the ‘Opening the Heart’ workshop they said that we can only recover from the past by coming to terms with our core truths. Well, he’s been sleeping on a mat in the resting area of the Korean spa. And I’m a compassionate person. And I want him to be with me. So that’s my core truth.” I glanced over at Diana, the newest member of the group. She looked horrified. Diana was a Brentwood mommy—a gorgeous, fuckable mother in Lululemon—whose husband was a very new-moneyed TV producer. Apparently he wasn’t paying her any attention anymore. It’s not that he was bad in bed or turned her off sexually, but after they made love, a progressively less-frequent occasion now, he no longer connected with her. He no longer looked her in the eyes. It was like he could barely see her. Also, sometimes he had a difficult time getting it up.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  That’s not gonna do it, I thought. It’s not the pills or the depression. It’s the sex and love. But you can’t tell a person’s husband, one who probably still very much loves her, about her addiction to other men. You can’t say, Oh, the real problem is in her heart and cunt. Who was I to know what the real problem was anyway? Maybe her real problem was drug addiction, and this love and sex thing was only a poor substitute. But if that was the case then where was my drug problem? And why was she crying for men but never for drugs? Why was it that whenever one of them left or did not give her enough of what she wanted, she dissolved into a disaster? And why was I vomiting on Abbot Kinney last night? “I’ll go see her,” I said. I walked and fed Dominic quickly and then I went to see Claire, just like that, no fear of what I would see, no recalling the memory of having almost been hospitalized by the doughnut incident. There was only this person who needed me. It wasn’t a reflection of me that I was seeking, a way to feel good about myself. There was just this human being for whom I could maybe bring some love. For once I could actually do something of service. The thought of getting out of my own mind, and the situation with Theo, made me feel good for a moment. The psych ward smelled like institutional mashed potatoes and the nurses said that Claire was with a doctor. I wondered if this was where I was going to end up. Or would I end up in a hospital in Phoenix? As the patients moved back and forth, shuffling around the locked ward, I felt very aware of my freedom. One woman about my age sat in a chair, in her gown, digging her nails into her scalp: red sores scabbing all along the hairline. With every few digs she would intently scrutinize the skin she had scraped off and then put it in her mouth. I did not feel like I was a better person than these people, but perhaps stronger, or luckier, or something. Then I felt ashamed of my strength and freedom. I was one of them, only I was out here. But I wasn’t one of them, was I? I had been alive a long time and had not ended up in one of these places. I had come close but never completely lost my freedom. Didn’t it say something about my ability to make decisions, or at the last moment save myself and evade disaster?

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I didn’t like that it was she who had left him, even for death, and that he would always long for her. And perhaps as punishment or to regain control of the narrative—that I might be like her and have a moment like that, the beloved vanisher—I confessed. “I suppose it won’t matter with me,” I said. “Now that you’ve been through it in such a sad way.” “What do you mean?” “I mean, I guess you will be okay when I leave here.” “What do you mean ‘leave’?” “I’ll be going away soon.” “For how long?” “Well, for good.” I told him everything: that I was from a place where there was no ocean and would be leaving in three weeks to return there, permanently. I asked him if he knew what the desert was. He only stared at me. Immediately I knew that I had hurt him. “Do you think—” I started to say. I was going to backtrack, to ask him what could be possible. Could I take him with me? Could he ever exist in a desert? But he put his hands over his face and began moaning. “Theo,” I said. He wouldn’t answer me and seemed to be in a trance. It was like he’d become a Siren. As Homer said, the Sirens had gorgeous, melodic voices, but they could also howl with pain and agony. It was not pain as I had romanticized it: him beautifully bereft with aching for me. It was not the Sirens as we humans imagined them, armed with divine power. This was vulnerability, a bit of madness even, and what it revealed was that he truly loved me, and that love could be grotesque. Dominic woke up in the other room and began barking along with Theo’s moaning. “Please calm down,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I told him that maybe I could work something out. Maybe I could stay after all. I hadn’t known how much he cared. But he said it was too late. “You lied to me,” he said. “I was going to keep coming to see you on land. I had even wanted to ask you to come join me under the water, seriously. And here you have been set to abandon me all along.” I didn’t know exactly what “under the water” meant. Was he more delusional than I was? Did he know I couldn’t live under there? “Theo, no, it isn’t like that. I really am in love with you. I want to stay with you forever.” “That you would think of leaving me,” he said. “That you would let me grow so close to you and never tell me it was finite. It breaks my heart. It’s humiliating too.” “I was afraid that if I told you there was an end date you would see me differently. I liked the way you saw me. I didn’t want anything to change.