What you missed, really, was only the knowledge that there was someone

From The Heaven Of Together To The Earth Of Alone by Michael Dumorier & Neil Farber

He thanks her when she hands him his meal, but there is a distant formality to it: he doesn’t smile, their eyes seldom meet. It saddens her, that, for they used to be friends. Briefly they were. Lovers of a kind. The sort of thing you only recognized after. That has been the way of love in her life: a feeling understood only after it leaves, discernible in the hollow space of its absence, known only as a haunting, a ghost.
Lovers of a Kind (p. 6*)

Days, she would move from one room to the next, regard infants like sea creatures washed onto shore, writhing in a vain effort to swim. Their fingers strained against something unseen; their skin was as pale and thin as wet cloth. She watched as they moved in that way, at times overwhelmed by tenderness for them: the unlikeliness, the accident of their lives.
Lovers of a Kind (p. 7*)

From above, she could hear Mrs. Ridgewe’s TV, the laugh track from a comedy show. The laughter was constant, night after night, but never belonged to Mrs. Ridgewe herself.
Lovers of a Kind (pp. 8-9*)


 
Her youth was like a fine silk or fur she might wear without any notion of what it had cost.
At the Circus (p.31*)

They were all three of them orphans. That thought occurred now, as it hadn’t before. Each one bereft of a different love in one common stroke of youthful caprice. Sharing that was something for her. It was something for Joe Avery, too. In their lives they had that much, at least. Later, for the boy, there would be other things, but for now you knew enough to take what there was.
At the Circus (p.34*)


 
In all the photos they took through the years, Agnes never looked at the camera. There was something almost ghostly in that, her presence strong but elusive, unfixed. As if she wished her face would be forgotten, as in truth it is beginning to be. If you looked now, you’d long for her large, clumsy teeth, a dark eye, but instead would see only her jaw, the thick cords of her neck as they twisted away.
Virginia's Birthday (pp. 46-47*)

Where he had seen love, she had seen coercion. It is a gift to be allowed this birthday tradition: the cakes and balloons, the extra money for shoes. His was an accidental trespass: harm done without malice but done nonetheless. An ancient crime, without beginning or end; the eviction she imposed was his due. Now she touches him as he comforts the girl. Now she says, “Walter, what on earth will we do?” and he knows that it is not a gesture of love but of a fragile, uncertain forgiveness for which she has had to dredge the depths of her heart.
It is another gift, and one he accepts.
In his arms, he rocks the damaged child they made.
Virginia's Birthday (p. 50*)


 
“They’d buy anything if it had a good ad on telly,” Abigail said, recalling how her mother had asked for nothing more than a particularly absorbent mop for her birthday, and how, when it arrived, her father in his excitement had cleaned the floors for a month, the only times in twenty-five years of marriage he had done so.
A Romance (p. 54*)

In later years there would be fondness in the memory of youth’s urgency, gratitude for a passion, however short-lived. For now, though, as she walked about Glass, there was nothing of that, only bitter, premature resignation

Harold’s ambition would come to nothing, of course, and she envisioned the charade of tender disappointment with which they would meet its failure together. He would be good to her, surely, but hopelessly dull, and she would have to try her best to be good in return. She would not hold against him what he never was and could not be, or the natural impermanence of a summer’s romance.
A Romance (p. 66*)



What you missed, really, wasn’t marriage itself; it was only the knowledge that there was someone.
What Is Meant To Remain (p. 76*)

[...] as he turned for home it seemed that perhaps it would be enough, that he might manage eventually to supplement his solitary pleasures with new vicarious and borrowed ones, as he had come through the years to enjoy hearing stories of his patients’ successes and good fortune, to take them, in small measure, for his own.
What Is Meant To Remain (p. 78*)



He could not imagine why she should have chosen him to confide in. It made him feel special, and burdened as well.
A Bit Of Fun (pp. 81-82*)

You got used to a person, in addition to love, used to the way they acted and spoke, to the sound of their laughter from the next room when something funny occurred on TV.
A Bit Of Fun (p. 83*)

Widowerhood had so far been this way: you thought a memory might bring some comfort, then found that it caused only guilt or regret.
A Bit Of Fun (p. 84*)

Through the years of his marriage the flower shop had been with him. Sometimes scarcely thought of for years, even then it had nevertheless been a presence. He wondered if Peter and Leslie had sensed it, and he thought that, in the wordless way of children, they had. It would have been there whenever they visited Glass, in the silence as they passed the derelict picture house, the diner that had at one time been a florist’s. That would have been the reason they seemed withdrawn: he had never been entirely theirs. All along they’d have known that, just as they knew without having to ask that their mother’s piano had fallen from tune, or that his thoughts drifted back to dwell in a past to which none of them had ever laid claim.

