Relief

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 Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Amy and three of her friends, all women, handled the move with the military precision of a hostage extraction. They waited until Stanley went to work, arrived in a rented truck, and moved Reese’s belongings out of the closet in Stanley’s apartment and into Amy’s place by noon. Reese and Amy had already eaten two meals together in their new home before Stanley even learned of his own reacquaintance with bachelorhood. Reese stole Stanley’s blender when she left. She told herself that both she and he deserved it. That small theft turned out to be the grievance on which he litigated his subsequent stream of enraged voicemails, texts, and emails: her greed, how spoiled she was, the way she used people, broke them down, and ultimately stole their small appliances. Then the messages stopped. Even a few years after the financial crash, the occasional aftershock reverberated to collapse yet another firm. This time it was Stanley’s. CHAPTER THREE Six weeks after conception W wes BOOM AGAINST the breakwater along Lake Shore Drive, beneath the Chicago skyline. They bounce back from the vertical concrete seawall into the oncoming sets, rolling under and over the newcomers, violently hoisting each other aloft then dropping apart diminished. Even from inside the taxi, with the windows rolled up, Ames can smell the water, can sense the ionized air that jolts him into a pleasant alertness, as happens near waterfalls, or just after a sudden, hard downpour. Bikers weave to avoid the spray, which gets caught by the wind and carried over the lake path. Two windsurfers rip across the flat inner breakwater at Navy Pier, bracing their weight so hard against the gusts that they’ve pulled back the sails, closer to parallel with than perpendicular to the horizon. One of them carves toward the channel entrance, where the steeper whitecaps come in, catches the first big crest, and launches twelve feet into the air, hanging for a moment like a kite. Ames is so surprised and impressed by the maneuver that he cries out and grabs Katrina’s arm, forgetting that, for the past week, every conversation that does not stick tightly to questions of their work has ended in uneasy sadness or recriminations. “Sorry,” he says, his hand retreating. “Did you see that, though? That guy was using his sail like a wing when he jumped off the wave.” Katrina refuses to direct her attention toward the lakefront, and the full bore of her distress is recalled to him. He exhales slowly through his nose.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  People began to turn from the white robes and back toward Brother Terrell.“Bless God, they’s some people will stand with you no matter who or what is standing against you . . . ain’t that right?”The man blanched when Brother Terrell stuck the microphone in his face.“Yes, sir, I . . . I . . . guess that’s right.”“They’s some people won’t back down when the devil takes a pitchfork after ’em. Ain’t that right too?”“Yes, sir, Brother Terrell.” Certainly seemed to grow more confident with each step.“Some people when you ask ’em to say amen, they don’t just say amen. They say . . .” Brother Terrell turned toward the man beside him. “What was it you said?”The man hesitated, then took the microphone, leaned back as far as he could, and whipped his body forward as the word shot out of his mouth. “CERTAINLY!”“Look, saints. Look, Brother Certainly. I b’lieve you scared the devils. I b’lieve they’ve turned tail and run.”We turned in our chairs. The white robes were stomping back to their cars and the cars were backing up and pulling away, the glare of their headlights finally receding. Brother Terrell ran up and down the aisles, dragging Certainly by the hand.“We may not have won the battle tonight, but we didn’t lose it either. God protected us with his shield.”Brother Terrell urged us to have courage, to have faith, to hold on. He told us that our brothers and sisters would be back, that we would raise our hands and pray together again. That God was still in his heaven, still in charge, and that in the end, we would be the victors. People wanted to believe him. They clapped their hands because they knew that’s what they were supposed to do. They said amen and hallelujah, but their voices fell flat. Brother Terrell took his white handkerchief out of his breast pocket and mopped his face.“You know what we need tonight? We need a victory march. Sister Johnson, play us a victory march.”My mother played the opening notes of “When the Saints Go Marching In” and Brother Terrell pounded out the rhythm with his fist and sang.Oh when the saints go marching in Oh when the saints go marching in, Oh, Lord, we want to be in that number . . .The ministers on the platform marched down the prayer ramp and queued up behind Brother Terrell. They shot one another quick, nervous looks as if they were on their way to a firing squad. Brother Terrell seemed determined not to notice how sick at heart everyone felt. As they proceeded down the aisle and around the tent, he pumped his arms and legs and grinned like a maniac. He marched with his hand in the air. He beat the tambourine double-time. He danced with his hand on his hip, stepping back, then shuffling forward.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  “Alaska and Chip,” a member of the Jury said, “you get ten work hours—doing dishes in the cafeteria—and you’re both officially one problem away from a phone call home. Takumi and Miles, there’s nothing in the rules about watching someone smoke, but the Jury will remember your story if you break the rules again. Fair?” “Fair,” Alaska said quickly, obviously relieved. On my way out, the Eagle spun me around. “Don’t abuse your privileges at this school, young man, or you will regret it.” I nodded. eighty-nine days before “WE FOUND YOU A GIRLFRIEND,” Alaska said to me. Still, no one had explained to me what happened the week before with the Jury. It didn’t seem to have affected Alaska, though, who was 1. in our room after dark with the door closed, and 2. smoking a cigarette as she sat on the mostly foam couch. She had stuffed a towel into the bottom of our door and insisted it was safe, but I worried—about the cigarette and the “girlfriend.” “All I have to do now,” she said, “is convince you to like her and convince her to like you.” “Monumental tasks,” the Colonel pointed out. He lay on the top bunk, reading for his English class. Moby-Dick . “How can you read and talk at the same time?” I asked. “Well, I usually can’t, but neither the book nor the conversation is particularly intellectually challenging.” “I like that book,” Alaska said. “Yes.” The