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.

Page 50 of 88 · 20 per page

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Corinne Thank god for Cousin Tewky, that’s all she had to say. When he heard her on the phone crying and carrying on about Steve, about Arthur, about the whole family falling apart, Tewky flew in and took charge, presenting her with a tantalizing idea. Come home to Birmingham. He had his eye on a charming house with a garden just a block from his own. Three bedrooms, plus a maid’s, impeccably furnished, for rent with an option to buy. He’d already put a hold on it. He’d scouted out the best private schools for the girls. There was nothing to be done about Steve at the moment. Be proud of him, going off to serve his country. He’s young. He’s strong. He’s smart. He’ll go to college when he’s out in a few years. Let Fern go with Arthur for the summer. Send Natalie to the dance camp she’s begging to attend. If she loses weight the camp will be instructed to call immediately. If need be we’ll bring in a doctor to evaluate the situation. When she’d asked, “And then what?” Tewky had taken her hand. “Then we’ll take action. There are rest homes in Birmingham, too. But I’m betting she’ll be fine. Give yourself a chance to recuperate, Corinne. When Fern and Natalie get back from summer vacation everything will be set up. They’ll be happy because their mother will be happy.” It was true, she realized. She hadn’t been happy in a long time. “You’ll be the belle of the ball, dearest cousin,” Tewky promised. “And I will be your dapper escort. Plus, I’m a very good dancer.” And just like that she stopped crying. Just like that she was Tewky’s little cousin Corinne. He would take care of her and everything else. The house on Shelley Avenue would stay as it was. Tewky would find someone to live in and watch over it. If she wanted to sell in a year or two, they’d sell. For now, no decision had to be made. No decision. Such a relief. She felt very tired but the idea of going home to Birmingham filled her with hope. If only she knew for sure what had gone wrong with her marriage. If only she understood how he could leave her for that woman. Miri’s mother, no less. It was unthinkable. And when, exactly, had they fallen so in love they were leaving town together,

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  To be sure there had been earlier unashamed gay novels published in the 1970s (I’d even written one), but surprisingly few of them had been consecrated to childhood and adolescence, even though “coming out” was the quintessential rite of passage in gay life and the one story every lesbian and gay man had perfected and had frequently recited, often as pillow talk. Since homosexuals are never brought up to be gay and discover their sexual identity and declare it (at least to themselves) at a precise moment in their lives, the first time has become a sacrosanct topic in gay life. There’s always the moment (usually just after sex) when a new partner asks, “So, when did you first figure out you were gay?” In America the coming-out story can be harrowing. Since the 1950s when I first started listening to variations on this theme until now, a half century later, I’ve heard so many stories of parental brutality, corporeal punishment, schoolyard bullying, threats of excommunication and damnation from priests and preachers, prolonged programs of re-conditioning and corrective therapy from psychologists—so many tales of self-imposed chastity, of alcoholism, failed heterosexual marriages, mental illness, self-hatred. Some of the stories are also very sexy. There have been stories of horny neighbor boys, of pajama parties, of college roommates, of drunken avowals and passionate clenches. And there have been stories of love and fellowship, of genuine caring and intimacy. And the one thing that almost all these stories share is a strong and spontaneous feeling of release: ah, this is what I was destined to do. The term “coming out” covers several quite different stages in an individual’s evolution. It can mean admitting to oneself that one is attracted to members of the same sex. It can mean the first homosexual contact and adventure. Or it can mean telling someone else—a sibling, a friend, a parent. Finally, it can mean a full and public commitment to living openly as a gay person.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Since homosexuals are never brought up to be gay and discover their sexual identity and declare it (at least to themselves) at a precise moment in their lives, the first time has become a sacrosanct topic in gay life. There’s always the moment (usually just after sex) when a new partner asks, “So, when did you first figure out you were gay?” In America the coming-out story can be harrowing. Since the 1950s when I first started listening to variations on this theme until now, a half century later, I’ve heard so many stories of parental brutality, corporeal punishment, schoolyard bullying, threats of excommunication and damnation from priests and preachers, prolonged programs of re-conditioning and corrective therapy from psychologists—so many tales of self-imposed chastity, of alcoholism, failed heterosexual marriages, mental illness, self-hatred. Some of the stories are also very sexy. There have been stories of horny neighbor boys, of pajama parties, of college roommates, of drunken avowals and passionate clenches. And there have been stories of love and fellowship, of genuine caring and intimacy. And the one thing that almost all these stories share is a strong and spontaneous feeling of release: ah, this is what I was destined to do. The term “coming out” covers several quite different stages in an individual’s evolution. It can mean admitting to oneself that one is attracted to members of the same sex. It can mean the first homosexual contact and adventure. Or it can mean telling someone else—a sibling, a friend, a parent. Finally, it can mean a full and public commitment to living openly as a gay person. Today coming out in all its stages is generally easier than it was fifty or even thirty years ago. Almost any evening’s television programming or month’s worth of film releases deal with homosexuality, often positively or even humorously. Gays have replaced blacks as the staple source of most television comedy. Liberationists might complain that gays are almost never shown among themselves; that they are always paired with heterosexual men and women, often as zany sidekicks. But complaints about how gays are represented are outweighed by their massive visibility. When I was growing up the only plays that mentioned homosexuality were The Children’s Hour, Tea and Sympathy , and The Immoralist , and the first two presented it as a form of social damnation, whereas the third, based on Gide’s novel, was so shadowy that only someone on the lookout would have detected the underlying subject. Radio and television never mentioned homosexuality at all.

