The Robber Bride

by Margaret Atwood

  "Did she really travel to all those countries?" says Roz.

  "How much money do you want to spend?" asks Harriet.

  Knowing about the flimsiness of Zenia's facade is no help to Roz at all. She's stalemated. If she tells Mitch about the lies it will just come across as jealousy.

  It is jealousy. Roz is so jealous she can't think straight. Some nights she cries with rage, others with sorrow. She walks around in a red fog of anger, in a grey mist of self-pity, and she hates herself for both. She calls on her stubbornness, her will to fight, but who exactly is her enemy? She can't fight Mitch, because she wants him back. Maybe if she holds her fire long enough, this will all blow over. Mitch will fizzle out like a barbecue in the rain, he'll come back home as he has before, wanting her to disentangle him from Zenia, wanting to be saved. And Roz will do it, though this time it won't be so easy. He's violated something, some unwritten contract, some form of trust. He's never moved out before. The other women were a game to him but Zenia is serious business.

  There's another way it could play: Zenia would divest herself of Mitch. She would throw him out the window, as he has thrown many. Mitch would get his comeuppance. Roz would get revenge.

  In public Roz maintains her grin, her tooth-filled grin. The muscles of her jaws ache with it. She wishes to preserve her dignity, put up a bold front. But that's not so easy, with her chest ripped open like this and her heart exposed for all to surely see; her heart, which is on fire and dripping blood.

  She can't expect much pity from her friends, the ones who used to tell her to dump Mitch. She sees now what they'd meant: Dump him before he dumps you!

  But she didn't listen. Instead she'd kept on playing the knife-thrower's assistant, in her sparkly costume, with her arms and legs splayed out, standing still and smiling while the knives thudded into the wall, tracing the outline of her body. Flinch and you're dead. It was inevitable that one day, by accident or on purpose, she'd get hit.

  Tony phones her. So does Charis. She hears the concern in their voices: they know something, they've heard. But she puts them off, she holds them at arm's length. One touch of their compassion now would do her in.

  Three months go by. Roz straightens her back and tightens her lips and clenches her jaws so hard she's sure her teeth are being ground to stumps, and tints her hair maroon, and buys a new outfit, an Italian leather suit in an opulent shade of vermilion. She has several unsatisfactory flings with men. She rolls about with them, fitfully, self-consciously, as if her bedroom's wired for sound: she knows she's acting. She hopes the news of her reckless unfaithfulness will get back to Mitch and make him writhe, but any writhing he does is in the privacy of his own home, if the viper's nest he's living in can be called that. Worst case: maybe he's not writhing. Maybe he's delighted at the possibility that some hapless fall guy might take her off his hands.

  Harriet phones: she thinks Roz might like to know that Zenia is seeing another man, in the afternoons, while Mitch is out.

  "What sort of other man?" says Roz. Adrenalin rushes through her brain.

  "Let's just say he wears a black leather jacket and drives a Harley, and has two arrests but no convictions. Lack of witnesses willing to come forward."

  "Arrests for what?" says Roz.

  "Dealing coke," says Harriet.

  Roz asks for a written report, and pops it into an envelope, and addresses it anonymously to Mitch, and waits for the other shoe to drop; and it does drop, because one Monday just before lunchtime Harriet calls her at the office.

  "She's taken a plane," says Harriet. "Three big suitcases."

  "Where to?" says Roz. Her whole body is tingling. "Was Mitch with her?"

  "No," says Harriet. "To London."

  "Maybe he'll join her there later," says Roz. Well, well, she thinks. Bye bye black sheep. Three bags full.

  "I don't think so," says Harriet. "She didn't have that look."

  "What look did she have?" says Roz.

  "The dark glasses look," says Harriet. "The scarf-around-the-neck look. I'd lay money on a black eye, and two to one he tried to throttle her. Or somebody did. I'd say from all appearances she's on the run."

  "He'll go after her," says Roz, who doesn't want to get her hopes up. "He's obsessed."

  But that evening, when she walks into her house, into her living room with its deep pink-and-mauve carpets and its subtle off-green accents, neo-forties revival with postmod undertones, there is Mitch, sitting in his favoured armchair as if he's never been away.

