Life Before Man

by Margaret Atwood

  She wants Dr. Van Vleet to be here. He never listens to gossip, he's heard nothing about her so-called private life. He's the only person she knows who is willing to treat her with amused paternal indulgence, which at the moment she feels very much in need of. He corrects her pronunciation, she laughs at his epigrams. If he were here now, opposite her at the table, she could ask him about something, some technical point, and then she wouldn't have to think about anything else. The feeding and breeding habits of the Pteranodon, for instance. If a glider rather than a flapper, how did it become airborne? Did it simply wait for a slight breeze to lift it by its twelve-foot wings? Some speculate that because of its incredibly delicate bone structure it would have been unable to touch down anywhere, on water or on land. If so, how did it reproduce? For a moment Lesje glimpses warm tranquil seas, gentle winds, the immense fur-covered pteranodons soaring like wisps of white cotton high overhead. Such visions are still possible, but they don't last long. Inevitably she sees a later phase: the stench of dying seas, dead fish on the mud-covered shores, the huge flocks dwindling, stranded, their time done. All of a sudden, Utah.

  She sits down, facing away from the room. Elizabeth is there; Lesje spotted her as soon as she came in. A few months ago she would have gone out again, but there's no longer any point to that. Elizabeth, like gamma rays, will continue to exist whether Lesje can see her or not. There's a dark, somewhat hefty woman with her. They both look at Lesje as she walks by, not smiling but not hostile either. As if they are sightseers and she is a sight.

  Lesje knows that when Nate moved completely in, or as completely as he's going to, Elizabeth should have felt deserted and betrayed and she herself should have felt, if not victorious, at least conventionally smug. Instead it seems to be the other way around. Lesje wishes that Elizabeth would vanish into some remote corner of the past and stay there forever, but she knows her wishes are not likely to have much effect on Elizabeth.

  She peels the foil top from her yogurt and sticks the straw into her carton of milk. At least she's been eating better since Nate moved in. Nate is making her eat better. He brought some cooking pots with him and he usually cooks dinner; then he supervises while she eats. It disturbs him if she doesn't finish. The food he cooks is probably quite good, certainly better than she could do, and she's ashamed to admit that she lusts at least once in a while for a package of Betty Crocker Noodles Romanoff. She's been living for so long on convenience food, take-outs, heat'n' serve, she's sure her capacities for appreciation have been blunted. In this way, she cannot seem to avoid being inappropriate.

  Her reactions, for instance. Reactions is Nate's word. He finds these reactions of hers, not disappointing exactly, but surprising, as if only a barbarian or an illiterate could have the reactions she does. He doesn't even get angry. He merely explains, again and again; he assumes that if she can understand what he's saying she will of necessity agree with it.

  For instance. Elizabeth, when she telephones, as she does fairly often, to ask if the children have left their socks or their rubber boots or their toothbrushes or their underpants behind at Lesje's house, is always polite. Of what then can Lesje complain? The truth is that she doesn't want Elizabeth to phone her at all. Especially not at the office. She doesn't want to be disturbed in the middle of the Cretaceous by Elizabeth, wondering if Lesje has happened to see a red and white mitten. It upsets her, and finally, awkwardly, she has managed to blurt this out.

  But the children forgot things, Nate said. Elizabeth had to know where these things were. There were not unlimited supplies of such items.

  Perhaps, Lesje ventured, the children could stop forgetting things.

  Nate said they were children.

  "Maybe you could phone her," Lesje said, "or she could phone you. Instead of me."

  Nate pointed out that he had never been very good at keeping track of toothbrushes and rubber boots, even his own. It just wasn't one of his talents.

  "Mine either," said Lesje. Or hadn't he noticed? On Sunday evenings, when the children were packing for their return, the house looked like a train station after a bomb attack. She did try, but since she didn't know what the children had brought with them, how could she be sure they'd taken the right numbers of things away again?

  Nate said that since neither of them was proficient at this and Elizabeth was, having had long practice, it made good sense for Elizabeth to phone when any of the said items disappeared. Lesje could only agree.

