The Robber Bride

by Margaret Atwood

  Roz's legs have gone to sleep. Every step she takes sends pins and needles shooting into them. She limps towards the cellar steps, pausing to wince. When she gets up to the kitchen she will open the refrigerator, just to see if there's something in there she might like to eat. She hasn't had a proper dinner, she often doesn't. Nobody to cook for her, nobody to cook for, not that she ever cooked. Nobody to order in for. Food should be shared. Solitary eating can be like solitary drinking - a way of dulling the edge, of filling in the blanks. The blank; the empty man-shaped outline left by Mitch.

  But there won't be anything in the fridge that she wants; or rather, a few things maybe, but she will not stoop so low, she will not eat spoonfuls from the jar of chocolate-rum ice cream sauce, as she has done before, or blitz the can of pate de foie gras she's been saving up for God knows what mythical occasion, along with the bottle of champagne she keeps tucked away at the back. There's a bunch of raw vegetables in there, roughage she bought in a fit of nutritional virtue, but right now they don't appeal. She foresees their fate: they will turn slowly to green and orange goo in the crisper, and then she will buy more.

  Maybe she could call up Charis or Tony, or both of them, invite them over; order up some red-hot chicken wings from the Indian tandoori take-out on Carlton, or some shrimp balls and garlic beans and fried won-ton from her favourite Szechuan place on Spadina, or both: have a sinful little multicultural feast. But Charis will already be back on the Island, and it's dark by now, and she doesn't like the thought of Charis out alone at night, there might be muggers, and Charis is such an obvious target, a long-haired middle-aged woman walking around covered with layers of printed textiles and bumping into things, she might as well have a sign pinned to her, Snatch my purse, and Roz can rarely persuade her to take taxis even if she offers to pay for them herself, because Charis goes on about the waste of gasoline. She will take a bus; or worse, she might decide to walk, through the wilds of Rosedale, past the rows of ersatz Georgian mansions, and get picked up by the police for vagrancy.

  As for Tony, she'll be at home in her turreted fortress, cooking up West's dinner for him, some noodle casserole or other from The Joy of Cooking, the 1967 edition. It's odd how Tony's the only one of them who has actually ended up with a man. Roz can't quite figure it out: tiny Tony, with her baby-bird eyes and her acidulated little smile, and, you'd think, the sex appeal of a fire hydrant, with more or less the same proportions. But love comes in odd boxes, as Roz has had occasion to learn. And maybe West was so badly frightened by Zenia in his youth that he's never dared look at any other woman since.

  Roz thinks wistfully of the dinnertime tableau at Tony's house, then decides she is not exactly envious, because straw-bodied, strange-minded, lantern-jawed West isn't her own idea of what she'd like to have sitting across the table from her. Instead she's glad that Tony has a man, because Tony is her friend and you want your friends to be happy. According to the feminists, the ones in the overalls, in the early years, the only good man was a dead man, or better still none at all; yet Roz continues to wish her friends joy of them, these men who are supposed to be so bad for you. I met someone, a friend tells her, and Roz shrieks with genuine pleasure. Maybe that's because a good man is hard to find, so it's a real occasion when anyone actually finds one. But it's difficult, it's almost impossible, because nobody seems to know any more what "a good man" is. Not even men.

  Or maybe it's because so many of the good men have been eaten, by man-eaters like Zenia. Most women disapprove of man-eaters; not so much because of the activity itself, or the promiscuity involved, but because of the greed. Women don't want all the men eaten up by man-eaters; they want a few left over so they can eat some themselves.

  This is a cynical view, worthy of Tony but not of Roz. Roz must preserve some optimism, because she needs it; it's a psychic vitamin, it keeps her going. "The Other Woman will soon be with us," the feminists used to say. But how long will it take, thinks Roz, and why hasn't it happened yet?

  Meanwhile the Zenias of this world are abroad in the land, plying their trade, cleaning out male pockets, catering to male fantasies. Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur. The Zenias of this world have studied this situation and turned it to their own advantage; they haven't let themselves be moulded into male fantasies, they've done it themselves. They've slipped sideways into dreams; the dreams of women too, because women are fantasies for other women, just as they are for men. But fantasies of a different kind.

