The Edible Woman

by Margaret Atwood

  She took the cake off the sill, felt it to see if it was cool enough, and put it on the kitchen table. Then she began to operate. With the two forks she pulled it in half through the middle. One half she placed flat side down on the platter. She scooped out part of it and made a head with the section she had taken out. Then she nipped in a waist at the sides. The other half she pulled into strips for the arms and legs. The spongy cake was pliable, easy to mould. She stuck all the separate members together with white icing, and used the rest of the icing to cover the shape she had constructed. It was bumpy in places and had too many crumbs in the skin, but it would do. She reinforced the feet and ankles with toothpicks.

  Now she had a blank white body. It looked slightly obscene, lying there soft and sugary and featureless on the platter. She set about clothing it, filling the cake decorator with bright-pink icing. First she gave it a bikini, but that was too sparse. She filled in the midriff. Now it had an ordinary bathing suit, but that still wasn't exactly what she wanted. She kept extending, adding to top and bottom, until she had a dress of sorts. In a burst of exuberance she added a row of ruffles around the neckline, and more ruffles at the hem of the dress. She made a smiling lush-lipped pink mouth and pink shoes to match. Finally she put five pink fingernails on each of the amorphous hands.

  The cake looked peculiar with only a mouth and no hair or eyes. She rinsed out the cake decorator and filled it with chocolate icing. She drew a nose, and two large eyes, to which she appended many eyelashes and two eyebrows, one above each eye. For emphasis she made a line demarcating one leg from the other, and similar lines to separate the arms from the body. The hair took longer. It involved masses of intricate baroque scrolls and swirls, piled high on the head and spilling down over the shoulders.

  The eyes were still blank. She decided on green - the only other possibilities were red and yellow, since they were the only other colours she had - and with a toothpick applied two irises of green food colouring.

  Now there were only the globular silver decorations to add. One went in each eye, for a pupil. With the others she made a floral design on the pink dress, and stuck a few in the hair. Now the woman looked like an elegant antique china figurine. For an instant she wished she had bought some birthday candles; but where could they be put? There was really no room for them. The image was complete.

  Her creation gazed up at her, its face doll-like and vacant except for the small silver glitter of intelligence in each green eye. While making it she had been almost gleeful, but now, contemplating it, she was pensive. All that work had gone into the lady and now what would happen to her?

  "You look delicious," she told her. "Very appetizing. And that's what will happen to you; that's what you get for being food." At the thought of food her stomach contracted. She felt a certain pity for her creature but she was powerless now to do anything about it. Her fate had been decided. Already Peter's footsteps were coming up the stairs.

  Marian had a swift vision of her own monumental silliness, of how infantile and undignified she would seem in the eyes of any rational observer. What kind of game did she think she was playing? But that wasn't the point, she told herself nervously, pushing back a strand of hair. Though if Peter found her silly she would believe it, she would accept his version of herself, he would laugh and they would sit down and have a quiet cup of tea.

  She smiled gravely at Peter as he came up out of the stairwell. The expression on his face, a scowl combined with a jutting chin, meant he was still angry. He was wearing a costume suitable for being angry in: the suit stern, tailored, remote, but the tie a paisley with touches of sullen maroon.

  "Now what's all this ..." he began.

  "Peter, why don't you go into the living room and sit down? I have a surprise for you. Then we can have a talk if you like." She smiled at him again.

  He was puzzled, and forgot to sustain his frown; he must have been expecting an awkward apology. But he did as she suggested. She remained in the doorway for a moment, looking almost tenderly at the back of his head resting against the chesterfield. Now that she had seen him again, the actual Peter, solid as ever, the fears of the evening before had dwindled to foolish hysteria and the flight to Duncan had become a stupidity, an evasion; she could hardly remember what he looked like. Peter was not the enemy after all, he was just a normal human being like most other people. She wanted to touch his neck, tell him that he shouldn't get upset, that everything was going to be all right. It was Duncan that was the mutation.

