Authors: Margaret Atwood
B
irdsong wakes me. It’s pre-dawn, earlier than the traffic starts in the city, but I’ve learned to sleep through that. I used to know the species; I listen, my ears are rusty, there’s nothing but a jumble of sound. They sing for the same reason trucks honk, to proclaim their territories: a rudimentary language. Linguistics, I should have studied that instead of art.
Joe is half-awake too and groaning to himself, the sheet pulled around his head like a cowl. He’s torn the blankets up from the bottom of the bed and his lean feet stick out, toes with the deprived look of potatoes sprouted in the bag. I wonder if he’ll remember he woke me when it was still dark, sitting up and saying “Where is this?” Every time we’re in a new place he does that. “It’s all right,” I said, “I’m here,” and though he said “Who? Who?”, repeating it like an owl, he allowed me to ease him back down into bed. I’m afraid to touch him at these times, he might mistake me for one of the enemies in his nightmare; but he’s beginning to trust my voice.
I examine the part of his face that shows, an eyelid and the side of his nose, the skin pallid as though he’s been living in a cellar, which
we have been; his beard is dark brown, almost black, it continues around his neck and merges under the sheet with the hair on his back. His back is hairier than most men’s, a warm texture, it’s like teddy-bear fur, though when I told him that he seemed to take it as an insult to his dignity.
I’m trying to decide whether or not I love him. It shouldn’t matter, but there’s always a moment when curiosity becomes more important to them than peace and they need to ask; though he hasn’t yet. It’s best to have the answer worked out in advance: whether you evade or do it the hard way and tell the truth, at least you aren’t caught off guard. I sum him up, dividing him into categories: he’s good in bed, better than the one before; he’s moody but he’s not much bother, we split the rent and he doesn’t talk much, that’s an advantage. When he suggested we should live together I didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t even a real decision, it was more like buying a goldfish or a potted cactus plant, not because you want one in advance but because you happen to be in the store and you see them lined up on the counter. I’m fond of him, I’d rather have him around than not; though it would be nice if he meant something more to me. The fact that he doesn’t makes me sad: no one has since my husband. A divorce is like an amputation, you survive but there’s less of you.
I lie for a while with my eyes open. This used to be my room; Anna and David are in the one with the map, this one has the pictures. Ladies in exotic costumes, sausage rolls of hair across their foreheads, with puffed red mouths and eyelashes like toothbrush bristles: when I was ten I believed in glamour, it was a kind of religion and these were my icons. Their arms and legs are constrained in fashion-model poses, one gloved hand on the hip, one foot stuck out in front. They’re wearing shoes with Petunia Pig toes and perpendicular heels, and their dresses have cantaloupe strapless tops like Rita Hayworth’s and ballerina skirts with blotches meant for
spangles. I didn’t draw very well then, there’s something wrong with the proportions, the necks are too short and the shoulders are enormous. I must have been imitating the paper dolls they had in the city, cardboard movie stars, Jane Powell, Esther Williams, with two-piece bathing suits printed on their bodies and cutout wardrobes of formal gowns and lacy negligées. Little girls in grey jumpers and white blouses, braids clipped to their heads with pink plastic barrettes, owned and directed them; they would bring them to school and parade them at recess, propping them up against the worn brick wall, feet in the snow, paper dresses no protection against the icy wind, inventing for them dances and parties, celebrations, interminable changing of costumes, a slavery of pleasure.
Below the pictures at the foot of the bed there’s a grey leather jacket hanging on a nail. It’s dirty and the leather is cracked and peeling. I see it for a while before I recognize it: it belonged to my mother a long time ago, she kept sunflower seeds in the pockets. I thought she’d thrown it out; it shouldn’t still be here, he should have got rid of it after the funeral. Dead people’s clothes ought to be buried with them.
I turn over and shove Joe further against the wall so I can curl up.
I surface again later; Joe is wide awake now, he’s come out from under the sheet. “You talked in your sleep again,” I tell him. Sometimes I think he says more when he’s asleep than he does when he’s awake.
He gives a noncommittal growl. “I’m hungry.” Then, after a pause, “What did I say?”
