Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [76]
“No thanks,” he said, “I’m not hungry. But I could use a drink if you’ve got one.” He walked into the living room and plopped himself onto the chesterfield as though his body was a sack that he was too tired to carry around any longer.
“I’ve only got beer – that okay?” She went into the kitchen, opened two bottles, and carried them into the living room. With good friends like Len she didn’t bother with the formality of glasses.
“Thanks,” he said. He upended the squat brown bottle. His mouth, pursed budlike around the bottleneck, was for a moment strangely infantile. “Christ, do I need this,” he said, putting the bottle down on the coffee table. “I guess she must’ve told you.”
Marian sipped at her beer before replying. It was Moose Beer; she had bought some out of curiosity. It tasted just like all the other brands.
“You mean that she’s pregnant,” she said in a neutral conversational tone. “Yes, of course.”
Len groaned. He took off his horn-rimmed glasses and pressed one hand over his eyes. “God, I feel just sick about it,” he said. “I was so shocked when she told me, god I’d just called her up to see if she’d have coffee with me, she’s been sort of avoiding me ever since that night, I guess all that really shook her up, and then to have that hit you over the phone. I haven’t been able to work all afternoon. I hung up right in the middle of the conversation, I don’t know what she thought about that but I couldn’t help it. She’s such a little girl, Marian, I mean most women you’d feel what the hell, they probably deserved it, rotten bitches anyway, not that anything like that has ever happened to me before. But she’s so young. The damn thing is, I can’t really remember what happened that evening. We came back for coffee, and I was feeling sort of rotten and that bottle of scotch was sitting on the table and I started in on it. Of course I won’t deny that I’d been angling for her, but, well, I wasn’t expecting it, I mean I wasn’t ready, I mean I would have been a lot more careful. What a mess. What’m I going to do?”
Marian sat watching him silently. Ainsley, then, hadn’t had a chance to explain her motives. She wondered whether she should attempt to unsnarl, for Len’s benefit, that rather improbable tangle, or wait and let Ainsley do it herself, as by right she ought to.
“I mean I can’t marry her,” Len said miserably. “Being a husband would be bad enough, I’m too young to get married, but can you imagine me as a husband and father?” He gave a small gurgle and upended his beer bottle again. “Birth,” he said, his voice higher and more distraught, “birth terrifies me. It’s revolting. I can’t stand the thought of having” – he shuddered – “a baby.”
“Well, it isn’t you who’s going to have it, you know,” Marian said reasonably.
Len turned to her, his face contorted, pleading. The contrast between this man, his eyes exposed and weak without their usual fence of glass and tortoise-shell, and the glib, clever, slightly leering Len she had always known was painful. “Marian,” he said, “please, can’t you try to reason with her? If she’d only decide to have an abortion, of course I’ll pay for it.” He swallowed; she watched his Adam’s apple go up and down. She hadn’t known anything could make him this unhappy.
“I’m afraid she won’t,” she said gently. “You see, the whole point of it was that she wanted to get pregnant.”
“She what?”
“She did it on purpose. She wanted to get pregnant.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Len said. “Nobody wants to get pregnant. Nobody would deliberately do a thing like that!”
Marian smiled; he was being simple-minded, which she found sweet, in a sticky sort of way. She felt as though she should take him upon her knee and say, “Now Leonard, it’s high time I told you about the Facts of Life.”
“You’d he surprised,” she said, “a lot of people do. It’s fashionable these days, you know; and Ainsley reads a lot; she was particularly