Stone Mattress

by Margaret Atwood

  No sooner had Alf stormed out than Violet found another note on the dressing table where no note had been just moments before: You shall belong to no one but me. Death cannot part us. Watch your neck. Eternally yours, William.

  Violet’s mouth opened and closed like that of a beached grouper. She was beyond screaming. Whoever was writing these notes was right in the house with her now! And she was all alone, the dressmaker having departed. It was too horrible!

  The more horrible it became, the faster Jack wrote. He mainlined instant coffee, gobbled packaged peanuts, and snatched only a few hours of sleep per night. Irena, fascinated by his manic energy, brought him plates of noodle casserole in aid of his creative efforts. She even went so far as to do his laundry for him, tidy up his room, and change his sheets.

  It was shortly after the change of sheets that Jack succeeded in wrestling her into bed. Or did she succeed in wrestling him into bed? He’s never been sure. In any case his bed was where they’d ended up, and he didn’t much care how they’d got there.

  He’d looked forward to such an event for a long time, he’d fantasized about it, he’d strategized; but now that the opportunity had come he was rapid in the execution and inattentive in the aftermath: he’d neglected to murmur any terms of endearment, and he’d zonked off to sleep almost immediately. He admits that wasn’t too suave. But there were reasons: he was young, he was overtired, he had a lot on his mind. His energies were needed elsewhere, because he was almost up to the dénouement in The Dead Hand Loves You.

  Alf was about to batter Roland to a pulp in an insane rage. Then, covered with blood, he would stagger off to his Alfa Romeo, where the Hand was lurking in the custom leather upholstery and would attempt to throttle him from behind. This would cause Alf to lose control of the car and crash it into a viaduct, incinerating him in the process. The Hand, though badly singed, would crawl out of the wreckage and limp over to Violet’s house.

  The unfortunate girl would just have been informed by the police about the murder of Roland and also the fatal accident; she’d be emotional rubble. The doctor would prescribe a sedative, and Violet would be drifting into an irresistible sleep when she would see, blistered, scarred, and charred to a crisp, the unstoppable Hand, dragging itself painfully but relentlessly towards her across the pillow …

  “What are you writing about?” said Irena from Jack’s own pillow, or one of them. He now had two, the second having been supplied by Irena herself. Her visits to his attic cubbyhole were becoming a habit. Sometimes she brought cocoa, and more and more frequently she stayed overnight, though her rump was not skinny, and Jack’s old-fashioned double bed was a tight squeeze. Thus far she’d been content to cast herself in the role of handmaid to greatness – she’d even offered to retype the manuscript for him, being a fast and efficient typist, unlike Jack – but he’d fended her off. This was the first time she’d been inquisitive as to the nature of his project, though she’d assumed he was writing Literature; she had no idea that he was spinning a cheap and tawdry horror yarn about a dried-up hand.

  “The materialism of our modern age, from an existential perspective,” said Jack. “Inspired by Steppenwolf.” (Steppenwolf! How could he? Jack thinks now. Forgivable, however: Steppenwolf had not yet achieved the vulgar popularity that was just around the corner for it.) This answer wasn’t exactly a lie, but, though truth of a kind, it was thinly stretched.

  Irena was pleased. She kissed him lightly, put her economical black underwear back on, followed by her thick pullover and tweed skirt, and bustled downstairs to warm up some leftover meatballs for the collective mid-day meal.

  In due course Jack finished the last chapter and slept for twelve hours straight, dreaming of nothing. Then he turned his attention to the peddling of his manuscript, because if he didn’t show some alacrity in his efforts to make up the past and future rent owing he might still find himself ignominiously evicted. Though nobody could say he wasn’t industrious. He’d gone all out on the typing part – Irena was his witness, he’d covered the pages – so maybe he’d get brownie points from his roommates for trying.

