Authors: Margaret Atwood
Duncan looked at her with a sardonic smile. “Well, now you know what it’s like for me at home.”
“You might move out,” she suggested.
“Oh no. Actually I sort of like it. Besides, who else would take such good care of me? And worry about me so much? They do, you know, when they aren’t engrossed in their hobbies or off on some other tangent. They spend so much time fussing about my identity that I really shouldn’t have to bother with it myself at all. In the long run they ought to make it a lot easier for me to turn into an amoeba.”
“Why are you so interested in amoebas?”
“Oh, they’re immortal,” he said, “and sort of shapeless and flexible. Being a person is getting too complicated.”
They had reached the top of the asphalt ramp that led down to the baseball park. Duncan sat down on the snowbank at one side and
lit a cigarette; he never seemed to mind the cold. After a moment she sat down beside him. Since he made no attempt to put his arm around her, she put hers around him.
“The thing is,” he said after a while, “I’d like something to be real. Not everything, that’s impossible, but maybe one or two things. I mean Dr. Johnson refuted the theory of the unreality of matter by kicking a stone, but I can’t go around kicking my roommates. Or my professors. Besides, maybe my foot’s unreal anyway.” He threw the stub of his cigarette into the snow and lit another. “I thought maybe you would be. I mean if we went to bed, god knows you’re unreal enough now, all I can think of is those layers and layers of woolly clothes you wear, coats and sweaters and so on. Sometimes I wonder whether it goes on and on, maybe you’re woollen all the way through. It would be sort of nice if you weren’t.…”
Marian couldn’t resist this appeal. She knew she wasn’t woollen. “All right, suppose we did,” she said, speculating. “We can’t go to my place though.”
“And we can’t go to mine,” Duncan said, showing neither surprise nor glee at her implied acceptance.
“I guess we’d have to go to a hotel,” she said, “as married people.”
“They’d never believe it,” he said sadly. “I don’t look married. They’re still asking me in bars whether I’m sixteen yet.”
“Don’t you have a birth certificate?”
“I did once, but I lost it.” He turned his head and kissed her on the nose. “I suppose we could go to the kind of hotel where you don’t have to be married.”
“You mean … you’d want me to pose as a – some kind of prostitute?”
“Well? Why not?”
“No,” she said, a little indignantly. “I couldn’t do that.”
“I probably couldn’t either,” he said in a gloomy voice. “And motels are out, I can’t drive. Well I guess that’s that.” He lit another
cigarette. “Oh well, it’s true anyway: doubtless you would be corrupting me. But then again,” he said with mild bitterness, “maybe I’m incorruptible.”
Marian was looking out over the baseball park. The night was clear and crisp, and the stars in the black sky burnt coldly. It had snowed earlier, fine powdery snow, and the park was a white blank space, untracked. Suddenly she wanted to go down and run and jump in it, making footmarks and mazes and irregular paths. But she knew that in a minute she would be walking sedately as ever across it towards the station.
She stood up, brushing the snow from her coat. “Coming any further?” she asked.
Duncan stood up too and put his hands into his pockets. His face was shadowed in places and yellowed by the light from the feeble street lamp. “Nope,” he said. “See you, maybe.” He turned away, his retreating figure blurring almost noiselessly into the blue darkness.
When she had reached the bright pastel oblong of the subway station, Marian took out her change purse and retrieved her engagement ring from among the pennies, nickels and dimes.
M
arian was resting on her stomach, eyes closed, an ashtray balanced in the hollow of her bare back where Peter had set it. He was lying beside her, having a cigarette and finishing his double scotch. In the living room the hi-fi set was playing cocktail music.
Although she was keeping her forehead purposefully unwrinkled, she was worrying. That morning her body had finally put its foot down on canned rice pudding, after accepting it with scarcely a tremor for weeks. It had been such a comfort knowing she could rely on it: it provided bulk, and as Mrs. Withers the dietician had said, it was fortified. But all at once as she had poured the cream over it her eyes had seen it as a collection of small cocoons. Cocoons with miniature living creatures inside.
