Girlfriend in a Coma

by Douglas Coupland

  Future!!

  It's dark there—in the Future, I mean. It's not a good place.Everybody looks so old and the neighborhood looks like shit (pardon my French!!)

  I'm writing this note because I'm scared. It's corny. I'm stupid. I feel like sleeping for a thousand years —that way I'll never have to be around for this weird new future.

  Tell Mom and Dad that I'll miss them. And say good-bye to the gang. Also Richard, could I ask you a favor? Could you wait for me? I'll be back from wherever it is I'm going. I don't know when, but I will.

  I don't think my heart is clean, but neither is it soiled. I can't remember the last time I even lied. I'm off to Christmas shop at Park Royal with Wendy and Pammie. Tonight I'm skiing with you. I'll rip this up tomorrow when you return it to me UNOPENED. God's looking.

  Karen

  Solid evidence confirms her fears. "I wrote this. Yes. Didn't I?"

  "Okay…"

  "And what I say in it is real. It exists. Yes." There's a defiant note to her voice.

  "I don't doubt you, Karen, not at all." Silence falls between them. Karen fidgets with a Tetris game Megan gave her to help improve her dexterity. Richard looks at her averted eyes. He asks quietly, "What is it—who are they—them—whoever?"

  "I'd rather not if that's okay. My ankles hurt."

  "You know who they are?"

  She looks up: "I do; I don't. I tried to run away and I got caught. They're not going to let me get away again."

  "What do you mean, 'get away'? And who's they?"

  Karen wishes she could be more forthcoming. At that moment Megan bounds into the room, bumping into a chair as she does so. "Ouch. Hi kids. Ready for some stretching, Mom?"

  Karen is all too glad to have her talk with Richard end. "Sure.Let's go." Richard's stomach flutters; he feels like he's being shipped off to war.

  Mom.

  Lois.

  Owls—nothing has changed. Or maybe not. Lois seems slightly hardened, probably the result of Megan's shenanigans. Lois isn't quite as vain as she once was. The outfits are there but gone is the constant preening. George—Dad—comes home early from the shop. He sits beside Karen's bed, dewy-eyed.

  Karen likes 1997 people because they're never boring—all these new words they have—the backlogs of gossip, of current events, and of history.

  "What was it like?" George and everybody else keeps asking, "What's it like to wake up?"

  Like? Like nothing. Honestly. Like she woke up and it was seventeen years later—and her body was gone.

  But her answers are consistently lame to deflect them away from darker ideas that are returning to her memory. Her day-to-day memory is fine. Some people from UBC gave her some psychological memory tests. Her memory is as good as the day she passed out. She even remembers the page number of her last algebra assignment. But the darkness? It's taking its time.

  She knows people are expecting more from her. A certain nobility is demanded—extreme wisdom through extreme suffering. People tread lightly around her.

  "I'm not made of uncooked spaghetti, everyone. Jesus—come a little bit closer, okay? I promise I won't splinter."

  One afternoon Wendy is having a coffee on Lonsdale with Pam. Wendy has decided she needs to know what Pam saw during the stereo dream. "Pam, remember when you OD'd last Halloween. I've always wondered what you were seeing inside your head. Your brain readouts looked like wheat blowing in the wind. Do you remember?" "Oh yeah. It was wild. I don't think I've thought about it muchsince then." She puts more sugar into her cup. "It was like a bootleg video of natural disasters and it even had a theme song. Remember when we used to do choir? Oranges and lemons, say the bells of Saint Clement…"

  "Go on."

  "There was this empty freeway. Texas. Very clear about that. And mud. Like a monsoon—in Japan. Again, no mistaking that. There were fields in Africa—all up in flames. And then this gross one—these rivers in Bangladesh or India—just full of bodies and fabric. The last thing was a big digital clock sign—Florida. Definitely Florida. The time was 00:00 and it was 140 degrees out." Pam puts down her cup. "Wow. I can't believe I remembered all that. But I did. Me with a brain like a damp paper towel."

  "It sounds beautiful in an eerie way."

  "It was. And it was real—it was no movie. That's for sure."

  Later that afternoon Wendy contrives a reason to visit Monster Machine—dropping off some long-ago borrowed books to Hamilton. "Got time for a quick coffee?"

  "For you, the Moon."

