"The Flatshare", "Truth and Consequences"

Beth O'Leary wrote an amiable 'boy-meets-girl-via-post-it-notes' story.

• She refuses to wear a bra even to this day, when bras have become quite comfortable and women have mostly given up on fighting the power because Beyoncé is doing it for us.
• Kay: Normally you’re just here on weekends by coincidence, not because you’ve planned for it. Not because it’s our life plan.
  Word ‘plan’ is much less pleasant with ‘life’ in front of it. Suddenly very busy eating omelette.
• We managed without checking Facebook every five minutes in the Cold War, didn’t we? Hmm? That’s right, a bit of perspective for you all! Phones away, that’s it!’
  I try not to laugh. That’s trademark Katherin – she always says bringing up the Cold War startles people into submission.
• The letter is here – let me know if you think it needs changing at all. At some point we may need to do a bit of a tidy of our notes to one another, by the way. The flat is starting to look like a scene from A Beautiful Mind. -- Tiffy x
• He opens the sampler and begins to read. ‘Tired of the corporate toil, Ken had a revelation after a weekend spent hiking with an old school friend who now made his living in woodwork. Ken had always loved to use his hands’ – and now the look he gives me is definitely flirtatious – ‘and when he went back to his old friend’s workshop, he felt suddenly at home. It was clear within moments that he was an extraordinarily skilled woodworker.’
  ‘If only we always had a pre-written biography for meeting new people,’ I say, raising an eyebrow. ‘Makes it so much easier to brag.’
• If we don’t speak soon, there’s a serious risk this morning will ruin everything – no more notes, no more leftovers, just silent, painful awkwardness. Humiliation is like mould: ignore it and the whole place will get smelly and green.
• My dad likes to say, ‘Life is never simple’. This is one of his favourite aphorisms.
  I actually think it’s incorrect. Life is often simple, but you don’t notice how simple it was until it gets incredibly complicated, like how you never feel grateful for being well until you’re ill,
• And then, simultaneously:
  Tiffy: Sorry I’m late—
  Me: Not seen those yellow shoes before—
  Tiffy: Sorry, you go.
  Me: Don’t worry, you’re hardly late.
  Thank God she spoke over me. Why would I draw attention to the fact I am familiar with most of her shoes? Sounds extremely creepy.
• ‘Tiffy Moore,’ he begins again. Everything feels wrong, as if I’ve stepped into my Sliding Doors alternative world, and suddenly all trace of my other life, the one where I didn’t need or want Justin, is threatening to desert me.
• ‘Tomorrow morning?’ It’s only late afternoon.
  Mo looks pained. ‘I think it’s our best option for now.’
  It’s ridiculous, really, that a man in prison with only one phone call is a best option for getting hold of someone.
• Me: We’re looking into getting a restraining order.
  Mam: Oh, sure, those are great.
  Awkward pause.

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I last read Alison Lurie in college. This makes an interesting chaser to the romance novel above. There are stray 911 references that don't quite fit the story.

