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 Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  walking out the door, leaving for good. She didn’t even ask for his money, she didn’t even want that. He lay there for a long time until the madam came in and said it was time for him to leave. It was getting very late, she said. He put on his shirt and dragged his body across the bed, back into the wheelchair. The madam helped him out into the street. It was early in the morning and the sun was about to come up and he sat crying outside the whorehouse. A cab came by. The driver stopped and asked him if he needed anything. “Do you need a woman?” he said. “Hey, want to go to a great whorehouse? There’s a woman in there that will knock you out, really knows how to fuck.” There wasn’t anything left to lose, he thought. The driver got out of his cab and pushed him down the street to a place that was still open. “Wait a minute out here. I’ll be right back,” he told him. He came back with a big smile on his face. “Maria will be right out,” he said, and pushed him into the bar. A very young girl came into the room, walking past all the tables and then up to his. She had long brown hair down to her waist. “Do you want to sleep with me?” she said. He looked at her and said, “Yes.” She seemed very excited, her brown eyes as bright as a little child’s. He thanked the cabdriver and gave him some money and followed the girl into one of the tiny cubicles. She was so much more relaxed than the other woman. He didn’t have to explain anything to her. She lay down and touched his face gently. She kissed him and pushed her breasts next to his chest. She felt warm and good. She didn’t seem to notice his pants were still on, or the catheter, the rubber urine bag, or any of that. She loved him, they loved each other on the bed in the little room, for what seemed a very long time. She didn’t care about the war or any of the other things. They laughed and rolled on top of each other, hiding under the blankets, and talked about a lot of things. She told him she had a kid, a little girl, and they lived in the city. It was very lonely she told him and she really didn’t want to do what she was doing, but it was the only way she could make money for herself and her baby. He held her in his arms as if she were his sister as well as his lover. There was a loud knock on the door and the cabdriver yelled in a taunting voice that it was time for him to get out. But she laughed and said something in Spanish and they stayed in bed almost an extra ten minutes over the limit. When she was getting dressed she asked him if he wanted to get married. She told him

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It was like nursery rhymes; they were two cute girls walking down the street talking harmless nonsense, while all around them the world was in full operation. Desperate vendors displayed miserable items arranged on dirty blankets—T-shirts, ratty sweaters and vinyl belts, wrinkled old magazines, faded books and records. Garbage flapped in the streets and humans walked up and down the sidewalks, on their way to perform hundreds of actions in a remarkably orderly fashion. The sun was evenly warm and pleasant and it seemed as though this was all that anyone could expect out of life. Susan felt an ache of futile tenderness for Leisha and she impulsively reached out and stroked her four serial earrings the way she would pet a cat. It was sometime during her second year in New York that their conversations began to seem like frantic attempts to wring each other for support that neither could give. Leisha became involved with an abusive rock musician. She called Susan, it seemed, only when she was hysterical in a phone booth after a fight with him. When he left her for a singer, Leisha went to Bellevue, was discharged, slit her wrists, went home to Michigan and returned in a state of quasi-hysteria that remained constant for the rest of the time Susan knew her. She immediately moved back in with the musician, who had been dumped by the singer. She was dropped by most of her Michigan friends, who said that she was too self-indulgent and theatrical to cope with. Susan didn’t know if what they said was true or not, but it seemed unkind. She wanted to remain loyal to Leisha, but she was floundering so thoroughly herself that when they talked they seemed like drowning people clinging to each other for life.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She picked up a piece of cardboard and began sweeping the mouse droppings on her desk into a neat pile. “So now they both know.” “And we can go to the opera tonight. I have tickets to Die Walküre. You can medicate and we can stay out all night.” “I don’t want to medicate.” She pulled the sticky, coffee-stained wastebasket out from under her desk and showered the mouse turds into it with a deft swish of cardboard. — Daisy had never been to an opera. “Will there be people in breastplates and headdresses with horns?” she asked. “Will there be a papier-mâché dragon and things flying through the air?” She looked hard at the curtained stage. “Probably not,” he said. “I think this production is coming from a German Impressionist influence, which means they’ll eschew costumes and scenery as much as possible. They’re coming from an emphasis on symbolism and minimal design. It was a reaction against the earlier period when—” “I want to see a dragon flying through the air.” She took a pink mint from the box of opera mints he’d bought, popped it into her mouth and audibly sucked it. She shifted it to her cheek and asked, “Why do you like the opera?” “I don’t know, I like the music sometimes, I like to see how they put productions together. I like to watch the people.” “So do I.” “Sometimes I have this fantasy that the opera house is suddenly taken over by psychos or terrorists or something, and that I save everybody.” She stopped sucking her mint and turned to look at him. “How?” “I jump from the balcony railing and scale down the curtain until I’m parallel with the cord. Then I jump for the cord, swing through the air—” “That’s impossible.” “Well, yes, I know. It’s a fantasy.” “Why would you have a fantasy like that?” She looked disturbed. “I don’t know. It’s not important.” She continued to stare at him, almost stricken. “I think it’s because you feel estranged from people. You want something extreme to happen so you can show that you love them, and that you deserve love from them.” He pulled her head against his shoulder and kissed it. He said, “Sometimes I just want to tear you apart.” She put her box of mints in her lap and grabbed him tightly around the waist.