The Edible Woman

“And we can’t go to mine,” Duncan said, showing neither surprise nor glee at her implied acceptance.

“I guess we’d have to go to a hotel,” she said, “as married people.”

“They’d never believe it,” he said sadly. “I don’t look married. They’re still asking me in bars whether I’m sixteen yet.”

“Don’t you have a birth certificate?”

“I did once, but I lost it.” He turned his head and kissed her on the nose. “I suppose we could go to the kind of hotel where you don’t have to be married.”

“You mean… you’d want me to pose as a – some kind of prostitute?”

“Well? Why not?”

“No,” she said, a little indignantly. “I couldn’t do that.”

“I probably couldn’t either,” he said in a gloomy voice. “And motels are out, I can’t drive. Well I guess that’s that.” He lit another cigarette. “Oh well, it’s true anyway: doubtless you would be corrupting me. But then again,” he said with mild bitterness, “maybe I’m incorruptible.”

Marian was looking out over the baseball park. The night was clear and crisp, and the stars in the black sky burnt coldly. It had snowed earlier, fine powdery snow, and the park was a white blank space, untracked. Suddenly she wanted to go down and run and jump in it, making footmarks and mazes and irregular paths. But she knew that in a minute she would be walking sedately as ever across it towards the station.

She stood up, brushing the snow from her coat. “Coming any further?” she asked.

Duncan stood up too and put his hands into his pockets. His face was shadowed in places and yellowed by the light from the feeble street lamp. “Nope,” he said. “See you, maybe.” He turned away, his retreating figure blurring almost noiselessly into the blue darkness.

When she had reached the bright pastel oblong of the subway station, Marian took out her change purse and retrieved her engagement ring from among the pennies, nickels and dimes.

23

Marian was resting on her stomach, eyes closed, an ashtray balanced in the hollow of her bare back where Peter had set it. He was lying beside her, having a cigarette and finishing his double scotch. In the living room the hi-fi set was playing cocktail music.

Although she was keeping her forehead purposefully unwrinkled, she was worrying. That morning her body had finally put its foot down on canned rice pudding, after accepting it with scarcely a tremor for weeks. It had been such a comfort knowing she could rely on it: it provided bulk, and as Mrs. Withers the dietician had said, it was fortified. But all at once as she had poured the cream over it her eyes had seen it as a collection of small cocoons. Cocoons with miniature living creatures inside.

Ever since this thing had started she had been trying to pretend there was nothing really wrong with her, it was a superficial ailment, like a rash: it would go away. But now she had to face up to it; she had wondered whether she ought to talk to someone about it. She had already told Duncan, but that was no good; he seemed to find it normal, and what was essentially bothering her was the thought that she might not be normal. This was why she was afraid to tell Peter: he might think she was some kind of freak, or neurotic. Naturally he would have second thoughts about getting married; he might say they should postpone the wedding until she got over it. She would say that, too, if it was him. What she would do after they were married and she couldn’t conceal it from him any longer, she couldn’t imagine. Perhaps they could have separate meals.

She was drinking her coffee and staring at her uneaten rice pudding when Ainsley came in, wearing her dingy green robe. These days she no longer hummed and knitted; instead she had been reading a lot of books, trying, she said, to nip the problem in the bud.

She assembled her ironized yeast, her wheat germ, her orange juice, her special laxative and her enriched cereal on the table before sitting down.

“Ainsley,” Marian said, “do you think I’m normal?”

“Normal isn’t the same as average,” Ainsley said cryptically. “Nobody is normal.” She opened a paperback book and began to read, underlining with a red pencil.

Ainsley wouldn’t have been much help anyway. A couple of months ago she would have said it was something wrong with Marian’s sex life, which would have been ridiculous. Or some traumatic experience in her childhood, like finding a centipede in the salad or like Len and the baby chicken; but as far as Marian knew there wasn’t anything like that in her past. She had never been a picky eater, she had been brought up to eat whatever was on the plate; she hadn’t even balked at such things as olives and asparagus and clams, which people say you have to learn to like. Lately though Ainsley had been talking a lot about Behaviourism. Behaviourists, she said, could cure diseases like alcoholism and homosexuality, if the patients really wanted to be cured, by showing them images associated with their sickness and then giving them a drug that stopped their breathing.

“They say whatever causes the behaviour, it’s the behaviour itself that becomes the problem,” Ainsley had told her. “Of course there are still a few hitches. If the cause is deep-rooted enough, they simply switch their addiction, like from alcohol to dope; or they commit suicide. And what I need is not a cure but a prevention. Even if they can cure him – if he wants to be cured,” she said darkly, “he’ll still blame me for causing it in the first place.”

But Behaviourism, Marian thought, wouldn’t be much use in her case. How could it work on any condition so negative? If she were a glutton it would be different; but they couldn’t very well show her images of non-eating and then stop her breathing.

She had gone over in her mind the other people she might talk to. The office virgins would be intrigued and would want to hear all about it, but she didn’t think they would be able to give her any constructive advice. Besides, if she told one they’d all know and soon everyone they knew would know: you could never tell how it might get back to Peter. Her other friends were elsewhere, in other towns, other cities, other countries, and writing it in a letter would make it too final. The lady down below… that was the bottom of the barrel; she would be like the relatives, she would be dismayed without understanding. They would all think it in bad taste for Marian to have anything wrong with what they would call her natural functions.

She decided to go and see Clara. It was a faint hope – surely Clara wouldn’t be able to offer any concrete suggestions – but at least she would listen. Marian telephoned her to make certain she would be in, and left work early.

She found Clara in the playpen with her second-youngest child. The youngest was asleep in its carrier on the dining-room table, and Arthur was nowhere to be seen.

“I’m so glad you came,” she said, “Joe’s down at the university. I’ll get out in a minute and make the tea. Elaine doesn’t like the playpen,” she explained, “and I’m helping her get used to it.”

“I’ll make the tea,” Marian said; she thought of Clara as a perpetual invalid and connected her with meals carried on trays. “You stay where you are.”

It took her some time to find everything but at last she had the tray arranged, with tea and lemon and some digestive biscuits she had discovered in the laundry basket, and she carried it in and set it on the floor. She handed Clara her cup over the bars.

“Well,” said Clara when Marian had settled herself on the rug, so as to be on the same level, “how’s everything? I bet you’re busy these days, getting ready and all.”

Looking at her sitting in there with the baby chewing on the buttons of her blouse, Marian found herself being envious of Clara for the first time in three years. Whatever was going to happen to Clara had already happened: she had turned into what she was going to be. It wasn’t that she wanted to change places with Clara; she only wanted to know what she was becoming, what direction she was taking, so she could be prepared. It was waking up in the morning one day and finding she had already changed without being aware of it that she dreaded.

“Clara,” she said, “do you think I’m normal?” Clara had known her a long time; her opinion would be worth something.

Clara considered. “Yes, I would say you’re normal,” she said, removing a button from Elaine’s mouth. “I’d say you’re almost abnormally normal, if you know what I mean. Why?”