Stone Mattress: Nine Tales

by Margaret Atwood

  “No,” says Tobias slowly. “I don’t think it’s a strike. Three of our security are talking with them. There’s a cop, as well. Two cops.”

  It startles Wilma whenever Tobias uses slang words like cop. They don’t go with his standard verbal ensemble, which is much more pressed and deliberate. But he might permit himself to say “cop” because it’s archaic. He once said, “Okey-dokey” and at another time, “Scram.” Maybe he gets these words out of books: dusty second-hand murder mysteries and the like. Though who is Wilma to make fun of him? Now that she can no longer fool around on the Internet, Wilma has lost track of how people talk. Real people, younger people Not that she’d fooled around on the Internet very much. She was never interactive, she was just a lurker, and she was only beginning to get the hang of it before her eyes started to go.

  She’d once said to her husband – when he was still alive, not during that year-long dream-nightmare period of mourning when she’d continued to talk to him after his death – that she’d have lurker written on her tombstone. Because hadn’t she spent most of her life just watching? It feels like that now, though it didn’t at the time, because she’d been so busy with this and that. Her degree had been in History – a safe-enough thing to study while waiting to get married – but a fat lot of good all that History is doing her at the moment, because she can’t remember much of it. Three political leaders who died having sex, that’s about it. Genghis Khan, Clemenceau, and what’s-his-name. It will come to her later.

  “What are they doing?” she asks. The marchers on the windowsill have been heading to the right, but suddenly they wheel around and quickstep left. They’ve added lances with glittering points, and some of them have drums. She tries not to be too distracted by them, though it’s such a pleasure to be able to see anything in such intricate and concrete detail. But Tobias doesn’t like it if he senses that her attention is not fully focused on him. She wrenches herself back to the solid, invisible present. “Are they coming in here?”

  “They’re standing around,” says Tobias. “Loitering,” he adds disapprovingly. “Young people.” He’s of the opinion that all young people are lazy freeloaders and should get jobs. The fact that there are few jobs available for them doesn’t register with him. If there are no jobs, he says, they should create some.

  “How many are there?” asks Wilma. If only a dozen or so it’s nothing serious.

  “I’d say about fifty,” says Tobias. “They’ve got signs. Not the cops, the other ones. Now they’re trying to block the Linens for Life van. Look, they’re standing in front of it.”

  He’s forgotten she can’t look. “What’s on the signs?” she asks. Blocking the Linens for Life van is not compassionate: today is the day the beds are changed, for those who don’t need extra linen services and a rubber sheet. The Advanced Life wing is on a more frequent schedule; twice a day, she’s heard. Ambrosia Manor isn’t cheap, and the relatives would not take kindly to ulcerating rashes on their loved ones. They want their money’s worth, or so they’ll claim. What they most likely want in truth is a rapid and blame-free finish for the old fossils. Then they can tidy up and collect the remnants of the net worth – the legacy, leftovers, the remains – and tell themselves they deserve it.

  “Some of the signs have pictures of babies,” says Tobias. “Chubby, smiling babies. Some say Time to Go.”

  “Time to go?” says Wilma. “Babies? What does that mean? This isn’t a maternity hospital.” About the opposite, she thinks caustically: it’s an exit from life, not an entrance. But Tobias doesn’t answer.

  “The cops are letting the van through,” he says.

  Good, thinks Wilma. Change of sheets for all. We won’t get so smelly.

  Tobias leaves for his morning nap – he’ll come by again at noon to lead her to the dining room for lunch – and, after a few false starts and a cheeseboard knocked to the floor, Wilma locates the radio she keeps on her kitchenette counter and switches it on. It’s specially made for those of diminished vision – the on-off and the tuning dial are the only buttons, and the whole radio is sheathed in grip-friendly, waterproof lime-green plastic. Another gift from Alyson on the West Coast, who worries that she’s not doing enough for Wilma. She would surely visit more frequently if it weren’t for the teenaged twins with unspecified issues and the demands of her own career in a large international accounting firm. Wilma must call her later today to assure her that she herself is still alive, at which time the twins will be forced to say hello to her. How tedious they must find these calls, and why not? She finds them tedious herself.

