That is Karen speaking. Karen is back, Karen has control of their body. Karen is angry with her, Karen is desolate, Karen is sick with disgust, Karen wants them to die. She wants to kill their body. Already she has the bread knife in her hand, moving it towards their shared arm. But if she does that, their baby will die too, and Charis refuses to let that happen. She calls all of her strength, all of her inner healing light, her grandmother's fierce blue light, into her hands; she wrestles Karen silently for possession of the knife. When she gets it, she pushes Karen away from her as hard as she can, back down into the shadows. Then she throws the knife out the door.
She waits for Billy to come back. She knows he won't, but she waits anyway. She sits at the kitchen table, willing her body not to move, not moving. She waits all afternoon. Then she goes to bed.
By the next day she's no longer so spaced out. Instead she's frantic. The worst thing is not knowing. Maybe she's misjudged Billy, maybe he hasn't run away with Zenia. Maybe he's in prison, having his throat cut in the showers. Maybe he's dead.
She calls all the numbers scribbled on the wall beside their phone. She asks, she leaves messages. None of his friends has heard anything, or will admit to it. Who else could know where he is, where he might have gone? Him, or Zenia, or both of them together. Who else knows Zenia?
She can think of only one person: West. West was living with Zenia before she turned up on Charis's doorstep with a black eye. Charis views that black eye from a different angle, now. It could have had a valid reason for existing.
West teaches at the university, Zenia told her that. He teaches music or something. She wonders if he calls himself West, or Stewart. She will ask for both. It doesn't take her long to track down his home number.
She dials, and a woman answers. Charis explains that she's looking for Zenia.
"Looking for Zenia?" says the woman. "Now why in hell would anyone want to do that?"
"Who is this?" says Charis.
"Antonia Fremont," says Tony.
"Tony," says Charis. Someone she knows, more or less. She doesn't stop to wonder what Tony is doing answering West's phone. She takes a breath. "Remember when you tried to help me, on the front lawn of McClung Hall? And I didn't need it?"
"Yes," says Tony guardedly.
"Well, this time I do."
"Help with Zenia?" says Tony.
"Sort of," says Charis.
Tony says she'll come.
38
Tony takes the ferry to the Island. She sits at Charis's kitchen table and drinks a cup of mint tea and listens to the whole story, nodding from time to time, with her mouth slightly open. She asks a few questions, but she doubts nothing. When Charis tells her how stupid she has been, Tony says that Charis has not been particularly stupid; no more stupid than Tony was herself. "Zenia is very good at what she does," is how she puts it.
"But I was so sorry for her!" says Charis: Tears roll down her face; she can't seem to stop them. Tony hands her a crumpled Kleenex.
"So was I," she says. "She's an expert at that."
She explains that West couldn't have punched Zenia in the eye, not only because West would never punch anyone in the eye but because at that time West wasn't living with Zenia. He hadn't been living with Zenia for over a year and a half. He had been living with Tony.
"Though I suppose he might have done it just walking along the street," she says. "It would be a definite temptation. I don't know what I'd do if I ran into Zenia again. Soak her with gasoline maybe. Set fire to her."
As for Billy, Tony is of the opinion that Charis shouldn't waste time looking for him; first, because she'll never find him; second, because what if she did? If he's been kidnapped by the Mounties she won't be able to rescue him, he's probably in some cement cubicle in Virginia by now, and if he wants to get in touch with her he will. They do allow letters. If he hasn't been kidnapped, but has been bagged by Zenia instead, he won't want to see Charis anyway. He'll be feeling too guilty.
Tony knows, Tony's been through it: it's as if Billy has been put under a spell. But Zenia won't be content with Billy for long. He's too small a catch, and - Charis will excuse Tony for saying so - he was too easy. Tony has thought a lot about Zenia and has decided that Zenia likes challenges. She likes breaking and entering, she likes taking things that aren't hers. Billy, like West, was just target practice. She probably has a row of men's dicks nailed to her wall, like stuffed animal heads.
"Leave him alone and he'll come home, wagging his tail behind him," says Tony. "If he still has a tail, after Zenia gets through with him."