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Clement issued one bull after another protesting the innocency of the offending parties concerned in the violent measures against Boniface. Philip and Nogaret were declared innocent of all guilt and to have only pure motives in preferring charges against the dead pope.96 The bull, Rex gloriae, 1311, addressed to Philip, stated that the secular kingdom was founded by God and that France in the new dispensation occupied about the same place as Israel, the elect people, occupied under the old dispensation. Nogaret’s purpose in entering into the agreement which resulted in the affair at Anagni was to save the Church from destruction at the hands of Boniface, and the plundering of the papal palace and church was done against the wishes of the French chancellor. In several bulls Clement recalled all punishments, statements, suspensions and declarations made against Philip and his kingdom, or supposed to have been made. And to fully placate the king, he ordered all Boniface’s pronouncements of this character effaced from the books of the Roman Church. Thus in the most solemn papal form did Boniface’s successor undo all that Boniface had done.97 When the Oecumenical Council of Vienne met, the case of Boniface was so notorious a matter that it had to be taken up. After a formal trial, in which the accused pontiff was defended by three cardinals, he was adjudged not guilty. To gain this point, and to save his predecessor from formal condemnation, it is probable Clement had to surrender to Philip unqualifiedly in the matter of the Knights of the Temple. After long and wearisome proceedings, this order was formally legislated out of existence by Clement in 1312. Founded in 1119 to protect pilgrims and to defend the Holy Land against the Moslems, it had outlived its mission. Sapped of its energy by riches and indulgence, its once famous knights might well have disbanded and no interest been the worse for it. The story, however, of their forcible suppression awakens universal sympathy and forms one of the most thrilling and mysterious chapters of the age. Döllinger has called it "a unique drama in history."98

• From The Pisces (2018)

  But since I had been the forward one, the one who asked him if we could kiss, I didn’t want to be too needy. “What time tomorrow night?” I asked. “Ten?” “Kiss me goodbye?” We kissed quickly and then I watched him swim off. I wondered if I had been too engaged in the kiss, too desperate and needy, falling down a hole. Maybe he could sense my addictive tendencies coming off of me like bad perfume. Maybe he was just sexually attracted to me? It was hard to say, but I assumed I had done something wrong, because, well, I always did. When I got home Dominic was in the corner. I had forgotten to give him his medicine and feed him. This was what happened when I followed my desires. I couldn’t believe how quickly I had forsaken him. It was as though he simply ceased to exist while I was out frolicking on the beach with a stranger. Was going to the rocks a mistake? For a moment I wished that they weren’t so near to Annika’s house and that Theo hadn’t given me a time for tomorrow—that we couldn’t have a day or two apart. But of course, when the time came I knew I’d rush out there to be with him. I gave Dominic a bowl of dehydrated duck and added a little water. I gave him some extra too, even though I wasn’t supposed to. “I’m so sorry, Domi,” I said. He ate hungrily, then licked my face. Then he started sniffing me, almost compulsively, and growled. Clearly he did not like the smell of Theo. I wondered if it was the scent of the ocean itself that made him angry. Perhaps he liked the ocean and was jealous that he couldn’t go there with me. I felt bad, but Venice Beach had a massive fine if you were caught there with a dog. I washed my face and realized that I hadn’t eaten either, but was too tired to make anything. I thought of that song, I didn’t know the music, just the words, something like “When you’re in love you’re never hungry.” Was I in love with this swimmer boy? Or was I just completely crazy? It didn’t make sense that something could feel so good, holy, and spiritual—like the gods themselves had put it there—and still not be right. It must be right, a gift for all of my suffering. But what if Theo just wanted sex? I thought about whether he was an “unavailable” man, and it seemed unlikely. I mean, I had never spent time with him out of the water.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  It was a robber. It stole you out of yourself, and you became a husk. Dominic’s warmth was all gone. But his spirit had to be somewhere. Where was his spirit now? Was he still in the room, hovering over me and his body? I hoped he couldn’t see himself like this. Was he watching me, angrily? Or was he already with Annika in Europe? Could she feel him? What was I going to say to Annika? I couldn’t tell her. She was going to be devastated and blame herself. Worse yet, what if they performed an autopsy and she found out I’d killed her child? Though there was the diabetes. Maybe that was what had happened, something with his blood sugar. But I’d neglected him horribly. And Annika never had a chance to say goodbye. I remembered my first group therapy session, when Claire had said to Dr. Jude, “Who cares what I’m doing? I’m only hurting myself.” And Dr. Jude had told her that wasn’t true. She said there would be casualties, that there were always casualties. This was what she meant. I was too scared to get in touch with Annika right away. I decided I would go to the hospital to see Claire before contacting my sister. I cleaned up the vomit and drool, then wrapped Dominic in the blanket I had used to smuggle Theo on the wagon. “It’s going to be okay,” I said to the poor