Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [134]
“What do you mean, upset!” he said. “You shouldn’t go wandering around the streets at night, you might get raped, if you’re going to do these things and god knows it isn’t the first time why the hell can’t you think of other people once in a while? You could at least have told me where you were, your parents called me long distance, they’re frantic because you weren’t on the bus and what was I supposed to tell them?”
Oh yes, she thought; she had forgotten about that. “Well, I’m perfectly all right,” she said.
“But where were you? When we’d discovered you’d left and I started quietly asking people if they’d seen you I must say I got a pretty funny story from that prince-charming friend of yours, Trevor or whatever the hell his name is. Who’s this guy he was telling me about anyway?”
“Please, Peter,” she said, “I just hate talking about things like this over the phone.” She had a sudden desire to tell him the whole story, but what good would that do since nothing had been proved or accomplished? Instead she said, “What time is it?”
“Two-thirty,” he said, his voice surprised into neutrality by this appeal to simple fact.
“Well, why don’t you come over a bit later? Maybe about five-thirty. For tea. And then we can talk it all over.” She made her voice sweet, conciliatory. She was conscious of her own craftiness. Though she hadn’t made any decisions she could feel she was about to make one and she needed time.
“Well, all right,” he said peevishly, “but it better be good.” They hung up together.
Marian went into the bedroom and took off her clothes; then she went downstairs and took a quick bath. The lower regions were silent; the lady down below was probably brooding in her dark den or praying for the swift destruction of Ainsley by heavenly thunderbolts. In a spirit approaching gay rebellion Marian neglected to erase her bathtub ring.
What she needed was something that avoided words, she didn’t want to get tangled up in a discussion. Some way she could know what was real: a test, simple and direct as litmus paper. She finished dressing – a plain grey wool would be appropriate – and put on her coat, then located her everyday purse and counted the money. She went out to the kitchen and sat down at the table to make herself a list, but threw down the pencil after she had written several words. She knew what she needed to get.
In the supermarket she went methodically up and down the aisles, relentlessly out-manoeuvring the muskrat-furred ladies, edging the Saturday children to the curb, picking the things off the shelves. Her image was taking shape. Eggs. Flour. Lemons for the flavour. Sugar, icing sugar, vanilla, salt, food colouring. She wanted everything new, she didn’t want to use anything that was already in the house. Chocolate – no, cocoa, that would be better. A glass tube full of round silver decorations. Three nesting plastic bowls, teaspoons, aluminium cake decorator and a cake tin. Lucky, she thought, they sell almost everything in supermarkets these days. She started back towards the apartment, carrying her paper bag.
Sponge or angel-food? she wondered. She decided on sponge. It was more fitting.
She turned on the oven. That was one part of the kitchen that had not been over-run by the creeping skin-disease-covering of dirt, mostly because they hadn’t been using it much recently. She tied on an apron and rinsed the new bowls and the other new utensils under the tap, but did not disturb any of the dirty dishes. Later for them. Right now she didn’t have time. She dried the things and began to crack and separate the eggs, hardly thinking, concentrating all her attention on the movements of her hands, and then when she was beating and sifting and folding, on the relative times and the textures. Sponge cake needed a light hand. She poured the batter into the tin and drew a fork sideways through it to break the large air bubbles. As she slid the tin into the oven she almost hummed with pleasure. It was a long time since she had made a cake.
While the cake was in