The Edible Woman

by Margaret Atwood

  He wrenched his sleeve out of Ainsley's clutch. "You'll never get me!" he screamed, charging down the stairs, his coat streaming behind him like a cape, scattering the assembled ladies before him in a blither of afternoon prints and velvet flowers, and gained the front door, which closed behind him with a thunderous crash. On the wall the yellowed ancestors rattled in their frames.

  Ainsley and Marian retreated up the stairs, to the sound of excited bleating and twittering from the ladies in the parlour. The voice of the lady down below was rising above the others, calm and soothing: "The young man was obviously inebriated."

  "Well," Ainsley said in a clipped practical voice when they were in the living room once more, "I guess that's that."

  Marian didn't know whether she was referring to Leonard or to the lady down below. "What's what?" she asked.

  Ainsley pushed her hair back over her shoulders and straightened her blouse. "I don't think he's going to come round. It's just as well: I doubt if he'd make a very good one anyway. I'll simply have to get another one, that's all."

  "Yes; I guess so," Marian said vaguely. Ainsley went into the bedroom, her firm stride expressing determination, and shut the door. The matter sounded ominously settled. She seemed to have decided on another plan already, but Marian didn't even want to think about what it might be. Thinking would be of no use anyway. Whatever course it took, there would be nothing she herself could do to prevent it.

  25

  She went into the kitchen and took off her coat. Then she ate a vitamin pill, remembering as she did so that she had not had any lunch that day. She ought to put something in her stomach.

  She opened the refrigerator to see what was in there that might be edible. The freezing-compartment was so thickly encrusted with ice that its door wouldn't stay shut. It contained two ice-cube trays and three suspicious-looking cardboard packages. The other shelves were crowded with various objects, in jars, on plates with bowls inverted over them, in waxed-paper packets and brown-paper bags. The ones toward the back had been there longer than she cared to remember. Some of them were definitely beginning to smell. The only thing she could see that interested her at all was a hunk of yellow cheese. She took it off the rack: it had a thin layer of green mould on the underside. She put it back and closed the door. She decided she wasn't hungry anyway.

  "Maybe I'll have a cup of tea," she said to herself. She looked into the cupboard where they kept the dishes: it was empty. That meant she would have to wash a cup, they had all been used. She went to the sink and peered in.

  It was full of unwashed dishes: stacks of plates, glasses half-filled with organic-looking water, bowls with vestiges of things that had ceased to be recognizable. There was a saucepan that had once held macaroni and cheese; its inner surface was spotted with bluish mould. A glass dessert dish sitting in the puddle of water at the bottom of the pot was filmed over with a grey slippery-looking growth reminiscent of algae in ponds. The cups were in there too, all of them, standing one inside another, ringed with dregs of tea and coffee and scums of cream. Even the white porcelain surface of the sink had developed a skin of brown. She did not want to disturb anything for fear of discovering what was going on out of sight: heaven only knew what further botulisms might be festering underneath. "Disgraceful," she said. She had a sudden urge to make a clean sweep, to turn the taps full on and squirt everything with liquid detergent; her hand even moved forward; but then she paused. Perhaps the mould had as much right to life as she had. The thought was not reassuring.

  She wandered into the bedroom. It was too early to start dressing for the party, but she couldn't think of anything else she could do to fill up the time. She took her dress out of its cardboard box and hung it up; then she put on her dressing gown and gathered together her bath equipment. She would be descending into the lady down below's territory and might have to brave an encounter; but, she thought, I'll just deny any connection with the whole mess and let her battle it out with Ainsley.

  When the bathtub was filling she brushed her teeth, examining them in the mirror over the basin to make sure she hadn't missed anything, an established habit, she did it even when she hadn't been eating; it was remarkable, she thought, how much time you spend with a scouring brush in your hand and your mouth full of foam, peering down your own throat. She noticed that a tiny pimple had appeared to the right of one of her eyebrows. That's because I'm not eating properly, she decided: my metabolism or chemical balance or something has got upset. As she gazed at the small red spot it seemed to shift position a fraction of an inch. She ought to have her eyes examined, things were beginning to blur; it must be an astigmatism, she thought as she spat into the sink.