• according to the nineteenth-century novels that Jane’s Aunt Nancy had loved as a child and presented to her at Christmas and birthdays, could be ennobling and inspiring. In What Katy Did and Jack and Jill, thoughtless young girls, injured in accidents at play (like Alan) had to lie in bed for months, during which time they matured wonderfully and their characters changed for the better.
  But Alan hadn’t needed to change for the better, Jane thought: he had been perfect as he was. So, logically, he had begun to change for the worse. His admirable evenness of temper, optimism, and generosity of spirit had slowly begun to leak away. He had become overweight and unattractive, he had become self-centered and touchy.
• Over the last fifteen months, her admired and beloved king had turned into a kind of shabby, whiny beggar. Like the tax inspector, the FBI man, and the hitchhiker that he had reminded her of earlier that morning, he always wanted something, something she didn’t always want to give and he didn’t always need.
• Until last May it had mostly been easy to be good—maybe too easy. Occasionally in the past Jane had felt her virtue untested. When Alan first became ill she had almost welcomed it as an opportunity.
• But now she was tired of being wonderful, and Alan, she suspected, was tired of being grateful. As time passed, her virtue had failed. Like an old dish towel, it had begun to wear thin, developed holes and creases and stains, and she had begun to turn into a mean, grudging, angry person.
• Building a ruin, he himself had become a ruin, and one that received no respect. In the past, aging men, like aging buildings, were admired as rare and marvelous survivors of time and weather: they appeared often in romantic painting and poetry. But since the twentieth century, which produced so many human and architectural ruins, they have not been seen as picturesque, but rather as ugly and even frightening.
• “I’m not surprised. Most men like a wife to be more restful.” Mrs. Unger smiled. It was clear that in her time she had been able to be, or at least to appear, restful.
• Later that evening they had exchanged formal apologies, but the phrases “defeatism and self-pity” and “fools or hypocrites” continued to reverberate through the house like the distant echoes of an ugly gong, and communication between them had remained tense ever since.
  Over the past year Alan had in fact sometimes found Jane’s optimism foolish or hypocritical, though at times comforting. Now it seemed almost disgusting.
• “I have to drop some things off at my house, it won’t take long,” she said as they left the grocery, with Henry pushing the cart. He would have seen the prunes and prune juice as she went through the checkout, and drawn conclusions, she thought, though she had attempted to muddle the message with a bag of brown sugar and some crackers. It’s my husband who is constipated, not me, she had suddenly wanted to say, though this would have been disloyal and also vulgar.
• “Oh yes. And then I’m numb and stupid too.”
  “Yes.” Delia nodded. “I know all about that. Your life becomes a blur, a sort of sodden, mean half-life. There’s some pain still, but nothing to show for it.”
• “I did, actually,” Jane had admitted. “You need to know that if you have a garden, because you have to plant aboveground crops when the moon is waxing, and root crops when it’s waning.”
  “You really believe that?” Henry said, smiling.
  “I don’t know; but I planted my carrots at the wrong time this year, because of Alan’s operation, and they’re not very good—pale and kind of tasteless. That’s why I didn’t bring you any.”
• The headaches may be real, she thought, but Delia uses them. Did that mean that Alan too used his pain? That he deliberately—But at that disloyal thought she felt a pang of acid guilt like heartburn.
• “Delia understands the use of obligations,” Henry said, following Jane into the office and sitting on the edge of her desk. “She knows how to bind people to her with them.
• “I don’t care. I hate her, if you want to know the truth,” Jane had cried, “and I hate that pasta machine. It’s more trouble than it’s worth. I can’t tell the least difference between what it makes and normal pasta, and I don’t believe anyone else can either.”
  In spite of himself, Alan (who believed he could tell the difference) must have allowed an ambiguous smile to appear on his face at this. Jane may have taken it as a smile of epicurean superiority, for a sudden spasm of rage convulsed her small neat features, and she snatched up the pasta machine and threw it, not exactly at Alan but at the floor next to his right foot, where it landed with a noisy, unpleasant jangle and thud.
• “But it’s because you’re lying to me, lying and lying,” she sobbed. “If you would just tell the truth, it wouldn’t be so awful.”
  For a moment, Alan had had the impulse to do this, but he stopped himself as he realized that the kitchen was full of other appliances and cookware that might be thrown, that might not miss. If he had been well, he wouldn’t have cared, but in his present condition any further injury could make his pain unbearable.
• “Oh, lord.” Jane gave a heavy sigh as a weight of obligation and guilt fell upon her, heavy and scratchy as the hay that towered around them. “I have to get back to the house.” She sat up.
• “Okay. Monday morning, you go down there first thing. You open up a new account in your own name, transfer half of both the old accounts into it.”
  “Oh, I don’t think Janey needs to do that,” his wife had protested. “Alan isn’t going to cheat her out of anything.”
  “Maybe not. But it’s best to be safe. Fellow gets involved with a floozy, he might do anything.”
  “She’s not really a floozy,” Jane had said, speaking rather for the honor of the Unger Center than for that of Delia.
  But her father had shaken his head. “Saw her photo in the paper. A floozy.”
• But she paid a price. The world outside the mountains isn’t quite real to her, you can tell that from her later writing. Same thing with Edna O’Brien, same thing with Colette, but worse because Delia’s never found another subject the way they did.
• Alan did not reply. He felt confused, angry, bereft. Then a stunning idea came to him. “Maybe I should leave too,” he said. “Maybe we could go together.” His head whirled as he tried to think how this could be arranged, how he could fly to North Carolina without terrible pain, how he could rent a studio and get supplies and work there; what he could say to the Council and his department and Jane.
  “Not now, dearest. I need to be alone now, to lure my voices back.”
  “But I—I need—” Alan stuttered and fell silent, unwilling to imitate all the other people who were crowding and pulling at Delia.
  “And we’ll still be together, really. We’re too close now ever to be apart.” As if to demonstrate this closeness, Delia moved back toward Alan and placed one soft white hand on his shirt, over his heart. “Part of me will always be with you, wherever I go, and part of you will be with me. You know that.”
• He had already hoped that she would meet someone suitable, someone dependable, someone more like her, eventually—but not right away. If she found someone first, it would look as if he, Alan, had been rejected. Of course, really he had found Delia first, but nobody knew that. And now, when Delia returned to Corinth, probably in a few weeks, and their relationship became public, they would be a joke. People would speak of wife-swapping.
• “A ruined Temple of Venus,” Alan growled. “Well, that’s fucking appropriate.” He turned away and began slowly and painfully to descend the stone steps, with Delia following close behind.
  “It doesn’t have to be very ruined,” she cried, clutching on to his arm to stop him. “Just a little. And it could be so beautiful, like in your drawing, with the columns and the stone garlands of flowers and fruit, and the faded frescoes—it would be a big project, it could take months to build. And you’d be there, and I’d be there. . . .”