  Sometimes Roz gets herself down. It's her own worthiness that does it, the pressure on her to be nice, to be ethical, to behave well; it's the rays of good behaviour, of good nature, of cluck-clucking good-as-gold goody-goodness beaming out from around her head. It's her best intentions. If she is so goldarned worthy, why isn't she having more fun? Sometimes she would like to cast off her muffling Lady Bountiful cloak, stop tiptoeing through the scruples, cut loose, not in minor ways as she does now - a little swearing inside her head, some bad verbiage - but something really big. Some great whopping thoroughly despicable sin.

  Random sex would have done the trick once, but plain garden-variety sex hardly counts any more, it's just a form of mood therapy or calisthenics, she'd have to go in for bloodthirsty kink. Or something else, something devious and archaic and complicated and mean. Seduction followed by slow poisoning. Treachery. Betrayal. Cheating and lies.

  To do that she would need another body, it goes without saying, because the one she has is too clumsy, too lumberingly honest, and the sort of evil she has in mind would require grace. To be truly malevolent she would have to be thinner.

  Mirror, mirror on the wall,

  Who is the evilest of us all?

  Take off a few pounds, cookie, and maybe I can do something for you.

  Or maybe she could go in for superhuman goodness, instead. Hair shirts, stigmata, succouring the poor, a kind of outsized Mother Teresa. Saint Roz, it sounds good, though Saint Rosalind would be classier. A few thorns, one or two body parts on a plate, to show how she'd been martyred: an eye, a hand, a tit, tits were favourites, the ancient Romans seemed to have a thing about cutting off women's breasts, sort of like plastic surgeons. She can see herself in a halo, with her hand languidly on her heart and a wimple, great for sagging chins, and her eyes rolled up in ecstasy. It's the extremes that attract her. Extreme good, extreme evil: the abilities required are similar.

  Either way, she would like to be someone else. But not just anyone. Sometimes - for a day at least, or even for an hour, or if nothing else was available then five minutes would do - sometimes she would like to be Zenia.

  She hobbles up the cellar stairs on prickling feet, one step at a time, holding onto the banister and wondering if this is what it will be like to be ninety, should she get that far. She makes it to the top finally, opens the door. Here is the white kitchen, just as she left it. She feels as if she's been away from it for a long time. Wandering lost in the dark wood with its twisted trees, enchanted.

  The twins are sitting on high stools at the counter, wearing shorts with tights underneath, a fashionable hole in each knee, drinking strawberry smoothies out of tall glasses. Pink moustaches adorn their upper lips. The frozen yogourt container melts near the sink.

  "Gollee, Mom, you look like a car accident!" says Paula. "What's that smeary stuff all over your face?"

  "It's just my face," says Roz. "It's coming off."

  Erin jumps down and runs over to her. "Sit down, sweetie," she says, in a
parody of Roz herself in her mothering mode. "Do you have a temperature? Let us feel your forehead!"

  The two of them propel her across the floor, up onto a stool. They wet the dishtowel and wipe her face - "Ooh, messy messy!" It's obvious to them she's been crying, but of course they don't mention it. Then they try to get her to drink one of their smoothies, laughing and giggling because it's funny to them, their mother as a big baby, themselves as mothers. Wait for it, Roz thinks. Wait till I lose my marbles and start to drool, and you find yourselves doing this for real. It won't be so funny then.

  But what a burden it must be to them, her bereft condition. Why shouldn't they put on clown faces to cover up their distress? It's a trick they've learned from her. It's a trick that works.

  THE TOXIQUE

  50

  Tony is playing the piano but no music comes out. Her feet don't reach the pedals, her hands don't span the keys, but she plays on because if she stops a terrible thing will happen. In the room is a dry burning smell, the smell of the flowers on the chintz curtains. They are large pink roses, they open and close their petals, which are now like flames; already they are spreading to the wallpaper. They aren't the flowers from her own curtains, they've come here from somewhere else, some place Tony can't remember.

