Marlena Rosenbluth Quotes

“Although there are times I’d give anything to have her back, I’m glad she went first. Losing her was like being cleft down the middle. It was the moment it all ended for me, and I wouldn’t have wanted her to go through that. Being the survivor stinks.”

“I called my parents and asked if I could come home, but they wouldn’t even speak to me. It was bad enough that I’d married a Jew, but now I wanted a divorce as well? My father made Mother tell me that in his eyes I had died the day I eloped.”

“Last night you said, ‘I need you.’ You never said the word ‘love,’ so I only know how I feel.” I swallow hard, blinking at the part in her hair. “I love you, Marlena. I love you with my heart and soul, and I want to be with you.”

“I hate him. I hate him for being so brutal. I hate that I’m beholden to him. I hate that I’m in love with his wife and something damned close to that with the elephant. And most of all, I hate that I’ve let them both down.”

“But it all zipped by. One minute Marlena and I were in it up to our eyeballs, and next thing we knew the kids were borrowing the car and fleeing the coop for college. And now, here I am. In my nineties and alone.”

“August is not the only one consumed by thoughts of Marlena. I lie on my horse blanket at night wanting her so badly I ache. A part of me wishes she would come to me – but not really, because it’s too dangerous. I also can’t go to her, because she’s sharing a bunk in the virgin car with one of the bally broads.”

“She talks of the pain, grief, and horror of the past four years; of learning to cope with being the wife of a man so violent and unpredictable his touch made her skin crawl and of thinking, until quite recently, that she’d finally managed to do that. And then, finally, of how my appearance had forced her to realize she hadn’t learned to cope at all.”

“I’m not going to sit here and listen to you tell me that it’s okay for August to hit her because she’s his wife. Or that it’s not his fault because he’s insane. If he’s insane, that’s all the more reason she should stay away.”