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She bought Lily a can of grape pop and took her to the car. It was a humid day; the seats were sticky and hot. They rolled down all the windows, and Virginia turned on the radio to a rock station. Lily didn’t say much until they got out on the turnpike. Then she said the thing about Florida. Virginia was surprised and pleased. She laughed and said, “Well, we did chase a few lobsters around the house, but it would take more than that to make us exotic. We just couldn’t manage to keep the doors and windows shut at the same time.” “Maybe exotic isn’t the right word,” said Lily. “You were just so obviously different from us. Mother showed us pictures of you and you always seemed so self-assured. I remember a picture of Magdalen and Camille. They were both standing with their hips out and one of them—Magdalen, I guess—had her foot perched up on something. They looked so blond and confident.” Virginia thought of the pictures she had seen of Anne’s family. In a group, they looked huddled together and meek, even when they were all smiling brightly. They looked as though they were strangers to the world outside their family, as if they had come out blinking, wanting to show their love and happiness, holding it out like a shy present. Anne’s daughters were pretty in a different way from Magdalen or Camille. She remembered a picture of Lily and her sister Dawn crouching in a sandbox in frilly red sunsuits. Their brown hair just reaching their shoulders, and the bashful smiles on their bright, thin lips seemed heartbreakingly, dangerously fragile to her. “Well, you all looked darling to us,” she said. “We could tell you were sweet as pie.” Virginia left the highway and took Lily for a drive through the mountains. She drove to the top of a hill that looked down on a lake and some old dull-colored green pines. They were near a convent, and the woods were planted with white daisies and small purple flowers. They got out and walked until Virginia felt a light sweat on her skin. Then they sat on a stone bench near the convent and told each other family stories. Virginia liked Lily. She was intrigued by her. She wondered why such an intelligent child could not do well in school. — They went home and Virginia made them cups of tea. Charles and Daniel came home from school. They were surprised to see Lily, and to hear that she was coming to live with them. They sat at the table and Virginia served them pieces of coconut cream pie. The three children had a short, polite conversation. Charles said, “That’s a cool knapsack. My sister Magdalen has one like that.” When the boys went upstairs, Virginia began to worry. Jarold was coming home, and she still hadn’t thought of what to say to him.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The construction workers at the next table stared at them quizzically. She smiled pleasantly at them and returned her gaze to him. “You don’t know that.” He was so relieved at the ease between them that he put his arm around her as they left the restaurant. She stretched up and kissed his neck. “We just had the wrong idea about each other,” she said. “It’s nobody’s fault that we’re incompatible.” “Well, soon we’ll be in Manhattan, and it’ll be all over. You’ll never have to see me again.” He hoped she would dispute this, but she didn’t. They continued to talk in the car, about the nature of time, their parents and the injustice of racism. She was too exhausted to extract much from the pedestrian conversation, but the sound of his voice, the position of his body and his sudden receptivity were intoxicating. Time took on a grainy, dreamy aspect that made impossible conversations and unlikely gestures feasible, like a space capsule that enables its inhabitants to happily walk up the wall. The peculiar little car became a warm, humming cocoon, like a miniature house she had, as a little girl, assembled out of odds and ends for invented characters. She felt as if she were a very young child, when every notion that appeared in her head was new and naked of association and thus needed to be expressed carefully so it didn’t become malformed. She wanted to set every one of them before him in a row, as she had once presented crayon drawings to her father in a neat many-colored sequence. Then he would shift his posture slightly or make a gesture that suddenly made him seem so helpless and frail that she longed to protect him and cosset him away, like a delicate pet in a matchbox filled with cotton. She rested her head on his shoulder and lovingly regarded the legs that bent at the knee and tapered to the booted feet resting on the brakes or the accelerator. This was as good as her original fantasy, possibly even better. “Can I abuse you some more now?” he asked sweetly. “In the car?” “What do you want to do?” “Gag you? That’s all, I’d just like to gag you.” “But I want to talk to you.” He sighed. “You’re really not a masochist, you know.” She shrugged. “Maybe not. It always seemed like I was.” “You might have fantasies, but I don’t think you have any concept of a real slave mentality. You have too much ego to be part of another person.” “I don’t know, I’ve never had the chance to try it. I’ve never met anyone I wanted to do that with.” “If you were a slave, you wouldn’t make the choice.