Sadness

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 Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Oh.” Mama shrugged. Her fingers wiped her cheek, smeared the mascara back toward her temple. “That’s what they say when a girl’s got a strong face and an’t ugly, but an’t pretty neither. When we were little I think Ruth would have given just about anything to be pretty. She used to stand in front of Granny’s wardrobe mirror and stare at herself when she thought no one was looking, but I never teased her about it. She got enough teasing from the boys.” Mama ground her cigarette out. “Truth is, she just about raised me. Daddy was gone by then, and Granny was always running after the boys or your aunt Alma, who was always getting herself in some trouble or the other. Ruth was the one that was there for me, that I could talk to. Once she told me that she liked to pretend I was hers. I was the baby, had just started school when she married Travis and moved down the road from us. She was over at our place almost as much as hers, cooking for Granny and picking up after us. Travis used to get mad and come beating on the door yelling for her to get her ass home to him.” Mama pulled her lips in and bit the lower lip lightly. It was something I had seen Aunt Ruth do often, something I did myself when I was nervous. Now it almost made me cry. I wiped at my own eyes, watching Mama use the back of her hand to wipe her eyes again. “For some reason, Ruth didn’t think she could have babies. When she got pregnant, she was so happy. It was a mystery to me why she liked having children so much. Seemed like everybody else whined and complained about it, but Ruth just took on so, laughed and sang and made her own baby clothes. Then, one time, I asked her why she acted so happy, and she stared at me like I was just plain crazy. Told me it was proof. Being pregnant was proof that some man thought you were pretty sometime, and the more babies she got, the more she knew she was worth something. I just about cried, and at the same time I wanted to hit her for talking like that, talking like she wasn’t worth something on her own. Talking like my love didn’t make her worth something!” I remembered all the times I had stared in the bathroom mirror, knowing I wasn’t pretty and hating it. I felt a cold chill go up my back, as if Aunt Ruth had just touched my spine. Mama was shaking her head, reaching to open her bag, rummaging around and pulling out a napkin. Carefully she dabbed under her eyes. “Go get me some cold cream, Bone. Let me get some of this gunk off.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  A rain began to fall outside. With no wind, it came down in a sweet, sprinkling whisper, little drops flicking through the tender new growth on the trees and bushes. Mama put her palms flat against her eyes. “All right,” she said. “All right.” I swallowed. I wanted to reach for her, to say I was sorry, to say that I hadn’t meant it, that I would go back with her, but I didn’t move. After a minute she got up and went back to her pallet. She didn’t smoke anymore. She pulled her blanket up and lay still, so quiet she might have been asleep as soon as she lay down. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Much later, in the early dawn with the blanket pulled over my head, I heard Mama start crying, trying hard not to make a sound and almost succeeding. Only her breath catching every little while gave her away. My own eyes were dry. I didn’t feel like I was going to cry. I didn’t feel like I was ever going to cry again. 20 [image file=image_rsrc2PR.jpg] It was peaceful out at Aunt Alma’s. The spring ripened until the yard and surrounding woods were lush green and full of singing birds. The three surviving puppies ran in stumbling leaps and falls, rolling over each other and digging between their mama’s titties. The clothes scattered across the yard had to have the dirt shaken out before they could be washed. The washer itself worked pretty good, though Earle could not figure out how to fix the wringer. I hung the soggy clothes out on a line that Grey put up between the porch and the black walnut tree, though none of them came truly clean and some of them Mama set aside as garbage. I made a big pile off the porch of the things that were broken beyond repair, and Uncle Earle hauled it away. Alma came back to herself slowly. She didn’t want to talk much, but then neither did I. Mama came out every afternoon for a while, then every other day, and finally every few days. She’d bring Alma some little treat, some sweet corn succotash, or chow-chow and biscuits, or once even a little blackberry cobbler. For me she brought books, paperbacks she traded for down at the book exchange, or magazines she got from the women she worked with over at the Stevens mill. One afternoon, Alma passed her the razor she’d been keeping in her apron pocket. “You’ll feel better if you take this away,” she said to Mama. They both looked at the deadly thing. “You sure you don’t still need it?” Mama ran her fingers over the smooth polished handle and the dull outside edge. “If it makes you feel better, you should just keep it.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Aunt Ruth lay back on the couch, hugging her belly with both arms, her eyes narrowing as her cheekbones caught the light pouring in the open door. The bones in her face stood out sharp and high. Propped on the couch with her legs drawn up so that her bare feet were against my thigh, she looked almost like a girl, a witch girl with a narrow gray face. Nobody should be that thin, so thin the pulse in her throat made the skin over her collarbones vibrate. She shaded her eyes for a moment, looking down the couch at me. “You know, when you close your eyes, you look just like your mama when she was a girl.” I nodded. I wasn’t paying much attention. Aunt Ruth had been talking a lot about Travis for the two weeks I’d been staying with her—about Travis and her daddy, about Uncle Earle and her brothers and sisters, about things that had happened long before I was born and she imagined no one had told me yet. I should have been glad to hear it all, finally, and to ask all the questions I had saved up for years. But for the first time in my life, I couldn’t think about all those old stories. All I could think about was going home. When was Mama going to take me home? Did I want to go home? I bit my lips, took a careful breath before I let what I had been thinking come out of me. Aunt Ruth looked over at me expectantly. “Daddy Glen hates me.” There, it was said. I drew my knees up and wrapped my arms around them, just waiting for her to say it wasn’t so. She was looking directly at me, her face still, calm, open. I knotted my hands into fists. “Tell me, Bone.