  Her mother walks into the darkening room, the heels of her shoes ticking on the floor, wearing her maroon hat with the spotted veil. She sits down on the piano bench beside Tony; her face glimmers, obscured, its features blurring. Her leather hand, cool as mist, brushes Tony's face, and Tony turns and holds onto her, holds on ferociously because she knows what happens next; but out of the front of her dress her mother takes an egg, an egg that smells like seaweed. If Tony can have this egg and keep it safe, the burning in the house will stop, the future can be avoided. But her mother lifts the egg up into the air, teasingly overhead, and Tony isn't tall enough to reach it. "Poor thing, poor thing," says her mother; or is it poor twin? Her voice is like a pigeon cooing, soothing and inexorable and infinitely mournful.

  Somewhere out of sight the flowers have grown out of control and the house is on fire. Unless Tony can stop it, everything that once was will burn. The unseen flames make a fluttering sound, like ruffling feathers. A tall man is standing in the corner. It's West, but why is he wearing those clothes, why is his hair black, why does he have a hat? There's a suitcase beside him on the floor. He picks it up and opens it: it's full of sharpened pencils. Reverof, he says sadly; though what he means is Farewell, because Zenia is there at the door, wound in a silk shawl with a long fringe. In her neck there's a pinkish grey gash, as if her throat's been cut; but as Tony watches, it opens, then closes moistly, and she can see that Zenia has gills.

  But West is going, he's putting his arm around Zenia, he's turning his back. Outside, the taxi is waiting to take them to the snowy hill.

  Tony needs to stop them. She holds out her hand once more and her mother puts the egg into it, but the egg is too hot now because of the fire and Tony drops it. It rolls onto a newspaper and breaks open, and time runs out of it, wet and dark red. There are gunshots, coming from the back of the house, and marching boots, and shouting in a foreign language. Where is her father? Frantically she looks around for him but he is nowhere to be seen, and the soldiers are already here to take her mother away.

  Charis is lying in her white vine-covered bed, arms at her sides, palms open, eyes closed. Behind her eyes she is fully aware. She feels her astral body rise out of her, rise straight up and hang suspended above her like a mask lifted from a face. It too is wearing a white cotton nightgown.

  How tenuously we inhabit our bodies, she thinks. In her body of light - clear, like gelatin - she glides out through the window and across the harbour. Below her is the ferry; she swoops and follows in its wake. Around her she hears the rushing of wings. She looks, expecting seagulls, and is surprised to see a flock of chickens flying through the air.

  She reaches the other shore and floats along over the city. Ahead of her is a large window, the window of a hotel. She fetches up against the glass and beats her arms for a moment, like a moth. Then the window melts like ice and she passes through.

  Zenia is in here, sitting in a chair, wearing a white nightgown just like Charis's, brushing her cloudy hair in front of the mirror. The hair twists like flames, like the branches of dark cypresses licking heavenwards, it crackles with static electricity; blue sparks play from the tips. Zenia sees Charis and motions to her, and Charis goes close and then closer, and she sees the two of them side by side in the mirror. Then Zenia's edges dissolve like a watercolour in the rain and Charis merges into her. She slides her on like a glove, she slips into her like a flesh dress, she looks out through her eyes. What she sees is herself, herself in the mirror, herself with power. Her nightgown ripples in an invisible wind. Beneath her face are the bones, darker and darker through the glass, like an X-ray; now she can see into things, now she can change herself into energy and pass through solid objects. Possibly she's dead. It's hard to remember. Possibly this is rebirth. She spreads the fingers of her new hands, wondering what they will do.

  She drifts to the window and looks out. Down below, among the fiery lights and many lives, there's a slow smouldering; the smell of it permeates the room. Everything burns eventually, even stone can burn. In the room behind her is the depth of outer space, where the atoms are blown like ashes, borne on the restless interstellar winds, the banished souls, atoning....