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Virginia would spend afternoons with Lily after school. They’d change into jeans and T-shirts and drive into the mountains where they’d gone the first day. Sometimes they’d stop at a Dairy Queen and buy pink-spotted cups of ice cream in melting puddles of syrup. They’d sit on the car hood, slowly swinging their legs and eating the ice cream with pink plastic spoons, talking about the bossy girl in Lily’s home ec class, or the boy she thought was “different.” Virginia spoke about her high school days, when she was beautiful and popular and all the girls tried to be friends with her. She’d give Lily social advice about how to choose her friends. When they’d get to the mountains, they’d leave the car and walk. They’d become quiet and concentrate on the walk. They’d find paths, then break branches from trees and use them to clear their way. Lily would stop to examine plants or insects, her brow taut and puzzled. She’d pick up a lot of things to hold in her pockets, especially chestnuts. She would pick up a chestnut and hold it in her hand for the whole walk, stroking it with her fingers, or meditatively rubbing it across her lower lip. Other times they’d just sit at the kitchen table and drink tea. Virginia was astonished at the things she told Lily during these afternoons. Lily knew things about Virginia that very few other people knew. Virginia did not know why she confided in her. She had been lonely. The afternoon kitchen was sunny and lulling. Lily listened intently. She asked questions. She asked a lot of questions about Magdalen. “But don’t you like Magdalen?” she asked once. “Weren’t there good times when she was growing up?” “Magdalen could be the most lovely, charming child in the world—if she wanted to be. She’d give you the shirt off her back—if she was in the mood. If she was in the mood. But to answer your question, no, I don’t like Magdalen. I love her—I love her dearly—because I’m her mother and I can’t help it. But I don’t like her.” Lily stared at her, pale and troubled. “Don’t you ever repeat that. It’s very private. If Magdalen ever comes to me and says, ‘Mama, Lily says you don’t like me,’ I’ll say you’re lying.” As they talked, Lily rested her elbow on a small pile of schoolbooks. She carried these books to and from school every day. One of them had a split green cover that showed its gray cardboard stuffing and a dirty strip of masking tape running up its broken spine. Whenever Lily heard Jarold pull into the driveway, she would grab her books and leave the room. Jarold would come in and see her cup on the table, its faint sugary crust fresh around the bottom. He’d never say anything, but his mouth got sarcastic.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “You’re wonderful.” He squeezed her like he wanted to break her ribs. She shoved her pelvis against him, threw her arms and one leg around him and squeezed with all her slippery might. She smiled with half-closed eyes, and bit her grinning lip. He squeezed harder. She jammed her elbows into his sides and he made a meek “whoof” noise. He dropped his arms, panting. “God, you’re strong. How did such a small person get so strong?” She grinned like a wolf. “I dunno.” She let go and rolled off, and padded into the bathroom. He followed her. “Are you a gymnast? A dancer?” “No. I used to work out with weights in school.” She dabbed between her legs with a nubbly white washcloth. “University?” “Yeah.” She grabbed a fat economy-size jar of mentholated mouthwash, threw her head back and dumped a big splash into her mouth. Her cheeks worked vigorously as she sloshed it to and fro. “Do you show your strength in the way you deal with people? I mean, outside of this place?” She spat a green burst of mouthwash into the sink and looked at him. “Yeah. I do.” “How do you make them aware of it?” She leaned against the sink, facing him with her arms behind her, her face thoughtful and soft. “I just…don’t let people sway my thinking. I don’t mold myself to fit what other people think I am.” She came forward and put her arms around him. “It’s interesting that you find strength in women attractive.” “Why?” “Don’t most older men like passive, dependent women?” “Oh, that’s an awful stereotype. Don’t believe it.” “Is your wife a strong woman?” “Yes, she is.” “Is she a lawyer too?” “No. She’s an antiquarian. She’s got a small rare-book business.” “Did you meet her in college?” “Yes. She studied art history and Latin. I was very impressed by that.” “Was she the first person you had sex with?” “Almost.” “I bet that’s why you see prostitutes.” She let go of him and hurried to get dressed. The outermost flesh of her backside jiggled as she balanced on one spike heel and stuck the other through a leg of her underpants. “What do you mean?” “You had so little chance to screw around when you were young. You’re trying to get it now.” Her fingers were flying over the tiny buttons of her checked dress. “You know, I think you’re writing a book. That’s what you’re doing here. You’re one of those journalists doing undercover work on prostitution.” She smiled miserably. “No.” “What do you do, besides work here? I think you do something. Am I right?” “Of course I do something.” She said “do” very sarcastically. She trotted to the mirror and got out her shiny silver lipstick case. “What? What do you do?” He came toward her.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She stood before the new man, feeling slightly knock-kneed in her short black skirt, smiling goofily and thinking, for some reason, of the I Love Lucy show. The canned laughter mumbled as Christine folded her hands and asked, “Well, Bernard, would you like to see Perry?” The man stood up and said, “Yes, very much.” He was about forty-five, very tall and thin, and wore an absurd bow tie with his conservative suit. He had kind eyes and an intelligent, inquisitive demeanor. She felt that something about her genuinely excited him, and she was flattered. He followed her to the awful burgundy Shadow Room. He stripped and lay on the bed, his torso resting against a pillow, his slender naked body placidly expectant, his almost alarmingly large penis lying half-hard on his thigh. She took off her high heels and knelt beside him on the bed. He didn’t touch her or even move closer, he just lay there and looked at her as though he were waiting to be amused. The old air conditioner moaned and dripped. “I like your hair,” he said. “It’s a becoming style.” She self-consciously ruffled her spiky, black-dyed crew cut. “Oh, it’s fashionable now. Lots of women have this