baby, even though it wasn’t. I sat with the dead dog on my lap and stroked him through the blanket for a long time. It was the most care I had given him in weeks. — This time Claire looked alive again—not overly drugged. “My darling,” she said. “What a pleasant surprise.” “Yes, for both of us,” I said. “You look like you again. You look like you’re back.” “Oh I’m back, baby.” “I really thought for a minute there that you had become sane.” “Never.” She laughed. “I will never give up on suicide again. They thought the meds were making me too Valley of the Dolls, I guess, so they changed them. Well, that didn’t work and I had another attempt. I tried to hang myself off the bathroom door handle with a four-hundred-dollar cardigan from CP Shades. They had to break in the door and found me naked on the floor of the bathroom, not dead yet, but passed out. It was brilliant.” I laughed with her, but also I shivered. This was what happened to girls like us. We were wired to die. “Are you still giving up men?” I asked. “Christ no! Do you want to know the best part of all this? David found out about this last attempt. He’s been writing me letters compulsively.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Two of them a day, pages and pages. He doesn’t even mail them; he comes here and drops them off for me. It’s like the more suicidal I am, the more he wants me. When I get out we are going to try and live together. Arnold is going to get full custody of the kids in the divorce and I can’t be arsed to give a fuck. So I’m too crazy to be a mother? Well then, that’s fine. I didn’t make myself this way. It is what it is.” “You sound…good,” I said. “I’m great,” she said, tugging at her hospital gown. “And what about you?” “I’m a mess. I think I may have poisoned my sister’s dog.” “Oh my God.” She giggled. “You did what?” “It’s not funny. He’s dead.” “That beast you brought to my house? You poisoned him? With what, bad Alpo?” “No. Tranquilizers.” “Oh shit.” “Yeah.” “A junkie dog. Jesus, who would have thought? You know, I could tell he had a drug problem. He tried to steal my TV.” She snorted. Now it wasn’t comforting at all to have the old Claire back. Why was she laughing? She was like one of those young boys who shoots animals with a BB gun and then has no remorse. Except I was the one who had killed Dominic. I wondered if we were both inherently evil people. Bad women. Were we? Evil people rarely know they’re evil. Someone had told me that once. What if we were put on the planet to fill some purpose but that purpose was bad? Maybe this was why we had to die. “He was such a sweet dog,” I said. “It’s horrible. My sister is going to be destroyed. I don’t think she will ever forgive me.” “Listen,” she said, “it’s not your fault he couldn’t handle his shit. Never trust an addict, Lucy, not even a dog.” “Stop it. I feel irredeemably awful.” “Well, you’re not.” “Do you ever feel that way? Like you’re the worst one and there is no hope for you?” “Darling, I know I’m the worst one,” she said. “And of course there’s no hope.” I began to cry. “Oh, love, don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m guessing it wasn’t intentional.” “No, of course it wasn’t intentional. And he had diabetes. So maybe it was that.” “It probably was.” “I really fucked up this time.” “Listen,” she said, and put her hand on my shoulder. “Your sister can find another dog. But there’s only one Lucy.” I wanted to believe her. I kept trying to wriggle out of the reality of the situation, find some way to prove to myself that I wasn’t a dog killer. But no matter how I looked at it I was a murderer, third degree at the very least. I wanted to see myself the way Claire saw me.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  At first she had blinded herself to this truth, sustained by the passionate stress of the battle, by her power to hold in despite of the man, by the eager response that she had awakened. Yet the day came when she was no longer blind, when nothing counted in all the world except this grievous unhappiness that was being silently borne by Mary. Martin, if he had wished for revenge, might have taken his fill of it now from Stephen. Little did he know how, one by one, Mary was weakening her defences; gradually undermining her will, her fierce determination to hold, the arrogance of the male that was in her. All this the man was never to know; it was Stephen’s secret, and she knew how to keep it. But one night she suddenly pushed Mary away, blindly, scarcely knowing what she was doing; conscious only that the weapon she thus laid aside had become a thing altogether unworthy, an outrage upon her love for this girl. And that night there followed the terrible thought that her love itself was a kind of outrage. And now she must pay very dearly indeed for that inherent respect of the normal which nothing had ever been able to destroy, not even the long years of persecution—an added burden it was, handed down by the silent but watchful founders of Morton. She must pay for the instinct which, in earliest childhood, had made her feel something akin to worship for the perfect thing which she had divined in the love that existed between her parents. Never before had she seen so clearly all that was lacking to Mary Llewellyn, all that would pass from her faltering grasp, perhaps never to return, with the passing of Martin—children, a home that the world would respect, ties of affection that the world would hold sacred, the blessèd security and the peace of being released from the world’s persecution. And suddenly Martin appeared to Stephen as a creature endowed with incalculable bounty, having in his hands all those priceless gifts which she, love’s mendicant, could never offer. Only one gift could she offer to love, to Mary, and that was the gift of Martin. In a kind of dream she perceived these things. In a dream she now moved and had her being; scarcely conscious of whither this dream would lead, the while her every perception was quickened. And this dream of hers was immensely compelling, so that all that she did seemed clearly pre-destined; she could not have acted otherwise, nor could she have made a false step, although dreaming. Like those who in sleep tread the edge of a chasm unappalled, having lost all sense of danger, so now Stephen walked on the brink of her fate, having only one fear; a nightmare fear of what she must do to give Mary her freedom.