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “You think I’m dying?” My stomach lurched. I looked out the door. Of course she was dying. I looked back at her and then away again. “Naah, you’re just awful damn sick.” “Bone.” I shook my head. The light coming in the screen door was too bright. Tears began to run down my face. “Bone?” “Auntie, don’t ask me.” I looked up. Lord, she was so thin! “Well, can we talk to each other or not?” Her voice sounded tired. She closed her eyes and brought one hand up to rub the soft skin at her right temple. It looked slightly bruised, a blue shadow on the parchment gray. “I don’t know.” I took the skin of my forearm between my teeth and sucked at it. I didn’t know what to say to her at all. “Well.” She was quiet for a moment, then dropped her hand and kind of pushed herself up a little.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  The magic I knew was supposed to wash over me with Jesus’ blood was absent, the moment cold and empty. I would stumble out into the sunshine guiltily, still unsaved, and go on to a new church the next Sunday. I’d begun to think about trying out the Church of God or the Holy Church of Jesus’ Disciples when Mama caught on to me. She took me to Aunt Ruth’s church at Bushy Creek and had me baptized beneath the painting of Jesus at the Jordan. When my head went under, my throat closed up and my ears went deaf. With cloudy water soaking my dress and my eyes tight shut, I couldn’t hear the choir or feel the preacher’s bruising grip. Whatever magic Jesus’ grace promised, I didn’t feel it. I pushed up out of that dirty water, shivering, broke out in a sweat, and felt my fever rise. I sneezed and coughed for a solid week, lying limp in my bed and crying to every gospel song that came over the radio. It was as if I were mourning the loss of something I had never really had. I sang along with the music and prayed for all I was worth. Jesus’ blood and country music, there had to be something else, something more to hope for. I bit my lip and went back to reading the Book of Revelation, taking comfort in the hope of the apocalypse, God’s retribution on the wicked. I liked Revelations, loved the Whore of Babylon and the promised rivers of blood and fire. It struck me like gospel music, it promised vindication. Bastard Out of Carolina 11 I recognized Shannon Pearl immediately on the first Monday of the school year. I’d seen her with her family at the revival tent. Her daddy booked singers for the circuit, and her mama managed the Christian bookstore, a religious supply store downtown south of Main Street, a place where you could get embossed Bibles, bookmarks with the 23rd Psalm in blue relief, hot plates featuring the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus and that damned lamb on everything imaginable—slipcovers, tablecloths, even plastic pants to go over baby diapers. Shannon got on the bus two stops after Reese and me, walking stolidly past a dozen hooting boys and another dozen flushed and whispering girls. As she made her way up the aisle, I watched each boy slide to the end of his seat to block her sitting with him and every girl flinch away as if whatever Shannon had might be catching.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  No one even looked at him. Temple had come by to make sure we all got some breakfast, her swollen belly showing how close she was to having her first child. She kept pushing herself up straight and putting her hand on her lower back as if it ached. She served us all bowls of grits with cheese and set a platter of fried fatback in the center of the table. “Patsy Ruth and Little Earle.” She called their names like they were stray puppies. “I promised Mama I’d make sure you got off to school, so move it along.” She wiped grease off the edge of the platter and put a bowl of butter down beside it. “Bone, your mama said you were to stay over here till she comes to get you. But she might not get here till afternoon, so let Reese sleep as long as she wants.” “Why do we have to go to school if Bone and Reese don’t?” Little Earle was offended. “I don’t know and I don’t care.” Temple sounded like she’d been married for twenty years. “All I know is you’re going. If you want to argue with Mama about why, you can do it when she gets home tonight. Right now I’ve got to get Tadpole ready to come home with me.” I took a piece of fatback to chew and went into the living room with the book I’d gotten from Aunt Raylene, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. I loved the story, but I was so tired I fell asleep, not waking up until Mama put her hand on my shoulder. “Where’s Reese, Bone?” Her voice sounded strange. “I think she’s still asleep, Mama.” I pulled myself up off the couch and followed her into Alma’s kitchen. She dropped her purse on the kitchen table and sank heavily into one of the metal chairs. Her mascara was smeared under bloodshot eyes. She sat quiet, looking at me. I couldn’t read her expression. “Mama, did I do something wrong?” “No. No, baby.” She shook her head, her eyes focusing on mine for just a moment before they looked past me. “It’s not you.” She opened her bag, took out her Pall Malls, lit one, and began to rake her hair out with her other hand. I got her an ashtray. “You want me to make coffee?” “No, baby.” I sat down at the table. “Is Alma still at Ruth’s?” She nodded, paused, and looked at me directly. “Bone, your aunt Ruth died early this morning.” Her eyes glistened. I waited for her to start crying, but she didn’t. She just sat there smoking. I looked at my hands. I couldn’t believe what she had said. Aunt Ruth was dead? No. Mama cleared her throat. “Alma is still with Travis and Raylene. I just came to get you and Reese.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Teresa used to tell me how I filled her up, satisfied her very soul. And every time, I’d think about our daddy—how Mama had to catch a drink of him now and then, so the man never filled her up, never actually eased her thirst. The woman always looked pinched and dry. I didn’t want to do that to Teresa. Didn’t want to be like that. I wanted to pour over that woman like a river of love. But shitfire! When she left me she told me I wasn’t even a full mouth of spit. Me, her long, cool drink of water! Damn!” Uncle Earle brushed tobacco flakes off his lap. “I just don’t understand sometimes, Bone, how things got so messed up, the simplest things—me and Teresa, Mama and Daddy, your mama and Glen. Hell, even Ruth and Travis. You know, Travis left Ruth once when their kids were little, just took off for two months and never said a thing. And anybody can see how he loves her. Sometimes I just don’t understand.” He tried to light the cigarette, but it fell apart in his hands. Looking down at the mess of damp tobacco all over his jeans, he swore and pushed himself up off the step. “Sad, an’t it,” he said, “a man who can’t even keep a cigarette together? Sad as hell.” He walked away, brushing his jeans as he went. