Tenderness

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 Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Now, I want you to go back over there and tell that little boy that you’re sorry.” “Yes, ma’am.” “Then I want you to give that little boy a hug.” “Huh?” “Then I want you to tell him that you love him.” I looked up at her and, to my horror, saw that she was dead serious. I had reacted as apologetically as I possibly could, but this was way too much. “Mom, I can’t go over and tell that boy I love him. People will—” She gave me that look again. I somberly turned around and returned to my group of friends. They had obviously seen my mother’s scolding; I could tell because they were all staring at me. I went up to the little boy who had struggled to speak. “Look, man, I’m sorry.” I was genuinely apologetic for laughing and even more deeply regretful of the situation I had put myself in. I looked over at my mother, who was still staring at me. I lunged at the boy to give him a very awkward hug. I think I startled him by grabbing him like that, but when he realized that I was trying to hug him, his body relaxed and he hugged me back. My friends looked at me oddly as I spoke. “Uh...also, uh...I love you!” I tried to say it as insincerely as I could get away with and half-smiled as I spoke. I was still hugging the boy, so he couldn’t see the disingenuous look on my youthful face. It made me feel less weird to smile like it was a joke. But then the boy hugged me tighter and whispered in my ear. He spoke flawlessly, without a stutter and without hesitation. “I love you, too.” There was such tenderness and earnestness in his voice, and just like that, I thought I would start crying. — I was in my office, talking to Jimmy Dill on the night of his execution, and I realized I was thinking about something that had happened nearly forty years earlier. I also realized that I was crying. The tears were sliding down my cheeks—runaways that escaped when I wasn’t paying attention. Mr. Dill was still laboring to get his words out, desperately trying to thank me for trying to save his life. As it got closer and closer to the time of his execution, it became harder for him to speak. The guards were making noise behind him, and I could tell he was upset that he couldn’t get his words out right, but I didn’t want to interrupt him. So I sat there and let the tears fall down my face. The harder he tried to speak, the more I wanted to cry. The long pauses gave me too much time to think. He would never have been convicted of capital murder if he had just had the money for a decent lawyer.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  At the time Winchester itself had been recorded in the five-year diary. It was written in a studied, microscopic hand, with tangling ascenders and capital letters which emerged from snakelike scrolls. On the bordered title-page the printer’s lettering (again, that effortful Gothic) announcing ‘This diary belongs to: _____’ was outdone by the looping tendrils with which ‘The Hon. Charles Nantwich’ was laboriously rendered in the manner of the signature of Elizabeth I. At a cursory look this diary was unreadable in more senses than one. With a schoolboy’s typical mixture of secrecy and conventionality the entries (which could only cover three lines per day) were written almost entirely in abbreviations. What was more interesting was to see how, over the five years at the school, the hand had changed, casting off the juvenile fanciness for later, adolescent, affectations. Equally illegible, the writing came to look less monkish and stilted, and took on a passionate, cursive air. Certain characters, ‘d’, for example, and ‘g’, became the subject for worried stylistic amendment and experiment. Little ’e’s, in particular, were restless—now Greekly sticking out their pointed tongues, now curling up in copperplate propriety. I remembered people at school attaching similar prestige to handwriting, though I never did much to adjust my own frankly careless scrawl. I would certainly have been too slovenly to have stuck, as Charles had done, to the virtually useless annotation of my life in a book for five years. It was one of those changeless schooltime occupations, which have no function beyond themselves, and I was touched to think of Charles as a prefect fitting in the details of match scores and books each evening on the same page that he had used as a new man, his eye flicking back each year over the slowly accumulating trivia. There must have been so much more, for the book showed only the self-imposed thoroughness of the dull-witted or the lonely. I had no doubt that Charles’s wits had been quick; and if he was lonely, then his thoughts would not have been taken up with fixtures and Latin verbs, he would have been living in his imagination.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  She asks me to read it to the class and then invites the other teachers from our corridor to hear me recite it a second, third, and fourth time. She begins to ask me, when the other kids are busy, “How are things at home, Regina?” The day I tell her I’m moving, I’m stunned when her eyes suddenly fill with tears. “Promise me you’ll never forget that you’re special, Regina.” Special? I usually get dirty , ugly , poor , bastard , gross , nasty , slut , rag doll , and whore . . . but never special . Ms. Muse continues, telling me I need to always make sure I have a library card, that reading will help me wherever I end up. “Stay smart, stay sharp, and never, ever stop reading,” she whispers in my ear. She hugs me so tight I think I might cry, too. “THE MORE EAST you go in the cold months,” Mom tells us, “the cheaper rents are.” As we drive near the shore, I notice construction workers securing the bulkheads to protect the beaches from another harsh winter. I try to imagine the bungalows we pass in Sound Beach bursting in summer with families, block parties, and barbecues . . . but when Mom finally moves us into a place in Rocky Point, it reminds me of a camp’s dark bunkhouse. The kitchen is a tiny galley with a two-burner stove and the furniture is broken and cushionless. I can see through the worn wooden floor planks to the dirt and weeds below. Mom leaves for a few weeks, telling us she’s “going to get warmed up by the Red Devil.” We know the Red Devil because he’s spent the night here