Life Before Man

by Margaret Atwood

  "Well, if you want to wait three years ..." Elizabeth shrugs. "It's all the same to me, as long as I get the support payments." She says something about postdated checks and Nate nods vaguely. He's caught in a vise, the handle is turning, slowly, inexorably. What will squirt out of him? Turkey juice, nickels and dimes. No matter what he does he's screwed. Opt for a quick adultery case and Lesje will resent being dragged into it. "I didn't break up your marriage, remember?" she's said at least once too often. But wait three years and she'll resent that, too.

  Nate fervently wishes he lived in California, Nevada, anywhere but this tight-assed churchified country. It's all the fault of Quebec. Marriage, which ought to be a sieve, is a lobster trap, baited with flesh. How did he get into it? He can't remember. He scrabbles vainly, groping for a way out.

  Can he, might he, ask Elizabeth whether she's slept with anyone else recently? Anyone, as it were, still alive? How to phrase it? He can't, he doesn't dare.

  Saturday, September 3, 1977

  ELIZABETH

  Elizabeth is sitting with her legs tucked under her, her flowered skirt (new, mauve tones, bought on impulse on a day of malaise) spread around her. She felt this position would create an effect of casual ease. She wishes to appear tranquil, serene, like her favorite stone Buddha in the Oriental collection. It will give her an advantage.

  Not only does she wish to appear serene, she wishes to be serene. Sometimes she thinks she has achieved this; at other times she thinks it may only be immobility. Is the statue a Buddha or a chunk of stone? For instance: she does not appear, for the moment, to be interested in men. She still tries, examining strangers in the subway, picturing various members of the Museum staff in exotic postures, but nothing flickers. She's stopped accepting invitations to dinner: she's no longer willing to be that bored simply to eat. If she wants to devour the ground-up livers of deceased geese, the plucked carcasses of birds, wild or domestic, the pancreases of young cows, she can buy them herself.

  She didn't used to get bored. She used to guess what the next move would be and then try to manipulate it. But now she knows the moves and can't be bothered going through the crude flatteries that will get her what, by popular consent, she is supposed to want. It takes two to tango and nobody waltzes any more. Rather than a parody, knee-squeezing at the Courtyard Cafe, she'd prefer a greaser, someone with no vocabulary at all, a leather shadow, a direct question in a back alley. Yes or no.

  (Like Chris. Yes or no. Yes, she said, and then, after a long time, no. It was the pause that got him. The real reason she doesn't want Chris mentioned in the divorce proceedings has nothing to do with the law, with Nate or even with the children. She doesn't want him involved. To have his name uttered in that ritual way might cause him to materialize in the witness box, pale and accusing or - worse - fragmented, his head watching her with a Cheshire grin, his body still contorted in agony. She's got him safely buried, she wants no resurrection.)

  She would like to sit here undisturbed in this quiet room, nibbling the biscuit that lies so far untouched on her saucer, thinking peaceful thoughts and letting events arrange themselves. Which isn't so easy. Elizabeth knows, from long experience, that events need help. Also her effortless pose is cutting off the circulation in her legs. But she doesn't want to change position, she doesn't want to move. It might suggest to Nate the idea that he too can move, that he is free to get up and walk out at any time. She knows - who better? - that there is always that freedom, that exit. One way or another. Nate, on the contrary, has never discovered it.

  They've begun to talk about money, to discuss the details of her list. Item by item she leads him down the page. She has left this till the end, till she's certain he can see quite clearly that her cards are on the table. Her aces. If he wants a quickie, she'll dictate the terms. If he wants to wait the three years, it will give her time to maneuver, and she can always change her mind about contesting and make him wait five. The main point for him to grasp is that she doesn't care what he decides. In a way she really doesn't. It's not as though she's in any hurry to dash off and marry someone else.

  He's telling her that, as she knows, he doesn't have very much money, hardly any in fact, but that he'll do everything possible. She indicates that his lack of money is no concern of hers. Whether he has a million dollars or ten, the children will continue to eat, wear clothes, go to the dentist, play with toys. They need allowances and lessons. Janet wishes to take dancing, Nancy has been skating for a year and Elizabeth doesn't see why she should give it up.

