First Pages Friday: IF I LOVED YOU I WOULD TELL YOU THIS

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A paperback release with a bonus track!

This week the celebrated collection of short stories by Robin Black, If I loved you, I would tell you this, came out in paperback—a year after its hardcover release, a year which People called the book "Exquisitely distilled tales of loss and reckoning," Vogue wrote about, "Characters so fully imagined you'll feel they're in the room," and Alan Cheuse declared in The Chicago Tribune, "Black delivers real emotion, the kind that gives you pause."

Each story in this collection sliced straight to my core, thus I was very excited when Robin told me that the paperback edition was added to her paperback. Excited and . . . curious.

Robin's explanation, followed by the beginning of that new story:

When Random House suggested to me that we add a story to the paperback of If I loved you, I would tell you this, a kind of bonus track, I didn't think of this story right away.  I thought of writing something new – this had appeared, with a different title, in Brain,Child Magazine in 2006 – and even started writing a story with the book in mind. But then, one day while transferring files, I happened on "Some Women Eat Tar" and realized it would be exactly right. The story is in some ways lighter than the majority in the book and I knew exactly where a little lightness might be a real asset to the collection.  And for all its more overt humor, it deals with a family at a point of change, as do all the other stories.  In this case, it's a pregnancy and not any kind of tragedy, but even a positive change can bring stressors.  And with the birth of a child come transitions and the need to reimagine one's life and one's identity as surely as with a loss.  I've come to see this story now as a kind of mirror image of the others in the book, and I like the way that reflected image expands the notion of what the collection is about.  It's about family life. Not so much what happens to us all, as how we all get through it with one another.

So, here is the opening to "Some Women Eat Tar."

Enjoy!

Some Women Eat Tar

When Artie suggested to Nina that they should have a baby, he did so at first kind of softly, just let- ting the idea slip in between them every once in a while, playfully, like a private joke shared from time to time. But gradually, his tone grew more serious and before too long Nina realized that he meant it. This was no joke. This was something Artie wanted. Very much. Really. Now. And without a lot of thought, Nina said okay, sure. Sure, they could become parents. It wasn't an unpleasant prospect, for her. Not at the time. Having a baby just wasn't Nina's idea; that was all. This wasn't something they would be doing be- cause of a burning need in her, but hey, that was no prob- lem. She was happy to go along with him, to answer his need. She loved him so much, that was fine. Men did this all the time, she told herself, let themselves be convinced it was the right time.

Why shouldn't she?

But then, when her next period never arrived and the first test stick testified to the success of Artie's plan with a blue plus sign and the second stick (Artie wanted the kind of certainty only using two brands, neither generic, can give) backed it up with two pink lines, Nina was shocked. More than shocked; completely flipped out. Those alien hormone hues on the pee-soaked magic wands charted for her a route she hadn't truly understood would be traversed: the distance between Artie tickling her thigh, joking about children's names—Uriah, Abednego, Job, Jezebel—and this: herself with another person inside herself.

Her alternatives, she understood, were terror or denial. She chose denial.

And so it was Artie who bought the seven pregnancy books he stacked under the bed on his side, and it was Artie who asked around at work—only people whose opinions he respected, of course—about pediatricians they should consider. It was Artie who knew to investigate, when they trooped together on interviews, where the doctor stood on the overuse of antibiotics for ear infections (or was it underuse? Nina was confused: How do you keep these things straight?), when kids need surgery for that, how soon or late babies should be weaned, and hey, what about circumcision? What's being recommended these days? Foreskin on or off?

And it was Artie who had already determined, going in, the answers he wanted to hear: Yes to antibiotics. Four ear infections in a season means the child needs tubes put in. There is no "should" about weaning, not from the breast, that is a highly personal, near-sacred, decision—as long as you nurse for at least six months. Before six months, it's not a personal deci- sion; it is The Only Right Thing To Do. And babies should be off bottles altogether by fourteen months and should never, ever, ever have one in bed with them. Never. Not even once. Or their teeth will grow in rotted and black. And then fall out. Breast-fed infants should be given their first bottle at around nine weeks, and then emphatically NOT by the mother and only sparingly, so there is no Nipple Confusion. And finally, these days, most doctors are pro-circumcision. Studies suggest it cuts down on diseases later on, and since Artie and Nina aren't Jewish so wouldn't use a mohel—because let's face it, those fellows are the best, it's all they do all day—the other way to go is a surgeon, which you have to request specially. And that can be difficult, arranging for that, but is certainly worth doing be- cause otherwise you get some bleary-eyed obstetrics resident cut- ting away, and who knows what can happen. Not often, but still . . . it isn't worth the risk.

The doctor who got every answer right—the winner— was a young, pretty woman who made Nina feel invisible from the moment they met. Especially when she repeated the phrase Nipple Confusion and Artie nodded knowingly. For just a second there, Nina thought that she would rather steal her own car, jump a plane, and take on a new identity than hear her husband discuss her potentially confusing nipples with this girl. (Nina herself had cast her quiet vote for Dr. Brown, the sixtyish rumpled guy who had suffered through Artie's questions, answering each with a shrug and a "Who knows? We all make mistakes. We try to do our best. Me. You. All of us. What more can we do?")

But Dr. Swenson, this Dr. Swenson with her perfect hair and makeup, her clean white coat, and the little sign on her desk that read "Because I'm the Pediatrician, That's Why" held no such views. There certainly was a right way to do this.

This: the baby.

This: the schedule.

This: the breast.

The breast? Nina could remember when Artie would moan to her about the sight and feel of her naked tits, begging to kiss them, stroke them, fall into them.

Oh well.

San Francisco Chronicle §  Irish Times Top Book of 2010  §  Short Listed for The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize §  Long Listed for The Story Prize §  A Denver Post Bestseller  §  Winner, The Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Prize §  Summer Reading Pick, O:  The Oprah Magazine

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Robin Black's story collection  If I loved you, I would tell you this, was published by Random House in 2010 to international acclaim by publications such as O. Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Irish Times and more. The stories, written over a period of eight years, focus on families at points of crisis and of growth. Her writing is very much influenced by her belief that the most compelling act of creativity in which we all participate is the daily manufacture of hope. Though the book can be seen as a study of loss, it is also a study of the miraculous ways in which people move forward from the inevitable challenges of life.

Robin's stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications including The Southern Review, The New York Times Magazine. One Story, The Georgia Review, Colorado Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Freight Stories, Indiana Review, and The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. I(Norton, 2007).  She is the recipient of grants from the Leeway Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Sirenland Conference and is also the winner of the 2005 Pirate's Alley Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Competition in the short story category.  Her work has been noticed four times for Special Mention by the Pushcart Prizes and also deemed Notable in The Best American Essays, 2008, The Best Nonrequired Reading, 2009 and Best American Short Stories, 2010.  She holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

Robin is currently working on her first novel, which is about a mother who flees the strains and the judgments of her suburban community, taking her disabled daughter out into the country and away from it all. The book will also be published by Random Hou