Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [109]
There were two taps, one for the hot and one for the cold. Each had a round bulb-shaped silver base and there was a third bulb in the middle with the spout where the water came out. She looked more closely: in each of the three silver globes she could see now that there was a curiously sprawling pink thing. She sat up, stirring the water into minor tidal waves, to see what they were. It was a moment before she recognized, in the bulging and distorted forms, her own waterlogged body.
She moved, and all three of the images moved also. They were not quite identical: the two on the outside were slanted inwards towards the third. How peculiar it was to see three reflections of yourself at the same time, she thought; she swayed herself back and forth, watching the way in which the different bright silver parts of her body suddenly bloated or diminished. She had almost forgotten that she was supposed to be taking a bath. She stretched one hand towards the taps, wanting to see it grow.
There were footsteps outside the door. She had better get out: it must be the lady down below trying to get in. She began to splash off the remaining traces of soap. Looking down, she became aware of the water, which was covered with a film of calcinous hard-water particles of dirt and soap, and of the body that was sitting in it, somehow no longer quite her own. All at once she was afraid that she was dissolving, coming apart layer by layer like a piece of cardboard in a gutter puddle.
She pulled the plug hastily and scrambled out of the tub. It was safer on the dry beach of the cold tiled floor. She slid her engagement ring back onto her finger, seeing the hard circle for a moment as a protective talisman that would help keep her together.
But the panic was still with her as she climbed the stairs. She could not face the party, all those people, Peter’s friends were nice enough but they didn’t really know her, fixing their uncomprehending eyes on her, she was afraid of losing her shape, spreading out, not being able to contain herself any longer, beginning (that would be worst of all) to talk a lot, to tell everybody, to cry. She contemplated bleakly the festive red dress hanging in her closet. What can I do? her mind kept thinking. She sat down on her bed.
She remained sitting on the bed, gnawing idly on the end of one of her fringed dressing-gown ties, closed in a sodden formless unhappiness that seemed now to have been clogging her mind for a long time, how long she could not remember. With its weight pressing around her it was most improbable that she would ever manage to get up off the bed. I wonder what time it is? she said to herself. I’ve got to get ready.
The two dolls which she had never thrown out after all were staring blankly back at her from the top of the dresser. As she looked at them their faces blurred, then re-formed, faintly malevolent. She was irritated with them for sitting there inertly on either side of the mirror, just watching her, not offering any practical suggestions. But now that she examined their faces more closely she could see that it was only the dark one, the one with the peeling paint, that was definitely watching her. Perhaps the blonde one didn’t even see her, the round blue eyes in its rubbery face were gazing straight through her.
She substituted one of her fingers for the dressing-gown tie, biting at the side of her nail. Or perhaps it was a game, an agreement they had made. She saw herself in the mirror between them for an instant as though she was inside them, inside both of them at once, looking out: herself, a vague damp form in a rumpled dressing gown, not quite focussed,