Read Girlfriend in a coma Online

Authors: Douglas Coupland

Girlfriend in a coma (4 page)

BOOK: Girlfriend in a coma
6.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Note:CallPammieaboutbeadsfor cornrowinghair.Also,arrangestreaking.

H iBeb.Karenhere.
Ifyou'rereadingthisyou'reeither a)theWorld'sBiggestSleazebagandIhateyou for peekingatthisor b)there'sbeensomeverybadnewsandit'sadaylater.I hopethatneither oftheseistrue!!
Whyam Iwritingthis?I'm askingmyselfthat.1feellikeI'm buyinginsurancebefore gettingonaplane.
I'vebeenhavingthesevisionsthisweek.Imayevenhavetoldyouaboutthem. Whatever.Normallymydreamsarenowilderthan,say,ridinghorsesor swimmingor arguingwithMom (andIwin!!),butthesenewthingsIsaw-they'renotdreams. OnTVwhensomebodyseesthebankrobber'sfacetheygetshotor takenhostage, right?IhavethisfeelingI'm goingtobetakenhostage-IsawmorethanIwas supposedtohaveseen.Idon'tknowhowit'sgoingtohappen.Thesevoices they'rearguing
-
oneevensoundslikeJared
-
andthesevoicesarearguingwhileI gettoseebitsof(thissoundssobad)theFuture!!
It'sdarkthere
-
intheFuture,Imean.It'snotagoodplace.Everybodylookssoold andtheneighborhoodlookslikeshit(pardonmyFrench!!).
I'm writingthisnotebecauseI'm scared.It'scorny.I'm stupid.Ifeellikesleepingfor a thousandyears-thatwayI'llnever havetobearoundfor thisweirdnewfuture. Te lMom andDadthatI'llmissthem.Andsaygood-byetothegang.AlsoRichard, couldIaskyouafavor?Couldyouwaitforme?I'llbebackfrom wherever itisI'm going.Idon'tknowwhen,butIwi
.
l
Idon'tthinkmyheartisclean,butneither isitsoiled.Ican'tremember thelasttimeI evenlied.I'm offtoChristmasshopatParkRoyalwithWendyandPammie.TonightI'm skiingwith
you.
I'llripthisuptomorrowwhenyoureturnittomeUNOPENED.God's looking.

xox
Karen

I thought it best not to show Mr. and Mrs. McNeil the letter at that moment; it could only confuse without offering consolation. I stuffed it back in the vest pocket of my ski jacket and sat and thought of the times I'd used this very bathroom before, back when Jared was in the hospital and before he left us and this world, atom by atom.
I thought of Karen in the intensive care unit and I felt as though I was a jinx of a friend. I stood up and achingly returned to the waiting room. An hour later when the corridors seemed empty enough, we snuck in to see Karen. The machinery of her new life was fully set in motion - the IVs, respirator, tubes, and wave monitors. An orderly shooed us out of the room, and we shambled toward the exit, the world no longer quite an arena of dreams - it was just an arena.

The West Vancouver police interviewed each of us that afternoon, down at the station on Marine Drive at Thirteenth. Understandably, they wanted the story from each of us individually to weed out discrepancies. But there were none. The housewrecker was quickly glazed over, the culprits still lolling about in the cells below us. Afterward at the White Spot restaurant down the road, we hunkered without hunger over cheeseburgers. The only pattern we could see in Karen's behavior on Saturday was that she
had
been behaving . . .
differently
that day. I showed everybody the letter, and we became chilled.

"We were shopping at Park Royal yesterday," said Pammie, "all Karen could notice were weird little things like the color of mandarin oranges. We tried Christmas shopping, but instead she just rubbed her hands over fabrics. At the bus stop at Taco Don's, she ate one of Wendy's Mexi-Fries. I think that was all she had to eat before skiing. Poor thing. I'd have passed out, too, if I'd been her."Wendy said, "We should have forced her to eat."
"Don't rake yourself over the coals," I said. "There's something else going on here. We all know it."
"I agree. She
was
acting sort of spaz/ed yesterday," said Pam. "Tiny stuff. Preoccupied - and not just by that diet, either."
"I think we should show her parents the letter," Hamilton said. We agreed to do so later that day. Our table went silent.

That same evening, after feeble naps, we returned to Lions Gate Hospital, but Karen was unchanged. Not a limb, not a hair, not an eyelash. A chill fell upon us: Karen was not transforming the way she ought to. Leaving her room, I placed pink and blue carnations in a bud vase at her bedside; outside by our cars, we agreed that we would assemble at the school's smokehole the next morning so we could enter the building together, providing a casually united front.
At home, my parents, being neither heavy moralizers nor stringent disciplinarians, continued life as usual. Meatloaf, green beans, baked potatoes, and an episode of
M*A*S*H.
Years ago my cousin Eileen had been out cold for two days after smacking her head in a swimming pool's shallow end; her successful later career as a med school student made Mom and Dad less worried about comas than they might have been otherwise.
But none of us slept that Sunday night. Instead, we made an electronic cat's cradle of phone calls between each other's houses, all of us wearing house robes, hunched over kitchen chairs with only stove lights burning, whispering, unknowingly mimicking the purgatorial hiss of Karen's respirator.

