Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood [94]
40
It’s Sunday evening. There’s a fire in the fireplace; the drapes are drawn against the heavy November darkness. My father sits in the easy chair marking drawings of spruce budworms cut open to show their digestive systems, my mother has made grilled cheese squares with bacon on them. We’re listening to “The Jack Benny Show” on the radio, which is punctuated by singing commercials for Lucky Strike cigarettes. On this show there is a man who talks in a raspy voice and another one who says “Pickle in the middle and the mustard on top.” I have no idea that the first one is supposed to be black and the second one Jewish; I think they just have funny voices.
Our old radio with the green eye has vanished, and a new, blond one has appeared, in a smooth unornamented cabinet that holds a long-playing record player as well. We have little wooden nesting tables for our plates with the cheese squares; these tables are blond also, with legs that are wide at the top and taper down without a bump or curlicue, no dust catchers. They look like the legs of fat women as they appear in comic books: no knees, no ankles. All this blond wood is from Scandinavia. Our silverware has descended to the steamer trunk. In its place there is new silverware, which is not silver but stainless steel.
These items have been chosen, not by my mother, but by my father. He picks out my mother’s dressing-up clothes as well; my mother, laughing, says that all her taste is in her mouth. As far as she is concerned a chair is there to sit down on, and she couldn’t care less whether it has pink petunias on it or purple polka dots, as long as it doesn’t collapse. It’s as if, like a cat, she cannot see things unless they are moving. She is becoming even more indifferent to fashion, and strides around in improvised getups, a ski jacket, an old scarf, mitts that don’t match. She says she doesn’t care what it looks like as long as it keeps out the wind.
Worse, she’s taken up ice dancing; she goes to classes at the local indoor rink, and tangos and waltzes in time to tinny music, holding hands with other women. This is mortifying but at least she does it indoors, where no one can see her. I can only hope she won’t take to practicing, later when it’s really winter, on the outdoor rink, where somebody I might know could see her. But she isn’t even aware of the chagrin this could cause. She never says What will people think? the way other mothers do, or are supposed to. She says she doesn’t give a hoot.
I think this is irresponsible of her. At the same time, the word hoot pleases me. It makes my mother into a nonmother, a sort of mutant owl. I have become picky about my own clothes, and given to looking at myself from behind with the aid of a hand mirror: although I may appear all right from the front, treachery could sneak up on me: a loose thread, a dropped hem. Not giving a hoot would be a luxury. It describes the fine, irreverent carelessness I myself would like to cultivate, in these and other matters.
My brother sits in one of the taper-legged blond chairs that go with the tables. He has become bigger and older, all of a sudden, when I wasn’t looking. He has a razor now. Because it’s the weekend and he hasn’t shaved, he has a line of fine bristles poking out of the skin around his mouth. He’s got on his moccasins, old ones he wears around the house, with holes worn under the big toes, and his V-neck maroon sweater with the ravels coming off the elbows. He resists my mother’s efforts to mend this sweater or replace it. My mother says frequently that she doesn’t give a hoot about clothes, but this indifference does not extend to holes, frayed edgs, or dirt.
My brother’s ragged sweater and sievelike moccasins are the clothes he studies in. On weekdays he has to wear a jacket and tie and gray flannels, all of which are required at his school. He can’t have a ducktail, like the boys at my school, or even a crewcut: his hair is shaved up