Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride

Larry used to sit gravely silent while she read to him. His favourites were about trains that talked and were a success, or good-for-you books about interspecies cooperation. Mr. Bear helps Mr. Beaver build a dam. Larry didn’t comment much. But with the twins she could barely get a word in edgewise. They would fight her for control of the story—Change the ending, Mom! Make them go back! I don’t like this part! They’d wanted Peter Part to end before Wendy grew up, they’d wanted Matthew in Anne of Green Gables to live forever.

She remembers one phase, when they were, what? Four, five, six, seven? It went on for a while. They’d decided that all the characters in every story had to be female. Winnie the Pooh was female, Piglet was female, Peter Rabbit was female: If Roz slipped up and said “he,” they would correct her: She! She! they would insist. All of their stuffed animals were female, too. Roz still doesn’t know why. When she asked them, the twins would give her looks of deep contempt. “Can’t you see?” they would say.

She used to worry that this belief of theirs was some reaction to Mitch and his absences, some attempt to deny his existence. But maybe it was simply the lack of penises, on the stuffed animals. Maybe that was it. In any case, they grew out of it.

Roz sits down on the cellar floor, in her orange bathrobe, never mind the cement dust and silverfish and webs. She pulls books off the shelves at random. To Paula and Erin, from Aunt Tony. There on the cover is the dark forest, the dark wolfish forest, where lost children wander and foxes lurk, and anything can happen; there is the castle turret, poking through the knobbly trees. The Three Little Pigs, she reads. The first little pig built his house of straw. Her house, her house, shout the small voices in her head. The Big Bad Wolf fell down the chimney, right into the cauldron of boiling water, and got his fur all burned off. Her fur! It’s odd what a difference it makes, changing the pronoun.

At one point the twins decided that the wolf should not be dropped into the cauldron of boiling water—it should be one of the little pigs, instead, because they had been the stupid ones. But when Roz suggested that maybe the pigs and the wolf could forget about the boiling water and make friends, the twins were scornful. Somebody had to be boiled.

It amazed Roz then, how bloodthirsty children could be. Not Larry; he didn’t like the more violent stories, they gave him nightmares. He didn’t take to the kinds of books Tony liked to contribute—those authentic fairy tales 1n the gnarlytree editions, not a word changed, all the pecked-out eyes and cooked bodies and hanged corpses and red-hot nails intact. Tony said they were more true to life that way.

“The Robber Bridegroom,” reads Tony, long ago, a twin at each elbow. The beautiful maiden, the search for a husband, the arrival of the rich and handsome stranger who lures innocent girls to his stronghold in the woods and then chops them up and eats them. “One day a suitor appeared. He was ...

“She! She!” clamour the twins.

“All right, Tony, let’s see you get out of this one,” says Roz, standing in the doorway.

“We could change it to The Robber Bride,” says Tony. “Would that be adequate?”

The twins give it some thought, and say it will do. They are fond of bridal costumes, and dress their Barbie dolls up in them; then they hurl the brides over the stair railings or drown them in the bathtub.

“In that case,” says Tony, “who do you want her to murder? Men victims, or women victims? Or maybe an assortment?” The twins remain true to their principles, they do not flinch. They opt for women, in every single role.

Tony never talked down to the children. She didn’t hug them or pinch their cheeks or tell them they were sweet. She spoke to them as if they were miniature adults. In turn, the twins accepted her as one of themselves. They let her in on things, on their various plots and conspiracies, their bad ideas—stuff they would never have shared with Roz. They used to put Tony’s shoes on and march around the house in them, one shoe for each twin, when they were six or seven. They were entranced by those shoes: grown-up shoes that fit them!

The Robber Bride, thinks Roz. Well, why not? Let the grooms take it in the neck for once. The Robber Bride, lurking in her mansion in the dark forest, preying upon the innocent, enticing youths to their doom in her evil cauldron. Like Zenia.

No. Too melodramatic for Zenia, who was, after all—who is surely nothing more than an up-market slut. The Rubber Broad is more like it—her and those pneumatic tits.

Roz is crying again. What she’s mourning is her own good will. She tried so hard, she tried so hard to be kind and nurturing, to do the best thing. But Tony and the twins were right: no matter what you do, somebody always gets boiled.

The story of Roz and Zenia began on a lovely day in May, in 1983, when the sun was shining and the birds were singing and Roz was feeling terrific.

‘Well, not quite terrific. Baggy, to tell the truth: under the eyes, under the arms. But better than she’d felt when she’d turned forty. Forty had been truly depressing, she had despaired, she’d dyed her hair black, a tragic mistake. But she’d come to terms with herself since then, and her hair was back to auburn.

Also: the story of Roz and Zenia had actually begun some time before, inside Zenia’s head, but Roz had no idea.

Not quite that, either. She had an idea, but it was the wrong idea. It was hardly even an idea, just a white idea balloon with no writing inside it. She had an idea that something was up. She thought she knew what, but she didn’t know who. She told herself she didn’t much care: she was past that. As long as it didn’t disrupt, as long as it didn’t interfere, as long as she could come out of it with not very many ribs broken. Some men needed their little escapades. It kept them toned up. As an addiction it was preferable to alcohol or golf, and Mitch’s things—things, she called them, to distinguish them from people—never lasted long.

It was a lovely May day, though. That much was true.

Roz wakes up at first light. She often does this: wakes up, and sits up stealthily, and watches Mitch when he’s still sleeping. It’s one of the few chances she gets to look at him when he can’t catch her doing it and interpose his opaque blue stare. He doesn’t like being examined: it’s too close to an evaluation, which is too close to a judgment. If there are judgments going around he wants to be making them himself.

He sleeps on his back, legs flung wide, arms spread out as if to possess as much of the space as possible. The Royal Posture, Roz saw it called once, in a magazine. One of those psychocon articles that claim to tell all on the basis of how you tie your shoelaces. His Roman nose juts up, his slight double chin and the heaviness around.his jaw disappear in this position. There are white lines around his eyes, wrinkles where he isn’t tanned; some of the blunt hairs poking through his morning chin are grey.

Distinguished, thinks Roz. Distinguished as heck. Maybe she,,; should’ve married someone ugly. Some ugly toad of a man who’d never be able to believe his good luck, who’d appreciate her sterling qualities of character, who’d worship her baby finger. Instead she had to go for distinguished. Mitch should have married a cold blonde with homicidal eyes and a double string of real pearls grafted onto her neck, and a built-in pocket behind the left breast, for the bankbook. Such a woman would’ve been up to him. She would not have taken the kind of crap Roz takes.

She goes back to sleep, dreams about her father standing on a black mountain, a mountain of coal or of something burnt, hears Mitch’s alarm go off, hears it go off again, wakes finally. The space beside her is empty. She climbs out of bed, out of the king-sized bed with the brass bedstead in a curving art nouveau design and the raspberry-coloured sheets and duvet cover, onto the aubergine carpet, in the bedroom with its salmon walls and the priceless twenties dresser and mirror, faux Egyptian, and slips into her cream satin robe and pads barefoot into the bathroom. She loves this bathroom! It has everything: shower cubicle, jacuzzi, bidet, a heated towel rack, His and Hers sinks so the hairs from Roz’s head won’t get mixed up with the stubble from Mitch’s chin. She could live in this bathroom! So could several Southeast Asian families, come to that, she reflects morosely. Guilt sets in.