The next morning, as agreed, we sluggishly convened down in the parking lot beside the smokehole five minutes before first bell, our eyes reddened, hair already stinking of smoke, our then-stylish corduroy wide-leg pants flapping in a wet, chilly Pacific wind.
Our entrance into English class - Wendy and Linus and me - caused a not unsurprising teen zing as Karen's seat in front of me was pregnantly empty. Yet the three of us kept our down jackets on, chinsburied within their waffled nylon quilting, not as an act of defiance but as one of insulation, to shield us from the stares, the passed notes and hungry sideways glances. Philip Eng and Scott Litman gave us goggled incredulity; Andrea Porter offered kittenish gossip-hungry leers. Unspoken voices surrounded us:
Look:it'stheKarenkillers.Ihear theywreckedtheCarters' house.Drugs,too:prescriptiondrugs.Pissed tothegills!Weallsawitcoming,what withJaredkickingitlastyear.They'rejinxed
-
theybringdeathtothosearound them.Lookattheir faces:I'venever seentheir badnessbefore
-
I
...
Ican'tivaitto talktothem.Stars!Killersrighthereinour ownEnglishclass!
When the session bell rang, the three of us skittered down the booming north hallway to reconvene outside by the Datsun. Hamilton and Pammie were already there, smoking and looking prickly. Their experiences had been similar to our own. "Well, that was a real
lulu,
kids," Hamilton said, saying what we all felt. "No shitting
way
am I going back into that freak show." The five of us had already realized we were never going to finish school in a normal way. Pam said, "Canyon," then we hopped into our cars.
We had a few cigarettes and Linus had bargain-basement dime-bag skunkweed pot, which was all we needed for that moment. So we zoomed off to the canyon forest below Rabbit Lane. There, we parked the cars, walked down into the canyon's windless soggy greens where the tall trees above shielded us from the wet harsh weather, and we were calmed.

5 NO SEX NO MONEY

Again, personalities.
I have always noticed in high school yearbooks the similarity of all the graduate writeups - how, after only a few pages, the identities of all the unsullied young faces blur, how one person melts into another and another:
Susan likes to eat at Wendy's; Donaldwasonthebasketballteam;Normanisvainaboutbisvarsitysweater;Gillian brokeher arm on Spring Retreat; Brian isacar nut;Suewantsto livein Hawaii; Don wants to make a million and be a ski bum; Noreen wants to live in Europe; Gordon wants to be a radio deejay in Australia.
At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities - to clarify just who it is we really are?
What have I said about myself so far? Not much, as is obvious. Until Jared vanished, I had thought my life average. You might look at me and ask me to baby-sit your children or coach them in baseball. I believed my mind was clean. My ambitions were undefined, but I assumed I would make my way in the world. I tried to be pleasant and likable. I don't think that's bad, but I was left every day with the sensation that I wasn't doing a good job at being . . .
me.
Not fraudulent, merely . . . not doing a good job at being
me.
I remembered people from back in my early twenties, friends who would adopt a persona - the chic Euro-person; the embittered Grunge Thing; Stevie Nicks - and after years of practicing, they suddenly
became
those personas. What had I become? I don't remember even trying to fake a persona.
And after Karen left, I felt permanently jinxed; I was pulling away from the center. I darkened. My life had the beginnings of a story. I was no longer just like everybody else; the sensation felt wobbly, like jittering across a creek on slippery rocks with wet shoes, the current running ever faster.
The high school yearbook for the class of 1980 bore a special page honoring Karen. It showed Karen's grad photo, taken the month before her coma, inset above a foggy picture of trees with the following words below: Memories .

KAREN ANN MCNEIL
To Karen Ann, who left us on December I5th, still dreaming of larger worlds than ours. Hey, Karen - we miss you and we're always thinking of you.

David Bowie freak / Future legal secretary living in Hawaii / "Bumhead" / chatterbox / Smiles for all / "Ferrrrr-get it!" / Oh, those Mondays! / Let us ask ourselves, girls, do we have enough sweaters? / Lost a shoe at the Elton John

concert /
duh,,..I
walking to the portable in the rain /Eggie (right!) / Greatest love in life? The Fonz: Heyyyy! (Sorry, Richard!)
Senior volleyball, senior grass hockey, yearbook committee, Photography Club, Ski Team

Eggie was the nickname of Karen's white egg-shaped Honda Civic, speedily renamed by Hamilton as "the Ovary" - one of those nicknames that clings like a burr. Students most likely remembered Karen as the girl who was always gallivanting through the student parking lot, shuttling a load of laughing girls off to McDonald's for lunches of tea, saccharine, and half a small bag of fries.
The yearbook of the previous year had the following:

IN
MEMORIUM:
JARED ANDERSON HANSEN

"Jare" was 1978's best sportsman, a good student and a fine friend to all. He left us in his prime, but we can maybe find peace in knowing that when we knock on heaven's door, Jared will be there to answer. Good-bye, Jared; we think you made the team.

