"The Edible Woman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Atwood Margaret)

5

We walked down towards the subway in the semi-dusk, through the sound of crickets and muffled television sets (in some of the houses we could see them flickering blue through the open windows) and a smell of warm tar. My skin felt stifled, as though I was enclosed in a layer of moist dough. I was afraid Ainsley hadn’t enjoyed herself: her silence was negative.

“Dinner wasn’t bad,” I said, wanting to be loyal to Clara, who was after all an older friend than Ainsley; “Joe’s turning into quite a good cook.”

“How can she stand it?” Ainsley said with more vehemence than usual. “She just lies there and that man does all the work! She lets herself be treated like a thing!”

“Well, she is seven months pregnant,” I said. “And she’s never been well.”

“She’s not well!” Ainsley said indignantly. “She’s flourishing; it’s him that’s not well. He’s aged even since I’ve known him and that’s less than four months. She’s draining all his energy.”

“What do you suggest?” I said. I was annoyed with Ainsley: she couldn’t see Clara’s position.

“Well, she should do something; if only a token gesture. She never finished her degree, did she? Wouldn’t this be a perfect time for her to work on it? Lots of pregnant women finish their degrees.”

I remembered poor Clara’s resolutions after the first baby: she had thought of it as only a temporary absence. After the second she had wailed, “I don’t know what we’re doing wrong! I always try to be so careful.” She had always been against the pill – she thought it might change her personality – but gradually she had become less adamant. She had read a French novel (in translation) and a book about archaeological expeditions in Peru and had talked about night school. Lately she had taken to making bitter remarks about being “just a housewife.” “But Ainsley,” I said, “you’re always saying that a degree is no real indication of anything.”

“Of course the degree in itself isn’t,” Ainsley said, “it’s what it stands for. She should get organized.”

When we were back at the apartment I thought of Len, and decided it wasn’t too late to call him. He was in, and after we’d exchanged greetings I told him I would love to see him.

“Great,” he said, “when and where? Make it some place cool. I didn’t remember it was so bloody hot in the summers over here.”

“Then you shouldn’t have come back,” I said, hinting that I knew why he had and giving him an opening.

“It was safer,” he said with a touch of smugness. “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.” He had acquired a slight English accent. “By the way, Clara tells me you’ve got a new roommate.”

“She isn’t your type,” I said. Ainsley had gone into the living room and was sitting on the chesterfield with her back to me.

“Oh, you mean too old, like you, eh?” My being too old was one of his jokes.

I laughed. “Let’s say tomorrow night,” I said. It had suddenly struck me that Len would be a perfect distraction for Peter. “About eight-thirty at the Park Plaza. I’ll bring a friend along to meet you.”

“Aha,” said Len, “this fellow Clara told me about. Not serious, are you?”

“Oh no, not at all,” I said to reassure him.

When I had hung up Ainsley said, “Was that Len Slank you were talking to?”

I said yes.

“What does he look like?” she asked casually.

I couldn’t refuse to tell her. “Oh, sort of ordinary. I don’t think you’d find him attractive. He has blond curly hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Why?”

“I just wondered.” She got up and went into the kitchen. “Want a drink?” she called.

“No thanks,” I said, “but you could bring me a glass of water.” I moved into the living room and went to the window seat where there was a breeze.

She came back in with a scotch on the rocks for herself and handed me my glass of water. Then she sat down on the floor. “Marian,” she said, “I have something I need to tell you.”

Her voice was so serious that I was immediately worried. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m going to have a baby,” she said quietly.

I took a quick drink of water. I couldn’t imagine Ainsley making a miscalculation like that. “I don’t believe you.”

She laughed. “Oh, I don’t mean I’m already pregnant. I mean I’m going to get pregnant.”

I was relieved, but puzzled. “You mean you’re going to get married?” I asked, thinking of Trigger’s misfortune. I tried to guess which of them Ainsley could be interested in, without success; ever since I’d known her she had been decidedly anti-marriage.

“I knew you’d say that,” she said with amused contempt. “No, I’m not going to get married. That’s what’s wrong with most children, they have too many parents. You can’t say the sort of household Clara and Joe are running is an ideal situation for a child. Think of how confused their mother-image and their father-image will be; they’re riddled with complexes already. And it’s mostly because of the father.”

“But Joe is marvellous!” I cried. “He does just about everything for her! Where would Clara be without him?”

“Precisely,” said Ainsley. “She would have to cope by herself. And she would cope, and their total upbringing would be much more consistent. The thing that ruins families these days is the husbands. Have you noticed she isn’t even breast-feeding the baby?”

“But it’s got teeth,” I protested. “Most people wean them when they get teeth.”

“Nonsense,” Ainsley said darkly, “I bet Joe put her up to it. In South America they breast-feed them much longer than that. North American men hate watching the basic mother-child unit functioning naturally, it makes them feel not needed. This way Joe can give it the bottle just as easily. Any woman left to her own devices would automatically breast-feed as long as possible: I’m certainly going to.”

It seemed to me that the discussion had got off the track: we were talking theory about a practical matter. I tried a personal attack: “Ainsley, you don’t know anything at all about babies. You don’t even like them much, I’ve heard you say they’re too dirty and noisy.”

“Not liking other people’s babies,” said Ainsley, “isn’t the same as not liking your own.”