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Aunt Ruth wanted to make sure I understood who our people were and what they had done. She devoted two whole days to the story of Great-Uncle Haslam Boatwright, who had driven a truck over at the JC Penney mill until he shot his wife and her lover on a weekend visit to Atlanta. He’d been locked away in the Georgia State Penitentiary ever since. She told me more about my real daddy and Lyle Parsons, and the whole story of how Daddy Glen had courted Mama through a solid year of lunches at the diner before she would ever date him. Best of all, she told me how Uncle Beau and Uncle Earle had tried to enlist in the army during the Korean War and had been thrown out of the recruiting office into the muddy street after the sergeant got their arrest records. Drunk and determined, they had made so much noise that the army boys called the county sheriff to lock them up. “Oh, come on, son,” Beau was supposed to have told that sergeant after punching out the deputy and chewing on the ear of some innocent fool who’d made the mistake of trying to help. “You an’t gonna find better soldier material anywhere in the county. Hell, you can see we already know how to fight!” Telling the story, Aunt Ruth snarled and twanged like Uncle Beau did when he’d been drinking, sounding so like him that I giggled to hear her.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Out of those four records, there was only one Mama liked, and she damn near wore it out. “The Sign on the Highway,” it was called, and after a while I could sing it from memory. “The sign on the highway, the scene of the crash…the people pulled over to let the hearse pass…their bodies were found ‘neath the signboard that read—Beer, Wine and Whiskey for sale just ahead.” What surprised me was that Mama, who wouldn’t go to church and never even said Jesus’ name, had the same response to that music I did. She cried every time she heard it, and she wanted to hear it all the time. It was a gospel song, of course, a kind of a gospel song. Mama would play it over and over, and I’d come in to sit with her while she listened, her with a glass of tea in one hand and the other over her eyes, and me as close to her as she’d let me, both of us crying quietly and then smiling at each other and playing it again. Uncle Earle would come in and laugh at us. “Look at you two. You just as crazy as you can be. Look at you. Crying over some people didn’t never really die. That’s only a slide guitar and some stupid folks can’t make a living no other way ‘cept acting the fool in front of people like you.” He stomped off out the screen door while Mama wiped her face and I sat still. He kicked each step as he went down. “I swear this family’s got shit for brains.” Since I was getting nowhere saving my uncles, I fell back on the only capital I had—my own soul. I became fascinated with the idea of being saved, not just welcoming Jesus into my heart but the seriousness of the struggle between salvation and damnation, between good and evil, life and death. God and the devil were the ultimate arbiters, and everyone knew what was being fought over. It was just like Uncle Earle had told me: if you were not saved, not part of the congregation, you were all anyone could see at the invocation. There was something heady and enthralling about being the object of all that attention. It was like singing gospel on the television with the audience following your every breath. I could not resist it. I came close to being saved about fourteen times—fourteen Sundays in fourteen different Baptist churches.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I bent forward and pressed my mouth to the blanket edge. “Not gonna tell me anything?” One of the cows moaned out in the dark pasture. I swallowed again. “I’m waiting for you to go home,” I said. “I’m waiting for you to go back to Daddy Glen.” There was a long silence. “You think I’m going to?” Mama whispered finally. “Uh-huh,” I said. “Oh, Bone.” She sat up, took another cigarette out, and lit it with a match. In the glow I saw her cheeks pale and shiny. “You want to come over here and sit by me?” “No.” I didn’t move. I felt as if I had become hypersensitive, as if I could hear everything, the cow’s hooves in the damp grass, the dew slipping off the porch eaves, Mama’s heart pounding with fear. “Bone, I couldn’t stand it if you hated me,” she said. “I couldn’t hate you,” I told her. “Mama, I couldn’t hate you.” “But you’re sure I’m gonna go back to him.” “Uh-huh.” I coughed and cleared my throat. “Oh God, Bone! I can’t just go back. I can’t have you hating me.” “I an’t never gonna hate you.” I took a deep breath, and made myself speak with no intonation at all. “I know you love him. I know you need him. And he’s good to you. He’s good to Reese. He just…” I thought a minute. “I don’t know.” We were quiet for a while. When Mama spoke she sounded almost like a girl, unsure of herself and scared. “Maybe he needs to talk to somebody. Raylene said maybe he needed a doctor.” I wiped my face and shrugged. Now I felt tired, aching tired, so deeply tired it was hard to pull air all the way down into my lungs. “Maybe,” I said. “I won’t go back until I know you’re gonna be safe.” Mama’s voice was determined. “I promise you, Bone.” “I won’t go back.” The words were so quiet, so flat, they didn’t seem to have come out of me. But once they were said, some energy seemed to come back to me. “I wouldn’t make you, honey.” “No. I know. It’s not that, Mama. I know you wouldn’t.” I sat up, rocked my head forward, and heard my neck bones make an odd cracking sound as the muscles stopped straining. When I spoke this time, my voice was strong, the words clear. “I know you’ll go back, Mama, and maybe you should. I don’t know what’s right for you, just what I have to do. I can’t go back to live with Daddy Glen. I won’t. I could go stay with Aunt Carr for a while or move in with Raylene. I think she’d be glad to keep me. But no matter what you decide, when you go back to Daddy Glen, I can’t go with you.” “Bone.”