  A few minutes later in the staff coffee room during a lull enhanced by canned music that Hamilton describes as "Eleanor Rigby played on a didgeridoo," Wendy brings up Hamilton's Halloween overdose, and like Pam, he remembers it vividly yet is surprised he hasn't thought of it since. "Texas—a freeway—all quiet, like a sci-fi film. Oh, and music—a children's choir singing 'Oranges and Lemons.' What else—mud. Lots of mud. Slopping onto Tokyo. Some fields in Africa burning. Bodies in a river in India …" Hamilton's eyes aren't fixed on Wendy but are distant and reminiscing: "And the time and temperature in Florida. Dade County? Zero o'clock and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. There."

  Wendy is immobilized with shock. "Wendy—what's up? You look like you've seen our most recent monster creation—come on—I'll show you."

  They stumble into the main shop full of urethane and fiberglass odors. Hamilton leads Wendy to a decapitated torso with a handsticking out from the neck. Wendy nods approval but her mind is elsewhere.

  The news cameras and TV trucks left a while ago, having given up attempts at garnering photos. Linus snaps some black-and-white head shots of Karen and her recently dyed and styled hair. From this selection, one photo is chosen, copied and given out to the press at large. Nobody in the family has given interviews.

  Karen's body, hidden by day under a Canucks hockey jersey, is slowly returning to life—fingers, then hands and then forearms; ankles, feet and then the knees. Richard and Megan and a trained therapist oversee many hours each day of bending, rotating and stretching Karen's sad little body, porking up as it may be. Richard helps Karen relearn to write her signature and he's shocked at how difficult the effort is for Karen. Her round girlish signature of yore is now an angular nursery school blotch.

  Lois makes sure Karen eats; her stomach, essentially unused to solids for nearly two decades, can accept only the tiniest amounts of food, but Lois, always happy to merge science and dining, is happy to see the amounts rising gram by gram and Karen's body filling out.

  Richard has bought an extraordinarily expensive Norwegian wheelchair equipped with a hammocklike sling that allows the passenger, Karen, to travel across bumpy surfaces such as forest paths, and so outside the two of them trek. It's too late in the year for tourists; their only intrusion is a quick greeting from a strolling neighbor; passing dogs lick Karen's face. The chair's sling makes Karen feel utterly dependent and while Richard tries to yank the chair up a rocky patch, Karen's eyes tear; she misses nature.

  "Richard, just give it a rest a second," she says. She collects her breath. "Just look at the trees. So alive. So pure. So blameless and strong." Light dapples the leaves of the undergrowth; Karen shivers.

  "What is it,Kare?"

  "Richard, look at my body. I'm—I'm nothing anymore. I'm a monster—some monster cooked up by Hamilton and Linus. I'm ateenager trapped in an old crone's body. I've never even lived, barely. What if you get tired of taking care of me all the time?"

  Richard stills the chair and lifts Karen out of it, then cradles her in his lap while looking at the canyon and river and tall fir trees below. Karen calms down and apologizes: "Time out. That was uncool."

  "Cool? Karen, please. Cool is not an issue. Coolness is for eighteen-year-olds." He rethinks that statement in light of her mental age, and he holds her close to him. "Karen, I hear your voice and it's like having jewels rustling across my heart." He pitter-pats her chest with his fingers; Karen loves touching and she loves Richard's sentimental blurts.

  Karen leans he
r head on Richard's shoulder; it still takes so much effort to lift it. "You're being sentimental," she says. She feels odd being so intimate with an older man. Mentally her taste is what a teenager might choose: a first year college guy; a steady North Van guy who plays hockey on weekends. She has had to radically redefine her vision of sex. And Richard, lying there every night, holding her and spooning with her. She has felt him go hard a few times and sensed him pulling away in silent awkwardness, pretending to be asleep. But in his sleep he is hard and he does press against her and between her legs. She finds herself enjoying this—wanting this—but she is unable to imagine herself making love again. She hasn't even been able to ask Wendy about the medical side of all this, but she knows she'll soon be doing so.

  Richard is in love with Karen, and she with him, but their connection to each other needs to progress or perish. She's angry that she may never again be with Richard as they were up on the mountain.

