There was Selma Gardinsky, a red diaper baby from Brooklyn transplanted to Boston by marriage, where she took a unionized office job and became an organizer in an attempt to catch the party’s eye. She left her husband “without so much as a backward glance” when the union offered her a position back in New York; there, she was recruited by the Communist Party and went to work for it for “the best ten years” of her life. “Whatever else we were or were not as Communists,” Gardinsky told Gornick, “we were not lonely.” There was Bernie Sanders, a socialist from a Brooklyn immigrant family who does not appear in Romance. He became the mayor of a small city in Vermont, then a senator, and finally ran twice for President. “I have cast some lonely votes, fought some lonely fights, mounted some lonely campaigns,” he wrote in 2015. “But I do not feel lonely now.” I don’t feel lonely anymore, but it isn’t nearly enough. An infinite amount of care seems necessary. While we gather our strength, the lucky ones among us will grow old.