Colonel smiled and leaned over to look at her from his top bunk. “You would. Big white whale is a metaphor for everything. You live for pretentious metaphors.” Alaska was unfazed. “So, Pudge, what’s your feeling on the former Soviet bloc?” “Um. I’m in favor of it?” She flicked the ashes of her cigarette into my pencil holder. I almost protested, but why bother. “You know that girl in our precalc class,” Alaska said, “soft voice, says thees, not this. Know that girl?” “Yeah. Lara. She sat on my lap on the way to McDonald’s.” “Right. I know. And she liked you. You thought she was quietly discussing precalc, when she was clearly talking about having hot sex with you. Which is why you need me.” “She has great breasts,” the Colonel said without looking up from the whale. “DO NOT OBJECTIFY WOMEN’S BODIES!” Alaska shouted. Now he looked up. “Sorry. Perky breasts.” “That’s not any better!” “Sure it is,” he said. “Great is a judgment on a woman’s body. Perky is merely an observation. They are perky. I mean, Christ.” “You’re hopeless,” she said. “So she thinks you’re cute, Pudge.” “Nice.” “Doesn’t mean anything. Problem with you is that if you talk to her you’ll ‘uh um uh’ your way to disaster.” “Don’t be so hard on him,” the Colonel interrupted, as if he was my mom. “God, I understand whale anatomy. Can we move on now, Herman?” “So Jake is going to be in Birmingham this weekend, and we’re going on a triple date.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Maybe she just decided at the last second. — And POOF we are through the moment of her death. We are driving through the place that she could not drive through, passing onto asphalt she never saw, and we are not dead. We are not dead! We are breathing and we are crying and now slowing down and moving back into the right lane. — We got off at the next exit, quietly, and, switching drivers, we walked in front of the car. We met and I held him, my hands balled into tight fists around his shoulders, and he wrapped his short arms around me and squeezed tight, so that I felt the heaves of his chest as we realized over and over again that we were still alive. I realized it in waves and we held on to each other crying and I thought, God we must look so lame, but it doesn’t much matter when you have just now realized, all the time later, that you are still alive. one hundred nineteen days after THE COLONEL AND I threw ourselves into school once we gave up, knowing that we’d both need to ace our finals to achieve our GPA goals (I wanted a 3.0 and the Colonel wouldn’t settle for even a 3.98). Our room became Study Central for the four of us, with Takumi and Lara over till all hours of the night talking about The Sound and the Fury and meiosis and the Battle of the Bulge. The Colonel taught us a semester’s worth of precalc, although he was too good at math to teach it very well—“Of course it makes sense. Just trust me. Christ, it’s not that hard”—and I missed Alaska. And when I could not catch up, I cheated. Takumi and I shared copies of Cliffs Notes for Things Fall Apart and A Farewell to Arms (“These things are just too damned long !” he exclaimed at one point). We didn’t talk much. But we didn’t need to. one hundred twenty-two days after A COOL BREEZE had beaten back the onslaught of summer, and on the morning the Old Man gave us our final exams, he suggested we have class outside. I wondered why we could have an entire class outside when I’d been kicked out of class last semester for merely glancing outside, but the Old Man wanted to have class outside, so we did. The Old Man sat in a chair that Kevin Richman carried out for him, and we sat on the grass, my notebook at first perched awkwardly in my lap and then against the thick green grass, and the bumpy ground did not lend itself to writing, and the gnats hovered. We were too close to the lake for comfortable sitting, really, but the Old Man seemed happy. “I have here your final exam. Last semester, I gave you nearly two months to complete your final paper. This time, you get two weeks.” He paused.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  The Colonel, who had driven the Investigation from the start, who had cared about what happened to her when I only cared if she loved me, had given up on it, answerless. And I didn’t like what answers I had: She hadn’t even cared enough about what happened between us to tell Jake; instead, she had just talked cute with him, giving him no reason to think that minutes before, I’d tasted her boozy breath. And then something invisible snapped inside her, and that which had come together commenced to fall apart. And maybe that was the only answer we’d ever have. She fell apart because that’s what happens. The Colonel seemed resigned to that, but if the Investigation had once been his idea, it was now the thing that held me together, and I still hoped for enlightenment. sixty-two days after THE NEXT SUNDAY, I slept in until the late-morning sunlight slivered through the blinds and found its way to my face. I pulled the comforter over my head, but the air got hot and stale, so I got up to call my parents. “Miles!” my mom said before I even said hello. “We just got caller identification.” “Does it magically know it’s me calling from the pay phone?” She laughed. “No, it just says ‘pay phone’ and the area code. So I deduced. How are you?” she asked, a warm concern in her voice. “I’m doing okay. I kinda screwed up some of my classes for a while, but I’m back to studying now, so it should be fine,” I said, and that was mostly true. “I know it’s been hard on you, buddy,” she said. “Oh! Guess who your dad and I saw at a party last night? Mrs. Forrester. Your fourth-grade teacher! Remember? She remembered you perfectly , and spoke very highly of you, and we just talked”—and while I was pleased to know that Mrs. Forrester held my fourth-grade self in high regard, I only half listened as I read the scribbled notes on the white-painted pine wall on either side of the phone, looking for any new ones I might be able to decode (Lacy’s—Friday, 10 were the when and where of a Weekday Warrior party, I figured)—“and we had dinner with the Johnstons last night and I’m afraid that Dad had too much wine. We played charades and he was just awful. ” She laughed, and I felt so tired, but someone had dragged the bench away from the pay phone, so I sat my bony butt down on the hard concrete, pulling the silver cord of the phone taut and preparing for a serious soliloquy from my mom, and then down below all the other notes and scribbles, I saw a drawing of a flower. Twelve oblong petals around a filled-in circle against the daisy-white paint, and daisies, white daisies, and I could hear her saying, What do you see, Pudge?