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  [image file=image_rsrc3R3.jpg] It took me until I was twenty-eight to finish all the course work and pass the PhD written and oral exams. By then Philip’s hip menswear sales were going so well that while waiting to hear back on the university teaching positions I’d interviewed for at the MLA convention, I took a break from earning my own way. Within the year I would have to accept a job that required I move out of state, and I wanted to enjoy my time at the beach house with Philip. I believed I’d found the best of Anaïs’s two worlds in Philip. As Hugo once was, Philip was a good breadwinner, and like Rupert, he supported my artistic ambitions without having such aspirations himself. I smiled, recalling what Anaïs had said when I’d once asked why she’d chosen Rupert. “Why do you ask?” Her tone a warning not to say anything negative about him. “I don’t know. You’re so extraordinary, and he—” I caught myself. “You’re an artist, and he isn’t.” With her soft, guttural laugh she’d told me, “I learned a long time ago, Tristine, that there can only be one star in a relationship, and I decided it should be me.” It was surprising, though, how quickly I got bored being the star of the relationship, unlike Anaïs. I loved Philip’s gentleness, his slow hand, the opium-dream length of his kisses, the assured gong of orgasm with him, but our lovemaking simply couldn’t compare to the inferno I’d known with Neal. With Philip’s new age otherworldliness and all the pot he smoked, our lovemaking was ethereal and dreamlike, but not mythic. More worrisome, Philip wanted to get married—in part because it would help with his immigration status, but also because he wanted to start a family, which I didn’t. To my surprise, with his paying all the rent and freeing up my time, I seemed to have lost my willpower. Even though I wasn’t teaching and was home all day, I couldn’t get anywhere on my PhD dissertation. I sat at my desk in a corner of the one-room house every day and was lucky if I squeezed out half a page. The sea and sky were gray and flat, the low-hanging haze stuck like a sigh in my chest. I was writing about other women’s lives. I wasn’t living my life as Anaïs had done, and I wouldn’t really be free to live until I finished the damned dissertation, and by that time Anaïs might be dead.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  What about, ah, I said, but I hesitated. Damp spring wind blew in. I inhaled the lazy, bittersweet stink that lingered in her room from a hyacinth bouquet she’d let spoil in a vase. I’d thrown it out, but the rich hint of rot persisted. Is Liesl— No, Julian said she’ll be home. In St. Paul. I still didn’t know Liesl well; Phoebe had mentioned, though, that she’d also been directed to enroll in remedial classes. Then, in April, she’d filed a rape charge against the New York governor’s son, Neil Pugh. Details of the night had since become public: a full living room, the tall girl following him up the stairs. Not everyone believed Liesl. I knew Neil, a little. He’d joined Phi Epsilon in the spring, then dropped out. Neil, a sailing recruit, looked the part: disheveled, wind-blown, as if he’d always just strolled off a boat. Despite the Nantucket reds he affected, his ripped twilled shirts, he’d lived most of his life in San Francisco, in his divorced mother’s house. It was a short drive from Carmenita. I avoided him, as a result; despite the distance I kept, if not because of it, he’d invited me to several parties. Poor girl, I said. – Before long, Phoebe was taking me to the airport, and it was too late to shift course. We parted at the curb, brusque: we’d argued that morning. I called when I landed in Beijing. She apologized, so I did, as well, both each other’s old selves again, and while we talked about schedules, plotting phone dates, I could almost believe Phoebe to be within reach and not, as she was, divided from me by miles of land and sea. The job at the fund turned out to be more tiring than I’d expected. I worked long hours. Often, I had to cancel phone calls with Phoebe. The first time I stayed the night at the office, napping thirty minutes beneath a desk in the morning, colleagues hailed me as if I’d been admitted to an exclusive club. It surprised me, how much I liked the work. I could be confident in the finance demimonde, with its upstart cowboy strut, its practitioners bloated with the hubris of men—and it was all men—paid well at high-profile jobs. The hum of competence filled the office, like air-conditioning. I built intricate, mazelike financial models, reveling in the fiction of a predictable world. The models multiplied, breeding hypothetical yuan.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  What I’d do without you, I don’t know, honey, she said. She laughed a little, rueful. The exhale rustled the line, and she almost sounded like her old self again. The mother I’d had used to bring kitchen-table bouquets from the garden: buttercups, dahlia. Goldenrod in armfuls, the paint-daub petals trailing, flickering, like tattered flags. Nose dusted with pollen, she sang Donizetti arias in phonetic Italian. When I was an infant, she waltzed me to bel canto until I slept. She’d been ill a long time; still, it wasn’t until last March, in my father’s absence, that she first had to be hospitalized. I returned home from a spring-break mission to Beijing, a trip I’d had planned for months, to find she’d moved into the living room, stationed on an airbed to avoid what she’d shared with him. He’d fled to Florida to live with a girlfriend we hadn’t known existed. I learned this from the note he left; my mother had stopped talking. The cut flowers had wilted. I changed the vases. When she did, at last, get up, she sat gazing into a compact. Once, as I watched, she brushed lipstick on the reflection. But when I was hired at Michelangelo’s, Paul, who owned the place, had indicated I might attain a future promotion. He could use a college kid like me to help snap the whip, like an assistant-managing type, he said. Since then, he hadn’t brought it up. I thought of what I’d spent these past couple of months on clothes. Oxford shirts, marlin-printed shorts. The white-soled boat shoes, out of season until spring. Ribbon belts. In thrift