Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood [169]
I have men, at long intervals in some desperation. These affairs are rushed and unsatisfactory: I don’t have time for the finer points. Even these brief interludes are almost too strenuous for me.
None of these men rejects me. I don’t give them the chance. I know what is dangerous for me, and keep away from the edges of things. From anything too bright, too sharp. From lack of sleep. When I start feeling shaky I lie down, expecting nothing, and it arrives, washing over me in a wave of black vacancy. I know I can wait it out.
After more time I meet Ben, who picks me up in the most ordinary way, in the supermarket. Actually he asks if he can carry my shopping bags, which look heavy and are, and I let him, feeling silly and archaic and looking first to make sure no women I know are watching.
Years before, I would have considered him too obvious, too dull, practically simple-minded. And for years after that, a chauvinist of the more amiable sort. He is all these things; but he is also like an apple, after a prolonged and gluttonous binge.
He comes over and fixes my back porch with his own saw and hammer, as in the women’s magazines of long ago, and has a beer afterward, on the lawn, as in ads. He tells me jokes I haven’t heard since high school. My gratitude for these mundane enjoyments amazes me. But I don’t require him, he’s no transfusion. Instead he pleases me. It’s a happiness, to be so simply pleased.
He takes me to Mexico, as in drugstore romances. He’s just bought his small travel business, more as a hobby than anything: he made his money earlier, in real estate. But he likes to take photographs and sit in the sun. To do what he likes and make money at the same time is what he’s wanted all his life.
He is shy in bed, easily surprised, quickly delighted.
We combine households, in a third, larger house. After a while we get married. There is nothing dramatic about it. To him it seems appropriate, to me eccentric: it’s a defiance of convention, but of a convention he’s never heard of. He doesn’t know how outlandish I think I’m being.
He’s ten years older than I am. He has a divorce of his own, and a grown son. My daughter Sarah becomes the daughter he wanted, and soon we have Anne. I think of her as a second chance. She is less pensive than Sarah, more stubborn. Sarah knows, already, that you can’t always have everything you want.
Ben considers me good, and I don’t disturb this faith: he doesn’t need my more unsavory truths. He considers me also a little fragile, because artistic: I need to be cared for, like a potted plant. A little pruning, a little watering, a little weeding and straightening up, to bring out the best in me. He makes up a set of books, for the business end of my painting: what has sold, and for how much. He tells me what I can deduct on my income tax return. He fills out the return. He arranges the spices in alphabetical order, on a special shelf in the kitchen. He builds the shelf.
I could live without this. I have before. But I like it all the same.
My paintings themselves he regards with wonder, and also apprehension, like a small child looking at a candle. What he focuses on is how well I do hands. He knows these are hard. He once wanted to take up something like that himself, he says, but never got around to it because of having to earn a living. This is a lot like the kinds of things people have said to me at gallery openings, but in him I forgive it.
He goes away at judicious intervals, on business, giving me a chance to miss him.
I sit in front of the fireplace, with his arm