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Hamilton is grouchy this morning, Pam is withdrawn, and Karen is preoccupied by what she sees outside and what's inside her head.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 seeing 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?"
"You mean friends and family?"
"Yeah."
Karen tells him only the palatable half of the Story. "The thing I'm noticing is that nobody's really changed in seventeen years; they're simply amplified versions of themselves. Mom is as … er … regulatory as ever. Dad's nice but weird. Richard is still earnest and a cutie-pie and he tries so hard. You're still a brat. Pam's quietly beautiful. Linus is still on Mars. Wendy may be a doctor and everything, but in her head she's still handing in essays and getting A's. Everybody's become, yeah—more like themselves."
The car hums, and they look at the mountains and the city. "Remember when we went to Future Shop to buy a camera?" Karen asks. The others nod. "Did you see the categories they had there for their products? 'Simulation'; 'Productivity'; 'Games.' I mean, what kind of world is this? And please tell me what's happened to time! Nobody has time anymore. What's the deal? Shit. Now I'm in a bad mood." Lowering the window allows into the Jeep the faint industrial fart smell of a pulp mill. Karen retreats behind her sunglasses. She doesn't tell Hamilton that she had expected people to be grown up at the age of thirty-four. Instead, they seem at best insular and without a central core, which might give purpose to their lives.
Hamilton talks: "And what of your lovely daughter, Megan?"
Karen smiles: "Isn't she the coolest, Ham? So strong. So sure of herself. Imagine being so together at seventeen—wow." She pauses: "Well, in a way I am seventeen. So maybe I can be as cool as her, too. Yes."
"I think you're going to have to be older," Pam says from the backseat, talking through a yawn. "People are expecting you to be wise after all that sleep. To most people you're not seventeen anymore—you're one thousand years old."
It's true. People treat Karen as though she can sense not only color, smells, and sound, but something else—something rich and sublime and far beyond color. She has this subtle feeling people are a touch jealous of this. What frustrates her, too, is that she knows she's seen things, but these things are locked away and unreachable.
Megan now has morning sickness and wonders how much longer she can keep her secret. She avoids nearly all her old friends and lives at
Richard's condo, essentially alone, since Richard spends most of his time with Karen or at work. She likes the solitude; she's too young tounderstand the throbbing weight of loneliness. She has tossed out most of her old Goth clothing and now favors a pared-down, somewhat athletic look. She has also dropped out of school and works part-time with Linus; she'd like to work there full-time someday once her baby is in day care.
For lack of peers, Megan is reduced to having to speak with adults. Megan can't believe that she actually wants to speak with Lois. A good rousing fight would be fun. Karen ("Bio-Mom") is great, if not slightly clued out (Well, she did miss two decades). But there remains an awkwardness between them. A jealousy? Emotionally, they are both the same age; both need attention from Richard, Lois, and the others. Yet on some deeper level they just don't connect. They're too much the same and each poses a form of competition to the other. They're wary.