Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [75]
Marian congratulated her, but not as dourly as she would have done if it had happened several months earlier. At that time she would have had to cope with the resulting problems, such as where Ainsley would live – the lady down below would certainly not tolerate her once she became rotund – and whether she herself should get another roommate, and if so, whether she would feel guilty about deserting Ainsley, and if not, whether she could face all the intricacies and tensions that would result from living with an unmarried mother and a newborn baby. But now it wasn’t her concern, and she could afford to sound genuinely pleased for Ainsley’s sake. After all, she herself was getting married; she had contracted out.
It was because she didn’t want to be involved that she resented Len’s phone call. From the tone of his voice she guessed Ainsley had told him something, but it hadn’t been clear from the conversation exactly what he knew. She was already resolved to be as passive as possible. She would listen, of course – she had ears, she couldn’t help it – to whatever he had to say (what was there for him to say, anyway? His function, such as it had been, was over); but beyond that there was nothing she could do. She felt incapable of handling the situation, and irritated too: if Len wanted to talk to anyone he should talk to Ainsley. She was the one with the answers.
Marian ate another spoonful of peanut butter, disliking the way it cleaved to the roof of her mouth, and to pass the time turned to the shellfish chapter and read the part about de-veining shrimps (who, she wondered, still bought real shrimps?) and then the instructions for turtles, which she had recently begun to find of interest: precisely what kind of interest, she was not certain. You were supposed to keep your live turtle in a cardboard box or other cage for about a week, loving it and feeding it hamburger to rid it of its impurities. Then just as it was beginning to trust you and perhaps follow you around the kitchen like a sluggish but devoted hard-shelled spaniel, you put it one day into a cauldron of cold water (where no doubt it would swim and dive happily, at first) and then brought it slowly to the boil. The whole procedure was reminiscent of the deaths of early Christian martyrs. What fiendishness went on in kitchens across the country, in the name of providing food! But the only alternative for that sort of thing seemed to be the cellowrapped and plasticoated and cardboard-cartoned surrogates. Substitutes, or merely disguises? At any rate, whatever killing had gone on had been done efficiently, by somebody else, beforehand.
Down below the doorbell rang. Marian tensed, listening: she didn’t want to start down the stairs if it wasn’t necessary. She heard a mumble of voices and the reverberation of the closing door. The lady down below had been on the alert. She sighed, closed the cookbook, tossed her spoon into the sink after giving it one last lick, and screwed the top on the peanut-butter jar.
“Hi,” she said to Len as he rose, white faced and out of breath, from the stairwell. He looked ill. “Come on in and sit down.” Then, because it was only six-thirty, she asked, “Have you had dinner? Can I get you anything?” She wanted