  Sitting in his favoured armchair, at least. But as for away, yes, that's where he's been. Far away. Some cinder of a planet in a distant galaxy. He looks as if he's been drifting around in deep space, where it's cold and empty and there are things with tentacles, and has just barely made it back to Earth. A stunned look, a conked-on-the-head look. Mugged, pushed face first against a brick wall, crammed into a trunk, tossed half-naked onto the stony roadside, and he didn't even see who did it.

  Glee leaps up in Roz, but she stifles it. "Mitch," she says, in her best hen voice. "Honey, what's wrong?"

  "She's gone," says Mitch.

  "Who is?" says Roz, because although she won't demand a pound of flesh, not at this juncture, she does want a little blood, just a drop or two, because she's thirsty.

  "You know who," says Mitch in a choking voice. Is this sorrow or fury? Roz can't tell.

  "I'll get you a drink," she says. She pours one for each of them, then sits down opposite Mitch in the matching armchair, their usual position for conversations like this. Have-it-out conversations. He will explain, she will be hurt; he will pretend to repent, she will pretend to believe him. They face each other, two card sharps, two poker players.

  Roz opens. "Where did she go?" she says, although she knows the answer; but she wants to know if he knows. If he doesn't know it won't be her that tells him. He can hire his own detective.

  "She took her clothes," says Mitch, in a sort of groan. He puts one hand to his head, as if he has a headache. So, he doesn't know.

  What is Roz expected to do? Sympathize with her husband because the woman he loves, loves instead of her, has flown the coop? Console him? Kiss him better? Yes, that's what, all right. She hovers on the edge of doing it - Mitch looks so battered - but she hangs back. Let him wait.

  Mitch looks across at her. She bites her tongue. Finally he says, "There's something else."

  Zenia, it appears, has forged some cheques, on the Woman operating account. She's made off with the entire allowable overdraft. How much? Fifty thousand dollars, give or take; but in cheques under a thousand dollars each. She cashed them through different banks. She knows the system.

  Roz calculates: she can afford it, and the disappearance of Zenia is cheap at the price. "Whose name did she use?" she asks. She knows who the signing officers are. For small cheques like that, it's Zenia herself and any one of three board members.

  "Mine," says Mitch.

  What could be crystal clearer? Zenia is a cold and treacherous bitch. She never loved Mitch. All she wanted was the pleasure of winning, of taking him away from Roz. Also the money. This is obvious to Roz, but not, apparently, to Mitch. "She's in some kind of trouble," he says. "I ought to find her." He must be thinking about the coke dealer.

  Roz loses it. "Oh, spare me," she says.

  "I'm not asking you to do anything," Mitch says, as if Roz would be too mean-spirited to lend a helping hand. "I know where that envelope came from."

  "You're not actually going after her," says Roz. "I mean, haven't you got the message? She's wiped her spikes on you. She's made a fool of you. She's lied and cheated and stolen, and she's written you off. Believe me, there's no place in her life for a used dupe."

  Mitch shoots her a glance of intense dislike. This is far too much truth for him. He's not used to getting dumped, to being betrayed, because it's never happened to him before. Maybe, thinks Roz, I should give lessons.

  "You don't understand," he says. But Roz does understand. What she
understands is that no matter what went on before this, there was never anyone more important to Mitch than she was, and now there is.

  Harriet calls: Mitch has taken the Wednesday-night plane to London.

  Roz's heart hardens. It ceases to burn and drip. The rent in her chest closes over it. She can feel an invisible hand there, tight as a bandage, holding her body shut. That's it, she thinks. That finally tears it. She buys five murder novels and takes a week off, and goes to Florida, and lies in the sun crying.

  48

  Mitch comes back. He comes back from the hunt. He comes back in the middle of February, having phoned first; having booked himself a time slot, like any client or petitioner. He turns up on Roz's doorstep in his sheepskin coat, looking like an empty sack. In his hand he holds a plaintive bouquet of flowers.