  Sometimes the children would be there for Friday dinner when Lesje was expecting to come home from the Museum and find nobody there but Nate. "Could you ask her not to spring them on us?" she said after the fourth time.

  "What do you mean?" Nate asked sadly.

  "I mean, isn't Friday a little late to tell you?"

  "She told me on Tuesday."

  "No one told me," Lesje said.

  Nate admitted it had slipped his mind; even so there were better ways of phrasing things. Spring them he found rather blunt, even abrasive. "And I cooked dinner," he concluded reasonably. "It didn't inconvenience you, did it?"

  "No," Lesje said. She felt at a disadvantage: she'd had no practice at this sort of dialogue. Her parents, at least in her hearing, had never discussed each others' behavior and motives, and her grandmothers had never discussed anything. They'd limited themselves to monologues, wistful reveries from her Ukrainian grandmother, raucous commentaries from her Jewish one. Her conversations with William had centered on an exchange of facts, and even their rare disputes had been more like the squabblings of children: I want. You did so. She wasn't used to saying what she felt, or why, or why someone else ought to behave differently. She knew she was not subtle, that she often sounded rude when she meant only to be accurate. Invariably she came out of these conversations feeling like a mean-minded ogre. It wasn't that she resented or disliked the children as such, she wanted to say. She just wanted to be consulted.

  But she couldn't say that; if she did, he might bring up that other conversation.

  "I want to feel I'm living with you," she said. "Not with you and your wife and children."

  "I'll try to keep them out of your way as much as possible," Nate said, with such dejection that she'd retracted immediately.

  "I don't mean they can't come over," she said generously.

  "I want them to feel that this is their house, too," Nate said.

  Lesje isn't sure any longer whose house it is. She wouldn't be surprised to get a gracious phone call from Elizabeth saying that she and the children would be moving in the next day and could she please get the spare room ready and make sure all the stray socks and boots had been gathered together? Nate wouldn't protest. He feels they should both try to make things easier for Elizabeth, which as far as Lesje can see means doing everything she wants. He often says he thinks Elizabeth is being very civilized. He also feels he is being civilized. He didn't seem to think that Lesje should have to make any special effort to be civilized as well. She isn't directly involved.

  "We have each other," he says. Lesje has to agree that this is true. They do have each other, whatever have means.

  Lesje sucks up the last of her milk and puts the empty carton on the tray. She stubs out her cigarette and is bending to gather up her shoulder bag when a penetrating voice says, "Excuse me."

  Lesje looks up. The dark-haired woman who's been having lunch with Elizabeth is standing beside her.

  "You're living with Nate Schoenhof, aren't you?" she says.

  Lesje is too startled to say anything. "Mind if I sit down?" the woman says. She's wearing a red wool suit with lipstick to match.

  "I almost did, myself," she says neutrally, as if discussing a job she didn't get. "I'm the one before you. But he kept saying he could never leave his family." She laughs as if enjoying a slightly witless joke.

  Lesje can't think of anything at all to say. This must be Martha, whom Nate has mentioned in passing. She sounded ineffectual. Lesje expected her to be about five feet tall and mousy
. The real Martha does not seem ineffectual, and Lesje now wonders if she herself may at some future date be reduced to an equally pallid shadow. Of course Nate would not have mentioned Martha's large breasts and striking mouth, not to her.

  "Having any trouble with her?" Martha says, jerking her head.

  "Who?" Lesje says.

  "Don't worry, she just went out. Queen Elizabeth."

  Lesje wishes to avoid being drawn into a conspiracy. To say anything against Elizabeth to this particular person would be disloyal to Nate. "She's being very civilized," she says. No one could object to that.

  "I can see he's brainwashed you," Martha says with another laugh. "God, the two of them love that word." She grins at Lesje, a red gypsy grin. Suddenly Lesje likes her enormously. She smiles faintly back.

  "Don't let them do a job on you," Martha says. "Let them start and they'll turn your head to mush. Fight back. Give 'em hell." She stands up.