  Richard finds himself wanting Karen and it feels perverted. He, too, is embarrassed to ask advice from anybody. More times than he can remember he has been aroused by Karen during the night. Lois and George have been understanding of the two of them sleeping together. They understand the healing effect of skin on skin. But how far should it go? What would Karen say if he asked her? What would she think?

  Perv.

  "Do you remember that night up on the mountain, Richard?""Yeah."

  "I remember it, too." Karen cocks her ear to listen to the river. "I dragged you into that. I was pushy."

  "I didn't mind."

  "I thought maybe you'd think I was a slut or something."

  "Oh, I rather doubt that."

  "Well, I did think of it that way. I avoided your eyes afterward. On the chairlift. And at the party afterward—up in the car. I felt bad. I feel bad now." A heron swoops by and Richard makes a gesture to lift Karen into her chair, but Karen says, "No. Not right now. I need to ask you something."

  Richard says sure.

  "I need to know if—if I was—" Karen's voice squeaks here then becomes a whisper. "If I was any good or not."

  "Oh Karen, honey!" He bends down and kisses her sallow cheek and rubs her neck, skeletal still, like bones being reduced in a kitchen pot. "Of course you were. That's one of my happiest memories."

  Karen starts breathing in staccato. Richard speaks in a soothing monotone to relax her: "See those paths over there?" he says, pointing to lines within the forest where the trees grow along thin road-width glades, "Those used to be logging roads, a long time ago. Linus told me he'd read through old maps and found out that a train had run right through the spaces now occupied by our houses. Sometimes I think of the ghosts of trains flowing nightly through my head. I mean, up here we have our world of driveways and lawns and microwaves and garages. Down there inside the trees … it's eternity."

  "You know, Richard …"

  "What?"

  "That night up Grouse—"

  "Yeah?"

  "It's—well it's the only time I'm ever going to have. I don't think I can live with that."

  "I don't get it. I mean …"

  "Richard, just shut up for a moment. Listen to what I'm feeling."There is a silence and then, boom!—with all her effort Karen lifts herself out of Richard's arms in a manner that attempts to be graceful but which ends up looking undignified. She crumples on the muddy soil. Richard is frightened she might be broken.

  Karen's weakness is utterly at odds with the landscape's rigor. She tries to crawl away with her arms, inching forth like a worm, soil smudging her face and sleeves, her face grim and determined. With her mouth she tries to drink the sky; her sweater and shirt and jeans are cold and wet, and her fingers clasp and rip a fern. Richard lets Karen move a fair distance and then walks alongside her and then lies down on the soil beside her. She is shivering; he gives her his coat and says, "That's not true at all." He then lifts her and carries her home and leaves the wheelchair where it sits. He can come fetch it later. If.

  "Two strong arms," says Karen.

  Richard says, "Yes," and kisses her.

  19 DREAMING EVEN THOUGH

  Pam's detox has not been as shaky as Hamilton's—cramping mostly, eternal period pain, constipation, and dizzy headaches. Today the two are chauffeuring Karen around on a tour of the city, showing her new and modern things. The sun has emerged—cold and bleached, weak and low on the horizon out beyond Burnaby and Mount Baker; sunglasses are required by all. Karen is buried within an ivory-colored sheepskin coat of Pam's. "Très glam, Kare, you sexy detox kitten. Meow."

  Hamilton has strapped Karen into the front seat with extra nylon harnesses for legs and chest, carefully checked Karen's neck brace, and promised Richard that he'll drive under the speed limit at all times. He notices Karen's mood this morning: beautiful, lively, and loquacious. There is good reason for this. The night before, Karen and Richard made awkward but delicate love and afterward he asked her to marry him and she accepted. Well, Richard, I'm thirty-four and I can count the number of times I've done it on two fingers.

  By now Karen has taken many drives with her family and friends and has seen the changes progress has wreaked. She's seen the city of Vancouver multiply and bathe itself in freighter loads of offshore money. Blue glass towers through which Canada geese fly in V-formation, traffic jams of Range Rovers, Chinese road signs, and children with cell phones. Karen rather likes the new city and she rather likes the small things in life that are new: blue nail polish, hygiene products, better pasta.

