Life Before Man

by Margaret Atwood

  Lesje looks forward to this time - it would be good to be with him in a neutral bed with no fear of opening doors - but doesn't exactly believe in it. She can't picture, for instance, actually moving. Folding sheets and towels, taking down her posters (from the Museum, mostly, stuck to the walls with masking tape), putting her few dishes and the frying pan her mother gave her when she left home into cardboard cartons. If she really is going to move, she ought to be able to picture it. (And where will William be? At the office? Standing by with arms folded to see that she doesn't take any of his books, or the shower curtains, which were his own purchases, or the Organic Eating cookbook they never use?)

  Nate hasn't discussed this future move with Elizabeth, though he's discussed other things. Elizabeth knows about them. He and Elizabeth had quite a good talk about it one night while he was having a bath. It's a long-standing habit of Elizabeth's to talk to him while he's in the bathtub, Nate tells her. Though it bothers Lesje slightly to think of them having habits together, she asked, "Was she angry?"

  "Not at all," Nate said. "She was very good about it. She's glad I've found someone congenial."

  For some reason Elizabeth's approval annoys Lesje more than her anger would have.

  "She does think, though," Nate said, "that you should tell William. She feel it's a little dishonest not to. She thinks it's only fair to her. She ..."

  "It's none of her business," Lesje said, surprising herself by her own abruptness. "Why should she care what I tell William?"

  "They've become quite friendly," Nate said mildly. "They seem to have lunch together quite a lot. She says it puts her in a false position with William, that she knows and he doesn't."

  Lesje hadn't heard about this friendship, these lunches. She felt left out. Why hadn't William mentioned anything about it? Though he rarely tells her who he has lunch with. But this may mean only what she thinks it means: that, like her, he seldom has lunch at all. She sees, too, the threat behind the message; for it was a message, Elizabeth the sender, Nate merely the unwitting deliverer. If she doesn't tell William soon, Elizabeth will tell him herself.

  Yet she's been unable to say anything. There hasn't been an opportunity, she tells herself. What's she supposed to do? Interrupt a cribbage game to say, "William, I'm having an affair"?

  She swings along the street, head down, carrying the bag of potato salad and fried chicken she's bought at Ziggy's. William once told her she walks like an adolescent boy. But so does he, so they're even.

  When she reaches the apartment, William is sitting at the card table. He has a solitaire game spread in front of him, but he's looking out the window.

  "I got some stuff from Ziggy's," Lesje says cheerfully. William doesn't answer, which is nothing new. She walks through the kitchenette, leaving the bag on the counter, and goes into the bedroom.

  She's sitting on the bed, pulling off her leather boots, when William appears in the doorway. He has a strange look on his face, as if his muscles are in spasm. He comes towards her, hulking.

  "William, what's wrong?" she says; but he pushes her down on the bed, one arm across both shoulders, his elbow digging in beside her collarbone. His other hand rips at the zipper on her jeans.

  William has always liked to tumble around a little. She starts to laugh, then stops. This is different. His arm is against her throat, cutting off her wind.

  "William, that hurts," she says; then, "William, cut it out!"

  He's got her jeans worked halfway down her thighs before it occurs to her that William is trying to rape her.

  She's always thought of rape as something the Russians did to the Ukrainians, something the Germans did, more furtively, to the Jews; something blacks did in Detroit, in dark alleys. But not something William Wasp, from a good family in London, Ontario, would ever do to her. They're friends, they discuss extinction and pollution, they've known each other for years. They live together!

  What can she do now? If she fights him off, kicks him in the nuts, he'll never speak to her again. She's almost certain she could: her knee's in the right position, he's crouching over her, fumbling at her nylon crotch. But if she lets him go ahead, there's a good chance she'll never speak to him again. It's absurd, and William, huffing and puffing and grinding his teeth, is absurd too. But she knows if she laughs he'll hit her.

  This is frightening; he's hurting her on purpose. Maybe he's always wanted to do this but never had the excuse. What is the excuse?