  She took off her engagement ring and deposited it in the soap dish. It was a little too large for her - Peter had said they should get it cut down to size, though Clara said No, it would be best to leave it, since your fingers swelled up as you got older, especially when you were pregnant - and she had developed a fear of seeing it disappear down the drain. Peter would be furious: he was very fond of it. Then she clambered into the bathtub over the high old-fashioned side and lowered herself into the warm water.

  She occupied herself with the soap. The water was lulling, relaxing. She had lots of time; she could indulge her desire to lie back with her enamelled hair placed for security against the slope of the tub, to float with the water washing gently over her nearly submerged body. From their elevated position her eyes had a long vista of white concave enclosing walls and semi-transparent water, her body islanded, extending in a series of curves and hollows down towards the terminal peninsula of legs and the reefs of toes; and beyond that a wire rack with the soap dish, and then the taps.

  There were two taps, one for the hot and one for the cold. Each had a round bulb-shaped silver base and there was a third bulb in the middle with the spout where the water came out. She looked more closely: in each of the three silver globes she could see now that there was a curiously sprawling pink thing. She sat up, stirring the water into minor tidal waves, to see what they were. It was a moment before she recognized, in the bulging and distorted forms, her own waterlogged body.

  She moved, and all three of the images moved also. They were not quite identical: the two on the outside were slanted inwards towards the third. How peculiar it was to see three reflections of yourself at the same time, she thought; she swayed herself back and forth, watching the way in which the different bright silver parts of her body suddenly bloated or diminished. She had almost forgotten that she was supposed to be taking a bath. She stretched one hand towards the taps, wanting to see it grow.

  There were footsteps outside the door. She had better get out: it must be the lady down below trying to get in. She began to splash off the remaining traces of soap. Looking down, she became aware of the water, which was covered with a film of calcinous hard-water particles of dirt and soap, and of the body that was sitting in it, somehow no longer quite her own. All at once she was afraid that she was dissolving, coming apart layer by layer like a piece of cardboard in a gutter puddle.

  She pulled the plug hastily and scrambled out of the tub. It was safer on the dry beach of the cold tiled floor. She slid her engagement ring back onto her finger, seeing the hard circle for a moment as a protective talisman that would help keep her together.

  But the panic was still with her as she climbed the stairs. She could not face the party, all those people, Peter's friends were nice enough but they didn't really know her, fixing their uncomprehending eyes on her, she was afraid of losing her shape, spreading out, not being able to contain herself any longer, beginning (that would be worst of all) to talk a lot, to tell everybody, to cry. She contemplated bleakly the festive red dress hanging in her closet. What can I do? her mind kept thinking. She sat down on her bed.

  She remained sitting on the bed, gnawing idly on the end of one of her fringed dressing-gown ties, closed in a sodden formless unhappiness that seemed now to have been clogging her mind for a long time,
how long she could not remember. With its weight pressing around her it was most improbable that she would ever manage to get up off the bed. I wonder what time it is? she said to herself. I've got to get ready.

  The two dolls which she had never thrown out after all were staring blankly back at her from the top of the dresser. As she looked at them their faces blurred, then re-formed, faintly malevolent. She was irritated with them for sitting there inertly on either side of the mirror, just watching her, not offering any practical suggestions. But now that she examined their faces more closely she could see that it was only the dark one, the one with the peeling paint, that was definitely watching her. Perhaps the blonde one didn't even see her, the round blue eyes in its rubbery face were gazing straight through her.

  She substituted one of her fingers for the dressing-gown tie, biting at the side of her nail. Or perhaps it was a game, an agreement they had made. She saw herself in the mirror between them for an instant as though she was inside them, inside both of them at once, looking out: herself, a vague damp form in a rumpled dressing gown, not quite focussed, the blonde eyes noting the arrangement of her hair, her bitten fingernails, the dark one looking deeper, at something she could not quite see, the two overlapping images drawing further and further away from each other; the centre, whatever it was in the glass, the thing that held them together, would soon be quite empty. By the strength of their separate visions they were trying to pull her apart.