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  In obedience to the mighty but unseen will that had taken control of this vivid dreaming, she ceased to respond to the girl’s tenderness, nor would she consent that they two should be lovers. Ruthless as the world itself she became, and almost as cruel in this ceaseless wounding. For in spite of Mary’s obvious misgivings, she went more and more often to see Valérie Seymour, so that gradually, as the days slipped by, Mary’s mind became a prey to suspicion. Yet Stephen struck at her again and again, desperately wounding herself in the process, though scarcely feeling the pain of her wounds for the misery of what she was doing to Mary. But even as she struck the bonds seemed to tighten, with each fresh blow to bind more securely. Mary now clung with every fibre of her sorely distressed and outraged being; with every memory that Stephen had stirred; with every passion that Stephen had fostered; with every instinct of loyalty that Stephen had aroused to do battle with Martin. The hand that had loaded Mary with chains was powerless, it seemed, to strike them from her. Came the day when Mary refused to see Martin, when she turned upon Stephen, pale and accusing: ‘Can’t you understand? Are you utterly blind—have you only got eyes now for Valérie Seymour?’ And as though she were suddenly smitten dumb, Stephen’s lips remained closed and she answered nothing. Then Mary wept and cried out against her: ‘I won’t let you go—I won’t let you, I tell you! It’s your fault if I love you the way I do. I can’t do without you, you’ve taught me to need you, and now . . .’ In half-shamed, half-defiant words she must stand there and plead for what Stephen withheld, and Stephen must listen to such pleading from Mary. Then before the girl realized it she had said: ‘But for you, I could have loved Martin Hallam!’ Stephen heard her own voice a long way away: ‘But for me, you could have loved Martin Hallam.’ Mary flung despairing arms round her neck: ‘No, no! Not that, I don’t know what I’m saying.’ 3 The first faint breath of spring was in the air, bringing daffodils to the flower-stalls of Paris. Once again Mary’s young cherry tree in the garden was pushing out leaves and tiny pink buds along the whole length of its childish branches. Then Martin wrote: ‘Stephen, where can I see you? It must be alone. Better not at your house, I think, if you don’t mind, because of Mary.’ She appointed the place. They would meet at the Auberge du Vieux Logis in the Rue Lepic. They two would meet there on the following evening. When she left the house without saying a word, Mary thought she was going to Valérie Seymour. Stephen sat down at a table in the corner to await Martin’s coming—she herself was early.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  That turkey, zucchini, and peas dish I left the recipe for out on the counter. He loves it. Vegetables are good for his blood sugar.” “Will do.” “I hate being separated from him for so long. You don’t think I’m a bad mother, do you?” “No, it’s the twenty-first century, don’t be a helicopter parent.” “But—” “That’s just patriarchal guilt. Enjoy your trip, Aunt Lucy is taking great care of him.” When we hung up I felt like an asshole. Annika had always tried to be a good sister to me. By the time my mother died she was already in college, out of the house, but she tried her best. She called often to check in on me and never made me feel like I had been forgotten. She sent me mix tapes, weed, and makeup, so that I could feel cool in high school. Before she was even rich she paid for the abortion I had at nineteen so I wouldn’t have to ask my father for the money. How was I repaying her? By neglecting the most beloved thing in her life for strangers on the Internet. I looked around the living room. There were pictures of Dominic everywhere: Dominic on the beach in Malibu with his ears blowing back, Dominic dressed as a bumblebee on Halloween, Annika cradling Dominic as a little puppy, her face serene and dreamlike. Dominic himself now had his head in my lap and was looking up at me from under his dog brow. “I’m going to do better,” I said to him, scratching his white diamond. “I promise. From now on it’s only going to be you and me. As soon as I get back from this date.” 17. I got to the Ace at five and had time to kill. I decided I would go up to the roof and maybe try to think about my book a little bit. Once again, I’d somehow shoved Sappho under a man: multiple men this time. I’d come to Venice to purge the influence of dick on my life and had wound up becoming Helen of Troy. What would Sappho think? The advisory committe said the thesis draft was due by fall semester. Did that mean the beginning of the semester? Day one? I knew that it did. But I pretended I had some wiggle room: that I could just pop in there on Halloween, draft in hand, like, Sorry for the delay! and my funding would go on. I’d always been scared not to finish the thesis but maybe even more scared to finish it. What would happen then? Would I apply for teaching jobs in other cities?