  "Of course I could support them entirely on my own salary," she says. "Realistically I could do that, though we would have to cut down on certain things." She thinks of saying, We'd have to send the cat to the Humane Society, but decides this would be going too far. For one thing the cat, although promised, has not yet been acquired, and a cat in the bush is no hostage. And if they already had it the children would never forgive her for disposing of it. Nate or no Nate. She'll send him the bill, though, when it has to be fixed. "But I thought we'd agreed that you were going to participate as much as possible. The children need to know that both of their parents love them."

  Nate is angry. "You really think that because I don't have any goddamned money I don't love my kids?" he says. "That's pretty crass."

  "The children will hear you," Elizabeth says softly. "Maybe I'm a crass person. I guess I believe that if you really love someone you're prepared to make certain sacrifices." Sacrifices. This is straight out of the doctrine according to Auntie Muriel. She shifts her legs. She doesn't like to hear herself using Auntie Muriel's phrases, even when she believes in them. Though Auntie Muriel would have left out the word love.

  She realizes the sentence is ambiguous: she could have meant the children or herself. Does she want Nate to love her and make sacrifices for her? Probably she does. It's hard to renounce tribute from those who once willingly paid it; hard not to exact. She lies on a bed, not her own in any real sense then, while Nate strokes his hands over her, shoulders, breasts, belly, the stretch marks from the children, he likes to finger those, any trace of mutilation, thighs, again, again. He's always considerate, he waits for her. Is this what she wants? All she could think of at the time was: Let's get on with it.

  She tries to remember whether she ever loved him and concludes that she did, though in ways that were not sufficient. Nate was a good man and she recognized goodness, though she could not withhold a slight contempt. On their wedding day, what had she felt? Safety, relief: at last she was out of danger. She would become a homemaker, she would make a home. This in itself seemed to her improbable, even at the time. What else had happened, besides the usual erosion, attrition, the death of cells? She'd made the home but she could not quite believe in it, make it solid. And safety was not all she wanted. Slumming, Auntie Muriel said when she'd married Nate, but that was wrong. Slumming was dangerous and Nate was not that. Or not in the usual way.

  She hasn't heard from Auntie Muriel lately; she expects never to hear from her again. This ought to make her feel victorious. Happy and glorious. Auntie Muriel either has to cut her out completely or pretend that last unthinkable scene, hair-breadth escape for her white velour potty hat, never happened. It's quite possible that Elizabeth will receive a call in December, as usual, setting the date of the New Year's visit. She can't imagine going. She also can't imagine not going. She will sit on the slippery pink chesterfield once more, surrounded by polished surfaces, the baby grand piano, the silver tray, Auntie Muriel squatting across from her with her pebble-colored eyes, and the past will yawn around her, a cavern filled with menacing echoes.

  "Exactly what sacrifices do you want me to make?" Nate says, still angry. Meaning: You can't get blood from a stone.

  "Nate," she says, "I know how difficult this is for you. Believe me, it's difficult for me, too. But let's try to be as calm about it as possible. I'm not trying to torture you," she adds. "You have to take that on faith."

  This is more or less true. She i
sn't trying to torture Nate: torture is a by-product. She's merely trying to win. Looking at him, watching him subside back onto his chair, she knows she will win, there's no way she can help winning. She'll win, and she hopes it will make her feel better.

  Saturday, September 3, 1977

  LESJE

  Lesje is in the living room, in the Upper Jurassic, where she runs along the path worn by the iguanodons. She's wearing her Adidas and a navy-blue sweatshirt that says SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL on it in red. This was once William's idea of a good thing to give her for her birthday; it didn't occur to him that the lettering would run across her chest. She hasn't worn it much. She carries her binoculars in their leather case, slung over her shoulder where they thump unpleasantly against her hip.

  There's nothing behind her, nothing in front of her but the muddy path. To either side the undergrowth is unbroken; moisture drips from the fronds, it's hot as a steambath, her flesh simmers. The lake is miles away. She slows to a walk. In the distance ahead, where she knows there will be open spaces, scrub and hot sunlight, she can hear the raucous cries of the circling pterodactyls, intent on carrion.