  Perhaps the strike, or whatever it is, will be on the local news. She can listen while washing the breakfast dishes, which she does fairly well if she goes slowly. In case of broken glass she’ll have to connect with Services on the intercom and then wait for Katia, her personal on-call cleaner, to arrive and sweep up the damage, tut-tutting and lamenting in her Slavic accent all the while. Splinters of glass can be treacherously sharp, and it would be unwise of Wilma to risk a cut, especially since she’s temporarily forgotten which bathroom drawer she keeps the Band-Aids in.

  Blood puddles on the floor would give the wrong signal to the management. They don’t really believe she’s able to function on her own; they’re just waiting for an excuse to slot her into Advanced Living and grab the rest of her furniture and her good china and silver, which they’ll sell to support their profit margin. That’s the deal, she signed it; it was the price of entry, the price of comfort, the price of safety. The price of not being a burden. She’s kept two of her nice antiques, the little escritoire and the dressing table – the last relics of her former household. The rest went to her three children, who had no use for it really – not their taste – and no doubt stuck it all in the cellar, but who were reverentially grateful.

  Upbeat radio music, jovial chitchat between the male host and the female one, more music, the weather. Heat wave in the north, flooding out west, more tornadoes. A hurricane heading for New Orleans, another one pummelling the eastern seaboard, the usual thing for June. But in India it’s the opposite story: the monsoons have failed and there are worries about a coming famine. Australia is still gripped by drought, with, however, a deluge in the Cairns area, where crocodiles are invading the streets. Forest fires in Arizona, and in Poland, and also in Greece. But right here all is well: it’s a good moment for the beach, grab some rays, don’t forget the sunblock, though watch out for storm cells popping up later. Have a good day!

  Here’s the main news. First, a regime topple in Uzbekistan; second, a mass shooting in a shopping mall in Denver, the doubtless hallucinating assailant then killed by a sniper. But third – Wilma listens harder – on the outskirts of Chicago, an old-age home has been set on fire by a mob wearing baby masks; and a second one near Savannah, Georgia, and a third one in Akron, Ohio. One of the homes was state-run, but the other two were private institutions with their own security, and the inhabitants of them, some of whom were fried to a crisp, were not poor.

  It was not a coincidence, says the commentator. It was coordinated arson: a group naming itself Artern has claimed responsibility on a website whose account-holders the authorities are attempting to track down. The families of the elderly dead people are naturally – says the newscaster – in shock. An interview with a weeping, incoherent relative commences. Wilma switches it off. There was no mention of the gathering outside Ambrosia Manor, but it’s probably too small and non-violent to have registered.

  Artern. That’s what it sounded like: they didn’t spell it. She’ll ask Tobias to watch the television news – an activity he claims to dislike, though he’s always doing it – and tell her more. She ignores the festival of little people that’s going on in the vicinity of the microwave, a pink and orange theme with multiple frills and grotesquely high beflowered wigs, and goes to lie down for her morning nap. She used to hate naps, and she still does: she doesn’t want to miss anything. But she can’t get through the day without them.
r />   Tobias leads her down the hallway towards the dining room. Theirs is the second sitting: Tobias considers it gauche to lunch before one. He’s walking more quickly than usual and she asks him to slow down. “Of course, dear lady,” he says, squeezing her elbow, which he’s using to propel her. Once he’d slipped his arm around her waist – she still does have a waist, more or less, unlike some of the others – but that had unbalanced him, and the two of them had almost toppled over. He’s not a tall man, and he’s had a hip replacement. He needs to watch his equilibrium.

  Wilma doesn’t know what he looks like, not any more. She’s probably embellished him; made him younger, less withered, more alert. More hair on top.

  “I have so much to tell you,” he says, too close to her ear. She wants to tell him not to shout, it’s not as if she’s deaf. “I have learned they are not strikers, these people. They are not retreating, they have increased in number.” This turn of events has energized him; he’s almost humming.