He backed the car away from the diner and pulled forward onto the road. In the mirror he watched as the building receded, the same way he had done on his bicycle, evenings, the touch of her hand like a wound on his brow.
That touch remained, as all the rest of it did, though time was beginning to soften its texture. They had been young, he and Loraine, hardly more than children at play, their game one not of seduction but of innocence: a bit of fun in a burdensome life, a lost adolescence briefly restored. A bit of fun need not diminish all that came after, nor need it diminish what had brought it to be. Love had flourished in the dark at the Princess, granted by still a worthier kind. There was beauty in the gift Mr. Trilby had made, though surely its price had been terribly dear.
A Bit Of Fun (p. 91*)



Mr. Harris wet his trousers once, then again. Seeing him try to hide what he’d done threatened to break Louise’s heart. She helped him undress and led him into the shower, averting her eyes as best she could. His body was pale white and spotted, ribs and thin muscles stark beneath skin. If only Nan could see me, she thought. He covered his face with his hands. She was very gentle about it, but still he flinched at the first touch of the washcloth.
“Well, don’t stare at me,” he said. “What are you looking at?”
She said nothing. His private place appeared heavy and soft, dampened by urine, achingly there. Seeing it, you felt the weight of yourself, the deep beauty and sadness of having a body.
Housekeeper (p. 101*)



For twenty years, Erma and Violet lived together in Glass, neither simply as friends nor precisely as lovers. If ever a question on the matter was raised, or if (more often) assumptions were made, they would share a glance, blushing, without a reply, not having a name for what they were to each other.
Other People's Love Affairs (p. 122*)

As she showed him out, as they exchanged apologies and condolences, as they even embraced in the doorway, Erma knew that in John Killian’s eyes it was she who had the better end of things, who’d won Violet’s heart and what time there had been. He did not know, as all the other people of Glass did not either, that her endearments had gone for twenty years unanswered, that the desk in the bedroom had been replaced not by one large bed but by the addition of a second twin. When they’d waved at the car as it passed on the road, they had all thought or spoken aloud, “There is Violet with her Erma”. And when Violet had sounded the horn they had taken it for a proclamation of love. They need never find now how mistaken they’d been […]

Other People's Love Affairs (p. 133*)

She is kind when she thinks of her sister. Gentle. Patient. It is always the same. Today the thoughts have come on a bit early. There is the weekend to negotiate yet.
The Well Sister (pp. 137-138*)

It is strange that she never dreams of her husband. Waking before dawn, she thinks about that.
He was good: kind in marriage, honest in work. An accountant with a local government office. She ought to make an effort to remember him more. That much he is probably owed.
In the bedroom that they never slept in together, a crack in the curtains reveals the pale sky. The clock on the nightstand reads 5:24, and she turns over knowing sleep won’t be reclaimed.
His illness was the happiest time in their lives, weakness drawing her to him as goodness never had.
The Well Sister (p. 140*)

In her heart is a pain she can scarcely withstand, an uncanny mix of gratitude and disgust. She feels she would fall to her knees if she could, or that she would run, that she would do herself harm. What she did to Camille has been her secret alone, a shame that made up the better part of herself. She hadn’t known that she’d wanted to share it, that she’d long for someone to say what he has. She has not wished for love, but he offers it, regardless: this madman, this lunatic does.
“I loved you more because your strength broke,” he says. “It was cruel, but cruelty is part of us, too.”
The Well Sister (pp. 144-145*)
* sur ma liseuse

 Wystan D. Owen - Other People's Love Affairs, Stories (Algonquin Books, 2018)