The Robber Bride (44 page)

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 also 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

R
oz 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.

Roz wonders what the other two are doing right now. Are they pacing the floor like her, are they nervous? Seen from the air the three of them would form a triangle, with Roz as their apex. They could signal to each other with flashlights, like Nancy Drew the girl detective. Of course there’s always the phone.

Roz reaches for it, dials, sets it down. What can they tell her? They don’t know anything more about Zenia than she does. Less, most likely.

Roz’s hands are damp, and her underarms. Her body smells like rusty nails. Is this a hot flash, or merely the old rage coming back?
She’s just jealous
, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it’s not, it’s the worst, it’s the worst feeling there is – incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and
focused and hard as glass, like the view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness. Which must be why it inspires so much murder: killing is the ultimate control.

Roz thinks of Zenia dead. Her actual body, dead. Dead and melting.

Not very satisfying, because if Zenia were dead she wouldn’t know it. Better to think of her ugly. Roz takes Zenia’s face, pulls down on it as if it’s putty. Some nice jowls, a double chin, a permanent scowl. Blacken a few teeth, like children’s drawings of witches. Better.