Surfacing - Margaret Atwood [46]
“He thinks we should get married,” I said.
Her eyebrows lifted like antennae. “Really? Joe? That’s not …”
“I don’t want to.”
“Oh,” she said, “then that’s awful. You must feel awful.” She’d found out; now she was rubbing after-sun lotion on her shoulders. “Mind?” she said, handing me the plastic tube.
I didn’t feel awful; I realized I didn’t feel much of anything, I hadn’t for a long time. Perhaps I’d been like that all my life, just as some babies are born deaf or without a sense of touch; but if that was true I wouldn’t have noticed the absence. At some point my neck must have closed over, pond freezing or a wound, shutting me into my head; since then everything had been glancing off me, it was like being in a vase, or the village where I could see them but not hear them because I couldn’t understand what was being said. Bottles distort for the observer too: frogs in the jam jar stretched wide, to them watching I must have appeared grotesque.
“Thanks,” Anna said, “I hope I won’t peel. I think you should go talk to him, or something.”
“I have,” I said; but her eyes were accusing, I hadn’t done enough, conciliation, expiation. I went obediently towards the door.
“Maybe you can work it out,” she called after me.
Joe was still on the dock but he was sitting on the edge now with his feet in the water, I crouched down beside him. His toes had dark hairs on the tops, spaced like the needles on a balsam twig.
“What is it?” I said. “Are you sick?”
“You know fucking well,” he said after a minute.
“Let’s go back to the city,” I said, “the way it was before.” I took hold of his hand so I could feel the calloused palm, thickened by the wheel, concrete.
“You’re screwing around with me,” he said, still not looking at me. “All I want is a straight answer.”
“About what?” I said. Near the dock there were some water skippers, surface tension holding them up; the fragile shadows of the dents where their feet touched fell on the sand underwater, moving when they moved. His vulnerability embarrassed me, he could still feel, I should have been more careful with him.
“Do you love me, that’s all,” he said. “That’s the only thing that matters.”
It was the language again, I couldn’t use it because it wasn’t mine. He must have known what he meant but it was an imprecise word; the Eskimoes had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them, there ought to be as many for love.
“I want to,” I said. “I do in a way.” I hunted through my brain for any emotion that would coincide with what I’d said. I did want to, but it was like thinking God should exist and not being able to believe.
“Fucking jesus,” he said, pulling his hand away, “just yes or no, don’t mess around.”
“I’m trying to tell the truth,” I said. The voice wasn’t mine, it came from someone dressed as me, imitating me.
“The truth is,” he said bitterly, “you think my work is crap, you think I’m a loser and I’m not worth it.” His face contorted, it was pain: I envied him.
“No,” I said, but I couldn’t say it right and he needed more than that.
“Come up to the cabin,” I said; Anna was there, she would help. “I’ll make some tea.” I got up but he wouldn’t follow.
While the stove was heating I took the leather album from the shelf in their room and opened it on the table, where Anna was reading. It was no longer his death but my own that concerned me; perhaps I would be able to tell when the change occurred by the differences in my former faces, alive up to a year, a day, then frozen. The duchess at the French court before the Revolution, who stopped laughing or crying so her skin would never change or wrinkle, it worked, she died immortal.
Grandmothers and grandfathers first, distant ancestors, strangers, in face-front firing-squad poses: cameras weren’t ordinary then, maybe they thought their souls were being stolen, as the Indians did. Underneath them were labels in white, my mother’s cautious printing. My mother before she was married, another stranger, with bobbed hair and a knitted hat. Wedding pictures, corseted smiles. My brother