Surfacing - Margaret Atwood [38]
“It would be different with us,” he said, disregarding what I said about the baby.
At my wedding we filled out forms, name, age, birthplace, blood type. We had it in a post office, a J.P. did it, oil portraits of former postmasters presided from the beige walls. I could recall the exact smells, glue and humid socks and the odour of second-day blouse and crystallized deodorant from the irritated secretary, and, from another doorway, the chill of antiseptic. It was a hot day, when we stepped out into the sun we couldn’t see for an instant; then there was a flock of draggled pigeons pecking at the scuffed post office lawn beside the fountain. The fountain had dolphins and a cherub with part of the face missing.
“It’s over,” he said, “feel better?”
He coiled his arms around me, protecting me from something, the future, and kissed me on the forehead. “You’re cold,” he said. My legs were shaking so much I could hardly stand up and there was an ache, slow like a groan. “Come on,” he said, “we’d better get you home.” He lifted my face, scrutinizing it in the light. “Maybe I should carry you to the car.”
He was talking to me as though I was an invalid, not a bride. In one hand I carried a purse or a suitcase; the other was closed. We walked through the pigeons and they blew up around us, confetti. In the car I didn’t cry, I didn’t want to look at him. “I know it’s tough,” he said, “but it’s better this way.” Quote, unquote. His flexible hands on the wheel. It turned, perfect circle, and the gears interlocked and spun, the engine ticked like a clock, the voice of reason.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I said, losing control. “You’ll ruin it.” Then I was sorry, as though I’d stepped on a small animal by accident, he was so miserable: he’d abdicated, betrayed what I’d assumed were his principles, in order to be saved, by me, from me, and he’d got nothing by it.
I took his hand; he let me hold it, frowning at me, sullen as a doormat. “I’m not good enough for you,” I said, motto, the words printed on a scroll like a fortune cookie. I kissed him on the side of the face. I was stalling for time, also I was afraid of him: the look he gave me as I drew away was one of baffled rage.
We were sitting outside in the chicken wire enclosure; Joe was in the sandbox with his back half-turned to us, scraping together a large mound of sand. He’d finished his pie, the rest of us were still eating. It was too hot to eat in the house, we had to keep the stove going for two hours. They had purple mouths and blue teeth which showed when they talked or laughed.
“That’s the best pie I ever ate,” David said. “Just like mother used to make.” He smacked his lips and posed, pretending to be a T.V. ad.
“Stuff it,” Anna said, “you can’t afford just one measly compliment, can you?”
David’s purple mouth grinned. “Aw,” he said, “that was a compliment.”
“The hell,” Anna said. “I’ve met your mother.”
David sighed and leaned back against his tree, rolling his eyes to Joe for sympathy. But he got none and so he gazed up at the sky instead. “This is the life,” he said after a while. “We ought to start a colony, I mean a community up here, get it together with some other people, break away from the urban nuclear family. It wouldn’t be a bad country if only we could kick out the fucking pig Americans, eh? Then we could have some peace.”
Nobody answered him; he took off one of his shoes and began scratching the sole of his foot thoughtfully.
“I think it would be a copout,” Anna said abruptly.
“What would?” David said, overly tolerant, as though she’d interrupted him in mid-sentence. “Kicking out the pigs?”
“Oh shit,” Anna said, “you just won’t.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he said, feigning hurt. But she sat hugging her knees, smoke breathing through her nostrils. I got up and started to collect the plates.
“It turns me on when she bends over,” David said. “She’s got