The Robber Bride (13 page)

The twins come round her, smaller than they were, anxious, more timid, patting her, stroking her orange back. “It’s okay, Mom, it’s okay,” they say.

“Look,” she tells them, “I put my elbow in your darned blue milk!”

“Oh heck!” they say. “Oh double darn!” They smile at her with relief.

13

T
he twins place their tall smoothie glasses ostentatiously in the dishwasher, head for the back stairs, forget the blender, remember it and come back, put it in too, forget the puddle of blue milk. Roz wipes it up as they take the stairs, two at a time, and barge along the hall to their rooms to get ready for school. They’re more subdued than usual, though; normally it’s an elephant stampede. Upstairs, two stereos go on at once, two competing drumbeats.

A couple more years and they’ll be away at university, in some other city. The house will be quiet. Roz doesn’t want to think about it. Maybe she’ll sell this barn. Get a Grade A condo, overlooking the lake. Flirt with the doorman.

She sits at the white counter, drinking her coffee at last, and eating her breakfast. Two rusks. Just an orange and two rusks, because she’s on a diet. Sort of a diet. A mini-diet.

She used to do all kinds of diets. Grapefruit ones, bran added to everything, all-protein. She used to wax and wane like the moon, trying to shake the twenty pounds that came on when the twins were born. But she’s not so drastic any more. She knows by now that
weird diets are bad for you, the magazines have been full of it. The body is like a besieged fortress, they say; it stores up food supplies in its fat cells, it stockpiles in case of emergency, and if you diet then it thinks it’s being starved to death and stores up even more, and you turn into a blimp. Still, a little deprivation here and there can’t hurt. Eating a little less, that’s not a real diet.

It’s not as if she’s fat, anyway. She’s just solid. A good peasant body, from when the women had to pull the ploughs.

Though maybe she shouldn’t skimp so much, especially at breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and at this age, what they say is that you trim the body at the expense of the face. It comes off the hips, but off the neck first. Then you get chicken neck. She has no intention of turning into one of those fiftyish size 6 bimbos with faces like piles of scrap metal and string, each bone and tendon showing. Though
bimbo
isn’t the right word for a woman of that age.
Bimbag
, maybe. That’s what Zenia would have been, if she’d lived. A bimbag.

Roz smiles, and puts two pieces of whole wheat bread into the toaster. She finds it helpful to call Zenia names; helpful and reassuring. So who can it hurt, now?

So who did it hurt, then? she asks herself bitterly. Certainly not Zenia, who never gave two hoots about what Roz thought of her. Or said about her, even to Mitch. There were some things she had the sense not to say, however.
Can’t you see those tits aren’t real? She had them done, I know for a fact; she used to be a 34A. You’re in love with two sacks of silicone gel
. No, that wouldn’t have gone over all that well with Mitch, not in his besotted phase. And after his besotted phase it was too late.

Those things don’t burn when they cremate you either; that’s the rumour going around, about artificial boobs. They just melt. The rest of you turns to ashes, but your tits to marshmallow goo; they have to scrape them off the bottom of the furnace. Maybe
that’s why they didn’t scatter the ashes at Zenia’s memorial service. Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe that’s what was in that sealed tin can. Melted tits.

Roz butters her two pieces of toast and spreads honey on them, and eats them with slow relish, licking her fingers. If Zenia were alive there’s no doubt that she’d be dieting; you don’t get a waist like Zenia’s without hard work. So by now she’d have chicken neck. Or else she’d be going for surgery, more of it. She’d get a nip here, a tuck there; a lid-lift, puffed-up lips. That isn’t for Roz, she can’t stand the thought of someone, some strange man, bending over her with a knife while she’s lying in bed conked out cold. She’s read too many thrillers for that, too many sex-murder thrillers. He could be a depraved nut in a stolen doctor suit. It happens. Or what if they make a mistake and you wake up covered in bandages and then spend six weeks looking like a road-kill raccoon, only to emerge as some bit player from a botched-up horror movie? No, she’d rather just age quietly. Like good red wine.

She makes herself another piece of toast, with strawberry-and-rhubarb jam this time. Why punish the flesh? Why stint the body? Why incur its resentments, its obscure revenges, its headaches and hunger pains and growls of protest? She eats the toast, jam dripping; then, after glancing behind to make sure nobody is watching her – though who would be? – she licks the plate. Now she feels better. It’s time for her cigarette, her morning reward. Reward for what? Don’t ask.