  "Thank you," Lesje says. She's grateful that anyone, anyone at all, has given her this much sympathetic thought.

  "Any time," Martha says. "There's not much I'm an expert on but believe you me, I'm the world's living authority on them."

  For at least fifteen minutes Lesje is elated. She's been vindicated; her own perceptions, which she has increasingly begun to distrust and even to disown, are possibly valid. Back in her office though, replaying the conversation, it occurs to her that Martha may have had one or two ulterior motives.

  Also: Martha didn't say what she's supposed to fight back against, or how. Martha obviously fought back herself. But it's to be noted - a hard fact - that Martha is not currently living with Nate.

  Friday, July 8, 1977

  NATE

  Nate is going to his house; his former house. He can't believe he no longer lives there. Up Shaw Street, past Yarmouth, past Dupont, the railway tracks, the factory where they make some product he's never bothered to identify. Steel girders, something like that, something for which he has no use. It's a hot day, muggy, as they say; the air warm porridge.

  He's spent the morning going from shop to shop where his toys are placed, Yorkville, Cumberland, lower Bayview Avenue, the boutique districts, hoping something had sold and he could collect, at least enough to keep him going. One Mary Had a Little Lamb. His share, ten bucks. He wonders if any of the owners was holding out on him; they must be able to tell he's desperate, and desperation, he knows, induces contempt. Waiting in the cute stores with their gingham aprons and patchwork chair covers, their tea cosies in the shape of hens, egg cosies in the shape of chickens, the bayberry soap from the States, all the country pretences, he felt a little of his mother's dismay. People spent money on this stuff, a lot of money. People spent money on his toys. Wasn't there anything better? It's a living, he thought. Wrong again, it isn't. He threw away a promising career, everyone said it was promising though they didn't say what it promised. He wanted to make honest things, he wanted his life to be honest, and all he has now is the taste of sawdust in his mouth.

  But he's glad enough to have the ten. He's supposed to meet the kids at his old house. They'll walk the three long blocks up to St. Clair, Nancy walking ahead of them as if she does not belong with them, Janet keeping close but not deigning to hold his hand; lately she's decided she's too old for hand-holding. These are the ways they demonstrate their anger with him, which otherwise they conceal. Atoning, he'll buy them each an ice cream bar, and then they'll go to the Italian baker's to pick up the cake for Elizabeth. He'll pay for it and that will be the ten. Though he'll still have change from the five he borrowed from Lesje.

  He can't connect the acts of carving the lamb, of painting and varnishing, with their consequence: Elizabeth's birthday cake. He can't connect any act he can think of with any consequence he can imagine. The trees he's passing, leaves limp in the heat, the houses with their patchy lawns or gardens crammed with tomato plants, look segmented, a collection of units, not really attached. The leaves aren't attached to the trees, the roofs aren't attached to the houses; blow and it would all fall down, a Lego town. His body feels the same. There's a toy he once made, a favorite several years back, lathe work, a wooden man built of rings which slipped over a central post. The head screwed on, holding the man together. A clown's smile he used. This is his body, stiff fragments held together by his spine and his screwtop head. Segmented man. Maybe he needs a salt tablet.

  He thought that by moving to Lesje's he could rid himself of the need to be in two places at once. But he's still spending almost as much time at his old house as at the new one. Lesje isn't supposed to know this, but she behaves as if she does anyway. He should have two sets of clothes, two identities, one for each house; it's the lack of this extra costume or body that is cracking him apart. He knew in advance, in theory, that separation is painful; he did not know it would also be literal. He has been separated; he is separate. Dismembered. He is no longer a member. His own house rebukes him, fills with ravens: Nevermore. It's this pain of his, sentimental, unbearable, that Lesje resents and Elizabeth ignores.