  She couldn't stay there any longer. She pushed herself off the bed and into the hallway, where she found herself crouching over the telephone and dialing a number. There was ringing, then a click. She held her breath.

  "Hullo?" said a sullen voice.

  "Duncan?" she said tentatively. "It's me."

  "Oh." There was a pause.

  "Duncan, could you come to a party tonight? At Peter's place? I know it's late to ask you, but ..."

  "Well, we're supposed to be going to a brain-picking graduate English party," he said. "The whole family."

  "Well, maybe you could come on later. And you could even bring them with you."

  "Well, I don't know...."

  "Please, Duncan, I don't really know anybody there, I need you to come," she said with an intensity which was unfamiliar to her.

  "No you don't," he said. "But maybe we'll come though. This other thing sounds pretty dull, all they ever do is talk about their Orals, and it would be sort of a kick to see what you're getting married to."

  "Oh thank you," she said gratefully, and gave him directions.

  When she had put down the phone she felt a lot better. So that was the answer, then: to make sure there were people at the party who really knew her. That would keep everything in the right perspective, she would be able to cope.... She dialled another number.

  She spent half an hour on the phone; by that time she had rounded up a sufficient number of people. Clara and Joe were coming if they could get a babysitter, that made five counting the other three; and the three office virgins. After their initial hesitations, caused she supposed by the lateness of the invitation, she had hooked the three firmly by saying that she hadn't asked them before because she thought it was going to be mostly married people, but that several unescorted bachelors were coming, and could they do her the favour of coming along too? Things got so dull for single men at couple-parties, she had added. That made eight altogether. As an afterthought she had asked Ainsley - it would be good for her to get out - and she accepted, surprisingly: it wasn't her kind of party.

  Although she considered it in passing, Marian did not think it would be a wise move to ask Leonard Slank.

  Now she was all right she could begin to dress. She oozed herself into the new girdle she had got to go with the dress, noting that she hadn't really lost much weight: she had been eating a lot of noodles. She hadn't intended to buy one at all, but the saleslady who was selling her the dress and who was thoroughly corseted herself said that she ought to, and produced an appropriate model with satin panelling and a bow of ribbon at the front. "Of course you're very thin dear, you don't really need one, but still that is a close-fitting dress and you wouldn't want it to be obvious that you haven't got one on, would you?" She had lifted her pencilled brows. At that time it had seemed like a moral issue. "No, of course not," Marian had said hastily, "I'll take it."

  When she had slithered into her red dress, she found she couldn't reach behind far enough to do up the zipper. She knocked on Ainsley's door. "Do up my zipper, please?" she asked.

  Ainsley was in her slip. She had begun to put on her makeup, but thus far only one of her eyes had acquired its outline of black and her eyebrows hadn't appeared at all, which made her face look unbalanced. After she had done up Marian's zipper and the little hook at the top, she stood back and examined her critically. "That's a good dress," she said, "but what are you going to wear with it?"

  "With it?"

  "Yes, it's very dramatic; you need some good heavy earrings or something to set it off. Have you got any?"

  "I don't know," said Marian. She went into her own room and brought back the drawer that held the trinkets accumulated from her relatives. They were all variations of clustered imitation pearls and pastel arrangements of seashells and metal-and-glass flowers and cute animals.

  Ainsley pawed through them. "No," she said, with the decisiveness of someone who really knew. "These won't do. I've got a pair that'll work, though." After a search which involved much rustling in drawers and overturning of things on the bureau, she produced a couple of chunky dangly gold objects, which she screwed to Marian's ears. "That's better," she said. "Now smile."

  Marian smiled, weakly.

  Ainsley shook her head. "Your hair's okay," she said, "but really you'd better let me do your face for you. You'll never manage it by yourself. You'd just do it in your usual skimpy way and come out looking like a kid playing dress-up in her mother's clothes."

