Life Before Man

by Margaret Atwood

  William says he's still hungry and is going into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. This is an expression of dissatisfaction with Lesje's ability to meet his requirements: Lesje knows it but doesn't care. Ordinarily she would make the sandwich for him, since William has always claimed to be one big thumb in the kitchen. He will manage to break something out there or cut his finger on a sardine can (William, foe of cans, nevertheless has a periodic hankering for sardines that must be catered to). There will be wreckage and carnage, wounds, mutterings and curses; William will emerge with a tatty sandwich, blood-smeared uneven bread, sardine oil on his shirt. He will display himself, he'll wish to be appeased, and Lesje, she knows, will do this. In the absence of Nate, who has offered, when she comes to think of it, nothing at all. A wide plain. A risk.

  The phone rings and William gets to it before Lesje is even out of her chair. "It's for you," he says.

  Lesje, chest gripped by a fit of shallow breathing, seizes the phone.

  "Hello," says a woman's voice. "This is Elizabeth Schoenhof."

  Lesje's throat closes. She's been found out. Grandmothers converge on her, holding out her guilt, their grief.

  But far from it. Elizabeth is merely inviting her to dinner. Her and William, of course. Nate and Elizabeth, says Elizabeth, would both be very happy if they could come.

  Friday, January 21, 1977

  ELIZABETH

  Elizabeth is having lunch with Martha in the orange cafeteria of the Museum. They're both eating sparingly: soup, fruit yogurt, tea. Elizabeth has insisted on paying. Martha has not fought her for half of the bill as she once would have. It's a sign of her defeat.

  So is the fact that they're eating here at all. The Museum cafeteria is nothing special. Once, in the days of Martha's ascendancy, when Elizabeth thought she might be a real threat, she'd gone to considerable trouble to make sure they met for these lunches in good restaurants, where Elizabeth could demonstrate her own knowledge of the superior menu and get Martha slightly bombed on cocktails and wine. Martha doesn't hold her liquor very well and Elizabeth has found this useful. She would sip delicately at the edge of her own wine glass while Martha downed the carafe, priming herself and finally spewing out a lot more than she should have about Nate's activities and imperfections. Every time Martha said something unflattering about Nate, Elizabeth would nod and murmur agreement, even though these criticisms irritated her, reflecting as they did on her taste in husbands; and Martha's eyes would dampen with gratitude. Not that Martha likes her. Neither of them has any illusions about that. Soon she will not have to take Martha to lunch at all; coffee will be sufficient. After that, she will have dentist's appointments. Lots of them.

  Elizabeth has removed the dishes from her tray and set them out on an unfolded napkin, but Martha has no time today for such niceties. She eats from the tray, slurping her soup, her square face bunched into a scowl. Her dark hair is stringy, pulled back and clamped to her scalp with a tortoise-shell plastic clip. She looks brownish, pinched; hardly the confident peasant, hearty and wide-chested, that Elizabeth had first found herself having to deal with. She's here to complain about Nate, as if Nate has broken a window with a baseball and Elizabeth is his mother.

  "I hit him," Martha is saying, "right between the eyes. I guess I shouldn't have, but it felt good. He's a prick, you know. Underneath all that understanding stuff. I don't know how you can live with him."

  Once Elizabeth would have agreed; now, however, she can allow herself a few luxuries. Poor Nate, she thinks. He's such an innocent. "He's a sensational father," she says. "You couldn't ask for a better one. The girls adore him."

  "I wouldn't know," says Martha. She bites savagely into her cracker; brittle flakes sprinkle the tray. No class, Elizabeth thinks; she never did have any. Elizabeth has always known that sooner or later Martha would overplay her hand. She herself tries for understatement. She opens her peach yogurt and stirs the contents up from the bottom.

  "I never understood at first why you were so nice to me," Martha says, with a little of her old belligerence. "Taking me out to lunch and so forth. I couldn't see it. I mean, if I was you I wouldn't have done that."

  "I believe in being civilized about these things," Elizabeth says.

  "But then I figured it out. You wanted to supervise us. Like some kind of playground organizer. Make sure it didn't go too far. Right? You can admit it now, it's all over."