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Katrina shifted a pillow, and when she turned back to Ames, her face was...amused? “See, you proved my point. When I said ‘ennui of heterosexuality,’ you challenged me, but when I said ‘miscarriage,’ you immediately apologized. That’s why the miscarriage is the official story of my divorce. No one ever challenges it. Miscarriages are private, and so my miscarriage is a clean get-out-free card. It makes for a divorce in which Danny was blameless—grief where you lose something you can’t quite name. People assume that mourning drove a sad wedge between a couple—no one’s fault. Everything is assumed. No one ever asks how I actually felt about the miscarriage.” “How did you feel about the miscarriage?” Ames asked. “T felt relief.” “Relief?” “Yes. I was relieved. Which made me feel like a psychopath. I read all these articles in women’s magazines about miscarriages, and they all said that I would feel grief and guilt. They assured me that it wasn’t my fault: that it wasn’t because of that glass of wine I had once, or that Italian sub full of processed meat. But I never thought it was my fault. My own guilt came from not having guilt. After a while of feeling that way, I began to ask why. Why should I feel relieved? It caused me to look harder at my marriage. I was relieved because of something I didn’t want to admit: I didn’t want to be with Danny anymore and if we had a kid together I would have to be. Danny was a good boyfriend to have when I was younger, when we were in college. Like, in the same way that a Saint Bernard would be a good dog to have if you were lost in the mountains. A big amiable body that a girl could shelter behind. Danny was an idea I inherited, maybe from growing up in Vermont, of what a man was supposed to be. We looked good together; like, early on I knew any photo for our wedding announcement was going to look like it came from a magazine. So when he proposed, I accepted, even though we had been dating two years, and I don’t think that sex ever lasted longer than fifteen minutes, including foreplay, and despite the fact that by the three-month point in our relationship, I had somehow already ended up doing his laundry. “One time, I made this joke that my marriage was like a push-up bra: It looked pretty good underneath a shirt, but you know it’s all just padding and by the end of the day you can’t wait to take the damn thing off. My friends laughed, but I felt icy, because I realized I had inadvertently told the truth and it was awful.” Ames listened. She had once told him that she liked how he didn’t seem to feel a need to speak or give advice when she was working through a thought out loud.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Yes, he’s right! Amy and her driver traveled north on the map, her trajectory parallel with Reese’s R. Soon enough they would pull even, and then it was just a matter of cutting over and heading them off. Amy’s pulse raced. Love is a battlefield, but also a car chase. Earlier that month, Amy had come home from the adoption orientation to an empty apartment. She wandered from the foyer to the dining room to the kitchen, shell-shocked, not understanding. In her mind, Amy expected Reese to be waiting at home—sorrowful, repentant. Or even angry. But an empty apartment? It had not occurred to her, and the cold fear that she had gone to Stanley’s pierced her. She opened Reese’s closet: The clothes were still there. In the front closet, Amy pulled out the suitcases. Did Reese have a bug-out bag? That just didn’t seem like Reese. Reese was not a prepper type. Even if prepping was just to run, after admitting to cheating. She unzipped both suitcases they owned, to check if cash or toothbrushes, or whatever, had been stashed in one. But no, the suitcases were empty. She was kneeling on the floor, zipping back up a blue suitcase, when the front door opened. Reese saw Amy on the floor with a suitcase. Her eyes widened, then she screamed, “No!” and came down upon Amy, tore the suitcase from her and sent it tumbling across the wood floor. “No, no, no.” Reese clutched at Amy, pulled her closer. “Don’t go, don’t, please.” “What? I’m not going. You were the one who wasn’t here!” “T went back to wait by the train stop for you! For hours!” “T took a car.” Reese’s eyes showed red and raw. “You had a suitcase out.” She had a hurt, little-girl tone. “T was seeing if you were going to leave.” Reese shook her head, and her nose flared, a sign that she was holding back tears. Look how sad Reese was at the thought of losing Amy! Relief radiated out through Amy’s limbs, bright and hopeful. So intense that it almost compensated for the anguish of her whole night thus far. When Reese asked if she wanted to process, to talk, Amy—now confident—shook her head and said they should sleep, and talk in the morning. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing this relief raft. She grasped at it, and even managed a wan smile when turning back the covers and getting in tentatively beside Reese. Amy settled in with maximum care and tenderness, as though getting into bed beside someone who’d just had surgery and needed comfort but couldn’t be jostled.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  “Yes, Mom.” Oh, if only you knew. There’s an obscenely rich guy I’ve met and he wants some kind of strange kinky sexual relationship, in which I don’t get a say in things. “Have you met someone?” “No, Mom.” I am so not going there right now. “Well, darling, I’ll be thinking of you on Thursday. I love you…you know that, honey?” I close my eyes. Her precious words give me a warm glow inside. “Love you, too, Mom. Say hi to Bob, and I hope he gets better fast.” “Will do, honey. Bye.” “Bye.” I have strayed into my bedroom with the phone. Idly, I switch the mean machine on and fire up the email program. There’s an email from Christian from late last night or very early this morning, depending on your point of view. My heart rate spikes instantly, and I hear the blood pumping in my ears. Holy crap. Perhaps he’s said no. That’s it—maybe he’s canceling dinner. The thought is so painful. I dismiss it quickly and open the email. From: Christian Grey Subject: Your Issues Date: May 24 2011 01:27 To: Anastasia Steele Dear Miss Steele, Following my more thorough examination of your issues, may I bring to your attention the definition of submissive. submissive [suhb-mis-iv]—adjective 1. inclined or ready to submit; unresistingly or humbly obedient: submissive servants. 2. marked by or indicating submission: a submissive reply. Origin: 1580–90; submiss + -ive Synonyms: 1. tractable, compliant, pliant, amenable. 2. passive, resigned, patient, docile, tame, subdued. Antonyms: 1. rebellious, disobedient. Please bear this in mind for our meeting on Wednesday. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. My initial feeling is one of relief. He’s willing to discuss my issues at least, and he still wants to meet tomorrow. After some thought, I reply. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: My Issues… What about Your Issues? Date: May 24 2011 18:29 To: Christian Grey Sir, Please note the date of origin: 1580–90. I would respectfully remind Sir that the year is 2011. We have come a long way since then. May I offer a definition for you to consider for our meeting: compromise [kom-pruh-mahyz]—noun 1. a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; an agreement reached by adjustment of conflicting or opposing claims, principles, etc., by reciprocal modification of demands. 2. the result of such a settlement. 3. something intermediate between different things: The split-level is a compromise between a ranch house and a multistoried house. 4. an endangering, esp. of reputation; exposure to danger, suspicion, etc.: a compromise of one’s integrity. Ana From: Christian Grey Subject: What about My Issues? Date: May 24 2011 18:32 To: Anastasia Steele Good point, well made, as ever, Miss Steele. I will collect you from your apartment at 7:00 tomorrow. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: 2011—Women Can Drive Date: May 24 2011 18:40 To: Christian Grey Sir, I have a car. I can drive. I would prefer to meet you somewhere.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  I felt myself drifting into that lake of eternal hellfire when the front door creaked open and startled me fully awake. A man’s voice. Brother Cotton’s. Then my mother’s and Betty Ann’s. No one screamed or cried. The door closed again. Thank you. I curled around Pam and pressed my knees into the bend of hers. Sleep blanketed my thoughts and everything that could go wrong in the world slipped away. I woke the next morning to a warm, doughy smell. Biscuits. No one had baked biscuits since Brother Terrell started his fast. He could stand the smell of beans bubbling, cornbread baking, and chicken frying, but the smell of biscuits brought him to tears. I inhaled deeply and opened my eyes. A rheumy water spot stared down from the ceiling. On one side of me Randall snored, mouth wide open. On the other side, where Pam should have been, was an empty space. Voices rose and fell in some other part of the house. I pulled myself above the quilt, scooched to the foot of the bed, and lowered my feet to the wooden floor, smooth and cold. I slipped over to the door and pulled it open. Laughter. I walked down the hall to the living room, past the couch, cleaved in two with Gary sleeping in the middle. I wanted to rub my hand over the dark wool of his curly hair but thought better of it. There would be more biscuits if Gary and Randall stayed asleep.Bright light washed across every surface of the kitchen. Shiny enameled stove and round-shouldered fridge, pale no-color countertops, cabinets with peeling white paint, faded linoleum traced with indecipherable patterns. My mother stood on one side of the stove, hand on her hip, stirring a cast-iron fryer full of tomato gravy. The light blurred and softened the strong features of her face and brought out the red and gold in her hair. On the other side of the stove stood Laverne. She flipped one strip of bacon, then another, jumping as the grease popped and splattered, laughing at the brief, sharp pain, so ordinary and expected. Betty Ann faced the counter, cutting into biscuits with a wooden handled knife and spreading butter, then fig preserves into the warm, flaky centers.She let go that deep, throaty laugh, then whipped around to Mama and Laverne. “The steak!”Mama dropped the long-handled spoon into the gravy and knelt in front of the oven broiler. “Laverne, hand me that hot pad.” She pulled out the pan with smoking meat and placed it on the counter in front of Betty Ann. “A burnt offering.” They laughed, voices mingling in a loose, rough harmony.“Hey, can we get some of that food? We got a hungry man over here.” Brother Cotton’s voice drew my attention to the table where Brother Terrell sat, elbows propped on the round white table, a fork in one fist, knife in the other, a shiny white platter in front him.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  Celsius, which is experienced as painfully cold, but not intolerable. At the end of the 60 seconds, the experimenter instructed the participant to remove his hand from the water and offered a warm towel. The long episode lasted 90 seconds. Its first 60 seconds were identical to the short episode. The experimenter said nothing at all at the end of the 60 seconds. Instead he opened a valve that allowed slightly warmer water to flow into the tub. During the additional 30 seconds, the temperature of the water rose by roughly 1°, just enough for most subjects to detect a slight decrease in the intensity of pain. Our participants were told that they would have three cold-hand trials, but in fact they experienced only the short and the long episodes, each with a different hand. The trials were separated by seven minutes. Seven minutes after the second trial, the participants were given a choice about the third trial. They were told that one of their experiences would be repeated exactly, and were free to choose whether to repeat the experience they had had with their left hand or with their right hand. Of course, half the participants had the short trial with the left hand, half with the right; half had the short trial first, half began with the long, etc. This was a carefully controlled experiment. The experiment was designed to create a conflict between the interests of the experiencing and the remembering selves, and also between experienced utility and decision utility. From the perspective of the experiencing self, the long trial was obviously worse. We expected the remembering self to have another opinion. The peak-end rule predicts a worse memory for the short than for the long trial, and duration neglect predicts that the difference between 90 seconds and 60 seconds of pain will be ignored. We therefore predicted that the participants would have a more favorable (or less unfavorable) memory of the long trial and choose to repeat it. They did. Fully 80% of the participants who reported that their pain diminished during the final phase of the longer episode opted to repeat it, thereby declaring themselves willing to suffer 30 seconds of needless pain in the anticipated third trial. The subjects who preferred the long episode were not masochists and did not deliberately choose to expose themselves to the worse experience; they simply made a mistake. If we had asked them, “Would you prefer a 90-second immersion or only the first part of it?” they would certainly have selected the short option. We did not use these words, however, and the subjects did what came naturally: they chose to repeat the episode of which they had the less

