The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [77]
God, I’m so sick of myself.
Oh, Roger, I truly wish I’d had religion growing up, because believing in something might shut off my inner voice—and maybe also so that I could feel like I shared something with my family, a common vision. All I got from my family is death, divorce and desertion. Please come up with ideas to share with Zoë. She’ll probably hate you until she’s twenty-one, but after that she’ll thank you forever. You’re so lucky to have the chance to not screw somebody up.
You know, I was at the gym an hour ago, using a bench press, and my head was upside down and I was looking out the windows and there were thousands of crows flying east, out to their roost by the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, this endless stream of crows. And then the stream stopped and I stood up, and the blood rushed out of my head a bit, and I looked out at the parking lot and there were no people and no birds—not a breeze—all of this lifeless stuff— cars and litter, like the end of the world. I’m not going to the gym any more.
My weight thing? My body obsession? It scares me too, and I don’t understand it. I think I thought that if I messed with my body enough my brain would change too, and that would shut off my interior monologue. Maybe I’d become one of those scrawny, sunburnt people in cargo shorts, a nylon windbreaker and hiking boots—those people who go camping for three weeks and eat nothing more than wild cranberries and wild mushrooms—a person who can go out into the wilderness and not freak out about being alone. I used to think Kyle was one of those people, but I don’t think that any more.
Him.
I want to stop thinking about this stuff, Roger. I’m so tired. I can’t look at Europe on a weather map without feeling carsick. And there was this nutso guy in that grim Parisian hostel, a real religious nut from Belgium, who kept on saying that we each inhabit two worlds—the real world and the end of the world. I can’t help but wonder what he meant. It’s so lame, yet I can’t get that out of my head.
Roger, why is it that people wait until the end of a relationship before they say all the meanest shit to each other?
Why do people stockpile their grudges like ammunition?
Why does it always have to end so badly?
Bethany
PS: I quit Staples.
PPS: In summation, I enclose a buttering. Bye, Roger.
A Slice of Small-Town Life
Karen Slice felt snug within her housecoat, its comfortable, forgiving flannel smelling of spilled tea, yesterday’s bowl of lilies so perfectly arranged in her grandmother’s vase, and the yeasty aroma of her two sleeping children, Melba and Crouton. Outside the sink window, still gritty from a long winter (I must wash it soon—so many small details to remember in even the smallest, quietest lives!), Karen witnessed spring’s blessed spectacle: gentle dandelions giggling with yellow, cumulus clouds like chunks of raw butter and, sadly, a pair of crows nesting in the linden tree, their black, greedy beaks like the Jaws of Life, except in this case they were the Jaws of Death.
Uh-oh . . . yet another year in which I won’t be able to venture outside.
On the counter were two Pyrex bowls in which her soon-to-be-born new children were rising, and they filled the space with a warm, nurturing, floury aroma. Karen Slice felt safe in the kitchen, a room that never made the newspapers, perhaps, but one in which some gentle and important thinking took place. Karen heard Melba’s delicate baby snores