stores, online, in the attempt to look like what I claimed to be, I scavenged polo shirts in pink, azure, and apple-green, the bizarrely colorful regalia of the ruling class. I wore the polos layered; I ridged collars upright, like gills. Meanwhile, my mother bagged groceries in Carmenita. I deposited much of what I made in tips into my mother’s account, helping with basic necessities: rent, medical bills, but each week I still had a little extra, which, if I’d saved, I could have given at once, instead of asking that she wait. – Fifteen minutes before the gates opened at Michelangelo’s, I found Paul. I asked if he’d thought about the promotion he’d said was possible. He stood at the reservations pulpit, writing in his tight script on the back of a menu. Sure, I’ve thought about it, he said, not looking up. His gold pen scratched out a line. Is anything decided? I asked. The pen scraped. His belt-halved gut bulged out, grazing the zinc edge, like an animal about to lunge. It fit his look of menace: if provoked, his flesh might achieve its escape. I glanced past him, trying not to stare. In a torn baseball cap, a man slumped against the other side of the glass. It had started raining. Paul? What’s that? he said. Do I qualify for the job?

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  I flinched; noticing, he said, fast, No, it’s what I’d do if I, I love Sichuan food. Phoebe, forget it. I’m joking! Just come. If you don’t go, I won’t. It was fine. I let it pass, though I heard what he’d implied, the insult left unsaid, that he’d enroll in a cooking class if he didn’t have his own, real pursuits. Well, he had a point. I saw them spin, like tops: a lifetime’s stack of plates I hadn’t been allowed to wash, whirligig red-gold globes of fruit I hadn’t peeled. I still couldn’t cut an apple without nicking myself. When I tried, knives slipped. Dishes fell, goblin-bewitched. The logic behind this upbringing: if I didn’t learn how to be in a kitchen, no one could keep me there. It wasn’t a spell. It was a gift, one I had put to no use at all. – In the spring, I learned my grades might prohibit going to Beijing with Will. I let it be what happened; I failed. I’ll miss you, I said. I kissed his hairline. He turned away, his forehead pinched, high. I didn’t like causing him pain, but I couldn’t have tagged along. I kissed him, again. I didn’t stop until he turned back to me, still so trustful: like a child, finding solace with the person who’d hurt him in the first place. I took Will to his flight, then I returned, alone, to Noxhurst. The suite locked shut. Its silence rang like an alarm. I sat on the futon, at a loss. I didn’t have a friend in town. The June hours swelled, humid, dull, waiting to be filled. At parties, listless bodies held iced drinks to hot, moist skin. The college had no air-conditioning, and I kept thinking I should get a window unit. If I bought it, though, I’d be obliged to haul it home. I’d have to install it. I thought of the time a pigeon had flown into my suite, how it had crashed, flapped, rattling around, the trapped bird too panicked to find an exit. It dotted the living room white with shit. I was shrieking; Julian, too. Liesl ran to the landing, but Will stayed calm. He caught the pigeon with an upended trashcan. Sliding a flattened shoebox beneath the plastic lip, he carried it out. If Will were here, he’d have long since solved the air-conditioning problem. Instead, I sprawled on damp sheets. I listened to flash storms, too hot to sleep. Will’s fund in Beijing required most of his time; often, he couldn’t talk. Julian was living in Manhattan. I could have gone to him, except that, like Will, he’d objected to the plan of staying in Noxhurst. I predict anguish, he’d said. Phoebe, you’re a capable girl, but I’m afraid being alone isn’t a skill. It’s a disposition. I didn’t want to prove him right; still, one night, I had to call him.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  I quit the Exhibit visits. I received an email from Leigh asking if I’d like to get a bite to eat sometime, but I didn’t know what to write. One day sped past, then several, until I thought it would be more insulting if I wrote, at this late point, than if I didn’t respond at all. The note might have been lost in transit, or she’d written to the wrong Will Kendall. – While I still had Phoebe with me, hot in my arms, singing Ella Fitzgerald back to life as I washed the dishes, I knew what I was losing, and it ached as if she’d already gone. The expected rift came in late March. I was home; she planned to have gimlets with Julian at the Colonial. I’d heard his reproaches tolling from Phoebe’s earpiece when he called. I miss you, angel, he’d said. Bix misses you. He says no one’s asked for his house special in ages, and how could you be unkind to Bix? I was in the kitchen, fixing a salad. I sliced a red onion lengthwise, then into minute squares. I swept the last diced bits off the knife: piled amethysts, I thought, a geode. I had the idea I’d show it to Phoebe. I’d finished most of a bottle of wine. She was in the bedroom, door open, trying to zip up a dress. It was a black shift I liked, and I laughed as I said, I’m coming, I’ll help. She flinched at the sound, but she’d left the door open. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that I’d noticed she was changing. She backed up to the wall, bent elbows slanting above her head. No, I can do it, she said. Let me help, I insisted. I’ll zip the dress. I spun Phoebe to face the wall, lighthearted, but then I saw that, in the space where the knit dress gaped open, she had a back crisscrossed with welts, bruises. In spots, the skin had broken. Some of the marks had partially healed. Others looked fresh, a dull red. Phoebe, I said. What is this? She pulled away from me, flushing. Phoebe, please— It’s nothing. Who did this to you? She walked out of the room, and I followed. We sat at the kitchen table. I asked if I should call the police, if she was in pain. No. Phoebe, what happened? She’d tell me, she said. But first, I had to listen. They’d been holding group penances. In turn, they detailed how they’d failed God, then asked the others to help them with physical notes of what they’d resolved. One night, they sang to God while they knelt on uncooked rice grains, hands up until their arms collapsed. They fasted. The flesh is strong; the mind, frail. We believe with our bodies, she said.