Ever since this thing had started she had been trying to pretend there was nothing really wrong with her, it was a superficial ailment, like a rash: it would go away. But now she had to face up to it; she had wondered whether she ought to talk to someone about it. She had already told Duncan, but that was no good; he seemed to find it normal, and what was essentially bothering her was the thought that
she might not be normal. This was why she was afraid to tell Peter: he might think she was some kind of freak, or neurotic. Naturally he would have second thoughts about getting married; he might say they should postpone the wedding until she got over it. She would say that, too, if it was him. What she would do after they were married and she couldn’t conceal it from him any longer, she couldn’t imagine. Perhaps they could have separate meals.
She was drinking her coffee and staring at her uneaten rice pudding when Ainsley came in, wearing her dingy green robe. These days she no longer hummed and knitted; instead she had been reading a lot of books, trying, she said, to nip the problem in the bud.
She assembled her ironized yeast, her wheat germ, her orange juice, her special laxative and her enriched cereal on the table before sitting down.
“Ainsley,” Marian said, “do you think I’m normal?”
“Normal isn’t the same as average,” Ainsley said cryptically. “Nobody is normal.” She opened a paperback book and began to read, underlining with a red pencil.
Ainsley wouldn’t have been much help anyway. A couple of months ago she would have said it was something wrong with Marian’s sex life, which would have been ridiculous. Or some traumatic experience in her childhood, like finding a centipede in the salad or like Len and the baby chicken; but as far as Marian knew there wasn’t anything like that in her past. She had never been a picky eater, she had been brought up to eat whatever was on the plate; she hadn’t even balked at such things as olives and asparagus and clams, which people say you have to
learn
to like. Lately though Ainsley had been talking a lot about Behaviourism. Behaviourists, she said, could cure diseases like alcoholism and homosexuality, if the patients really wanted to be cured, by showing them images associated with their sickness and then giving them a drug that stopped their breathing.
“They say whatever causes the behaviour, it’s the behaviour itself that becomes the problem,” Ainsley had told her. “Of course there are still a few hitches. If the cause is deep-rooted enough, they simply switch their addiction, like from alcohol to dope; or they commit suicide. And what I need is not a cure but a prevention. Even if they can cure him – if he
wants
to be cured,” she said darkly, “he’ll still blame me for causing it in the first place.”
But Behaviourism, Marian thought, wouldn’t be much use in her case. How could it work on any condition so negative? If she were a glutton it would be different; but they couldn’t very well show her images of
non
-eating and then stop her breathing.
She had gone over in her mind the other people she might talk to. The office virgins would be intrigued and would want to hear all about it, but she didn’t think they would be able to give her any constructive advice. Besides, if she told one they’d all know and soon everyone they knew would know: you could never tell how it might get back to Peter. Her other friends were elsewhere, in other towns, other cities, other countries, and writing it in a letter would make it too final. The lady down below … that was the bottom of the barrel; she would be like the relatives, she would be dismayed without understanding. They would all think it in bad taste for Marian to have anything wrong with what they would call her natural functions.
She decided to go and see Clara. It was a faint hope – surely Clara wouldn’t be able to offer any concrete suggestions – but at least she would listen. Marian telephoned her to make certain she would be in, and left work early.
She found Clara in the playpen with her second-youngest child. The youngest was asleep in its carrier on the dining-room table, and Arthur was nowhere to be seen.
“I’m so glad you came,” she said, “Joe’s down at the university. I’ll get out in a minute and make the tea. Elaine doesn’t like the playpen,” she explained, “and I’m helping her get used to it.”
“I’ll make the tea,” Marian said; she thought of Clara as a perpetual invalid and connected her with meals carried on trays. “You stay where you are.”
It took her some time to find everything but at last she had the tray arranged, with tea and lemon and some digestive biscuits she had discovered in the laundry basket, and she carried it in and set it on the floor. She handed Clara her cup over the bars.
“Well,” said Clara when Marian had settled herself on the rug, so as to be on the same level, “how’s everything? I bet you’re busy these days, getting ready and all.”