  But there was something about his shoulders. He must have been sitting with his arms folded. The face on the other side of that head could have belonged to anyone. And they all wore clothes of real cloth and had real bodies: those in the newspapers, those still unknown, waiting for their chance to aim from the upstairs window; you passed them on the streets every day. It was easy to see him as normal and safe in the afternoon, but that didn't alter things. The price of this version of reality was testing the other one.

  She went into the kitchen and returned, bearing the platter in front of her, carefully and with reverence, as though she was carrying something sacred in a procession, an icon or the crown on a cushion in a play. She knelt, setting the platter on the coffee table in front of Peter.

  "You've been trying to destroy me, haven't you," she said. "You've been trying to assimilate me. But I've made you a substitute, something you'll like much better. This is what you really wanted all along, isn't it? I'll get you a fork," she added somewhat prosaically.

  Peter stared from the cake to her face and back again. She wasn't smiling.

  His eyes widened in alarm. Apparently he didn't find her silly.

  When he had gone - and he went quite rapidly, they didn't have much of a conversation after all, he seemed embarrassed and eager to leave and even refused a cup of tea - she stood looking down at the figure. So Peter hadn't devoured it after all. As a symbol it had definitely failed. It looked up at her with its silvery eyes, enigmatic, mocking, succulent.

  Suddenly she was hungry. Extremely hungry. The cake after all was only a cake. She picked up the platter, carried it to the kitchen table and located a fork. "I'll start with the feet," she decided.

  She considered the first mouthful. It seemed odd but most pleasant to be actually tasting and chewing and swallowing again. Not bad, she thought critically; needs a touch more lemon though.

  Already the part of her not occupied with eating was having a wave of nostalgia for Peter, as though for a style that had gone out of fashion and was beginning to turn up on the sad Salvation Army clothes racks. She could see him in her mind, posed jauntily in the foreground of an elegant salon with chandeliers and draperies, impeccably dressed, a glass of scotch in one hand; his foot was on the head of a stuffed lion and he had an eyepatch over one eye. Beneath one arm was strapped a revolver. Around the margin was an edging of gold scrollwork and slightly above Peter's left ear was a thumbtack. She licked her fork meditatively. He would definitely succeed.

  She was halfway up the legs when she heard footsteps, two sets of them, coming up the stairs. Then Ainsley appeared in the kitchen doorway with Fischer Symthe's furry head behind her. She still had on her blue-green dress, much the worse for wear. So was she: her face was haggard and in only the past twenty-four hours her belly seemed to have grown noticeably rounder.

  "Hi," said Marian, waving her fork at them. She speared a chunk of pink thigh and carried it to her mouth.

  Fischer had leaned against the wall and closed his eyes as soon as he reached the top of the stairs, but Ainsley focussed on her. "Marian, what have you got there?" She walked over to see. "It's a woman - a woman made of cake!" She gave Marian a strange look.

  Marian chewed and swallowed. "Have some," she said, "it's really good. I made it this afternoon."

  Ainsley's mouth opened and closed, fishlike, as though she was trying to gulp down the full implication of what she saw. "Marian!" she exclaimed at last, with horror. "You're rejecting your femininity!" />
  Marian stopped chewing and stared at Ainsley, who was regarding her, through the hair that festooned itself over her eyes, with wounded concern, almost with sternness. How did she manage it, that stricken attitude, that high seriousness? She was almost as morally earnest as the lady down below.

  Marian looked back at her platter. The woman lay there, still smiling glassily, her legs gone. "Nonsense," she said. "It's only a cake." She plunged her fork into the carcass, neatly severing the body from the head.

  PART THREE

  31

  I was cleaning up the apartment. It had taken me two days to gather the strength to face it, but I had finally started. I had to go about it layer by layer. First there was the surface debris. I began with Ainsley's room, stuffing everything she had left behind into cardboard cartons: the half-empty cosmetic jars and used lipsticks, the strata of old newspapers and magazines on the floor, the desiccated banana peel I found under the bed, the clothes she had rejected. All the things of mine I wanted to throw out went into the same boxes.

