Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [89]
Peter and Joe had started talking about the international situation, but Peter had tactfully changed the subject when it became obvious they would disagree. He said he had once had to take a philosophy course at university and had never been able to understand Plato; perhaps Joe could explain? Joe said he thought not, as he himself specialized in Kant, and asked Peter a technical question about inheritance taxes. He and Clara, he added, belonged to a co-operative burial society.
“I didn’t know that,” Marian said in an undertone to Clara as she dished herself a second helping of noodles. She felt as though her plate was exposed, all eyes fixed upon it, the hidden meatballs showing up from beneath the lettuce leaves like bones in an X-ray; she wished she had used one candle instead of two.
“Oh yes,” said Clara briskly, “Joe doesn’t believe in embalming.”
Marian was afraid Peter might find this a little too radical. The trouble was, she sighed inwardly, that Joe was idealistic and Peter was pragmatic. You could tell by their ties: Peter’s was paisley and dark green, elegant, functional; while Joe’s was – well, it wasn’t exactly a tie any more; it was the abstract idea of a tie. They themselves must have realized the difference: she caught them separately eyeing each others’ ties, each probably thinking he would never wear a tie like that.
She began putting the glasses into the sink. It bothered her that things hadn’t gone well; it made her feel responsible, like being It in a game of tag at recess. “Oh well,” she remembered, “he got on with Len.” It didn’t really matter anyway: Clara and Joe were from her past, and Peter shouldn’t be expected to adjust to her past; it was the future that mattered. She shivered slightly; the house was still chilly from when Peter had opened the window. She would smell maroon velvet and furniture polish, behind her there would be rustlings and coughings, then she would turn and there would be a crowd of watching faces, they would move forward and step through a doorway and there would be a flurry of white, the bits of paper blowing against their faces and settling on their hair and shoulders like snow.
She took a vitamin pill and opened the refrigerator door to get herself a glass of milk. Either she or Ainsley should really do something about the refrigerator. In the past couple of weeks their interdependent cleaning cycle had begun to break down. She had tidied up the living room for this evening, but she knew she was going to leave the dishes unwashed in the sink, which meant Ainsley would leave hers, and they would go on like that until they had used up all the dishes. Then they would start washing the top plate when they needed one and the others would sit there undisturbed. And the refrigerator: not only did it need defrosting, but its shelves were getting cluttered up with odds and ends, scraps of food in little jars, things in tinfoil and brown-paper bags.… Soon it would begin to smell. She hoped that whatever was going on in there wouldn’t spread too quickly to the rest of the house, at least not down the stairs. Maybe she would be married before it became epidemic.
Ainsley had not been at dinner; she had gone to the Pre-Natal Clinic, as she did every Friday evening. While Marian was folding the tablecloth, she heard her come upstairs and go into her room, and shortly afterwards her tremulous voice called, “Marian? Could you please come here?”
She went into Ainsley’s room, picking her way over the boggy surface of clothes that covered the floor towards the bed where Ainsley had thrown herself. “What’s the matter?” she asked. Ainsley looked dismayed.
“Oh Marian,” she quavered, “it’s too awful. I went to the Clinic tonight. And I was so happy, and I was doing my knitting and everything during the first speaker – he talked about The Advantages of Breast Feeding. They even have an Association for it now. But then they had this psy-psy-psychologist, and he talked about the Father Image.” She was on the verge of tears, and Marian got up and rooted around on