The twins cascade down the stairs, wearing, more or less, their school uniforms, those outfits Roz has never fully understood, the kilts and ties that are supposed to turn them into Scottish men. Leaving your shirt untucked until the dire last minute is the current thing, she gathers. They kiss her on the cheek, big sloppy exaggerated kisses, and gallop out the back door, and their two shining heads go past the kitchen window.

Possibly they are trampling on the flower border Charis insisted on planting there last year, a deed of love so Roz can’t lay a finger on it, even though it resembles a moth-eaten patchwork quilt and her regular gardener, an elegant Japanese minimalist, considers it an affront to his professional standing. But maybe the twins will mash it beyond repair, cross your fingers. She looks at her watch: they’re running late, but not very late. They take after her: she has always had a flexible sense of time.

Roz drains her coffee and butts out her cigarette, and goes up the stairs in her turn, and along the hall to have her shower. On the way she can’t resist peeking into the twins’ rooms, though she knows they’re off limits. Erin’s room looks like a clothing explosion, Paula has left her lights on again. They make such a fuss about the environment, they bawl her out because of her poisonous cleaning products, they make her buy recycled stationery, but still they can’t seem to turn off their darn lights.

She flicks off the light switch, knowing she’s given herself away
(Mom! Who’s been in my room? I can go in your room, sweetie, I’m your mother! You don’t respect my privacy, and Mom, don’t be such a conehead, don’t call me sweetie! I’m entitled! So who pays the light bills around here?
and so forth), and continues on down the hall.

Larry’s room is at the very end, past her own room. Maybe she should wake him up. On the other hand, if he wanted her to he’d have left a note. Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes he expects her to read his mind. Well, why wouldn’t he expect that? She used to be able to. Not any more. With the twins, she’d know if something was wrong, though she wouldn’t necessarily know what. But not with Larry. Larry has become opaque to her.
How are things going?
she’ll say, and he’ll say
Fine
, and it could mean anything. She doesn’t even know what
things
are, any more, those things that are supposed to be going so fine.

He was a dogged kid. Through all the uproar with Mitch, when the twins were acting out, snitching from the supermarket, skipping school, he plodded faithfully on. He tended Roz, in a dutiful sort of way. He took out the garbage, he washed the car, her car, on Saturdays, like a middle-aged man.
You don’t need to do that
, she’d tell him.
Ever heard of car washes? I like to
, he said,
it relaxes me
.

He got his driver’s licence, he got his high school diploma, he got his university degree. He got a worried little furrow between his eyes. He did what he thought was expected of him, and brought the official pieces of paper home to her like a cat bringing dead mice. Now it’s as if he’s given up because he doesn’t know what else to bring; he’s run out of ideas. He says he’s deciding what to do next, but she sees no signs of any decision being made. He stays out at night and she doesn’t know where he goes. If it was the twins she’d ask, and they’d say she should mind her own business. With him, she doesn’t even ask. She’s afraid to, because he might tell her. He’s never been a very good liar. An earnest kid, maybe too earnest. There’s a joylessness in him that bothers her. She’s sorry he’s given up that drum set he used to practise on, down in the cellar, although it drove her crazy at the time. At least then he had something to hit.

He sleeps in late. He doesn’t ask her for money; he doesn’t need to, because of what’s been left him, what’s his own. He could afford to leave home, get an apartment somewhere, but he’s not making a move. He shows so little initiative; when she was his age she could hardly wait to shake the ancestral dust off her sandals. Not that she managed it all that well.

Maybe he’s on dope, she thinks. She sees no signs of that either, but what does she know? When she was growing up,
dope
was some guy you thought was stupid. She did find a packet once, a little plastic envelope with what looked like baking powder in it, and she decided not to know what it was, because what could she do? You
don’t tell your twenty-two-year-old son that you just happened to be going through his pants pockets. Not any more.

He has an alarm clock. But on the other hand, he turns it off in his sleep, the way Mitch used to. Maybe she should just tiptoe in, take a quick look at the alarm clock, and see what time it’s set for. Then she’ll know whether or not he’s turned it off, and her way will be clear.

She eases open his door. There’s a trail of clothes leading from it to the bed, like a shed cocoon, just left there: hand-tooled 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 push-up 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 mini-skirts 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 Zarathustra
.