  Elizabeth is being very civilized, up to a point. Deliberately, ponderously polite. Whenever he comes to pick up the kids she invites him in and offers him some tea or, depending on the time of day, an aperitif: Cinzano, Dubonnet. She knows he never drinks these things but she's rubbing his nose in it, treating him like a guest in his own house. Which is not his own house. He's willing to bet there are some bottles or ends of bottles left in his kitchen cupboard or in the bottom of the pine sideboard - Elizabeth isn't much of a drinker, she won't have finished them - but he can't violate this game by asking. So he perches on the edge of one of his former chairs, sipping a drink he doesn't like but can't refuse, while Elizabeth fills him in on the children - their marks, their latest interests - as if he hasn't talked to them for a year. As if he's an uncle, a new school principal. I'm their father! he wants to shout. I haven't forgotten that, she'd say. But sometimes you do. It's one of her assumptions, so deeply rooted she never bothers to discuss it, that he neglects his children.

  He knows he should be getting a birthday present for Elizabeth, he always has before. Even if she herself doesn't expect it the children will. But Lesje would guess, partly because he'd have to borrow the money from her, and then there would be trouble. He doesn't want trouble, he doesn't need any more trouble of that sort. Lesje can't manage to see Elizabeth as a factor, a condition, something to be endured, like a snowstorm; morally neutral. Which is how Nate feels Elizabeth ought to be viewed. Instead she insists on regarding her as - what? her own private troll, a combination of the Dragon Lady and a vacuum cleaner. Nate himself tries to be objective. There's more excuse for his own failure in this respect than for Lesje's.

  He wants to tell her she's taking everything too seriously; but how can he do this when among the things she takes so seriously is himself? Elizabeth ceased to do this some time ago, and he isn't even sure he can still do it. But Lesje can, she can do nothing else. He can't remember ever having been listened to so attentively; even his banalities, his random comments. Almost as if he's speaking a foreign language, one with which she is only slightly familiar. She thinks he knows things it would benefit her to learn; she thinks of him as older. Which flatters but alarms him: he can't risk total exposure, bare his confusion or his carefully guarded despair. He's never told her how he jittered in phone booths night after night, dialing her number, hanging up when she answered. Cowardice, failure of nerve.

  In the bedroom he's beginning to think of as theirs, she glimmers like a thin white moon for him alone. By seeing how beautiful she is he's made her beautiful. But what if she discovers the truth? What he suspects is the truth. That he's patchwork, a tin man, his heart stuffed with sawdust.

  He thinks of her waiting for him, somewhere else, an island, subtropical, not muggy, her long hair waving in the sea breeze, a red hibiscus tucked behind one ear. If he's lucky she'll wait till that happens, till he can get there to be with her.

  (Though on the shore,
at a discreet distance and despite his best efforts, there's always another hut. He tries to shut it out but it too is indigenous. For the children and, of course, for Elizabeth. Who else would take care of them?)

  Saturday, July 9, 1977

  ELIZABETH

  Elizabeth has taken off her shoes and is brushing her hair, standing in front of the bureau with its oak-framed mirror. The air is humid and unmoving, though the window is wide open. The soles of her feet feel tender and swollen. She hopes she will never get varicose veins.

  In the glass oval, behind her own face, rigid and it seems to her puffy in the muted light, she can trace the shadow of her face as it will be in twenty years. Twenty years ago she was nineteen. In another twenty years she will be fifty-nine.

  Today is her birthday. Cancer. In the Scorpio decanate, as some pretentious little fraud at the last Museum Christmas party told her. Someone from Textiles, floral prints and herbal teas. Since yesterday the earth has turned once on its axis, and now she is thirty-nine. Jack Benny's age, the joke age. If someone asks her her age and she tells it, they'll automatically assume she's being funny as well as lying. Jack Benny, of course, is dead. Not only that, her children don't even know who he was. Before this birthday her age has never bothered her.

  She half-empties her glass. She's drinking sherry, has been drinking it for some time. A stupid thing to be doing, a stupid thing to be drinking; but since Nate left, the liquor cabinet is never very well stocked. She doesn't drink steadily the way Nate does and she forgets to replace things. She finished off a heel of Scotch earlier in the day. Another of his leavings.