Margaret Atwood - Stone Mattress - Nine Tales

She tries to summon them. Come out , she commands silently, fixing what would once have been her gaze in the direction of the artificial flower arrangement in the centre of the table — top quality, says Tobias, you can hardly tell the difference. It’s yellow, which is about all she can say for it.

Nothing happens. No manikins appear. She can control neither their appearances nor their disappearances; which seems unfair, since they’re products of nobody’s brain but hers.

The clam chowder is succeeded by a ground beef casserole with mushrooms, followed in turn by rice pudding with raisins. Wilma concentrates on eating: she must locate the plate out of the corners of her eyes, she must direct the fork as if it’s a steam shovel: she must approach, swivel, acquire payload, lift. This takes effort. At long last the cookie plate descends, shortbread and bars as usual. There’s a brief glimpse of seven or eight ladies in off-white frilly petticoats, a can-can flash of their silk-stockinged legs, but they morph back into shortbread cookies almost immediately.

“What’s happening outside?” she says into a gap left in the web of compliments that’s been spinning itself among the others. “At the main gate?”

“Oh,” says Noreen gaily, “we were trying to forget all that!”

“Yes,” says Jo-Anne. “It’s too depressing. We’re living for the moment, aren’t we, Tobias?”

“Wine, women, and song!” Noreen announces. “Bring on the belly dancers!” Both of them cackle.

Surprisingly, Tobias does not laugh. Instead he takes Wilma’s hand; she feels his dry, warm, boney fingers enclosing hers. “More are gathering. The situation is more grave than we at first apprehended, dear lady,” he says. “It would be unwise to underestimate it.”

“Oh, we weren’t underestimating it,” says Jo-Anne, striving to keep her conversational soap bubbles in the air. “We were just ignoring it!”

“Ignorance is bliss!” chirps Noreen; but they’re no longer cutting any ice with Tobias. He’s dumped his Scarlet Pimpernel foppish-aristocrat frippery and has swung into his Man of Action mode.

“We must expect the worst,” he says. “They will not catch us napping. Now, dear lady, I will escort you home.”

She breathes out with relief: he’s come back to her. He’ll take her as far as the door of her apartment; he does this every evening, faithful as clockwork. What has she been afraid of? That he’d leave her to fumble her way ignominiously, deserted in full view of all, and scamper off into the shrubbery with Noreen and Jo-Anne to commit threefold sexual acts with them in a gazebo? No chance of that: the security men would scoop them up in no time flat and frog-march them into the Advanced Living wing. They patrol the grounds at night, with flashlights and beagles.

“Are we ready?” Tobias asks her. Wilma’s heart warms to him. We . So much for Jo-Anne and Noreen, who are, once again, merely they . She leans on him as he takes her elbow, and together they make what she’s free to picture as a dignified exit.

“But what is the worst?” she says to him in the elevator. “And how can we prepare for it? You don’t think they’ll burn us down! Not here! The police would stop them.”

“We cannot count on the police,” says Tobias. “Not any more.”

Wilma is about to protest — But they have to protect us, it’s their job! — but she stops herself. If the police were all that concerned, they would have acted by now. They’re holding back.

“These people will be cautious, at first,” says Tobias. “They will proceed by small steps. We still have a little time. You must not worry, you must sleep well, to build up your strength. I have my preparations to make. I will not fail.”

It’s strange how reassuring she finds this snippet of melodrama: Tobias taking charge, having a deep plan, outfoxing Fate. He’s only a feeble old man with arthritis, she tells herself. But she’s reassured and soothed all the same.

Outside her apartment they exchange their standard peck on the cheek, and Wilma listens while he limps away down the hall. Is this regret she’s feeling? Is this a fluttering of ancient warmth? Does she really want him to enfold her in his stringy arms, make his way in towards her skin through the Velcro and zippers, attempt some ghostly, creaky, arthropod-like reprise of an act he must have committed effortlessly hundreds, indeed thousands of times in the past? No. It would be too painful for her, the silent comparisons that would be going on: the luscious, chocolate-sampling mistresses, the divine breasts, the marble thighs. Then only her.

You believed you could transcend the body as you aged, she tells herself. You believed you could rise above it, to a serene, non-physical realm. But it’s only through ecstasy you can do that, and ecstasy is achieved through the body itself. Without the bone and sinew of wings, no flight. Without that ecstasy you can only be dragged further down by the body, into its machinery. Its rusting, creaking, vengeful, brute machinery.

When Tobias is out of earshot she closes the door and embarks on her bedtime routine. Shoes replaced by slippers: best to take that slowly. Then the clothes must come off, one Velcro tab after another, and must be arranged on hangers, more or less, and placed in the closet. Underwear into the laundry hamper, and none too soon: Katia will deal with that tomorrow. Peeing accomplished with not too much effort, toilet flushed. Vitamin supplements and other pills washed down with ample water, because having them dissolve in the esophagus is unpleasant. Death by choking avoided.

She also avoids falling down in the shower. She takes hold of the grips and doesn’t overuse the slippery shower gel. Drying is best done sitting down: many have come to grief attempting to dry their own feet while standing up. She makes a mental note to call Services for an appointment at the salon to get her toenails trimmed, which is another thing she can no longer do herself.

Her nightgown, clean and folded, has been placed ready on her bed by silent hands at work behind the scenes during the dinner hour, and the bed itself has been turned down. There’s always a chocolate on the pillow. She gropes for it and finds it, and peels off the foil paper, and eats the chocolate greedily. It’s the details that differentiate Ambrosia Manor from its rivals, said the brochure. Cherish yourself. You deserve it.

Next morning Tobias is late for breakfast. She senses this lateness, then confirms it with the talking clock in the kitchen, another gift from Alyson: you hit the button — if you can find the button — and it tells you the time in the voice of a condescending grade two arithmetic teacher. “It is eight thirty-two. Eight thirty-two.” Then it’s eight thirty-three, then eight thirty-four, and with every minute Wilma can feel her blood pressure shooting up. Maybe something has happened to him? A stroke, a heart attack? Such things occur in Ambrosia Manor every week: a high net worth is no defence against them.

Finally, here he is. “There is news,” he tells her, almost before he’s inside the door. “I have been to the Dawn Yoga Class.”

Wilma laughs. She can’t help herself. It’s the idea of Tobias doing yoga, or even being in the same room with yoga. What had he chosen to wear for this event? Tobias and sweatpants don’t compute. “I understand your mirth, dear lady,” says Tobias. “This yoga business is not what I would choose, given other pathways. But I have made a sacrifice of myself in the interests of obtaining information. In any case there was no class, because there was no instructor. So the ladies and I — we could chat.”

Wilma sobers up. “Why wasn’t there any instructor?” she asks.