cut.” “Yes, I know. But it suits you especially well.” She said thank you and pulled her shirt over her head. He glanced at her breasts with apparent approval but still made no move to touch her. She decided with some relief that he was a talker and settled into conversation. She quickly found out that he worked for the city on the redevelopment of the Lower East Side, that he did not love his wife, though he was very fond of her, and that they rarely made love. He stayed with her because he didn’t want to be alone. “And what about you? What do you do when you’re not at this place?” She grimaced. “Well, I don’t know if I do anything. I’m trying to become a writer. That’s why I came to New York.” She paused, wondering if that sounded ridiculous to this man who wore suits and patronized prostitutes. “Do you think that’s stupid?” “No, not at all. Why would I think it’s stupid?” “Because so many girls in these houses have the desire to do something else, but it’s obvious that in most cases they don’t have any talent or are too scared, and I don’t know, it just seems sort of pathetic to me. I don’t even tell people here what I do. I say I’m a secretary or a dental technical or something.” “But that’s silly. As it happens, I know there have been some very talented people working here.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Susan thought it was pointless, but Leisha loved the exercise. “I love to walk down the street and look at people,” began Leisha. “You love to walk down the street looking at people.” “People look at me when I walk down the street.” “You like it when people look at you.” “You like it when people look at you.” “I’m scared when people look at me.” “I’m scared when people look at me.” “But you like it.” “Do you like it?” “It makes me nervous and I pull my earrings.” “You pull your earrings all the time.” “I hate to pull my earrings.” “I want to pet your earrings.” “You want to pet my earrings.” It was like nursery rhymes; they were two cute girls walking down the street talking harmless nonsense, while all around them the world was in full operation. Desperate vendors displayed miserable items arranged on dirty blankets—T-shirts, ratty sweaters and vinyl belts, wrinkled old magazines, faded books and records. Garbage flapped in the streets and humans walked up and down the sidewalks, on their way to perform hundreds of actions in a remarkably orderly fashion. The sun was evenly warm and pleasant and it seemed as though this was all that anyone could expect out of life. Susan felt an ache of futile tenderness for Leisha and she impulsively reached out and stroked her four serial earrings the way she would pet a cat. It was sometime during her second year in New York that their conversations began to seem like frantic attempts to wring each other for support that neither could give. Leisha became involved with an abusive rock musician. She called Susan, it seemed, only when she was hysterical in a phone booth after a fight with him. When he left her for a singer, Leisha went to Bellevue, was discharged, slit her wrists, went home to Michigan and returned in a state of quasi-hysteria that remained constant for the rest of the time Susan knew her. She immediately moved back in with the musician, who had been dumped by the singer. She was dropped by most of her Michigan friends, who said that she was too self-indulgent and theatrical to cope with. Susan didn’t know if what they said was true or not, but it seemed unkind. She wanted to remain loyal to Leisha, but she was floundering so thoroughly herself that when they talked they seemed like drowning people clinging to each other for life. The first time the musician walked out, Leisha called her at five in the morning, sobbing and pleading with her to come over. Susan got out of bed and took a cab down to Eighth Street, where ghostly men and women were tipping over garbage cans to better examine the contents.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She tossed her hair off her forehead with the usual nervous gesture. “Didn’t you feed these guys?” “Yeah, they just got their faces out of the dish two minutes ago.” Connie rolled up and out of the mattress as gracefully as possible and put her arms around Deana’s waist and her head on her shoulder. “What’s this?” Deana tenderly felt the lumps of Connie’s spine, lingering in the spaces between the bones. “Nothing. I was just spacing out and the room was beginning to look like a set for Giant Ants from Pluto or something.” “What?” “I was in a weird mood.” “I guess so.” Deana rubbed her briskly, let go and turned toward the refrigerator. “I’m starving. I have to have some carrots or something.” “What do you want for dinner?” Connie put one foot on the other knee and stood like an aborigine in a textbook photograph. “I was thinking that we could order Chinese food from Empire. I’m too cranky to cook. And you’re too weird to cook, apparently.” She got the bag of carrots out of the refrigerator’s vegetable bin and began scattering the sink with bright orange peels. “Why are you cranky?” “The same garbage. If I’d known I was going to work for a clone of my mother, I never would’ve taken the job.” Deana rinsed her three shaved carrots meticulously, then went into the bathroom to tear off a large piece of toilet paper, folded it on the counter and put the carrots on it to drain. (One of her idiosyncrasies, which still caused Connie a pang of tender amusement, was her aversion to eating wet vegetables or fruit; she routinely dried pieces of cut fruit before putting them in her cereal.) “So what’s your problem?” Connie shrugged and sank into the mattress again. “I ran into somebody...not somebody I dislike really, just somebody I associate with anxiety.” “Who?” “Somebody I haven’t seen in years. Do you remember me mentioning Franklin Weston?” Deana snapped off the end of a carrot. “Was he the guy you used to proofread with, who became some sort of quasi-famous art critic or something?” “Yeah.” Rat Fink, the male cat, came into grabbing range, and Constance scooped him into her lap like a large plush bunny, his eyes agog, paws helpless and limp in the air. “He’s connected with some people I used to know before I met you. One person who—who hurt me, who rejected me in fact. Did I ever tell you about Alice?” “A bit,” said Deana, quietly crunching. “Well, she came up in conversation and it depressed me. That’s all.