  "William, stop," she says; but William tugs and rips, silently, relentlessly, forcing his torso between her knees. Finally she is angry herself. The least he could do is answer her. She clamps her legs together, tightens the muscles of her neck and shoulders, and lets William batter himself against her. He's pulling her hair now, digging his fingers into her arms. Finally he groans, oozes, unclenches.

  "Finished?" she says coldly. He's a dead weight. She pries herself out from beneath him, buttons her shirt. She pulls off her jeans and underpants and mops her thighs with them. William, pink-eyed, watches her from the bed.

  "I'm sorry," he says.

  Lesje is afraid he's going to cry. Then she will have to forgive him. Without answering, she goes to the bathroom and stuffs her clothes into the laundry hamper. She wraps a towel around her waist. All she wants to do is have a shower.

  She leans her forehead against the cool glass of the mirror. She can't stay here. Where will she go, what did she do? Her heart is racing, there are scratches on her arms and breasts, she's gasping for air. It's the sight of William turning into someone else that has shocked her. She doesn't know whose fault it is.

  Wednesday, February 16, 1977

  ELIZABETH

  Elizabeth is having a bad dream. The children are lost. They are only babies, both of them, and through carelessness, a moment of inattention, she's misplaced them. Or they've been stolen. Their cribs are empty, she's hurrying through unfamiliar streets looking for them. The streets are deserted, the windows dark; there's no snow on the ground, no leaves on the hedges, the sky overhead would be full of stars if she could only look up. She would call, but she knows the children will not be able to answer her, even if they can hear her. They're inside one of the houses, wrapped up; even their mouths are covered by blankets.

  She turns over, forces herself awake. She looks around the room, the looming bureau, the spider plants, the stripes of light through the blinds, making sure she is here. Her heart quiets, her eyes are dry. The dream is an old one, an old familiar. She began having it after Nancy was born. At that time she would wake crying convulsively, and Nate would comfort her. He would take her to the children's room so she could listen and see that they were all right. He'd thought she was dreaming about their own children, but even then she had known, though she hadn't told him, that the lost babies were her mother and Caroline. She's shut them out, both of them, as well as she could, but they come back anyway, using the forms that will most torment her.

  She doesn't want to go back to sleep; she knows that if she does she'll probably have the same dream again. She gets out of bed, finds her slippers and dressing gown, and goes downstairs to make herself a warm milk and honey. As she passes the children's room she listens, then pushes open the door just to make sure. Pure habit. She will probably go on doing this for the rest of her life, even after they are really gone. She will go on having the dream. Nothing ever finishes.

  PART FOUR

  Wednesday, March 9, 1977

  LESJE

  Lesje's knife squeaks on china. They're having roast beef, which is a little tough. Her mother has never known how to cope with roast beef. Lesje cuts and chews; nobody says anything, which is not unusual. Around her is the sound she remembers from childhood, a hollow sound, like a cave where there might be an echo.

  They didn't know she was coming until the last minute. Nevertheless her mother has set out the good plates, the ones with pink roses and gold rims that belonged to Lesje's grandmother. The other good plates have blue borders with silver rims a
nd scenes of Scottish castles; they belonged to the other grandmother. The meat plates. Lesje's parents got them because, despite his transgressions, her father was the only son. Her aunt got the milk plates and has never ceased to resent it. There's a third set of dishes for everyday, which her parents bought themselves: oven-to-table stoneware. Lesje feels more comfortable with these, which are a neutral shade of brown.

  Her mother offers her more Yorkshire pudding. Lesje accepts, which makes her mother smile; a placid, mournful smile. She has braids wound around her head only in old photographs, Lesje can't remember her with them, but she looks as though the braids are still there, shining through the matronly permanent she renews every two months. A rounded face, tidy features. Lesje's father too is round, which makes Lesje's height and stringiness a family mystery. When she was in her teens her mother kept telling her she would fill out when she got older, to console her for the lack of breasts. But she has not filled out.

