Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride

“Promise me she’s leaving soon,” says Billy. By now he’s no longer angry. He’s insistent, pleading, almost desperate. “She’s leaving soon,” says Charis, as if reassuring a child. She loves Billy more now, in some ways; but in some ways less. Once greediness comes into a thing, the greediness of the body, it gets in the way of pure giving. She wants Billy’s body now, for itself, not just as a manifestation of his essence. Instead of simply ministering to him, she wants something back. Maybe this is wrong; she doesn’t know.

They’re lying in bed, it’s morning, she’s stroking his face. “Soon, soon,” she sings, crooning, to soothe him. She no longer thinks his body wants Zenia. How could he want Zenia, now that Charis wants him?

It’s the middle of December. The frost is in the ground, the leaves are off the trees, the wind is gathering momentum. Tonight it’s straight off the lake, hurling itself through the trees and bushes, tearing at the plastic sheeting that Charis has stapled over the windows to keep out the drafts. There are no storm windows for this house and the landlord has no intention of buying them any, because in his opinion all the houses on the Island will soon be bulldozed flat, so why spend the money? There’s also no insulation.

Charis is beginning to see the drawbacks of living here. Already two of the houses on her street are empty, their windows boarded up. She wonders whether they will have enough wood to keep themselves warm when the real winter comes. There’s a man at the co-op who might trade some yoga lessons for wood, but wood is heavy, so how will she get it to the Island?

They will all need winter clothing too. Billy is in the city tonight, at another one of those meetings. She pictures him at the ferry dock, waiting for the last boat back, shivering in his thin jacket. She should be knitting him something. She’ll go to the Goodwill store, soon, and try for some second-hand coats.

One for Billy, one for herself, and one for Zenia as well, because Zenia has only the clothes on her back. She’s afraid to go to West’s place to get the rest of her clothes, or so she says. She’s afraid West will kill her. He has an obsessive personality—gentle on the outside, but sometimes he goes berserk, and the thought of her dying drives him crazy. If he’s going to lose her, if she’s going to be dead, he wants to be in control of her death himself. A lot of men are like that, says Zenia, with a reminiscent stare into space, a tiny smile. Love drives them mad.

Once upon a time, Charis would never have understood a statement like that. Now she does.

Charis is certain she’s pregnant. She’s missed a period, but that isn’t all: her body feels different, no longer taut and sinewy but sponge-like, fluid. Saturated. It has a different energy, a deep orangy-pink, like the inside of a hibiscus. She hasn’t told Billy yet, because she isn’t sure how he’ll take it.

She hasn’t told Zenia either. For one thing, she doesn’t want to hurt her. Zenia can’t have babies because of her hysterectomy for cancer, and Charis doesn’t want to flaunt or boast. But also Zenia is now sleeping in the small room upstairs, the one that used to have all Charis’s cardboard boxes in it. They moved her up there because Billy complained about never having any privacy in the living room. It’s this little room that Charis wants to make over into a nursery for the baby, after Zenia is gone. So how can she tell Zenia she’s pregnant without practically booting her out onto the street?

And she couldn’t do that, not yet; although when Zenia mentions leaving, Charis no longer tells her not to even think about it. She is torn: she wants Zenia to go, but she doesn’t want her to die. She would like to cure her and then never see her again. They don’t have all that much in common, and now that she has part of Zenia inside herself, the only part that’s necessary to her, she would rather—not have the actual, fleshly Zenia around. Zenia takes up a lot of time. Also—though Charis hates to think this way—a certain amount of money. Charis doesn’t really have enough money for the three of them.

Zenia is looking a lot better, but this can be deceptive. Sometimes she’ll eat a good meal and then rush to the bathroom and throw up. And just yesterday, after they’d been discussing when Zenia might be ready to leave—after she’d been saying she was sure the tumours were shrinking, she was really getting on top of it—Charis walked into the bathroom and found the toilet bowl full of blood. If it were any other woman she’d have assumed that the woman was having her period and had forgotten to flush. But Zenia can’t have periods. She has made that clear.

Charis was concerned, and asked about the blood; Zenia was offhand. It was just a hemorrhage, she said. More or less like a nosebleed. Minor. Charis admires her courage, but who is she trying to fool? Herself, maybe. She doesn’t fool Charis. From time to time Charis wonders whether she should suggest a hospital. But she can’t stand hospitals. Because her mother died in one she thinks of them as places where you go to die. She is already making plans to have the baby at home.

Charis and Zenia are sitting at the kitchen table. They’re finishing supper: baked potatoes, mashed-up squash, a cabbage salad. This cabbage came from the market, because Charis’s own cabbages have all been used up. They’ve been turned into juice and poured into Zenia, green transfusions.

“You’re looking stronger today,” says Charis hopefully. “I’m strong as an ox,” says Zenia. She puts her head down on the table for a moment, then—raises it with an effort. “Really, I am.”

“I’ll make you a cup of ginseng,” says Charis. “Thanks,” says Zenia. “So, where is he tonight?”

“Billy?” says Charis. “Some meeting, I guess.”

“Don’t you ever worry?” says Zenia.

“About what?” says Charis. “That it’s not just some meeting.”

Charis laughs. She has more confidence lately. “You mean, some chick,” she says. “No. Anyway, it wouldn’t interfere:” She believes that. Billy can do what he wants with other women, because it wouldn’t count.

Billy has begun speaking to Zenia. He now says good morning to her, and when he comes into a room she’s already in, he nods and grunts. What he calls his Southern manners are having a struggle with his aversion to Zenia, and the manners are winning. The other night he even offered her a puff on the joint he was smoking. But Zenia shook her head and Billy felt—rebuffed, and that was that. Charis would like to ask Zenia to take it easy on Billy, to meet him halfway, but after the way he’s behaved she can hardly do that.

Behind Zenia’s back, Billy is if anything even ruder than he was at first. “If she has cancer I’ll eat my hat,” he said two days ago.

“Billy!” said Charis, appalled. “She’s had an operation! She has a big scar!”

“You seen it?” said Billy.

Charis hadn’t. Why would she? Why would she ask to see a person’s cancer scar? It wasn’t something you could do.

“You want to place a little bet?” said Billy. “Five bucks there isn’t one.”

“No,” said Charis. How could you prove such a thing? She had a short vision of Billy rushing into Zenia’s room and tearing off her nightgown. That was not something she wanted.

“Penny for your thoughts,” says Zenia.

“What?” says Charis. She is thinking about Zenia’s scar. “Billy’s a big boy,” says Zenia. “You shouldn’t get too anxious about him. He can take care of himself. “

“I was thinking about the winter,” says Charis. “How we’re going to get through it:”

“Not how—if,” says Zenia. “Oh, sorry, too morbid. One day at a time!”