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Solitude is an Anglo-Saxon concept. In Mexico City, if you’re the only person on a bus and someone gets on they’ll not only come next to you, they will lean against you.

When my sons were at home, if they came into my room there was usually a specific reason. Have you seen my socks? What’s for d…

I hoped he’d say he’d wait for me, that he’d still be here when I got back. But he said that if I really loved him I’d marry him right now. I reacted to that. He needs to graduate; he only works part-time. I didn’t say more of the truth which is that I don’t want to leave school. I want to study Sh…

When I’m with Joe none of this matters. I think he is a reporter because he likes to talk to people. Wherever we go we end up talking to strangers. And liking them.

I don’t think I ever really liked the world until I met him. My parents don’t like the world, or me, or they would trust me.

“I can’t imagine you doing this … having some kind of a fling … in Texas.”

“That’s what’s bothering you. The idea that your mother might have sex, or that somebody in her fifties might. Anyway he didn’t say, ‘Let’s have a fling.’ He said, ‘Why not come to my farm for a week? The bluebonnets have…

They smiled at each other. The years were erased, their communication still there. She had once said wryly that he had been perfect. He couldn’t read or write and most of their romance was underwater, where there were no words. There had never been any need for explanations.