  There were several publishing houses in New York that specialized in horror and terror, so Jack purchased some brown paper envelopes and mailed off the manuscript to three of them. Sooner than he’d expected – in reality, he hadn’t expected anything – he received a terse reply. The book had been accepted. An advance was offered. It was a modest advance, but large enough to cover the rent owed, with enough left over to pay for the rest of his term.

  There was even enough for a celebration party, which Jack threw, Irena assisting. Everyone congratulated him and wanted to know when the masterpiece was due to appear and who was publishing it. Jack dodged these questions, smoked some dope and drank too much Old Sailor Port and vodka punch, and retched up the cheeseballs baked by Irena in homage to his talent. He wasn’t looking forward to the publication of his own book: too many cats would come swarming out of the bag, and his roommates were sure to recognize the funhouse mirror distortions of themselves he’d thoughtlessly inserted into his tale. Truth to tell, he hadn’t believed it would ever see daylight.

  Having recovered from the party, and with his obligations fulfilled and his degree just barely obtained, Jack was free to get on with the rest of his life, which turned out to involve advertising. He had a facility with adjectives and adverbs, he was told, which would come in handy once he’d learned the ropes. Though the four roommates had given up their house and found separate abodes, he was still seeing Irena, who’d decided to go to law school. Sex with her was an ongoing revelation to him. The first time had been rapturous for him, not to say jubilant, and repeated encounters were the same, despite Irena’s traditional man-on-top parameters. She was a woman of few words, which he appreciated – more words for him – but he wouldn’t have minded a phrase or two as to how he was doing, not having anything to compare his own performance with. Wasn’t she supposed to do more moaning? He had to content himself with her blue-eyed gaze, which he found unreadable. Adoring? He certainly hoped so.

  Although it was obvious from her dexterity that Irena herself had the wherewithal for comparisons, she had the tact not to mention it, another thing he appreciated. She wasn’t his first love – that had been Linda, a pigtailed brunette in second grade – but she was his first sex. Like it or not, Irena had been a milestone. So whatever else, she exists in a mental grotto consecrated to her alone: Saint Irena of the Holy Orgasm. A plaster saint, as it’s turned out, but still there in his head, posed in the act of removing her pragmatic black panties, her thighs incandescently white, her eyes downcast but sly, her half-open mouth smiling enigmatically. That image is quite different from the later image of the flinty, grasping harridan who cashes his cheques twice a year. He can’t fit them together.

  Over the next months, Irena bought him a set of mixing bowls and a kitchen garbage pail because she said he needed them – translation, she needed them in order to cook dinner for them over at his place – and she cleaned his bathroom, more than once. Not only was she moving in on him physically, she was beginning to dictate. She disapproved of his advertising job, and felt he should begin a second work of art, and by the way, wasn’t the first work of art – which she was longing to read – due to be published soon? Meanwhile The Dead Hand Loves You lay doggo, and Jack hoped that the publisher had left the manuscript in a taxi.

  But no such luck; for, like the severed hand of its title, The Dead Hand Loves You clawed its way to the surface and made its debut on the drugstore shelves of the nation. Jack had some furniture by then, including a beanbag chair and a good sound system, and he also had three suits, with ties to match. He regretted that he’d used his real name for the book instead of a nom de plume: would his new employers think he was a deranged pervert for writing this stuff? All he could do was keep his head down and hope no one noticed.

  Again, no such luck. There was a chilly row with Irena when she discovered that his masterwork had in fact a
ppeared and he hadn’t told her. Then there were more stiff words when she read it and saw what kind of masterwork it was – a waste of his talent, a sellout, and a shameless act of slumming, so very much beneath him – and that the characters in it were thinly disguised portraits of his three former roommates, including herself.

  “So this is what you really think of us all!” she said.

  “But Violet is beautiful!” he protested. “But the hero loves her!” It cut no ice. The love of a dried-up hand – however devoted – was not in any way flattering, according to Irena.

