The Robber Bride

by Margaret Atwood

  Maybe that's what people mean by a national identity. The hired help in outfits. The backdrops. The props.

  Roz's head office is in a converted brewery, nineteenth-century. Red brick, with factory windows and a carving of a lion's head over the main entrance, for a touch of class. One of her father's cute ideas, to do it over; otherwise it would have been torn down. It was his first really big thing, his first indulgence; when he began playing with his money, finally, instead of just accumulating it.

  She parks in the company lot, Unauthorized Vehicles Will Be Towed, in her own space marked Ms. President with its gold-lettered sign - if you've got it, flaunt it, although Roz constantly has to remind herself that she's not as all-fired important as she might be tempted to think. It's true she occasionally gets recognized in restaurants, especially after she's been in the annual Toronto Life list of Toronto's Fifty Most Influential. But if that kind of recognition is the measure of power, then Mickey Mouse is a million times more powerful than she is, and Mickey Mouse doesn't even exist.

  She checks her front teeth for lipstick in the rear-view mirror - well, these things count - and walks briskly, she hopes it looks briskly, into the reception area. Time to change the wall art in here, she's tired of those stupid coloured squares, it looks like a tablecloth, though the thing cost a mint. A corporate tax write-off, fortunately. Canadian Art.

  "Hi, Nicki," she says to the receptionist. It's important to remember their names. Roz has been known to print the names of new receptionists and secretaries on her wrist, in ballpoint ink, like a high school crib. If she were a man she could get away with a brief nod; but she's not a man, and she knows a whole lot better than to try acting like one.

  Nicki blinks at her and continues talking on the phone, and doesn't smile, the stony-faced bimbette. Nicki won't last long.

  It's complicated, being a woman boss. Women don't look at you and think Boss. They look at you and think Woman, as in Just another one, like me, and where does she get off? None of their sexy little tricks work on you, and none of yours work on them; big blue eyes are no advantage. If you forget their birthdays your name is mud, if you bawl them out they cry, they don't even do it in the washroom the way they would for a man but right out where you can see them, they hang their hard-luck stories on you and expect sympathy, and just try getting a cup of coffee out of them. Lick your own stamps, lady. They'll bring it all right, but it'll be cold and also they'll hate you forever. Who was your servant last year? she used to say to her own mother, once she was old enough to be defiant. Exactly.

  Whereas the very same women would fetch and carry for a man boss, no question. Buy the wife's birthday present, buy the mistress's birthday present, make the coffee, bring his slippers in her mouth, overtime no problem.

  Is Roz being too negative? Could be. But she's had some bad experiences.

  Maybe she handled it wrong. She was dumber then. Threw her weight around, acted normal. Had a few tantrums. I didn't say tomorrow, I said now! Let's see a little professionalism around here! By now she knows that if you're a woman and you hire women, you have to make them into girlfriends, into pals; you have to pretend you're all equal, which is hard when you're twice their age. Or else you have to baby them. You have to mother them, you have to take care of them. Roz has enough people in her life to mother already, and who is there to baby and mother and take care of her? Nobody; which is why she hired Boyce.

  She takes the elevator up, and gets off on the top floor. "Hi, Suzy," she says to the receptionist there. "How's tricks?"

  "Great, Ms. Andrews," says Suzy, giving a dutiful smile. She's been around longer than Nicki.

  Boyce is in his office, which is right beside her own office and has a gold-lettered title: Assistant to Ms. President. Boyce is always in his office when she gets to work. "Hi, Boyce," she says to him.

  "Good morning, Ms. Andrews," says Boyce gravely, rising from behind his desk. Boyce is studiously formal. Every one of his thin chestnut-coloured hairs is in order, his shirt collar is impeccable, his suit is a masterpiece of understatement.

  "Let's run over it," says Roz, and Boyce nods.

  "Coffee?" he says.

  "Boyce, you're an angel," says Roz, and Boyce disappears and comes back with some, it's hot and fresh, he's just made it. Roz has remained standing so she can now experience the pleasure of having Boyce pull out her chair for her, which he proceeds to do. Roz sits down, as gracefully as she can manage, in this skirt - Boyce brings out the lady in her, such as it is - and Boyce says, as he never fails to do, "I must say, Ms. Andrews, you're looking very well this morning, and that's an attractive ensemble you're wearing."

