Margaret Atwood

Under Glass (extract)

I’m feeling better. For once the sky is out, there’s a breeze, I’m walking through the ellipses and arranged vistas of the park, the trees come solidly up through the earth as though they belong there, nothing wavers. I have confidence in the grass and the distant buildings, they can take care of themselves, they don’t need my attention on them to keep them together, my eyes holding them down.

The steam-covered mothers and shrill, hyperthyroid children of yesterday’s trip to the zoo are far away, the traces they have left in me are faint as grease smudges and scratchings of twigs on window panes. That was a risk I shouldn’t have taken, it would have been cleverer to have waited, but I managed it. I even made it through the Moonlight Pavilion, darkened tunnels full of screaming, the goggling rodents and shrunken foetal-headed primates deluded by the grey light into going about their lives, so publicly, behind the soundproof panels. I enjoy knowing I can do it without anyone to help.

I pass the 7-B greenhouse: it glitters, it beckons. Inside are the plants that look like stones, their fleshy lobed leaves knuckle-sized and mottled so that they blend perfectly with the pebbles. I was pleased at first to have discovered them. I think with a kind of horror at myself of the hours I’ve spent watching them, all of us keeping quite still. Today, however, the greenhouse has no attraction: I walk on two legs, I wear clothes.

In the street outside the station I go shopping. It feels new, my legs ripple as though I’ve just gotten out of a wheelchair. I buy little brown paper parcels and stow them away inside my serviceable black bag with handles on it like a doctor’s. Bread and butter, grapes, greengages which he has probably never had before but we must all try different experiences. Before I zip the bag I rearrange the packages to safeguard the rose, encased in plastic wrap with stem swathed in wet toilet paper. Redundant. It’s a gift though and I’m proud of myself for being able, we don’t do much of that. I cut it in the garden, which isn’t mine. I admire roses but I’ve never wanted to be one, maybe that’s why I’m not worrying much about whether the stem hurts.

What part of a rose bush is the body? Last night I dreamed I had a baby which was the right size and colour. It’s a healthy sign, maybe I’ll be able to after all, the way other women are supposed to. Usually when I dream of babies they are scrawny as kittens, pale greenish and highly intelligent; they talk in polysyllables and I know they aren’t mine but are creatures from another planet sent to take over the earth, or that they are dead. Sometimes they’re covered with fur. But last night’s was pink and reassuringly illiterate; it cried. He ought to find this promising, he wants to have sons. I’ve thought about it, I’ve even gone so far as to read a couple of books on exercises and what they call natural childbirth, though having a gourd or a tomato would surely be more pleasant and useful these days than having a baby, the world has no need of my genes. That’s an excuse though.

I put the bag on my knees and keep hold of the handles. It’s playing house, we both know I can’t cook him anything till he gets his stove repaired, which somehow he postpones: still it’s the first domestic thing I’ve ever done for him. He ought to approve, he’s obliged to approve, he’ll see it’s getting better. I’m feeling so good I even look at other people in the train, their faces and clothes, noticing them, wondering about their lives. See how kind I am, what a cornucopia.

The cement stairway going down to his door smells of piss and antiseptic; I hold my breath as usual. I look in through the letter flap: he isn’t up, so I let myself in with my key. His two-room flat is more untidy than last time but it’s been worse. Today the dust and litter leave my skin alone. I set my black bag on the table and go through to the bedroom.

He’s on the bed, asleep in a tangled net of blankets, on his back with his knees up. I’m always afraid to wake him: I remember the stories about men who kill in their sleep with their eyes open, thinking the woman is a burglar or an enemy soldier. You can’t be convicted for it. I touch him on the leg and stand back, ready to run, but he wakes immediately and turns his head towards me.

“Hi, ” he says. “Jesus I’m hung over.”

It’s rude of him to be hung over when I’ve come all this way to see him. “I brought you a flower, ” I say, determined to be calm and cheerful.

I go out to the other room and unwind the rose from its toilet paper and look for something to put it in. There’s a stack of never-used plates in his cupboard, the rest of the space is books and papers. I find a lone glass and fill it with water at the sink. Forks and knives, also unused, are rusting in the drainer. I list to myself the things he needs: a vase, more glasses, a dishtowel.

I carry the rose in to him and he sniffs at it dutifully and I set the glass beside the alarm clock on the improvised table, two chairs and a board. He would really like to go back to sleep, but he compromises by pulling me down beside him and involving me in the blankets. His head seeks the hollow between my shoulder and collarbone and he closes his eyes.

“I’ve missed you, ” he says. Why should he have missed me, I’ve only been gone five days. The last time wasn’t good, I was nervous, the wallpaper was bothering me and the bright peel-off stick-on butterflies on the cupboard, not his, prior to him. He kisses me: he does have a hangover, his mouth tastes of used wine, tobacco resin and urban decay. He doesn’t want to make love, I can tell, I stroke his head understandingly; he nuzzles. I think again of the Moonlight Pavilion, the Slow Loris creeping cautiously through its artificial world, water dishes and withering branches, its eyes large with apprehension, its baby clutched to its fur.

“Want to have lunch? ” he says. This is his way of telling me he’s in no shape.

“I brought it. Or most of it anyway. I’ll go round the corner and get the rest. It’s healthier than those greasy hamburgers and chips.”

“Great, ” he says, but he makes no move to get up.

“Have you been taking your vitamin pills? ” They were my idea, I was afraid he’d get scurvy, eating the way he does. I always take them myself. I feel him nod ritualistically.

I can’t see whether he’s telling the truth. I turn over so I’m looking down at him. “Who were you drinking with? Did you go out after you moved the furniture? ”

“The furniture was already moved when I got there. She couldn’t call to tell me.” That’s true, he has no phone; our conversations take place in booths. “She wanted to go out and drink instead. I spilled chop suey all over myself, ” he says with self-pity.

I am supposed to commiserate. “Was it digested or undigested? ” I ask.

“I hadn’t touched a bite of it.”

I’m surprised at her for being so obvious, but then she’s always seemed unsubtle, blunt and straightforward, captain of a women’s basketball team, no, high school gym teacher with whistle in mouth. An old friend. No nonsense. Mine had bloomers and skinny legs and made jokes about what she called The Cramps in a way that suggested we weren’t supposed to have them. Trampolines, the body contorted, made to perform, the mind barking orders.

“She’s been trying to seduce you for months, ” I say, smiling; the thought amuses me, she looks like a marmot. At this he tries to shrug, but I have him pinned, one arm across the neck. “Did she succeed? ”

“By the time we got out of the bar the subway was closed.”

I hadn’t been serious, but this is suddenly a confession. I want to ignore it but I go on. “You mean she spent the night here? ”

“As opposed to trying to get all the way back to her place, ” he says, “yes.” It would be a reason like that. Logical as hell.

What do you think you are, the YWCA, I want to say, but instead I ask the obvious. “I suppose you slept with her.” My voice is steady, I’m steady too, I won’t let it tip me.

“It was her idea. I was drunk.” He thinks both these things are good excuses.

“Why did you tell me? ” If he hadn’t told me and I’d found out I’d say, Why didn’t you tell me; I know this while I’m asking it.

“You could have figured it out for yourself, the alarm’s set for eight.”

“What does that mean? ” I say; I don’t connect. I’m cold, I get up off the bed and move backwards towards the doorway.