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  I couldn’t find a way in. Out on the sidewalk, alone, I watched the crowds reveling inside. With Phoebe, the walls lifted. Invitations spilled out; warmth, life. I also pledged a fraternity, Phi Epsilon, when I heard about its influential alumni, the class portraits lined with well-known faces. I wasn’t eating enough, but at parties, in the Phi Epsilon house, alcohol was plentiful. I drank more. Still, I kept my grades high. I barely slept; I wanted every prize. I intended to outdo all these people I lied to imitate, the lotus-eaters who sprawled on the lawn. I finished the last final exam, an evening class, then I stumbled home. I fell in bed. I planned to celebrate with Phoebe at the Colonial, but instead, when I opened my eyes again, I saw that mild light filled the room. It was late morning. I’d slept through the night. I called Phoebe: she was on the train, going to the airport. I came by your suite when I didn’t hear from you, she said. If Julian hadn’t left for Berlin, I’d have recruited him to pick the lock. I kept calling. I heard your phone from out on the landing. I should have just let you sleep, but I wanted to see you— I spent most of the break in ice-piled Noxhurst, working extra shifts at the restaurant. In late fall, Paul had finally given me a promotion; I couldn’t have left during the holiday rush. I thought, too, that I should save a little cash while I had the time. I helped see Michelangelo’s through New Year’s Eve, an upheaval of white-peach Bellinis and smashed flutes, banderoles and tricolored spumoni (a Conti tradition, I heard Paul tell a table), then I flew home to Carmenita. It was the first trip back since I’d started school. I’d anticipated the pleasure I’d see on my mother’s face, but then, almost as soon as the plane landed, I wanted to leave again. Outlines softened, salt in liquid; I felt how easily I could dissolve into the life I’d left behind. Ripped flip-flops still held the stain of old footprints. She asked me to attend church. I said I couldn’t; I offered to drive, past the graffiti-blotched traffic signs I didn’t need to consult. I let her out, then left in a rush to evade old friends who, still God-wild, pitied me. Radio stations I’d left preset hadn’t changed. Last spring, while she was being held captive in the hospital, I avoided the house. Instead, I’d taken to driving around town at night to look in at people’s lives. Intact families sat in the blue wash of television light, tranquil, like drowned statues. I noticed, too, that she’d kept up the habit of red lipstick, the starlet’s hue my father used to like.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  For me, that is. I understand people find it useful, but, okay, let’s assume I wish my mother hadn’t died. It’s not worth examining. Julian says the most dispiriting words in the English language are “Red or white?” but, obviously, he’s wrong. What’s worse is “Last night, I dreamed,” and— She riffed like this until I stopped. If I tried again, insisting she find help, Phoebe’s smile widened. It lit the girl up. In a glade of light, she slipped away. It was an act; I knew that, but I suppose I let it happen. Even now, I’ll admit, if I recall these night fits, part of me wants to protest that this wasn’t Phoebe: that the girl I loved, for instance, during a childhood trip to Delphi, went jumping through its ruins. Since she hadn’t told me much else about it, I’d filled in the details until I might have been there, too, our earliest lives conjoined. On the crowded bus ride from Athens to Delphi, this Phoebe slept against my arm. The guide lectured into a microphone. It’s the omphalos, he said. The holiest site, navel of the Hellenic world. In time, the bus rolled to a halt. Phoebe stood in the white, hot wash of sun; she rubbed light-blind eyes. Despite the heat, I held Phoebe’s hand. I kept it in mine while we leaped the ancient stones, raising exuberant brumes of dust. – The day after the Cape Cod trip, as we left the apartment, I asked if I could attend the next Jejah meeting. Right, Phoebe said, with a laugh. I explained I wasn’t kidding. Pulling on a white pashmina, she looked at me through its soft folds. It was raining again. I held the umbrella for both of us. We walked to Latham Hall while I told Phoebe partial truths. I’ve noticed the effect it’s had on you, I said. You’ve spent so much time with this group. I want to know more about it. Since it’s important to you, I can’t help being curious. She kept her face tucked down, hidden in the cashmere pile, until, lifting her head, she said she’d give John Leal a call. We’d arrived at the Latham gate. She hesitated, phone in hand. I left Phoebe the umbrella, and I said I’d walk ahead. I waited in front of the dining hall, shielded from rain by the stone arcade. Croquet wickets littered the ground. That morning, I’d passed a group of old men in pastels and wan hats, batting mallets: alumni, I figured. But in the fog they’d been wraiths, sprung from time. Balls tocked, skinkling, through delicate arches. My head pulsed. I’d had too much to drink the previous evening. She was still on the phone. I watched as she talked. Hanging up, she came to tell me he’d apologized, but it wasn’t possible. The group just didn’t have the space.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  15 “And I will put enmity (open hostility) Between you and the woman, And between your seed (offspring) and her e Seed; He shall [fatally] bruise your head, And you shall [only] bruise His heel.” [Gal 4:4 ] 16 To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth; In pain you will give birth to children; Yet your desire and longing will be for your husband, And he will rule [with authority] over you and be responsible for you.” 17 Then to Adam the LORD God said, “Because you have listened [attentively] to the voice of your wife, and have eaten [fruit] from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’; The ground is [now] under a curse because of you; In sorrow and toil you shall eat [the fruit] of it All the days of your life. 18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 “By the sweat of your face You will eat bread Until you return to the ground, For from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.” 