before—he’s a pale, freckled, lanky guy with a long red goatee that comes to a sharp point. “Good, go,” Cherie says quietly when the front door slams behind Cookie. “We like our freedom without you anyway.” “Yeah,” I join in. “And don’t bring that crusty scruff back with you, either.” Cherie and Camille burst out laughing. In the house, the only source of heat comes from the semiwarm air that’s pushing through one floor grate in the hall that adjoins the bathroom to the one bedroom. From the house’s front windows we watch icy snow fill the road, wondering how we’ll get a ride to school—our only source of meals and warmth—when our bus driver inevitably gives up on attempting our narrow hill. In between alternating as caretakers for Rosie, now age four, we go digging in enclosed steel bins outside the Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul charities for items to stuff between the floor planks, insulating us from the wind and door drafts, and any semblance of towels or blankets to pile on top of us when we sleep. “Snorkels!” Camille hollers from inside one of the bins. Cherie snorts. “Get real, it’s winter.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, As Augustine says (De Civ. Dei i, 13): “If a father’s coat or ring, or anything else of that kind, is so much more cherished by his children, as love for one’s parents is greater, in no way are the bodies themselves to be despised, which are much more intimately and closely united to us than any garment; for they belong to man’s very nature.” It is clear from this that he who has a certain affection for anyone, venerates whatever of his is left after his death, not only his body and the parts thereof, but even external things, such as his clothes, and such like. Now it is manifest that we should show honor to the saints of God, as being members of Christ, the children and friends of God, and our intercessors. Wherefore in memory of them we ought to honor any relics of theirs in a fitting manner: principally their bodies, which were temples, and organs of the Holy Ghost dwelling and operating in them, and are destined to be likened to the body of Christ by the glory of the Resurrection. Hence God Himself fittingly honors such relics by working miracles at their presence. Reply to Objection 1: This was the argument of Vigilantius, whose words are quoted by Jerome in the book he wrote against him (ch. ii) as follows: “We see something like a pagan rite introduced under pretext of religion; they worship with kisses I know not what tiny heap of dust in a mean vase surrounded with precious linen.” To him Jerome replies (Ep. ad Ripar. cix): “We do not adore, I will not say the relics of the martyrs, but either the sun or the moon or even the angels”—that is to say, with the worship of “latria.” “But we honor the martyrs’ relics, so that thereby we give honor to Him Whose martyrs [*The original meaning of the word ‘martyr,’ i.e. the Greek {martys} is ‘a witness’] they are: we honor the servants, that the honor shown to them may reflect on their Master.” Consequently, by honoring the martyrs’ relics we do not fall into the error of the Gentiles, who gave the worship of “latria” to dead men. Reply to Objection 2: We worship that insensible body, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the soul, which was once united thereto, and now enjoys God; and for God’s sake, whose ministers the saints were. Reply to Objection 3: The dead body of a saint is not identical with that which the saint had during life, on account of the difference of form, viz. the soul: but it is the same by identity of matter, which is destined to be reunited to its form. OF CHRIST AS CALLED THE MEDIATOR OF GOD AND MAN (TWO ARTICLES)We have now to consider how Christ is called the Mediator of God and man, and under this head there are two points of inquiry:

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 1: The male sex is more noble than the female, and for this reason He took human nature in the male sex. But lest the female sex should be despised, it was fitting that He should take flesh of a woman. Hence Augustine says (De Agone Christ. xi): “Men, despise not yourselves: the Son of God became a man: despise not yourselves, women; the Son of God was born of a woman.” Reply to Objection 2: Augustine thus (Contra Faust. xxiii) replies to Faustus, who urged this objection; “By no means,” says he, “does the Catholic Faith, which believes that Christ the Son of God was born of a virgin, according to the flesh, suppose that the same Son of God was so shut up in His Mother’s womb, as to cease to be elsewhere, as though He no longer continued to govern heaven and earth, and as though He had withdrawn Himself from the Father. But you, Manicheans, being of a mind that admits of nought but material images, are utterly unable to grasp these things.” For, as he again says (Ep. ad Volus. cxxxvii), “it belongs to the sense of man to form conceptions only through tangible bodies, none of which can be entire everywhere, because they must of necessity be diffused through their innumerable parts in various places . . . Far otherwise is the nature of the soul from that of the body: how much more the nature of God, the Creator of soul and body! . . . He is able to be entire everywhere, and to be contained in no place. He is able to come without moving from the place where He was; and to go without leaving the spot whence He came.” Reply to Objection 3: There is no uncleanness in the conception of man from a woman, as far as this is the work of God: wherefore it is written (Acts 10:15): “That which God hath cleansed do not thou call common,” i.e. unclean. There is, however, a certain uncleanness therein, resulting from sin, as far as lustful desire accompanies conception by sexual union. But this was not the case with Christ, as shown above ([4139]Q[28], A[1]). But if there were any uncleanness therein, the Word of God would not have been sullied thereby, for He is utterly unchangeable. Wherefore Augustine says (Contra Quinque Haereses v): “God saith, the Creator of man: What is it that troubles thee in My Birth? I was not conceived by lustful desire. I made Myself a mother of whom to be born. If the sun’s rays can dry up the filth in the drain, and yet not be defiled: much more can the Splendor of eternal light cleanse whatever It shines upon, but Itself cannot be sullied.”

