Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride

The twins are in the family room, watching a rerun of Star Trek.

“Greetings, Earthmom,” says Paula.

“Maybe she isn’t Mom,” says Erin. “Maybe she’s a Replicant. “Hi, kids,” says Roz. “It’s way past your bedtime! Where’s Larry?”

“Erla’s done our homework,” says Erin. “This is our reward:”

“Mom, what’s wrong?” says Paula. “You look like shit.”

“It’s old age,” says Roz. “Is he home?”

“He’s in the kitchen,” says Erin. “We think:”

“Eating bread and honey,” says Paula.

“That’s the Queen, stupid,” says Erin. They giggle.

Larry is sitting on one of the high stools, at the kitchen counter, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt and bare feet, and drinking a bottle of beer. Across from him on another high stool is Boyce, neat in his suit; he’s got a beer, too. When Roz walks into the room they both look up. They both seem equally anxious.

“Hi, Boyce,” says Roz. “What a surprise! Is something wrong at the office?”

“Good evening, Ms. Andrews,” says Boyce. “Not at the office, no:”

“I have something to discuss with Larry, “ says Roz. “If you don’t mind, Boyce:”

“I think Boyce should stay,” says Larry. He looks dejected, as if he’s failed an exam: there must be something to Zenia’s story. But what’s Boyce got to do with it?

“Larry, I’m concerned,” says Roz. “What are you into with Zenia?”

“Who?” Larry says, too innocently. “I need to know,” says Roz.

“I dream of Zenia in her light brown lair,” Boyce murmurs as if to himself.

“She told you?” says Larry.

“About the drugs?” says Roz. “Oh God, it’s true! If you’ve got any drugs in this house, I want them out of here, right now! So you were having a thing with her!”

“Thing?” says Larry.

“Thing, fling, whatever,” says Roz. “Holy Moly, don’t you know how old she was? Don’t you know how vicious she was? Don’t you know what she did to your father?”

“Thing?” says Boyce. “I don’t think so.”

“What drugs?” says Larry.

“It was only a few times,” says Boyce. “He was experimenting. My nose aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense. Keats. He’s given it up, as of now—right, Larry?”

“Then you weren’t her dealer?” says Roz. “Mom, it was the other way around,” says Larry.

“But Charis saw you kissing her, right out on the street!” says Roz. She feels very weird, talking this way to her own son. She feels like a snoopy old crock.

“Kissing?” says Larry. “I never kissed her. She was whispering in my ear. She was telling me that we were being followed around by this deranged older woman. Maybe it looked like kissing, to Aunt Charis, because that woman was definitely her.”

“Not kissing, but hissing,” says Boyce. “Like ‘not waving but drowning.’ Stevie Smith.”

“Boyce, shut up for a minute,” says Larry irritably. They seem to know each other quite a lot better than Roz has assumed. She’s thought they’d just met the one time, at the Father-Daughter Dance, and then a few nods at the office, as Larry came and went. Apparently not.

“But you went to her hotel room a lot,” says Roz. “I know it for a fact!”

“It’s not what you think,” says Larry.

“You realize she’s dead?” Roz says, playing her ace. “I just came from there, they just fished her out of the fountain!”

“Dead?” says Boyce. “,’Of what? A self-inflicted snakebite?”

“Who knows?” says Roz. “Maybe somebody threw her off the balcony.”

“Maybe she jumped,” says Boyce. “When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, they jump off balconies.”

“I just hope to God you had nothing to do with it,” says Roz; to Larry.

Boyce says quickly, “He couldn’t have, he was nowhere near her tonight. He was with me.”

“I was trying to talk her out of it,” says Larry. “She wanted money. I didn’t have enough, and I could hardly ask you for some.

„

“Talk her out of what? Money for what?” says Roz. She’s almost yelling.

“For not telling you,” says Larry miserably. “I thought I could keep it secret. I didn’t want to make things any worse—I thought you’d been upset enough, because of Dad, and everything.”

“Judas Priest; for not telling me what?” shouts Roz. “You’ll be the death of me!” She sounds exactly like her own mother. All the same, so sweet, Larry trying to protect her. He doesn’t want to come home and find her flopping around on the kitchen floor, the way he did before. “Boyce,” she says, more gently, “have you got a cigarette?”

Boyce, ever prepared, hands her the package and flicks his lighter for her. “I think it’s time,” he says to Larry.

Larry gulps, stares at the floor, looks resigned. “Mom,” he says, gay.”

Roz feels her eyes bugging out like those of a strangled rabbit. Why didn’t she see, why couldn’t she tell, what’s the matter with her anyway? Nicotine grabs at her lungs, she really must quit, and then she coughs, and smoke billows from her mouth, and maybe she’s about to have a premature heart attack! That’s what she’ll do, fall to the floor in a heap and let everyone else deal with this, because it’s way beyond her.

But she sees the distress in Larry’s eyes, and the appeal. No, she can handle it, if she can bite her tongue hard enough. It’s just that she wasn’t prepared. What’s the right thing to say? I love you anyway? You’re still my son? What about my grandchildren?

“But all those bimbos you put me through!” is what she comes out with. She’s got it now: he was trying to please her. Trying to bring home a woman, like some kind of dutiful exam certificate, to show Mom. To show he’d passed.

“A man can but do his best,” says Boyce. “Walter Scott.”

“What about the twins?” Roz whispers. They are at a formative stage; how will she tell them?

“Oh, the twins know,” says Larry, relieved that he’s got at least one corner covered. “They worked it out pretty fast. They say it’s cool.” That figures, thinks Roz: for them, the fences once so firmly in place around the gender corrals are just a bunch of rusty old wire.

“Think of it this way,” says Boyce affectionately. “You’re not losing a son, you’re gaining a son:’

“I’ve decided to go to law school,” says Larry. Now that the worst is over and Roz hasn’t croaked or burst, he looks relieved. “We want you to help us decorate our apartment:”

“Sweetie,” says Roz, taking a deep breath, I’d be glad to.” It’s not that she’s prejudiced, and her own marriage wasn’t such a terrific argument for heterosexuality, and neither was Mitch, and she just wants Larry to be happy, and if this is how he plans to do it, fine, and maybe Boyce will be a good influence and make him pick his clothes up off the floor and keep him out of trouble; but it’s been a long day. Tomorrow she’ll be genuinely warm and accepting. For tonight, hypocrisy will have to do.

“Ms. Andrews, you’re the glass of fashion and the mould of form,” says Boyce.

Roz spreads her hands wide, raises her shoulders, pulls down the, corners of her mouth. “Tell me,” she says. “What are my options?”

Men in overcoats come to visit. They want to know a lot of things about Zenia. Which of her three passports is real, if any. Where she actually came from. What she was doing.

Tony is informative, Charis vague; Roz is careful, because she doesn’t want Larry involved. But she needn’t have worried, because none of these men seems to be the least interested in Larry. What they are interested in is Zenia’s two packed suitcases, left neatly on the bed, one of them with eleven little plastic bags of white powder in them, or so they say. A twelfth bag was open, beside the phone. Not nose candy either: heroin, and ninety per cent pure. They look out from their immobile faces, their eyes like intelligent pebbles, watching for twinges, for hints of guilty knowledge.