Atwood Margaret - The Heart Goes Last

“It’s a piece of information, about you.”

“About me?” Charmaine says, dismayed. Is this another trick, is it some blackmail thing like those videos of her and Max? But those were supposed to have been destroyed.

“You can choose,” says Jocelyn. “To hear it or not. If you hear it, you’ll be more free but less secure. If you don’t hear it, you’ll be more secure, but less free.” She crosses her arms, waits.

Charmaine has to think. How could she be more free? She’s already free enough. And she’s already secure, as long as Stan has his job and she has Stan. But she knows herself well enough to realize that if Jocelyn goes away without telling her, she’ll always be curious about what it was.

“Okay, tell me,” she says.

“Simply this,” says Jocelyn. “You never had that operation. That brain adjustment.”

“That can’t be true,” says Charmaine flatly. “It can’t be true! There’s been such a difference!”

“The human mind is infinitely suggestible,” says Jocelyn.

“But. But now I love Stan so much,” says Charmaine. “I have to love him, because of that thing they did! It’s like an ant, or something. It’s like a baby duck! That’s what they said!”

“Maybe you loved Stan anyway,” says Jocelyn. “Maybe you just needed some help with it.”

“This isn’t fair,” says Charmaine. “Everything was all settled!”

“Nothing is ever settled,” says Jocelyn. “Every day is different. Isn’t it better to do something because you’ve decided to? Rather than because you have to.”

“No, it isn’t,” says Charmaine. “Love isn’t like that. With love, you can’t stop yourself.” She wants the helplessness, she wants …

“You prefer compulsion? Gun to the head, so to speak?” says Jocelyn, smiling. “You want your decisions taken away from you so you won’t be responsible for your own actions? That can be seductive, as you know.”

“No, not exactly, but …” It will take Charmaine a while to think this through. There’s an open door, and standing just on the other side of it is Max. Not Max as such, because his brain really has been altered, he’s bonded to Aurora now and he’ll be devoted to her forever, not that Charmaine begrudges Aurora that, because she’s suffered so much in her previous life, and doesn’t she deserve a little out-of-your-mind ecstasy, like …

Never mind like what. Better not to dwell on that in too much detail. The past is the past.

So not Max, but a shadow of Max. A Max-like person. Someone who isn’t Stan, waiting for her in the future. That would be so destructive! Why is she even considering it? Maybe she ought to see a therapist or something. “Of course not!” she says. “But I need …”

“Take it or leave it,” says Jocelyn. “I’m only the messenger. As they say in court, you’re free to go. The world is all before you, where to choose.”

“How do you mean?” says Charmaine.

My first thanks must go to Amy Grace Loyd, who was my editor at the online site Byliner, which published a first episode of this story. This later gave rise to three more episodes, known collectively as “Positron,” which appeared on Byliner over the course of 2012–2013. Amy was also kind enough to read The Heart Goes Last and to offer some suggestions. Who better than she, who has been well acquainted with the story from the beginning?

My gratitude to my editors: Ellen Seligman of McClelland & Stewart, Penguin Random House (Canada); Nan Talese of Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, Penguin Random House (U.S.A.); and Alexandra Pringle of Bloomsbury (U.K.). And to copy editor Heather Sangster of strongfinish.ca.

Thanks also to my first readers: Jess Atwood Gibson, who always does a thorough reading; Phoebe Larmore, my North American agent; and my U.K. agents, Vivienne Schuster and Karolina Sutton of Curtis Brown.

Also to Betsy Robbins and Sophie Baker of Curtis Brown, who handle foreign rights. Thanks also to Ron Bernstein of ICM. Also to LuAnn Walther of Anchor; Lennie Goodings of Virago; and to my many agents and publishers around the world. And to Alison Rich, Ashley Dunn, Madeleine Feeny, Zoe Hood, and Judy Jacobs.

Thanks to my office assistant, Suzanna Porter; and to Penny Kavanaugh; and to V.J. Bauer, who designed my website at margaretatwood.ca. Also to Sheldon Shoib and Mike Stoyan. And to Michael Bradley and Sarah Cooper, Coleen Quinn and Xiaolan Zhao, and to Evelyn Heskin; and to Terry Carman and the Shock Doctors, for keeping the lights on. And to the Book Hive bookstore in Norwich, England, for reasons known to themselves. And to the Book Hive bookstore in Norwich, England, for reasons known to themselves. Finally, my special thanks to Graeme Gibson, who, though always an inspiration, did not inspire any of the characters in this book. And that’s a good thing.

Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in thirty-five countries, is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, her novels include Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace , which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; Oryx and Crake, short-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize; The Year of the Flood ; and her most recent, MaddAddam. She is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award, and lives in Toronto with the writer Graeme Gibson.