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Deana shrugged. “Well, I only know what I’ve seen. I’m just trying to come up with an answer for you because you seem so distressed.” She stood and collected the dishes. Her fingers and hands, Constance thought, had an exposed, strangely cold and receptive quality, like the nose of a puppy. As she was watching her clear the table and take the dishes to the kitchen, she could see the many aspects of her lover come forward and shyly recede with each movement; her rigid, stubborn arms, her strong shoulders positioned in a soft, demure curve, her stern chin, her luminous forehead, her odd way of stiffly holding back and gently, curiously moving forward—all spoke of her radial gradations of tenderness, sorrow and radiant, fanlike intelligence. — She woke up in the middle of the night, slumberously thinking of Franklin. “I love you,” he said. “I love you in a way I’ve never loved anyone.” “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “He’s just crazed,” said his friends. “Frank’s hyper, that’s all.” What would happen if she went to his party? Would he fall all over her and rave about how glad he was to see her, then disappear for the rest of the night? Would it hurt her feelings? She imagined Alice standing near a table of ravaged snacks, holding a plastic cup of alcohol, a little hat neatly sitting on her blow-dried head. It wasn’t true that Alice had no unhappiness. She had a schizophrenic mother who lived in a state mental hospital (Alice’s family wasn’t wealthy) and who sometimes didn’t know her. Alice felt that she wasn’t accepted as an artist by her circle, and sometimes would get so upset about it that she’d scream and throw things. “I feel like a piece of shit,” she once said to Connie. Connie turned and put her stomach and breasts against Deana’s warm back. She thought about the first woman she’d had a crush on, a beautiful stripper with black hair and bitter blue eyes. She had gone to see her strip and was irretrievably moved by the resigned but arrogant turn of her strong chin, the way she casually offered and rigidly withheld her body, as well as her tacky black lingerie. “You don’t love women. You’re just trying to live out some kind of porno fantasy invented by men with the corniest props you can find,” a gay woman had told her.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Yes, “keep on my lads, humanity. . . .” Yes, Jacques Vaché, quite right—“Art ought to be something funny and a trifle boring.” Yes, my dear dead Vaché, how right you were and how funny and how boring and touching and tender and true: “It is of the essence of symbols to be symbolic.” Say it again, from the other world! Have you a megaphone up there? Have you found all the arms and legs that were blown off during the mêlée? Can you put them together again? Do you remember the meeting at Nantes in 1916 with André Breton? Did you celebrate the birth of hysteria together? Had he told you, Breton, that there was only the marvelous and nothing but the marvelous and that the marvelous is always marvelous—and isn’t it marvelous to hear it again, even though your ears are stopped? I want to include here, before passing on, a little portrait of you by Emile Bouvier for the benefit of my Brooklyn friends who may not have recognized me then but who will now, I am sure. . . . “. . . he was not all crazy, and could explain his conduct when occasion required. His actions, none the less, were as disconcerting as Jarry’s worst eccentricities. For example, he was barely out of hospital when he hired himself out as a stevedore, and he thereafter passed his afternoons in unloading coal on the quays along the Loire. In the evening, on the other hand, he would make the rounds of the cafés and cinemas, dressed in the height of fashion and with many variations of costume. What was more, in time of war, he would strut forth sometimes in the uniform of a lieutenant of hussars, sometimes in that of an English officer, of an aviator or of a surgeon. In civil life, he was quite as free and easy, thinking nothing of introducing Breton under the name of André Salmon, while he took unto himself, but quite without vanity, the most wonderful titles and adventures. He never said good morning nor good evening nor good-by, and never took any notice of letters, except those from his mother, when he had to ask for money. He did not recognize his best friends from one day to another. . . .” Do you recognize me, lads? Just a Brooklyn boy communicating with the red- haired albinos of the Zuni region. Making ready, with feet on the desk, to write “strong works, works forever incomprehensible,” as my dead comrades were promising. These “strong works”—would you recognize them if you saw them? Do you know that of the millions who were killed not one death was necessary to produce “the strong work?” New beings, yes!

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Charles called her to the phone, and she felt a thrill of duty. What had happened to Lily now? She took her drink and cigarettes and left the gentle darkness, padding down the hall and through the swing door into the kitchen. The light was bright and there was a peaceful smell of old food. She shooed Charles, who was eating a dish of lime sherbet at the counter, and sat on the high red stool under the phone, her elbows on her knees. “What is it, honey?” Lily had just been released from a mental hospital. “All she does is lie around like a lump, eating butter sandwiches and drinking tea like a fiend. I don’t think she can go back to school here, now that she’s been expelled. We’ve already tried sending her away to school and that didn’t work either. I don’t know what to do.” Magdalen was somewhere in Canada. Camille was away at college. Charles and Daniel were always outside playing. “Why doesn’t Lily come and go to school here?” she said. “I’m fresh out of girls, you know. Send her on out.” She went back into the den forty