He loved the way women, clothed, had a bosom, a single entity, but when unclothed, it cleaved into two discrete parts, two breasts, like the way you could separate an orange into halves by hooking thumbs into it.

No one had told her this would happen, that her girlishness would give way to the solid force of wifehood, motherhood. The choices available were all imperfect. If you chose to be with someone, you often wanted to be alone. If you chose to be alone, you often felt the unbearable need for another body - not necessarily for sex, but just to rub your foot, to sit across the table, to drop his things around the room in a way that was maddening but still served as a reminder that he was there.

Girls weren’t weak. They had a softness sometimes, but not all the time.

Because of course everyone was so soft and hard. Skeleton and skin. But women claimed for themselves the province of softness, which men cast off. maybe it was easier to say you liked it in a woman. But really, maybe you wished you had it yourself.