  Elizabeth frowns slightly. She doesn't like this interpretation of her motives, though it may be just slightly accurate. "I hardly think that's fair, Martha," she says. Behind Martha, something of more interest is taking place. Lesje Green has come in with the Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Dr. Van Vleet. They're going along the counter now, filling their trays. They often have lunch together; everyone knows there's nothing to it, since Dr. Van Vleet is about ninety and Lesje is known to be living with a young man who works at the Ministry of the Environment. They have lunch together presumably because they can't find anyone else to talk to about the old rocks and bones they're both so stuck on.

  Elizabeth has always found Lesje hard to deal with: strange, sometimes pedantic, skittish. Too specialized. Today, however, she follows her with more than usual interest. The tipoff, now that she's thought about it, was that visit to the Museum back in November. The children told her about the dinosaur lady who showed them around, but Nate hadn't mentioned her. He'd asked Elizabeth to go with them, which didn't fit; but Nate is such a bungler it's the kind of thing he would do. Increasingly he has that mooning look, he's rubbing against the furniture. She's almost certain she's right, and tomorrow evening she'll know.

  "We were supposed to be having these heart-to-hearts," Martha is saying, "but we never did, really, did we? I mean, we'd both say a lot about him, but I never said what I thought about you and you never said what you thought about me. We were never really honest, isn't that right?"

  Martha is itching for honesty right now, she'd like a shouting match, right here in the cafeteria. Elizabeth wishes Nate had picked a ladyfriend with more sense of style. But a legal secretary at a two-bit lawyer's office, what could you expect? Elizabeth herself has no time for honesty right now. She doesn't think it would serve any purpose to tell Martha her real opinions, and she already knows what Martha thinks about her.

  But in any contest she knows she would win. Martha has only one vocabulary, the one she uses; but Elizabeth has two. The genteel chic she's acquired, which is a veneer but a useful one: insinuating, flexible, accommodating. And another language altogether, older, harder, left over from those streets and schoolyards on the far edge of gentility where she fought it out after each one of her parents' quick decampments.

  These fast moves were done at night, to avoid witnesses and landlords. Elizabeth would fall asleep on a pile of her mother's unpacked dresses, beautiful frail dresses left over from some earlier time, and wake up knowing she would have to go out into the strange faces, the ritual tests. If anyone pushed her she pushed back twice as hard, and if anyone pushed Caroline she put her head down and charged, right in the pit of the stomach. She could get big kids that way, even boys. They never expected it from someone that short. Sometimes she lost, but not often. She lost when there were more than two against her.

  "You're turning into a hooligan," her mother said in one of her spasms of self-pity, dabbing at blood. In those days Elizabeth was always bleeding. Not that there was anything her mother could do about it; or about much else. Elizabeth's grandfather helped out while he was alive, though he said her father was a rounder, but Auntie Muriel got hold of him in the last months of his life and he changed his will. That's what Elizabeth's mother said, after the funeral.

  Then they moved again, to an even smaller apartment, and her mother wandered helplessly around the cramped living room carrying things, a teapot, a stocking, which she didn't know where to set down. "It's not what I'm used to," she said. She went to bed with a headache; this time there was a bed. Elizabeth's father came home with tw
o other men and told her a joke: What did the chickens say when their mother laid an orange? Look at the orange marmalade.

  No one put Elizabeth to bed, but no one usually did. Sometimes her father pretended to, but it was only an excuse to fall asleep across her bed with all his clothes on. Her mother got up again and they all sat around in the living room drinking. Elizabeth was used to this. In her nightgown she sat on one of the men's laps, his bristly skin against her check. He called her "baby." Her mother got up to go to the little girls' room, she said, and tripped over her father's foot. He put it there on purpose: he liked practical jokes. "Most beautiful woman in the world," he said, laughing, picking her up from the linoleum whose pattern of maroon and yellow tapestry flowers Elizabeth can see whenever she wants to. He gave her a loose kiss on the cheek, winking; the other men laughed. Elizabeth's mother started to cry, her thin hands covering the porcelain face.

  "You're a turd," Elizabeth said to her father. The other men laughed even more at this.

