The Edible Woman

by Margaret Atwood

  The telephone rang. She let it ring a couple of times before getting up to answer it. She didn't feel like talking to anyone and it was an effort to pull herself up out of the gentle realm of lettuce and watercress and piquant herb dressings.

  "Marian?" It was Leonard Slank's voice. "Is that you?"

  "Yes, hi Len," she said. "How are you?" She hadn't seen him or even spoken to him for quite a long time.

  He sounded urgent. "Are you alone? I mean is Ainsley there?"

  "No; she isn't back from work yet. She said she was going to do some shopping." It was the Christmas season; had been, it seemed, for several months; and the stores were staying open till nine. "But I can get her to call you when she comes in."

  "No no," he said hastily. "It's you I want to talk to. Can I come over?"

  Peter was working on a case that night, so technically she wasn't busy; and her brain did not provide her with any excuse. "Sure, of course Len," she said. So she's told him, she thought as she put down the phone. The idiot. I wonder what she did that for.

  Ainsley had been in the highest of spirits for the past few weeks. She had been certain from the beginning that she was pregnant, and her mind had hovered over the activities of her body with the solicitous attention of a scientist towards a crucial test tube, waiting for the definitive change. She spent more time than usual in the kitchen, trying to decide whether or not she had strange cravings and sampling a multitude of foods to see if they tasted at all different, reporting her findings to Marian: tea, she said, was more bitter, eggs were sulphury. She stood on Marian's bed to examine the profile of her belly in Marian's dresser mirror, which was bigger than her own. When she wandered around the apartment she hummed to herself, constantly, intolerably; and finally one morning she had retched in the kitchen sink, to her immense satisfaction. At last it had been time to go and see the gynaecologist, and just yesterday she had bounced up the stairs, her face radiant, waving an envelope: the result was Positive.

  Marian congratulated her, but not as dourly as she would have done if it had happened several months earlier. At that time she would have had to cope with the resulting problems, such as where Ainsley would live - the lady down below would certainly not tolerate her once she became rotund - and whether she herself should get another roommate, and if so, whether she would feel guilty about deserting Ainsley, and if not, whether she could face all the intricacies and tensions that would result from living with an unmarried mother and a newborn baby. But now it wasn't her concern, and she could afford to sound genuinely pleased for Ainsley's sake. After all, she herself was getting married; she had contracted out.

  It was because she didn't want to be involved that she resented Len's phone call. From the tone of his voice she guessed Ainsley had told him something, but it hadn't been clear from the conversation exactly what he knew. She was already resolved to be as passive as possible. She would listen, of course - she had ears, she couldn't help it - to whatever he had to say (what was there for him to say, anyway? His function, such as it had been, was over); but beyond that there was nothing she could do. She felt incapable of handling the situation, and irritated too: if Len wanted to talk to anyone he should talk to Ainsley. She was the one with the answers.

  Marian ate another spoonful of peanut butter, disliking the way it cleaved to the roof of her mouth, and to pass the time turned to the shellfish chapter and read the part about de-veining shrimps (who, she wondered, still bought real shrimps?) and then the instructions for turtles, which she had recently begun to find of interest: precisely what kind of interest, she was not certain. You were supposed to keep your live turtle in a cardboard box or other cage for about a week, loving it and feeding it hamburger to rid it of its impurities. Then just as it was beginning to trust you and perhaps follow you around the kitchen like a sluggish but devoted hard-shelled spaniel, you put it one day into a cauldron of cold water (where no doubt it would swim and dive happily, at first) and then brought it slowly to the boil. The whole procedure was reminiscent of the deaths of early Christian martyrs. What fiendishness went on in kitchens across the country, in the name of providing food! But the only alternative for that sort of thing seemed to be the cellowrapped and plasticoated and cardboard-cartoned surrogates. Substitutes, or merely disguises? At any rate, whatever killing had gone on had been done efficiently, by somebody else, beforehand.

  Down below the doorbell rang. Marian tensed, listening: she didn't want to start down the stairs if it wasn't necessary. She heard a mumble of voices and the reverberation of the closing door. The lady down below had been on the alert. She sighed, closed the cookbook, tossed her spoon into the sink after giving it one last lick, and screwed the top on the peanut-butter jar.

