Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood [78]
By now it’s dark outside. I could go out for something more like dinner, or try for a movie. Instead I crawl onto the futon, under the duvet, with a cup of coffee and the Toronto phone book, and start looking up names. There are no more Smeaths, they must have moved or died off, or got married. There are more Campbells than you can shake a stick at. I look up Jon, whose name was once my own. No Josef Hrbik, though there are Hrbeks, Hrens, Hrastniks, Hriczus.
There are no more Risleys.
There is no Cordelia.
It’s strange to by lying in Jon’s bed again. I haven’t thought of this as Jon’s bed because I’ve never seen him in it, but of course it is. It’s a lot neater than his beds used to be, and a great deal cleaner. His first bed was a mattress on the floor, with an old sleeping bag on top of it. I didn’t mind this, in fact I liked it; it was like camping out. Usually there would be a tide line of empty cups and glasses and plates with scraps of food surrounding it, which I didn’t like as much. There was an etiquette about such messes, in those days: there was a line you crossed, from ignoring them to cleaning them up. Whether the man would think you were moving in on him, trying to take him over.
We were lying on that bed one time, right at the beginning, before I’d started to pick up the plates, when the bedroom door opened and a woman I’d never seen before appeared in the doorway. She was wearing dirty jeans and a wan pink T-shirt; her face thin and bleached-looking, with huge pupils. It looked as if she was on some sort of drug, which was beginning to be a possibility, then. She stood there saying nothing, one hand behind her back, her face tight and blank, while I pulled the sleeping bag up over me.
“Hey,” said Jon.
She drew her hand out from behind her back then and threw something at us. It was a paper bag full of warm spaghetti, sauce included. It burst when it hit, festooning us. She went out, still without saying anything, and slammed the door.
I was frightened, but Jon started laughing. “What was that?” I said. “How the hell did she get in?”
“Through the door,” said Jon, still laughing. He untangled a piece of spaghetti from my hair and leaned over to kiss me. I knew this woman must have been a girfriend, or an ex-girlfriend, and I was furious with her. It didn’t occur to me that she might have reason. I hadn’t yet encountered the foreign hairpins left in the bathroom like territorial dog pee on snowy hydrants, the lipstick marks placed strategically on pillows. Jon knew how to cover his tracks, and when he didn’t cover them it was for a reason. It didn’t occur to me either that she must have had a key.
“She’s crazy,” I said. “She should be in a bin.”
I did not pity her at all. In a way I admired her. I admired her lack of compunction, the courage of her bad manners, the energy of simple rage. Throwing a bag of spaghetti had a simplicity to it, a recklessness, a careless grandeur. It got things over with. I was a long way, then, from being able to do anything like it myself.
34
Grace says grace. Mr. Smeath says, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” and reaches for the baked beans. Mrs. Smeath says, “Lloyd.” Mr. Smeath says, “It’s harmless,” and shoots me a sideways grin. Aunt Mildred contracts her whiskery mouth. I chew away at the rubber plant Smeath food. Under cover of the tablecloth, I tear at my fingers. Sunday goes on.
After the stewed pineapple Grace wants me to come down into the cellar with her to play school. I do this, but I have to come up the stairs again to go the bathroom. Grace has given me permission, the same way the teachers in school give you permission. As I come up the cellar stairs I can hear Aunt Mildred and Mrs. Smeath, who are in the kitchen doing the dishes.
“She’s exactly like a heathen,” says Aunt Mildred. Because she’s been a missionary in China, she’s an authority. “Nothing you’ve done has made a scrap of difference.”
“She’s learning her Bible, Grace tells me,” Mrs. Smeath says, and then I know it’s me they’re discussing. I stop on the top step,