“Dr. Menger says you can start on solids next week.”
“Gee.”
“No need to be sarcastic, young lady.”
Once home, Karen is both relieved and annoyed by the absent signs of time’s passage, by the same owls, furniture, knickknacks and carpets that adorn the house. Only Megan’s room, once Karen’s, gives evidence of time’s march: posters of strange young pop stars engineered to disturb parents, unfamiliar and annoyingly provocative garments strewn hither and yon and a plaque on the door made in wood shop: MEGAN’S SPACE.
Richard spends an inordinate amount of time in Karen’s new room, which was previously George’s never-used den. At night he sleeps on the floor beside Karen’s bed, and sometimes on the bed with Karen. Thus the geography of their lives has become the same as when they were teenagers. The two of them quickly develop baby talk words between themselves and when they aren’t together they begin to experience a sweet ache. Their conversation devolves into a secret patois and the two are wonderfully aware that they are in love.
“I look like a telethon child,” she tells Richard. “My body may be interesting to others as a science project but that’s all. I’m not sexy.”
“Well I’m head over heels for you,” says Richard.
“Toot toot, Beb,” Karen says.
“lck,” says Megan, overhearing them speak, beginning to feel pangs of jealousy. Megan is allowed to be helpful, and enjoys being so, but between Lois and Richard, she feels the way she imagines a Best Supporting Actress must feel when she loses her Oscar. Megan and Karen have many chats, but they aren’t as deep or intimate as her chats with Richard. Karen saves all her intimacy for Richard. How can she jimmy her way inside Karen’s heart? Fashion? How pathetic. Dyeing Karen’s hair was fun, and the new hairdo is at least serviceable. But that was just a few hours. She must try harder. Food? Lois has taken complete charge of both Karen’s nutrition and her hospital functions. Lois is blissed out. Even a few days earlier, when a coyote from the canyon made off with the bison friche, Lois took the event with almost cheerful equanimity. “Nature’s way. Sigh. Here, Karen—freshly squeezed orange juice—no pips, either.”
Karen jokes with Richard that her bedroom is a jail cell with Lois as warden. “It’s her dream situation, Richard. I’m her dietary lab rat. No chance of escape.” She bites her knuckles. “There must be something karma-ish about this. I might as well be a newborn.”
“We’ll break you out of here soon enough.”
“As if.”
“Don’t be so negative.”
Richard is happier than he’s ever been, juggling Karen and his TV work. Hamilton and Pam are happy enough, too, juggling work with Narcotics Anonymous meetings and clinic visits. They live in a bedroom cocoon of un-rewound VCR tapes, rancid yogurt containers, empty prescription bottles, color-coded vitamin jars, half-eaten meals, lipsticked napkins, stained blankets, and half-read magazines and books. Wendy oversees their recovery.
Richard, looking at all of their lives from a distance, sees the recurring pattern here, the one mentioned on a rainy poker night months ago—a pattern in which the five of his friends seem destined always to return to their quiet little neighborhood. Karen notices this, too. What she doesn’t tell Richard, though, is that in a strange way her old friends aren’t really adults—they look like adults but inside they’re not really. They’re stunted; lacking something. And they all seem to be working too hard. The whole world seems to be working too hard. Karen seems to remember leisure and free time as being important aspects of life, but these qualities seem utterly absent from the world she now sees in both real life and on TV. Work work work work work work work.
Look at this! Look at this! People are always showing Karen new electronic doodads. They talk about their machines as though they possess a charmed religious quality—as if these machines are supposed to compensate for their owner’s inner failings. Granted, these new things are wonders—e-mail, faxes, and cordless phones—but then still … big deal.
“Hamilton, but what about you—are you new and improved and faster and better, too? I mean, as a result of your fax machine?”
“It’s swim or drown, Kare. You’ll get used to them.”
“Oh, will I?”
“It’s not up for debate. We lost. Machines won.”
After life has calmed down somewhat—after the initial flushes of wonder have pulsed and gone, Richard waits until he and Karen have the house alone—a cold gray overcast afternoon day hinting at snow but unwilling to deliver.
“Karen,” he gently asks, “do you remember the letter you gave me?” “Letter?”
“Yeah. The envelope. That night up Grouse. I was supposed to give it to you the next day unless something happened—which it obviously did.”
“Yeah.” She mulls this over. “I remember. You never mentioned it. I thought you’d left it unopened, that it was forgotten.”
Richard pulls Karen’s letter from its envelope where it has lived for nearly two decades, removed every so often for confirmation of its existence. “Here.” He hands it to Karen.
December 15 … 6 Days to Hawaii!!!
Note: Call Pammie about beads for corn-rowing hair. Also, arrange streaking.
Hi Beb. Karen here.
If you’re reading this you’re either a) the World’s Biggest Sleazebag and I hate you for peeking at this or b) there’s been some very bad news and it’s a day later. I hope that neither of these is true!!
Why am I writing this? I’m asking myself that. I feel like I’m buying insurance before getting on a plane.
I’ve been having these visions this week. I may even have told you about them. Whatever. Normally my dreams are no wilder than, say, riding horses or swimming or arguing with Mom (and I win!!) but these new things I saw—they’re not dreams.
On TV when somebody sees the bank robber’s face they get shot or taken hostage, right? I have this feeling I’m going to be taken hostage—I saw more than I was supposed to have seen. I don’t know how it’s going to happen. These voices—they’re arguing—one even sounds like Jared—and these voices are arguing while I get to see bits of (this sounds so bad) the 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.
xox
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 Richar
d 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 much since 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 hand sticking 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 a teenager 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 her 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.
Girlfriend in a Coma: A Novel Page 14