  "You don't mean it, your poor old dad," he said. He tickled her under the armpits. The next morning he was gone. It was after this that space became discontinuous.

  Almost no one knows any of this about Elizabeth. They don't know she's a refugee, with a refugee's desperate habits. Nate knows a little of it. Chris knew it, finally. Martha doesn't, neither does Lesje, and this gives Elizabeth a large advantage. She knows there's nothing in her that will compel her to behave decently. She can speak from that other life if she has to. If pushed she'll stop at nothing. Or, put another way: when she reaches nothing she will stop.

  Two tables away, Lesje walks towards them, her tray listing badly, that otherworldly expression on her face which probably means she's thinking obscure thoughts but which reminds Elizabeth of someone having a minor epileptic fit. She sits down, almost knocking over her coffee cup with one of those gawky elbows. Elizabeth quickly appraises her clothes: jeans again. Lesje can get away with it, she's skinny enough. Also she's only a curatorial assistant. Elizabeth herself must dress more responsibly.

  "Excuse me, Martha," she says. "There's someone I have to speak to." Martha, balked, rips the tinfoil top from her yogurt cup.

  Elizabeth walks softly, puts her hand on Lesje's checkered shoulder, says "Lesje."

  Lesje shrieks and drops her spoon on the table. "Oh," she says, turning.

  "Can't come up behind her," says Dr. Van Vleet. "Learned that a long time ago. Trial and error."

  "I'm so sorry," Elizabeth says. "I just wanted to say how pleased we both are that you'll be able to make it tomorrow."

  Lesje nods, finally manages to say, "So am I, I mean, we both are." Elizabeth smiles graciously at Dr. Van Vleet and pauses beside Martha just long enough to say how pleasant it has been to see her again and she hopes they can get together soon; she's sorry, but she has to get back to the office now.

  She feels very calm. She will manage.

  She works in her office all afternoon, dictating memos and filling out request forms and typing a few special letters that need more thought. They've given a definite yes to the Chinese Peasant Art exhibit, which will now need some groundwork; but China is good copy these days and the show should be easy to promote.

  Just before closing time she covers her typewriter and gathers her purse and coat. There's one more project she's promised herself she will take care of today.

  She goes up the stairs, through the wooden door that keeps out the public, along the corridor with the metal drawers on either side. Chris's workroom. Another man works here now. He looks up from the table as Elizabeth comes towards him. Small, balding, not at all like Chris.

  "Can I help you?" he says.

  "I'm Elizabeth Schoenhof," Elizabeth says. "I work in Special Projects. I was wondering if you had a few spare scraps of fur. Any kind will do. My children use them for dolls' dresses."

  The man smiles and gets up to look. Elizabeth has been told his name but she's forgotten it: Nagle? She will look it up. It's part of her job to know the technicians in every department, in case she needs to use them for anything.

  As he rummages among the clutter on the shelves behind his table, Elizabeth looks around. The room has changed, been rearranged. Time has not stood still, nothing here is frozen. Chris is definitely gone. She cannot bring him back, and for the first time she no longer wants to. He'll punish her for that thought later, no doubt, but at the moment she's clear of him.

  She walks slowly down the marble stairs, fingering a handful of fur. Scraps. All that's left of Chris, whom she can no longer remember whole. At the door she stuffs the bundle into her purse, then takes the subway up to St. George and along to Castle Frank. She walks along the viaduct till she's roughly in the middle, over the snow-filled ravine and the rushing cars below. Like Auntie Muriel, she needs her burial rituals. She opens her purse and throws the fur scraps one by one into space.

  Saturday, January 22, 1977

  LESJE

  Lesje is sitting in Elizabeth's living room, balancing a small cup of what she supposes is excellent coffee on her left knee. In her right hand she's holding a liqueur glass half-full of Benedictine and brandy. She doesn't know how she's ended up with two containers of liquid and no place to put them. She's positive she will very soon spill at least one and probably both of them onto Elizabeth's mushroom-colored carpet. She's desperate to get away.

  But the others are all playing a game that substitutes the word "moose" for any other word in the title of a Canadian novel. It has to be Canadian. This apparently is part of the joke.

  "As for Me and My Moose," Elizabeth says, and everyone else in the room chuckles.

