Girlfriend in a coma (8 page)

In the spring of 1981, Hamilton showed up at my apartment with a cut lip, a black eye, and a seething disposition. "That douche bag Klaus whacked me with a tripod. Pam can keep him." I asked who Klaus was: "Pammie's new beefy plaything." The next day Pam phoned me to say good-bye; she was moving to New York with Klaus. "He's not a very talented photographer, Rick, but he
is
sweet." For the next decade, I only saw Pam on magazine covers and heard from her via breathy little phone calls from exalted places: "Hi Rick. I'm in a 63 flying over Juneau
(crackle crackle).
Oh bugger, I just spilled the coke box in my lap. Oliver, what time does the hunt start? No . . . that was the jacket in Madrid. Hi . . . Richard . . . where were we?"
Hamilton spent a few years with a surveying crew in the wilds of northern BC, thus beginning his romance with dynamite blasting, a natural extension of a pyromaniacal bent that began in the first grade with black ants, barbecue starter, Hamburger Helper boxes, and a large magnifying glass. By 1985, he earned his geology degree and his blaster's ticket, and for years thereafter he was clam-happy, roaming the province, felling mountains and hammering cliffs into gravel.
Linus became an electrical engineer, which surprised nobody. After graduation, he worked for two years at an engineering firm down-town. We saw him rarely. His life seemed dull. An adult too early.

Virtuous Wendy studied emergency medicine at UBC. Such is thelife of the med student that we saw Wendy only when she came up for air throughout the decade, underslept, vague, with cherry-stained eyeballs, rumple-clothed, and a preoccupied, crow-footed face. At lunch with her one day, Hamilton and I learned the rigors of medicine thirty-six-hour days, gorgon floor nurses, and flesh-eating bacteria lying in wait around every corner. "God, I feel like a carton of time-expired milk all the time. But I love the work."
Hamilton pulled a bottle of Visine from his pocket and told Wendy to lean back. "There," he said, dribbling it into each eye, "I don't like to see you looking so beat. Your eyes feel better?"
"Yes. Thanks, Ham."
"Keep the bottle. I bought it for you. Want to go for a walk on the beach at Ambleside?"
"I'd love to, Ham, but I'm on night shift. Have to be there in fifteen minutes." Me, I had to go work at the Vancouver Stock Exchange - lucrative, but so dull that words to describe it escape me.

Megan, she knew from the start that I was her father, but knowledge of Karen was another issue. There was no right or wrong decision in this matter. Our final decision not to tell her about Karen was tough on us. Should we have told her Karen was dead? A lie. Should we have said she's on a long holiday? Dumb. Should we have told her that Karen's ill? "The only problem there," my dad said, "is that she'll want to see her, of course. To a young child, the sight of Karen, love her as much as we do, might be more than shocking - cruel even."
In the end, we figured that by age seven Megan would be adequately mature to see Karen. In the interim we told Megan Karen was sick, that it would be some while before we could go visit. Megan asked the inevitable questions soon: "What was Mom like, Dad? You know, my
real
Mom." This distinction, while natural, made Lois's toes curl under each time Megan used it. "Is Mom dead?" "Is my mom pretty?" "Does Mom like horses?" "If Mom came to visit, could she help me clean my room?"In 1986, Megan started school with unfettered glee. She bounced out of bed each morning and hurled herself through the kitchen door before Lois had the chance to dole out either a lecture or a berating. No extracurricular activity was too time consuming; no school project or music lesson too long.
And Megan had indeed started out in life resembling me in a Bumhead wig - her hair grew straight as rain and that was just fine but fate took pity on her. As her baby fat melted away, Karen's infinitely prettier features emerged from within. We all mentally exhaled a relieved "whew!"
Occasionally, I'd pick Megan up at school to drive her home:
Ding dong, hello, Lois . ..
"You know, Richard, I just don't understand why she enjoys school so much. She has a lovely house here with stacks of toys, plus I have worthwhile activities planned for almost all of her waking hours, so she has no reason to go gallivanting up to your house. No offense, but your house has nothing in it for a baby. Not one single thing. I had coffee up there last week and it was the most I could do to locate even a bouncing ball - and
then
it turns out to be Charlie's [our golden lab]. I'm going to have to be much more strict from now on. Or figure out a much more elaborate containment system. Come inside, Megan. We have flash cards to do. Goodbye Richard, and please, cut your hair, because I know shorter hair is now in style and you're a father now." Door closed; muffled yaps; Megan squalling as French language flash cards are produced. Poor baby.