  In the dining room he pulls out her chair, guides her into it, pushes the chair back in just as her bottom is descending. It’s an almost-lost art, she thinks, this graceful ladies’ chair push, like shoeing horses or fletching arrows. Then he sits down opposite her, a dark shape against the eggshell wallpaper. She turns her head sideways, gets a vague impression of his face, with its dark, intense eyes. She remembers them as intense.

  “What’s on the menu?” she says. They’re given a printed menu for each meal, on a single sheet of paper with an embossed, fraudulent crest. Smooth, creamy paper, like the theatre programs of a former era, before they became flimsy and cluttered up with advertisements.

  “Mushroom soup,” he says. Usually he dwells on the daily offerings, disparaging them gently while reminiscing about gourmet banquets from his past and reflecting that no one knows how to cook properly any more, especially not veal, but today he skips all that. “I have been delving into it,” he says. “In the Activity Centre. I have been trolling.”

  He means he’s been using the computer and searching the Internet for clues. They aren’t allowed personal computers in Ambrosia, the official explanation being that the system isn’t up to speed. Wilma suspects the real reason is that they’re afraid the women will fall victim to online scammers and start up unsuitable romances and then piddle away their money, and the men will be sucked into the Internet porn and then get overheated and have heart attacks, thus causing Ambrosia Manor to be sued by indignant relatives who will claim the staff ought to have monitored the old boys more carefully.

  So no individual computers; but they can use those in the Activity Centre, where controls can be put on access, as for prepubescent children. Though management tries to steer the inhabitants away from the addictive screens: they’d rather have the customers fumbling around in mounds of wet clay or gluing geometric shapes of cardboard into patterns; or playing bridge, which is supposed to delay the onset of dementia. Though, as Tobias says, with bridge players how can you tell? Wilma, who once played a lot of bridge, declines to comment.

  Shoshanna, the occupational therapist, makes the rounds at dinnertime, pestering the clientele about everyone’s need to express themselves through Art. When urged to participate in the finger-painting or pasta necklace-making or whatever other bright idea Shoshanna has cooked up to give them all a reason for staying on the planet for another sunrise, Wilma pleads her limited sight. Shoshanna once upped the ante with some yarn about blind potters, several of whom had achieved international recognition for their beautiful hand-thrown ceramics, and wouldn’t Wilma like to expand her horizons by giving it a try? But Wilma froze her out. “Old dog,” she smiled with her hard, false teeth. “No new tricks.”

  As for the Internet porn, some of the crafty lechers have cellphones and treat themselves to the full freakshow that way. This is according to Tobias, who gossips with anyone in sight when he isn’t gossiping with Wilma. He claims he himself doesn’t bother with the tawdry and inelegant cellphone porn, because the women on view are too tiny. There’s a limit, he says, as to how much you can shrink the female body without turning it into an ant with mammary glands. Wilma doesn’t entirely believe this tale of abstinence, though maybe’s he’s not lying: he just might find his own invented sagas more erotic than anything a mere phone can come up with, and they have the added virtue of starring him.

  “What else did you learn?” Wilma asks. All around them is the clanking of spoons on china, the murmur of thinning voices, an insect vibration.

  “They say it’s their turn,” says Tobias. “That’s why they put Our Turn on the signs.”

  “Oh,” says Wilma. Light dawns: Artern. Our Turn. She’d misheard. “Their turn at what?”

  “At life, they say. I heard one of them on the television news; naturally they’re being interviewed all over the place. They say we’ve had our turn, those our age; they say we messed it up. Killing the planet with our own greed and so forth.”

  “They have a point there,” says Wilma. “We did mess it up. Not on purpose, though.”

  “They’re only socialists,” says Tobias. He has a dim opinion of socialists; everyone he doesn’t like is a socialist in some disguise or other. “Just lazy socialists, always trying to grab what others worked for.”

  Wilma has never been sure how Tobias made his money, enough money to be able to afford not only all the ex-wives, but his quite large suite in Ambrosia Manor. She suspects he was involved in some dubious business deals in countries in which all business deals are dubious, but he’s cagey about his earlier financial life. All he’ll say is that he owned several companies in international trade and made sound investments, though he doesn’t call himself rich. But then rich people never call themselves rich: they call themselves comfortable.

