Читать книгу Hard, Soft and Wet - Melanie McGrath - Страница 21

Unwelcome thoughts of home crowd round the breakfast table.

Sorting through Nancy’s clippings box I find the following:

1980s see 19,346 US teen murders, 18,365 suicides.

150,000 young Americans on missing persons register

20% teenage unemployment rises to 40% for African Americans

One in four young African American males in prison, on probation, parole

At lunch, an uneasiness sets in, somehow connected to Dave’s visit.

‘Don’t all those gloomy statistics about kids get you down?’

‘Uh huh.’ My friend pushes aside a half-eaten pop tart, takes some ice cream out of the freezer. It occurs to me that Nancy’s clippings are as much a part of Nancy as her fragile insouciance, whereas for me they’re just statistics strings.

‘So why d’you keep them?’

A bottle of olives appears on the table, followed by some Oreo cookies. She tries a spoonful of ice cream, an olive, a bite of pop tart. Looks unsteady.

‘Pandora’s Box.’ A muffled sound as the other half of the pop tart follows an olive. She scrapes some Oreo filling onto her teeth.

‘It’s my only weapon against the bio-clock. Just to concentrate on what a shitty world it is out there for kids.’ I watch her removing an olive stone and inserting a spoonful of ice-cream.

‘Nancy. You’re not …?’

‘Are you insane?’ she looks at me with her eyes in that crepey position. ‘I don’t even know a friendly sperm bank.’

I remind her of Dave.

‘Oh yeah, like the world really needs another programmer geek in diapers.’

‘That’s harsh.’

Nancy pauses to think for a moment.

‘You’re right. And anyway, it’s untrue. The world needs all the programmer geeks in diapers it can get right now.’

Muir Woods has become a weekend routine. At Nancy’s request a Japanese tourist takes a photo of us marking off the start of the digital age on the slice of redwood trunk, at the very edge where the bark begins to flake away. Climbing up onto the plateau, a weight of sadness falls. I look out over the ocean towards Japan, trying to think myself back to the blue of that wide water. Almost before I’m aware of it, salt tears have begun to scratch at my contact lenses.

It dawns on me that I’m not a part of the grand technological experiment that is Northern California right now, nor a part either of those older dreams it has come to symbolize. I don’t belong to the redwoods, to the frozen yoghurt stands or the piney air. I’ve found myself a project here precisely because I am not from here. There is so much about this new digital world that is alien to me, but utterly familiar to Nancy. I am deflated and left behind, made spare by the sheer pace and scale of the change. I feel like a dazzled rabbit caught in headlights, a mere witness to the ballooning din and flux that is digital America, a self-indulgent stand-in. And as I watch Nancy striding across the plateau towards the woods again, I see she’s given me a vivid fragment of her life to take away and make flourish somewhere else. And I’m overcome by the stillness of understanding. What Nancy has known for a while and has patiently waited for me to discover is that the time has come for me to return to England, though that is where I least belong.