Shortly after enrolling in first grade, Megan's classmates - having heard it from their parents who heard it at the Super-Valu who heard it from wherever - these vicious little oiks told Megan, then six, that her mother was a "vegetable." As little brutes will do, they howled grocery lists at her across the gravel playing field:
"Lettuce. Corn. Green beans, carrots Megan's mother is a carrot."
And so forth. On the day of the 1987 stock crash, just moments after it sank in that I'd lost most of my assets, Megan's school principal phoned my office around noon - Lois was out, so he called me. He said that Megan was in "a state."I drove from downtown to fetch my daughter and then we cruised aimlessly around the neighborhood, the crisply changing leaves that hinted of wine amid the lengthening shadows of fall. The radio was off. "What's up Sweetie Pie?"
"Dad, everyone's saying my
real
mother's a carrot."
"Well she's
not
a carrot. That's impossible."
"Lettuce?"
"Megan! Of course she's
not
lettuce - nor any other vegetable. Your mother is
not
a vegetable, Megan."
"Then why does everybody call her a carrot?"
"Because kids are cruel, Megan. They say stupid untrue things and have no idea what they're really saying."
"Did / used to be a carrot?"
We came to a stop sign at Hadden Drive. "Megan, stop . . . "
Megan opened the door and dashed out into the trees beside the golf course. Shit. I left the car running at the stop sign, door wide open, and chased after her. Fortunately, I knew my way through the surrounding trees as well as any child, having spent so much time there myself when young. "Megan, come back."
"Kleek.Kleek.Kleek."
What was this strange noise she was making? I followed the sound over a series of logs, over a dewy patch of psilocybin mushrooms, then into a glade where as teenagers we'd spent many a Friday and Saturday night. Megan was sitting fetal beside an old rotted log that had probably been felled back in the 1920s.
"Kleek.Kleek.Kleek."
"Megan,
there
you are." I stopped to catch my breath and looked around at the dry cool dent in the forest floor, untouched by undergrowth as the shade canopy above was too dense. Between the yearly layers of pine, fir, and cedar sheddings lay bits of uncountable cigarettes packs, weather-yellowed pornography, candy wrappers, condoms, dead flashlight batteries, and clusters of stolen Mercedes hood ornaments.
"Kleek."

"Megan, what's that sound you're making?"
"Kleek."
Two could play at this game. I said,
"KleegKleeg."
Megan rolled her eyes. "Daddy, you're not doing it right."
"Kleeg.Kleeg."
"Daddy, that's
not
what carrots sound like. They sound like this:
Kleek. Kleek. Kleek."
"How silly of me. I forgot."
There was a quiet moment and I thought of the summer Jared and I borrowed a golf cart from an elderly twosome and drove it through the woods, bailing out just before it ran over a small cliff. We never got caught.
"Megan, for God's sake, stop the carrot stuff. You know it's not true." "Where's my real mom?" She was getting teary.
"Okay, Megan. I'll
tell
you, okay?"
"Okay." Her posture slackened and she relaxed visibly.
I caught my breath. "Your mom was eighteen when she became sick. She has the same birthday as you."
"Really?"
"Really."
I told Megan about her mother - everything - and afterward we walked out of the forest and back to the car, still running, still waiting to drive us away. Of course, Megan wanted to see Karen - the sooner the better. We went that night. My mother and the staff at Inglewood spruced Karen up as best they could. Once inside Inglewood, I greeted the staff as I'd done hundreds of times before, and all the while my stomach felt lightweight and bilious. We slowly marched down the echoing hallway into Karen's room, where a small radio played Blondie's "Heart of Glass," then a song by the Smiths. Her bed had a blue chenille spread. "It's okay, Megan," I said. "There's no need to be afraid. We all love you."
Karen, even dolled up by Mom, was a heartbreaking sight. They tried to make Karen as natural as possible with foundation plus a dab of blush, with a trim of her hair, all crowned with an Alice-band. Shewore a lavender cardigan. Not having seen Karen dolled up since
1979,
I felt a pang of intense loneliness. For Megan, the initial shock of seeing her mother seemed to wear off quickly. She gave no initial reaction. I stood still while Megan approached Karen's bedside. She placed her hand on her mother's forehead and with her other hand stroked Karen's hair and touched her hollow cheeks. She smudged her fingers on Karen's eyelids. "She's wearing makeup," Megan said. "Sleeping people don't wear makeup." She moistened her fingers to try to wipe clean Karen's cheeks and forehead, erasing Mom's makeover effort. Having accomplished this, she jumped up onto the bed and lay down beside Karen. Karen was inside a sleep cycle, her mouth rasping. Megan looked closely at her face. "How long has she been like this?"
"Since December 15, 1979."
"Who visits her?"
"George does," I said, "every day. And I come here once a week on Sunday." "Hmm."
Megan looked at her mother. "She doesn't scare me, you know."
"Well, she shouldn't."
Megan ran her fingers over Karen's face again, then said to me, "Can I come with you on Sunday from now on, Dad?"
"Deal."
"Do I look more like you or Mom?"
"Your mother," I said with relief.
Megan looked at Karen's face right up close, as though trying to locate the watermark on a forged banknote. She gave out a puff of air indicating satisfaction, and then lay down beside her and rested. I went outside for fresh air, flummoxed by Megan's casual acceptance. I thought of how life ought to have been as opposed to what it became. After that day, Megan drove with me to Inglewood Lodge on Sundays.

