Margaret Atwood - The Edible Woman

I looked at her, feeling a wave of embarrassed pity sweep over me; what could I do? Perhaps I could offer to come over some day and clean up the house. Clara simply had no practicality, she wasn’t able to control the more mundane aspects of life, like money or getting to lectures on time. When we lived in residence together she used to become hopelessly entangled in her room at intervals, unable to find matching shoes or enough clean clothes to wear, and I would have to dig her out of the junk pile she had allowed to accumulate around her. Her messiness wasn’t actively creative like Ainsley’s, who could devastate a room in five minutes if she was feeling chaotic; it was passive. She simply stood helpless while the tide of dirt rose round her, unable to stop it or evade it. The babies were like that too; her own body seemed somehow beyond her, going its own way without reference to any directions of hers. I studied the pattern of bright flowers on the maternity smock she was wearing; the stylized petals and tendrils moved with her breathing, as though they were coming alive.

We left early, after Arthur had been carried off to bed screaming after what Joe called “an accident” behind the living-room door.

“It was no accident,” Clara remarked, opening her eyes. “He just loves peeing behind doors. I wonder what it is. He’s going to be secretive when he grows up, an undercover agent or a diplomat or something. The furtive little bastard.”

Joe saw us to the door, a pile of dirty laundry in his arms. “You must come and see us again soon,” he said, “Clara has so few people she can really talk to.”

We walked down towards the subway in the semi-dusk, through the sound of crickets and muffled television sets (in some of the houses we could see them flickering blue through the open windows) and a smell of warm tar. My skin felt stifled, as though I was enclosed in a layer of moist dough. I was afraid Ainsley hadn’t enjoyed herself: her silence was negative.

“Dinner wasn’t bad,” I said, wanting to be loyal to Clara, who was after all an older friend than Ainsley; “Joe’s turning into quite a good cook.”

“How can she stand it?” Ainsley said with more vehemence than usual. “She just lies there and that man does all the work! She lets herself be treated like a thing !”

“Well, she is seven months pregnant,” I said. “And she’s never been well.”

“ She’s not well!” Ainsley said indignantly. “She’s flourishing; it’s him that’s not well. He’s aged even since I’ve known him and that’s less than four months. She’s draining all his energy.”

“What do you suggest?” I said. I was annoyed with Ainsley: she couldn’t see Clara’s position.

“Well, she should do something; if only a token gesture. She never finished her degree, did she? Wouldn’t this be a perfect time for her to work on it? Lots of pregnant women finish their degrees.”

I remembered poor Clara’s resolutions after the first baby: she had thought of it as only a temporary absence. After the second she had wailed, “I don’t know what we’re doing wrong! I always try to be so careful.” She had always been against the pill – she thought it might change her personality – but gradually she had become less adamant. She had read a French novel (in translation) and a book about archaeological expeditions in Peru and had talked about night school. Lately she had taken to making bitter remarks about being “just a housewife.” “But Ainsley,” I said, “you’re always saying that a degree is no real indication of anything.”

“Of course the degree in itself isn’t,” Ainsley said, “it’s what it stands for. She should get organized.”

When we were back at the apartment I thought of Len, and decided it wasn’t too late to call him. He was in, and after we’d exchanged greetings I told him I would love to see him.

“Great,” he said, “when and where? Make it some place cool. I didn’t remember it was so bloody hot in the summers over here.”

“Then you shouldn’t have come back,” I said, hinting that I knew why he had and giving him an opening.

“It was safer,” he said with a touch of smugness. “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.” He had acquired a slight English accent. “By the way, Clara tells me you’ve got a new roommate.”

“She isn’t your type,” I said. Ainsley had gone into the living room and was sitting on the chesterfield with her back to me.

“Oh, you mean too old, like you, eh?” My being too old was one of his jokes.

I laughed. “Let’s say tomorrow night,” I said. It had suddenly struck me that Len would be a perfect distraction for Peter. “About eight-thirty at the Park Plaza. I’ll bring a friend along to meet you.”

“Aha,” said Len, “this fellow Clara told me about. Not serious, are you?”

“Oh no, not at all,” I said to reassure him.

When I had hung up Ainsley said, “Was that Len Slank you were talking to?”

I said yes.

“What does he look like?” she asked casually.

I couldn’t refuse to tell her. “Oh, sort of ordinary. I don’t think you’d find him attractive. He has blond curly hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Why?”

“I just wondered.” She got up and went into the kitchen. “Want a drink?” she called.

“No thanks,” I said, “but you could bring me a glass of water.” I moved into the living room and went to the window seat where there was a breeze.

She came back in with a scotch on the rocks for herself and handed me my glass of water. Then she sat down on the floor. “Marian,” she said, “I have something I need to tell you.”

Her voice was so serious that I was immediately worried. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m going to have a baby,” she said quietly.

I took a quick drink of water. I couldn’t imagine Ainsley making a miscalculation like that. “I don’t believe you.”

She laughed. “Oh, I don’t mean I’m already pregnant. I mean I’m going to get pregnant.”

I was relieved, but puzzled. “You mean you’re going to get married?” I asked, thinking of Trigger’s misfortune. I tried to guess which of them Ainsley could be interested in, without success; ever since I’d known her she had been decidedly anti-marriage.

“I knew you’d say that,” she said with amused contempt. “No, I’m not going to get married. That’s what’s wrong with most children, they have too many parents. You can’t say the sort of household Clara and Joe are running is an ideal situation for a child. Think of how confused their mother-image and their father-image will be; they’re riddled with complexes already. And it’s mostly because of the father.”

“But Joe is marvellous!” I cried. “He does just about everything for her! Where would Clara be without him?”

“Precisely,” said Ainsley. “She would have to cope by herself. And she would cope, and their total upbringing would be much more consistent. The thing that ruins families these days is the husbands. Have you noticed she isn’t even breast-feeding the baby?”

“But it’s got teeth,” I protested. “Most people wean them when they get teeth.”

“Nonsense,” Ainsley said darkly, “I bet Joe put her up to it. In South America they breast-feed them much longer than that. North American men hate watching the basic mother-child unit functioning naturally, it makes them feel not needed. This way Joe can give it the bottle just as easily. Any woman left to her own devices would automatically breast-feed as long as possible: I’m certainly going to.”

It seemed to me that the discussion had got off the track: we were talking theory about a practical matter. I tried a personal attack: “Ainsley, you don’t know anything at all about babies. You don’t even like them much, I’ve heard you say they’re too dirty and noisy.”