Margaret Atwood - Hag-Seed

His lost Miranda, three years old, on her swing, up in the sky, in her silver frame. Laughing with joy. That did preserve me.

“No,” Felix almost shouts. “No, I don’t have anything suitable! But thank you all the same. Excuse me.” They’re not doing this to get at him. They can’t possibly know anything about him, him and his remorse, his self-castigation, his endless grief.

Half blinded, choking, he blunders down to the fifties-period demonstration cell and collapses onto a bottom bunk. Scratchy gray blankets. Arms crossed on knees, head bowed. Lost at sea, drifting here, drifting there. In a rotten carcass the very rats have quit.

Saturday, February 9, 2013.

Moods pass. Things look up. Bustling around is always a help.

On the weekend, Felix makes a trip into Toronto in search of costumes and props. He goes on the train, leaving his car in the Makeshiweg station lot because he can’t face the traffic and the ordeal of trying to park. He’s no longer used to urban crowds.

The guys have made their lists of what they think is needed. He hasn’t promised them certainty, but he’s vowed to do his best for them. Anne-Marie has added the three Disney Princess dolls. She would have ordered them online, she said, but her credit cards are maxed out.

He gets off the train at Union Station and begins his quest. Anne-Marie, after a search on her smartphone, has made him a map, with likely locations marked on it.

His first stop is a toy store a few subway stops away. He can contemplate these kinds of stores now: Miranda is no longer at the age for toys. He walks past the front window, walks past again: it’s only plastic in there, it’s only cardboard. Surely he can risk going in.

He takes a deep breath, plunges across the threshold into that world of damaged wishes, forlorn hopes. So bright, so shining, so out of reach for him. There’s a fluttering in his chest, but he holds firm.

Once safely inside, he heads for the beach-toy section: anything that might float is likely to be there. As he ponders the many primary-colored items on offer, a salesgirl comes up to him. “May I help you?” she says.

“Thank you,” says Felix. “I’d like two boats. One more like a rowboat, the other maybe bigger, more like a sailboat.” No, he doesn’t want a model kit. Something that can actually handle water, like a bath toy, or—

“Ah,” says the girl. “Grandchildren?”

“Not exactly,” says Felix. “I’m more like an uncle.” Together they select the boats. The small one can be covered with patches, the big one will look good in the tempest.

“Anything else?” the girl asks. “Can I interest you in some flotation devices for the little ones? Water wings — they’re decorated like butterflies, cute for girls — and the noodles are very popular. Swim noodles,” she adds, seeing his blank look.

“Actually,” says Felix, “do you have any, ah, Disney Princesses?”

“Oh yes,” says the girl, laughing. “We’ve got a surfeit of them!” She’s a history major or something like that, because who else would say surfeit ? “Over there.” She’s finding him droll. That’s fine, he tells himself: droll can work for me.

“Would you help me pick them out?” he asks, putting on his helpless face. “I need three.”

“What lucky nieces!” she says with an ironic quirk of her eyebrow. “Did you have any particular princesses in mind?”

Felix consults his list. “Snow White,” he reads. “Jasmine. Pocahontas.”

“My,” says the girl. “How knowledgeable you are! About the tastes of girls. I bet you have daughters as well as the nieces!”

Felix winces. Why, this is hell, he thinks, nor am I out of it. Damn Anne-Marie, I should have made her come with me and buy these things herself. He negotiates the purchase process, then asks that the future goddesses be deboxed, wrapped in tissue, and crammed into a single bag. Humiliating for them, but their apotheosis awaits.

Carrying his two shopping bags, he locates the costume and joke emporium on Yonge Street that Anne-Marie has marked down for him. In the window is an almost-naked mannequin in stiletto heels, a sequined mask, and leather bondage gear, wielding a whip. Inside, he scopes through the vampire teeth, Batman capes, and zombie masks, trying not to look like a fetishist. Behind the counter is a heavily muscled young man with an array of chrome ornaments in his ears and a skull tattooed on his forearm.

“Anything special?” he says with a demi-leer. “We’ve got some new leather, very nice. We do custom-fitted. Muzzles, shackles.” He’s spotted Felix for a masochist; not so far from the mark, thinks Felix.

“Got any black wings?” he says. “Or any color really, except white.”

“Fallen angel, are we?” says the guy. “Sure. We’ve got some blue ones. Those do?”

“Even better,” says Felix. He buys the wings, a jar of blue face paint, a jar of muddy-green face paint, a clown makeup kit, a scaly green Godzilla hat with lizard eyes on top and upper teeth that frame the forehead, a pair of snakeskin-patterned leotards — these last three items for Caliban — and some werewolf masks, which is the closest he can get to spirit dogs.

The shop doesn’t have any ruffs, but there are four short velvet capes, so he adds them to the pile for the aristocrats. A handful of fake gold medallions on chains, with lions and dragons on them. Two cheap gold-sequinned wraparounds and a silver one: glisterwear, to allure the fools. A couple of packages of blue glitter confetti, several sheets of temporary tattoos: spiders, scorpions, snakes, the usual.

The wings are hard to carry. He stops at a luggage place, buys a large wheeled suitcase, and stows the wings, the boats, the Disney Princesses, the werewolf masks, and the glistering trash. It all fits in with room to spare, which is good, because there’s more to come.

Next, a sports shop. He wants some ski goggles, he tells the healthy-looking young sales clerk: the iridescent kind of goggles. “These are our top sellers,” says the youth. “Plutonite.” There’s a purple-blue sheen to the lenses, which are enormous and wraparound: a bug-eye effect. “For yourself?” says the clerk, raising his eyebrows; evidently the image of Felix on skis is a stretch for him.

“No,” says Felix. “A juvenile relative.”

“Good skier?”

“Let’s hope so,” says Felix. “And I want fifteen black ski masks.”

“Fifteen?”

“If you’ve got them. It’s for a party.”

They only have eight in stock, but there’s a Mark’s Work Wearhouse in the Wilmot mall where he can doubtless pick up the rest of them, plus fifteen pairs of stretchy black gloves. He’s unsure of how many Goblins he will finally need, but it’s best to be well prepared.

In a corner knick-knack shop that sells umbrellas and handbags he picks up a semi-opaque women’s raincoat in aqua, with a cheerful pattern of ladybugs, bees, and butterflies. “The biggest one you’ve got,” he tells the clerk. It’s a Large, woman’s size, but despite that it may still be a tight squeeze for 8Handz. They can always cut it up the back and pin the two sides to his shirt: only the front needs to show.

In a Canadian Tire outlet he buys a blue shower curtain, a stapler, a clothesline, some plastic clothes pegs — these last two for Stephano and Trinculo’s clothes-stealing scene — and a green plastic bowl for the feast that’s offered, then snatched away.

Next he goes to a nearby Staples and scores a large pack of construction paper in various colors, a roll of brown wrapping paper, and some felt markers: cactuses, palm trees, those kinds of things, for the island sets. All you need is a few items: the brain completes the illusion.