  "Hi," she said to Len as he rose, white faced and out of breath, from the stairwell. He looked ill. "Come on in and sit down." Then, because it was only six-thirty, she asked, "Have you had dinner? Can I get you anything?" She wanted to prepare something for him, if only a bacon-and-tomato sandwich. Ever since her own relation to food had become ambiguous she found she took a perverse delight in watching other people eat.

  "No thanks," he said, "I'm not hungry. But I could use a drink if you've got one." He walked into the living room and plopped himself onto the chesterfield as though his body was a sack that he was too tired to carry around any longer.

  "I've only got beer - that okay?" She went into the kitchen, opened two bottles, and carried them into the living room. With good friends like Len she didn't bother with the formality of glasses.

  "Thanks," he said. He upended the squat brown bottle. His mouth, pursed budlike around the bottleneck, was for a moment strangely infantile. "Christ, do I need this," he said, putting the bottle down on the coffee table. "I guess she must've told you."

  Marian sipped at her beer before replying. It was Moose Beer; she had bought some out of curiosity. It tasted just like all the other brands.

  "You mean that she's pregnant," she said in a neutral conversational tone. "Yes, of course."

  Len groaned. He took off his horn-rimmed glasses and pressed one hand over his eyes. "God, I feel just sick about it," he said. "I was so shocked when she told me, god I'd just called her up to see if she'd have coffee with me, she's been sort of avoiding me ever since that night, I guess all that really shook her up, and then to have that hit you over the phone. I haven't been able to work all afternoon. I hung up right in the middle of the conversation, I don't know what she thought about that but I couldn't help it. She's such a little girl, Marian, I mean most women you'd feel what the hell, they probably deserved it, rotten bitches anyway, not that anything like that has ever happened to me before. But she's so young. The damn thing is, I can't really remember what happened that evening. We came back for coffee, and I was feeling sort of rotten and that bottle of scotch was sitting on the table and I started in on it. Of course I won't deny that I'd been angling for her, but, well, I wasn't expecting it, I mean I wasn't ready, I mean I would have been a lot more careful. What a mess. What'm I going to do?"

  Marian sat watching him silently. Ainsley, then, hadn't had a chance to explain her motives. She wondered whether she should attempt to unsnarl, for Len's benefit, that rather improbable tangle, or wait and let Ainsley do it herself, as by right she ought to.

  "I mean I can't marry her," Len said miserably. "Being a husband would be bad enough, I'm too young to get married, but can you imagine me as a husband and father?" He gave a small gurgle and upended his beer bottle again. "Birth," he said, his voice higher and more distraught, "birth terrifies me. It's revolting. I can't stand the thought of having" - he shuddered - "a baby."

  "Well, it isn't you who's going to have it, you know," Marian said reasonably.

  Len turned to her, his face contorted, pleading. The contrast between this man, his eyes exposed and weak without their usual fence of glass and tortoise-shell, and the glib, clever, slightly leering Len she had always known was painful. "Marian," he said, "please, can't you try to
reason with her? If she'd only decide to have an abortion, of course I'll pay for it." He swallowed; she watched his Adam's apple go up and down. She hadn't known anything could make him this unhappy.

  "I'm afraid she won't," she said gently. "You see, the whole point of it was that she wanted to get pregnant."

  "She what?"

  "She did it on purpose. She wanted to get pregnant."

  "That's ridiculous!" Len said. "Nobody wants to get pregnant. Nobody would deliberately do a thing like that!"

  Marian smiled; he was being simple-minded, which she found sweet, in a sticky sort of way. She felt as though she should take him upon her knee and say, "Now Leonard, it's high time I told you about the Facts of Life."

  "You'd he surprised," she said, "a lot of people do. It's fashionable these days, you know; and Ainsley reads a lot; she was particularly fond of anthropology at college, and she's convinced that no woman has fulfilled her femininity unless she's had a baby. But don't worry, you won't have to be involved any further. She doesn't want a husband, just a baby. So you've already done your bit."