20 The man named his wife Eve (life spring, life giver), because she was the mother of all the living. 21 The LORD God made tunics of [animal] skins for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), knowing [how to distinguish between] good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take from the tree of life as well, and eat [its fruit], and live [in this fallen, sinful condition] forever”— 23 therefore the LORD God sent Adam away from the Garden of Eden, to till and cultivate the ground from which he was taken. 24 So God drove the man out; and at the east of the Garden of Eden He [permanently] stationed the f cherubim and the sword with the flashing blade which turned round and round [in every direction] to protect and guard the way (entrance, access) to the tree of life. [Rev 2:7 ; 22:2 , 14 , 19 ] Genesis 4 Cain and Abel 1 N OW THE man a Adam knew Eve as his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have obtained a man (baby boy, son) with the help of the LORD .” 2 And [later] she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept the flocks [of sheep and goats], but Cain cultivated the ground. 3 And in the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground. 4 But Abel brought [an offering of] the [finest] firstborn of his flock and the b fat portions.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Exodus 33 The Journey Resumed 1 T he LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought from the land of Egypt, to the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel), saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’ 2 “I will send an Angel before you and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. [Ex 23:23 ; 34:11 ] 3 “Go up to a land [of abundance] a flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, because you are a stiff-necked (stubborn, rebellious) people, and I might destroy you on the way.” 4 When the people heard this sad word, they mourned, and none of them put on his ornaments. 5 For the LORD had said to Moses, “Say to the sons of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked (stubborn, rebellious) people! If I should come among you for one moment, I would destroy you. Now therefore, [penitently] take off your ornaments, so that I may know what to do with you.’ ” 6 So the Israelites left off all their ornaments [in repentance], from Mount Horeb (Sinai) onward . 7 Now Moses used to take his own tent and pitch it outside the camp, far away from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting [of God with His own people]. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the [temporary] tent of meeting which was outside the camp. 8 Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise and stand, each at his tent door, and look at Moses until he entered the tent. 9 Whenever Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the doorway of the tent; and the LORD would speak with Moses. 10 When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the tent door, all the people would rise and worship, each at his tent door. 11 And so the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his attendant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. Moses Intercedes 12 Moses said to the LORD , “See, You say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but You have not let me know whom You will send with me. Yet You have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in My sight.’ 13 “Now therefore, I pray you, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways so that I may know You [becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with You, recognizing and understanding Your ways more clearly] and that I may find grace and favor in Your sight.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen said: ‘Go on,’ and her voice sounded husky. ‘Oh, my dear—it’s so dreadfully hard to tell you. The pay was rotten, not enough to live on—I used to think that they did it on purpose, lots of the girls used to think that way too—they never gave us quite enough to live on. You see, I hadn’t a vestige of talent, I could only dress up and try to look pretty. I never got a real speaking part, I just danced, not well, but I’d got a good figure.’ She paused and tried to look up through the gloom, but Stephen’s face was hidden in shadow. ‘Well then, darling—Stephen, I want to feel your arms, hold me closer—well then, I—there was a man who wanted me—not as you want me, Stephen, to protect and care for me; God, no, not that way! And I was so poor and so tired and so frightened; why sometimes my shoes would let in the slush because they were old and I hadn’t the money to buy myself new ones—try to think of that, darling. And I’d cry when I washed my hands in the winter because they’d be bleeding from broken chilblains. Well, I couldn’t stay the course any longer, that’s all. . . .’ The little gilt clock on the desk ticked loudly. Tick, tick! Tick, tick! An astonishing voice to come from so small and fragile a body. Somewhere out in the garden a dog barked—Tony, chasing imaginary rabbits through the darkness. ‘Stephen!’ ‘Yes, my dear?’ ‘Have you understood me?’ ‘Yes—oh, yes, I’ve understood you. Go on.’ ‘Well then, after a while he turned round and left me, and I just had to drag along as I had done, and I sort of crocked up—couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t smile and look happy when I went on to dance—that was how Ralph found me—he saw me dance and came round to the back, the way some men do. I remember thinking that Ralph didn’t look like that sort of man; he looked—well, just like Ralph, not a bit like that sort of man. Then he started sending me flowers; never presents or anything like that, just flowers with his card. And we had lunch together a good few times, and he talked about that other man who’d left me. He said he’d like to go out with a horsewhip—imagine Ralph trying to horsewhip a man! They knew each other quite well, I discovered; you see, they were both in the hardware business. Ralph was out after some big contract for his firm, that was why he happened to be in New York—and one day he asked me to marry him, Stephen.

