But all of that was pertinent only in the night, and had nothing to do with the man you loved, at least in daylight. With that man you wanted it to work, to work out. Working out was also something you did to keep your body in shape, for the man. If you worked out enough, maybe the man would too. Maybe you would be able to work it out together, as if the two of you were a puzzle that could be solved; otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, would go wandering off on a trajectory of his own, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawal, which you could counteract by exercise. If you didn’t work it out it was because one of you had the wrong attitude. Everything that went on in your life was thought to be due to some positive or negative power emanating from inside your head.
If you don’t like it, change it, we said, to each other and to ourselves. And so we would change the man, for another one. Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.
It’s strange to remember how we used to think, as if everything were available to us, as if there were no contingencies, no boundaries; as if we were free to shape and reshape forever the ever-expanding perimeters of our lives. I was like that too, I did that too. Luke was not the first man for me, and he might not have been the last. If he hadn’t been frozen that way. Stopped dead in time, in mid-air, among the trees back there, in the act of falling.
In former times they would send you a little package, of the belongings: what he had with him when he died. That’s what they would do, in wartime, my mother said. How long were you supposed to mourn and what did they say? Make your life a tribute to the loved one. And he was, the loved. One.
Is, I say. Is, is, only two letters, you stupid shit, can’t you manage to remember it, even a short word like that?
I wipe my sleeve across my face. Once I wouldn’t have done that, for fear of smearing, but now nothing comes off. Whatever expression is there, unseen by me, is real.
You’ll have to forgive me. I’m a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I’ve left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it. Like a White Russian drinking tea in Paris, marooned in the twentieth century, I wander back, try to regain those distant pathways; I become too maudlin, lose myself. Weep. Weeping is what it is, not crying. I sit in this chair and ooze like a sponge.
So. More waiting. Lady in waiting: that’s what they used to call those stores where you could buy maternity clothes. Woman in waiting sounds more like someone in a train station. Waiting is also a place: it is wherever you wait. For me it’s this room. I am a blank, here, between parentheses. Between other people.
The knock comes at my door. Cora, with the tray.
But it isn’t Cora. “I’ve brought it for you,” says Serena Joy.
And then I look up and around, and get out of my chair and come towards her. She’s holding it, a Polaroid print, square and glossy. So they still make them, cameras like that. And there will be family albums, too, with all the children in them; no Handmaids though. From the point of view of future history, this kind, we’ll be invisible. But the children will be in them all right, something for the Wives to look at, downstairs, nibbling at the buffet and waiting for the birth.
“You can only have it for a minute,” Serena Joy says, her voice low and conspiratorial. “I have to return it, before they know it’s missing.”
It must have been a Martha who got it for her. There’s a network of the Marthas, then, with something in it for them. That’s nice to know.
I take it from her, turn it around so I can see it right-side-up. Is this her, is this what she’s like? My treasure.
So tall and changed. Smiling a little now, so soon, and in her white dress as if for an olden-days First Communion .
Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I’m nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water. I have been obliterated for her. I am only a shadow now, far back behind the glib shiny surface of this photograph. A shadow of a shadow, as dead mothers become. You can see it in her eyes: I am not there.
But she exists, in her white dress. She grows and lives. Isn’t that a good thing? A blessing?
Still, I can’t bear it, to have been erased like that. Better she’d brought me nothing.
I sit at the little table, eating creamed corn with a fork. I have a fork and a spoon, but never a knife. When there’s meat they cut it up for me ahead of time, as if I’m lacking manual skills or teeth. I have both, however. That’s why I’m not allowed a knife.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I knock on his door, hear his voice, adjust my face, go in. He’s standing by the fireplace; in his hand he’s got an almost-empty drink. He usually waits till I get here to start on the hard liquor, though I know they have wine with dinner. His face is a little flushed. I try to estimate how many he’s had.
“Greetings,” he says. “How is the fair little one this evening?”
A few, I can tell by the elaborateness of the smile he composes and aims. He’s in the courtly phase.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Up for a little excitement?”
“Pardon?” I say. Behind this act of his I sense embarrassment, an uncertainty about how far he can go with me, and in what direction.
“Tonight I have a little surprise for you,” he says. He laughs; it’s more like a snigger. I notice that everything this evening is little. He wishes to diminish things, myself included. “Something you’ll like.”
“What’s that?” I say. “Chinese chequers?” I can take these liberties; he appears to enjoy them, especially after a couple of drinks. He prefers me frivolous.
“Something better,” he says, attempting to be tantalizing.
“I can hardly wait.”
“Good,” he says. He goes to his desk, fumbles with a drawer. Then he comes towards me, one hand behind his back.
“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.