In the 1980s, Hamilton and I would party often. One morning in particular I was awakened by Hamilton tweezing unmetabolized coke from my nostrils. Life was big.

I recovered somewhat from the 1987 stock crash and continued treadmilling within the city's financial district selling low-tide stocks. This was around the time where I started to drink. My compatriots were machine-bronzed fiftysomethings decorated with gold nugget rings and pin-curly hairdos lying into telephone headsets at 5:00 A.M.
Lord
- the scammy little push-me-pull-you's we enacted over the phones from within our bleak putty-colored office cubicles.

A minor scandal about a spurious core sample knocked me out of the Stock Exchange. With my savings, I bought a Kleenex-box house in North Van where I lived alone, seeing Megan only rarely
baaad
father. I took that first house, spackled, sanded, and painted it, then flipped it for a twenty-five-thousand-dollar profit. This became a pattern: I'd buy the worst house on a good block, work and drink like a demon on weekends to whip it into shape, then flip it for a reasonable profit. My behavior wasn't greed, it was ... it was me doing anything but speaking honestly with myself - countless silent moments hastily varnished with vodka and thoughts of renovations. I was visiting Karen twice, thrice a week. At Inglewood, I drank vodka and orange juice from a carton.

10 ONE DAY YOU WILL SPEAK WITH YOURSELF

After some years I realized I'd landed myself a major drinking problem - a device for coping with life's endlessly long days. I truly wondered if I was in some kind of coma myself, shambling through life with an IV drip filled with Scotch. My twenties were vanishing and the only good thing I had going for me was a daughter who I hardly ever saw. For her sake I bucked up a bit in the early 19905 and began to sell residential properties with a modicum of success - my years of renovating claptraps left me with a good instinct for the true value of a house.
I also began doing things I couldn't have imagined doing while sober: I'd often lose my car when I went out at night - forget where parked it, then call all the towing firms the next day to see if they had it. I woke up one morning to see I'd peed onto the wall. For the most part, I maintained a good front while inner deterioration grew. My breath stank permanently like wine left inside a stemmed glass overnight. And time ticked on.
Pam sent me a card from Athens:

DINNER WITH DAVID BOWIE. GLAMORAMA. DRANK ABSINTHE FOR THE FIRST TIME, P.

Linus, one day in 1990, without telling anybody, left the city. He drove to Lethbridge in Alberta, parked his VW Bug on the side of a ridge, the Continental Divide, donned his knapsack, and went walking through the stubble and chaff on the fields, across the prairies, flushing out the partridge and pheasants, slouching eastward, then south as winter approached, never again to return to his VW. He spent the next few years gadabouting the southern United States, growing his beard, doing spare jobs for food, and sending a postcard from here or there in his microscopic print:

DEAR RICHARD, THIS IS LAS VEGAS. VIVA. IT'S WINTER NOW. I'MWORKING AT AN ITALIAN

RESTAURANT AS A WAITER. IT'S OKAY. THERE'S NOT MUCH TO DO HERE. THERE'S A TARGET RANGE NEARBY, SO I'M LEARNING TO SHOOT. IT SOUNDS DUMB, BUT IT'S SOMETHING TO LEARN.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR KIND LETTER PLUS THE SNAPSHOTS OF HOME. I APPRECIATE YOUR