Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood [46]
What exactly was it that Tig was offering her? He claimed to want permanence, but in what form? He was still married, after all. There would be a plot, there would be emotions and events, that much was predictable. There would be love – the word had been used – but what kind of love was it? And in terms of daily life, what did it mean? “I think it could work out for us,” was how Tig had put it. “I want to share my life with you.” But did the life he said he wanted to share include – for instance – Oona?
Nell could feel Oona’s presence as soon as she walked through the door of her study. Feel, or possibly smell: Oona favoured perfumed cosmetics, leaning toward the more exotic end of the aroma spectrum. During their editing days Nell had found these scents pleasant enough, but now she couldn’t settle down to work unless she opened the window first to let in a current of fresh air, despite the sub-zero temperatures. She had the sensation that Oona was standing just behind her, looking over her shoulder, smiling in an ambiguous manner and giving off waves of soporific odour, like a field of ripe poppies.
But Oona had been coming up to the farm less and less, according to Tig. As for the project of Oona’s new book, the one Nell was to have edited, or – more like it – ghost-written, it had been quietly dropped.
In late February, Tig announced that it was now time for Nell to be at the farm at the same time as the boys. Nell wasn’t sure she was ready for that. She’d got used to being invisible: to change the arrangement now would be to upset a balance. But Tig said he’d explained about her to the boys, about how she was living at the farm for most of the week, so she had to do her part. Anyway he and Oona had discussed it and had agreed that this was the way things should go: it was time for the boys to see Nell on her home turf.
“Why did you discuss it with her?” asked Nell, making her voice as neutral as possible.
Tig looked baffled. “Naturally I discussed it with her,” he said. “We discuss everything about the boys. She’s their mother.”
“What exactly did she say?” said Nell. “About me?”
“She’s all in favour of it,” said Tig. “She’s all in favour of you. She thinks you’ll be good for the boys.”
“But what about me?” asked Nell. She wanted to add that the farm wasn’t her home turf. She didn’t have a home turf, she wasn’t settled, she hadn’t made up her mind. She wanted more courtship.
“What do you mean?” said Tig.
“Who do they think I am?” said Nell. “What am I supposed to be?”
“You’re supposed to be the wonderful woman who lives here with me,” said Tig. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her neck, but she could tell that he was annoyed nonetheless. She was making difficulties where none existed. She was overstepping a line. But where was the line? She couldn’t see it.
On the last Saturday in February, Nell took the Greyhound bus up to Stiles. It was already the afternoon: Tig and Oona had decided that Nell shouldn’t try to spend the entire weekend, not the first time, because it might be too much of a strain for the children. She waited in the station for Tig to pick her up, knitting away at her bedspread. She had only two more rows of squares to go; she’d already attached the finished rows together, using a crochet hook, and the red and purple and blue checkerboard effect had come out just