The house across the street has a single row of clear white lights along the eaves and it’s built close to the ground, cabin-style, with trees on all sides. Behind it, the trees erupt out of Shield rock that is nearly as tall as the apartment building in the distance beyond, the slope steep now covered with a thin layer of snow. The sun sets around 4:30, and the house grows dark enough in the mid-afternoon, that the sensor on the light above the stairs begins to glow in anticipation. (It’s so dark at night, here, that I cannot see my hand in front of my face. I’m grateful for that light, then.)

Reading this week’s story and lecture was a two-afghan event. Now it’s an exercise in balance, whether to open the drapes when there’s a bit of sun or whether to keep them closed to disrupt the heat seeping out. And rugs are no longer elements of comfort that potentially draw out an accent colour in a room; they are the layer beneath your feet that determines how often your toes will cramp against a cold floor. (Since I made Susan shiver with all this, I feel compelled to say that winter is my favourite season, so this isn’t a sorrowful situation for me! Hee hee)

This week I pulled a few short story collections off the shelves, curious to see which of Margaret Atwood’s short stories were included, most curious to see which of her own stories she included in the 1978 edition of The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories –“The Sin Eater” from Bluebeard’s Egg, a story which fits perfectly with the lectures in Payback.

The fourth lecture in Payback is “The Shadow Side”, which is primarily preoccupied by revenge. Of course I thought about elements of Alias Grace and The Robber Bride, but in the lecture Atwood is still talking about Dickens (Scrooge, yes, but more importantly the experiences of Charles Dickens’ father in debtor’s prison) and mythology (promising that the last lecture will be memorable in Pandora-and-her-box style) and religion (as it relates specifically to Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” and how being Jewish and Christian informs his characterisation of Antonio and Shylock, which contradicts much of what my tenth-grade English teacher had to say about all that because—spoiler—Antonio is not such a good guy after all).

She’s also got a slightly different take on “Hamlet” which she describes as a “Revenge Tragedy” but with a Shakespearian twist: “it’s the slowness of the revenge, not its rapidity, that results in the dead-body pyramid at play’s end.” She made me laugh out loud quoting Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty in regard to mob politics. Her wit peppers these lectures, as when she describes the two types of taxation systems: “ones that are resented and ones that are really resented.” Just when I start to think maybe the subject matter is too serious for a cold and dark November evening, she makes me giggle.

The next story in my Dancing Girls reading is “Under Glass” which was originally published in Harper’s. The story opens and closes with the image of a plant raised in cloistered circumstances, forced to thrive in an unfamiliar habitat with particular tending and monitoring. Overall, readers are intended to wonder: how can a woman thrive in a situation which does not promote her growth, without attention paid to her needs and desires.

The story left me feeling a little sad. And with a craving for French fries. Even though they don’t sound very appetising here.

There’s a sense of disruption throughout the story, of things being off-kilter: “The air shimmers with rock music and the smell of exhausted french fries. Though it is winter the room reminds me of a beach, even to the crumpled paper napkins and pop bottles discarded here and there and the slightly gritty texture of the cheeseburgers.”

And not only the woman at the heart of the story is unhappy, but the other women she observes around her, too: “I check the cashier as we go out: cashiers fill me with dismay. I want them to be happy but they never are. This one is waterlogged and baggy, saturated with too much sound and too many french fries. She is apathetic rather than surly. Fight back, I tell her silently.” (In another version of the story, I imagine her slipping a copy of Sister Outsider into the cashier’s purse.)

There’s a sense of despair front and centre. (Unlike, say, in the first story, where the woman could well have felt this way before she moved into the apartment building, or with might happen after the second story ends, and more akin to what happens in the third story, which is one of the stories selected for inclusion in a collection of Canadian short stories by women that I was browsing through this week. If you are curious about this month’s earlier MARM posts, each of these links will bring you up to date.)

And the despair reeks of stagnation: “Sometimes I go into the bathroom and turn the taps on and off, taking drinks of water and sleeping pills, it give me the illusion of action.”

And her silence is overwhelming: “I want to tell him now what no one’s ever taught him, how two people who love each other behave, how they avoid damaging each other, but I’m not sure I know. The love of a good woman. But I don’t feel like a good woman right now.” (If you’ve been watching the third season of “Love is Blind”, I’m sure you have THINGS TO SAY about this passage.)

In the novel Atwood recommended by Jess Walter, The Cold Millions, we’ve slipped back in time, a couple of decades. I’m distressed by the fact that I do not understand the relationship of the preface to the novel proper, because I know that—somewhere along the way—I am likely to develop an attachment to the characters from that early scene and that won’t end well. But, meanwhile, the documentary I’m watching on Kanopy about the Wobblies has such cheerful little songs, that that seems impossible.

And, how about you: how is your MARM coming along in 2022? (This is the fifth iteration of Margaret Atwood Reading Month: here are links to previous participants’ posts, if you’re looking to reminisce or to find some inspiration to join. If you notice that one of your earlier posts is missing, please let me know!)