Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood [63]
In the mornings they would sit around after breakfast – stacks of Tig’s wheat-germ pancakes were featured – saying how restful it was in the country, while Nell and Tig tidied up the dishes. They might stand around with their arms dangling at their sides, asking if there was anything they could do – Nell could remember when she herself was like that – and Nell might send them out to the henhouse with a basket padded with tea towels, to collect eggs, which gave them a thrill. Or she would put them to work weeding the garden. They would say how therapeutic it was to get dirt on their fingers; then they would breathe deeply as if they’d just discovered air; then they would have lunch again. After they’d left, Nell would wash their sheets and towels and hang them up on the outside line to flap in the sunshine between the apple trees.
Usually these visitors to the farm were couples, but Nell’s baby sister, Lizzie, would come up by herself. The frequency of her visits was connected with the troubles in her life: if there were lots of troubles she would visit, if there weren’t many troubles she wouldn’t.
The troubles were about men, of which there had already been a number in her life. The men behaved badly. Nell listened to the accounts of their thoughtlessness, their contrariness, and their betrayals, coupled with descriptions of Lizzie’s own shortcomings, flaws, and mistakes. She joined in the task of deciphering the men’s casual remarks – remarks that usually had a mean and hurtful undertone, it was decided. Then Nell would take Lizzie’s side and denounce the men as unworthy. At this point Lizzie would turn around and defend them. These men were exceptional – they were smart, talented, and sexy. In fact, they were perfect, except that they didn’t love Lizzie enough. Nell sometimes wondered how much enough would be.
Lizzie had been born when Nell was eleven. She’d been an anxious baby and then an anxious child and then an anxious teenager, but now she was twenty-three. Nell hoped the anxiety would begin to wear off soon.
It was her anxiety that caused Lizzie to pick away at the men, peeling them down through their callous and blemished outer layers to get at their pristine cores – at the good, kind hearts she believed were hidden inside them somewhere, like truffles or oil wells. The men didn’t seem to relish the process of being peeled, not in the long run. But no one could stop Lizzie from doing it. This would go on until some other man would come along, and then the former man would be archived.
Lizzie and Nell had the same noses. They both bit their fingers. Other than that, there were differences. Nell looked the age she was, but Lizzie could have been mistaken for a fourteen-year-old. She was thin, delicate-looking, with big eyes the colour of blue-green hydrangeas. Hydrangeas were a flower she favoured; she had a list of other favourite flowers. She liked the ones with small petals.
She thought Nell and Tig should plant some hydrangeas at the farm. She had other planting suggestions as well.
Lizzie loved the farm. Certain of its aspects enraptured her – the apple blossoms, the wild plum trees along the fencelines, the swallows dipping over the pond. One beautiful day, Nell and Lizzie were sitting outside the back door making ice cream. The inner ice cream canister was turned by electricity; they’d run an extension cord into the house. The outer canister was packed with chipped ice and rock salt. Some of the cats were watching from a distance: they knew there was cream involved. Howl had been over to investigate but had been alarmed by the whirring noise the machine was making and had backed away, whimpering.
As for Gladys, she was keeping an eye on them from the other side of the barnyard fence. She lived inside the barnyard now, because Nell had decided the sheep and cows would be company for her. After a short period of terrorizing the sheep by stampeding them around the barnyard, teeth bared, tail fully erect, she