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I am very, very drunk. It is half past two in the morning. I tiptoe in with fantastical caution, & see him sleeping quietly. Everything I have an impulse to do wd wake him—& that wd be inexcusable. All my love to him goes out in a sweet bedside gesture of self-denial, a kind of blessing, a sweeping of the arms that comes from I don’t know where and is lost into the air. And in a mood of certainty & faint ridiculousness, I stagger to bed. June 1, 1926 : A terrible head this morning. I cancelled all engagements, such as they were, & fell into a routine of parallel convalescence with my boy. Hassan evidently foully jealous. This evening, as he was much brighter, I sat with Taha in close & utterly irregular comradeship & had him tell me about his family. I even told him a bit about mine, until he said that being British I must know Mr Mills, a missionary apparently, who comes from New York, & I recognised that our understandings were a trifle out of kilter. Finally I told him the story of Prince Ahmed; it was the one I had learnt most recently to tell after dinner, & a strange amusement & entrancement came over his features to hear me recite to him in my painfully correct Arabic, as if he had been some dignitary. But then the story too held him like a revelation. I made use of various props for the three magical gifts of the princes: for the flying carpet the old rush mat on the floor, for the spying-tube which showed whatever one desired my field-glasses, & for the apple which cured all ills the lime on the tray with my drink. He laughed with that delight which children show at certain well-worn jokes whose very repetition is a guarantee of pleasure & security, & I capered around, squatting on the mat, peering out of the window through the binoculars—though I saw not the Princess Nural-Nihar but birds coming down into the nim-trees, a stupendous sunset above the rocks, a girl loping home with a dog at her heels—& then wafting the lime under my nose & rolling my eyes as if it smelt divine. But all the gifts were of equal wondrousness, I explained, sitting solemnly down on the edge of the bed: and then, as I went on about the shooting of the arrows, & how the Princess wd be given to him who shot the furthest, the most exquisite thing happened.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Whether there was a true marriage between Mary and Joseph?Objection 1: It would seem that there was no true marriage between Mary and Joseph. For Jerome says against Helvidius that Joseph “was Mary’s guardian rather than her husband.” But if this was a true marriage, Joseph was truly her husband. Therefore there was no true marriage between Mary and Joseph. Objection 2: Further, on Mat. 1:16: “Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary,” Jerome says: “When thou readest ‘husband’ suspect not a marriage; but remember that Scripture is wont to speak of those who are betrothed as husband and wife.” But a true marriage is not effected by the betrothal, but by the wedding. Therefore, there was no true marriage between the Blessed Virgin and Joseph. Objection 3: Further, it is written (Mat. 1:19): “Joseph, her husband, being a just man, and not willing to take her away [*Douay: ‘publicly to expose her’], i.e. to take her to his home in order to cohabit with her, was minded to put her away privately, i.e. to postpone the wedding,” as Remigius [*Cf. Catena Aurea in Matth.] expounds. Therefore, it seems that, as the wedding was not yet solemnized, there was no true marriage: especially since, after the marriage contract, no one can lawfully put his wife away. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Consensu Evang. ii): “It cannot be allowed that the evangelist thought that Joseph ought to sever his union with Mary” (since he said that Joseph was Mary’s husband) “on the ground that in giving birth to Christ, she had not conceived of him, but remained a virgin. For by this example the faithful are taught that if after marriage they remain continent by mutual consent, their union is still and is rightly called marriage, even without intercourse of the sexes.” I answer that, Marriage or wedlock is said to be true by reason of its attaining its perfection. Now perfection of anything is twofold; first, and second. The first perfection of a thing consists in its very form, from which it receives its species; while the second perfection of a thing consists in its operation, by which in some way a thing attains its end. Now the form of matrimony consists in a certain inseparable union of souls, by which husband and wife are pledged by a bond of mutual affection that cannot be sundered. And the end of matrimony is the begetting and upbringing of children: the first of which is attained by conjugal intercourse; the second by the other duties of husband and wife, by which they help one another in rearing their offspring.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  When sex with a decent woman was not an open provocation of another man, attitudes might be less exacting. One of the finest representations of quiet indulgence occurs at the end of the fifth book of Leucippe and Clitophon. The young “widow” Melite falls passionately in love with Clitophon, yet he artfully avoids physical consummation of their engagement. When Melite’s husband turns up alive, she makes one last effort to take Clitophon to bed. The seduction scene was the deliberate inverse of Leucippe’s heroic resistance against Thersander, Melite’s husband. Melite’s speech is the cri de coeur of a desperate young wife infatuated with another man. Clitophon’s response is tender. “Something human moved me, and I truly feared the god Eros too.… This would have to be reckoned not so much intercourse as a cure for an ailing soul.