  For that, Roz would like to kick him - does he think she's such a cheap date? - but she's shocked by his appearance. He's rumpled like a park-bench drunk, his skin is grey from travel, dark hollows ring his eyes. He's lost weight, his flesh is loose, his face is starting to cave in, like some old guy without his false teeth, like the kids' Hallowe'en pumpkins a few days after the holiday is over and the candles inside have burned out. That softening, that subsiding inwards towards a damp central emptiness.

  Roz feels she should stand in the doorway, a barrier between the cold outside air he brings with him and her own warm house, blocking him, keeping him out. The children need to be protected from this leftover, this sagging echo, this shadowy copy of their real father, with his sinkhole eyes and his smile like crumpled paper. But she owes him a hearing, at least. Wordlessly she takes the flowers - roses, red, a mockery, because she does not delude herself, passion is not what he feels. Not, at least, for her. She lets him in.

  "I want to come back," he tells her, gazing around the high, wide living room, the spacious domain that Roz has made, that was once his to share. Not Will you let me come back? Not I want you back. Nothing to do with Roz, no mention of her at all. It's the room he's claiming, the territory. He is deeply mistaken. He thinks he has rights.

  "You didn't find her, did you?" says Roz. She hands him the drink she's poured for him, as in days of yore: a single-malt scotch, no ice. That's what he used to like, long long ago; that's what she's been drinking these days, and more of it than she should. The gesture of handing the glass to him softens her, because it's their old habit. Nostalgia for him seizes her by the throat. She fights against choking. He has a new tie on, an unfamiliar one, with grisly pastel tulips. The fingerprints of Zenia are all over it, like unseen scorch marks.

  "No," says Mitch. He won't look at her.

  "And if you had," says Roz, hardening herself again, lighting her own cigarette - she won't ask him to do it, they are way beyond such whimsical courtship gestures, not that he's leaping forward with arm outstretched - "what would you have done? Beat the shit out of her, or sicked the lawyers onto her, or given her a big sloppy kiss?"

  Mitch looks in her direction. He can't meet her eyes. It's as if she's semi-invisible, a kind of hovering blur. "I don't know," he says.

  "Well, at least that's honest," says Roz. "I'm glad you aren't lying to me." She's trying to keep her voice soft, to avoid the bitter cutting edge. He isn't lying to her, he isn't doing anything to her. There is no her, as far as he's concerned; she might as well not be here. Whatever he's doing is to himself. She has never felt so non-existent in her life. "So, what do you want?" She may as well ask, she may as well find out what's being demanded of her.

  But he shakes his head: he doesn't know that, either. He isn't even drinking from the glass she's poured. It's as if he can't take anything from her. Which means there's nothing she can give him. "Maybe when you figure it out," she says, "you could let me in on it."

  Now he does finally look at her. God knows who he sees. Some avenging angel, some giantess with a bared arm and a sword - it can't be Roz, tender and feathery Roz, not the way he's staring at her. His eyes are frightening because they're frightened. He's scared shitless, of her or of someone or something, and she can't bear the sight. Whatever else has been going on, all those years he played In and Out the Bimbos and she raged at him and wept, she's always depended on him not to lose his nerve. But now there's a crack in him, like a crack in glass; a little heat and he'll shatter. But why should it be Roz's job to sweep up?

  "Just let me stay here," he says. "Let me stay in the house. I could sleep downstairs, in the family room. I won't bother you."

  He's begging, but Roz hears this only in retrospect. At the moment she finds the idea intolerable: Mitch on the floor, in a sleeping bag, like the twins' friends at group sleepovers, demoted to transience, demoted to adolescence. Locked out of her bedroom, or worse, not wishing to go into it. That's it - he's rejecting her, he's rejecting her big, eager, clumsy, ardent, and solid body; it's no longer good enough for him, not even as a feather bed, not even as a fallback. He must find her repellent.

  But she does have some pride left, though God knows how she's managed to hang onto it, and if she's going to let him come back it has to be on full terms. "You can't treat me like a rest stop," she says. "Not any more."