  Lesje's mother is pleased she's suddenly come to dinner; Lesje hasn't come to dinner that often lately. But she's also puzzled: she throws swift inquiring glances across the table at Lesje while Lesje wolfs her Yorkshire pudding, hoping for explanations, later, in the kitchen. But Lesje can't explain anything. Since she's never told her parents in so many words that she was living with William (though her mother guessed), she can hardly say she's moved out and is now living with someone else. Marriage is an event, a fact, it can be discussed at the dinner table. So is divorce. They create a framework, a beginning, an ending. Without them everything is amorphous, an endless middle ground, stretching like a prairie on either side of each day. Though she's moved herself physically from one place to another Lesje has no clear sense of anything having ended or of anything else having begun.

  She told her mother she'd moved. She also said she hadn't unpacked her own dishes, which is true and was her excuse for inviting herself so suddenly to dinner. But she gave the impression that the move had taken place that very day, whereas in fact it's been three weeks since she hired the U-Haul and bundled her possessions into cardboard boxes. She did it during the day, when William wasn't there, and with no prior announcement. To say she was moving would have demanded an explanation, and she was reluctant to get into that.

  It's amazing how quickly her life with William was expelled from the drawers and torn from the walls and how little space it took up. She carried the boxes to the elevator herself, nothing was very heavy, and packed them into the U-Haul, which wasn't necessary at all, a station wagon would have done. Then she lifted them out and carted them up the rickety steps of the house she'd rented. It's a decaying row house on Beverly Street, not a very good one, but she'd only spent a day looking and she'd taken the first space available that was both cheap enough and big enough for Nate's machines. A developer owned it; he was going to turn it into a townhouse, so he was willing to give her a low rate as long as she didn't demand a lease.

  She felt she had to get out before William apologized. If he'd apologized - as she'd been sure he would sooner or later - she would have been trapped.

  The day after that thing happened - she doesn't know what to call it and has finally decided to think of it as the incident - William left early in the morning. Lesje had spent the night in the bathroom with the door locked, lying curled up on the bathmat covered with towels, but this had been overkill as he hadn't tried to get in.

  It had pleased her slightly to think of him arriving at work unshowered, unshaven; squeaky cleanliness was one of his fetishes. When she heard the apartment door close she ventured out, changed into fresh clothes and went to work herself. She didn't know what to do or think. Was he violent, would he try it again? She resisted the desire to phone Nate and describe the incident. After all it wasn't that bad, she hadn't been hurt, she hadn't really been raped, not technically. Also, if she told Nate she would be putting pressure on him to do something; to move in with her immediately, for instance. She didn't want to do this. She wanted Nate to move in when he was ready, when he wanted to be with her, not because of something William had almost done.

  After work she wandered around for a while, sitting in Murray's with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, walking along Bloor Street and looking at the store windows. In the end she went home, and William was sitting in the living room, pink-cheeked, cheerful, as if nothing at all had happened. He greeted her pleasantly and launched into a discussion of the caloric values produced by the controlled fermentation of liquid effluents.

  This behavior of William's was more frightening than surliness or rage would have been. Had William forgotten all about the incident? Where had it come from, that burst of pure hate? She couldn't ask him, for fear of provoking it again. She stayed up late, reading a book on ichthyosaurs until after William had gone to bed. Then she slept on the living-room rug.

  "More mashed potatoes, Lesje?" her mother says. Lesje nods. She's eating ravenously. This is the first real meal she's had in three weeks. She's been camping out in the almost empty house, sleeping on blankets unrolled on the bedroom floor, eating take-out food, bran muffins, hamburgers, fried chicken. She puts the bones and crusts in a green garbage bag; she has no garbage can yet. She has no stove and no fridge either and she hasn't got around to buying them, partly because she left a month's rent in an envelope for William, which has lowered her bank balance. But also she feels that major domestic appliances like these, even second-hand ones, should be shared by Nate. A stove is a serious commitment.

