Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood [151]
Right after we were married, I lapsed into a voluptuous sloth. My body was like a feather bed, warm, boneless, deeply comforting, in which I lay cocooned. It may have been the pregnancy, sponging up my adrenaline. Or it may have been relief. Jon glowed for me then like a plum in sunlight, richly colored, perfect in form. I would lie in bed beside him or sit at the kitchen table, running my eyes over him like hands. My adoration was physical, and wordless. I would think Ah, nothing more. Like a breath breathed out. Or I would think, like a child, Mine. Knowing it wasn’t true. Stay that way, I would think. But he could not.
Jon and I have begun to have fights. Our fights are secret fights, conducted at night, when Sarah is asleep: a squabbling in undertones. We keep them from her, because if they are frightening to us—as they are—how much more frightening will they be to her?
We thought we were running away from the grown-ups, and now we are the grown-ups: this is the crux of it. Neither of us wants to take it on, not the whole thing. We compete, for instance, over which of us is in worse shape. If I get a headache, he gets a migraine. If his back hurts, my neck is killing me. Neither one of us wants to be in charge of the Band-Aids. We fight over our right to remain children.
At first I do not win these fights, because of love. Or so I say to myself. If I were to win them, the order of the world would be changed, and I am not ready for that. So instead I lose the fights, and master different arts. I shrug, tighten my mouth in silent rebuke, turn my back in bed, leave questions unanswered. I say, “Do it however you like,” provoking sullen fury from Jon. He does not want just capitulation, but admiration, enthusiasm, for himself and his ideas, and when he doesn’t get it he feels cheated.
Jon has a job now, supervising part-time at a co-op graphics studio. I am part-time as well. Between the two of us, we can manage to cover the rent.
Jon is no longer painting on canvas, or on anything flat. In fact he is no longer painting. Flat surfaces with paint on them he calls “art-on-the-wall.” There is no reason for art to be on the wall, there’s no reason for it to have a frame around it or paint on it. Instead he is making constructions, out of things he gathers from junk heaps or finds here and there. He makes wooden boxes with compartments, each containing a different item: three pairs of outsized ladies’ panties in fluorescent colors, a plaster hand with long false nails glued onto it, an enema bag, a toupee. He makes a motorized furry bedroom slipper that runs around on the floor by itself, and a family of diaphragms fitted up with monster movie eyes and mouths and jumping legs underneath that hop around on the table like radiation-damaged oysters. He’s decorated our bathroom in red and orange, with purple mermaids swimming on the walls, and hooked up the toilet seat so that it plays “Jingle Bells” when it’s raised. This is for Sarah’s benefit. He makes toys for her as well, and lets her play with ends of wood and leftover pieces of cloth and some of his less dangerous tools, while he’s working.
That’s when he’s here. Which is by no means most of the time.
For the first year after Sarah was born I didn’t paint at all. I was freelancing then, working at home, and just keeping up with the few book cover assignments I’d taken on was a major effort. I felt clogged, as if swimming with my clothes on. Now that I’m half a day at work, it’s better.
I’ve done some of what I call my own work as well, although hesitantly: my hands are out of practice, my eyes disused. Most of what I do is drawing, because the preparation of the surface, the laborious underpainting and detailed concentration of egg tempera are too much for me. I have lost confidence: perhaps all I will ever be is what I am now.
I’m sitting on a wooden folding chair, on a stage. The curtains are open and I can see the auditorium, which is small, battered, and empty. Also on the stage is a stage set, not yet