Margaret Atwood - Hag-Seed

But it was only a short distance from wistful daydreaming to the half-belief that she was still there with him, only invisible. Call it a conceit, a whimsy, a piece of acting: he didn’t really believe it, but he engaged in this non-reality as if it were real. He returned to his habit of checking out kids’ books from the Wilmot library, only now he read them out loud in the evenings. Partly he enjoyed it — his voice was still as good as it had ever been, it kept him in practice — but partly he was indulging his self-created illusion. Was there a small girl listening to him? No, not really. But it was soothing to think that there was.

When Miranda was five, six, seven, he helped her with her schoolwork; she was home-schooled, naturally. They’d sit at the Formica table, he in one of his old wooden chairs, she in the other one. “Six times nine?” he’d quiz her. She was so sharp! She almost never made a mistake.

They began having their meals together, which was a good thing because otherwise he might sometimes have forgotten about meals. She scolded him gently when he didn’t eat enough. Finish what’s on your plate, she would say to him. Her own favorite was macaroni and cheese.

When she was eight, he taught her to play chess. She was a quick learner, and was soon beating him two times out of three. How seriously she would study the board, chewing on the end of the long braid she’d learned to make all by herself. How delighted he would be, secretly, when she won, although he’d pretend to be downhearted. Then she would laugh, because she knew he was only fooling. If he really had been downhearted, she would have been all sympathy. Such an empathetic girl. He tried never to show his anger to her, the anger he was hoarding up against Tony, against Sal: it would have confused her. When he was following their antics on the Internet, muttering out loud to himself, she was always out of the room.

During the day she was often outside, playing in the field beside the house or in the woodlot at the back. He would see a cloud of butterflies lift in the meadow: she must have startled them. When blue jays or crows would make a fuss in the woods, he’d conclude that Miranda had been walking there. Squirrels chattered at her, grouse whirred away at her approach. In the dusk, fireflies marked her path, and owls greeted her with muffled calls.

In the winters, when the snow drifted in the laneway and the wind howled, she’d slip outside without a second thought. She didn’t dress as warmly as she ought to have done, despite his nagging about mittens, but nothing happened as a consequence: no colds, no flu. In fact, she was never ill, unlike himself. When he was sick she tiptoed around him, anxious; but he never had to worry about her, because what harm could possibly come to her? She was beyond harm.

She never asked him how they came to be there together, living in the shanty, apart from everyone else. He never told her. It would have been a shock to her, to learn that she did not exist. Or not in the usual way.

One day he heard her singing, right outside the window. He didn’t daydream it, the way he’d been semi-daydreaming up to then. It wasn’t one of his whimsical yet despairing fabrications. He actually heard a voice. It was not a consolation. Instead, it frightened him.

“This has gone way too far,” he told himself sternly. “Snap out of it, Felix. Pull yourself together. Break out of your cell. You need a real-world connection.”

Therefore, in Year Nine of his exile — when Miranda was twelve — Mr. Duke took a job. It wasn’t a high-status job, but that suited Felix: he wanted to keep a low profile. Getting back into the world, re-engaging with people — he hoped it would ground him. He’d been going stir-crazy, he could see that now. Too much time alone with his grief eating away at him, too much time gnawing on his grievances. He felt as if he were waking up from a long and melancholy dream.

The job came his way via one of the local online papers. A teacher in the Literacy Through Literature high school level program at the nearby Fletcher County Correctional Institute had suffered a sudden illness — a fatal illness, as it turned out. A vacancy needed to be filled at short notice. It would be a temporary position. Some experience was required, although — Felix assumed — not much. Those interested…

Felix was interested. Using Mr. Duke’s email account, he sent an initial note registering his willingness. Then he cobbled together a fraudulent résumé, forging decades-old letters of reference from several obscure schools in Saskatchewan, signed by principals who might be expected to have died or moved to Florida. He was ninety percent certain that these would never be checked: he’d be, after all, just a stopgap. In his covering letter he said he’d been retired for some years but felt the need to give back to the community, since he had been given so much in life himself.

He was summoned by email for an interview almost immediately, by which he divined that there weren’t any other applicants. So much the better: they were probably desperate, and he’d get the job by default. By this time he really wanted it, he’d talked himself into it. It had, perhaps, some potential.

He cleaned himself up — he’d been letting himself get ratty — and bought a new dark-green plebian-looking shirt at the Mark’s Work Wearhouse in Wilmot. He even trimmed his beard. He’d grown it over the years; it was gray now, almost white, and he had long white eyebrows to match. He hoped he looked sage.

The interview took place not at Fletcher Correctional itself but at a McDonald’s nearby. The woman interviewing him was forty-odd and making efforts: the streak of pink in her gray-blond hair, the shining earrings; the careful nails, a fashionable silver. Her name was Estelle, she offered. The first name was a positive signal, she wanted them to be friends. She didn’t work at Fletcher herself, she explained: she was a professor at Guelph University and supervised the Fletcher course from a distance. She also sat on various advisory committees, for the government. The Ministry of Justice. “My grandfather was a Senator,” she said. “It’s given me a certain access. I know the ropes, you could say, and I have to share with you that the Literacy Through Literature program has been more or less…well, my special baby. I’ve lobbied quite hard for it!”

Felix said that was admirable. Estelle said we all did what we could.

The teacher who’d died had been such a fine person, she said; he’d be missed by so many, it was so sudden, a shock. He’d really tried, up at Fletcher; he’d accomplished…well, he’d done his very best, under conditions that were…no one could go into it expecting too much.

Felix nodded and um-hummed at the right places, and looked sympathetic, and made eye contact. In return, Estelle’s smiles multiplied. All was as going as it should.

The preliminaries over, Estelle launched into the interview proper. She took a breath. “I believe I recognize you, Mr. Duke,” she said. “Despite the beard, which I must say looks very distinguished. You’re Felix Phillips, yes? The famous director? I’ve been attending that Festival since I was a kid, my grandfather used to take us; I have a big collection of the programs!”

So much for alter egos. “Indeed,” said Felix, “but I’m going under Mr. Duke for this job. I thought it would be less intimidating.”

“I see.” A smile, more tentative. A weaponless, elderly theatre director, intimidating? To the hardened Fletcher inmates? Really?