  Because that's exactly what he'd do, he'd move in, she'd dish out the nourishing lunches, feed him, build him up again, and he'd get his strength back and be off, off in his longboat, off in his galleon, scouring the seven seas for the Holy Grail, for Helen of Troy, for Zenia, peering through the spyglass, on the watch for her pirate flag. Roz can see it in his eyes, which are focused on the horizon, not on her. Even if he came back, into her bedroom, in between her raspberry-coloured sheets, into her body, it wouldn't be her underneath him, on top of him, around him, not ever again. Zenia has stolen something from him, the one thing he always kept safe before, from all women, even from Roz. Call it his soul. She slipped it out of his breast pocket when he wasn't looking, easy as rolling a drunk, and looked at it, and bit it to see if it was genuine, and sneered at it for being so small after all, and then tossed it away, because she's the kind of woman who wants what she doesn't have and gets what she wants and then despises what she gets.

  What is her secret? How does she do it? Where does it come from, her undeniable power over men? How does she latch hold of them, break their stride, trip them up, and then so easily turn them inside out? It must be something very simple and obvious. She tells them they're unique, then reveals to them that they're not. She opens her cloak with the secret pockets and shows them how the magic trick is worked, and that it is after all nothing more than a trick. Only by that time they refuse to see; they think the Water of Youth is real, even though she empties the bottle and fills it again from the tap, right before their very eyes. They want to believe.

  "It won't work," Roz tells Mitch. She isn't being vindictive. It's the simple truth.

  He must know it, because he doesn't plead. He subsides into his crumpled clothing; his neck gets shorter, as though there's a steady but inexorable weight pushing slowly down on the top of his head. "I guess not," he says.

  "Didn't you keep the apartment?" says Roz. "Isn't that where you're living?"

  "I couldn't stay there," says Mitch. His voice is reproachful, as if it's crass of her, cruel of her even to suggest such a thing. Doesn't she realize how much it would hurt him to be in a place he once shared with the fled beloved, a place where he would be reminded of the dear departed at every turn, a place where he was so happy?

  Roz knows. She herself lives in such a place. But he obviously hasn't thought of that. Those in pain have no time for the pain they cause.

  Roz sees him out, into the front hall, into the overcoat, which almost does her in because it's her overcoat too, she helped him buy it, she shared the life he led in it, that good-taste leather, that sheepskin, one-time container of such a rascally wolf. No longer, no more; he's toothless now. Poor lamb, thinks Roz, and clenches her fists tight because she won't let herself be fooled like that again.

  He takes himself off, off into the free
zing February dusk, off into the unknown. Roz watches him walk towards his parked car, lurching a little although he didn't touch his drink. The sidewalks are icy. Or maybe he's on something, some kind of pill, a tranquillizer. Most likely he shouldn't be driving, though it's no longer any of her business to stop him. She tells herself it's not necessary to have qualms about him. He can stay at a hotel. It's not as if he doesn't have any money.

  She leaves his red roses on the sideboard, still wrapped in their floral paper. Let them wilt. Dolores can find them tomorrow, and reproach Roz in her heart for carelessness, rich people don't know what things cost, and throw them out. She pours herself another scotch and lights another cigarette, then gets down her old photo albums, those pictures she took so endlessly at backyard birthday parties, at graduations, on vacations, winters in the snow, summers on the boat, to prove to herself they were all indeed a family, and sits in the kitchen going through them. Pictures of Mitch, in non-living colour: Mitch and Roz at their wedding, Mitch and Roz and Larry, Mitch and Roz and Larry and the twins. She searches his face for some clue, some foreshadowing of the catastrophe that has befallen them. She finds none.

  Some women in her place take their nail scissors and snip out the heads of the men in question, leaving only their bodies. Some snip out the bodies too. But Roz will not do this, because of the children. She doesn't want them to come across a picture of their headless father, she doesn't want to alarm them, any more than she already has. And it wouldn't work anyway, because Mitch would still be there in the pictures, an outline, a blank shape, taking up the same amount of room, just as he does beside her in her bed. She never sleeps in the middle of that bed, she still sleeps off to one side. She can't bring herself to occupy the whole space.