Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

whose vocabulary was slightly old-fashioned, and whose ideas were stolen almost entirely from dead
people. I suppose that would be when she started drinking, just after you were born and she had a
hysterectomy. It must have been devastating to her, to realize she'd hitched herself to a religious fraud.
And I led her on - that's my own disgrace. And now her life's basically over. I visit her twice a month at
the facility near Mount Seymour Parkway. The first time I went there I was unsure whether I should go. I
was convinced she'd throw an IV-tree at me, or go into hysterics like Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last
Summer, but instead she smiled and said she had some donuts tucked away for me, and then she kept
on saying it, with nooff switch, and that was the worst rebuke of all.
Kent.
When Kent died, I found that physically leaving earth was a desirable notion. I was at work when I
learned of his death, out by the front reception area trying to unjam a roll of fax paper. I was irritated and
I'd told the receptionist to put me on speakerphone, and that's where I was when Barb's mother told me.
I fell to my knees and I saw a wash of light, and then I saw a fleet of dazzling metal spaceships, like
bullets aimed at the sun, and I wanted to walk toward them and get inside one, and leave everything
behind. And then the everyday world returned. I'd had that vision, the only vision I've ever had, but it told
me nothing and offered no comfort. So, what good was that? And what was left in my life? At the funeral
you shunned me, as did your mother. I can't say I blame you. My family in the Valley? They're junkyard
dogs now, what's left of them. And then last year you vanished, and all that remains are the twins - the
spitting image of you, I might add. And there's Barb, grudgingly, and (I'm not stupid) only at the behest of
Heather. Heather is a fine woman, a woman you're so lucky to have had enter your life: a heart as big as
the Hoover Dam, and a soul as clear as ice cubes.
I sound maudlin here. I don't want that. I'm not striving for effect, and I'm not drunk. But to spit things
out in a list like this is humbling. Lists only spell out the things that can be taken away from us by moths
and rust and thieves. If something is valuable, don't put it in a list. Don't even say the words.
Ruth.
There. And she's gone, too. She was the trumpet that returned me from the dead. I know you must have
seen her photo that day when you came to fetch things at my apartment - you never missed a trick of
mine. So you know what she looked like, large but not fat - you'd never describe her as plump - with
hair the color of rich soil and - Cripes, listen to me discuss this woman like a 4-H Club sow.
By the time you saw her photo we'd been dating - what a silly word - for years. We met at an insurance
seminar downtown, where she gave a short speech on insuring the elderly, and I liked her because she
had a sense of humor in the face of that day's technical blathering. I also learned from her that I have a
hint of a sense of humor myself. Yes, I can already see your face puckering with disbelief. So be it.
I lost Ruth for two reasons, the first of which was the seed of the second: I didn't want to take her to
Kent's funeral; why, I don't know. I could plead crazed grief, but even still. She said I was ashamed
because I was still married to your mother, and that I had a schoolboy's shame that people would stare at
us and imagine the two of us making love out of wedlock. How pathetic. And she was right. Ruth was
always right. But she was a deep believer, too, and willing to endure my crotchety trespasses.
When you went missing, I fell apart, although I doubt you'll believe that. Two sons gone - how is a man
supposed to feel? Ruth was a help at first, but then she learned I was still going to visit your mother twice
a month, and she told me it was time I divorced your mother and married her. I ought to have hired a
skywriting jet to sayyes. But no. I said that marriage was until death - this from a man who went for a
decade not communicating with his wife. Such a hypocrite.
Page 134