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I paid for some Dimetapp, the Ambien, a tiny tin of Altoids, and strutted home through the cold—vibrating but relieved, the pills and mints now rattling like snakes, I thought, with each step I took. Soon I’d be home again. Soon, God willing, I’d be asleep. A dog walker passed by with a team of yipping teacups and lapdogs on whiplike leashes. The dogs skittered across the wet blacktop as silently as cockroaches, each so small it amazed me that they hadn’t been squashed underfoot. Easy to love. Easy to kill. I thought again of Ping Xi’s stuffed dogs, the preposterous myth of his industrial dog-killing freezer. A tight sheet of wind slapped me in the face. I pulled the collar of my fur coat up around my throat, and I pictured myself as a white fox curling up in the corner of Ping Xi’s freezer, the room whirling with smoky air, swinging sides of cow creaking through the hum of cold, my mind slowing down until single syllables of thought abstracted from their meanings and I heard them stretched out as long-held notes, like foghorns or sirens for a blackout curfew or an air raid. “This has been a test.” I felt my teeth chatter, but my face was numb. Soon. The freezer sounded really good. “Some flowers just came for you,” the doorman said as I walked back into my building. He pointed at a huge bouquet of red roses sitting on the mantel over the nonworking fireplace in the lobby. “For me?” Were the roses from Trevor? Had he changed his mind about his fat old girlfriend? Was this good? Was this the beginning of the new life? Renewed romance? Did I want that? My heart reared up like a frightened horse, an idiot. I went over to look at the flowers. The mirror hanging on the wall above the mantel showed a frozen corpse, still pretty. And then I noticed that the glass vase was skull-shaped. Trevor wouldn’t have sent me that. No. “Did you see who dropped these off?” I asked the doorman. “A delivery guy.” “Was he Asian?” I asked. “Old black guy. A foot messenger.” Tucked between the flowers was a small note written in girly ballpoint: “To my muse. Call me and we’ll get started.” I flipped it over: Ping Xi’s business card with his name, number, e-mail address, and the corniest quotation I’d ever read: “Every act of creation is an act of destruction.—Pablo Picasso” I took the vase off the mantel and got into the elevator, the smell of the roses like the stink off a dead cat in the gutter.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  It was just a daily log of numbers, mathematical sums and subtractions, the final results circled and annotated with either smiley or frowny faces. The last entry was marked December 23. Reva seemed to have abandoned her daily numbers game when her mother died. I thought of Reva sleeping in that bed each night, probably drunk and full of Aspartame and Pepcid. In the mornings, she prepped and set out into the world, a mask of composure. And I had problems? Who’s the real fuckup, Reva? I hated her more and more. The bathroom looked like it belonged to a pair of adolescent twins preparing for a beauty pageant. I could smell the mildew and the puke and Lysol. A pink expanded toolbox burst with brushes and applicators of all shapes and sizes, drugstore makeup, nail polish, stolen testers, a dozen shades of Maybelline lip gloss. On the shelf, there were two hair dryers, a curling iron, a flat iron, a bowl of bejeweled barrettes and plastic headbands. Cutouts from fashion magazines were taped to the edges of the mirror over the low vanity and sink: Claudia Schiffer’s Guess Jeans ad. Kate Moss in her Calvins. Runway stick figures. Linda Evangelista. Kate Moss. Kate Moss. Kate Moss. There was a bowl of cotton balls and swabs. A bowl of bobby pins. Two huge bottles of Listerine. Next to the cup that must have held a dozen toothbrushes, each head of bristles yellowed and frayed, a prescription bottle of Vicodin. Vicodin! From the dentist. There were twelve pills left in the bottle. I took one and pocketed the rest. I found more pills under the sink in a wicker box with a pink ribbon tying the lid shut—an Easter relic, I guessed. Maybe when Reva bought it, it was full of chocolate eggs. Clearance sale. Inside: Diurex, ibuprofen, Mylanta, Dulcolax, Dexatrim, Midol, aspirin, fen-phen. A Victoria’s Secret gift bag was tucked into the back corner of the cabinet. Inside, glory! My Ambien, my Rozerem, my Ativan, my Xanax, my trazodone, my lithium. Seroquel, Lunesta. Valium. I laughed. I teared up. Finally, my heart slowed. My hands started trembling a little, or maybe they’d been trembling all along. “Thank God,” I said aloud. The draft sucked the bathroom door shut with a celebratory bang. I counted out three lithium, two Ativan, five Ambien. That sounded like a nice mélange, a luxurious free fall into velvet blackness. And a couple of trazodone because trazodone weighed down the Ambien, so if I dreamt, I’d dream low to the ground. That would be stabilizing, I thought. And maybe one more Ativan. Ativan to me felt like fresh air. A cool breeze, slightly effervescent. This was good, I thought. A serious rest. My mouth watered. Good strong American sleep. Those pills would scrape out the sludge of Infermiterol left in my mind. Then I’d feel better. Then I’d be set. I’d live easy.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  As in a dream (I never would have believed myself capable of it) I got up from the couch (how many years had I been lying there?), picked up my pocket-book, and walked (no, I did not quite “saunter"—though I wish I had) out the door. I closed it gently. No Nora-slamming-the-door routine to undercut the effect. Goodbye Kolner. For a moment in the elevator I nearly cried. But by the time I’d walked two blocks down Madison Avenue I was jubilant. No more eight o’clock sessions! No more wondering was-it-helping as I wrote out the gargantuan check each month! No more arguing with Kolner like a movement leader! I was free! And think of all the money I didn’t have to spend! I ducked into a shoestore and immediately spent $40 on a pair of white sandals with gold chains. They made me feel as good as fifty minutes with Kolner ever had. OK, so I wasn’t really liberated (I still had to comfort myself with shopping), but at least I was free of Kolner. It was a start anyway. I was wearing the sandals on the flight to Vienna, and I looked down at them as we trooped back into the plane. Was it stepping on with the right foot or with the left that kept the plane from crashing? How could I keep the plane from crashing if I couldn’t even remember? “Mother,” I muttered. I always mutter “Mother” when I’m scared. The funny thing is I don’t even call my mother “Mother” and I never have. She named me Isadora Zelda, but I try never to use the Zelda. (I understand that she also considered Olympia, after Greece, and Justine, after Sade.) In return for this lifetime liability, I call her Jude. Her real name is Judith. Nobody but my youngest sister ever calls her Mommy. — Vienna. The very name is like a waltz. But I never could stand the place. It seemed dead to me. Embalmed. We arrived at 9 a.m. —just as the airport was opening up. willkommen in wien , it said. We shuffled in through customs dragging our suitcases and feeling dopey from the missed night of sleep. The airport looked scrubbed and gleaming. I thought of the level of disorder, dirt, and chaos New Yorkers get used to. The return to Europe was always something of a shock. The streets seemed unnaturally clean. The parks seemed unnaturally full of unvandalized benches, fountains, and rose bushes. The public flowerbeds seemed unnaturally tidy.