  When the floors and furniture had been cleared I dusted everything in sight, including the mouldings and the tops of the doors and the windowsills. Then I did the floors, sweeping and then scrubbing and waxing. The amount of dirt that came off was astounding: it was like uncovering an extra floor. Then I washed the dishes and after that the kitchen window curtains. Then I stopped for lunch. After lunch I tackled the refrigerator. I did not examine closely the horrors that had accumulated inside it. I could see well enough from holding the little jars up to the light that they had better not be opened. The various objects within had been industriously sprouting hair, fur or feathers, each as its nature dictated, and I could guess what they would smell like. I lowered them carefully into the garbage bag. The freezing compartment I attacked with an ice pick, but I discovered that the thick covering of ice, though mossy and sponge-like on the outside, was hard as a rock underneath, and I left it to melt a little before attempting to chip or pry it loose.

  I had just begun on the windows when the phone rang. It was Duncan. I was surprised; I had more or less forgotten about him.

  "Well?" he asked. "What happened?"

  "It's all off," I said. "I realized Peter was trying to destroy me. So now I'm looking for another job."

  "Oh," said Duncan. "Actually I didn't mean that. I was wondering more about Fischer."

  "Oh," I said. I might have known.

  "I mean, I think I know what happened but I'm not sure why. He's abandoned his responsibilities, you know."

  "His responsibilities? You mean graduate school?"

  "No," said Duncan. "I mean me. What am I going to do?"

  "I haven't the faintest idea," I said. I was irritated with him for not wanting to discuss what I was going to do myself. Now that I was thinking of myself in the first person singular again I found my own situation much more interesting than his.

  "Now, now," Duncan said, "we can't both be like that. One of us has to be the sympathetic listener and the other one gets to be tortured and confused. You were tortured and confused last time."

  Face it, I thought, you can't win. "Oh all right. Why don't you come over for some tea a bit later then? The apartment's a mess," I added apologetically.

  When he arrived I was finishing the windows, standing on a chair and wiping off the white glass cleaner I had spread on them. We hadn't cleaned them for a long time and they had got quite silted over with dust, and I was thinking it was going to be curious to be able to see out of them again. It bothered me that there was still some dirt on the outside I couldn't reach: soot and rainstreaks. I didn't hear Duncan come in. He had probably been standing in the room for several minutes watching me before he announced his presence by saying "Here I am."

  I jumped. "Oh hi," I said, "I'll be right with you as soon as finish this window." He wandered off in the direction of the kitchen.

  After giving the window one last polish with a sleeve torn from one of Ainsley's abandoned blouses I got down from the chair, somewhat reluctantly - I like to finish things once I've begun them and there were still several windows left uncleaned; besides, the prospect of discussing the love life of Fischer Smythe wasn't all that compelling - and went out to the kitchen. I found Duncan sitting in one of the chairs, regarding the open refrigerator door with a mixture of distaste and anxiety.

  "What smells in here?" he asked, sniffing the air.

  "Oh, various things," I answered lightly. "Floor polish and window cleaner and some other things." I went over and opened the kitchen window. "Tea or coffee?"

  "Doesn't matter," he said. "Well, what's the real truth?"

  "You must know they're married." Tea would be easier, but a quick root through the cupboards didn't uncover any. I measured the coffee into the percolator.

  "Well, yes, sort of. Fish left us a rather ambiguous note. But how did it happen?"

  "How do these things ever happen? They met at the party," I said. I turned on the coffee and sat down. I had thoughts of holding out on him but he was beginning to look hurt. "Of course there are a few complications, but I think it will work out." Ainsley had come in the day before after another prolonged absence and had packed her suitcases while Fischer waited in the living room, head thrown back against the cushions of the chesterfield, beard bristling with the consciousness of its own vitality, eyes closed. She had given me to understand in the few sentences she had time for that they were going to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon and that she thought Fischer would make, as she put it, "a very good one."

