The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
Those things don't burn when they cremate you either; that's the rumour going around, about artificial boobs. They just melt. The rest of you turns to ashes, but your tits to marshmallow goo; they have to scrape them off the bottom of the furnace. Maybe that's why they didn't scatter the ashes at Zenia's memorial service. Maybe they couldn't. Maybe that's what was in that sealed tin can. Melted tits.
Roz butters her two pieces of toast and spreads honey on them, and eats them with slow relish, licking her fingers. If Zenia were alive there's no doubt that she'd be dieting; you don't get a waist like Zenia's without hard work. So by now she'd have chicken neck. Or else she'd be going for surgery, more of it. She'd get a nip here, a tuck there; a lid-lift, puffed-up lips. That isn't for Roz, she can't stand the thought of someone, some strange man, bending over her with a knife while she's lying in bed conked out cold. She's read too many thrillers for that, too many sex-murder thrillers. He could be a depraved nut in a stolen doctor suit. It happens. Or what if they make a mistake and you wake up covered in bandages and then spend six weeks looking like a road-kill raccoon, only to emerge as some bit player from a botched-up horror movie? No, she'd rather just age quietly. Like good red wine.
She makes herself another piece of toast, with strawberry-and-rhubarb jam this time. Why punish the flesh? Why stint the body? Why incur its resentments, its obscure revenges, its headaches and hunger pains and growls of protest? She eats the toast, jam dripping; then, after glancing behind to make sure nobody is watching her - though who would be? - she licks the plate. Now she feels better. It's time for her cigarette, her morning reward. Reward for what? Don't ask.
The twins cascade down the stairs, wearing, more or less, their school uniforms, those outfits Roz has never fully understood, the kilts and ties that are supposed to turn them into Scottish men. Leaving your shirt untucked until the dire last minute is the current thing, she gathers. They kiss her on the cheek, big sloppy exaggerated kisses, and gallop out the back door, and their two shining heads go past the kitchen window.
Possibly they are trampling on the flower border Charis insisted on planting there last year, a deed of love so Roz can't lay a finger on it, even though it resembles a moth-eaten patchwork quilt and her regular gardener, an elegant Japanese minimalist, considers it an affront to his professional standing. But maybe the twins will mash it beyond repair, cross your fingers. She looks at her watch: they're running late, but not very late. They take after her: she has always had a flexible sense of time.
Roz drains her coffee and butts out her cigarette, and goes up the stairs in her turn, and along the hall to have her shower. On the way she can't resist peeking into the twins' rooms, though she knows they're off limits. Erin's room looks like a clothing explosion, Paula has left her lights on again. They make such a fuss about the environment, they bawl her out because of her poisonous cleaning products, they make her buy recycled stationery, but still they can't seem to turn off their darn lights.
She flicks off the light switch, knowing she's given herself away (Mom! Who's been in my room? I can go in your room, sweetie, I'm your mother! You don't respect my privacy, and Mom, don't be such a conehead, don't call me sweetie! I'm entitled! So who pays the light bills around here? and so forth), and continues on down the hall.
Larry's room is at the very end, past her own room. Maybe she should wake him up. On the other hand, if he wanted her to he'd have left a note. Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes he expects her to read his mind. Well, why wouldn't he expect that? She used to be able to. Not any more. With the twins, she'd know if something was wrong, though she wouldn't necessarily know what. But not with Larry. Larry has become opaque to her. How are things going? she'll say, and he'll say Fine, and it could mean anything. She doesn't even know what things are, any more, those things that are supposed to be going so fine.
He was a dogged kid. Through all the uproar with Mitch, when the twins were acting out, snitching from the supermarket, skipping school, he plodded faithfully on. He tended Roz, in a dutiful sort of way. He took out the garbage, he washed the car, her car, on Saturdays, like a middle-aged man. You don't need to do that, she'd tell him. Ever heard of car washes? I like to, he said, it relaxes me.