• 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 In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  For a while she thought Mason might come by the house, but he didn’t. Once she understood he was avoiding her the way she was avoiding him, she wanted to leave, the sooner the better. And now she was going. She was going to walk up the steps leading to the silver bird that would gobble her up, holding her in its belly until it reached its faraway destination, where it would spit her out. In one piece, she hoped. The stewardess, in her famous uniform with the red cut-out TWA logo on her right shoulder, welcomed them onto the plane. Miri was reassured to see that the seating looked so much like a train. She was never afraid on a train. They were seated two by two—Irene with Ben, Rusty with Dr. O and Miri with Fern. The stewardess handed the two girls silver wings to pin to their jackets. Fern’s jacket was turquoise felt with appliquéd animals. She asked for a second pin for Roy Rabbit. Miri offered hers, then pinned one to Fern’s jacket, and the other to Roy Rabbit’s well-worn vest. “Have you been to Lost Vegas?” Fern asked her. “No.” Miri resisted a laugh. It made sense to call it lost since it was in the middle of nowhere. “Will you be my sister now?” Fern asked. “Stepsister.” “Like in Cinderella?” “No. My mother is very nice so you don’t have to worry about having a wicked stepmother. And my grandmother is the best grandmother ever—except when she talks about boys, but you don’t have to worry about that yet.” “I’m only coming for the summer,” Fern said. “Mommy wanted me to go to camp but I wanted to go with Daddy.” “I’m glad you’re coming with us.” Miri never thought she’d say that, but there was something comforting about having Fern sitting next to her, her skinny little legs swinging up and down, her cowboy bunny clutched against her chest. She liked having someone to watch over, someone who needed her to be strong. “Did you know Roy Rogers has a penis but Roy Rabbit doesn’t have one, even though he’s a boy bunny?” “Yes, I know.” “I told you, right?” “About a hundred times.” Fern said, “I flew one time when I was little, all the way to Birmingham,

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Whereas aspirations towards high culture had once been considered a necessary key to sophisticated gay life, in the dawning twenty-first century all that was needed by a young gay man was a good income, a pretty face, a taste for raves, and a gym-built body. Now gay life seemed to be less about reflection and private suffering and sublimation and more about ecstasy, pleasure, and the direct expression of erotic desire. AIDS, of course, had plunged the gay male community into a decade of pain, self-doubt, and death, but it had also given the gay community a higher profile and better political organization and had garnered more general acceptance and sympathy from a portion of the straight community. Gays were no longer shadowy deviants or spoiled brats but just another part of the human drama. To the degree that fiction continued to speak to the gay community or at least reflect its concerns, the gay novels of the late eighties and nineties were no longer about coming out but about fighting AIDS. In my stories (Skinned Alive) and in my novels (The Farewell Symphony and The Married Man) I moved away from the struggle to accept oneself as gay to the dire reality of AIDS. In this period those prescriptive gay critics were no longer insisting on positive role models but on some carefully positioned presentation of the AIDS crisis. Today the whole category of gay and lesbian fiction seems dated and about to disappear. The bookstores and the literary magazines are disappearing (with the exception of two quality publications valiantly fighting on, the Gay and Lesbian Review and The James White Review). Gay subject matter has been taken up by the more popular medium of sitcoms. Gay novelists are bridging out into other domains. Allan Gurganus, who published the first gay story ever to appear in The New Yorker in the early 1970s, became best known for his historical novel, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. David Leavitt, who became famous in the 1980s for exploring the relationship of a young gay man to his family, an innovation in subject matter that won him a wide audience, has recently moved on to travel writing. Michael Cunningham has become the best known postgay writer, winning the Pulitzer Prize for The Hours, a novel that echoes Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and mixes a gay man and his lesbian friend in with a larger, heterosexual cast.