The Robber Bride (44 page)

Roz busies herself with the layette, because Tony doesn’t like shopping and anyway wouldn’t have a clue what to buy. Neither does Charis. But Roz has had a baby of her own, so she knows everything, even how many towels. She tells Charis how much it all costs so Charis can pay her back, and Charis is surprised at the lowness of the prices. “Honey, I’m the original bargain hunter,” says Roz. “Now, what you need is a Happy Apple. They’re those plastic apples, they dingle in the bath – I swear by them!”

Charis, once so tall and thin, is now tall and bulgy. Tony spends the last two weeks of the pregnancy at Charis’s house. She can afford to, she says, because it’s the summer vacation. She helps Charis with her breathing exercises, timing Charis on her big-numbers wristwatch and squeezing Charis’s hand in her own little hand, so strangely like a squirrel’s paw. Charis can’t quite believe she is actually having a baby; or she can’t quite believe that the baby will soon be outside her. She knows it’s in there, she talks to it constantly. Soon she will be able to hear its own voice, in return.

She promises it that she will never touch it in anger. She will never hit it, not even a casual slap. And she almost never does.

Charis goes to a hospital after all, because Tony and Roz decide it will be better: if there were complications Charis would have to be taken to the mainland in a police launch, which would not be
appropriate. When August is born she has a golden halo, just like Jesus in the Christmas cards. No one else can see it, but Charis can. She holds August in her arms and vows to be the best person she can be, and praises her oval God.

Now that August is in the outside world Charis feels more anchored. Anchored, or tethered. She no longer blows around so much in the wind; all of her attention is on the
now
. She has been pushed back into her own milky flesh, into the heaviness of her breasts, into her own field of gravity. She lies under her apple tree on a blanket spread on the patchy grass, in the humid air, in the sunlight filtering through the leaves, and sings to August. Karen is far away, which is just as well: Karen would not be dependable around small children.

Tony and Roz are the godmothers. Not officially, of course, because there isn’t a church in the world that would do things the way Charis wants. She performs the ceremony herself, with her grandmother’s Bible and a very potent round stone she found on the beach, and a bayberry candle and some spring water from a bottle, and Tony and Roz promise to watch over August and to protect her spirit. Charis is glad she’s able to give August two such hard-headed women as godmothers. They won’t let her be a wimp, they’ll teach her to stand up for herself – not a quality Charis is sure that she herself can provide.

There is a third godmother present, of course – a dark godmother, one who brings negative gifts. The shadow of Zenia falls over the cradle. Charis prays she will be able to cast enough light, from within herself, to wash it away.

August grows bigger, and Charis tends her and rejoices, because August is happy, happier than Charis ever was when she was Karen, and she feels the tears in her own life mending. Though not completely, never completely. At night she takes long baths, with lavender
and rosewater in them, and she visualizes all of her negative emotions flowing out of her body into the bathwater, and when she pulls the plug they swirl down the drain. It’s an operation she feels compelled to repeat frequently. She stays away from men, because men and sex are too difficult for her, they are too snarled up with rage and shame and hatred and loss, with the taste of vomit and the smell of rancid meat, and with the small golden hairs on Billy’s vanished arms, and with hunger.

She is better just by herself, and with August. August’s aura is daffodil yellow, strong and clear. Even by the age of five she has definite opinions. Charis is glad about that; she’s glad August is not a Pisces, like her. August has few electric feelers, few hunches; she can’t even tell when it’s going to rain. Such things are gifts, true, but not without their drawbacks. Charis writes August’s horoscope into one of her notebooks, a mauve one: sign, Leo; gem, the diamond; metal, gold; ruler, the Sun.

In all this time there is no word from Billy. Charis decides to tell August – when she is big enough – that her father died bravely fighting in the Vietnam War. It’s the sort of thing she got told herself, and possibly just as accurate. She doesn’t have a solemn picture of Billy in a uniform, though, for the simple reason that he didn’t have such a thing. The only picture she has of him is a snapshot, taken by one of his buddies. In it he’s holding a beer and wearing a T-shirt and shorts; it was when he was working on the henhouse. He looks hammered, and the top of his head is cut off. She doesn’t consider it suitable for framing.

The ferry pulls into its dock and the gangway goes down, and Charis walks off, breathing in the clear Island air. Dry grass like reed pipes, loam like a cello. Here she is, back at her house, her fragile but steady house, her flimsy house that is still standing, her house with
the lush flowers, her house with the cracked walls, her house with the cool white peaceful bed.

