Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood [7]
Once a day she went for a swim, although she didn’t swim energetically, not the way she used to, she just floated around; and I would go in too, whether I wanted to or not: I had to prevent her from drowning. I had a fear of her sinking down suddenly, down through the cold brownish water, with her hair fanning out like seaweed and her eyes gazing solemnly up at me. In that case I would have to dive down and get my arm around her neck and tow her to shore, but how could I do that? She was so big. But nothing like that had happened yet, and she liked going into the water; it seemed to wake her up. With only her head sticking out, she looked more like herself. At such times she would even smile, and I would have the illusion that everything was once again the way it was supposed to be.
But then she would emerge, dripping – there were varicose veins on the backs of her legs, I couldn’t avoid seeing them, although they embarrassed me – and make her way with painful slowness up to our cabin, and put together our lunch. The lunch would be sardines, or peanut butter on crackers, or cheese if we had any, and tomatoes from the garden, and carrots I’d dug out and washed. She didn’t appear much interested in eating this lunch, but she chewed away at it anyway. She would make an effort at conversation – how was my knitting coming along? – but I didn’t know what to say to her. I couldn’t understand why she’d chosen to do what she’d done – why she’d turned herself into this listless, bloated version of herself, thus changing the future – my future – into something shadow-filled and uncertain. I thought she’d done it on purpose. It didn’t occur to me that she might have been ambushed.
It was mid-August: hot and oppressive. The cicadas sang in the trees, the dry pine needles crackled underfoot. The lake was ominously still, the way it was when thunder was gathering. My mother was dozing. I sat on the dock, slapping at the stable flies and worrying. I felt like crying, but I could not allow myself to do that. I was completely alone. What would I do if the dangerous thing – whatever it was – began to happen? I thought I knew what it might be: the baby would start to come out, too soon. And then what? I couldn’t exactly stuff it back in.
We were on an island, there were no other people in sight, there was no telephone, it was seven miles by boat to the nearest village. I would have to start the outboard motor on our clunky old boat – I knew how to do this, though pulling the cord hard enough was almost beyond my strength – and go all the way to the village, which could take an hour. From there I could telephone for help. But what if the motor wouldn’t start? That had been known to happen. Or what if it broke down on the way? There was a tool kit, but I’d learned only the most elementary operations. I could fix a shear pin, I could check a gas line; if those things didn’t work I would have to row, or wave and yell at passing fishermen, if any.
Or I could use the canoe – put a stone in the stern to weight it down, paddle from the bow end, as I’d been taught. But that method would be useless in a wind, even a light wind: I wasn’t strong enough to hold a course, I would be blown sideways.
I thought of a plan of last resort. I would take the canoe over to one of the small offshore islands – I could get that far, no matter what. Then I would set fire to the island. The smoke would be seen by a fire ranger, who would send a float plane, and I would stand on the dock in full view and jump up and down and wave a white pillowcase. This could not fail. The risk was that I would set the mainland on fire as well, by accident. Then I would end up in jail as an arsonist. But I would just have to do it anyway. It