… Everything happened by the will of Eros.” In the dramatic final act, Melite would indeed find herself charged with adultery. The prosecutors note that one who corrupts a wedded wife steals what belongs to another man. Nevertheless, Achilles Tatius is humane, or subversive, enough to let Melite escape on a technicality, by vowing that she did not violate her marriage so long as she thought her husband was dead, when in fact she hurriedly cheated on him as soon as she learned that his return was imminent!42 The satisfaction of Melite demonstrates that sometimes eros transcended human rules, not that the rules were changing. Despite the episode’s undoubted charm, it cannot count as a winking acknowledgment of women’s liberation. Sometimes the Roman Empire is construed as a progressive moment in women’s history, rolled back in late antiquity by the regressive alliance of religion and patriarchy. The vociferous, if satirical, complaints about powerful wives, the frank depiction of feminine sexual pleasure in the visual arts, the greater presence of women in the public sphere—all of these are signs that point to a wider range of motion for the Roman matron. As with any such caricature, this one has only a certain admixture of truth. A number of structural factors worked in a woman’s favor. By the imperial era, older forms of marriage that placed the woman in the legal power of her husband had long fallen into desuetude. Roman rules that kept spousal property in separate funds meant that the woman’s dowry was, as men complained, a subtle source of leverage. The woman’s—or, more realistically, the girl’s—consent was formally required for the marriage, and liberal laws of divorce allowed women to end marriages, unilaterally and virtually without cause. The Augustan social legislation created a path for women to achieve an exceptional legal competence, the ability to act without a male tutor, by bearing three children. The Roman woman is hardly a naive and feeble creature hopelessly under her husband’s thumb.43

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Anthia’s escape from the brothel is a paradigm of the heroine’s chastity in the romance. Parallel endangerments from pimps and pirates, slave owners and other ruffians, recur throughout the entire genre. The most direct parallel, and the only rival to the Ephesian Tale in the transparency of its conventionality, survives in the popular History of Apollonius, King of Tyre. The History of Apollonius is a family romance rather than an erotic romance, but the pattern of separation, endurance, and reunion is structurally parallel. In this story, which survives in Latin, it is the protagonist’s daughter, Tarsia, who has been cast on the cruel winds of fate and endures lurid threats to her virginal purity. In the climactic scene of the History, Tarsia, like Anthia, is placed for sale in a slave market. The prince of the city and the town’s most notorious procurer enter a bidding war for the beautiful girl, with equally prurient interests. As the price escalates, the prince reckons that the purchase of this one creature would force him to sell off a number of his other slaves. With the dispassionate logic of a cost-cutting accountant, he reasons that he can let the pimp buy her, then pay to be the first customer for just a fraction of the girl’s sale price. “I’ll go in first and snatch the knot of her virginity at a low price and it will be the same as if I had bought her.” The deep material and ideological connection between the flesh trade and the sex trade was rarely exposed to such direct view. The demand for sex was a major impetus behind the circulation of human chattel in the Roman world.6 The pimp in this story, a monochromatic villain, ignores Tarsia’s pleas for compassion. “Don’t you know that supplications and tears have no force with pimps and executioners?” Like the executioner, the pimp is an agent of death. He sends her to the brothel. The prince, with his face covered, entered first. Tarsia prostrated herself at his feet and in the most desperate terms begged for his pity. “Listen to the misfortune that brought me to this unhappy state, weigh the fact of my respectable ancestry.” The prince was startled into compassion. He, too, had a virgin daughter, for whom he might fear a similar fate. He abandoned his lustful intentions and told Tarsia to implore future customers with the same sad recital, until she had earned enough to buy her own freedom. A train of suitors follows, and all are so moved by Tarsia’s story that they refrained from impairing her chastity. She endured, inviolate, until she was reunited with her father, who promised Tarsia to the noble prince as a bride (and incited the people of Mytilene to burn the merciless pimp alive). Tarsia’s preservation of her chastity was less elaborately contrived than Anthia’s. She relied on the bare compassion of strangers. But the underlying assumptions about the order of the universe were the same.7

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Taha slid his hand shyly across the blanket & clasped my own. I scarcely faltered as I spoke of Ahmed’s arrow, which going so far was assumed to have vanished so that he lost the Princess to his brother Ali, but I felt a squeezing in my chest & throat & hardly dared look at him as, all unconsciously, I made our two hands more comfortable together, interweaving his long fingers with my own. By a simple gesture I wd never have dared to make & without words which neither of us cd have said, he conveyed his trust in me, & holding my hand held on to a simple faith that all wd be well with Ahmed, wretched though his current state now was. And when the others had all turned home, I went on, saying that the arrow wd never be found & that they must make haste for the wedding-feast of Prince Ali & the Princess Nur-al-Nihar, Ahmed went on alone & lo he encountered the radiant fairy Peri-Banou & fell in love with her & married her & lived in happiness with her all the days of his life. Then Hassan was scuffling & waiting at the door, & Taha with less than innocence drew his hand away— The phone was ringing. Phil, I knew, would never answer it, though it was at the bedside, and when I came in he was sprawled over the sheets, pale, bleary and tumescent. ‘Leave us out with the phone,’ he groaned. I half sat on him and picked up the receiver. ‘Darling, it’s James. You couldn’t come over, could you?’ ‘Sweetest, I’ve got a pretty frightful head and it’s only seven o’clock. Can’t it wait?’ ‘A bit, I suppose. I’m in a terrible mess. I’ve been arrested.’ 3 I did so regret it was the Central Line I used most. I couldn’t get any kind of purchase on it. It had neither the old-fashioned openair quality of the District Line, where rain misted the tracks as one waited, nor the grimy profundity of the Northern Line, nor the Piccadilly’s ingenious, civilised connexiveness. For much of its length it was a great bleak drain, and though some of its stops—Holland Park, St Paul’s, Bethnal Green—were historic enough, they were offset on my daily journeys by the ringing emptiness of Lancaster Gate and Marble Arch, and the trash and racket of Tottenham Court Road, where I got out. Somewhere, I knew, the line had its ghost stations, but I had given up looking out for their unlit platforms and perhaps, in a flash from the rails, the signboards and good-humoured advertisements of an abandoned decade.