He got his driver's licence, he got his high school diploma, he got his university degree. He got a worried little furrow between his eyes. He did what he thought was expected of him, and brought the official pieces of paper home to her like a cat bringing dead mice. Now it's as if he's given up because he doesn't know what else to bring; he's run out of ideas. He says he's deciding what to do next, but she sees no signs of any decision being made. He stays out at night and she doesn't know where he goes. If it was the twins she'd ask, and they'd say she should mind her own business. With him, she doesn't even ask. She's afraid to, because he might tell her. He's never been a very good liar. An earnest kid, maybe too earnest. There's a joylessness in him that bothers her. She's sorry he's given up that drum set he used to practise on, down in the cellar, although it drove her crazy at the time. At least then he had something to hit.
He sleeps in late. He doesn't ask her for money; he doesn't need to, because of what's been left him, what's his own. He could afford to leave home, get an apartment somewhere, but he's not making a move. He shows so little initiative; when she was his age she could hardly wait to shake the ancestral dust off her sandals. Not that she managed it all that well.
Maybe he's on dope, she thinks. She sees no signs of that either, but what does she know? When she was growing up, dope was some guy you thought was stupid. She did find a packet once, a little plastic envelope with what looked like baking powder in it, and she decided not to know what it was, because what could she do? You don't tell your twenty-two-year-old son that you just happened to be going through his pants pockets. Not any more.
He has an alarm clock. But on the other hand, he turns it off in his sleep, the way Mitch used to. Maybe she should just tiptoe in, take a quick look at the alarm clock, and see what time it's set for. Then she'll know whether or not he's turned it off, and her way will be clear.
She eases open his door. There's a trail of clothes leading from it to the bed, like a shed cocoon, just left there: hand-tooled cowboy boots, socks, fawn suede jacket, jeans, black T-shirt. Her hands itch, but it's no longer her job to pick up their floors, and she's told Maria not to do it either. If it's in your laundry hamper it gets washed, she's told all of them. Otherwise not.
The room is a boy's room, still. Not a man's. The bookshelves filled with school textbooks; two pictures of eighteenth-century sailing ships, chosen by Mitch; their first boat, the Rosalind, with the three of them on it, her and Mitch and Larry when he was six, before the twins were born; the hockey team trophy from Grade Eleven; a picture of a fish he drew when he was nine, and that Mitch liked especially. Or praised, at least. Larry got more of Mitch than the twins did, because he was the first maybe, and a boy, and because there was only one of him. But Mitch was never fully at ease with him, or with any of them. He always had one foot out the door. He had a father act: too bluff, too hearty, too conscious of the time. He made jokes that were way over Larry's head, and Larry would gaze at him with his puzzled, suspicious child's eyes, and see right through him. Kids do.
Still, it's been hard on Larry. There's something missing. Dejection enters Roz, a familiar sense of failure. The one she's failed most is Larry. If she'd only been - what? - prettier, smarter, sexier even, better somehow; or else worse, more calculating, more unscrupulous, a guerrilla fighter - Mitch might still be here. Roz wonders how long it will take her kids to forgive her, once they've figured out exactly how much they need to forgive her for.
Larry is asleep in his bed, his single bed, one arm thrown over his eyes. His hair is feathery on the pillow, hair lighter than the twins', straighter, more like Mitch's hair. He's growing it longer, with a thin rat-tail braid at the back. It looks like heck, in her opinion, but not a word has she said.
Roz stands stock-stil
He draws in a breath, a long sigh, and her heart turns over. Her love for him is different in quality from her love for the twins. They're tough and wiry, they have resilience; it's not that they won't get any wounds, they have wounds already, but they can lick their wounds and then bounce back. Also they have each other. But Larry has an exiled look to him, the look of a lost traveller, as if he's stuck in some no man's land, between borders and without a passport. Trying to figure out the road signs. Wanting to do the right thing.
Under the young moustache his mouth is tidy, and also gentle. It's the mouth that worries her the most. It's the mouth of a man who can be wrecked by women; by a whole bunch of women in succession. Or else by one woman: if she was mean enough, it would only take one. One really slick mean-minded woman, and poor Larry will fall in love, he'll fall in love earnestly, he'll trot around after her with his tongue hanging out, like a sweet, loyal, housetrained puppy, he'll set his heart on her, and then one flick of her bony gold-encircled wrist and he'll just be a sucked-out shell.