  The final blow came after she’d been nosing through his mail when he was out – he never should have given her a key to his apartment – and realized that he was banking his royalty cheques rather than dividing them with his fellow shareholders. He was not honouring their contract! He was a crappy writer, a crappy lover, and a criminal cheat of a human being, she said. She would be contacting Jaffrey and Rod immediately, and she could imagine what they would have to say about this.

  “But,” said Jack. “I forgot about the contract thing. It isn’t a real contract, it was only a joke, it was just a sort of …”

  “It is a real contract,” said Irena icily. She knew quite a lot by then about real contracts. “It proves intentionality.”

  “Okay. I was going to do the split. I hadn’t got around to it.”

  “That’s rubbish and you know it.”

  “Since when can you read my mind? You think you know everything about me. Just because I’m fucking you …”

  “I will not have that language,” said Irena, who was a prude when it came to words, though in no other way.

  “What do you want me to call it? You like it well enough when I do it. Okay, just because I’m sticking my carrot into your well-visited …”

  Stomp, stomp, stomp. Across the floor, out the door. Slam. Was he happy or sad about that?

  There followed a letter from the collective lawyer of the three irate shareholders. Demands. Threats. Then, on the part of Jack, capitulation. They had him dead to rights. As Irena claimed, there had indeed been intentionality.

  Jack was upset about the departure of Irena – more upset than he could admit. He did make some attempts at fence-mending. What had he done? he asked her. Why was she writing him off?

  No dice. She’d made an evaluation of him, she’d added him up and found him wanting, and no, she did not want to discuss it, and no, there wasn’t anyone else, and no, she would not give them another chance. There was one thing Jack could do – should already have done, she said – but the fact that he had no idea of what it was merely underscored why she had left.

  What did she want? he pleaded, though feebly. Why couldn’t she tell him? She wouldn’t say. It was baffling.

  He drowned his sorrows, though like other drowned things they had a habit of floating to the surface when least expected.

  On the sunny side, The Dead Hand Loves You was a hit in its own field, neglected though that field was by serious literati. As his editor put it, “Yeah, it’s a piece of shit, but it’s good shit.” Even better, there was a film deal in the offing, and who more suitable than Jack to write the screenplay? And then to produce a sequel to The Dead Hand Loves You, or at any rate some other piece of good shit? Jack quit his advertising job and devoted himself to the life of the pen. Or rather, to the life of the Remington, soon to be replaced with an IBM Selectric, with the bouncing ball that let you change the typeface. Now that was cool!

  His life as a scribe has had its ups and downs. Truth to tell, he’s never lived up to the success of his first book, which is still the one he’s known for and provides the bulk of his income; an income that, thanks to that youthful contract, is three times smaller than it ought to be. Which rankles. And as time passes and he finds it ever more difficult to churn out the verbiage, it’s rankling more and more. The Dead Hand was his big thing; he won’t, now, be able to repeat it. Worse, he’s at the age at which younger, sicker, more violent writers are patronizing and dismissing him. The Dead Hand, yeah, it was, like, seminal, but tame by today’s standards. Violet, for instance, did not get her intestines ripped out. There wasn’t any torture, nobody’s liver got fried in a pan, there wasn’t any gang rape. So what’s the fun of that?

  They’re likely to reserve their spike-haired, nose-ringed respect for the film, rather than the book – the original film, not the remake. The remake was more accomplished, yeah, like, if that’s what you want. It had better technical values, it had – god knows – better special effects; but it wasn’t fresh, it didn’t have that raw, primitive energy. It was too manicured, it was too self-conscious, it lacked …

  Here’s our special guest for tonight: Jack Dace, the grand old man of horror. And what do you think about the film, Mr. Dace? The second one, the dud, the failure. Oh. That was your screenplay? Wow, who knew? Nobody on this panel was even born then, right, guys? Haha, yes, Marsha, I know you aren’t a guy, but you’re an honorary guy. You’ve got more balls than half the guys in the audience! Am I right? Witless giggling.