  Len was having trouble believing her. He put on his glasses, stared at her through them, and took them off again. There was a pause while he drank more beer. "So she's been to college, too. I should have known. That's what we get then," he said nastily, "for educating women. They get all kinds of ridiculous ideas."

  "Oh, I don't know," Marian said with a touch of sharpness, "there's some men it doesn't do much good for either."

  Len winced. "Meaning me, I suppose. But how was I to know? You certainly didn't tell me. What a friend."

  "Why, I'd never presume to try and tell you how to run your life," Marian said indignantly. "But why should you be upset, now that you know? You don't have to do anything. She'll take care of the whole business. Believe me, Ainsley's quite capable of looking after herself."

  Leonard's mood seemed to be changing rapidly from despair to anger. "The little slut," he muttered. "Getting me into something like this...."

  There were footsteps on the stairs.

  "Shhh," Marian said, "here she is. Now keep calm." She went out into the small vestibule to greet Ainsley.

  "Hi, just wait till you see what I got," Ainsley called, lilting up the stairs. She bustled into the kitchen, setting her parcels on the table and taking off her coat and talking breathlessly. "It was such a jam down there but besides the groceries - have to eat enough for two now, you know - oh, and I got my vitamin pills - and I got the darlingest little patterns, just wait till you see." She produced a knitting book, then some blue baby-wool.

  "So it's going to be a boy," Marian said.

  Ainsley's eyes widened. "Well of course. I mean, I thought it might be better...."

  "Well, maybe you should have discussed it with the prospective father before you took the necessary steps. He's in the living room, and he seems rather annoyed at not being consulted. You see," Marian said maliciously, "he may have wanted a girl."

  Ainsley pushed back a strand of auburn hair that had fallen over her forehead. "Oh. Len's here, is he?" she said, with pronounced coolness. "Yes. He sounded a little upset on the phone." She walked into the living room. Marian did not know which of them needed her support more or which she would give it to if forced to choose between them. She followed Ainsley, aware that she should extricate herself before the thing got much messier, but not knowing how.

  "Hi Len," Ainsley said lightly. "You hung up on me before I had a chance to explain."

  Len wouldn't look at her. "Marian has already explained, thanks."

  Ainsley pouted reproachfully. She had evidently wanted to do it herself.

  "Well, it was somebody's duty to," Marian said, compressing her lips in a slightly Presbyterian manner. "He was suffering."

  "Maybe I shouldn't have told you at all," Ainsley said, "but I really couldn't keep it to myself. Just think, I'm going to be a mother! I'm really so happy about it."

  Len had been gradually bristling and swelling. "Well I'm not so damn happy about it," he burst out. "All along you've only been using me. What a moron I was to think you were sweet and innocent, when it turns out you were actually college educated the whole time! Oh, they're all the same. You weren't interested in me at all. The only thing you wanted from me was my body!"

  "What did you want," Ainsley asked sweetly, "from me? Anyway, that's all I took. You can have the rest. And you can keep your peace of mind, I'm not threatening you with a paternity suit."

  Len had stood up and was pacing the floor, at a safe distance from Ainsley. "Peace of mind. Hah. Oh no, you've involved me. You involved me psychologically. I'll have to think of myself as a father now, it's indecent, and all because you" - he gasped: the idea was a novel one for him - "you seduced me!" He waved his beer bottle at her. "Now I'm going to be all mentally tangled up in Birth. Fecundity. Gestation. Don't you realize what that will do to me? It's obscene, that horrible oozy ..."

  "Don't be idiotic," Ainsley said. "It's perfectly natural and beautiful. The relationship between mother and unborn child is the loveliest and closest in the world." She was leaning in the doorway, gazing towards the window. "The most mutually balanced ..."

  "Nauseating!" interjected Len.

  Ainsley turned on him angrily. "You're displaying the classic symptoms of uterus envy. Where the hell do you think you came from, anyway? You're not from Mars, you know, and it may be news but your mother didn't find you under a cabbage plant in the garden either. You were all curled up inside somebody's womb for nine months just like everybody else, and ..."

  Len's face cringed. "Stop!" he cried. "Don't remind me. I really can't stand it, you'll make me sick. Don't come near me!" he yelped, as Ainsley took a step towards him. "You're unclean!"

