IF I LOVED YOU, I WOULD TELL YOU THIS - ROBIN BLACK

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 248 : A History of the World

   That is the problem with the past, she thinks, as she flicks off the light. This illusion that revisiting it might somehow change what has occurred, the same illusion that brought her to Italy a week before, that brought her to Orvieto on this day.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 248 : The History of the World

   She couldn't remember him raising his voice at her. At the children, yes, but not at her.
   Catching herself in the mirror, she wonders now whether this detachment was something for which to feel gratitude or more like a sign of things to come.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 227 : The History of the World

   But under her arms there are bristles, sharp among the pale, pouching skin, and standing there, in a just too cold shower, she cannot bear the thought of herself as a woman of a certain age, deserted by her husband, traveling with her brother, a woman whose underarms have grown visibly unkempt.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 222 : ...Divorced, Beheaded, Survived

   There are things that go on, I believe, important things that make only an intuitive kind of sense. Silences, agreed to. Intimacies, put away.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 220 : ...Divorced, Beheaded, Survived

   But of course the children have always known that I had a brother and that he died. A brother named Terrance, Terry. They know about him without my ever having had to tell either of them. Uncle Terry, he would have been. It's family information. The kind that travels in the air that children breathe.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 219 : ...Divorced, Beheaded, Survived

   I don't think about Terry every day, anymore. And sometimes I'm stunned by that fact. It isn't only the discomfort of disloyalty I feel, it's the fact of utter disappearance after death. The idea that as loved as we may be, we may also be forgotten. If only for a day here and there.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 219 : ...Divorced, Beheaded, Survived

   "Mom, he can't be dead."
   I didn't speak.
   Can't be. I know that feeling.
   Can't be.
   But is.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 207 : A Country Where You Once Lived

   It isn't romantic jealousy he's protecting her from now. It's something else. Not that he's found love with another but that he's found love first. That he's leaving this limbo they've shared for thirteen years.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 200 : A Country Where You Once Lived

   As she moves, she dissolves into pixels--Seurat from too close--then reassembles; and unmoored as he feels, it's that process of dissolution and resolution that mesmerizes him. The way the tiny squares of cream and pink and red and brown and white fall apart into nothing, then emerge reorganized as a nipple, an eye, her hand between her legs, her smile. It's as though the computer screen is complicit in the tease of it all and complicit, too, in some greater, grander conspiracy of elusiveness.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 188 : A Country Where You Once Lived

   The tentative hug they exchange in the drive and his first impressions of her become tiny details in what is quickly a bustling, comic scene that includes their reunion and also an errant cow wandering over as though she too wants to catch up.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 188 : A Country Where You Once Lived

   In the end, though, Jeremy didn't write to his daughter because he was ashamed of himself or wanted Rose to think better of him but because something about loving Rose, about Rose loving him, made him believe that it might not be too late.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 182 : A Country Where You Once Lived

   She looked like a wraith, otherworldly, but she did normal things. That was what kept him mesmerized. The way she sat at the kitchen table eating yogurt. The fact that she spoke on the phone. That she listened to music. That she walked through the doorways of their elegant rented town house without falling to her knees at every threshold to reflect on what she had done.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 180 : A Country Where You Once Lived

   Jeremy could only ever remember bits and moments from those two weeks, the ones when she was gone. Merciful amnesia, a friend once called it--except it wasn't very merciful, because only the worst of it stuck with him.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 158 : Pine

   We met at work before Joe died, in the glory days of my marriage, when all I wanted from any man other than Joe was friendship, and all I wanted from friends was that they agree with me that life was good, tat my choices were inspired and my future bright as anything can be.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 157 : Pine

   The other women are oblivious to my tears. They chatter on. They laugh. I feel out of place and absurdly, embarrassingly hurt, angry that no one sees me cry, worried that anyone will, too obvious and too invisible all at once.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 150 : Tableau Vivant

   In bed that night, hearing what she thought were sobs from her daughter's room, unable to go check, lest she was wrong, lest Brooke wasn't alone, lest the heartbroken Aaron was there as well, their hearts breaking together, Jean sat up.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 136 : Tableau Vivant

   The wooden staircase, with its steep treads and its audible objections and the slight curve toward the top, had lain in wait for some years now, a sleeping serpent stretched in their home, ready to snap. It had been something like love, something like the myopia of romance that had blinded them to the inevitable collusion between a staircase and time.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 135 : Tableau Vivant

   But lying in the dark Jean had no doubt, no doubt that there was another person there, no doubt that this person and her daughter were lovers, no doubt at all--like glancing at the back cover of a book and inadvertently, irretrievably knowing too much.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 132 : Tableau Vivant

   Brooke was still standing between Cliff and the TV, and though it had barely been a minute, Jean could see him growing, if not consciously impatient, physically twitchy. It was difficult for anyone else to understand how immersed he was in that world, to appreciate the degree to which caring about those flickers of color and light kept him from brooding on himself.