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Only the two girls on the davenport, both wearing black, the younger fingering a bright something about her white neck, only they said nothing, but just smiled on, so young, so lewd. As the music paused for a moment, there was a sudden noise on the stairs. Tony and I stepped out into the hall. Quilty of all people had managed to crawl out onto the landing, and there we could see him, flapping and heaving, and then subsiding, forever this time, in a purple heap. “Hurry up, Cue,” said Tony with a laugh. “I believe, he’s still—” He returned to the drawing room, music drowned the rest of the sentence. This, I said to myself, was the end of the ingenious play staged for me by Quilty. With a heavy heart I left the house and walked through the spotted blaze of the sun to my car. Two other cars were parked on both sides of it, and I had some trouble squeezing out. 36The rest is a little flattish and faded. Slowly I drove downhill, and presently found myself going at the same lazy pace in a direction opposite to Parkington. I had left my raincoat in the boudoir and Chum in the bathroom. No, it was not a house I would have liked to live in. I wondered idly if some surgeon of genius might not alter his own career, and perhaps the whole destiny of mankind, by reviving quilted Quilty, Clare Obscure. Not that I cared; on the whole I wished to forget the whole mess—and when I did learn he was dead, the only satisfaction it gave me, was the relief of knowing I need not mentally accompany for months a painful and disgusting convalescence interrupted by all kinds of unmentionable operations and relapses, and perhaps an actual visit from him, with trouble on my part to rationalize him as not being a ghost. Thomas had something. It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality. I was all covered with Quilty—with the feel of that tumble before the bleeding.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  At twenty paces Frank used to look a mountain of health; at five, as now, he was a ruddy mosaic of scars—had been blown through a wall overseas; but despite nameless injuries he was able to man a tremendous truck, fish, hunt, drink, and buoyantly dally with roadside ladies. That day, either because it was such a great holiday, or simply because he wanted to divert a sick man, he had taken off the glove he usually wore on his left hand (the one pressing against the side of the door) and revealed to the fascinated sufferer not only an entire lack of fourth and fifth fingers, but also a naked girl, with cinnabar nipples and indigo delta, charmingly tattooed on the back of his crippled hand, its index and middle digit making her legs while his wrist bore her flower-crowned head. Oh, delicious … reclining against the woodwork, like some sly fairy. I asked him to tell Mary Lore I would stay in bed all day and would get into touch with my daughter sometime tomorrow if I felt probably Polynesian. He noticed the direction of my gaze and made her right hip twitch amorously. “Okey-dokey,” big Frank sang out, slapped the jamb, and whistling, carried my message away, and I went on drinking, and by morning the fever was gone, and although I was as limp as a toad, I put on the purple dressing gown over my maize yellow pajamas, and walked over to the office telephone. Everything was fine. A bright voice informed me that yes, everything was fine, my daughter had checked out the day before, around two, her uncle, Mr. Gustave, had called for her with a cocker spaniel pup and a smile for everyone, and a black Caddy Lack, and had paid Dolly’s bill in cash, and told them to tell me I should not worry, and keep warm, they were at Grandpa’s ranch as agreed.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Later on, when he retold the story to Erskine – a veteran of marital infidelity – his friend had gifted him with some belated, obvious advice: Deny everything . This was Erskine’s long-term policy, and he claimed it had never failed him. But Howard had been discovered and confronted in the oldest way – a condom in the pocket of his suit – and she had stood before him holding it between her fingers, alive with a pure contempt he had found almost impossible to bear. He had many choices before him that day, but the truth had simply not been one of them, not if he wanted to retain any semblance of the life he loved. And now he felt vindicated: he had made the right decision. He had not told the truth. Instead he said what he felt he must in order to enable all of this to continue: these friends, these colleagues, this family, this woman. God knows, even the story he ended up giving – a one-night stand with a stranger – had caused terrible damage. It broke that splendid circle of Kiki’s love, within which he had existed for so long, a love (and it was to Howard’s credit that he knew this) that had enabled everything else. How much worse would it have been had he told the truth? It would only have packed misery upon misery. As it stood, a few of his closest friendships had been imperilled: those people Kiki had spoken to were disappointed in him and had told him so. A year later, this party was the test of their respect for him, and now, realizing that he had passed the