Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood [163]
We take a taxi back to the warehouse, our hands resting side by side on the seat. We go up the stairs to the studio, slowly, so we won’t get out of breath: neither one of us wants to be caught out by the other in a middle-aged wheeze. Jon’s hand is on my waist. It’s familiar there; it’s like knowing where the light switch is, in a house you once lived in but haven’t been back to for years. When we reach the door, before we go in, he pats me on the shoulder, a gesture of encouragement, and of wistful resignation.
“Don’t turn on the light,” I say.
Jon puts his arms around me, his face in the angle of my neck. It’s a gesture less of desire than of fatigue.
The studio is the purplish gray of autumn twilight. The plaster casts of arms and legs glimmer whitely, like broken statues in a ruin. There’s a scatter of my clothes in the corner, empty cups dotted here and there, on the work counter, by the window, marking my daily trails, claiming space. This room seems like mine now, as if I’ve been living here all along, no matter where else I’ve been or what else I’ve been doing. It’s Jon who has been away, and has returned at last.
We undress each other, as we used to do at first; but more shyly. I don’t want to be awkward. I’m glad it’s dusk; I’m nervous about the backs of my thighs, the wrinkling above my knees, the soft fold across my stomach, not fatness exactly but a pleat. The hair on his chest is gray, a shock. I avoid looking at the small beer belly that’s grown on him, though I’m aware of it, of the changes in his body, as he must be of mine.
When we kiss, it’s with a gravity we lacked before. Before we were avid, and selfish.
We make love for the comfort of it. I recognize him, I could recognize him in total darkness. Every man has his own rhythm, which remains the same. In this there is the relief of greeting.
I don’t feel I’m being disloyal to Ben, only loyal to something else; which predates him, which has nothing to do with him. An old score.
Also I know it’s something I’ll never do again. It’s the last look, before turning away, at some once-visited, once-extravagant place you know you won’t go back to. An evening view, of Niagara Falls.
We lie together under the duvet, arms around each other. It’s hard to remember what we used to fight about. The former anger is gone, and with it that edgy, jealous lust we used to have for each other. What’s left is fondness, and regret. A diminuendo.
“Come to the opening?” I say. “I’d like you to.”
“No,” he says. “I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I’d feel bad,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to see you that way.”
“What way?” I say.
“With all those people, slobbering over you.”
What he means is that he doesn’t want to be merely an onlooker, that there’s no room for him in all that, and he’s right. He doesn’t want to be just my ex-husband. He would be dispossessed, of me and of himself. I realize I don’t want it either, I don’t really want him to be there. I need him to be, but I don’t want it.
I turn, lean on my elbow, kiss him again, on the cheek this time. The hair down low, behind his ears, is already turning white. I think, we did that just in time. It was almost too late.
65
With Jon it’s like failing downstairs. Up until now there have been preliminary stumblings, recoveries, a clutching for handholds. But now all balance is lost and we plunge down headlong, both of us, noisily and without grace, gathering momentum and abrasions as we go.
I enter sleep angry and dread waking up, and when I do wake I lie beside the sleeping body of Jon, in our bed, listening to the rhythm of his breathing and resenting him for the oblivion he still controls.
For weeks he has been more silent than usual, and home less. Home less, that is, when I am home. When I’m away at work he is there all right, even when Sarah’s in preschool. I’ve begun to find signs, tiny clues left in my way like breadcrumbs dropped on a trail: a cigarette with a pink mouthmark on it, two used glasses in the sink, a hairpin that is not mine, beneath