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Shit , I thought. They never can tell the difference. “Yes, could you ring his room please?” “Who shall I say is calling?” “His wife.” The term “wife” apparently had clout back here in the nineteenth century. My friend Bob Cratchit literally sprang for the phone. Maybe it really was a Japanese gentleman. Toshiro Mifune perhaps? Complete with Samurai sword and topknot of hair? One of the rapists of Rashomon? The ghost of Yukio Mishima with his wounds still oozing? “I’m sorry, Madam, there’s no answer,” the deskman said. “May I wait in the room?” “Suit yourself, Madam.” And with that he banged a bell on his desk and called for the porter. Another Dickensian type. This one was shorter than me and had glossily Vase-lined hair. I followed him into the elevator cage. Many whirring minutes later, we arrived on the sixth floor. It was Bennett’s room all right; his jackets and ties hanging neatly in the closet. A stack of playbills on the dresser top, his toothbrush and shampoo on the rim of the old-fashioned sink. His slippers on the floor. His underwear and socks drying on the radiator. It scarcely felt as if I had been away at all. Had I? Was Bennett that able to adjust to my absence, calmly going to plays and coming home to wash his socks? The bed was a single. It was unmade but hardly looked tossed at all. I flipped through the stack of playbills. He’d seen every play in London. He had not cracked up or done anything crazy. He was the same predictable Bennett. I sighed with relief, or was it disappointment? I ran a bath for myself and stripped off my dirty clothes, letting them drop in a trail on the floor. The bathtub was one of those long, deep, claw-footed ones. A regular sarcophagus. I sank in up to my chin. “Hello feet,” I said, as my toes surfaced at the other end of the tub. My arms were bruised and aching from dragging that suitcase, and my feet were blistered. The water was so hot that for a moment I thought I’d pass out. “DROWNED IN ESTRANGED HUSBAND’S BATHTUB,” I wrote in my head for the National Enquirer. I hadn’t the remotest idea of what was going to happen next and for the moment I didn’t care. I floated lightly in the deep tub, feeling that something was different, something was strange, but I couldn’t figure out just what it was. I looked down at my body. The same. The pink V of my thighs, the triangle of curly hair, the Tampax string fishing the water like a Hemingway hero, the white belly, the breasts half floating, the nipples flushed and rosy from the steamy water. A nice body. Mine. I decided to keep it. I hugged myself. It was my fear that was missing.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  6A word about Gaston Godin. The main reason why I enjoyed—or at least tolerated with relief—his company was the spell of absolute security that his. ample person cast on my secret. Not that he knew it; I had no special reason to confide in him, and he was much too self-centered and abstract to notice or suspect anything that might lead to a frank question on his part and a frank answer on mine. He spoke well of me to Beardsleyans, he was my good herald. Had he discovered mes goûts and Lolita’s status, it would have interested him only insofar as throwing some light on the simplicity of my attitude toward him, which attitude was as free of polite strain as it was of ribald allusions; for despite his colorless mind and dim memory, he was perhaps aware that I knew more about him than the burghers of Beardsley did. He was a flabby, dough-faced, melancholy bachelor tapering upward to a pair of narrow, not quite level shoulders and a conical pear-head which had sleek black hair on one side and only a few plastered wisps on the other. But the lower part of his body was enormous, and he ambulated with a curious elephantine stealth by means of phenomenally stout legs. He always wore black, even his tie was black; he seldom bathed; his English was a burlesque. And, nonetheless, everybody considered him to be a supremely lovable, lovably freakish fellow! Neighbors pampered him; he knew by name all the small boys in our vicinity (he lived a few blocks away from me) and had some of them clean his sidewalk and burn leaves in his back yard, and bring wood from his shed, and even perform simple chores about the house, and he would feed them fancy chocolates, with real liqueurs inside—in the privacy of an orientally furnished den in his basement, with amusing daggers and pistols arrayed on the moldy, rug-adorned walls among the camouflaged hot-water pipes. Upstairs he had a studio—he painted a little, the old fraud. He had decorated its sloping wall (it was really not more than a garret) with large photographs of pensive André Gide, Tchaïkovsky, Norman Douglas, two other well-known English writers, Nijinsky (all thighs and fig leaves), Harold D. Doublename (a misty-eyed left-wing professor at a Midwestern university) and Marcel Proust. All these poor people seemed about to fall on you from their inclined plane. He had also an album with snapshots of all the Jackies and Dickies of the neighborhood, and when I happened to thumb through it and make some casual remark, Gaston would purse his fat lips and murmur with a wistful pout “Oui, ils sont gentils.” His brown eyes would roam around the various sentimental and artistic bric-a-brac present, and his own banal toiles (the conventionally primitive eyes, sliced guitars, blue nipples and geometrical designs of the day), and with a vague gesture toward a painted wooden bowl or veined vase, he would say “Prenez done une de ces poires. La bonne dame d’en face m!en offre plus que je n’en peux savourer.” Or: “Mississe Taille Lore vient de me donner ces dablias, belles fleurs que j’exècre.” (Somber, sad, full of world-weariness.)

