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. 1 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 sawthey'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 hostageI saw more than I was supposed to have seen. I don't know how it's going to happen. These voices they're arguingone even sounds like Jaredand these voices are arguing while. I get to see bits of (this sounds so bad) the
Future!!
It's dark therein 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 itwho are theythemwhoever?"
"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.
Owlsnothing 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. GeorgeDadcomes home early from the shop. He sits beside Karen's bed, dewy-eyed.
Karen likes 1997 people because they're never boringall these new words they havethe 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 laterand 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 demandedextreme wisdom through extreme suffering. People tread lightly around her.
"I'm not made of uncooked spaghetti, everyone. Jesuscome 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 monsoonin Japan. Again, no mistaking that. There were fields in Africaall up in flames. And then this gross onethese rivers in Bangladesh or Indiajust full of bodies and fabric. The last thing was a big digital clock signFlorida. 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 realit was no movie. That's for sure."
Later that afternoon Wendy contrives a reason to visit Monster Machinedropping 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. "Texasa freewayall quiet, like a sci-fi film. Oh, and musica children's choir singing 'Oranges and Lemons.' What elsemud. 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. "Wendywhat's up? You look like you've seen our most recent monster creationcome onI'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 lifefingers, 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.