“The usual. You wanted to know where you were and who I was.” I’d like to hear about the dream itself; I used to have dreams but I don’t any longer.
“That’s pretty boring,” he says. “Was that all?”
I throw back the covers and lower my feet to the floor, a minor ordeal: even in midsummer here the nights are cold. I get dressed as
fast as possible and go out to start the fire. Anna is there, still in her sleeveless nylon nightgown and bare feet, standing in front of the wavery yellowish mirror. There’s a zippered case on the counter in front of her, she’s putting on makeup. I realize I’ve never seen her without it before; shorn of the pink cheeks and heightened eyes her face is curiously battered, a worn doll’s, her artificial face is the natural one. The backs of her arms have goose pimples.
“You don’t need that here,” I say, “there’s no one to look at you.” My mother’s phrase, used to me once when I was fourteen; she was watching, dismayed, as I covered my mouth with Tango Tangerine. I told her I was just practising.
Anna says in a low voice, “He doesn’t like to see me without it,” and then, contradicting herself, “He doesn’t know I wear it.” I glimpse the subterfuge this must involve, or is it devotion: does she have to sneak out of the bed before he’s awake every morning and into it at night with the lights out? Maybe David is telling generous lies; but she blends and mutes herself so well he may not notice.
While the stove is heating I go outside, first up to the outhouse and down again to the lake to dip my hands and face, then to the refrigerator, a metal garbage can sunk in the ground with a tight-fitting raccoon-proof lid and over that a heavy wooden cover. When the game wardens arrived in their police launch, as they did once a year, they could never believe we didn’t have an icebox, they used to search everywhere for hidden, illegal fish.
I reach down for the eggs; the bacon is in a screened box under the cabin, ventilated but protected from flies and mice. In a settler’s house these would have been rootcellar and smoke-house; my father is an improvisor on standard themes.
I carry the food inside and start the breakfast. Joe and David are up, Joe sitting on the wall bench, face still fuzzy with sleep, David examining his chin in the mirror.
“I can make you hot water if you want to shave,” I suggest, but his reflection grins and he shakes his head.
“Naaa,” he says, “I’m gonna grow me a little old beard.”
“Don’t you dare,” Anna says. “I don’t like him kissing me when he has a beard, it reminds me of a cunt.” Her hand goes over her mouth as though she is shocked. “Isn’t that awful?”
“Filthy talk, woman,” David says, “she’s uncultured and vulgar.”
“Oh I know, I’ve always been like that.”
It’s a quick skit, Joe and I are the audience, but Joe is still off in the place inside himself where he spends most of his time and I’m at the stove turning the bacon, I can’t watch them so they stop.
I crouch down in front of the stove and open the firebox door to make the toast over the coals. There are no dirty words any more, they’ve been neutered, now they’re only parts of speech; but I recall the feeling, puzzled, baffled, when I found out some words were dirty and the rest were clean. The bad ones in French are the religious ones, the worst ones in any language were what they were most afraid of and in English it was the body, that was even scarier than God. You could also say Jeesus Christ, but it meant you were angry or disgusted. I learned about religion the way most children then learned about sex, not in the gutter but in the gravel and cement schoolyard, during the winter months of real school. They would cluster in groups, holding each others’ mittened hands and whispering. They terrified me by telling me there was a dead man in the sky watching everything I did and I retaliated by explaining where babies came from. Some of their mothers phoned mine to complain, though I think I was more upset than they were: they didn’t believe me but I believed them.
I finish the toast; the bacon is done too, I dish it out, pouring the fat afterwards into the fire, keeping my hand back from the spurt of flame.
After breakfast David says “What’s on the agenda?” I tell them I would like to search the trail that runs for half a mile close to the shore; my father may have gone along it to get wood. There was another trail that went back almost as far as the swamp but it was my brother’s and secret, by now it must be illegible.
He can’t have left the island, both canoes are in the toolshed and the aluminum motorboat is padlocked to a tree near the dock; the gas tanks for the motor are empty.
“Anyway,” I say, “there’s only two places he can be, on the island or in the lake.” My head contradicts me: someone could have picked him up here and taken him to the village at the other end of the lake, it would be the perfect way to vanish; maybe he wasn’t here during the winter at all.