test, Howard had to restrain himself from crying with relief before each new person who was kind to him. He had made a silly mistake – this was the consensus – and should be allowed (for who among middle-aged academics would dare to throw the first stone?) to remain in possession of that  On Beauty unusual thing, a happy and passionate marriage. How they had loved each other! Everybody thinks they’re in love at twenty, of course; but Howard Belsey had really still been in love at forty – embarrassing but true. He never really got over her face . It gave him so much pleasure. Erskine often joked that only a man who had such pleasure at home could be the kind of theorist Howard was, so against pleasure in his work. Erskine himself was on his second marriage. Almost all the men Howard knew were already divorced, had begun again with new women; they told him things like ‘you get to the end of a woman’, as if their wives had been pieces of string. Is that what happened? Had he finally got to the end of Kiki?

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  But first, wash your hands,” Mama ordered. “Use plenty of soap. Hot water.” Life is short, Christina told herself while scrubbing her hands. At least she wouldn’t die a virgin. MiriIn the morning Miri snapped on her radio, but instead of jokey morning banter and pop tunes, she heard the news that a third plane had crashed in Elizabeth. She’d been right about last night, about the terrible feeling in her gut. When she learned it had crashed in the field behind Janet Memorial, she threw her coat over her flannel pajamas, pulled on boots and ran the mile to the site. Breathing hard, rushing by the scene of devastation, she banged on the front door of Janet with both fists, and shouted for someone, anyone. When the door was flung open Miri nearly fell inside. “Look at you,” a woman said, helping Miri regain her balance. “You’re half frozen. Come in, child.” “My friend lives here.” “All the children are safe, dear. Which one is your friend?” “Mason McKittrick.” “Well, now—Mason McKittrick is quite the hero. Rescued I don’t know how many last night. The stewardess, too, I hear. Pulled them out of the burning plane. The lucky ones are alive because of him and three of our other boys.” Miri felt such relief she began to cry. The woman put her arms around her. “Now, now…it’s all right. Come along, the children are at breakfast. Polina’s in the kitchen making pancakes.” She led Miri into the dining room, where the younger children were sitting around a table. “Can I see Mason?” “Not now, dear. He’s asleep. Those boys worked all night, fell into bed at dawn.” Her voice went quiet, to almost a whisper. “He’s got his dog with him.” “Fred!” Miri said. “Fred is here?” “We bent the rules, just for the night. A brave boy deserves to have his dog.” Polina came in from the kitchen carrying a platter of pancakes. Miri almost didn’t recognize her in a blue hairnet, an apron over her plain dress, sturdy shoes, no makeup. She looked younger, softer, than the day they’d met at Dr. O’s office. “Polina, this is a friend of Mason’s.” Miri didn’t think Polina recognized her and she didn’t feel like reminding her they’d already met. “What a boy!” Polina sang. “What a boy!” the children repeated, reminding Miri of the way Penny and Betsy liked to imitate their parents. Let’s go, Jo! But thinking of Penny and Betsy made her too sad. “I didn’t catch your name, dear…” the woman said. “Miri.” “I’m Mrs. Traynor. Sit right down here”—she pulled out a chair at the table—“and let Polina bring you a nice hot cup of cocoa.” “Thank you,” she said to Mrs. Traynor, “but I have to go. My grandmother will be wondering where I am.” “Not even one pancake?” Mrs. Traynor asked. “No. Really.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  In a sequence that describes the process that leads to menstrual shedding, a simulation of a woman’s reproductive system appears on-screen, portrayed in bloodless shades of ivory, with an egg touring through a fallopian tube like a tiny pinball. “If the egg is impregnated, which happens when a woman is going to have a child, the egg will stay within the uterus,” the voiceover actress recites in the film’s only subtle nod to how babies are actually conceived. “Then the thickened lining will provide nourishment for the budding human being through the early days of its development. However, most eggs pass through the fallopian tubes without being fertilized.” The Story of Menstruation goes on to provide tips to girls for getting through their periods, including tracking them on a calendar, getting exercise, and eating right. At times, the tone borders on condescending: “Some girls have a little less pep, a feeling of pressure on the lower body, perhaps an occasional twinge or a touch of nerves.” (“An occasional twinge”? Okay, try telling that to someone with mind-numbing cramps.) “But don’t let it get you down. After all, no matter how you feel, you have