  "Boyce, I love your tie," Roz says, "it's new, isn't it?" and Boyce beams with pleasure. Or rather he glows quietly. Boyce rarely shows his teeth.

  She adores Boyce! Boyce is delicious! She gets such a kick out of him, she could give him such a hug, although she would never dare to do a thing like that. She doesn't think Boyce would stand for it. Boyce is nothing if not reserved.

  Boyce is also twenty-eight, a lawyer by training, smart as a whip, and gay. He dealt with the gayness right up front, at the job interview. "You might as well know immediately," he said to her, "it saves time-wasting speculation. I'm gay as a grig, but I won't embarrass you in public. My straight act is impeccable. A grig, in case you ever wondered, can mean either a short-legged hen or a young eel. I prefer the young eel version, myself."

  "Thanks," said Roz, who found she had not known the least thing about grigs; she'd thought it must be some ethnic slur, like wop. She could see at once that Boyce was a person who would fill in the blanks for her without being asked. "Boyce, you're hired."

  "Cream?" says Boyce now. He always inquires, because he deduces Roz's intermittent diets. He is so courteous!

  "Please," says Roz, and Boyce pours some and then lights her cigarette for her. It's amazing, she thinks, what you have to do to get treated like a woman in this town. No, not like a woman. Like a lady. Like a lady president. Boyce has a sense of style, that's what it is, and also a sense of decorum. He respects hierarchies, he appreciates good china, he colours within the lines. He likes the fact that there's a ladder, with rungs on it, because he wants to go up it. And up is where he's going, if Roz has anything to say about it, because Boyce has real talent, and she's perfectly willing to help him. In return for his loyalty, needless to say.

  As for what Boyce thinks of her, she has no idea. Though she does hope that, please God, he doesn't see her as his mother. Maybe he pictures her as a large, soft-bodied man, in drag. Maybe he hates women, maybe he wants to be one. Who cares, as long as he performs?

  Roz cares, but she can't afford to.

  Boyce closes the office door to show the rest of the world that Roz is occupied. He pours a coffee for himself, buzzes Suzy to ask her to stop all calls, and gives Roz the first thing she wants to see every morning, namely his rundown of how her remaining stocks are doing.

  "What d'you think, Boyce?" says Roz.

  "Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of Death rode the Fortune Five Hundred," says Boyce, who likes both reading and quoting. "Tennyson," he adds, for Roz's benefit.

  "That one I got," says Roz. "So it's bad, eh?"

  "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold," says Boyce. "Yeats."

  "Sell, or hang on?" says Roz.

  "The way down is the way up. Eliot," says Boyce. "How long can you wait?"

  "No problem," says Roz.

  "I would," says Boyce.

  What would Roz do without Boyce? He's becoming indispensable to her. Sometimes she thinks he's a surrogate son; on the other hand, he might be a surrogate daughter. On rare occasions she's even weaselled him into going shopping with her - he has such good taste in clothes - though she suspects him of maybe egging her on, just a little, for his own concealed and sardonic amusement. He was implicated, for instance, in the orange bathrobe.

  "Ms. Andrews, it's time to let loose," was w
hat he said. "Carpe diem."

  "Which means?" said Roz.

  "Seize the day," said Boyce. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Though myself, I'd rather be the gatheree."

  This surprised Roz, because Boyce never gets that explicit inside the office walls. He must have, of course, another life - an evening life, about which she knows nothing. A private life, into which she is sweetly but firmly not invited.

  "What're you doing tonight?" she was so unwise as to ask him once. (Hoping for what? That he would maybe go to a movie with her, or something. She gets lonely, why not admit it? She gets hugely, cavernously lonely, and then she eats. Eats and drinks and smokes, filling up her inner spaces. As best she can.)

  "Some of us are going to see the Clichettes," said Boyce. "You know. They do lip-sync parodies of songs, they dress up like women."

  "Boyce," said Roz, "they are women."