  I explained all this to Duncan as well as I could. He did not seem either dismayed or delighted, or even surprised, by any of it.

  "Well," he said, "I guess it's a good thing for Fischer, mankind cannot bear too much unreality. Trevor was quite disturbed though. He's gone to bed with a nervous headache and refuses to get up even to cook. What it all means is that I'm going to have to move out. You've heard how destructive a broken home can be and I wouldn't want my personality to get warped."

  "I hope it will be all right for Ainsley." I really did hope so. I was pleased with her for justifying my superstitious belief in her ability to take care of herself: for a while there I had begun to lose faith. "At least," I said, "she's got what she thinks she wants, and I suppose that's something."

  "Cast out into the world again," Duncan said reflectively. He was gnawing on his thumb. "I wonder what will become of me." He did not seem overly interested in the question.

  Talking about Ainsley made me think of Leonard. I had called Clara shortly after I had heard the news about Ainsley's marriage, so she could tell Len it was safe to come out of hiding. Later she had called back. "I'm quite worried," she said, "he didn't seem nearly as relieved as he ought to have been. I thought he would go back to his apartment right away but he said he didn't want to. He's afraid to go outside the house, though he seems perfectly happy as long as he stays in Arthur's room. The children adore him most of the time and I must say it's rather nice having someone who takes them off my hands a bit, but the trouble is he plays with all of Arthur's toys and sometimes they get into fights. And he hasn't been going to work at all, he hasn't even phoned them to tell them where he is. If he just lets himself go like this much longer I'm not sure how I'm going to cope." Nevertheless she had sounded more competent than usual.

  There was a loud metallic clunk from inside the refrigerator. Duncan jerked, and took his thumb out of his mouth. "What was that?"

  "Oh, just falling ice, I expect," I said. "I'm defrosting the refrigerator." The coffee smelled done. I set two cups on the table and poured.

  "Well, are you eating again?" Duncan asked after a moment of silence.

  "As a matter of fact I am," I said. "I had steak for lunch." This last remark had been motivated by pride. It still was miraculous to me that I had attempted anything so daring and had succeeded.

  "Well, it's healthier that way," Duncan said. He looked at me directly for the first time since he had come in. "You look
better too. You look jaunty and full of good things. How did you do it?"

  "I told you," I said. "Over the phone."

  "You mean that stuff about Peter trying to destroy you?"

  I nodded.

  "That's ridiculous," he said gravely. "Peter wasn't trying to destroy you. That's just something you made up. Actually you were trying to destroy him."

  I had a sinking feeling. "Is that true?" I asked.

  "Search your soul," he said, gazing hypnotically at me from behind his hair. He drank some coffee and paused to give me time, then added, "But the real truth is that it wasn't Peter at all. It was me. I was trying to destroy you."

  I gave a nervous laugh. "Don't say that."

  "Okay," he said, "ever eager to please. Maybe Peter was trying to destroy me, or maybe I was trying to destroy him, or we were both trying to destroy each other, how's that? What does it matter, you're back to so-called reality, you're a consumer."

  "Incidentally," I said, remembering, "would you like some cake?" I had half the torso and the head left over.

  He nodded. I got him a fork and took the remains of the cadaver down from the shelf where I had put it. I unwrapped its cellophane shroud. "It's mostly the head," I said.

  "I didn't know you could bake cakes," he said after the first forkful. "It's almost as good as Trevor's."

  "Thank you," I said modestly. "I like to cook when I have the time." I sat watching the cake disappear, the smiling pink mouth first, then the nose and then one eye. For a moment there was nothing left of the face but the last green eye; then it too vanished, like a wink. He started devouring the hair.

  It gave me a peculiar sense of satisfaction to see him eat as if the work hadn't been wasted after all - although the cake was absorbed without exclamations of pleasure, even without noticeable expression. I smiled comfortably at him.

  He did not smile back; he was concentrating on the business at hand.

  He scraped the last chocolate curl up with his fork and pushed away the plate. "Thank you," he said, licking his lips. "It was delicious."