Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride

Zenia sips her juice, with the two ovals of her dark glasses turned towards Charis. Charis isn’t sure what she can say to her. She didn’t really know Zenia at university, she never spoke to her—Zenia was older, she was ahead of Charis, and she was in with all those artistic, intellectual people—but Charis remembers her, so beautiful and confident, striding around campus with her boyfriend Stew, and then later with short little Tony as well. What Charis remembers about Tony is that Tony followed her one night when Charis went outside to sit under a tree on the McClung lawn. Probably Tony thought Charis was sleepwalking; which showed some insight, because Charis had certainly done some sleepwalking in the past, though she wasn’t doing it then.

This action of Tony’s revealed a good heart, a quality much more important to Charis than Tony’s academic brilliance, which was what she was known for. Zenia was known for other things as well—most notoriously for living with Stew, right out in the open, at a time when such things were not done. So much has changed. It’s the married people, now, who are considered immoral. The nukes, they are called, for nuclear family. Radioactive, potentially lethal; a big leap from Home Sweet Home, but in Charis’s opinion more appropriate.

Zenia too has changed. In addition to being thin she’s ill, and in addition to being ill she is cowed somehow, beaten, defeated. Her shoulders hunch inwards protectively, her fingers are awkward claws, the corners of her mouth droop downwards.

Charis wouldn’t have known her. It’s as if the former Zenia, the lovely Zenia, the Zenia of obvious flesh, has been burned away, leaving this bone core.

Charis doesn’t like to question—she doesn’t like to intrude on the selfhood of others—but Zenia is so drained of energy it’s unlikely she will say anything at all, otherwise. So Charis chooses something non-invasive. “What brought you to my class?” she asks.

“I heard about it from a friend,” says Zenia. Every word seems an effort. “I thought it might help.”

“Help?” says Charis.

“With the cancer,” says Zenia.

“Cancer,” says Charis. It isn’t even a question, because didn’t she know it? There’s no mistaking that whiteness, that sickly flicker. An imbalance of the soul.

Zenia smiles crookedly. “I beat it once before,” she says, “but it’s come back.”

Now Charis remembers something: didn’t Zenia disappear suddenly at the end of the year? The second year Charis lived in McClung Hall, that’s when it was: Zenia vanished without an explanation, into thin air. The girls used to talk about it over breakfast and Charis would listen in, on the rare occasions when she bothered with listening, or with breakfast. They didn’t have much there that she could eat: bran flakes was about it. The gossip was that Zenia had run away with another man, dumping Stew flat and taking some of his money as well, but now Charis divines the real truth: it was the cancer. Zenia went away without telling anyone about it because she didn’t want a lot of fuss. She went away to cure herself, and to do that you need to be alone, to be free of interruption. Charis can understand that.

“How did you do it, the first time?” says Charis. “Do what?” says Zenia, a little sharply.

“Beat it,” says Charis. “The cancer.”

“They did an operation,” says Zenia. “They took out—they did a hysterectomy, I can never have babies. But it didn’t work. So then I went to the mountains, by myself. I stopped eating meat, I cut out alcohol. I just had to concentrate. On getting well.”

This sounds exactly right to Charis. Mountains, no meat. “And now?” she says.

“I thought I was better,” says Zenia. Her voice has sunk to a hoarse whisper. “I thought I was strong enough. So I came back. I’ve been living with Stew—with West. I guess I let him take me back into our old way of living, you know, he drinks a lot—and the cancer came back. He can’t take it—he really can’t! A lot of people can’t stand to be around sickness, they’re afraid of it.” Charis nods: she knows this, she knows this deeply, at the level of her cells. “He just denies that there’s anything wrong with me,” Zenia continues. “He tries to get me to eat ... mounds of food, steak and butter, all those animal fats. They make me nauseated, I can’t, I just can’t!”

“Oh,” says Charis. This is a horrible story, and one that has the ring of truth. So few people understand about animal fats. No, more: so few people understand about anything. “How awful,” she says, which is only a pallid reflection of what she feels. She is troubled; she is on the verge of tears; above all she is helpless.

“Then he gets angry” Zenia goes on. “He gets furious with me, and I feel so weak ... he hates me to cry, it just gets him angrier. He was the one who did this:” She gestures towards her eye. “It makes me so ashamed, I feel like I’m the one responsible ..:’

Charis tries to remember Stew, or West, whose name once changed so abruptly, just like her own. What she sees is a tall man, a somewhat inturned and unconnected man, gentle as a giraffe. She can’t picture him hitting anyone, much less Zenia; but people can have deceptive exteriors. Men especially. They can put on a good act, they can make you believe they are model citizens and that they are right and you are wrong. They can fool everyone and make you seem like a liar. West, no doubt, is one of these. Indignation rises in her, the beginning of anger. But anger is unhealthy for her so she pushes it away.

‘ “He says if I really have cancer I should have another operation, or else chemotherapy,” says Zenia. “But I know I could heal myself again, if only .. :” she trails off. “I don’t think I can drink any more of this right now,” she says. She nudges the juice glass away. “Thank you .... you’ve been really nice.” She reaches across the table and touches Charis’s hand. Her thin white fingers look cold but they are hot, hot as coals. Then she pushes back her chair, takes up her coat and purse, and hurries away, almost staggering. Her head is bent, the hair is falling over her face like a veil, and Charis is sure she’s crying.

Charis wants to jump up and run after her and bring her back. This desire is so strong in her it’s like a fist on her neck. She wants to sit Zenia down again in her chair and put both hands on her, and summon up all her energy, the energy of the light, and heal her, right on the spot. But she knows she can’t do that, so she doesn’t move.

On Friday Zenia isn’t in the yoga class, and Charis is anxious about her. Maybe she’s collapsed, or maybe West has hit her again, this time more than once. Maybe she’s in the hospital with multiple fractures. Charis takes the ferry boat to the Island, fretting all the way. Now she’s feeling inadequate: there must have been something she could have said or done, something better than what she did do. A glass of juice was not enough.

That evening the fog returns, and with it a chilly drizzle, and Charis makes a good fire in the stove and turns on the furnace as well, and Billy wants her to come to bed early. She’s brushing her teeth in the drafty bathroom downstairs when she hears a knock at the kitchen door. What she thinks is that it’s one of

Billy’s group, with yet another draft dodger to be parked overnight on her living-room sofa. She has to admit she’s getting a bit tired of them. For one thing, they never help with the dishes.

But it’s not a draft dodger. It’s Zenia, her head framed in the wet glass square of the door like a photo under water. Her hair is soaked and streaking down her face, her teeth are chattering, her sunglasses are gone, and her eye, purple now, is piteous. There’s a fresh cut on her lip.