  There's a knock at the door. She goes to open, because it will be a maid with towels. But it isn't, it's Billy, in striped pyjamas, his body grown older, bloated, his face raw meat. If he touches her she will fall apart like a bundle of rotted leather. It's her new eyes doing this. She rubs and pulls at her face, trying to get out of these eyes, these dark eyes she no longer wants. But Zenia's eyes won't come off; they're stuck to her own eyes like the scales of a fish. Like smoked glass, they darken everything.

  Roz is walking through the forest, through the shattered trunks and spiky undergrowth, wearing a sailor dress that is too big for her. She knows this dress isn't hers, she never had a dress like this. Her feet are bare, and cold too; pain shoots through them, because the ground is covered with snow. There's a track ahead of her: a red footprint, a white footprint, a red footprint. To the side there's a clump of trees. Many people have been that way; they've dropped the things they were carrying, a lamp, a book, a watch, a suitcase fallen open, a leg with a shoe, a shoe with a diamond buckle. Paper money blows here and there, like candy-bar wrappers tossed away. The footprints lead in among the trees but none come out. She knows not to follow them; there's something in there, something frightening she doesn't want to see.

  She's safe though because here is her garden, the delphiniums drooping, black with mildew, forlorn in the snow. There are white chrysanthemums too but they aren't planted, they're in big cylindrical silver vases and she's never seen them before. Nevertheless this is her house. The back window is shattered, the door swings loose but she goes in anyway, she walks through the white kitchen where nothing moves, past the table with three chairs. Dust covers everything. She'll have to clean this up, because her mother is no longer here.

  She climbs up the back stairs, her thawing feet tingling with pins and needles. The upstairs hallway is empty and silent; there is no music. Where are her children? They must be grown up, they must have gone away, they must be living elsewhere. But how can that be, how can she have grown-up children? She's too young for that, she's too small. There's something wrong with time.

  Then she hears the sound of the shower. Mitch must be here, which fills her with joy because he has been away so long. She wants to run inside, to greet him. Through the open bedroom door steam billows.

  But she can't go in, because a man in an overcoat is blocking her way. Orange light pours from his mouth and nostrils. He opens his coat and there is his sacred heart, orange too like a glowing jack-o'-lantern, flickering in the wind that has sprung up suddenly. He holds up his left
hand to stop her. Nun, he says.

  Despite appearances, despite everything, she knows this man is Zenia. From the ceiling it begins to rain.

  51

  It's after dark. There's a fine chilly drizzle, and the storefronts with their lit-up windows and the black streets with their red neon reflections have the slick, wet look that Tony associates with plastic raincoats and greased hair and freshly applied lipstick - a dubious, exciting look. Cars sizzle past, filled with strangers, going somewhere unknown. Tony walks.

  The Toxique is different at night. The lights are dimmer, and squat candles in red glass holders flicker on the tables; the outfits of the waiters and waitresses are subtly more outrageous. There are a few men in suits, having dinner; businessmen, Tony guesses, though with their mistresses rather than their wives. She likes to think that such men might still have mistresses, though probably they don't call them that. Lovers. Main squeezes. Special friends. The Toxique is where you would take a special friend, but maybe not a wife. Though how would Tony know? It's not a world she moves in. There are more men in leather jackets than there are in the daytime. There's a subdued buzz.

  She checks her big-numbers wristwatch: the rock band doesn't come on till eleven, and she hopes she'll be out of there by then. She's had enough noise at home; today she had to listen to a full thirty minutes of aural torture, put together by West and played to her at full volume, with considerable arm-waving and expressions of glee. "I think I've done it," was West's comment. What could she say? "That's good," was what she came out with. It's an all-occasion phrase, and appeared to suffice.

  Tony is the first one here. She's never had dinner at the Toxique before, only lunch. This dinner is last-minute: Roz phoned in a state of breathlessness and said there was something she really needed to tell. At first she suggested that Tony and Charis should come over to her place, but Tony pointed out that such a thing was difficult without a car.