to live with people. You have to live with yourself, too.” As the film assures its young female audience, it’s all part of growing up to be a healthy adult, within “nature’s eternal plan for passing on the gift of life.” The film also mentions an accompanying pamphlet called “Very Personally Yours,” which Disney and Kotex had produced as well to reiterate the cartoon’s messages. In Are You There God? , Blume pokes fun at the kind of stuffy, in-school presentations that would have a junior high schooler like Margaret walking home at the end of the day with an illustrated period fact sheet tucked in her bookbag. One Friday afternoon, the sixth-grade girls gather in the auditorium to watch What Every Girl Should Know , which is being chaperoned by a representative from the fictional Private Lady company. “The narrator of the film pronounced it menstroo-ation,” Margaret says. “The film told us about the ovaries and explained why girls menstroo-ate. But it didn’t really tell us how it feels, except to say that it’s not painful… it just said how wonderful nature was and how we would soon become women and all that.” Margaret is doubly unimpressed when she’s handed a pamphlet after the movie, also called “What Every Girl Should Know.” “It was like one big commercial. I made a mental note never to buy Private Lady things when and if I needed them,” she says. That irreverence and inborn skepticism are part of what make Margaret so relatable to young readers. It’s also part of what makes her so needling to the kinds of parents who don’t want their children exposed to sex ed. The problem is, sex is a part of human life and people figure out ways to learn about it, Zimmerman said.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Dead seemed the dead, and the living, living. He saw not better than I who saw the reality of all that I trod upon while I was going bent down. Now wax proud and on with haughty visage, ye children of Eve, and bow not down your faces, so that ye may see your evil path! Already more of the mount was circled by us, and of the sun’s path much more spent, than the mind, not set free, esteemed; when he, who ever in front of me alert was going, began; “Lift up thy head, this is no time to go thus engrossed. See there an angel who is making ready to come towards us; look how the sixth handmaiden is returning from the days’ service.14 Adorn with reverence thy bearing and thy face, so that it may delight him to send us upward; think that this day never dawns again.” Right well was I used to his monitions never to lose time, so that in that matter he could not speak to me darkly. To us came the beauteous creature, robed in white, and in his countenance, such as a tremulous star at morn15 appears. His arms he opened and then outspread his wings; he said: “Come; here nigh are the steps, and easily now is ascent made.” To this announcement few be they who come. O human folk, born to fly upward, why at a breath of wind thus fall ye down? He led us where the rock was cut; there he beat his wings upon my forehead, then did promise me my journey secure. As on the right hand, to ascend the mount where stands the church which, over Rubaconte, dominates the well-guided city,16 the bold scarp of the ascent is broken by the steps, which were made in the times when the records and the measure were safe.17 Even so is the bank made easier, which here right steeply falls from the other cornice, but on this side and on that the high rock grazes. While we were turning there our persons, “Beati pauperes spiritu”18 voices so sweetly sang, that no speech would tell it. Ah! how different are these openings from those in Hell! for here we enter through songs, and down there through fierce waitings. Now were we mounting up by the sacred steps, and meseemed I was exceeding lighter, than meseemed before on the flat; wherefore I: “Master, say, what heavy thing has been lifted from me, that scarce any toil is perceived by me in journeying?” He answered: “When the P’s which have remained still nearly extinguished on thy face, shall, like the one, be wholly rased out, thy feet shall be so vanquished by good will, that not only will they feel it no toil, but it shall be a delight to them to be urged upward.” Then did I. like those who go with something on their head unknown to them, save that another’s signs make them suspect;