I couldn’t deny this. I was baffled: I didn’t even know how to justify my own opposition to her plan. The worst of it was that she would probably do it. She can go about getting what she wants with a great deal of efficiency, though in my opinion some of the things she wants – and this was a case in point – are unreasonable. I decided to take a down-to-earth approach.

“All right,” I said. “Granted. But why do you want a baby, Ainsley? What are you going to do with it?”

She gave me a disgusted look. “Every woman should have at least one baby.” She sounded like a voice on the radio saying that every woman should have at least one electric hair dryer. “It’s even more important than sex. It fulfills your deepest femininity.” Ainsley is fond of paperback books by anthropologists about primitive cultures: there are several of them bogged down among the clothes on her floor. At her college they make you take courses in it.

“But why now?” I said, searching my mind for objections. “What about the job at the art gallery? And meeting the artists?” I held them out to her like a carrot to a donkey.

Ainsley widened her eyes at me. “What has having a baby got to do with getting a job at an art gallery? You’re always thinking in terms of either/or. The thing is wholeness. As for why now, well, I’ve been considering this for some time. Don’t you feel you need a sense of purpose? And wouldn’t you rather have your children while you’re young? While you can enjoy them. Besides, they’ve proved they’re likely to be healthier if you have them between twenty and thirty.”

“And you’re going to keep it,” I said. I looked around the living room, calculating already how much time, energy and money it would take to pack and move the furniture. I had contributed most of the solider items: the heavy round coffee table donated from a relative’s attic back home, the walnut drop-leaf we used for company, also a donation, the stuffed easy chair and the chesterfield I had picked up at the Salvation Army and re-covered. The outsize poster of Theda Bara and the bright paper flowers were Ainsley’s; so were the ashtrays and the inflatable plastic cushions with geometric designs. Peter said our living-room lacked unity. I had never thought of it as a permanent arrangement, but now it was threatened it took on a desirable stability for me. The tables planted their legs more firmly on the floor; it was inconceivable that the round coffee table could ever be manipulated down those narrow stairs, that the poster of Theda Bara could be rolled up, revealing the crack in the plaster, that the plastic cushions could allow themselves to be deflated and stowed away in a trunk. I wondered whether the lady down below would consider Ainsley’s pregnancy a breach of contract and take legal action.

Ainsley was getting sulky. “Of course I’m going to keep it. What’s the good of going through all that trouble if you don’t keep it?”

“So what it boils down to,” I said, finishing my water, “is that you’ve decided to have an illegitimate child in cold blood and bring it up yourself.”

“Oh, it’s such a bore to explain. Why use that horrible bourgeois word? Birth is legitimate, isn’t it? You’re a prude, Marian, and that’s what’s wrong with this whole society.”

“Okay, I’m a prude,” I said, secretly hurt: I thought I was being more understanding than most. “But since the society is the way it is, aren’t you being selfish? Won’t the child suffer? How are you going to support it and deal with other people’s prejudices and so on?”

“How is the society ever going to change,” said Ainsley with the dignity of a crusader, “if some individuals in it don’t lead the way? I will simply tell the truth. I know I’ll have trouble here and there, but some people will be quite tolerant about it, I’m sure, even here. I mean, it won’t be as though I’ve gotten pregnant by accident or anything.”

We sat in silence for several minutes. The main point seemed to have been established. “All right,” I said finally, “I see you’ve thought of everything. But what about a father for it? I know it’s a small technical detail, but you will need one of those, you know, if only for a short time. You can’t just send out a bud.”

“Well,” she said, taking me seriously, “actually I have been thinking about it. He’ll have to have a decent heredity and be fairly good-looking; and it will help if I can get someone co-operative who will understand and not make a fuss about marrying me.”

She reminded me more than I liked of a farmer discussing cattle-breeding. “Anyone in mind? What about that dentistry student?”

“Good god no,” she said, “he has a receding chin.”

“Or the electric toothbrush murder-witness man?”

She puckered her brow. “I don’t think he’s very bright. I’d prefer an artist of course, but that’s too risky genetically; by this time they must all have chromosome breaks from l.s.d. I suppose I could unearth Freddy from last year, he wouldn’t mind in the least, though he’s too fat and he has an awfully stubbly five o’clock shadow. I wouldn’t want a fat child.”

“Nor one with heavy stubble either,” I said, trying to be helpful.

Ainsley looked at me with annoyance. “You’re being sarcastic,” she said. “But if only people would give more thought to the characteristics they pass on to their children maybe they wouldn’t rush blindly into things. We know the human race is degenerating and it’s all because people pass on their weak genes without thinking about it, and medical science means they aren’t naturally selected out the way they used to be.”

I was beginning to feel fuzzy in the brain. I knew Ainsley was wrong, but she sounded so rational. I thought I’d better go to bed before she had convinced me against my better judgment.

In my room, I sat on the bed with my back against the wall, thinking. At first I tried to concentrate on ways to stop her, but then I became resigned. Her mind was made up, and though I could hope this was just a whim she would get over, was it any of my business? I would simply have to adjust to the situation. Perhaps when we had to move I should get another roommate; but would it be right to leave Ainsley on her own? I didn’t want to behave irresponsibly.

I got into bed, feeling unsettled.