But that’s avoiding, it’s not unusual for a man to disappear in the bush, it happens dozens of times each year. All it takes is a small mistake, going too far from the house in winter, blizzards are sudden, or twisting your leg so you can’t walk out, in spring the blackflies would finish you, they crawl inside your clothes, you’d be covered with blood and delirious in a day. I can’t accept it though, he knew too much, he was too careful.
I give David the machete, I don’t know what shape the trail will be in, we may have to brush it out; Joe carries the hatchet. Before we start I coat their wrists and ankles with bug spray, and my own also. I used to be immune to mosquitoes, I’d been bitten so much, but I’ve lost it: on my legs and body are several itchy pink bumps from last night. The sound of love in the north, a kiss, a slap.
It’s overcast, lowhanging cloud; there’s a slight wind from the southeast, it may rain later or it may miss us, the weather here comes in pockets, like oil. We go in through the neck-high grass mixed with wild raspberry canes between the garden and the lake, past the burn heap and the compost heap. I should have unearthed the garbage, to see how recent it is; there’s a pit also, where the burned
tin cans are smashed flat and buried, that could be excavated. My father viewed as an archeological problem.
We’re on the trail inside the forest; the first part is fairly open, though now and then we pass gigantic stumps, level and saw-cut, remnants of the trees that were here before the district was logged out. The trees will never be allowed to grow that tall again, they’re killed as soon as they’re valuable, big trees are scarce as whales.
The forest thickens and I watch for the blazes, still visible after fourteen years; the trees they’re cut on have grown swollen edges around the wounds, scar tissue.
We begin to climb and my husband catches up with me again, making one of the brief appearances, framed memories he specializes in: crystal clear image enclosed by a blank wall. He’s writing his own initials on a fence, graceful scrolls to show me how, lettering was one of the things he taught. There are other initials on the fence but he’s making his bigger, leaving his mark. I can’t identify the date or place, it was a city, before we were married; I lean beside him, admiring the fall of winter sunlight over his cheekbone and the engraved nose, noble and sloped like a Roman coin profile; that was when everything he did was perfect. On his hand is a leather glove. He said he loved me, the magic word, it was supposed to make everything light up, I’ll never trust that word again.
My bitterness about him surprises me: I was what’s known as the offending party, the one who left, he didn’t do anything to me. He wanted a child, that’s normal, he wanted us to be married.
In the morning while we were doing the dishes I decided to ask Anna. She was wiping a plate, humming snatches of The Big Rock Candy Mountain under her breath. “How do you manage it?” I said.
She stopped humming. “Manage what?”
“Being married. How do you keep it together?”
She glanced at me quickly as though she was suspicious. “We tell a lot of jokes.”
“No but really,” I said. If there was a secret trick I wanted to learn it.
She talked to me then, or not to me exactly but to an invisible microphone suspended above her head: people’s voices go radio when they give advice. She said you just had to make an emotional commitment, it was like skiing, you couldn’t see in advance what would happen but you had to let go. Let go of what, I wanted to ask her; I was measuring myself against what she was saying. Maybe that was why I failed, because I didn’t know what I had to let go of. For me it hadn’t been like skiing, it was more like jumping off a cliff. That was the feeling I had all the time I was married; in the air, going down, waiting for the smash at the bottom.
“How come it didn’t work out, with you?” Anna said.
“I don’t know,” I said, “I guess I was too young.”
She nodded sympathetically. “You’re lucky you didn’t have kids though.”
“Yes,” I said. She doesn’t have any herself; if she did she couldn’t have said that to me. I’ve never told her about the baby; I haven’t told Joe either, there’s no reason to. He won’t find out the usual way, there aren’t any pictures of it peering out from a crib or a window or through the bars of a playpen in my bureau drawer or my billfold where he could stumble across them and act astonished or outraged or sad. I have to behave as though it doesn’t exist, because for me it can’t, it was taken away from me, exported, deported. A section of my own life, sliced off from me like a Siamese twin, my own flesh cancelled. Lapse, relapse, I have to forget.