  There's nowhere else she wants to be, but this time it isn't exploration; she knows the terrain too well. It's merely flight.

  She cuts herself off, gets out of her chair, walks back to the kitchen with her empty cup, tracking sawdust. He should sweep up. She turns on the element under the kettle, adds brown powder to her cup.

  It's Saturday, and for once she's alone. There's a good reason: Nate is over at Elizabeth's house and at last they're discussing the divorce. She's wanted this to happen for a long time, so it's unfair of her to resent being left out of it. Shut out, like a child whose parents have closed the door on important matters, things they consider too adult for her to hear. She'd like to tiptoe, press her ear to the keyhole. She'd like to spy. She wants to hear what is being said about her. If anything.

  But it's none of her business. Now it's started, though, it will continue. Elizabeth has him hooked. She'll demand more and more conferences of this sort, more negotiations. It could go on for years.

  She pours boiling water into her cup, adds white from a jar. She doesn't really want to drink this but she has to do something. To pass the time she begins to classify Elizabeth, a familiar exercise by now. If she had Elizabeth on a shelf, nicely ossified, the label would read: CLASS: Chondrichthyes; ORDER: Selachii; GENUS: Squalidae; SPECIES: Elizabetha. Today she classifies Elizabeth as a shark; on other days it's a huge Jurassic toad, primitive, squat, venomous; on other days a cephalopod, a giant squid, soft and tentacled, with a hidden beak.

  Lesje knows scientific objectivity is a fraud. She's read the stories of plunder and revenge, of evidence stolen from one scientist by another, of the great dinosaur hunters who bribed each other's workmen and attacked each other's reputations. She knows that a passion for science is like any other passion. Nevertheless she wishes scientific objectivity really did exist and that she could have some of it. Then she would be able to apply it to her own life. She would become philosophical and wise, she would be able to cope with Elizabeth in some way more adult, more dignified than this secret game, which is after all little better than juvenile name-calling.

  As it is she can't cope. Neither, it seems, can Nate. Although he indulges in private fits of rage, a relief anyway from the earlier phase in which he refused to criticize Elizabeth at all, when he actually has to confront her, haggle over money or the children's visits, he turns to putty. He justifies this by saying he's doing it for Lesje, he doesn't want to jeopardize the divorce. He's perennially short of money, but Elizabeth gets her support check on the dot each month. He's taken to borrowing small sums from Lesje, five dollars, ten dollars. How can she refuse, how can she refuse him cigarettes and the odd case of beer when he's so obviously going quietly mad? She feels sorry for him. She doesn't want to feel sorry for him. He doesn't want it either. So she says nothing and lends him the money.

  A week ago Lesje raised again the subject of a child, for herself, for them. She was tentative about it; but maybe, before she gets too old, maybe now is the right time?

  Nate was reluctant. He could hardly afford it now, he said.

  "But it was your idea in the first place," Lesje said. She felt as if she'd propositioned him and been rejected. Was she unattractive? Genetically deficient?

  Nate explained that when he said he wanted to have a child with her he'd been expressing a wish, a desire, not making a practical suggestion that was meant to be acted on right away.

  Lesje, who felt she seldom made this distinction, tried to understand it. She supposed he was right. Elizabeth's children were living on Nate's income, what there was of it, and she and Nate were living on hers. She could hardly sabotage this arrangement by having a child. She isn't absolutely positive she wants to have a child, but she resents being denied one by Elizabeth.

  Perhaps, Lesje thinks, she should join a discussion group. She's heard about such groups, she reads about them in the family sections of the papers Nate brings home every night. They meet in church basements and offer bandages to those wounded by the shrapnel of exploding families. Maybe she should go and drink cups of tea with such a group and eat cookies and bitch about Elizabeth. But she knows she can't. She's hopeless in groups, she'd be afraid of what she might say. In any gathering of the disabled she will always be the least disabled, or pretend to be. Also, the groups have names like Second Time Round and are aimed at married couples, and she isn't married.