  Wilma herself was comfortable, back when her husband was alive. She’s probably still comfortable. She no longer pays much attention to her savings: a private management company takes care of that. Alyssa keeps an eye on them, as much as she can from the West Coast. Ambrosia Manor hasn’t kicked Wilma out onto the street, so the bills must be getting paid.

  “What do they want from us?” she asks, trying not to sound peevish. “Those people with the signs. For heaven’s sakes. It’s not as if we can do anything.”

  “They say they want us to make room. They want us to move over. Some of the signs say that: Move Over.”

  “That means die, I suppose,” says Wilma. “Are there any rolls today?” Sometimes there are the most delicious Parker House rolls, fresh from the oven. As a way of helping their clients feel at home, Ambrosia Manor makes a conscious effort to recreate what they imagine were the menus of seventy or eighty years ago. Macaroni and cheese, soufflés, custards, rice pudding, Jell-O dolloped with whipped cream. These menus have the added virtue of being soft, and thus no threat to wobbly teeth.

  “No,” says Tobias. “No rolls. Now they are bringing the chicken pot pies.”

  “Do you think they’re dangerous?” says Wilma.

  “Not here,” says Tobias. “But in other countries they are burning things down. This group. They say they are international. They say millions are rising up.”

  “Oh, they’re always burning things down in other countries,” Wilma says lightly. If I live that long, she hears herself saying to her former dentist. It’s the same throwaway tone: None of this can possibly ever happen to me.

  Idiot, she tells herself. Wishful thinking. But she simply can’t bring herself to feel threatened, or not by the foolishness outside the gates.

  In the afternoon Tobias invites himself for tea. His own room is on the other side of the building. It has a view out over the back grounds with their gravelled walks, their frequent park benches for the easily winded, their tasteful gazebos for shelter from the sun, and their croquet lawn for leisurely games. Tobias can see all of this, which he has described to Wilma in gloating detail, but he can’t see the front gate. Also he has no binoculars. He’s here in her apartment for the vista.

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p; “There are more of them now,” he says. “Maybe a hundred. Some are wearing masks.”

  “Masks?” Wilma asks, intrigued. “You mean, like Halloween?” She pictures goblins and Draculas, fairy princesses, witches and Elvis Presleys. “I thought masks are illegal. At public gatherings.”

  “Not quite like Halloween,” says Tobias. “Masks of babies.”

  “Are they pink?” says Wilma. She feels a slight tremor of fear. Baby masks on a mob: it’s disconcerting. A horde of life-sized, potentially violent babies. Out of control.

  There are twenty or thirty small people holding hands, circling what is most likely the sugar bowl: Tobias likes sugar in his tea. The women are wearing skirts that appear to be made out of overlapping rose petals, the men shimmer in iridescent peacock-feather blue. How exquisite they are, how embroidered! It’s hard to believe they aren’t real; they’re so physical, so finely detailed.

  “Some of them,” says Tobias. “Some are yellow. Some brown.”

  “They must be trying for an inter-racial theme,” says Wilma. Stealthily she inches her hand across the table toward the dancers: if only she could catch one, hold it between thumb and forefinger like a beetle. Maybe then they’d acknowledge her, if only by kicking and biting. “Do they have baby outfits on, as well?” Such as diapers, onesies with slogans on them, or bibs with incongruously vicious images such as pirates and zombies. Those had been all the rage, once.

  “No, just the faces,” says Tobias. The tiny dancers won’t give Wilma the satisfaction of allowing her fingers to pass through them, thus demonstrating their non-reality once and for all. Instead they curve their dance-line to evade her, so perhaps they’re aware of her after all. Perhaps they’re teasing, the little rascals.

  Don’t be silly, she tells herself. It’s a syndrome. Charles Bonnard. It’s well documented, other people have it. No, Bonnet: Bonnard was a painter, she’s almost sure of that. Or is it Bonnivert?