Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride

She eases open his door. There’s a trail of clothes leading from it to the bed, like a shed cocoon, just left there: handtooled 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-still, listening for his breathing. She’s always done that, ever since he was a baby: listened to see if he was still alive. He had weak lungs, as a child; he had asthma. With the twins she didn’t listen because it didn’t seem called for. They were so robust.

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 pushup 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 miniskirts 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 Zaratlaustra.

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 X—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 penwipers. 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.