  She wadded Marian into her chair, which was lumpy with garments in progressive stages of dirtiness, and tucked a towel around her neck. "I'll do your nails first so they can be drying," she said, adding while she began to file them, "looks like you've been biting them." When the nails had been painted a shimmering off-white and Marian was holding her hands carefully in the air, she went to work on Marian's face, using mixtures and instruments from the jumble of beauty aids that covered her dressing table.

  During the rest of the procedure, while strange things were being done to her skin, then to each eye and each eyebrow, Marian sat passively, marvelling at the professional efficiency with which Ainsley was manipulating her features. It reminded her of the mothers backstage at public-school plays, making up their precocious daughters. She had only a fleeting thought about germs.

  Finally Ainsley took a lipstick brush and painted the mouth with several coats of glossy finish. "There," she said, holding a hand-mirror so that Marian could see herself. "That's better. But be careful till the eyelash glue is dry."

  Marian stared into the Egyptian-lidded and outlined and thickly-fringed eyes of a person she had never seen before. She was afraid even to blink, for fear that this applied face would crack and flake with the strain. "Thank you," she said doubtfully.

  "Now smile," said Ainsley.

  Marian smiled.

  Ainsley frowned. "Not like that," she said. "You've got to throw yourself into it more. Sort of droop your eyelids."

  Marian was embarrassed: she didn't know how. She was experimenting, looking in the mirror, trying to find out which particular set of muscles would produce the desired effect, and had just succeeded in getting an approximate droop that still however had a suggestion of squint in it, when they heard footsteps ascending the stairs; and a moment later the lady down below stood in the doorway, breathing heavily.

  Marian removed the towel from her neck and stood up. Now that she had got her eyelids drooped she could not immediately get them undrooped again, back to their usual capable and level width. It was going to be impossible in thi
s red dress and this face to behave with the ordinary matter-of-fact politeness that the situation was going to require.

  The lady down below gasped a little when she saw Marian's new ensemble - bare arms and barish dress and well-covered face - but her real target was Ainsley, who stood bare-footed in her slip with one eye black-ringed and her auburn hair tendrilling over her shoulders.

  "Miss Tewce," the lady down below began. She was still wearing her tea dress and her pearls: she was going to attempt dignity. "I have waited until I am perfectly calm to speak to you. I don't want any unpleasantness, I've always tried to avoid scenes and unpleasantness, but now I'm afraid you'll have to go." She was not at all calm: her voice was trembling. Marian noticed that she was clenching a lace handkerchief in one hand. "The drinking was bad enough, I know all those bottles were yours, I'm sure Miss MacAlpin never drank, not more than one should" - her eyes flicked again over Marian's dress; her faith was somewhat shaken, but she let the comment pass - "though at least you were fairly discreet about all the liquor you were carrying into this house; and I couldn't say anything about the untidiness and disorder, I'm a tolerant person and what a person does in their own living quarters has always been entirely their own business as far as I'm concerned. And I turned the other way when that young man as I'm perfectly aware, don't try to lie to me, was here overnight, I even went out the next morning to avoid unpleasantness. At least the child didn't know. But to make it so public" - she was shrilling now, in a vibrant accusing voice - "dragging your disreputable, drunken friends out into the open, where people can see them ... and it's such a bad example for the child...."

  Ainsley glared at her; the black-rimmed eye flashed. "So," she said in an equally accusing voice, tossing back her hair and planting her bare feet further apart on the floor, "I've always suspected you of being a hypocrite and now I know. You're a bourgeois fraud, you have no real convictions at all, you're just worried about what the neighbours will say. Your precious reputation. Well, I consider that kind of thing immoral. I'd like you to know that I'm going to have a child too, and I certainly wouldn't choose to bring him up in this house - you'd teach him dishonesty. You'd be a bad example, and let me tell you that you're by far the most anti-Creative-Life-Force person I've ever met. I will be most pleased to move and the sooner the better; I don't want you exerting any negative pre-natal influences."