Her
house, not theirs; not Billy’s and Zenia’s, even though this is where it all happened. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to stay here. She has exorcised their fragments, she has burned sweetgrass, she has purified all the rooms, and the birth of August was an exorcism in itself. But she could never get rid of Billy, no matter what she tried, because his story was unfinished; and with Billy came Zenia. The two of them were glued together.

She needs to see Zenia because she needs to know the end. She needs to get rid of her, finally. She won’t tell Tony or Roz about this need, because they would discourage her. Tony would say, keep out of the fire zone. Roz would say, why stick your head in a blender?

But Charis has to see Zenia, and very soon she will, now that she knows where Zenia is. She’ll march right into the Arnold Garden Hotel and go up in the elevator and knock on the door. She’s feeling almost strong enough. And August is grown up now. Whatever the truth turns out to be, about Billy, she’s old enough not to be too hurt by it.

So Charis will confront Zenia and this time she won’t be intimidated, she won’t conciliate, she won’t back down; she will stand her ground and fight back. Zenia, chicken murderer, drinker of innocent blood. Zenia, who sold Billy for thirty pieces of silver. Zenia, aphid of the soul.

From her bookshelf she takes down her grandmother’s Bible and sets it on her oak table. She finds a pin, closes her eyes, waits for the pull downwards.

Kings Two, Nine, Thirty-five
, she reads.
And they went to bury her, but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands
.

It’s Jezebel thrown down from the tower, Jezebel eaten by dogs.
Again
, thinks Charis. Behind her eyes there is a dark shape falling.

R
oz paces her office, to and fro, back and forth, smoking and eating the package of stale cheese straws she stashed in her desk last week and then forgot about, and waiting. Smoking, eating, waiting, the story of her life. Waiting for what? She can’t expect feedback this early. Harriet the Hungarian snoop is good, but surely it will take her days to sniff out Zenia, because Zenia won’t have hidden herself in any obvious place, or so you’d think. Though maybe she’s not hiding. Maybe she’s out in plain sight. There’s Roz, down on all fours looking under the bed, at the fluff balls and the dried-out bug carcasses that always seem to accumulate there despite Roz’s state-of-the-art vacuum cleaner, and all the time Zenia is standing right there in the middle of the room.
What you see is what you get
, she says to Roz.
Only you didn’t see it
. She likes to rub things in.

Over by the window Roz comes to a stop. Her office is a corner office, naturally, and on the top floor. Toronto company presidents are entitled to top-floor corner offices, even small-potatoes presidents like Roz. It’s a status thing: in this city there’s nothing higher on the totem pole than a room with a view, even if the view is mostly
idle cranes and construction scaffolding and the freeway with its beetle-sized cars, and the spaghetti snarl of railroad tracks. But anyone who walks into Roz’s office gets the message at once.
Let’s have a little respect around here! Harrumph, harrumph!
Monarch of all she surveys.

Like shit. Nobody is monarch of anything any more. It’s all out of control.

From here Roz can see the lake, and the future marina they’re building out of termite-riddled landfill, and the Island, where Charis has her tiny falling-apart mouse nest of a house; and, from her other window, the CN Tower – tallest lightning rod in the world – with the SkyDome stadium beside it, nose and eye, carrot and onion, phallus and ovum, pick your own symbolism, and it’s a good thing Roz didn’t invest in that one, rumour has it the backers are losing a shirt or two. If she stands in the angle of the two windows and looks north, there’s the university with its trees, golden at this time of year, and hidden behind it, Tony’s red-brick Gothic folly. Perfect for Tony though, what with the turret. She can hole herself up in there and pretend she’s invulnerable.

Roz wonders what the other two are doing right now. Are they pacing the floor like her, are they nervous? Seen from the air the three of them would form a triangle, with Roz as their apex. They could signal to each other with flashlights, like Nancy Drew the girl detective. Of course there’s always the phone.

Roz reaches for it, dials, sets it down. What can they tell her? They don’t know anything more about Zenia than she does. Less, most likely.

Roz’s hands are damp, and her underarms. Her body smells like rusty nails. Is this a hot flash, or merely the old rage coming back?
She’s just jealous
, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it’s not, it’s the worst, it’s the worst feeling there is – incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and
focused and hard as glass, like the view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness. Which must be why it inspires so much murder: killing is the ultimate control.

Roz thinks of Zenia dead. Her actual body, dead. Dead and melting.