  Had he himself ever been that brash, that callow? Yes. He had.

  Last week he received a proposal for a TV miniseries, linked to a video-game tie-in; both forms unhappily subject to the original four-party contract, according to his lawyer. There’s also to be an entire symposium – in Austin, Texas, home of super-cool nerdery – devoted to Jack Dace and his work, his total oeuvre, and especially to The Dead Hand Loves You. This renewed activity and the accompanying social-media blitz will lead to more book sales, and more residuals, and more of everything that – fuckit! – has to be split four ways. This is his last gasp, it’s his last hurrah, and he won’t be able to enjoy it; he’ll only be able to enjoy a quarter of it. The four-way splitting is supremely unfair and it’s gone on long enough. Something has to give, someone has to go. Or several people.

  How best to make it look natural?

  He’s kept track of all three of them, not that he had a choice. Their lawyers saw to that.

  Rod was briefly married to Irena, but that’s long over. He’s retired from his position with an international brokerage firm and lives in Sarasota, Florida, where he’s involved in the ballet and theatre communities as a volunteer financial adviser.

  Jaffrey – who was also briefly married to Irena, but after Rod – is in Chicago, having tailored his philosophical debating talents to municipal politics. Fourteen years ago he was almost convicted on a charge of bribery, but he dodged the bullet and has carried on as a well-known backroom boy, spin-doctor, and candidate’s consultant.

  Irena is still in Toronto, where she heads up a company devoted to raising funds for worthy non-profits, such as kidneys. She’s the widow of a man who did well in potash, and throws a lot of high-end dinner parties. She sends Jack a Christmas card every year, enclosing a form-letter account of her banal society doings.

  Jack is not outwardly on bad terms with the threesome, having floated it about years ago that he accepts the situation for what it is. Still, he hasn’t seen any of them for years. Make that decades. Why would he want to? He’s had no desire to experience a burp from the past.

  Not until now.

  He decides to start with Rod, who lives the farthest away. Rather than emailing, he leaves a voice message: he’ll be passing through Sarasota in connection with a film he’s considering – he’s looking for the right kind of setting – and how would Rod like to have lunch and catch up on old times? He’s ready for a brush-off, but somewhat to his surprise Rod sends an acceptance.

  They don’t meet in a restaurant, or even at Rod’s home. They meet in the discouraging cafeteria of the Buddhist palliative care centre where Rod is now a resident. White folks clad in saffron robes drift here and there, smiling benign smiles; bells ding; in the distance, chants are chanted.

  Formerly stocky Rod has dwindled: he’s yellowish grey and looks like an empty glove. “Pancreatic cancer,” he tells Jack. “It’s a death sentence.” Jack says he had no id
ea, which is true. He also says – how does he come up with these platitudes? – that he hopes Rod is receiving the proper spiritual care. Rod says he isn’t a Buddhist, but they do death well, and, having no family, he might as well be here as anywhere.

  Jack says he is sorry. Rod says it could be worse and he can’t complain. He’s had a good run – partly thanks to Jack, he has the grace to add, since that Dead Hand money gave him the leg-up he needed at the beginning of his career.

  They sit looking at their plates of vegetarian Buddhist-temple cuisine. There’s not a lot more to say.

  Jack is relieved he won’t have to murder Rod after all. Did he really intend to go that far? Would he have been up to it? Most likely not. He never disliked Rod as such. That’s a lie: he did dislike Rod, but not enough to kill him, then or now.

  “You weren’t really Roland,” he says. He owes at least this much of a lie to the suffering little bugger.

  “I know that,” says Rod. He smiles, a watery smile. A middle-aged woman in an orange robe brings them green tea. “We had fun, didn’t we?” he says. “In that old house. It was a more innocent age.”

  “Yes,” says Jack. “We did have fun.” From this distance it does resemble fun. Fun is not knowing how it will end.