Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [122]
So that’s what was in there all the time, she thought happily: this is what he’s turning into. The real Peter, the one underneath, was nothing surprising or frightening, only this bungalow-and-double-bed man, this charcoal-cooking-in-the-backyard man. This home-movie man. And I called him out, she thought, I evoked him. She swallowed some of her scotch.
It had been a long search. She retraced through time the corridors and rooms, long corridors, large rooms. Everything seemed to be slowing down.
If that’s who Peter really is, she thought, walking along one of the corridors, will he have a pot-belly at forty-five? Will he dress sloppily on Saturdays, in wrinkled blue jeans for his workshop in the cellar? The image was reassuring: he would have hobbies, he would be comfortable, he would be normal.
She opened a door to the right and went in. There was Peter, forty-five and balding but still recognizable as Peter, standing in bright sunlight beside a barbecue with a long fork in his hand. He was wearing a white chef’s apron. She looked carefully for herself in the garden, but she wasn’t there and the discovery chilled her.
No, she thought, this has to be the wrong room. It can’t be the last one. And now she could see there was another door, in the hedge at the other side of the garden. She walked across the lawn, passing behind the unmoving figure, which she could see now held a large cleaver in the other hand, pushed open the door and went through.
She was back in Peter’s living room with the people and the noise, leaning against the door frame holding her drink. Except that the people seemed even clearer now, more sharply focussed, further away, and they were moving faster and faster, they were all going home, a file of soap-women emerged from the bedroom, coats on, they teetered jerkily out the door trailing husbands, chirping goodnights, and who was that tiny two-dimensional small figure in a red dress, posed like a paper woman in a mail-order catalogue, turning and smiling, fluttering in the white empty space.… This couldn’t be it; there had to be something more. She ran for the next door, yanked it open.
Peter was there, dressed in his dark opulent winter suit. He had a camera in his hand; but now she saw what it really was. There were no more doors and when she felt behind her for the doorknob, afraid to take her eyes off him, he raised the camera and aimed it at her; his mouth opened in a snarl of teeth. There was a blinding flash of light.
“No!” she screamed. She covered her face with her arm.
“What’s the matter, darling?” She looked up. Peter was standing beside her. He was real. She put up her hand and touched his face.
“It startled me,” she said.
“You really can’t hold your liquor, can you darling,” he said, fondness and irritation blending in his voice. “You should be used to it, I’ve been taking pictures all evening.”
“Was that one of me?” she asked. She smiled at him in conciliation. She sensed her face as vastly spreading and papery and slightly dilapidated: a huge billboard smile, peeling away in flaps and patches, the metal surface beneath showing through.…
“No, actually it was of Trigger over at the other side of the room. Never mind, I’ll get you later. But you’d better not have another drink darling, you’re swaying.” He patted her