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Th e grace of sexual familiarity in marriage would breed philia, a blend of friendship and love. In the letters of Pliny the Younger, we read almost with embarrassment the eff usions of saccharine aff ection toward his wife (more than twenty years his ju nior), but the public nature of the letters reveals how far private emotional investment had become an acceptable ele- ment of the elite’s self- projection. Th e highest ideal of marriage was har- mony, homonoia, a charged term that located the peaceful partnership of husband and wife within the civic and cosmic order. Th e man who was going to harmonize the city, with its internecine squabbles and intense fac- tionalism, was expected to have a harmonious house. Like the “ceaseless circling dance of the planets,” companionate marriage was part of nature, “an image of order and harmony.”  Sex inevitably became enmeshed in the high ideals of conjugal harmony. “Where does eros more rightly belong than in the lawful marriage of man and wife?” It was a short step for Roman moralists to lay down rules of plea sure. Aphrodite, within the house hold, was to be subjected to “reason, harmony, and philosophy.” Injunctions of mutual sexual fi delity easily arose from the high spirit of companionate marriage. For Plutarch, sexual fi delity was advised on pragmatic grounds. Plutarch reminded a bride not to lose her modesty with her clothes off ; he counseled the groom to make the bed- room a “school of orderly behavior.” But nothing is more likely to render a stilted view of Roman marriage than exclusive focus on the stern counsels  FROM SHAME TO SIN of the moralists. Viewed in isolation, the moralizing literature on marital sex is too easily construed as a step toward a more repressed future, as though the conjugalization of sex might already achieve by boredom and grim routine half of what the preachers and prudes would later seek to con- trol by religious command. Nothing could be further detached from the original soil of Roman marriage. Th e advice complex sprang from a culture where companionate marriage and erotic investment were intertwined as never before.  A pessimistic view of the Roman marriage couch has become surpris- ingly entrenched. It is not impossible to fi nd indications that sex was mud- dled, perfunctory, and embarrassed. In what age could a diligent search not return indications of the most varied sensual experiences?

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  You don’t seem very well kitted out if you are.’ He had on smartly pressed shorts with an elasticated waistband and a T-shirt advertising the previous year’s Proms. ‘No, I’m just going for a walk,’ he said. ‘It’s such a lovely day—one would hate to stay indoors!’ ‘One would indeed,’ I agreed. ‘Roops, this is my friend Phil, who’s staying with me for a bit.’ ‘Hello,’ he said breezily, and then gambolled along backwards in front of us, so as to get a good look at the two of us. I thought it must be like being filmed, walking towards an ever-receding camera, and I put on silly faces to make him laugh. When he decided he liked us he dropped into place between us, and we swung along hand-in-hand. He was as touching and confidential as ever, and I felt we must look like a young couple that by some dazzling agamogenesis had produced this golden-haired offspring. I was keeping an eye out for the house numbers and we were already nearly there. ‘We’re going in here, darling,’ I said, and Phil looked up a shade apprehensively while Rupert, disappointed that our meeting was over so soon, took on a serious air, not quite understanding what was going on, and glancing from one to the other of us, as though some decision had to be taken. ‘Why don’t you come round for tea one day?’ I suggested. ‘If old Pollywog will let you.’ ‘Yes, I will,’ he said. But something else was clearly worrying him and he tugged on my hand and led me off to several parked cars’ length away. He looked around carefully, and I knew what he was going to talk about. For a moment I thought he was going to tell me he had seen Arthur, and I felt that perhaps life would suddenly become quite different. ‘What ever happened to that boy?’ he asked. ‘Oh, he went away a bit ago,’ I said plausibly, as if it were a lie. ‘Did he manage to run away all right, then?’ ‘Oh yes—he got clean away.’ ‘Have you heard where he went to? Did he go abroad?’ ‘Funnily enough, old chap, I don’t know quite where he is. It was all top secret, you know. I hope you didn’t tell anyone about it?’ ‘No,’ he whispered, shocked that I could imagine that. ‘As a matter of fact,’ it struck me, ‘if you should see him I’d quite like to know. It would have to be really hush-hush, though. Keep your eyes skinned when you’re going for a walk or anything’ (here he rubbed his eyes quickly, carrying out my orders at once) ‘and if you do see him, and you’re really sure it’s him, why don’t you give me a ring?’ ‘All right,’ he said. I was glad I had made a little game or experiment out of it, and began already to look anxiously forward to it.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  The next year, I had the opportunity to return to South America to work as a field assistant to a Princeton graduate student, Nina Pierpont, who was studying woodcreeper ecology at Cocha Cashu—a remote, Amazonian field station in southeastern Peru. My research at Cocha Cashu proved to be critical to my future life, for it was there that I met Ann Johnson, a Bowdoin College student who was working as an assistant for a Princeton undergraduate student, Jenny Price, on the social behavior of White-winged Trumpeters (Psophia leucoptera). Ann and I became sweethearts that summer, and we have been partners ever since. Ann is a producer and cinematographer of nature and science documentaries for television. We have three sons. In the fall of 1984, I started graduate school in evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan. Inspired by the diversity and complexity of manakin displays from Suriname, I proposed for my dissertation a grand, comparative analysis of the evolution of manakin behavior across the entire family. I wanted to use manakin phylogeny—their family tree—to study the evolution of manakin lek display behavior. This emerging scientific field combined phylogeny with the study of animal behavior, called ethology, into a vibrant new discipline—phylogenetic ethology. The goal was to investigate the evolution of behavior comparatively through its history. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, this was my first step into the study of aesthetic radiation. During my first year in graduate school, my office mate, Rebecca Irwin, introduced me to the classic work of Ronald A. Fisher and to the revolutionary new papers on mate choice by Russell Lande and Mark Kirkpatrick. This was my first exposure to the science of mate choice and to the deep intellectual conflicts between the aesthetic/Darwinian and the adaptationist worldviews. But even then I could sense that the open-ended and arbitrary qualities of the Fisher hypothesis looked a lot more like how nature worked than the honest signaling theories did.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  She’s been through a lot and, well, on the trip down here she just kept saying over and over, ‘Lord, I can’t be scared of no dog, I can’t be scared of no dog.’ ” I was apologizing again to the daughter for what the court officials had done the day before when suddenly there was a commotion at the courtroom door. We both looked up and there stood Mrs. Williams. She was once again dressed impeccably in her scarf and hat. She held her handbag tight at her side and seemed to be swaying at the entrance. I could hear her speaking to herself, repeating over and over again: “I ain’t scared of no dog, I ain’t scared of no dog.” I watched as the officers allowed her to move forward. She held her head up as she walked slowly through the metal detector, repeating over and over, “I ain’t scared of no dog.” It was impossible to look away. She made it through the detector and stared at the dog. Then, loud enough for everyone to hear, she belted out: “I ain’t scared of no dog!” She moved past the dog and walked into the courtroom. Black folks who were already inside beamed with joy as she passed them. She sat down near the front of the courtroom and turned to me with a broad smile and announced, “Attorney Stevenson, I’m here!” “Mrs. Williams, it’s so good to see you here. Thank you for coming.” The courtroom filled up, and I started getting my papers together. They brought Walter into the courtroom, the signal that the hearing was about to begin. That’s when I heard Mrs. Williams call my name. “No, Attorney Stevenson, you didn’t hear me. I said I’m here.” She spoke very loudly, and I was a little confused and embarrassed. I turned around and smiled at her. “No, Mrs. Williams, I did hear you, and I’m so glad you’re here.” When I looked at her, though, it was as if she was in her own world. The courtroom was packed, and the bailiff brought the court to order as the judge walked in. Everyone rose, as is the custom. When the judge took the bench and sat down, everyone else in the courtroom sat down as well. There was an unusually long pause as we all waited for the judge to say something. I noticed people staring at something behind me, and that’s when I turned around and saw that Mrs. Williams was still standing. The courtroom got very quiet. All eyes were on her. I tried to gesture to her that she should sit, but then she leaned her head back and shouted, “I’m here!” People chuckled nervously as she took her seat, but when she looked at me, I saw tears in her eyes. In that moment, I felt something peculiar, a deep sense of recognition.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  and we finally end up at Cordwood Beach—the place we used to play for hours, writing our names in the sand, hunting the rocks for clams, and picking fistfuls of onion grass for our dinners. Arm in arm, my sister and I walk the beach, saying nothing. Under the gray December sky, we look out at the Long Island Sound to where the floating dock once was anchored; to the broken stone house that we used to climb on. “She did one thing right,” Camille says. “What?” “She gave us each other.” The lives Cookie gave us were only etched in sand; able to be erased and written all over again . . . better, with meaning. We’ve all made our stories into what we wanted for ourselves. Standing side by side on the cold beach, there’s just one thought keeping Camille and me from feeling total completion: Rosie. She doesn’t want us to be a part of her life or to know her family. Rosie got married and gave birth to a son, but by the time we knew about any of it, all the momentous events had passed. Occasionally, she mails Camille and me photographs, in all of which she’s clearly a loving, doting mother . . . but on the rare occasion the photos are accompanied by a letter, the communication is all very matter-of-fact. Everyone here is fine, she says. Hope you’re great. She wants us to be aware that she’s adjusted well as an adult, but she doesn’t want us to be present for it. In December 1999, a colleague tells me he’s venturing into Times Square to ring in the new millennium. “You used to work for the City, right?” he asks. “What’ll be the best way to navigate the streets?” I call someone whom I heard now works as the special assistant to the NYC police commissioner: Todd Ciaravino, the handsome, stoic aide to Giuliani whom I knew from my years at the comptroller’s office. After sharing the layout of the security route, Todd remembers my burgeoning golf hobby and says it might be nice to hit the driving range at Chelsea Piers when the weather warms up a little. Todd is sensitive to my guardedness—unlike other guys I’ve been attracted to, he’s consistent, mild-mannered, and kind . . . not at all overbearing or arrogant. Instead of what so many former partners and people from my childhood promised—You can trust me —Todd shows me he deserves my trust. He looks out for me, and coming from the same field, he doesn’t give me a hard time about how busy my work keeps me. By late spring, we’ve entered potentially-serious-romance territory when Todd begins traveling with the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign. At the same time, I’m transitioning from my position on Wall Street back to working with the public sector and, as a hobby, I begin to appear on Fox News, supporting the Democratic presidential ticket.