Charis is astonished at the ease with which Tony expresses hostility. It can't be good for her. But it brings an undeniable comfort.
"What if he doesn't?" says Charis. "What if he doesn't come back?" She is still sniffling. Tony rummages under the sink and finds her a paper towel.
Tony shrugs. "Then he doesn't. There are other things to do."
"But why did she murder my chickens?" says Charis. No matter how she considers this, she just can't get her head around it. The chickens were lovely, they were innocent, they had nothing to do with stealing Billy.
"Because she's Zenia," says Tony. "Don't fret about motives. Attila the Hun didn't have motives. He just had appetites. She killed them. It speaks for itself."
"Maybe it was because her mother was stoned to death by Roumanians, for being a gypsy," says Charis.
"What?" says Tony. "No, she wasn't! She was a White Russian in exile! She died in Paris, of tuberculosis!"
Then Tony begins to laugh. She laughs and laughs.
"What?" says Charis, puzzled. "What is it?"
Tony makes Charis a cup of tea, and tells her to take a rest. She has to look after her health now, says Tony, because she is a mother. She wraps Charis up in a blanket and Charis lies on the living-room sofa. She feels drowsy and cared for, as if things are out of her hands.
Tony goes outside with some plastic garbage bags - Charis knows plastic is bad, but she's found no alternative - and collects up the dead chickens. She sweeps out the chicken house. She fills a pail of water and does the best she can with the blood.
"There's a hose," says Charis sleepily.
"I think I got most of it," says Tony. "What was this bread knife doing in the garden?"
Charis explains about trying to slit her wrists, and Tony doesn't scold her. She simply says that bread knives are not a viable solution, and washes it off and puts it back in the knife rack.
After Charis has had her rest, Tony sits her down at the table again. She has a sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen. "Now, think of everything you need," she says. "Everything practical."
Charis thinks. She needs some white paint, for the nursery; she needs insulation for the house, because after the summer there will be a winter. She needs some loose dresses. But she can't afford any of these things. With Billy and Zenia eating up the groceries, she hasn't been able to save. Maybe she will have to go on welfare.
"Money," she says slowly. She hates to say it. She doesn't want Tony to think she's begging.
"Good. Now, let's think of all the ways you can get some."
With the help of her friend Roz, whom Charis remembers dimly from McClung Hall, Tony finds Charis a lawyer, and the lawyer goes after Uncle Vern. He's alive, though Aunt Viola is not. He's still living in the house with the wall-to-wall and the rec room. Charis doesn't have to go and see him - the lawyer does that for her, and reports to Tony. Charis doesn't have to tell the whole story about Uncle Vern because everything the lawyer needs is there in the wills, her mother's and her grandmother's. What has happened is perfectly clear: Uncle Vern has taken the money he got from selling the farm, Charis's money, and put it into his own business. He claims he tried to find Charis after her twenty-first birthday, but he couldn't. Maybe this is true.
Charis doesn't get as much money as she should have - she doesn't get interest, and Uncle Vern has spent some of the capital, but she gets more than she's ever had before. She al
so gets a creepy note from Uncle Vern, saying he'd love to see her again because she was always like a daughter to him. He must be going senile. She burns the note in the stove.
"I wonder if my life would've been better if I'd had a real father," she says to Tony.
"I had one," says Tony. "It was a mixed blessing."
Roz invests some of Charis's money for her. It won't bring in very much, but it will help. Charis spends part of what's left buying the house - the landlord wants it off his hands, he thinks the city will tear it down any day now, so he's happy to take a low price. After she's bought the house she fixes it up, not totally but enough.
Roz comes over to the Island, because she loves renovating houses, or so she says. She is even larger than Charis remembers her; her voice is louder, and she has a bright lemon-coloured aura that Charis can see without even looking hard.
"Oh, this is terrific," says Roz, "it's just like a doll's house! But sweetie - you need a different table!" The next day, a different table arrives. It's round and oak, just what Charis wants. Charis decides that - despite all appearances - Roz is a sensitive person.
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.
THE ROBBER BRIDE
39
Roz 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.
The Robber Bride Page 33