The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood Read Free Book Online

I’m certainly going to.”
    It seemed to me that the discussion had got off the track: we were talking theory about a practical matter. I tried a personal attack: “Ainsley, you don’t know anything at all about babies. You don’t even like them much, I’ve heard you say they’re too dirty and noisy.”
    “Not liking other people’s babies,” said Ainsley, “isn’t the same as not liking your own.”
    I couldn’t deny this. I was baffled: I didn’t even know how to justify my own opposition to her plan. The worst of it was that she would probably do it. She can go about getting what she wants with a great deal of efficiency, though in my opinion some of the thingsshe wants – and this was a case in point – are unreasonable. I decided to take a down-to-earth approach.
    “All right,” I said. “Granted. But why do you want a baby, Ainsley? What are you going to
do
with it?”
    She gave me a disgusted look. “Every woman should have at least one baby.” She sounded like a voice on the radio saying that every woman should have at least one electric hair dryer. “It’s even more important than sex. It fulfills your deepest femininity.” Ainsley is fond of paperback books by anthropologists about primitive cultures: there are several of them bogged down among the clothes on her floor. At her college they make you take courses in it.
    “But why now?” I said, searching my mind for objections. “What about the job at the art gallery? And meeting the artists?” I held them out to her like a carrot to a donkey.
    Ainsley widened her eyes at me. “What has having a baby got to do with getting a job at an art gallery? You’re always thinking in terms of either/or. The thing is
wholeness
. As for why now, well, I’ve been considering this for some time. Don’t you feel you need a sense of purpose? And wouldn’t you rather have your children while you’re young? While you can enjoy them. Besides, they’ve proved they’re likely to be healthier if you have them between twenty and thirty.”
    “And you’re going to keep it,” I said. I looked around the living room, calculating already how much time, energy and money it would take to pack and move the furniture. I had contributed most of the solider items: the heavy round coffee table donated from a relative’s attic back home, the walnut drop-leaf we used for company, also a donation, the stuffed easy chair and the chesterfield I had picked up at the Salvation Army and re-covered. The outsize poster of Theda Bara and the bright paper flowers were Ainsley’s; so were the ashtrays and the inflatable plastic cushions with geometric designs. Peter said our living-room lacked unity. I had never thought of it as a permanent arrangement, but now it was threatened it took on a desirable stabilityfor me. The tables planted their legs more firmly on the floor; it was inconceivable that the round coffee table could ever be manipulated down those narrow stairs, that the poster of Theda Bara could be rolled up, revealing the crack in the plaster, that the plastic cushions could allow themselves to be deflated and stowed away in a trunk. I wondered whether the lady down below would consider Ainsley’s pregnancy a breach of contract and take legal action.
    Ainsley was getting sulky. “Of course I’m going to keep it. What’s the good of going through all that trouble if you don’t keep it?”
    “So what it boils down to,” I said, finishing my water, “is that you’ve decided to have an illegitimate child in cold blood and bring it up yourself.”
    “Oh, it’s such a bore to
explain
. Why use that horrible bourgeois word? Birth is legitimate, isn’t it? You’re a prude, Marian, and that’s what’s wrong with this whole society.”
    “Okay, I’m a prude,” I said, secretly hurt: I thought I was being more understanding than most. “But since the society is the way it is, aren’t you being selfish? Won’t the child suffer? How are you going to