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  I voice my hesitation, telling Steve, “If I accept this position, I’ll need to resign as a board member for You Gotta Believe—an organization that actually gets older foster kids adopted so they can avoid homelessness or worse. They have a contract with the county and that could be a conflict.” Steve assures me my job helping him run Suffolk County will even better position me to impact the lives of foster kids. “With the county’s resources, you can help lots of homeless kids,” he says. “And you’ll still be supporting me in the day-to-day operations of the county.” I start my new job as the chief deputy executive of Suffolk County on January 1, 2012. Eleven days into the new position, at the end of a senior staff meeting, one of my colleagues asks whether I read this morning’s Long Island Newsday . “Regina, you’ve got to read this,” she says. On the front page is a profile of Samantha Garvey, a seventeen-year-old student at Brentwood High School on the southern shore of Suffolk County. Samantha has been selected as a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search—she’s one of three hundred students up for the most prestigious high school science award in the United States. The challenge is that she lives in a homeless shelter with her family. When her family was forced from their home, their pit bull, Pulga, was put in an animal shelter. According to the story, the Garvey family is as worried about Pulga’s being euthanized as they are about how they’ll find a home. I go back to my desk and call the shelter where Pulga has been placed. I tell them confidently, “I’d like to give you my credit card to get the dog into a boarding home where it’s certain she won’t be put down, please.” She can stay in the boarding facility until we address the family’s housing needs. By one o’clock that afternoon, a dedicated team of county employees identifies the only vacant house the county owns and they put a plan in place for Samantha and her family to move into it within two weeks. When Steve announces that Samantha will have a home again, families, businesses, and contractors in the community contribute their energy, furniture, and labor. The county workers who work with Steve and me help us with renovations and setting the house up for the Garveys’ move-in, and my ten-year-old niece Christina accompanies me on a shopping trip to decorate the home. I save all the news clippings that feature Samantha’s family . . . and Pulga. Christina and I pick out frames for the news clippings, a pup-inspired welcome mat, dog bowls, and a leash for Pulga. We hang the leash on a hook near the entryway and, remembering how as a child I’d push it out of my mind anytime I wished for family photos on our walls, Christina and I place the frames with the news clippings throughout the house.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  On top of the clothes she placed my favorite games: Candy Land, Parcheesi, and Operation. If we were missing parts to the games, Gi, Cherie, and Camille would always compromise by using random chess and checker pieces or pebbles so that all three games were complete. In a fractured life, my sisters were always trying to make things whole again. We came downstairs. Norm sat silently on the couch in the living room, waiting to be told what the next move was. Cookie was still in the kitchen; she could hear us, but she couldn’t see us. There was an awkward bashfulness around Cookie after she’d let loose with one of her barbaric beatings. It was as if Cookie’s violence were a vicious animal caged inside her flesh and she had to be real still to keep it from busting out again. Of course, she’d never let that animal out in front of a social worker. Gi dropped the Hefty bag on the living room floor. I wrapped my arms around her leg again and turned away from Mrs. Brady. Camille came downstairs carrying Norm’s bag of clothes. She set his bag beside mine. “What’s in there?” Mrs. Brady asked. Her voice wasn’t like the mother’s on the TV show. This woman sounded hard, official, as if her throat was made of steel. “Their clothes,” Camille said. You could tell Camille and Gi were sisters—she was a lighter, more round-eyed version of Gi. “And some games,” Gi said. “Take the games out.” Mrs. Brady stood and smoothed out her beige skirt. “But these are their games that they love to play,” Gi said. “Take them out. There will be games there.” She looked toward the door. It was time to go. “But they have all the pieces,” Camille said. “They’re whole games.” “TAKE THE DAMN GAMES OUT!” Cookie shouted from the kitchen. We all startled at the sound of her voice. Two days earlier, on Tuesday, our mother had come home with a carton of milk and a box of macaroni and cheese. She was drunk and angry because her latest boyfriend had kicked her out. There were no hellos or kisses. Cookie dropped the bag of groceries on the ground, then dropped herself onto the couch and immediately fell asleep on her stomach. Her face was turned to one side, smashed up as if there were no bones. She snored so loudly and deeply that Norm and I laughed. “It sounds like a big old man,” I said, and we laughed even harder. Gi made the macaroni and cheese, and the three of us sat on the living room floor eating the pasta and drinking glass after glass of milk until the entire carton was gone. Gi and Norm finished their meals first and were in the kitchen cleaning up while I still ate. When I was done, I placed my glass on my plate and stood to clear my dishes.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  That afternoon, when Steve gives Samantha and her family the keys to their new home, in just one short month I see the rewards of my career and the power of government and community. I work from January through the fall focusing primarily on Suffolk County’s budget, but one morning in September, I’m pulled away from work after I read texts sent from Camille’s second daughter. Danielle Grace 7:13 a.m. Aunt Gina, Mom had a stroke! She’s in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Please call! 7:35 a.m. Aunt Gina, where are you? Please call! I call her older sister, Maria. “Aunt Gi, Mom had a massive stroke. She was paralyzed when the paramedics took her away. We’re driving behind her ambulance to the hospital. Please hurry.” I leave home and drive the forty minutes to Stony Brook University Hospital, where Maria meets me in the doorway of the waiting room. “She’s just had a second stroke,” she says . . . and by the time Cherie arrives moments later, she’s experienced two more. Our forty-eight-year-old sister—a mother of five—has just experienced four strokes. “You’re a very lucky baby,” her doctor tells her. “No one this young has the strokes that you have and regains all their cognition and function the way you have.” Surrounded by Frank, their five kids, and Cherie and me, Camille’s body takes a few days to recover from paralysis. Just before the following weekend, she’s released and sent home. As a birthday gift, I buy her fresh exercise clothes, sneakers, and a