Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [137]
His eyes widened in alarm. Apparently he didn’t find her silly.
When he had gone – and he went quite rapidly, they didn’t have much of a conversation after all, he seemed embarrassed and eager to leave and even refused a cup of tea – she stood looking down at the figure. So Peter hadn’t devoured it after all. As a symbol it had definitely failed. It looked up at her with its silvery eyes, enigmatic, mocking, succulent.
Suddenly she was hungry. Extremely hungry. The cake after all was only a cake. She picked up the platter, carried it to the kitchen table and located a fork. “I’ll start with the feet,” she decided.
She considered the first mouthful. It seemed odd but most pleasant to be actually tasting and chewing and swallowing again. Not bad, she thought critically; needs a touch more lemon though.
Already the part of her not occupied with eating was having a wave of nostalgia for Peter, as though for a style that had gone out of fashion and was beginning to turn up on the sad Salvation Army clothes racks. She could see him in her mind, posed jauntily in the foreground of an elegant salon with chandeliers and draperies, impeccably dressed, a glass of scotch in one hand; his foot was on the head of a stuffed lion and he had an eyepatch over one eye. Beneath one arm was strapped a revolver. Around the margin was an edging of gold scrollwork and slightly above Peter’s left ear was a thumbtack. She licked her fork meditatively. He would definitely succeed.
She was halfway up the legs when she heard footsteps, two sets of them, coming up the stairs. Then Ainsley appeared in the kitchen doorway with Fischer Symthe’s furry head behind her. She still had on her blue-green dress, much the worse for wear. So was she: her face was haggard and in only the past twenty-four hours her belly seemed to have grown noticeably rounder.
“Hi,” said Marian, waving her fork at them. She speared a chunk of pink thigh and carried it to her mouth.
Fischer had leaned against the wall and closed his eyes as soon as he reached the top of the stairs, but Ainsley focussed on her. “Marian, what have you got there?” She walked over to see. “It’s a woman – a woman made of cake!” She gave Marian a strange look.
Marian chewed and swallowed. “Have some,” she said, “it’s really good. I made it this afternoon.”
Ainsley’s mouth opened and closed, fishlike, as though she was trying to gulp down the full implication of what she saw. “Marian!” she exclaimed at last, with horror. “You’re rejecting your femininity!”
Marian stopped chewing and stared at Ainsley, who was regarding her, through the hair that festooned itself over her eyes, with wounded concern, almost with sternness. How did she manage it, that stricken attitude, that high seriousness? She was almost as morally earnest as the lady down below.
Marian looked back at her platter. The woman lay there, still smiling glassily, her legs gone. “Nonsense,” she said. “It’s only a cake.” She plunged her fork into the carcass, neatly severing the body from the head.
PART THREE
31
I was cleaning up the apartment. It had taken me two days to gather the strength to face it, but I had finally started. I had to go about it layer by layer. First there was the surface debris. I began with Ainsley’s room, stuffing everything she had left behind into cardboard cartons: the half-empty cosmetic jars and used lipsticks, the strata of old newspapers and magazines on the floor, the desiccated banana peel I found under the bed, the clothes she had rejected. All the things of mine I wanted to throw out went into the same boxes.
When the floors and furniture had been cleared I dusted everything in sight, including the mouldings and the tops of the doors and the windowsills. Then I did the floors, sweeping and then scrubbing and waxing. The amount of dirt that came off was astounding: it was like uncovering an extra floor. Then I washed the dishes and after that the kitchen window curtains. Then I stopped for lunch. After lunch I tackled the refrigerator. I did not examine closely the