Over my dead body, thinks Roz, but what can she do? Against this unknown future woman she will be helpless. She knows about mothers-in-law, she knows about women who think that their sons are perfect, that no woman, no other woman, will ever be good enough for them. She's seen it, she knows how destructive it can be, she's sworn never to get like that.
Already she's weathered several of his girlfriends - the one in high school who had crimped bangs and tiny crazed eyes like a pit bull, who claimed she played the guitar, who left her push-up French bra in his room; the near-sighted stockbroker's daughter from summer camp with aggressively hairy legs and B.O. of the head, who'd been on an art tour to Italy and thought that gave her the right to patronize Roz's living-room furniture; the plump smart-mouth one in university, with hair like a man's toupee, dyed a lifeless artificial black, shaved at the sides, who wore three earrings in each ear and leather mini-skirts up to her armpits, who perched at the kitchen counter and crossed her bulgy thighs and lit up a cigarette without offering Roz one, and used Roz's coffee cup for an ashtray, and asked Roz if she'd read Thus Spake Zarathustra.
That was the worst; that was the one she'd caught looking through the Victorian rosewood silver caddy in the dining room; probably wanted to hock some small item and get the cleaning lady blamed, and stuff the proceeds up her nose. That was the one who considered it tactful to inform Roz that her mother had known Mitch, a few years back, and acted surprised when Roz said she'd never heard of her. (Untrue. She knew exactly who that woman was. Twice divorced, a real estate agent, a man-collector, a slut. But that was in Mitch's blow-and-throw female-Kleenex period, and she'd only lasted a month.)
Larry was way over his depth with that creature. Thus Spake Zarathustra, indeed! Pretentious little shit. Roz heard her telling the twins (and they were only thirteen then) that their brother had great buns. Her son! Great buns! The tawdry bitch was just using him, but try telling him that.
Not that she sees much of the girlfriends. Larry keeps them well tucked away. Is she a nice girl? she'll probe. Bring her to dinner! Fat chance. And red-hot tongs wouldn't get any information out of him. She can tell, though, when they're up to no good. She bumps into those girls on the street, hooked onto Larry with their tiny jaws and claws, and Larry introduces her, and she can tell by their shifty little mascara-encrusted eyes. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of women? A mother knows.
She's waited them all out, biting her tongue, praying it wasn't serious. Now, according to the twins, she's in for another one. Down on your knees, Roz, she tells herself. Atone for your sins. Dear God, send me a nice understanding girl, not too rich, not too poor, not too pretty but not ugly either, not too bright, bright he won't need, a kind, warm, sensible, generous girl who'll appreciate his good points, who understands about his work, whatever the heck it turns out to be, who doesn't talk too much, and most of all, who loves kids. And please, God: make her have normal hair.
Larry sighs and shifts in his bed, and Roz turns away. She's given up her plan of checking out his alarm clock. Let him sleep. Real life will be digging into him soon enough, with its shiny pointed grasping red nails.
Standing barefooted and pink and steaming and wrapped in a bath sheet, flamingo pink, best British, Roz goes through her room-length mirror-door closet. There's plenty to wear, but nothing she wants to. She settles on the suit she got in that Italian boutique on Bloor: she has a meeting, and then she's having lunch with Tony and Charis, at the Toxique, and this outfit's not too informal, but not too formal either. Also it's not built like a mummy case across the shoulders. Shoulder pads are going out, thank heaven, though Roz routinely snips hers off anyway, she has enough shoulders for two. The twins have been recycling some of her discarded pads: they've recently converted to fountain pens because plastic ballpoints are too wasteful, and according to them shoulder pads make great pen-wipers. It was only ever the tall and willowy who could handle the darn things anyway; and though Roz is tall, willowy she's not.
The shoulders are shrinking, but the bosoms are swelling. Not without help. Roz adds to her list of desirables: Please, God, let her not have breast implants. Zenia was ahead of her time.
