The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [30]
Brittany looked at Steve. “Kyle’s given that same speech twenty times this year.”
Kyle smiled. “But I still mean it.”
“You could at least stop trying to pretend it’s the first time you’re doing it every time you do it.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Kyle, right now you’ve given that same speech twenty times already. But in twenty years you’ll have told it thousands of times . . . won’t you have? Doesn’t that exhaust you in advance . . . knowing that you’ll one day become this anecdote robot?”
“How sweet!” said Gloria. “A spat between a writer and his wife. Look at them, Steve—aren’t they darling? They remind me so much of you and me back when we first started out.”
Roger
I like booze.
Booze makes me feel the way being in a womb must feel. If fetuses aren’t getting alcohol, what are they getting in there that makes the womb everybody’s dream vacation spot? I bet they’re floating around and getting wasted on fet-ohol. Imagine the withdrawal newborns must go through when their supply of fet-ohol leaves their bodies and their nervous system’s alarm bells go off: Hey! You’re part of the world now! Brutal.
I think scientists should be trying more than anything to find the formula for fet-ohol. Imagine taking a hit of “F”: “The Security Drug”—you’d feel like you were safe and happy, even if you were doing boring everyday crap like collecting spray-painted shopping carts from the ditch across the road by the Indian reserve or haggling with some pathetic senior trying to scam an extra twenty percent off the purchase of a Maxell CD twelve-pack using an expired coupon.
But then, fet-ohol would probably have some backfiring aspect. That predictable monkey’s paw: official key fob of Saint Teresa of Avila, patron saint of the answered prayer. If you became a fetus again, you’d become autistic or a zombie, or would pull so far away from the world that people looking at you would think you were a vegetable. Fet-ohol would convert your brain back into the brain of a fetus. It wouldn’t be the same thing as brain damage— instead, your brain would sort of erase itself, like a CD or a tape. You’d be unborn.
Why do I mention any of this? Because of my mother.
Years ago, I visited my parents’ place on a Saturday afternoon. My dad was downstairs, my mother upstairs. My dad and I said hi, and then he called upstairs, “Honey, your favourite son is here for a visit!” and my mother came downstairs, almost skipping like a girl. “Chris, I’ve made your favourite peanut butter and raisin cookies,” she called, and then she saw it was me and the temperature dropped to zilch. “Oh. Hello.”
“Hi to you, too, Mom.”
She stared at me, and—okay, it’s not like I haven’t done enough shit to merit a frosty reception—but this time was different. She seemed afraid of me, definitely something new, and after a few seconds of locked eyeballs, I realized that something new was going on here. She didn’t recognize me.
My mother’s Alzheimer’s was more rapid than that of most people with the disease, and it struck her in her late fifties, which is rare but by no means unheard of. One week she couldn’t find her car keys. A month later the police phoned to say she’d been found cowering in the women’s bathroom outside the Bay cafeteria and had no idea who she was.
When Mom started wetting herself and that kind of thing, Dad had to get a live-in helper, Dolores, to help out. Dolores was Mexican and treated Mom like a child, which Mom definitely seemed to prefer to being treated like an adult. Six years after it all began, Dad divorced Mom and married Dolores, and by the time Zoë came along my mother was completely gone. She died of pneumonia a month after Zoë’s birth, and I really have to wonder why we went to all the effort to keep her going. Were we cruel to elongate her time on earth? Was her life enhanced? Did she suffer—especially on those nights when she’d start hollering and screaming and we couldn’t figure out why? And is the world a better place for her having gone through it