  Lesje eats apple pie and wonders what Nate is doing. When her father says, "How's the bone business?" she smiles wanly at him. If you discovered a new kind of dinosaur, you could name it after yourself. Aliceosaurus, she used to write, practicing, Anglicizing her name. When she was fourteen this was her ambition, to discover a new kind of dinosaur and name it Aliceosaurus. She made the mistake of telling her father this; he thought it was very funny and teased her about it for months afterwards. She isn't sure what her ambition is now.

  Lesje helps her mother stack the dishes and carry them out to the kitchen. "Is everything all right, Lesje?" her mother says, once they're out of her father's earshot. "You're looking thin."

  "Yes," Lesje says. "I'm tired from moving, that's all."

  Her mother seems satisfied with this. But everything is not all right. Nate comes to her new house in the evenings and they make love on her unrolled blankets, the hard boards jammed against her back. That's fine, but he hasn't yet said when he'll move in. She's beginning to wonder whether he ever will. Why should he? Why should he disarrange his life? He says he has to explain it gradually to the children; otherwise they might become disturbed. Lesje feels that she herself is disturbed already, but she can't tell this to Nate.

  She doesn't seem able to tell it to anyone else either. Certainly not Trish or Marianne. She sits with them in the Museum coffee shop, smoking, tensed, always on the verge of blurting. But she can't. She's aware that from the outside William's behavior, the incident (which could be seen as an ignominious failure), her own flight and unconditional arrangement with Nate, might look naive, gawky, laughable perhaps. Gauche, Marianne would think, though she wouldn't say it; or, a new English expression she's taken to lately: thick. She would give Lesje good counsel, as if she were planning a wardrobe for her. She'd advise bargaining, pressure, ruses, all things Lesje is not good at. You want him to live with you? Try locking him out. Why get a cow when milk's free? Lesje doesn't want to be the object of such amused, momentary concern. It occurs to her that she has no close friends.

  She wonders whether she could talk to her mother, confide in her. She doubts it. Her mother has cultivated serenity; she's had to. Juliet at fifty-five, Lesje thinks, though her mother was never Juliet; she'd been no spring chicken, as the aunts said. No balconies for her father, no elopements; they'd taken the streetcar to the City Hall. Lesje studied Romeo and Juliet in high school; the teacher thought it would appeal to them because it was about teenagers and they were supposed to be teenagers. Lesje hadn't f
elt like a teenager. She wanted to study alluvial plains and marl deposits and vertebrate anatomy, and hadn't paid much attention to the play except to fill its margins with drawings of giant ferns. But how would the Montagues and the Capulets have behaved if Romeo and Juliet had lived? A lot like her relatives, she suspects. Snubs at family gatherings, resentments, subjects that were not discussed, this or that grandmother weeping or raving in a corner. Juliet, like her mother, would have become impenetrable, compact, plump, would have drawn herself together into a sphere.

  Lesje's mother wants Lesje to be happy, and if Lesje isn't happy she wants her to appear to be happy. Lesje's happiness is her mother's justification. Lesje has known this forever and is well practiced at appearing, if not happy, at least stolidly content. Busy, gainfully employed. But standing beside her mother, drying the dishes on the ageless dishtowel that says GLASS in blue down one side, she doesn't feel she has the strength to keep up this particular appearance. She wants instead to cry, and she wants her mother to put her arms around her and console her.

  It's for William she wants to be consoled. The loss of William, familiar William, does hurt after all. Not because of William himself, but because she trusted him simply, uncaring, unthinking. She trusted him like a sidewalk, she trusted him to be what he seemed to be, and she will never be able to do that with anyone again. It isn't the violence but the betrayal of this innocent surface that is so painful; though possibly there was no innocence, possibly she made it up.

  But her mother, encased as she is, would never be able to mourn with Lesje. She'd merely wait until Lesje had stopped crying and wiped her eyes on the dishtowel, and then she would point out all the things Lesje has pointed out to herself already: No real harm done. You're better out of it. It was the only way. Everything turns out for the best.