"Ladies Man" (. . . ahem!) / senior football / senior basketball / brewskies / thin ice at Elveden Lake / fix your muffler! / Jethro Tull / Elvis Costello / Santana / That night at Burnside park / first to wear puka shells / tipping the canoe with Julie Rasmussen

. . .
Hey,oldman,takealookatmylife...I'malotlikeyou were

My own yearbook caption, as well as those of my immediate friends, was perhaps more interesting than most, as Wendy was on the yearbook staff - as was Hamilton's archenemy Scott Phelps, who adored Pam from afar:

RICHARD DOORLAND

Richard was too busy racing his Datsun with Hamster to hand in his questionnaire. As the only guy who ever picked up litter at the smokehole, we salute you. We'll still have a hard time forgetting those fetal pig dissections and the blowtorch in

metal shop. Look out for radar traps and good luck in the future, Rick! Suntanning up at Cypress / "I hate to be the bad guy, but . . . " / senior football / bondo patches on the Datsun / stereo man / free Steve Miller tickets / nice teeth, fella!
Hamilton's was less sedate.
HAMILTON REESE

Hamster thought he was being really funny handing in his grad questionnaire with a big lipstick kiss and a rude word on it. Ha ha. Thank you for five years of
tormenting people weaker than yourself, you weed. We hope to see you working at the Texaco station in 1999.

Initiation day terror / pyro / "Omigawd . . . what's that in the Jell-O?" / never bothered to join one single club / swipes your sandwich if you're not looking / Ciao, babe

WENDY CHERNIN

"Brainiac" helped make many a day pass more sweetly. When not inventing a cancer cure or designing space capsules, Wendy was dressing up for Graffiti Days and hanging out at White Spot. Word has it she made DNA out of those bending

white straws. Bye, Wendy, and we all expect you to be the first cool chick in space."Are you eating that cookie?" / "Thank God It's Monday" / nail polish in math class / swim team / choir / "What's the cube root of Revlon?"

PAMELA SINCLAIR

"Pam the Glam." "Pamster." She's so good looking that . . . we can't keep our eyes off her! Hey, Pammie - thanks for being so beautiful and making our volleyball and basketball teams winners. Don't know
what
you see in Hamil - (just kidding!) and we expect you to be in Hollywood some day.

Supertramp / Charlie perfume / That little blue comb in the rear pocket / Smokin' in the Boys' Room / Gain two pounds and make us happy / Always looking out the window . . . clouds!

ALBERT LINUS

We dare not say anything about Linus, since he might wire a laser beam satellite to blow up our houses. Not a talkative fellow, Linus (we always thought Linus was his first name!) spent his years partying with other sci-fi's inside the fume hood and rigging the computer dating system so as to land Jaclyn Smith as his grad date. Good luck, Linus: We see much zinc in your future.

"What planet are we on?"/ same shirt two weeks in a row / "Umm . . . " / Photography Club / Kleenex / dustbunnies / lint

I'd known Karen all my life, her family's post-and-beam rancher lying just below our house (mock Tudor) on Rabbit Lane.
Through elementary school we'd been friends and by high schoolwe were one of those couples that nobody remembers ever
not
being a couple.
Karen: Her yearbook description was correct in saying she had a smile for everyone. And she
did
laugh all the time - not a nervous titter, but a gnarling Komedy Klub guffaw that could occasionally make us the unwanted floorshow in quiet restaurants. She was an avid photographer, flash-bulbing away at school, at Park Royal mall, at parties, or in the wild: seagulls, bare trees, mountain mists, and water ripples yearbook stuff. Yet when any one of us searched for stray photos of Karen, we looked almost in vain, rifling through boxloads of our teen-filled snaps, finding the most meager rewards: a left arm here; half a head there; legs cut off at the thighs. We realized that Karen must have gingerly yet effectively pursued a life-long campaign to avoid being photographed. Her preoccupation with the deficiencies her mother kept telling her she had:
Your nose is too plump; your hair's too straight; you're pretty enough hut no beauty.
Her graduation photo became almost the sole exception, one solitary image we were able to remember her by. Over time, the photo gradually leeched away our real memories of Karen - ultimately becoming the "Official Version": oval face with long brown hair parted in the middle, dripping off her head like sleek water (a style Karen called "Bumhead"); a neck she considered too scrawny sheathed beneath a sweater's cowl; and small, nice features with no one feature eclipsing any other. Karen is gently looking out - not toward us, the viewers, but to her left - to that place where she went on December 15? Maybe.

BOOK: Girlfriend in a coma
6.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Scorching Desire by Mari Carr
Surrender the Wind by RITA GERLACH
The Woman from Bratislava by Leif Davidsen
A Pinch of Poison by Frances Lockridge
Bindi Babes by Narinder Dhami
After the Stroke by May Sarton
Her Perfect Man by Jillian Hart
Alive by Holli Spaulding