Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood

Author:Margaret Atwood
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781551995526
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2009-03-31T10:00:00+00:00

On the last Saturday in February, Nell took the Greyhound bus up to Stiles. It was already the afternoon: Tig and Oona had decided that Nell shouldn’t try to spend the entire weekend, not the first time, because it might be too much of a strain for the children. She waited in the station for Tig to pick her up, knitting away at her bedspread. She had only two more rows of squares to go; she’d already attached the finished rows together, using a crochet hook, and the red and purple and blue checkerboard effect had come out just the way she’d pictured it.

Tig was late, but this was nothing new. He was usually late collecting her. He had other errands to do in Stiles. He needed to get gas, go to the hardware store, buy groceries. Once she’d recognized that, she was fine about the lateness, more or less.

They drove to the farm in the rusted-out Chevy. The boys were sliding around on the frozen pond. They didn’t have skates on, but they had hockey sticks; they were shooting pucks. They waved their mittened hands as the car skewed its way up the drive.

This time there was no embrace, no throwing off of garments, no hurried plunge under Tig’s duvet. Instead, once they were inside the door there was an awkward pause.

“They’ll be happy out there for a while,” said Tig.

“Maybe we should make some cocoa,” said Nell. That was what you did with children: you made them cocoa. “And popcorn,” she added. Those were the foods that had been served up for her when she was a child, on cold winter afternoons such as this one: comforting foods, rich and sweet and warm.

“That’s a good idea,” said Tig. He smiled at her, pleased that she was making an effort.

Luckily there was some cocoa, and also some popping corn. Nell busied herself mixing up the cocoa powder and the sugar. She measured the milk into a saucepan, then she turned on the stove and began jiggling the corn kernels in an iron pot. Den mother, she thought. Camp counsellor. Sunday-school teacher on an outing. Those were her choices, her disguises: prissy ones, all of them, reeking of blue cotton blouses with badges on their sleeves. How would she greet the boys? “Hello there, I’m your dad’s mistress.” But mistress as a word had gone out the window along with adultery. You couldn’t have the one without the other.

The boys came in through the shed; she could hear them laughing, stamping the snow off their feet. Then they were in the main room. They looked at her shyly, with what might also have been distrust or apprehension: much the same way – Nell supposed – that she was looking at them. Then they shook her hand, each one in turn. Despite the thorniness and leechiness of the marriage that had been their habitat until now, they had been what used to be known as well brought up. They were taller than she remembered them, and older, but of course they would be.

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