  Karen wishes she could shop in the department stores, but a recent excursion to the Park Royal mall caused such pandemonium they decided not to repeat the experience. The theoretical purpose of today's road trip is to buy a copy of Royalty magazine. Karen wants to see pictures of Princess Diana. She can't believe she missed out on the entire fable—the wedding, the kids, the flings, the divorce, and finally her rebirth as a private citizen—and then, the end. Diana's life is one of the few things that makes her jealous that she's been away. "Pam, it's just like in high school when we felt like everybody was out there partying but us."

  "But, Karen, I don't remember feeling that way."

  A sigh. "God, you good-looking people drive me nuts."

  Hamilton is grouchy this morning, Pam is withdrawn, and Karen is preoccupied by what she sees outside and what's inside her head. Three people sitting in the same car but not really together.

  "Look," Karen says, "an old Datsun B-210. Like Richard's back in school."

  "Don't see many of those around these days," Hamilton says.

  Karen asks, "Is Vietnam making cars now, too?"The Jeep comes to a stop sign and Karen's sunglasses slip off. Hamilton replaces them and continues driving. "Hey, Kare," he asks, "how do you feel being here now? After so long. I mean, not just what's new and different, but what does now feel like?"

  "Urn—"

  "Is that too annoying a question? I mean, you've been out of the coma for a while now. You must be used to it, right? Kick me if I'm yanking your chain too hard."

  "No. I mean yes. I mean wait, Ham—let me think."

  They pass a clique of high-schoolers. Their fashions seem alien yet attractive to Karen. She would have enjoyed wearing these new styles.

  "Pammie asked me, too. I told her, imagine walking a million miles … in heels, and she kind of got it."

  "Hey, Karen, don't shit me. That's crap. I could have told you that. There's other stuff. You know there is. How does it feel? I mean, seventeen years. Spill. And if you don't spill I'll spend the next hour telling you about the Berlin Wall coming down and AIDS."

  Only Hamilton can speak to her like this. Brat. He's always been able to go way off the edge with Karen. She likes him for this. "Well, okay, Hamilton. As one bullshitter to another. Very well." The Jeep is on the highway now, headed west toward Horseshoe Bay. The day is becoming pale blue and clean and cold. The ocean far down below the highway is a flat anvil blue.

  "Okay. You know what, Hamilton? There's a hardness I'm se
eing in modern people. Those little moments of goofiness that used to make the day pass seem to have gone. Life's so serious now. Maybe it's just because I'm with an older gang now." She lifts her scrawny arm and nibbles her finger and the act is a large effort on her part. "I mean, nobody even has hobbies these days. Not that I can see. Husbands and wives both work. Kids are farmed out to schools and video games. Nobody seems to be able to endure simply being by themselves, either—but at the same time they're isolated. People work much more, only to go home and surf the Internet and send e-mail rather than calling or writing a note or visiting each other. They work, watch TV, and sleep. I see these things. The whole world isonly about work: work work work get get get … racing ahead … getting sacked from work … going online … knowing computer languages … winning contracts. I mean, it's just not what I would have imagined the world might be if you'd asked me seventeen years ago. People are frazzled and angry, desperate about money, and, at best, indifferent to the future."

  She grabs her breath. "So you ask me how do / feel? I feel lazy. And slow. And antique. And I'm scared of all these machines. I shouldn't be, but I am. I'm not sure I completely like the new world."

  Hamilton's jaws clench and Karen sees this. "I know—you want me to say how great everything is now, but I can't. It's pretty clear to me that life now isn't what it ought to have become."

  They drive past the Cypress exit, the Westmount exit, and the Caulfield exit. Pam coughs in the backseat, a cough like two thick steaks flapping against each other, and Hamilton reacts: "Jesus, Pam—honk those things into a Baggie and maybe we can fry them up for dinner."

  "Ha."

  More mountains and ocean. "I think I know what you mean," Hamilton says. "If you look at the world as a whole, we have to admit life's good here where we live. But in an evil Twilight Zone kind of way there's nothing else to choose. In the old days there was always a bohemia or a creative underworld to join if the mainstream life wasn't your bag—or a life of crime, or even religion. And now there's only the system. All other options have evaporated. For most people it's the System or what… death') There's nothing. There's no way out now." A pulp mill up the fjord of Howe Sound stains the sky with an ash-white glaze. Hamilton asks, "What about the people you know—Richard, Wendy, Pam, and me? What changes have you noticed in all of us?"