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

  Albrecht, acting on the advice of Luther, changed the property of the Knights into a hereditary duchy. The king of Poland consented. On April 10, 1525, Albrecht was solemnly invested at Crakow with the rule of Prussia as a fief of Poland. Soon afterwards he received the homage of the Diet at Königsberg. The evangelical preachers saluted him under the ringing of the bells. The Emperor put him under the ban, but it had no effect. Most of the Knights received large fiefs, and married; the rest emigrated to Germany. Albrecht formally introduced the Reformation, July 6, 1525, and issued a Lutheran constitution and liturgy. The fasts were abolished, the number of holy days reduced, the ceremonies changed, the convents turned into hospitals, and worship conducted in the vernacular. All Romish and sectarian preaching was prohibited. He assumed all the ecclesiastical appointments, and became the supreme bishop of Prussia, the two Roman-Catholic bishops Georg and Queiss having surrendered to him their dignity. Their successors were mere superintendents. He felt, however, that the episcopal office was foreign to a worldly sovereign, and accepted it as a matter of necessity to secure order.800 He founded the University of Königsberg, the third Protestant university (after Wittenberg and Marburg). It was opened in 1544.801 He called Dr. Osiander from Nürnberg to the chief theological chair (1549); but this polemical divine, by his dissertations on the law and the gospel, and on the doctrine of justification, soon turned Prussia into a scene of violent and disgraceful theological controversies.802 Albrecht did not enjoy his reign. It was sadly disturbed in this transition state by troubles from within and without. He repeatedly said that he would rather watch sheep than be a ruler. He was involved in heavy debts. The seven children of his first wife, a daughter of the king of Denmark, died young, except a daughter, Anna Sophia, who married a duke of Mecklenburg (1555). His pious and faithful wife died, 1547. In 1550 he married a princess of Braunschweig; her first daughter was born blind; only one son, Albrecht Friedrich, survived him, and spent his life in melancholy. But Albrecht remained true to his evangelical faith, and died (March 20, 1568), with the words of Psa. 31:5, upon his lips, "Into Thine hand I commend my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, Thou God of truth." He left proofs of his piety in prayers, meditations, and the testament to his son, who succeeded him, and died without male issue, 1618. SUBSEQUENT HISTORY. A few glimpses of the later history are here in place to explain the present confessional status of the Protestant church in the kingdom of Prussia. The Duchy of Prussia in 1618 fell as an inheritance to John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg (1608–1619), son-in-law of the second Prussian Duke (Albert Frederick), and a descendant of Frederick of Hohenzollern, who had become margrave of Brandenburg by purchase in 1415. In this way the connection of Prussia arid Brandenburg was completed.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  phrases. The impulse to resist, the longing to go, culminating in that hurried visit to Morton. Morton so changed and yet so changeless. Changed because of those blue-clad figures, the lame, the halt and the partially blinded who had sought its peace and its kindly protection. Changeless because that protection and peace belonged to the very spirit of Morton. Mrs. Williams a widow; her niece melancholic ever since the groom Jim had been wounded and missing — they had married while he had been home on leave, and quite soon the poor soul was expecting a baby. Williams now dead of his third and last stroke, after having survived pneu- monia. The swan called Peter no longer gliding across the lake on his white reflection, and in his stead an unmannerly offspring who struck out with his wings and tried to bite Stephen. The family vault where her father lay buried — the vault was in urgent need of repair —‘ No men left, Miss Stephen, we’re that short of stonemasons; her ladyship’s bin complainin’ already, but it don’t be no use complainin’ these times.’ Raftery’s grave — a slab of rough granite: “In memory of a gentle and courageous friend, whose name was Raftery, after the poet.’ Moss on the granite half effacing the words; the thick hedge growing wild for the want of clipping. And her mother — a woman with snow-white hair and a face that was worn almost down to the spirit; a woman of quiet but uncertain movements, with a new trick of twisting the rings on her fingers. ‘It was good of you to come." ‘ You sent for me, Mother.’ Long silences filled with the realiza tion that all they dared hope for was peace between them - too late to go back — they could not retrace their steps even though there was now peace between them. Then those last poignant moments in the study together — memory, the old room was haunted by it —a man dying with love in his eyes that was deathless — a woman holding him in her arms, speaking words such as lovers will speak to each other. Memory —they’re the one perfect thing about me. ‘Stephen, promise to write when you’re out in France, I shall want to hear from you.’ ‘I promise, Mother.’ The return to London; Puddle’s anxious voice: ‘ Well, how was she?’ ‘ Very frail, you must go to Morton.’ Puddle’s 320 THE WELL OF LONELINESS