Looking at her sitting in there with the baby chewing on the buttons of her blouse, Marian found herself being envious of Clara for the first time in three years. Whatever was going to happen to Clara had already happened: she had turned into what she was going to be. It wasn’t that she wanted to change places with Clara; she only wanted to know what she was becoming, what direction she was taking, so she could be prepared. It was waking up in the morning one day and finding she had already changed without being aware of it that she dreaded.
“Clara,” she said, “do you think I’m normal?” Clara had known her a long time; her opinion would be worth something.
Clara considered. “Yes, I would say you’re normal,” she said, removing a button from Elaine’s mouth. “I’d say you’re almost abnormally normal, if you know what I mean. Why?”
Marian was reassured. That was what she herself would have said. But if she was so normal, why had this thing chosen to attack
her
?
“Something’s been happening to me lately,” she said. “I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Oh, what’s that? No, you little pig, that’s mummy’s.”
“I can’t eat certain things; I get this awful feeling.” She wondered whether Clara was paying as much attention as she ought to.
“I know what you mean,” said Clara, “I’ve always felt that way about liver.”
“But these are things I used to be able to eat. It isn’t that I don’t like the taste; it’s the whole …” It was difficult to explain.
“I expect it’s bridal nerves,” Clara said; “I threw up every morning for a week before my wedding. So did Joe,” she added. “You’ll get over it. Did you want to know anything about … sex?” she asked, with a delicacy Marian found ludicrous, coming from Clara.
“No, not really thanks,” she had said. Though she was sure Clara’s explanation wasn’t the right one she had felt better.
The record had begun to play from the middle again. She opened her eyes; from where she was lying she could see a green plastic aircraft carrier floating in the circle of light from Peter’s desk lamp. Peter had a new hobby, putting together model ships from model ship kits. He said he found it relaxing. She herself had helped with that one, reading the directions out loud and handing him the pieces.
She turned her head on the pillow and smiled at Peter. He smiled back at her, his eyes shining in the semi-darkness.
“Peter,” she said, “am I normal?”
He laughed and patted her on the rump. “I’d say from my limited experience that you’re marvellously normal, darling.” She sighed; she didn’t mean it that way.
“I could use another drink,” Peter said; it was his way of asking her to get him one. The ashtray was removed from her back. She turned over and sat up, pulling the top sheet off the bed and wrapping it around her. “And while you’re up, flip over the record, that’s a good girl.”
Marian turned the record, feeling naked in the open expanse of the living room in spite of the sheet and the venetian blinds; then she went into the kitchen and measured out Peter’s drink. She was hungry – she hadn’t had much for dinner – so she unboxed the cake she had bought that afternoon on the way back from Clara’s. The
day before had been Valentine’s Day and Peter had sent her a dozen roses. She had felt guilty, thinking she ought to have given him something but not knowing what. The cake wasn’t a real gift, only a token. It was a heart with pink icing and probably stale, but it was the shape that mattered.
She got out two of Peter’s plates and two forks and two paper napkins, then she cut into the cake. She was surprised to find that it was pink in the inside too. She put a forkful into her mouth and chewed it slowly; it felt spongy and cellular against her tongue, like the bursting of thousands of tiny lungs. She shuddered and spat the cake out into her napkin and scraped her plate into the garbage; after that she wiped her mouth off with the edge of the sheet.
She walked into the bedroom, carrying Peter’s drink and the plate. “I’ve brought you some cake,” she said. It would be a test, not of Peter but of herself. If he couldn’t eat his either then she was normal.
“Aren’t you nice.” He took the plate and the glass from her and set them on the floor.
“Aren’t you going to eat it?” For a moment she was hopeful.
“Later,” he said, “later.” He was unwinding her from the sheet. “You’re a bit chilly, darling; come here and be warmed up.” His mouth tasted of scotch and cigarettes. He pulled her down on top of him, the sheet rustling whitely around them, his clean familiar soap-smell enfolding her; in her ears the light cocktail music went on and on.
Later, Marian was resting on her stomach with an ashtray balanced in the hollow of her back; this time her eyes were open. She was watching Peter eat. “I really worked up an appetite,” he had said, grinning at her. He didn’t seem to notice anything odd about the cake: he hadn’t even winced.