  "Well, you know what I mean," said Boyce.

  Who was some of us? A group of men, probably. Young men, young gay men. She worries about Boyce's health. More specifically, and let's be frank - could he maybe have AIDS? He's young enough to have missed it, to have found out about it in time. She didn't know how to ask, but as usual Boyce divined her need. When she'd commented, once too often, on the flu he'd had trouble shaking last spring, he'd said, "Don't fret so much, Ms. Andrews. Time will not wither me, nor Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome stale. This little piggy can take care of himself." Which is only part of an answer, but it's all the answer she's going to get.

  After the stocks rundown, Roz and Boyce go over this month's batch of beautifully typed pleas, with embossed letterheads and signatures in real ink (Roz always tests them, by licking her finger; it's just as well to know who's cheating, and who on the other hand is truly pretentious). This one wants her to be an honorary patron, a title she hates, because how can you be a patron without being patronizing, and anyway it should be honorary matron, but that would be something else again. This other one wants to soak her a thousand bucks to attend some body-parts fundraising dance. Hearts, Lungs and Livers, Eyes, Ears, and Kidneys, all have their proponents; some, knowing how Torontonians will do anything to disguise themselves, are even going into costume balls. Roz is waiting for the Testicle Society, herself. The Ball Costume Ball. She used to love masquerade parties; maybe it would perk her up some to come as a scrotum. That, or the Ovarian Cysts; for that, she'd make the effort.

  Roz has her own list. She still does Battered Women, she still does Rape Victims, she still does Homeless Moms. How much compassion is enough? She's never known, and you have to draw the line somewhere, but she still does Abandoned Grannies. She no longer attends the formal dinner-dances though. She can hardly go alone, and it's too depressing, rounding up some sort of a date. There would be takers, but what would they want in return? She recalls the dispiriting period after Mitch's departure, when she was suddenly fair game and all those husbands-on-the-make came out of the woodwork, one hand on her thigh, one eye on her bank balance. Quite a few drinks she shouldn't have drunk, quite a few entanglements that did her no good at all, and how to get them out of her bleached-bone-coloured bedroom in the morning without the kids seeing? Thanks a bunch, she thinks, but no thanks.

  "B'nai Brith?" says Boyce. "The Marian Society?"

  "Nothing religious, Boyce," says Roz. "You know the rule." God is complicated enough without being used as a fundraiser.

  At eleven they take a meeting in the boardroom, with a new company, a little something Roz is thinking of investing in. Boyce puts on his businessman look, solemn and dull, conservative as heck, Roz could hug him to bits and she sure hopes his own mother appreciates him. She remembers her very first meeting like this: she'd grown up thinking business was something mysterious, something way beyond her, something her father did behind closed doors. Something only fathers did, that girls were forever too dull-witted to understand. But it was just a bunch of men sitting in a room, frowning and pondering and twiddling their gold-filled pens and trying to fake each other out. She'd sat there watching, trying to keep her mouth from falling open in astonishment. Hey! Is this all there is? Holy Moly, I can do this! And she can, she can do it better. Better than most. Most of the time.

  Canadian businessmen are such wimps, by and large; they think if they keep their money under the pillow the nickels will breed with the dimes and give birth to quarters. All that chest-thumping they did over the free trade thing! We have to be aggressive, they said, and now they're whining and sucking their thumbs and asking for tax breaks. Or else moving their businesses south of the border. Aggressively Canadian, what a contradiction in terms, it is to laugh! Roz herself is a gambler. Not reckless gambling - informed gambling; but gambling nonetheless. Otherwise, where's the fun?

  This group is from Lookmakers: cheap but high-quality cosmetics, and no bunny-torturing, it goes without saying. They started as a house-party outfit, like Tupperware, and then expanded with a special line for actresses and models; but now they're growing like mad and they want a retail outlet, with franchises a possibility. Roz thinks there's something to it. She's done her homework, or rather Boyce has, and in a recession - let's not mince words, depression - women buy more lipsticks. A little prezzie to yourself, a little reward, not that expensive and it cheers you up. Roz knows all about it. She may be rich but she can still think poor, it's an advantage. She likes the name, too, Lookmakers. It's bracing, it implies effort, a striding forth, a rolling up of the sleeves. A taking of risks.