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “My point of view! Don’t you see why so many people are getting so fucking fed up with analysis? It’s all the fault of you stupid analysts. You make the process like some sort of Catch-22. The patient goes and goes and goes and keeps paying in her money and whenever you guys are too dense to figure out what’s going on or whenever you realize that you can’t help the patient, you simply up the number of years they have to keep going or you tell them to go to another analyst to figure out what went wrong with the first analyst. Doesn’t the absurdity of it even strike you?” “The absurdity of my sitting here and listening to this tirade certainly does strike me. So I can only reiterate what I said before. If you don’t like it, why don’t you just get the hell out?” 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.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Brian Stollerman (my first lover and first husband) was very short, inclined to paunchiness, hairy and dark. He was also a human cannonball and a nonstop talker. He was always in motion, always spewing out words of five syllables. He was a medievalist and before you could say “Albigensian Crusade” he’d tell you the story of his life—in extravagantly exaggerated detail. Brian gave the impression of never shutting up. This was not quite true, though, because he did stop talking when he slept. But when he finally flipped his cookies (as we politely said in my immediate family) or showed symptoms of schizophrenia (as one of his many psychiatrists put it) or woke up to the real meaning of his life (as he put it) or had a nervous breakdown (as his Ph.D. thesis adviser put it) or became-exhausted-as-a-result-of-being-married-to-that-Jewish-princess-from-New York (as his parents put it)—then he never stopped talking even to sleep. He stopped sleeping, in fact, and he used to keep me up all night telling me about the Second Coming of Christ and how this time Jesus just might come back as a Jewish medievalist living on Riverside Drive. Of course we were living on Riverside Drive, and Brian was a spellbinding talker. But still, I was so wrapped up in his fantasies, such a willing member of a folie à deux that it took a whole week of staying up every night listening to him before it dawned on me that Brian himself intended to be the Second Coming. Nor did he take very kindly to my pointing out that this might be a delusion; he very nearly choked me to death for my contribution to the discussion. After I caught my breath (I make it sound simpler than it was for the sake of getting on with the story), he attempted various things like flying through windows and walking on the water in Central Park Lake, and finally he had to be taken forcibly to the psycho ward and subdued with Thorazine, Compazine, Stelazine, and whatever else anyone could think of. At which point I collapsed with exhaustion, took a rest cure at my parents’ apartment (they had become strangely sane in the face of Brian’s flagrant craziness), and cried for about a month. Until one day I woke up with relief in the quiet of our deserted apartment on Riverside Drive, and realized that I hadn’t been able to hear myself think in four years. I knew then that I’d never go back to living with Brian—whether he stopped thinking he was Jesus Christ or not.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  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. 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. T AFTERWORD Happy Thirtieth Birthday, Fear of Flying hirty years! It can’t be thirty years since Fear of Flying was published. Either time is an illusion (as I’ve always suspected) or I’ve been sleeping through the decades like Rip Van Winkle. The girl who wrote this book is young enough to be my daughter.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Whereupon (I know not whether it was by my fall, or by the great cry of the Hostler) Socrates as waking out of sleepe, did rise up first and sayd, It is not without cause that strangers do speake evill of all such Hostlers, for this Catife in his comming in, and with his crying out, I thinke under a colour to steale away something, hath waked me out of a sound sleepe. Then I rose up joyfull with a merry countenance, saying, Behold good Hostler, my friend, my companion and my brother, whom thou didst falsly affirme to be slaine by mee this might. And therewithall I embraced my friend Socrates and kissed him: but hee smelling the stinke of the pisse wherewith those Hagges had embrued me, thrust me away and sayd, Clense thy selfe from this filthy odour, and then he began gently to enquire, how that noysome sent hapned unto mee. But I finely feigning and colouring the matter for the time, did breake off his talk, and tooke him by the hand and sayd, Why tarry we? Why lose wee the pleasure of this faire morning? Let us goe, and so I tooke up my packet, and payed the charges of the house and departed: and we had not gone a mile out of the Towne but it was broad day, and then I diligently looked upon Socrates throat, to see if I could espy the place where Meroe thrust in her sword: but when I could not perceive any such thing, I thought with my selfe, What a mad man am I, that being overcome with wine yester night, have dreamed such terrible things? Behold I see Socrates is sound, safe and in health. Where is his wound? Where is the Sponge? Where is his great and new cut? And then I spake to him and said, Verily it is not without occasion, that Physitians of experience