Margaret Atwood - The Edible Woman

“So you aren’t doing anything then,” I said, establishing the fact.

“Well, no,” said Ainsley, “unless something comes along.”

“Then why don’t you come with me to Clara’s for dinner?” I was expecting a protest, but she accepted calmly. I arranged to meet her at the subway station.

I left the desk at five and headed for the cool pink Ladies’ Room. I wanted a few minutes of isolation to prepare myself for coping before I set out for Clara’s. But Emmy, Lucy and Millie were all there, combing their yellow hair and retouching their makeup. Their six eyes glittered in the mirrors.

“Going out tonight, Marian?” Lucy asked, too casually. She shared my telephone line and naturally knew about Peter.

“Yes,” I said, without volunteering information. Their wistful curiosity made me nervous.

I walked down towards the subway station along the late-afternoon sidewalk through a thick golden haze of heat and dust. It was almost like moving underwater. From a distance I saw Ainsley shimmering beside a telephone pole, and when I had reached her she turned and we joined the lines of office workers who were tunnelling down the stairs into the cool underground caverns below. By quick manoeuvring we got seats, though on the opposite sides of the car, and I sat reading the advertisements as well as I could through the screen of lurching bodies. When we got off again and went out through the pastel corridors the air felt less humid.

Clara’s house was a few blocks further north. We walked in silence; I thought about mentioning the Pension Plan, but decided not to. Ainsley wouldn’t understand why I found it disturbing: she’d see no reason why I couldn’t leave my job and get another one, and why this wouldn’t be a final solution. Then I thought about Peter and what had happened to him; Ainsley, however, would only be amused if I told her. Finally I asked her if she was feeling better.

“Don’t be so concerned, Marian,” she said, “you make me feel like an invalid.”

I was hurt and didn’t answer.

We were going uphill at a slight angle. The city slopes upwards from the lake in a series of gentle undulations, though at any given point it seems flat. This accounted for the cooler air. It was quieter here too; I thought Clara was lucky, especially in her condition, to be living so far away from the heat and noise of downtown. Though she herself thought of it as a kind of exile: they had started out in an apartment near the university, but the need for space had forced them further north, although they had not yet reached the real suburbia of modern bungalows and station wagons. The street itself was old but not as attractive as our street: the houses were duplexes, long and narrow, with wooden porches and thin back gardens.

“Christ it’s hot,” Ainsley said as we turned up the walk that led to Clara’s house. The grass on the doormat-sized lawn had not been cut for some time. On the steps lay a neatly decapitated doll and inside the baby carriage was a large teddy bear with the stuffing coming out. I knocked, and after several minutes Joe appeared behind the screen door, harried and uncombed, doing up the buttons on his shirt.

“Hi Joe,” I said, “here we are. How’s Clara feeling?”

“Hi, come on through,” he said, stepping aside to let us past. “Clara’s out back.”

We walked the length of the house, which was arranged in the way such houses usually are – living room in front, then dining room with doors that can be slid shut, then kitchen – stepping over some of the scattered obstacles and around the others. We negotiated the stairs of the back porch, which were overgrown with empty bottles of all kinds, beer bottles, milk bottles, wine and scotch bottles, and baby bottles, and found Clara in the garden, sitting in a round wicker basket-chair with metal legs. She had her feet up on another chair and was holding her latest baby somewhere in the vicinity of what had once been her lap. Clara’s body is so thin that her pregnancies are always bulgingly obvious, and now in her seventh month she looked like a boa constrictor that has swallowed a watermelon. Her head, with its aureole of pale hair, was made to seem smaller and even more fragile by the contrast.

“Oh hi,” she said wearily as we came down the back steps. “Hello Ainsley, nice to see you again. Christ it’s hot.”

We agreed, and sat down on the grass near her, since there were no chairs. Ainsley and I took off our shoes; Clara was already barefoot. We found it difficult to talk: everyone’s attention was necessarily focussed on the baby, which was whimpering, and for some time it was the only person who said anything.

When she telephoned Clara had seemed to be calling me to some sort of rescue, but I felt now that there was nothing much I could do, and nothing she had even expected me to do. I was to be only a witness, or perhaps a kind of blotter, my mere physical presence absorbing a little of the boredom.

The baby had ceased to whine and was now gurgling. Ainsley was plucking bits of grass.

“Marian,” Clara said at last, “could you take Elaine for a while? She doesn’t like going on the ground and my arms are just about falling off.”

“I’ll take her,” said Ainsley unexpectedly.

Clara pried the baby away from her body and transferred it to Ainsley, saying “Come on, you little leech. I sometimes think she’s all covered with suckers, like an octopus.” She lay back in her chair and closed her eyes, looking like a strange vegetable growth, a bulbous tuber that had sent out four thin white roots and a tiny pale-yellow flower. A cicada was singing in a tree nearby, its monotonous vibration like a hot needle of sunlight between the ears.

Ainsley held the baby awkwardly, gazing with curiosity into its face. I thought how closely the two faces resembled each other. The baby stared back up with eyes as round and blue as Ainsley’s own; the pink mouth was drooling slightly.

Clara raised her head and opened her eyes. “Is there anything I can get you?” she asked, remembering she was the hostess.

“Oh no, we’re fine,” I said hastily, alarmed by the image of her struggling up out of the chair. “Is there anything I can get you?” I would have felt better doing something positive.

“Joe will come out soon,” she said as if explaining. “Well, talk to me. What’s new?”

“Nothing much,” I said. I sat trying to think of things that would entertain her, but anything I could mention, the office or places I had been or the furnishings of the apartment, would only remind Clara of her own inertia, her lack of room and time, her days made claustrophobic with small necessary details.

“Are you still going out with that nice boy? The good-looking one. What’s-his-name. I remember he came by once to get you.”

“You mean Peter?”

“Yes she is,” said Ainsley, with a hint of disapproval. “He’s monopolized her.” She was sitting cross-legged, and now she put the baby down in her lap so she could light a cigarette.

“That sounds hopeful,” Clara said gloomily. “By the way, guess who’s back in town? Len Slank. He called up the other day.”

“Oh really? When did he get in?” I was annoyed that he hadn’t called me too.

“About a week ago, he said. He said he’d tried to phone you but couldn’t get hold of your number.”

“He might have tried Information,” I said drily. “But I’d love to see him. How did he seem? How long is he staying?”

“Who is he?” Ainsley asked.

“Oh, no one you’d be interested in,” I said quickly. I couldn’t think of two people who would be worse for each other. “He’s just an old friend of ours from college.”

“He went to England and got into television,” said Clara. “I’m not just sure what he does. A nice type though, but he’s horrible with women, sort of a seducer of young girls. He says anything over seventeen is too old.”