The Reasons I Won't Be Coming by Elliot Perlman

Your Niece's Speech Night

"For us memory has become a burden."

"Only you know.  You are not merely unknown to me but unknowable."

"What was I hoping for?  What do we ever hope for and isn't it fortunate how innocent we are in hoping for it?   Sunlight suddenly hits the earth, warming it till something grows, something we had not thought about, had not thought possible but now see and see it to be beautiful.  The weather here is unexpectedly balmy.  We quicken our step and the smallest thing excites us.  Your smile, have I mentioned it?  It can awaken a tenderness in me that had lain dormant for a longer time than I can measure.  We are in quite agreement on all that matters.  Everything is quiet and warm.  We are not afraid to close our eyes, and while there is nothing at all contrived about this moment, we have been waiting for it all our lives.  We close our eyes together.  No one is offering advice:  there is no need.  We lie together on the cool dry grass, partially entwined and gently breathing in our own felicity.  Do you remember?  We lay on the cool dry grass and it was as if it were there before the fall.  Can you remember?"

"Have I ever loved you?  Yes, before there was reason, and still later, when there was none, even though, as it turned out, the best thing about us was the person I would have become had you been as I had cast you.  I am broken now, feeling the wind on my skin till it pushes my bones to mock me, when there is no wind.  I am burnt dry by the sun till the feeling is gone on one side, when there is no sun.  They tell me these are the symptoms.  Your betrayal is as clear to me now as our Swedish vodka, but I cannot allow you to be so far removed from the person I thought you were that I am unable to love you.  You see, I realized something when you came along.  It was not a realization that pays.  It would be of no interest to Walker and it has no tax implications for anyone.  But I realized that I needed to love you.  It defined me, and if you did not exist I would have had to invent you, minus the betrayal.  But perhaps that is all of you, the sine qua non of you."

The Hong Kong Fir Doctrine

"I have been alone before but now it will be worse.  I am hungry for you, for your voice, your touch, your hand on my face.  It is as real as anything I have ever experienced, and nothing - no sleep, no conversation, no idea or image - can hold this hunger at bay, not even for a moment.  You are with me as I dress, as I go through the motions, becoming by day again a suited man with suitably qualified opinions recommending for or against some or other suit just to kill time in the hope that the hunger will dissipate, in the hope that I may feel some slight diminution in the need I have to be with you.  I have never been sure that you knew quite how much I loved you."

"But I hear you in the middle of the night.  You come to me and won't let me sleep.  I put out my hand to touch the side of the bed that you have known.  The sheets are cold.  I will grow old in them.  I have been alone before, but this is worse because now I have you to remember and nothing like you to look forward to.  Do you remember?"

A Tale in Two Cities

"Can a lifetime of humiliation and intimidation dumped comprehensively on hopes and dreams, a bloodied shirt from a random drunken explosion of hate, can all of this be assuaged only by his incineration?  I could see him burning. He would burn well.  He did everything well.  My father has so much to teach me.  Don't teach me this.  I will not see it as love, I promise you.  Don't risk it.  There will be nothing to remember.  I would have to end the uncertainty myself.  I would be next.  Don't try me.  Stay, you who have always fought, and love me overwhelmingly in your inadequate way."

"I have every confidence that loneliness will one day be recognized for what it is, a pathology.  Whether it will be psychiatrists, neuropsychologists or even philosophers who discover this I can't say, but in the same way that is is now thought that various types of depression have something to do with the presence or absence of serotonin in the brain, so loneliness will one day be correlated with the absence of something other than people.  It is possible to be lonely in a crowd at a party, in a marriage, and, of course, by yourself.  Clearly, other people have almost nothing to do with it.  Loneliness is an illness."

"In a genuine tragedy there is no hero to die finally, but the stage itself falls apart, beginning at the edges."