Margaret Atwood - The Edible Woman

She heard his slurred answer: “NO, dammit! You’ll never get me…”

“Alright then.” Before Marian realized what Ainsley was doing she had raised her hand and brought it down, hard, smashing her glass against the floor. Marian jumped back.

At the sound of shattering glass the conversation stopped as though its plug had been pulled out, and Ainsley said into the silence that was filled, incongruously, only by the soft sighing of violins, “Len and I have a marvellous announcement to make.” She hesitated for effect, her eyes glittering. “We’re going to have a baby.” Her voice was bland. Oh dear, Marian thought, she’s trying to force the issue.

There were a few audible gasps from the sofa side of the room. Somebody sniggered, and one of the soap-men said, “Atta boy Len, whoever you are.” Marian could see Len’s face now. The white surface had developed a random scattering of red blotches; the underlip was quivering.

“You rotten bitch!” he said thickly.

There was a pause. One of the soap-wives began a rapid conversation about something else, but trailed off quickly. Marian watched Len: she thought he was going to hit Ainsley, but instead he smiled, showing his teeth. He turned to the listening multitudes.

“That’s right folks,” he said, “and we’re going to have the christening right now, in the midst of this friendly little gathering. Baptism in utero. I hereby name it after me.” He shot out one hand and grasped Ainsley’s shoulder, lifted his beer stein, and poured its contents slowly and thoroughly over her head.

The soap-wives all gave delighted screams; the soap-men bellowed “Hey!” As the last of the suds were descending, Peter came charging in from the bedroom, jamming a flashbulb into his camera. “Hold it!” he shouted, and shot. “Great! That’ll be a great one! Hey, this party’s really getting off the ground!”

Several people gave him annoyed glances, but most paid no attention. Everyone was moving and talking at once; in the background the violins still played, saccharine sweet. Ainsley was standing there, drenched, a puddle of foam and beer forming at her feet on the hardwood floor. Her face contorted: in a minute she would have decided whether it would be worth the effort to cry. Len had let go of her. His head drooped; he mumbled something inaudible. He looked as though he had only an imperfect idea of what he had just done and no idea at all of what he was going to do next.

Ainsley turned and started to walk towards the bathroom. Several of the soap-wives trotted forward, uttering throaty cooing noises, eager to share the spotlight by helping; but someone was there before them. It was Fischer Smythe. He was pulling his woolly turtleneck sweater over his head, exposing a muscular torso covered with quantities of tufted black fur.

“Allow me,” he said to her, “we wouldn’t want you to catch a chill, would we? Not in your condition.” He began to dry her off with his sweater. His eyes were damp with solicitude.

Ainsley’s hair had come down and was lying in dripping strands over her shoulders. She smiled up at him through the beer or tears beading her eyelashes. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said.

“I think I already know who you are,” he said, patting her belly tenderly with one of his striped sleeves, his voice heavy with symbolic meaning.

It was later. The party, miraculously, was still going on, having somehow closed itself smoothly together over the rent made in it earlier by Ainsley and Len. Someone had cleaned the broken glass and beer off the floor, and in the living room now the currents of talk and music and drink were flowing again as though nothing had happened.

The kitchen however was a scene of devastation. It looked as though it had been hit by a flash-flood. Marian was scrabbling through the debris, trying to locate a clean glass; she had set her own down out there somewhere, she couldn’t remember where, and she wanted another drink.

There weren’t any more clean glasses. She picked up a used one, swished it under the tap, slowly and carefully poured herself another shot of scotch. She felt serene, a floating sensation, like lying on one’s back in a pond. She went to the doorway and leaned in it, gazing out over the room.

“I’m coping! I’m coping!” she said to herself. The fact amazed her somewhat, but it pleased her immensely. They were all there, all of them (except, she noted as she scanned, Ainsley and Fischer, and oh yes Len – she wondered where they had gone), doing whatever people did at parties; and she was doing it, too. They were sustaining her, she could float quite watertight, buoyed up by the feeling that she was one of them. She had a warm affection for them all, for their distinct shapes and faces that she could see now so much more clearly than usual, as though they were being illuminated by a hidden floodlight. She even liked the soap-wives and Trevor gesturing with one of his hands; and those people from the office, Millie, laughing over there in her shining light-blue dress, even Emmy, moving unconscious of her frazzled slip-edge… Peter was among them too; he was still carrying his camera and every now and then he would raise it to take a picture. He reminded her of the home-movie ads, the father of the family using up rolls and rolls of film on just such everyday ordinary things, what subjects could be better: people laughing, lifting glasses, children at birthday parties…

So that’s what was in there all the time, she thought happily: this is what he’s turning into. The real Peter, the one underneath, was nothing surprising or frightening, only this bungalow-and-double-bed man, this charcoal-cooking-in-the-backyard man. This home-movie man. And I called him out, she thought, I evoked him. She swallowed some of her scotch.

It had been a long search. She retraced through time the corridors and rooms, long corridors, large rooms. Everything seemed to be slowing down.

If that’s who Peter really is, she thought, walking along one of the corridors, will he have a pot-belly at forty-five? Will he dress sloppily on Saturdays, in wrinkled blue jeans for his workshop in the cellar? The image was reassuring: he would have hobbies, he would be comfortable, he would be normal.

She opened a door to the right and went in. There was Peter, forty-five and balding but still recognizable as Peter, standing in bright sunlight beside a barbecue with a long fork in his hand. He was wearing a white chef’s apron. She looked carefully for herself in the garden, but she wasn’t there and the discovery chilled her.

No, she thought, this has to be the wrong room. It can’t be the last one. And now she could see there was another door, in the hedge at the other side of the garden. She walked across the lawn, passing behind the unmoving figure, which she could see now held a large cleaver in the other hand, pushed open the door and went through.

She was back in Peter’s living room with the people and the noise, leaning against the door frame holding her drink. Except that the people seemed even clearer now, more sharply focussed, further away, and they were moving faster and faster, they were all going home, a file of soap-women emerged from the bedroom, coats on, they teetered jerkily out the door trailing husbands, chirping goodnights, and who was that tiny two-dimensional small figure in a red dress, posed like a paper woman in a mail-order catalogue, turning and smiling, fluttering in the white empty space… This couldn’t be it; there had to be something more. She ran for the next door, yanked it open.

Peter was there, dressed in his dark opulent winter suit. He had a camera in his hand; but now she saw what it really was. There were no more doors and when she felt behind her for the doorknob, afraid to take her eyes off him, he raised the camera and aimed it at her; his mouth opened in a snarl of teeth. There was a blinding flash of light.