Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood [35]
The apartment had a living room with a dining nook, and another room into which I put a Salvation Army desk and a chair and a typewriter. In the living room I set up a borrowed card table that acted as a dining table whenever I had any guests. For these affairs I used plates and cutlery, also borrowed.
I had a painting, bought from a friend of a friend because that person needed twenty-five dollars. The painting was an abstract, and showed some reddish blobs and scratches. When I’d had a few drinks I could see something in it, but without that sort of enhancement it looked like a damp patch on the wallpaper where something had leaked through. I hung it over the fireplace, which was not functional.
In this apartment, free at last from the eyes of roommates and far from the thought rays beamed out by my parents, I cycled through my most extreme versions of in and out, yes and no, stay and go, high and low, alone and together, elation and despair. One day I’d be flying through the clouds, drunk on cloudy possibilities; the next, up to my neck in mud, dragged down by the sodden prospects of the here and now. I walked around through the various rooms without any clothes on; I wore myself out reading until late in the night, then slept till noon, waking up entangled in the glossy green satin spread, unsure of where I was. I talked to myself; I sang out loud, silly, defiant songs I’d learned in school playgrounds a long time ago. Hi-ho, the derry-o, I’d sing. The cheese stands alone! Tried the other place, tried the other place, tried the other place last night … There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea, there’s a hole in the bottom of the sea … I care for nobody, no not I, and nobody cares for me! Or, deprived of all speech and song and even of motion, I’d find myself lying face down on the wall-to-wall carpeting of the hallway, through which I couldn’t help hearing the derisive television laughter from the dwelling below. What if I died from starvation, right there on the carpet, through a simple inability to crawl to the refrigerator and get myself something to eat? Then all those fun-filled, roistering people on the television would be sorry.
In the evenings, when I wasn’t twittering with glee or prostrate on the floor, I’d go for long, pensive walks. I’d start out purposefully, marching forward as if I had a destination. I was conscious of being watched through the windows of the floor below by the husband and wife who owned the apartment – he with a crewcut and a lawnmower, she with an apron and hair rollers. Although I dressed with relentless drabness, in dark browns and greys and shapeless blacks, they’d worried about renting to me until I’d proved I had a salary. It excited them to believe I was depraved in some way, or so I felt. I did have a lover or two during that time – temporary lovers, just borrowed – and they must have heard, on occasion, more than one pair of footsteps going up the stairs.
But for my evening walks I was alone. I made a point of it. As soon as I was out of the sight of the downstairs couple, I would slow down and choose the turnings at random, trying to avoid stepping on the huge black and grey slugs that crawled over the sidewalks as soon as it was dusk. These slugs ate everything,