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  The cold stone I had worn inside my chest for twenty-nine years was gone. Not suddenly. And maybe not for good. But it was gone. Perhaps I had only come to take a bath. Perhaps I would leave before Bennett returned. Or perhaps we’d go home together and work things out. Or perhaps we’d go home together and separate. It was not clear how it would end. In nineteenth-century novels, they get married. In twentieth-century novels, they get divorced. Can you have an ending in which they do neither? I laughed at myself for being so literary. “Life has no plot” is one of my favorite lines. At least it has no plot while you’re still living. And after you die, the plot is not your concern. But whatever happened, I knew I would survive it. I knew, above all, that I’d go on working. Surviving meant being born over and over. It wasn’t easy, and it was always painful. But there wasn’t any other choice except death. What would I say if Bennett walked in. “I’ve only come to take a bath?” Naked as I was, could I be noncommittal? How noncommittal can you be in the nude? “If you grovel, you’ll be back at square one,” Adrian had said. I knew for sure I wasn’t going to grovel. But that was all I knew. It was enough. I ran more hot water and soaped my hair. I thought of Adrian and blew him bubble kisses. I thought of the nameless inventor of the bathtub. I was somehow sure it was a woman. And was the inventor of the bathtub plug a man? I hummed and rinsed my hair. As I was soaping it again, Bennett walked in. Henry Miller on Fear of Flying C ertainly anyone whose book is on the bestseller list (even if at the bottom) needs no review, no boosting. These few words, therefore, are gratuitous, or, if you like, homage from one writer to another. Above all, a warm, heartfelt tribute to a woman writer, the likes of which I have never known. In some ways, this book— Fear of Flying —is the feminine counterpart to my own Tropic of Cancer. Fortunately, it is not as bitter and much funnier. The author has quite a gripe about shrinks, which most of us share with her. I say the author, but in my head I cannot separate the author from her chief protagonist, Isadora Zelda. In the case of Tropic of Cancer , on the other hand, critics and readers alike were inclined to think I had invented Henry Miller. To this day many people refer to it as a novel, despite the fact that I have said again and again that it is not. Erica Jong, the author, said to me in a letter that she thought it silly to make distinctions regarding the genre or category of a book. A book is a book is a book, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I think I can do it if I really set my mind to it. The doctor said the abortion won’t cause any dramatic weight loss, but I’ll take it. I’ll take whatever I can get. Especially now. Size twos are a challenge for my hips, you know. You’re sure you won’t want any of this back?” She was gleeful and flushed. “Take the jewelry, too,” I said, and returned to the bedroom, which now felt hollowed and cool. Thank God for Reva. Her greed would unburden me of my own vanity. I started picking through my jewelry, then decided just to give her the whole box. She didn’t ask why. Maybe she thought I was in a blackout, and if she questioned me, I’d wake up. Don’t disturb the sleeping beast. The white fox in the meat freezer. I went down in the elevator with her, the bags in our fists heavy yet cloudlike, the air in the elevator shifting pressure as though we were flying through a storm. But I felt almost nothing. The doorman held the door for us as we walked out. “Oh, thank you so much, that’s so kind of you,” Reva said, suddenly a lady, gracious and verbose. “That is just so sweet of you, Manuel. Thank you.” His name. I’d never bothered to learn it. I gave her forty dollars cash for the ride crosstown. The doorman whistled for a taxi. “I’m going on a trip, Reva,” I said. “Rehab?” “Something like that.” “For how long?” Just the slightest twitch in her eye, barely balking at the lie that was obvious in its vagueness. But what could she say? I’d paid her off in high fashion to leave me alone. “I’ll be back on June first,” I said. “Or maybe I’ll stay longer. They won’t let me make phone calls. They told me it’s best not to have contact with people from my past.” “Not even me?” She was being polite. I could tell she was already hatching plans, all the hunting for love and admiration she’d do with this new wardrobe, flashy armor, the brightest camouflage. She blew on her hands to warm them and craned her neck at the approaching cab. “Good luck with the abortion.” Reva nodded sincerely. In that moment, I think our friendship ended. What would come later would be only airy remembrances of the thing called love she used to give me. I felt a kind of peace about Reva seeing her off that day. I’d cost her so much dignity, but the bounty she was now shoving into the trunk of the cab seemed to make up for it. I was absolved.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Reva helped me up off the floor. I was relieved that she had no elaborately wrapped gift for me. Although Reva was Jewish, she celebrated every Christian holiday. I went to the bathroom, took my coat off, turned the pocket inside out and threw it in the tub. I let the water rinse away the melted Klondike bar. As the chocolate flowed down toward the drain, it looked like blood. “What are you doing here?” I asked Reva when I came back into the living room. She ignored the question. “It’s snowing again,” she said. “I took a cab.” She sat on the sofa. I reheated my half-drunk second cup of coffee in the microwave. I went to the VCR, moved the little elephant statue that I’d positioned to cover the glare from the digital clock. I rubbed my eyes. It was ten thirty. Christmas was almost over, thank God. When I looked at Reva, I saw that under her long black wool cape she was wearing a sparkly red dress and black stockings with boughs of holly embroidered on them. Her mascara was smudged, her face was droopy and swollen and caked with foundation and bronzer. Her hair was slicked back into a bun, shiny with gel. She had kicked off her heels and was now cracking her toe knuckles against the floor. Her shoes lay under the coffee table, tipped over on their sides like two dead crows. She wasn’t giving me any jealous, scornful looks, wasn’t asking if I’d eaten anything that day, wasn’t tidying up or putting the videotapes on the coffee table back in their cases. She was quiet. I leaned against the wall and watched her take her phone out of her purse and turn it off, then open the tin of popcorn, eat some, and put the cover back on. Something had happened, that was clear. Maybe Reva had gone to Ken’s Christmas party and watched him carouse with his wife, who she’d told me was petite and Japanese and cruel. Maybe he’d finally ended the affair. I didn’t ask. I finished my coffee and picked up the tin of popcorn, took it to the kitchen and emptied it into the garbage, which Reva had taken out, apparently, while I was washing my coat. “Thanks,” she said, when I sat down beside her on the sofa. I grunted and turned on the TV. We split the rest of the M&M’s and watched a show about the Bermuda Triangle and I ate some melatonin and Benadryl and drooled a little. At some point I heard my phone ring from wherever I’d last hidden it. “Is it a vortex to a new dimension? Or a myth? Or is there a conspiracy to cover up the truth?