minutes later. Jarold was hunched forward on the couch with the exasperated expression that he always had when he was watching liberals on TV. He was so intent on Cool Hand Luke that he didn’t ask about the telephone call. She cuddled against him silently. She meant to tell him about Lily after the movie was over, but she didn’t. She planned to tell him for several days. Then she realized she was putting it off because she knew he would say no. So she decided not to tell him anything. All week, she fantasized about Lily, and what it would be like to have her there. A week later, she picked Lily up at the airport. As she stood shielding her eyes to scan the passengers climbing from the plane, she realized that she had been vaguely expecting Lily to look like Magdalen. She felt a slight shock when she noticed the small, pale, brown-haired girl. Even as Virginia adjusted her expectation, she was surprised by Lily’s appearance. She had not imagined such a serious face. As Lily came toward her among the passengers, Virginia felt an odd sense of aloneness about the girl. Her gray eyes were wide and penetrating, but seemed veiled, as if she wanted to look out without you looking in. Her mouth and jaw were stiff and rather pained. Virginia was curious and taken aback.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  At times she had thought that this was the only kind of connection you could have with people—intense, inexplicable and ultimately incomplete. During the months that her friendship with Leisha was beginning to wane, she would think, Well, I can’t talk to her and I don’t respect her, but she has a beauty that can perhaps only be appreciated on a nonintellectual level. Like a sudden flame of piercing movement in an unexceptional dancer, or the grace and spirit of an animal. She remembered them walking down St. Marks together doing an acting-class exercise. One person would say something and the other person would repeat it, with slight changes in words or expression. Susan thought it was pointless, but Leisha loved the exercise. “I love to walk down the street and look at people,” began Leisha. “You love to walk down the street looking at people.” “People look at me when I walk down the street.” “You like it when people look at you.” “You like it when people look at you.” “I’m scared when people look at me.” “I’m scared when people look at me.” “But you like it.” “Do you like it?” “It makes me nervous and I pull my earrings.” “You pull your earrings all the time.” “I hate to pull my earrings.” “I want to pet your earrings.” “You want to pet my earrings.” It was like nursery rhymes; they were two cute girls walking down the street talking harmless nonsense, while all around them the world was in full operation. Desperate vendors displayed miserable items arranged on dirty blankets—T-shirts, ratty sweaters and vinyl belts, wrinkled old magazines, faded books and records. Garbage flapped in the streets and humans walked up and down the sidewalks, on their way to perform hundreds of actions in a remarkably orderly fashion. The sun was evenly warm and pleasant and it seemed as though this was all that anyone could expect out of life. Susan felt an ache of futile tenderness for Leisha and she impulsively reached out and stroked her four serial earrings the way she would pet a cat. It was sometime during her second year in New York that their conversations began to seem like frantic attempts to wring each other for support that neither could give. Leisha became involved with an abusive rock musician. She called Susan, it seemed, only when she was hysterical in a phone booth after a fight with him. When he left her for a singer, Leisha went to Bellevue, was discharged, slit her wrists, went home to Michigan and returned in a state of quasi-hysteria that remained constant for the rest of the time Susan knew her.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  That’s why I can’t forget Weesie either. She was full of a natural goodness, a child who was in love with me and who made no reproaches. She was the first of the other sex to admire me for being different. After Weesie it was the other way round. I was loved, but I was hated too for being what I was. Weesie made an effort to understand. The very fact that I came from a strange country, that I spoke another language, drew her closer to me. The way her eyes shone when she presented me to her little friends is something I will never forget. Her eyes seemed to be bursting with love and admiration. Sometimes the three of us would walk to the riverside in the evening and sitting on the bank we would talk as children talk when they are out of sight of their elders. We talked then, I know it now so well, more sanely and more profoundly than our parents. To give us that thick slice of bread each day the parents had to pay a heavy penalty. The worst penalty was that they became estranged from us. For, with each slice they fed us we became not only more indifferent to them, but we became more and more superior to them. In our ungratefulness was our strength and our beauty. Not being devoted we were innocent of all crime. The boy whom I saw drop dead, who lay there motionless, without making the slightest sound or whimper, the killing of that boy seems almost like a clean, healthy performance. The struggle for food, on the other hand, seems foul and degrading and when we stood in the presence of our parents we sensed that they had come to us unclean and for that we could never forgive them. The thick slice of bread in the afternoons, precisely because it was not earned, tasted delicious to us. Never again will bread taste this way. Never again will it be given this way. The day of the murder it was even tastier than ever. It had a slight taste of terror in it which has been lacking ever since. And it was received with Aunt Caroline’s tacit but complete absolution. There is something about the rye bread which I am trying to fathom— something vaguely delicious, terrifying and liberating, something associated with first discoveries. I am thinking of another slice of sour rye which was connected with a still earlier period, when my little friend Stanley and I used to rifle the icebox. That was stolen bread and consequently even more marvelous to the palate than the bread which was given with love. But it was in the act of eating the rye bread, the walking around with it and talking at the same time, that something in the nature of revelation occurred.