  Marian decided he was becoming hysterical. He sat down on the arm of the chesterfield and covered his face with his hands. "She made me do it," he muttered. "My own mother. We were having eggs for breakfast and I opened mine and there was, I swear there was a little chicken inside it, it wasn't born yet, I didn't want to touch it but she didn't see, she didn't see what was really there, she said Don't be silly, it looks like an ordinary egg to me, but it wasn't, it wasn't and she made me eat it. And I know, I know there was a little beak and little claws and everything...." He shuddered violently. "Horrible. Horrible, I can't stand it," he moaned, and his shoulders began to heave convulsively.

  Marian blushed with embarrassment, but Ainsley gave a maternal coo of concern and hurried to the chesterfield. She sat down beside Len and put her arms around him, pulling him down so that he was resting half across her lap with his head against her shoulder. "There, there," she soothed. Her hair fell down around their two faces like a veil, or, Marian thought, a web. She rocked her body gently. "There, there. It's not going to be a little chicken anyway, it's going to be a lovely nice baby. Nice baby."

  Marian walked out to the kitchen. She was coldly revolted: they were acting like a couple of infants. Ainsley was getting a layer of blubber on her soul already, she thought; aren't hormones wonderful. Soon she would be fat all over. And Len had displayed something hidden, something she had never seen in him before. He had behaved like a white grub suddenly unearthed from its burrow and exposed to the light of day. A repulsive blinded writhing. It amazed her though that it had taken so little, really, to reduce him to that state. His shell had not been as thick and calloused as she had imagined. It was like that parlour trick they used to play with eggs: you put the egg endwise between your locked hands and squeezed it with all your might, and the egg wouldn't break; it was so well balanced that you were exerting your force against yourself. But with only a slight shift, an angle, a re-adjustment of the pressure, the egg would crack, and skoosh, there you were with your shoes full of albumin.

  Now Len's delicate adjustment had been upset and he was being crushed. She wondered how he had ever managed to avoid the issue for so long, to persuade himself that his own much-vaunted sexual activities could have nothing whatever to do
with the manufacture of children. What would he have done then if the situation had been as he first imagined it, and he had got Ainsley pregnant by accident? Would he have been able to play guilt off against a blamelessness based on no-intent-to-injure, have let them cancel each other out and escaped unscathed? Ainsley couldn't have foreseen his reaction. But it was her decision that was responsible for this crisis. What was she going to do with him now? What should she do?

  Oh well, she thought, it's their problem, let them solve it; I'm well out of it anyway. She went into her bedroom and closed the door.

  The next morning, however, when she opened her soft-boiled egg and saw the yolk looking up at her with its one significant and accusing yellow eye, she found her mouth closing together like a frightened sea anemone. It's living; it's alive, the muscles in her throat said, and tightened. She pushed the dish away. Her conscious mind was used to the procedure by now. She sighed with resignation and crossed one more item off the list.

  19

  "There's jelly, salmon, peanut butter and honey, and egg salad," Mrs. Grot said, shoving the platter almost under Marian's nose - not because she was being rude but because Marian was sitting on the chesterfield and Mrs. Grot was standing up, and the assemblage of vertebrae, inflexible corsetry, and desk-oriented musculature that provided Mrs. Grot with her vertical structure would not allow her to bend very far over.

  Marian drew herself back into the soft chintz cushions. "Jelly, thanks," she said, taking one.

  It was the office Christmas party, which was being held in the ladies' lunchroom where they could be, as Mrs. Gundridge had put it, "more comfy." So far their comfiness, all-permeating as it was in these close quarters, had been tempered by a certain amount of suppressed resentment. Christmas fell on a Wednesday this year, which meant that they all had to come back to work on Friday, missing by a single day the chance of a gloriously long weekend. It was the knowledge of this fact however that had, Marian was sure, put the twinkle in Mrs. Grot's spectacles and even infused her with gaiety enough to sustain this unprecedentedly social sandwich-passing. It's because she wants to take a good close look at our sufferings, Marian thought, watching the rigid figure as it progressed around the room.