do affirme, That such as fill their gorges abundantly with meat and drinke, shall dreame of dire and horrible sights: for I my selfe, not tempering my appetite yester night from the pots of wine, did seeme to see this night strange and cruel visions, that even yet I think my self sprinkled and wet with human blood: whereunto Socrates laughing made answer and said, Nay, thou art not wet with the blood of men, but art embrued with stinking pisse; and verily I dreamed that my throat was cut, and that I felt the paine of the wound, and that my heart was pulled out of my belly, and the remembrance thereof makes me now to feare, for my knees do so tremble that I can scarce goe any further, and therefore I would faine eat somewhat to strengthen and revive my spirits.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  origine cunctis cladibus meis, quamquam et ipse insigni permotus miraculo, nutu significato prius praecipit tegendo mihi linteam dari laciniam : nam me cum primum nefasto tegmine despoliaverat asinus, compressis in artum feminibus et superstrictis accurate manibus, quantum nudo licebat, velamento me naturali probe muniveram. Tunc e cohorte reli- gionis unus impigre superiorem exutus tunicam supertexit me celerrime : quo facto, sacerdos vultu geniali et Hercule perhumano in aspectum meum attonitus sic effatur: * Multis et variis exanclatis laboribus magnisque Fortunae tempestatibus et maximis actus procellis ad portum quietis et aram misericordiae tandem, Luci, venisti: nec tibi natales ac.ne dignitas quidem, vel ipsa qua flores usquam doctrina ‘profuit, sed lubrico virentis aetatulae ad serviles delapsus voluptates, curiositatis impro- sperae sinistrum praemium reportasti. Sed utcum- que Fortunae caecitas, dum te pessimis periculis discruciat, ad religiosam istam beatitudinem im- provida produxit malitia. Eat nunc et summo furore saeviat, et crudelitati suae materiem quaerat aliam : nam in eos quorum sibi vitas in servitium deae nostrae maiestas vindicavit, non habet locum casus infestus. Quid latrones, quid ferae, quid servitium, quid asperrimorum itinerum ambages reciprocae, quid metus mortis cotidianae nefariae Fortunae profuit? In tutelam iam receptus es Fortunae, sed videntis, quae suae lucis splendore ceteros etiam deos illuminat. Sume iam vultum laetiorem candido isto habitu tuo congruentem, 562 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK XI

• From On Beauty (2005)

  She was not all what he’d expected. Howard had for some reason envisioned a younger woman, a trophy. But she was older than Kiki, more like sixty something, and rather rangy. Her hair was set and curled but stray wisps framed her face, and her clothes were not at all formal: a dark purple skirt that reached the floor, and an Indian blouse of loose white cotton with elaborate needlework down its front. Her neck was long (he saw now where Michael had inherited his look of nobility) and deeply creased, and round it was a substantial piece of art deco jewellery with a multifaceted moonstone at its centre, rather than the expected cross. She took both of Howard’s hands in her own. At once Howard felt that things were not as absolutely dire as they had appeared to be twenty seconds earlier. ‘Please, not ‘‘Doctor’’,’ he said. ‘I’m – off-duty – it’s Howard – please. Hello – I’m so sorry about all of – ’ Howard looked about him. The person he now assumed to be  kipps and belsey Victoria (though the sex was not at all clear from the scalp) was still frozen at the table. Jerome had slid all the way down the wall like a stain and now sat on the floor, looking at his feet. ‘Young people, Howard,’ said Mrs Kipps, as if beginning a Caribbean children’s story Howard had no interest in hearing, ‘they got their own way of doing things – it’s not always our way, but it’s a way.’ She smiled a purple gummy smile, and shook her head several times with what appeared to be a slight palsy. ‘These two are sensible enough, thank the Lord. Did you know Victoria just turned eighteen? Can you remember eighteen? I know I can’t, it’s like another universe. Now . . . Howard, you staying in a hotel, yes? I would offer you to stay here but – ’ Howard confirmed the existence of his hotel and his enthusiasm for leaving for it immediately. ‘That’s a good idea. And I think you should take Jerome – ’ At this point Jerome put his head in his hands; at the same moment, in a perfect inversion, the young lady at the table sprang out of that exact position, and Howard registered in his peripheral vision a gamine type with spidery-lashed wet eyes, and arms of sinew and bone like a ballet dancer’s. ‘Don’t worry, Jerome – you can get your things in the morning when Montague is at work. You can write to Victoria when you get home. Let’s not have any more scenes today, please.’ ‘Can I just – ’ offered the daughter, but stopped when Mrs Kipps closed her eyes and with unsteady fingers touched her own lips. ‘Victoria, go and see on the stew, please. Go.’

