The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood Page B

dust I was glad I didn’t have to sit up there in the reverberating hot glare of the room. Though I was only two or three feet lower than the rest of them, I was thinking of the room as “up there.” I myself was underground, I had dug myself a private burrow. I felt smug.
    One male voice, Peter’s I think, said loudly, “Hey, where’s Marian?” and the other one answered, “Oh, probably in the can.” I smiled to myself. It was satisfying to be the only one who knew where I really was.
    The position, however, was becoming more and more of a strain. The muscles in my neck were hurting; I wanted to stretch; I was going to sneeze. I began to wish they would hurry up and realize I had disappeared, so they could search for me. I could no longer recall what good reasons had led me to cram myself under Len’s bed in the first place. It was ridiculous: I would be all covered with fluff when I came out.
    But having taken the step I refused to turn back. There would be no dignity at all in crawling out from under the bedspread, trailing dust, like a weevil coming out of a flour barrel. It would be admitting I had done the wrong thing. There I was, and there I would stay until forcibly removed.
    My resentment at Peter for letting me remain crushed under the bed while he moved up there in the open, in the free air, jabbering away about exposure times, started me thinking about the past four months. All summer we had been moving in a certain direction, though it hadn’t felt like movement: we had deluded ourselves into thinking we were static. Ainsley had warned me that Peter was monopolizing me; she saw no reason why I shouldn’t, as she termed it, “branch out.” This was all very well for her but I couldn’t get over the subjective feeling that more than one at a time was unethical. However it had left me in a sort of vacuum. Peter and I had avoided talking about the future because we knew it didn’t matter: we weren’t really involved. Now, though, something in me had decided we were involved: surely that was the explanation for the powder-room collapse and the flight. I was evading reality. Now, this very moment, I would have to face it. I would have to decide what I wanted to do.
    Someone sat down heavily on the bed, mashing me against the floor. I gave a dusty squawk.
    “What-the-hell!” whoever it was exclaimed, and stood up. “Someone’s under the bed.”
    I could hear them conferring in low tones, and then Peter called, much louder than necessary, “Marian, are you under the bed?”
    “Yes,” I answered in a neutral voice. I had decided to be noncommittal about the whole thing.
    “Well, you’d better come out now,” he said carefully. “I think it’s time for us to go home.”
    They were treating me like a sulking child who has locked itself in a cupboard and has to be coaxed. I was amused, and indignant. I considered saying, “I don’t want to,” but decided that it might be the last straw for Peter, and Len was quite capable of saying, “Aw, let her stay under there all night, Christ
I
don’t mind. That’s the way to handle them. Whatever’s eating her, that’ll cool her off.” So instead I said, “I can’t! I’m stuck!”
    I tried to move: I
was
stuck.
    Up above, they had another policy meeting. “We’re going to lift up the bed,” Peter called, “and then you come out, got that?” I heard them giving orders to each other. It was going to be a major feat of engineering skill. There was a scuffling of shoes as they took their positions and got purchase. Then Peter said “Hike!” and the bed rose into the air, and I scuttled out backwards like a crayfish when its rock has been upset.
    Peter stood me up. Every inch of my dress was furred and tufted with dust. They both started to brush me off, laughing.
    “What the hell were you doing under there?” Peter asked. I could tell by the way they were picking off the larger pieces of dust, slowly and making an effort to concentrate,