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I knew exactly what I had to do: I needed to be locked up. If one tablet of Infermiterol put me into a state of vacuous unconsciousness for three days, I had enough to keep me in the dark until June. All I needed was a jailkeeper, and I could live in constant sleep without fear of going out and getting involved in anything. This all seemed like a practical matter. The Infermiterol would work for me. I was relieved, almost happy. I didn’t mind at all that when Reva finally came home and wrestled the bathroom door open, she shrieked, expressed her grave concern for my sanity, all while rushing me out the door, I guessed, because she had a stomach full of junk she wanted to puke up. I left the pills with her, all but the Infermiterol. At home, I called a locksmith, arranged a meeting with Ping Xi for the following afternoon, and called Dr. Tuttle to tell her I was going off the grid for the next four months. “Hopefully I won’t ever need to see you again,” I told her. “People say that to me all the time,” she said. That was the last time we spoke. Seven “ARE YOU SURE you won’t wear this stuff? What if I stretch something out, and then you want it back?” I had called Reva to say that I was cleaning out my closets. She brought over a collection of large paper shopping bags from various Manhattan department stores, bags she’d obviously saved in case she had to transport something and needed a vessel that would connote her good taste and affirm that she was respectable because she’d spent money. I’d seen housekeepers and nannies do the same thing, walking around the Upper East Side with their lunch in tiny, rumpled gift bags from Tiffany’s or Saks Fifth Avenue. “I never want to see any of these clothes again,” I told Reva when she arrived. “I want to forget it all existed. Whatever you don’t take, I’ll donate or throw away.” “But all of it?” She was like a kid in a candy store, methodically and vampirically pulling out every dress, every skirt, every blouse, hangers and all. Every pair of designer jeans, every bit of packaged lingerie, every pair of shoes except for the filthy slippers I wore on my feet. “They kind of fit,” she said, trying on an unworn pair of Manolo Blahniks. “Good enough.” She packed everything into the shopping bags with the urgent efficiency of someone building a sand castle at sundown, as the tide comes in. Like a dream you know will end. If I move fast enough, I won’t wake the gods. Most of the clothes still had the tags on them. “This is good motivation to stick to my diet,” Reva said, lugging the bags into the living room. “Atkins, I think. Bacon and eggs for the next six months.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  When the solution to my problems came to me, it landed in my mind like a hawk on a cliff. It was as though it had been circling up there the whole time, studying every little thing in my life, putting all the pieces together. “This is the way.” I knew exactly what I had to do: I needed to be locked up. If one tablet of Infermiterol put me into a state of vacuous unconsciousness for three days, I had enough to keep me in the dark until June. All I needed was a jailkeeper, and I could live in constant sleep without fear of going out and getting involved in anything. This all seemed like a practical matter. The Infermiterol would work for me. I was relieved, almost happy. I didn’t mind at all that when Reva finally came home and wrestled the bathroom door open, she shrieked, expressed her grave concern for my sanity, all while rushing me out the door, I guessed, because she had a stomach full of junk she wanted to puke up. I left the pills with her, all but the Infermiterol. At home, I called a locksmith, arranged a meeting with Ping Xi for the following afternoon, and called Dr. Tuttle to tell her I was going off the grid for the next four months. “Hopefully I won’t ever need to see you again,” I told her. “People say that to me all the time,” she said. That was the last time we spoke. Seven “ARE YOU SURE you won’t wear this stuff? What if I stretch something out, and then you want it back?” I had called Reva to say that I was cleaning out my closets. She brought over a collection of large paper shopping bags from various Manhattan department stores, bags she’d obviously saved in case she had to transport something and needed a vessel that would connote her good taste and affirm that she was respectable because she’d spent money. I’d seen housekeepers and nannies do the same thing, walking around the Upper East Side with their lunch in tiny, rumpled gift bags from Tiffany’s or Saks Fifth Avenue. “I never want to see any of these clothes again,” I told Reva when she arrived. “I want to forget it all existed. Whatever you don’t take, I’ll donate or throw away.” “But all of it?” She was like a kid in a candy store, methodically and vampirically pulling out every dress, every skirt, every blouse, hangers and all. Every pair of designer jeans, every bit of packaged lingerie, every pair of shoes except for the filthy slippers I wore on my feet. “They kind of fit,” she said, trying on an unworn pair of Manolo Blahniks. “Good enough.”