  "A Jest of Moose," says the wife of the man from Greek and Roman who works at the CBC.

  "A Moose of God," replies the man, whose name is Philip. Nobody calls him Phil. Elizabeth laughs and asks Lesje if she'll have some more B & B.

  "I'm fine," Lesje says, hoping she has murmured, fearing she's blurted. She needs a cigarette but has no free hand. She doesn't read novels and she hasn't recognized a single one of the titles the others, even Nate, even, sometimes, William, have been batting around so easily. The Lost Moose, she could say. But that isn't Canadian.

  The whole dinner has been like that. Just a couple of friends, Elizabeth said. Casual. So Lesje wore pants with a long sweater-coat, and the two other women are in dresses. Elizabeth for once is not in black; she's wearing a loose grey chiffon number that makes her look younger and thinner than she does at work. She even has a necklace on, a chain with a silver fish. The other woman is in flowing mauve. Lesje, in her perky, clean-cut stripes, feels about twelve years old.

  She's only been able to see Nate once before this evening. In desperation she called his house; one of the children answered.

  "Just a minute." Abruptly; the slam of the phone hitting the floor. It must have tumbled from the table. A shout. "Dad, it's for you!"

  They'd arranged to meet at the coffee shop in the indoor mall at the bottom of Lesje's building. Reckless: what if William?

  "Why is she asking us to dinner?" Lesje wanted to know, by this time frantic. She couldn't back out now, it would look funny. To William as well. And if she'd said no at first it would have looked funny too.

  Nate was cautiously holding her hand. "I don't know," he said. "I've given up wondering about her motives. I never know why she does anything."

  "We aren't that friendly at work," Lesje said. "Does she know?"

  "Probably," Nate said. "She didn't tell me beforehand she was asking you to dinner. I couldn't tell her not to. She often asks people to dinner; or anyway she used to."

  "Did you tell her?" It was suddenly the kind of thing he would do.

  "Not exactly," Nate said. "I guess I've mentioned you a few times. I'm thinking about you a lot. Maybe she picked up on that. She's pretty sharp."

  "But even if she does know, why would she ask me to dinner?" This would be the last thing she herself would do. One of William's old girlfriends, a dental technician,
is in the habit of suggesting they all three of them have lunch sometime. Lesje has consistently vetoed this.

  "I guess she just wants to take a look at you," Nate said, "up close. Don't worry, it'll be all right. She won't do anything. You'll enjoy the dinner, she's a great cook when she feels like it."

  Not that Lesje could tell. She was so paralyzed by apprehension that she could barely chew. The boeuf bourguignon could have been sand as far as she was concerned. Elizabeth graciously ignored the large amount left on Lesje's plate. During the first course she asked Lesje three well-informed questions about power-structures in Vertebrate Paleontology, a truthful answer to any of which might have cost Lesje her job if repeated in the right quarters. Lesje hedged awkwardly, and Elizabeth switched the talk to CBC gossip, with the wife of the man from Greek and Roman supplying.

  Elizabeth concentrated on William during dessert. She found his work with the Ministry of the Environment fascinating, and so worthwhile. She supposed she really should make the effort to cart all her old bottles and newspapers to those things, those bins. William, gratified, lectured her on the doom awaiting the world if she should fail to do this, and Elizabeth agreed meekly.

  Nate, meanwhile, moved in the background, chain-smoking, drinking steadily but without visible effect, avoiding Lesje's eyes, helping with the plate-clearing and pouring out the wine. Elizabeth directed him unobtrusively: "Love, would you get me a slotted serving spoon?" "Love, could you just turn on the coffee while you're out there?" Lesje sat, nibbling the edges of her meringue, wishing the children were there. At least she would have someone she could talk to without blushing and mumbling and the certainty that at any minute she would open her mouth and some tactless clinker would roll out onto the linen tablecloth. Something about suicides or hotel rooms. But the children had been sent to spend the night with friends. Sometimes, Elizabeth said, much as one loved one's children, one wanted to spend a little free adult time. Nate didn't always agree, she said, directly to Lesje. He was such a doting father. He'd like to be with his children twenty-four hours a day. "Isn't that true, love?"