Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [74]
Peter raised his head, smiling. “Christ I was hungry,” he said, “I sure was glad to get that steak inside. A good meal always makes you feel a little more human.”
She nodded, and smiled back limply. He shifted his glance to her platter. “What’s the matter, darling? You aren’t finished.”
“No,” she said, “I don’t seem to be hungry any more. I guess I’m full.” She meant to indicate by her tone of voice that her stomach was too tiny and helpless to cope with that vast quantity of food. Peter smiled and chewed, pleasantly conscious of his own superior capacity. “God,” she thought to herself, “I hope it’s not permanent; I’ll starve to death!”
She sat twisting her napkin unhappily between her fingers, watching the last of Peter’s steak disappear into his mouth.
18
Marian was sitting at the kitchen table, disconsolately eating a jar of peanut butter and turning over the pages of her largest cookbook. The day after the filet, she had been unable to eat a pork chop, and since then, for several weeks, she had been making experiments. She had discovered that not only were things too obviously cut from the Planned Cow inedible for her, but that the Planned Pig and the Planned Sheep were similarly forbidden. Whatever it was that had been making these decisions, not her mind certainly, rejected anything that had an indication of bone or tendon or fibre. Things that had been ground up and re-shaped, hot dogs and hamburgers for instance, or lamb patties or pork sausages, were all right as long as she didn’t look at them too closely, and fish was still permitted. She had been afraid to try chicken: she had been fond of it once, but it came with an unpleasantly complete skeletal structure, and the skin, she predicted, would be too much like an arm with goose bumps. For protein variety she had been eating omelettes and peanuts and quantities of cheese. The quiet fear, that came nearer to the surface now as she scanned the pages – she was in the “Salads” section – was that this thing, this refusal of her mouth to eat, was malignant; that it would spread; that slowly the circle now dividing the non-devourable from the devourable would become smaller and smaller, that the objects available to her would be excluded one by one. “I’m turning into a vegetarian,” she was thinking sadly, “one of those cranks; I’ll have to start eating lunch at health bars.” She read, with distaste, a column headed Hints For Serving Yoghurt. “For a taste sensation, sprinkle it with chopped nuts!” the editress suggested with glee.
The telephone rang. She let it ring a couple of times before getting up to answer it. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone and it was an effort to pull herself up out of the gentle realm of lettuce and watercress and piquant herb dressings.
“Marian?” It was Leonard Slank’s voice. “Is that you?”
“Yes, hi Len,” she said. “How are you?” She hadn’t seen him or even spoken to him for quite a long time.
He sounded urgent. “Are you alone? I mean is Ainsley there?”
“No; she isn’t back from work yet. She said she was going to do some shopping.” It was the Christmas season; had been, it seemed, for several months; and the stores were staying open till nine. “But I can get her to call you when she comes in.”
“No no,” he said hastily. “It’s you I want to talk to. Can I come over?”
Peter was working on a case that night, so technically she wasn’t busy; and her brain did not provide her with any excuse. “Sure, of course Len,” she said. So she’s told him, she thought as she put down the phone. The idiot. I wonder what she did that for.
Ainsley had been in the highest of spirits for the past few weeks. She had been certain from the beginning that she was pregnant, and her mind had hovered over the activities of her body