Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

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"Anything else?" "Yes. You're my wife, so act like it." "How should I be acting, then?" "Cheryl, look: in God's eyes we're not two individuals, okay? We're one unit now. So if you dick around with me, then you're only dicking around with yourself." And Jason was right. We were married - had been for about six weeks at that point - but we were the only ones who knew it. * * * I was late for school because I'd wanted everyone out of the house before I used a home pregnancy test. I was quite calm about it - I was a married woman, and shame wasn't a factor. My period was three weeks late, and facts were facts. Instead of the downstairs bathroom I shared with my brother, I used the guest bathroom upstairs. The guest bathroom felt one notch more medical, one notch less tinged by personal history - less accusatory, to be honest. And the olive fixtures and foil wallpaper patterned with brown bamboo looked swampy and dank when compared to the test's scientific white-and-blue box. And there's not much more to say, except that fifteen minutes later I was officially pregnant and I was late for math class. * * * "Jesus, Cheryl . . ." "Jason, don't curse. You can swear, but don't curse." "Pregnant?" I was quiet. "You're sure?" "I'm late for math class. Aren't you even happy?" A student walked by, maybe en route to see the principal. Jason squinted like he had dust in his eyes. "Yeah - well, of course - sure I am." Page 4
I said, "Let's talk about it at homeroom break." "I can't. I'm helping Coach do setup for the Junior A team. I promised him ages ago. Lunchtime then. In the cafeteria." I kissed him on his forehead. It was soft, like antlers I'd once touched on a petting zoo buck. "Okay. I'll see you there." He kissed me in return and I went to math class. * * * I was on the yearbook staff, so' I can be precise here. Delbrook Senior Secondary is a school of 1,106 students located about a five-minute walk north of the Trans-Canada Highway, up the algae-green slope of Vancouver's North Shore. It opened in the fall of 1962, and by 1988, my senior year, its graduates numbered about thirty-four thousand. During high school, most of them were nice enough kids who'd mow lawns and baby-sit and get drunk on Friday nights and maybe wreck a car or smash a fist through a basement wall, not even knowing why they'd done it, only that it had to happen. Most of them grew up in rectangular postwar homes that by 1988 were called tear-downs by the local real estate agents. Nice lots. Nice trees and vines. Nice views. As far as I could tell, Jason and I were the only married students ever to have attended Delbrook. It wasn't a neighborhood that married young. It was neither religious nor irreligious, although back in eleventh-grade English class I did a tally of the twenty-six students therein: five abortions, three dope dealers, two total sluts, and one perpetual juvenile delinquent. I think that's what softened me up for conversion: I didn't want to inhabit that kind of moral world. Was I a snob? Was I a hypocrite? And who was I to even judge? Truth be told, I wanted everything those kids had, but I wanted it by playing the game correctly. This meant legally and religiously and - this is the part that was maybe wrong - I wanted to outsmart the world. I had, and continue to have, a nagging suspicion that I used the system simply to get what I wanted. Religion included. Does that cancel out whatever goodness I might have inside me? Jason was right: Miss Priss. * * * Math class was x's and y's and I felt trapped inside a repeating dream, staring at these two evil little letters who tormented me with their constant need to balance and be equal with each other. They should just get married and form a new letter together and put an end to all the nonsense. And then they should have kids. I thought about my own child-to-be as I stared out the window, turning the pages only when I heard everybody else turn theirs. I saw fleeting images of breast-feeding, prams and difficult labor, my knowledge of motherhood being confined mostly to magazines and cartoons. I ignored Lauren Hanley, Page 5
Page 1 and 2: Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Couplan
Page 3: house was quiet - not even a clock
Page 7 and 8: Dear God, Remove the blood from the
Page 9 and 10: My family didn't know what to make
Page 11 and 12: Dear God, What's hardest here is th
Page 13 and 14: The important thing is that we were
Page 15 and 16: only indicate Your absence - that f
Page 17 and 18: outfits must have made us look all
Page 19 and 20: And I did have questions and uneasy
Page 21 and 22: late into the game, I think." "What
Page 23 and 24: didn't hurt, the shooting, and I di
Page 25 and 26: someone who spends her days deliver
Page 27 and 28: ecame ghosts. The only thing that c
Page 29 and 30: It's a bit later again, still here
Page 31 and 32: on a locker's ventilation slits. "L
Page 33 and 34: turned around to me and said, "You
Page 35 and 36: their badge. Another cop looked at
Page 37 and 38: myself reflected in the one remaini
Page 39 and 40: * * * Like anyone, I've seen those
Page 41 and 42: I sat down, while Mom gave Joyce a
Page 43 and 44: Mom said, "Didn't you hear me?" Dad
Page 45 and 46: "Stick a potato in it. Your job, by
Page 47 and 48: "Barb?" "Go now. Because I'll break
Page 49 and 50: the water, and here I am now in my
Page 51 and 52: My main memories of those two weeks
Page 53 and 54: Just don't screw your life up the w
Page 55 and 56:
was in. What came over me? It was n
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I changed the subject. "How long ar
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In the third week after the massacr
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don't, and they all work so hard -
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Alive! friends look forward to the
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But I was going to say that when it
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"Tell me." "He said, 'Who are we to
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"I've heard of that. More for me, t
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I dropped the rock onto a nearby bo
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But I hadn't killed Yorgo. I stoppe
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* * * I'm in a Denny's in North Van
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"No. Just you." I was confused. I h
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have a carry-on bag? So that some c
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I was going to motion to the elevat
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Saturday afternoon 4:00 I met Jason
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Barb's commuting down the coast, an
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"Heather, how many people are in th
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Okay, Barb's housekeeper will be in
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Oh, Heather, you knew it wouldn't b
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"I'm driving." "So?" I didn't argue
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kitchen table where I picked at the
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"Wait. Hold on a minute. When you g
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It was becoming windy, and our voic
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Oh. So, um - what are you up to lat
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"Why did he say, 'Oh, I say'?" "Bec
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first disappeared, but which I've s
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What has happened to me? I've gone
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In my peripheral vision I'm also no
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sweater and readying my purse. "Oh,
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morning jobs, and he clocked out ea
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Tuesday afternoon 3:00 I was eating
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"No, I'm not." And he wasn't. Reg h
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"Five thousand dollars." "I figured
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existence. This is when I felt the
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"How could Allison have known such
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Okay then, what did happen? I follo
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Five years ago, before I met Jason,
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Allison didn't like this. "Oh, real
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I was appalled. "How could you use
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eating an egg salad sandwich, when
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We were in the Keg at the foot of L
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But I haven't lost you, my son. No
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Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

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