Atwood Margaret - The Heart Goes Last

Under the shade of a sun umbrella, Charmaine sits in a lawn chair, knitting a tiny hat for what she hopes will soon be the next baby, and keeping an eye on Winnie. She hovers over the kid: there have been some unexplained baby disappearances in the news lately, and Charmaine is worried that they’re being stolen for their valuable, age-cancelling blood. Stan tells her it’s not likely to happen in their part of town, but Charmaine says you never know, and a stich in time saves nine.

She’s keeping an eye on Stan too, because she has this notion that he might ramble off and get involved in adventures, with or without predatory women. She never used to be so possessive of him, but ever since that thing they did to her head she’s been like this. A micro-manager of Stan. At first it was flattering, but some days he feels a little too examined.

Nor can he dump the fact that Charmaine was once willing to kill him, no matter how much she’d boo-hooed about it. The story – the story Jocelyn subsequently fed him – is that Charmaine always knew that scene was fake, and that’s what they both pretend to believe. But he doesn’t buy it; she’d been serious.

Not that he can use it against her. And he can’t use her fling with Max either, because thanks to Jocelyn, Charmaine has the counter-weapon, namely his fling with Jocelyn. He could say he was coerced into it, but that won’t wash: Charmaine would only say the same thing about herself. I couldn’t help it, and so on. And Charmaine knows about his pursuit of the imaginary Jasmine, which is more than humiliating for him: to be a rascal is one thing, it’s almost respectable, but to be an idiot is pathetic. They’re evenly balanced on the teeter-totter of cheating, so by mutual consent they never mention it.

On the other hand, his sex life has never been so good. Partly it’s whatever adjustment they made inside Charmaine’s brain, but also it has to be his repertoire of verbal turn-ons. They’re straight from the videos of Charmaine and Max that Jocelyn made him watch, and though it was hell at the time he’s grateful to her now, because all he needs to do is haul out one of those riffs – Turn over, kneel down, tell me how shameless you are – and Charmaine is toffee in his hands. She’ll do it all, she’ll say it all; she’s everything he once longed for in the imaginary Jasmine, and more. True, the routine has become slightly predictable, but it would be surly to complain. Like complaining that the food’s too delicious. What kind of a complaint is that?

Gift

Charmaine is basking like a seal. Or a like whale. Or a like a hippo. Like something that basks, anyway. Even her knitting is going better than it used to, now that she knows what it’s for. She knitted a bear for Winnie, though a green one not blue, and she embroidered the eyes to avoid a choking hazard. And this hat will be darling once she’s finished.

What a beautiful day! But all the days are beautiful. Thank heavens she had that adjustment to her brain, because she couldn’t ask for more out of life, she appreciates things so much more than she used to do, even when something goes wrong, such as the drain water spitting up into the dryer like it did yesterday, with a full load in there too. That would once have taken her mood way down. But after the plumber came and fixed it, she put that load through again with an extra dose of lavender-scented fabric softener, and it was just like new.

And that’s good, because her white cotton top with the peasant frill was in that load, and it’s what she wants to wear to the Positron Survivors’ Reunion. She’ll see Sandi and Veronica there, and catch up on their news. They’re both doing well, according to their online pages: Sandi’s in hairweaving, she has a real knack for it, and Veronica’s with a speaker’s agency and goes around talking about how to work with your sexual orientation if it doesn’t happen to fit in with society’s norms. Just last week she spoke to a gathering of shoe fetishists, and instead of giving her a bouquet or a plaque or anything they gave her the cutest pair of blue shoes, with peek-a-boo toes and ginormous high heels. Charmaine can’t wear shoes like that any more, they give her pain in the Achilles tendon. Maybe she’s getting middle-aged.

Max and Aurora might be there as well. She hasn’t kept up with them. There’s still a little needle of hurt buried somewhere in the cushions of warm wishes she takes care to send their way whenever she thinks about them. Or thinks about Max. She still does think about Max, from time to time. In that way. Which is odd, because those feelings about Max were supposed to have been wiped.

What she tries not to think about is the work she used to do, back in her other life at Positron Prison, before her shadows got erased. If you do bad things for reasons you’ve been told are good, does it make you a bad person? Thinking too much about that could really spoil everything, which would be selfish. So she tries to put that side of things right out of her mind.

Stan turns the hedge-trimmer off. He raises the visor he has to wear because of the flying cactus prickles, takes off his leather gloves, wipes his forehead.“Stan, honey, want a beer?” Charmaine calls. She’s not drinking herself, it wouldn’t be good for Winnie.

“In a minute,” he says. “Just got a foot more to do.” Charmaine thinks maybe they should take the cactus hedge out and put in a fence of woven sticks, but Stan didn’t go for that idea. He says why fix it if it’s not broke? Actually he said, Not fucking broke and told her to quit nagging him about it. She wasn’t nagging, but she let it rest. Let him keep on believing anything he wants to believe, because when he’s grumpy he won’t have sex, and the sex is amazing, way better than before; how can it not be, now that her brain’s been reborn?

Stan can still get a little impatient with her in daily life. Even though everything’s so wonderful. It’s the pressures of his work. Charmaine will get some work too, in a while, maybe part-time because it’s good to get some validation from the real world.

A dark hybrid car’s pulling up in front of the house. Jocelyn gets out of it. She seems to be alone.

Stan lowers his visor, switches on his trimmer, turns his back. So that’s all right, thinks Charmaine, it means he’s not interested in Jocelyn, despite the way she’s flashing her legs.

“Jocelyn!” says Charmaine as Joceyln walks across the AstroTurf toward her. “What a surprise! It’s so good to see you!” She sets down her knitting, makes flailing motions in the lawn chair.

Jocelyn’s wearing a fashionable dark grey linen sheath, white Cuban-heeled sandals, a floppy-brimmed sunhat. “Don’t get up,” she says. “Cute baby.” You can see she isn’t much interested; if she was, she would’ve picked Winnie up and gone Ooochie-kootchie or some normal thing like that. But then Winnie might spit up on Jocelyn’s expensive outfit, and that would not improve their relationship. Not that they have one: Charmaine hasn’t seen Jocelyn since the wedding. She and Conor are in Washington, doing something top, top secret. Or that’s the version Stan got from Conor.

“Can I get you a cold drink?” Charmaine says dutifully.

“I can’t stay a minute,” Jocelyn says. “I just came by to deliver your wedding gift.”

“Oh,” says Charmaine hopefully. “How great!” But what is it? Jocelyn isn’t carrying a package. Maybe it’s a cheque, and that would be nice too but not so tasteful. A personally chosen item is better, in Charmaine’s opinion. Though not always.

“It’s not an object,” Jocelyn says. Charmaine has a memory flash of Jocelyn’s head when it was in a box. She used to think that head could read her thoughts, and here was Jocelyn doing that very same thing, only not in a box.