  Lookmakers is two men and two women, thirty-odd, obsequious to break your heart, with a lot of diagrams and photos and samples and graphs. The poor sweeties have worked their tiny behinds off for this meeting, so although Roz has already made up her mind she lets them do their pitch, while she sits back in her chair and makes memo notes in her head about a fresh product line. She's tired of just moving money around the map, she's ready for something more hands-on again. This could be quite exciting! She'll get them to do some different names, move away from the languor, the toxicity and musky heaviness that was all the rage a few years ago. She has a flair.

  "What do you think, Boyce?" she says, after the quartet have bowed and scraped their way out and Boyce has said they'd call them tomorrow. Never make the deal on the same day, is Roz's motto. Let them cool their jets, it gets the price down. "Should we have a flutter?"

  "My eyes, my ancient, glittering eyes, are gay," says Boyce. "Yeats."

  "So are mine," says Roz. "A controlling interest, as usual?" Roz has burned her fingers a few times, she doesn't buy anything now that she can't control.

  "I must say, Ms. Andrews," says Boyce, admiringly, "you have a gourmet's taste for the underbelly."

  "Darn it, Boyce," says Roz, "don't make me sound so bloodthirsty. It's just good business."

  Roz goes back to her office and flips through the pink slips of her phone messages, shuffling them like cards: these for Boyce to answer, these for Suzy, these for herself. She scribbles on them, instructions, comments. She feels good, revved up for innovation.

  Now there's a pause; she just has time for a quick smoke. She sits down in her expensive leather-upholstered chair, behind her expensive desk, sleek, modern, handmade, no longer satisfying. It's time for a change of desk; what she'd like is something antique, with all those cute little hidden drawers. From her desktop the twins, age nine, look out at her from their photo, in their pink birthday-party dresses, mauling a long-gone cat. Then later, in their black semi-formals, at the annual Father-Daughter Dance put on by the school, an odd event considering the widespread shortage of fathers. Roz made Larry go, and coerced Boyce into being the second man. The twins said he was a cool dancer. Next to the four of them, silver-framed, is Larry all by himself, in his graduation gown, so serious. A worry.

  Next to him is Mitch.

  Guilt descends, billowing softly like a huge grey parachute, riderless, the harness empty. Her gold wedding ring weighs heavy as lead on her hand. She should dump this picture of him, grinn
ing at her so jauntily from the art nouveau brass frame, but with that uncertainty in the eyes. Always, but she didn't see it. Not my fault, she tells him. Zenia is still here, in this building, in this room; tiny fragments of her burnt and broken soul infest the old woodwork like termites, gnawing away from within. Roz should have the place fumigated. What are those people called? Exorcists. But she doesn't believe in them.

  On impulse she rummages in her desk drawer, finds the poisonous file, and buzzes next door for Boyce. She's never told him anything about this, never discussed it, and he's only worked for her two years; maybe he doesn't know the story. Though everyone must know it, surely: this is gossip city.

  "Boyce, your honest opinion. What do you think?"

  What she hands him is an eight-by-ten colour glossy of Zenia, a studio portrait, the same one they'd used for Wise Woman World when Zenia was the editor, and also the one Roz herself passed to the private detective when she was going through that humiliating snoop act. A dark dress with texture, plushy, V-necked of course - if you've got it, flaunt it, even if it's styrofoam; the long white throat, the dark electrical hair, the left eyebrow quirked, the mulberry-coloured mouth curved up at the edges in that maddening, secretive smile.

  My own monster, thinks Roz. I thought I could control her. Then she broke loose.

  Boyce assumes, or pretends to assume, that Zenia is someone Roz is considering as a model for Lookmakers. He holds the photo between thumb and forefinger as if it has germs, purses his lips. "The chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, etcetera," he says. "The leather garter-belt brigade, I'd say. Whips and chains, and overdone; I mean, that hair looks like a wig. Definitely not the nineties, Ms. Andrews. Vieux jeu, and don't you think she's a little old for our target market?"