The Handmaid's Tale(78)

“Guess,” he says.

“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” I say.

“Oh, animal,” he says with mock gravity. “Definitely animal, I’d say.” He brings his hand out from behind his back. He’s holding a handful, it seems, of feathers, mauve and pink. Now he shakes this out. It’s a garment, apparently, and for a woman: there are the cups for the breasts, covered in purple sequins. The sequins are tiny stars. The feathers are around the thigh holes, and along the top. So I wasn’t that wrong about the girdle, after all.

I wonder where he found it. All such clothing was supposed to have been destroyed. I remember seeing that on television, in news clips filmed in one city after another. In New York it was called the Manhattan Cleanup. There were bonfires in Times Square, crowds chanting around them, women throwing their arms up thankfully into the air when they felt the cameras on them, clean-cut stony-faced young men tossing things onto the flames, armfuls of silk and nylon and fake fur, lime-green, red, violet; black satin, gold lamé, glittering silver; bikini underpants, see-through brassieres with pink satin hearts sewn on to cover the nipples. And the manufacturers and importers and salesmen down on their knees, repenting in public, conical paper hats like dunce hats on their heads, SHAME printed on them in red.

But some items must have survived the burning, they couldn’t possibly have got it all. He must have come by this in the same way he came by the magazines, not honestly: it reeks of black market. And it’s not new, it’s been worn before, the cloth under the arms is crumpled and slightly stained, with some other woman’s sweat.

“I had to guess the size,” he says. “I hope it fits.”

“You expect me to put that on?” I say. I know my voice sounds prudish, disapproving. Still there is something attractive in the idea. I’ve never worn anything remotely like this, so glittering and theatrical, and that’s what it must be, an old theatre costume, or something from a vanished nightclub act; the closest I ever came were bathing suits, and a camisole set, peach lace, that Luke bought for me once. Yet there’s an enticement in this thing, it carries with it the childish allure of dressing up. And it would be so flaunting, such a sneer at the Aunts, so sinful, so free. Freedom, like everything else, is relative.

“Well,” I say, not wishing to seem too eager. I want him to feel I’m doing him a favour. Now we may come to it, his deep-down real desire. Does he have a pony whip, hidden behind the door? Will he produce boots, bend himself or me over the desk?

“It’s a disguise,” he says. “You’ll need to paint your face too; I’ve got the stuff for it. You’ll never get in without it.”

“In where?” I ask.

“Tonight I’m taking you out.”

“Out?” It’s an archaic phrase. Surely there is nowhere, any more, where a man can take a woman, out.

“Out of here,” he says.

I know without being told that what he’s proposing is risky, for him but especially for me; but I want to go anyway. I want anything that breaks the monotony, subverts the perceived respectable order of things.

I tell him I don’t want him to watch me while I put this thing on; I’m still shy in front of him, about my body. He says he will turn his back, and does so, and I take off my shoes and stockings and my cotton underpants and slide the feathers on, under the tent of my dress. Then I take off the dress itself and slip the thin sequined straps over my shoulders. There are shoes, too, mauve ones with absurdly high heels. Nothing quite fits; the shoes are a little too big, the waist on the costume is too tight, but it will do.

“There,” I say, and he turns around. I feel stupid; I want to see myself in a mirror.

“Charming,” he says. “Now for the face.”

All he has is a lipstick, old and runny and smelling of artificial grapes, and some eyeliner and mascara. No eye shadow, no blusher. For a moment I think I won’t remember how to do any of this, and my first try with the eyeliner leaves me with a smudged black lid, as if I’ve been in a fight; but I wipe it off with the vegetable-oil hand lotion and try again. I rub some of the lipstick along my cheekbones, blending it in. While I do all this, he holds a large silver-backed hand-mirror for me. I recognize it as Serena Joy’s. He must have borrowed it from her room.

Nothing can be done about my hair.

“Terrific,” he says. By this time he is quite excited; it’s as if we’re dressing for a party.

He goes to the cupboard and gets out a cloak, with a hood. It’s light blue, the colour for Wives. This too must be Serena’s.