  She supposes that if she had independence and strength of character this wouldn't bother her, in fact she would welcome it. Many women no longer use their husbands' names, they object to being called "my this" or "my that," and Nate, when he has to introduce her to anyone, which isn't all that often, doesn't use the possessive. He simply uses her name, without even a Miss, and this pleases him. He's glad, he says, that her name isn't Mrs. Schoenhof. God forbid she should in any way resemble his mother or his wife. But instead of making her feel like an entity in her own right, as Nate claims it's supposed to, this makes her feel like a cipher. Though her own conservatism, unsuspected till now, appalls her, she wants to belong, to be seen to belong; she wants to be classifiable, a member of a group. There is already a group of Mrs. Schoenhofs: one is Nate's mother, the other is the mother of his children. Lesje isn't the mother of anyone; officially she is nothing.

  Surely she didn't used to be like this, plugged into this constant inner whine, critical, begrudging. Maybe she's been thinking too much about Elizabeth. If you make that face too much, they said at school, you'll grow up to look like that. If she isn't careful she'll turn into Elizabeth. Sometimes she thinks Nate is an obscure practical joke being played on her by Elizabeth, for an unfathomable reason of her own. So laugh, she tells herself. But she can't.

  It's no good, she should say to him. It's no use. But that isn't true: it is good, it is of use. Some days, some minutes. From time to time.

  The fact is that she's addicted to Nate's version of her. Sometimes, when he touches her, she feels not naked but clothed, in some long unspecified garment that spreads around her like a shimmering cloud. She's realized with something close to panic that the picture he's devised of her is untrue. He expects her to be serene, a refuge; he expects her to be kind. He really thinks she is, underneath, and that if he can dig into her far enough this is what he'll unearth. He ought to be able to tell by now that she isn't like this at all. Nevertheless she wants to be; she wants to be this beautiful phantom, this boneless wraith he's conjured up. Sometimes she really does want it.

  Lesje paces the kitchen floor, which needs washing. Not that it looks any different clean. White lumps in her coffee, the sink is paved with cups and spoons, similarly lumpy. She should take a bath. Instead she puts her cup into the sink with the other cups and goes out, locking the door.

  She walks south on the heated sidewalk, then west along streets of crumbling red insulbrick siding, sagging porches, old houses skewed
and crowded. This place is more and more familiar to her; it's almost the land of the grandmothers. Her small grandmother's house was on this street, or possibly not this street but the one next to it; her round grandmother lived a few blocks further west, nearer the gold-domed church, but in the same kind of house.

  She hasn't thought much about these streets since the year both grandmothers died and she'd ceased to visit. She could remember the grandmothers themselves, what they looked like, certain rooms in their houses, but not the houses themselves. It was as if this district had been neatly snipped from the map. But now she wants to find the houses again, the actual houses. They will be a kind of evidence, since the grandmothers who are the real evidence are gone.

  She stands still. She's in a small street choked with trees, parked cars, with children playing between them and running out onto the pavement. The houses look smaller than she expected; some of them have been painted, bright blue, yellow, the cement between the bricks done carefully in a different color. She doesn't recognize anything; if she wants to find her grandmothers she'll have to look elsewhere. New people are here now, from other countries. They in their turn will make money and shift north. This is not a settled neighborhood, here for eternity as she thought when she was a child, but a way station, a campground. In some distant future archeologists will dig through the rubble and unearth the successive layers. The black people have it now, her grandmother said; talking about her store.

  If her grandmothers had lived, they too might have moved north. In any case they would have discarded their dark dresses, gone on day excursions to Niagara Falls, had their hair permed as her mother had done, bought crimplene pantsuits. Assimilated. As it is they're fixed, mounted specimens in her head, cut from their own wrecked and shadowly backgrounds and pasted here. Anachronisms, the last of their kind.

  A mother's blessing, that's what we had then. That was important. If a young man goes to war he has to get a mother's blessing. I was the first one to work in Eaton's, the rest was all English. They didn't like it. I just didn't say nothing, when they said what kind of a name is that. I kept my mouth shut and I got along good enough that way. What we had back then, we had the flowers on our head, and the dancing. They try to do it now but it's not the same.