Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
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“The problem is, Sara, there is no erasing you. And now, you’re part of me. One that I can’t snuff out, no matter how much I may try.” He steps in closer, forcing more blood to seep from his throat. “And I’m part of you too. Even if you hate that it’s so.”
“I’m your friend. Your sister from another mister. Nothing is more important than you. I don’t care how deep I’m buried in words, you always come first. And now that you know it, you can never use that against me again.” She turned her head back toward the sky and added, “Which means if you take away my friendship rights again, I’ll have to kick your ass.”
I let out a small laugh and looked away too. “Gee, Olive, I had no idea you were looking forward to being miserable. I promise, the next time someone breaks my heart—which is pretty unlikely since I’m never falling in love again—you’ll be the first person to hear it.”
Late one evening I was on the cancer floor in
a hospital, seeing a patient. There, I spoke
with a nurse who was devastated because she
had just lost a patient. "This is the sixth person I watched die this week!" she complained.
"I can't take it anymore, I can't watch loss
after loss after loss after loss. It feels
Closing the distance between us, he whispered, “I know you’re scared too, Lucy, and you know what…if there is one thing I’ve learned about love, it’s that it should scare you. A little or a lot, it doesn’t matter how much, but it should make you feel. And you, my beautiful, stubborn Lucy…” He brushed his lips against mine, just a quick touch, and pulled back. “You scare me—no, I promised to be honest with you: you terrify me, Lucy, and I love it. I will never take you for granted, and knowing that you won’t let me…you’re the one I want, Lucy Meyer. You’re the one I fell in love with.”
When I first wrote this book, I was going to use these lines from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s letters as an epigraph: “If a woman ignores these wrongs, then may women as a sex continue to suffer them; there is no help for any of us—let us be dumb and die.” I changed my mind, because I decided that no woman deserved what pornography does to women: no woman, however stupid or evil, treacherous or cowardly, venal or corrupt; no woman. I also decided that even if some women did, I didn’t. I also remembered the brave women, the women who had survived, escaped; in the late 1970s, they were still silent, but I had heard them. I don’t want them, ever, to be dumb and die; and certainly not because some other woman somewhere is a coward or a fool or a cynic or a Kapo. There are women who will defend pornography, who don’t give a damn. There are women who will use pornography, including on other women. There are women who will work for pornographers—not as so-called models but as managers, lawyers, publicists, and paid writers of “opinion” and “journalism.” There are women of every kind, all the time; there are always women who will ignore egregious wrongs. My aspirations for dignity and equality do not hinge on perfection in myself or in any other woman; only on the humanity we share, fragile as that appears to be. I understand Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s desperation and the rage behind it, but I’m removing her curse. No woman’s betrayal will make us dumb and dead—no more and never again. Beaver’s endured too much to turn back now.