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She took off her checked dress, button by button, very neatly. Her body was extremely pretty: white, curvy and plump. When she took off her high heels he saw that her legs were a little too short and her ankles a bit thick, but he liked them anyway. She folded her dress over the aluminum chair and turned to him with an uptilted chin, looking as if she might break into a trot, like a pony. She was proud of her body. Her pride was pitiful in the stupid room. It made him feel superior and tender. He gushed a smile and held out his arms. She met him with a surprisingly strong hug, the pouncing grab of a playful animal. “Goodness, you’re healthy.” She grinned and squeezed him. “What do you want to do?” “We’ll play it by ear. Don’t be nervous. It’s going to be lovely.” The way she touched became unsure. She talked to him as they touched, and her crude, frank words were like pungent flowers against the gray of her shyness. When he touched her hips, he thought he could feel her innermost life on the sensitive surface of her body. — “It was like a honeymoon,” he said to her afterward. “Just like I knew it would be.” “Oh, it was not.” Her face was in the mirror; she was swiping her mouth with lipstick. “Don’t be silly.” “Have you ever been married?” “Uh-uh.” “Then you don’t know what a honeymoon is like.” She was right, though. It wasn’t like a honeymoon at all. — She walked him to the door and he kissed her in front of the other girls. The stretch-pants woman smiled. “Good night, Fred,” she said.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She laughed, but she thought: He was not wrong. I am actually pretty normal. “So that’s what you’re doing. You’re playing prostitute.” He stroked her face and hair. She was startled that he seemed to be thinking in the same terms as she had been downstairs. She pictured him with his orange-haired, chain-smoking performance artist, and she had an almost visual sense of his delight in this educated woman who flew in the face of society, deliberately taking on a role that he probably considered demeaning, and then analyzing it. “Actually, I’m not playing. This is for real. I’m not going to give you your money back.” “You know what I mean.” He drew her against him and lightly scratched her head. “But even as a kid I realized there were problems with the customer-hooker romance. Because once, when I was about twelve, I was in my father’s study rubbing his neck—I used to do that all the time for him—and there was this Playboy calendar over his desk and some babe was on it and I said to him, ‘Do you like her?’ and he said, ‘Sure I do,’ and I said, ‘Would you like to meet her?’ and he looked shocked and said, ‘No, she’s just a dumb broad.’ And I was appalled.” Bernard’s smile almost became a laugh. “Well, but you know he was lying. He would’ve loved to meet her.” “It’s not funny. I was hurt by what he said. I was hurt for her.” “No, I know it’s not funny. I’m sorry.” He lay on top of her and kissed her, cupping her head tenderly in his hands. They kissed and touched each other and then broke apart to talk some more. She told him about the conversation with Brett and how it made her feel. She told him about the opening she had been to the night before, leaving out her almost frightened sense of isolation. She asked what his wife was like. “She’s intelligent, and very independent. She’s better at being alone than I am. And she’s adventurous in her own way. Last year she went to South America by herself, which isn’t something most woman her age would do.” “How old is she?” “Thirty-nine.” “What does she do?” “Teaches high school, which she likes very much. I enjoy her, even if it isn’t passionate. We actually have separate bedrooms.” “I couldn’t be married like that,” she said. “There would have to be passion.” “You’re very idealistic.” “You’re not?” “No, I’m not. Anyway, marriage isn’t about passion for me. We’re excellent company for each other. And I don’t want to be alone.” They were silent for a moment; she gently felt his earlobes. “Why do you come to places like this?” she asked. “Why do you think?” “I really don’t know. How any grown man can accept what happens here as sex is beyond me. You could have affairs if you wanted, I’ll bet.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  They were both standing with their hips out and one of them—Magdalen, I guess—had her foot perched up on something. They looked so blond and confident.” Virginia thought of the pictures she had seen of Anne’s family. In a group, they looked huddled together and meek, even when they were all smiling brightly. They looked as though they were strangers to the world outside their family, as if they had come out blinking, wanting to show their love and happiness, holding it out like a shy present. Anne’s daughters were pretty in a different way from Magdalen or Camille. She remembered a picture of Lily and her sister Dawn crouching in a sandbox in frilly red sunsuits. Their brown hair just reaching their shoulders, and the bashful smiles on their bright, thin lips seemed heartbreakingly, dangerously fragile to her. “Well, you all looked darling to us,” she said. “We could tell you were sweet as pie.” Virginia left the highway and took Lily for a drive through the mountains. She drove to the top of a hill that looked down on a lake and some old dull-colored green pines. They were near a convent, and the woods were planted with white daisies and small purple flowers. They got out and walked until Virginia felt a light sweat on her skin. Then they sat on a stone bench near the convent and told each other family stories. Virginia liked Lily. She was intrigued by her. She wondered why such an intelligent child could not do well in school. — They went home and Virginia made them cups of tea. Charles and Daniel came home from school. They were surprised to see Lily, and