14
Roz takes the Benz, because she knows she's going to have to park on Queen, at lunchtime, and the Rolls would attract too much attention. Who needs slashed tires?
Anyway she hardly ever drives the Rolls, it's like driving a boat. One of those ancient weighty in-boards, with the mahogany trim and the motor that whispered Old money, old money. Old money whispers, new money shouts: one of the lessons Roz thought she had to learn, once. Keep your voice down, Roz, went her inner censor. Low tones, low profile, beige clothing: anything to keep from being spotted, located among the pushing hordes of new money, narrow-eyed, nervous money, bad-taste money, chip-on-the-shoulder money. Anything to avoid incurring the amused, innocent, milky and maddening gaze of those who had never had to scrimp, to cut a few legal corners, to twist a few arms, to gouge a few eyes, to prove a thing. Most of the new-money women were desperate, all dressed up and nowhere safe to go and nervous as heck about it, and most of the men were pricks. Roz knows about desperation, and about pricks. She's a quick learner, she's a tough negotiator. One of the best.
Though by now she's been new money for so long she's practically old money. In this country it doesn't take long. By now she can wear orange, by now she can shriek. By now she can get away with such things; she can pawn them off as charming eccentricities, and anyone who doesn't like it can kiss her fanny.
She wouldn't have bought the Rolls herself, though. Too ostentatious, to her mind. It's left over from the days of Mitch; he was the one who talked her into it, she'd done it to please him, and it's one of the few things of his she can't bear to get rid of. He was so proud of it.
Mostly it sits in the garage, but she drove it to Zenia's memorial service, out of spite. There, she thought. You got away with a lot, bitch, but you never nabbed this car. Not that Zenia had been around to see, but there had been an undeniable pleasure all the same.
Charis disapproved of the Rolls; you could tell by the way she sat in it, hunched over and anxious. But Tony hardly noticed. Is this your big car? she'd said. Tony is so sweet about cars, she knows all about historical things and guns and such, but she can't tell one car from another. Your big car, your other car, those are her categories. It's like that awful joke about the Newfies counting fish: one fish, two fish, another fish, another fish.... Roz knows she shouldn't laugh at jokes like that, it's not fair, but she does anyway. Among friends. Does it hurt the Newfies, to lower Roz's blood pressure, to make her feel good on a bad day? Who knows? At least nobody has tried to genocide them. Yet. And they're supposed to have the best sex lives o
She heads south through Rosedale, past the fake Gothic turrets, the fake Georgian fronts, the fake Dutch gables, all melded by now into their own curious authenticity: the authenticity of well-worn money. With a single glance at each, she estimates them: a million five, two million, three, prices have gone down but these babies are holding more or less firm, and good for them, something has to in all this shift and flux. What can you trust these days? (Not the stock market, that's for sure, and lucky she rearranged her portfolio just in time.) Much as she used to resent these prim, WASPy, self-assured houses, she's become fond of them over the years. Owning one helps. That, and the knowledge that a lot of the people who live in them are no better than they should be. No better than her.
She goes down Jarvis, once the street of the upper crust, then the red-light district, now not very convincingly renovated, cuts west on Wellesley, and ducks onto the university campus, where she tells the guard she's just picking someone up at the library. He waves her through - she's plausible, or rather her car is - and she goes around the circle and past McClung Hall, scene of boisterous memories. It's funny to think she lived in there once, when she was young and bright green, and bounding with canine enthusiasm. Big doggy paws on the furniture, big doggy tongue bestowing slurps of hope on any available face. Like me! Like me! Not any more. Times have changed.
She turns down to College, and makes a right on University. What a design fiasco! One clunky block of sterile brick and glass and then another one, no sidewalk interest, though they keep trying to tart the thing up with those constipated little flower beds. What would Roz do with it, if she had the contract? She doesn't know. Maybe grape arbours, or else round kiosks, like Paris; though whatever you did it would come out like something escaped from a theme park. But then everything does, nowadays. Even the real thing looks constructed. When Roz saw her first Alp, she thought, Bring out the chorus line in bodices and dirndls, and let's all yodel.