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  "That is what one may call a good and holy hypoc- risy," said his wife. " I will not fail to wear as sad a face as possible ; for one is very fortunate when one can avoid offending God and provoking the sovereign's resentment." So said, so done ; and the king was very sorry to hear through the wife of the husband's illness, which, however, was not of long duration. Certain affairs hav- ing then supervened to claim the king's attention, he for- got his pleasure to think of his duty, and suddenly quitted Paris. One day, recollecting his unfulfilled pro- ject, he said to the young prince, "We were great fools to quit Paris with such haste as not to have seen the four girls who have been represented to us as the hand- somest in my realm." *' I am very glad," replied the prince, " that you have Seventh day.\ QUEEN OF NA VARKE. ^oc not done so, for I was greatly afraid during my illness that I alone should lose such a good fortune." The king never suspected the dissimulation of the young lord, who thenceforth was more beloved by his wife than ever.* Parlamente burst out laughing, and said, ** He would have shown his love for his wife much more if he had done it for her sake only ; but, in any point of view, such conduct was certainly most commendable." " It seems to me no such great merit in a man to be chaste for his wife's .sake," said Hircan. " He is bound to it by so many reasons that he can hardly do otherwise. In the first place, God commands it ; he is pledged to it by his marriage vow ; and besides, the satiated appetite is not subjected to temptation like the craving one. But for the free love one cherishes for a mistress whom one does not enjoy, obtaining from her no other pleasure than that of seeing and speaking to her, and often noth- ing but mortifying replies, when this love is so faith- ful and so constant that it will not change, happen what may, then I maintain that chastity displayed on occasions of this sort is not only laudable but mirac- ulous." "It is no miracle," said Oisille, "for when the heart is devoted, nothing is impossible for the body." "Yes, for angelic bodies," observed Hircan. " I do not mean to speak only of those who by God's * This novel is wanting in the edition of 1558, published by Boaistuau; it appeared for the first time in that of Gruget in 1559. The king who figures in it is Francis I. ; and the gentleman whom the king had made provost of Paris is Jean de la Barre, who is mentioned in Novel I. 4(j6 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE Novel 63

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘I should have brought my swimsuit,’ Howard had overhead Claire Malcolm saying loudly to somebody. ‘And would you have swum if you had?’ came the sensible reply. Without any great urgency, Howard was now looking for Erskine. He wanted Erskine’s opinion on his earlier speech. He sat down on the pretty bench Kiki had installed under their apple tree and looked out on to his party. The wide backs and solid calves of women he didn’t know surrounded him. Friends of Kiki from the hospital, talking among themselves. Nurses, thought Howard definitively, not sexy. And how had his speech gone down with women like this, non-academic, solid, opinionated, Kiki supporters – for that matter, how had it gone down with everyone? It had not been an easy speech to give. It was, in effect, three speeches. One for those who knew, one for those who didn’t know, and one for Kiki, to whom it was addressed and who both did and didn’t know. The people who didn’t know had smiled and whooped and clapped as Howard touched upon the rewards of love; they sighed sweetly when he expanded on the joys of marrying your best friend, also the difficulties. Encouraged by this moonlit attention, Howard had strayed from his prepared script. He segued into Aristotle’s praise of friendship, and from there to some aperc¸us of his own. He spoke of how friendship expands tolerance. He spoke of the fecklessness of Rembrandt and the forgiveness of his wife, Saskia. This was close to the knuckle, but none of it seemed to be greeted with any undue attention by the majority of his audience. Fewer people knew than he had feared. Kiki had not, after all, told the whole world of what he had done, and tonight he was more grateful for this fact than ever. Speech concluded, the applause had settled  kipps and belsey snug around him like a comfort blanket. He had hugged the two American children available to him hard around their shoulders, and felt no resistance. So that’s how it was. His infidelity had not ended everything, after all. It had been self-pity to think that, and self-aggrandizement. Life went on. Jerome showed him that first, by having his own romantic cataclysm so soon after Howard’s – the world does not stop for you. At first, he had thought otherwise. At first he had despaired. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before – he had no idea what to do, which move to make.