Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood [47]
Tig was late, but this was nothing new. He was usually late collecting her. He had other errands to do in Stiles. He needed to get gas, go to the hardware store, buy groceries. Once she’d recognized that, she was fine about the lateness, more or less.
They drove to the farm in the rusted-out Chevy. The boys were sliding around on the frozen pond. They didn’t have skates on, but they had hockey sticks; they were shooting pucks. They waved their mittened hands as the car skewed its way up the drive.
This time there was no embrace, no throwing off of garments, no hurried plunge under Tig’s duvet. Instead, once they were inside the door there was an awkward pause.
“They’ll be happy out there for a while,” said Tig.
“Maybe we should make some cocoa,” said Nell. That was what you did with children: you made them cocoa. “And popcorn,” she added. Those were the foods that had been served up for her when she was a child, on cold winter afternoons such as this one: comforting foods, rich and sweet and warm.
“That’s a good idea,” said Tig. He smiled at her, pleased that she was making an effort.
Luckily there was some cocoa, and also some popping corn. Nell busied herself mixing up the cocoa powder and the sugar. She measured the milk into a saucepan, then she turned on the stove and began jiggling the corn kernels in an iron pot. Den mother, she thought. Camp counsellor. Sunday-school teacher on an outing. Those were her choices, her disguises: prissy ones, all of them, reeking of blue cotton blouses with badges on their sleeves. How would she greet the boys? “Hello there, I’m your dad’s mistress.” But mistress as a word had gone out the window along with adultery. You couldn’t have the one without the other.
The boys came in through the shed; she could hear them laughing, stamping the snow off their feet. Then they were in the main room. They looked at her shyly, with what might also have been distrust or apprehension: much the same way – Nell supposed – that she was looking at them. Then they shook her hand, each one in turn. Despite the thorniness and leechiness of the marriage that had been their habitat until now, they had been what used to be known as well brought up. They were taller than she remembered them, and older, but of course they would be. It was months – a lot of months – since she had last seen them.
The three of them sat at the kitchen table, drinking their cocoa and eating their popcorn and playing Monopoly, while Tig boiled up spaghetti for dinner. The game did not have the spontaneity of their first game together; the moves were more cautious, more guarded; the boys hoarded their Monopoly money as if for some future emergency. There wasn’t the same reckless acquisition of property, the same gambling and risk-taking. Possibly they were remembering their first game with Nell, back when both parents were still under the same roof pretending that all was well. Now it was the boys who had to pretend that all was well. Tig was pretending too: he was overly jolly, vibrating with anxiety. He so much wanted everything to go smoothly.
Nell played as sloppily as she could and made numerous loans, but she won the game anyway despite her best efforts. She couldn’t bring herself to cheat. (In the months to come, she and the boys, and sometimes even Tig, would play many more such games. Nell tried to substitute Hearts or group Solitaire, but the boys demanded Monopoly. Nell felt sorry for them: each boy wanted to win, just once. But they had bad luck, and it could not somehow be managed.)
While they were eating their spaghetti, Oona phoned. After a few exchanges with Tig and a conversation with each of the boys, she asked to speak with Nell. Nell came to the phone reluctantly. It was a wall phone, right in the kitchen. Tig and the boys went still: they couldn’t help listening.
Oona’s voice had the confiding though authoritative tone Nell remembered. “You will make sure they do their homework, won’t you?” she said. “Tig lets them play around too much. They’re getting behind at school.”