So Much for That

by Lionel Shriver

Back then, kids were privileged with real summers, expanses of unscheduled time receding to the hazy horizon. Time whose seeming endlessness was a lie, but the lie was still beguiling. Ripe for improvisation, time you could play like a saxophone. So he’d always linked the lilt of running water to peace, lassitude, and a languid lack of urgency—which, between math camps, get-ahead tutoring, fencing classes, and organized playdates, kids these days never seemed to sample. That’s what The Afterlife was all about, he recognized, not for the first time, and poured another finger of bourbon. He wanted his summer back. All year round.

Her poor husband had misguidedly hoarded his pennies, when the only currency they spent that had ever counted was time.

How disconcerting to have discovered that time was so precious at the precise point at which every judder of the second hand became excruciating. What did you do when the same quantity that was precious was also hateful? It was sadistic, an epiphany coupled with the perfect incapacity to act upon it. When the likes of Petra clamored for their Truth from on high, that’s really what she should have spit at them: Just you wait. You’ll get your beloved revelation in due course. But only once it’s too late.