Not very satisfying, because if Zenia were dead she wouldn’t know it. Better to think of her ugly. Roz takes Zenia’s face, pulls down on it as if it’s putty. Some nice jowls, a double chin, a permanent scowl. Blacken a few teeth, like children’s drawings of witches. Better.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful of us all?

Depends
, says the mirror.
Beauty is only skin deep
.

Right you are
, says Roz,
I’ll take some anyway. Now answer my question
.

I think you’re a really terrific person
, says the mirror.
You’re warm and generous. You should have no difficulty at all finding some other man
.

I don’t want some other man
, says Roz, trying not to cry.
I
want Mitch
.

Sorry
, says the mirror.
Can’t be done
.

It always ends like that.

Roz blows her nose and gathers up her jacket and purse, and locks her office door. Boyce is working late, bless his fussy little argyle socks: the light’s on under his door. She wonders whether she should knock and invite him out for a drink, which he wouldn’t find it politic to refuse, and take him to the King Eddie bar and bore the pants off him.

Better not. She’ll go home and bore her kids, instead. She has a vision of herself, running down Bay Street in nothing but her orange bathrobe, tossing big handfuls of money out of a burlap bag. Divesting herself of her assets. Getting rid of all her filthy lucre. After that she could join a cult, or something. Be a monk. A monkess. A monkette. Live on dried beans. Embarrass everybody,
even more than she does now. But would there be electric toothbrushes? To be holy, would you need to get plaque?

The twins are watching TV in the family room, which is decorated in Nouveau Pueblo – sand, sage, ochre, and with a genuine cactus looming by the window, wrinkling like a morel, dying from over-watering. Roz must speak to Maria about that. Whenever Maria sees a plant, she waters it. Or else she dusts it. Roz once caught Maria going over that cactus with the vacuum cleaner, which can’t have done it any good.

“Hi Mom,” says Erin.

“Hi Mom,” says Paula. Neither of them looks at her; they’re channel-changing, snatching the zapper back and forth. “Dumb!” cries Erin. “So-o-o stupid! Look at that geek.”

“Brain snot!” says Paula.
“C’est con, ça!
Hey – my turn!”

“Hi kids,” says Roz. She kicks off her tight shoes and flops down in a chair, a dull purple chair the colour of New Mexican cliff rock just after sunset, or so said the decorator. Roz wouldn’t know. She wishes Boyce were here; he’d mix her a drink. Not even mix: pour. A single malt, straight up, is what she’d like, but all of a sudden she’s too tired to get it for herself. “What’re you watching?” she says to her beautiful children.

“Mom, nobody
watches
TV any more,” says Paula.

“We’re looking for shampoo ads,” says Erin. “We want to get rid of our flaky dandruff.”

Paula pulls her hair over one eye, like a model. “Do you suffer from … flaky crotch dandruff?” she intones in a phoney advertising voice. They both seem to find this riotously funny. But at the same time they’re scanning her, little fluttery sideways glances, checking for crisis.

“Where’s your brother?” Roz says wearily.

“My turn,” says Erin, grabbing the zapper.

“Out,” says Paula. “I think.”

“Planet X,” says Erin.

“Dancing and romancing,” they say together, and giggle.

If only they would settle down, rent a nice movie, something with duets in it, Roz could make popcorn, pour melted butter on it, sit with them in warm family companionship. As in days of yore.
Mary Poppins
was their favourite, once; back in their flannelettenightie days. But now they’ve hit the music channel, and there’s some man in a torn undershirt hopping up and down and wiggling his scrawny hips and sticking out his tongue in what he must assume is a sexual manner, although to Roz he just looks like a mouth-disease illustration, and Roz doesn’t have the stamina for this, even without the sound, so she gets up and goes upstairs in her stocking feet and puts on her bathrobe and her trodden-down landlady slippers, then ambles down to the kitchen, where she finds a half-eaten Nanaimo bar in the refrigerator. She puts it on a plate – she will not revert to savagery, she will use a fork – and adds some individually wrapped Laughing Cow cheese triangles she bought for the kids’ lunches and a couple of Tomek’s Pickles, an Old Polish Recipe, drink the juice for hangovers. No point in asking the kids to join her for dinner. They will say they’ve eaten, whether they have or not. Thus provisioned, Roz wanders the house, from room to room, munching pickles and revising the wall colours in her head. Pioneer blue, she thinks. That’s what I need. Return to my roots. Her weedy and suspect roots, her entangled roots. Inferior to Mitch’s, like so many other intangibles. Mitch had roots on his roots.