heart monitor so she can begin to strengthen her heart, which was weakened by the strokes. A FEW WEEKS later, I take an afternoon off from work to honor the only other passion that has ever pulled me away from my career: my family, which is growing again. No longer a baby, but still full of unconditional love, Camille’s son Frankie is getting married. Cherie, Rosie, Norman, and I are there to celebrate his marriage and support Camille, who is now well enough to walk her eldest son down the aisle . . . and to dance at the wedding. From the dance floor she catches my eyes and waves me to join her as the DJ cues up a special request: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Rosie, Cherie, and Norman follow me out and the five of us huddle in tight and sing to one another with all our hearts. Epilogue IN LATE OCTOBER , the National Weather Service forecasts a “Superstorm”—a hurricane they’re referring to as Sandy. For the first time ever, the NWS sends a representative out to Long Island to prepare us county leaders and our first responders for how serious this storm will be. “Death and devastation,” they tell us repeatedly. “Your residents have got to take this storm seriously. The devastation won’t be because of the wind or the rains, but because of the storm surge.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  She lurches out of the driver’s seat while the car lets up beneath her weight. We all watch her hulking five-foot-two, size-18 figure stagger around the front of the car and toward the gray house with a six-pack of Schlitz beer stuffed under her arm. I rest my hands on my hips and look around, relieved there are no neighbors outside. The dampness of Cookie’s white Hanes T-shirt exposes her quadruple-D over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders and, for God’s sake, too much of the boulders—they’re struggling to stay in the cups. Her appearance gives me a sudden urge to cover the little ones’ eyes, but by now, for them, the sight of our mother’s unmentionables holds no shock . . . instead Norman and Rosie are shaking in silent giggles. An old pair of cutoff jean shorts that should be six inches longer and wider in the thighs completes her look. She peers inside the house’s window from the front stoop then pushes open the door, which obviously bears no lock. Hastily she turns and waves—“Come on, kids!”—signaling urgency for us to unpack the car. While our younger siblings remain in the backseat, Camille leans over from the front passenger side of the car, reaches down toward the steering wheel, and fingers the keys Cookie left in the ignition. She looks back at me, and we understand the significance of the keys’ position. As usual, Cookie doesn’t plan to stick around our new home long. We spring into action. The faster we unpack the car, kids and all, the quicker our mother will head out on another long binge. We have to move with speed, convincing Cookie our motive is all about setting up our new home. She’d beat us senseless if she ever found out how eager we are to get rid of her. Through the backseat window I peek at Norman, who’s used to my Moving Day choreography. “Take her inside with you,” I tell him. He helps Rosie climb out from the middle; his brown, bowl-cut hair uncombed, his face calm. Camille and I work hard to raise him like one would raise any curious, carefree, twelve-year-old boy. His sweet, slanted brown eyes are barely visible below his uneven haircut, and I pledge him a silent promise: I’ll find new scissors for next time. Sometimes I reason that if I’ve gotta raise a kid who’s only a year and a half younger than I am, then surely I have the right to experiment my self-taught salon techniques on him . . . but that Dorothy Hamill look on a preteen boy is just plain cruel. Norm shuffles into the house with Rosie, still wearing her pink pajamas, close behind. I pause from unloading the car to take in her presence; a little flash of life scampering barefoot across this gray scene. Her innocence pierces my heart.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  We were driving in his car to a conference center in upstate New York. Divorced three years earlier, the father, who was a busy pediatrician, traveled a thousand miles twice a month to visit his daughter. Typically he called during the week, made plans for the weekend, and then took two rooms at a residential hotel. When his daughter had her tenth birthday, he thought that it might be hard or boring for her to spend the weekend alone with her father so he invited her to bring a friend. The child was very happy to do so. I asked the father whether he had ever thought of asking his daughter to fly to his home. He said sharply, “I don’t want my little girl alone on an airplane.” I was very impressed with his sensitivity and concern and so I said, “Your child is very fortunate to have you for her father.” As I glanced at the man, I was startled to see tears rolling slowly down his cheek. “Doctor, you’re crying!” “You’re the only person in the whole world who has ever said that to me,” he said. “Everyone else tells me that I’m a fool.” There may be many sensitive, loving fathers or mothers who would be willing to make the necessary sacrifice in order to fly to visit their children. Perhaps no one ever asked them. SEVENTEEN The Vulnerable Child T he next few chapters concern a group of children who have not been studied in the context of divorce. They are vulnerable children who suffer from a wide range of disabilities or problems, including birth defects, learning disorders, diabetes, cancer, and other diseases. After talking to physicians, teachers, clinicians, and others who treat these children, I learned that marital distress and divorce are high among families with such children. The job of raising a child who needs round-the-clock nursing, frequent doctor appointments, or special classes at school is daunting. Some parents thrive under the pressure, but alas, many cannot cope and find themselves blaming each other or the marriage for the strain they face each day. Billy’s story is about a child born with a congenital heart defect who was protected in his early years by a doting mother. But after his parents divorced, Billy’s world collapsed and he was never able to adjust to the changes demanded of him. Like Karen, Larry, and Paula, the divorce shaped his personality, but unlike the others, he grew more and more isolated and unhappy. What happened to Billy is another example of how the divorce experience in childhood can lead to changed lives and different outcomes in adulthood.