to hear that she was coming to live with them. They sat at the table and Virginia served them pieces of coconut cream pie. The three children had a short, polite conversation. Charles said, “That’s a cool knapsack. My sister Magdalen has one like that.” When the boys went upstairs, Virginia began to worry. Jarold was coming home, and she still hadn’t thought of what to say to him. She decided to take a shower and put on a pretty blouse. She told Lily to make herself at home, and went upstairs. When she came down again, she found Jarold in the kitchen; he had left work early. He was standing at the table, his face red and bitterly drawn about the eyes. He looked at Virginia like she was his enemy. Lily looked at her too, her face stiff and puzzled. Jarold walked out of the room. — She and Jarold talked about it that night. Apart from the intrusion, Jarold did not like Lily. “She’s weird,” he said. “She has no social graces.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Connie looked at the sadness in her jaw and the tired eyes, and she wanted to put her arms around Alice, to hold her and comfort her. Then either the face or her perception changed, and she was once again looking at a handsome, self-assured, wealthy woman with polite, curious, impenetrable eyes. “You know that we moved, don’t you? We bought a wonderful co-op in Soho. We’ll be having a party sometime soon. I should invite you.” “Oh, Alice!” A man in a paisley jacket with a smile like a bludgeon swooped toward them and took Alice’s elbow. “I must introduce you to Alex here…. Hi,” he said to Connie. “Are you a painter too?” Connie said no, and Alice waved a tiny good-bye with her fingers and went to meet Alex. Connie walked into the next room with her drink and got a hunk of chocolate cake and stood eating it out of one hand, dropping crumbs on the floor. A man asked her if she was a writer and she got involved in drunken conversations with three different people, in which almost nothing was said. The last was interrupted when Franklin appeared, his eyelids thick and purple, and took her by the arm. “Here’s a woman you’ve just got to meet. She’s incredibly intelligent and she’s a writer for The New Yorker. Cathy! Cathy! This is Constance Weymouth, an incredible writer, one of the most brilliant writers I know. You’ve got a lot to talk about.” An attractive gray-haired woman with large blue eyes stood facing her uncertainly but gamely. Connie shook her hand and they traded magazine gossip until it became apparent that while a great friendship could possibly be forged between them, the present situation precluded it. Two more couples shifted and undulated in the corner, and Connie watched them with a mournful and diffuse concentration. Their flat-footed steps were neither graceful nor dynamic, but their goodwill infused their clumsy gestures—the hand outstretched to squeeze a partner’s hand, the sudden eye contact—with a gentle, faded romance that made Connie want to go home and be with Deana. She found Franklin in the middle of two conversations about sculpture and Libya and said good-bye to him quickly. As she was putting on her coat, Alice turned toward her and smiled, holding a finger up in the paisley man’s face. “Are you leaving?” She came hurriedly across the floor. “Do you want to wait a little while? I’m going soon.” Connie felt an eagerness light in her eyes and then fade. She hesitated. “Well, if you’re in a rush, go ahead. But here, let me give you my card.” Alice had her business card ready in her hand. “It’s our new phone number. Why don’t you call?” They said it was good seeing each other, made more stunted hugging gestures and settled for hand squeezes.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The man stood up and said, “Yes, very much.” He was about forty-five, very tall and thin, and wore an absurd bow tie with his conservative suit. He had kind eyes and an intelligent, inquisitive demeanor. She felt that something about her genuinely excited him, and she was flattered. He followed her to the awful burgundy Shadow Room. He stripped and lay on the bed, his torso resting against a pillow, his slender naked body placidly expectant, his almost alarmingly large penis lying half-hard on his thigh. She took off her high heels and knelt beside him on the bed. He didn’t touch her or even move closer, he just lay there and looked at her as though he were waiting to be amused. The old air conditioner moaned and dripped. “I like your hair,” he said. “It’s a becoming style.” She self-consciously ruffled her spiky, black-dyed crew cut. “Oh, it’s fashionable now. Lots of women have this cut.” “Yes, I know. But it suits you especially well.” She said thank you and pulled her shirt over her head. He glanced at her breasts with apparent approval but still made no move to touch her. She decided with some relief that he was a talker and settled into conversation. She quickly found out that he worked for the city on the redevelopment of the Lower East Side, that he did not love his wife, though he was very fond of her, and that they rarely made love. He stayed with her because he didn’t want to be alone. “And what about you? What do you do when you’re not at this place?” She grimaced. “Well, I don’t know if I do anything. I’m trying to become a writer. That’s why I came to New York.” She paused, wondering if that sounded ridiculous to this man who wore suits and patronized prostitutes. “Do you think that’s stupid?” “No, not at all. Why would I think it’s stupid?” “Because so many girls in these houses have the desire to do something else, but it’s obvious that in most cases they don’t have any talent or are too scared, and I don’t know, it just seems sort of pathetic to me. I don’t even tell people here what I do. I say I’m a secretary or a dental technical or something.” “But that’s silly. As it happens, I know there have been some very talented people working here. There was a whole coterie of various artists at one point. One of them was a performance artist who went off to Italy and started working with, oh, some avant-garde choreographer—I know the name but I can’t think of it. Anyway, I hear she’s doing fine.” “How do you know?”