The Robber Bride (14 page)

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 a 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 pen-wipers. 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.

14

R
oz takes the Benz, because she knows she’s going to have to park on Queen, at lunchtime, and the Rolls would attract too much attention. Who needs slashed tires?

Anyway she hardly ever drives the Rolls, it’s like driving a boat. One of those ancient weighty in-boards, with the mahogany trim and the motor that whispered
Old money, old money
. Old money whispers, new money shouts: one of the lessons Roz thought she had to learn, once.
Keep your voice down, Roz
, went her inner censor. Low tones, low profile, beige clothing: anything to keep from being spotted, located among the pushing hordes of new money, narrow-eyed, nervous money, bad-taste money, chip-on-the-shoulder money. Anything to avoid incurring the amused, innocent, milky and maddening gaze of those who had never had to scrimp, to cut a few legal corners, to twist a few arms, to gouge a few eyes, to prove a thing. Most of the new-money women were desperate, all dressed up and nowhere safe to go and nervous as heck about it, and most of the men were pricks. Roz knows about desperation, and about pricks. She’s a quick learner, she’s a tough negotiator. One of the best.

Though by now she’s been new money for so long she’s practically old money. In this country it doesn’t take long. By now she can wear orange, by now she can shriek. By now she can get away with such things; she can pawn them off as charming eccentricities, and anyone who doesn’t like it can kiss her fanny.

She wouldn’t have bought the Rolls herself, though. Too ostentatious, to her mind. It’s left over from the days of Mitch; he was the one who talked her into it, she’d done it to please him, and it’s one of the few things of his she can’t bear to get rid of. He was so proud of it.

Mostly it sits in the garage, but she drove it to Zenia’s memorial service, out of spite.
There
, she thought.
You got away with a lot, bitch, but you never nabbed this car
. Not that Zenia had been around to see, but there had been an undeniable pleasure all the same.

Charis disapproved of the Rolls; you could tell by the way she sat in it, hunched over and anxious. But Tony hardly noticed.
Is this your big car?
she’d said. Tony is so sweet about cars, she knows all about historical things and guns and such, but she can’t tell one car from another.
Your big car, your other car
, those are her categories. It’s like that awful joke about the Newfies counting fish:
one fish, two fish, another fish, another fish.…
Roz knows she shouldn’t laugh at jokes like that, it’s not fair, but she does anyway. Among friends. Does it hurt the Newfies, to lower Roz’s blood pressure, to make her feel good on a bad day? Who knows? At least nobody has tried to genocide them. Yet. And they’re supposed to have the best sex lives of anybody in Canada, which is a darn sight more than Roz has these days, worse luck.

She heads south through Rosedale, past the fake Gothic turrets, the fake Georgian fronts, the fake Dutch gables, all melded by now into their own curious authenticity: the authenticity of well-worn money. With a single glance at each, she estimates them: a million five, two
million, three, prices have gone down but these babies are holding more or less firm, and good for them, something has to in all this shift and flux. What can you trust these days? (Not the stock market, that’s for sure, and lucky she rearranged her portfolio just in time.) Much as she used to resent these prim, WASPy, self-assured houses, she’s become fond of them over the years. Owning one helps. That, and the knowledge that a lot of the people who live in them are no better than they should be. No better than her.

She goes down Jarvis, once the street of the upper crust, then the red-light district, now not very convincingly renovated, cuts west on Wellesley, and ducks onto the university campus, where she tells the guard she’s just picking someone up at the library. He waves her through – she’s plausible, or rather her car is – and she goes around the circle and past McClung Hall, scene of boisterous memories. It’s funny to think she lived in there once, when she was young and bright green, and bounding with canine enthusiasm. Big doggy paws on the furniture, big doggy tongue bestowing slurps of hope on any available face.
Like
me!
Like
me! Not any more. Times have changed.

She turns down to College, and makes a right on University. What a design fiasco! One clunky block of sterile brick and glass and then another one, no sidewalk interest, though they keep trying to tart the thing up with those constipated little flower beds. What would Roz do with it, if she had the contract? She doesn’t know. Maybe grape arbours, or else round kiosks, like Paris; though whatever you did it would come out like something escaped from a theme park. But then everything does, nowadays. Even the real thing looks constructed. When Roz saw her first Alp, she thought, Bring out the chorus line in bodices and dirndls, and let’s all yodel.

Maybe that’s what people mean by a national identity. The hired help in outfits. The backdrops. The props.

Roz’s head office is in a converted brewery, nineteenth-century. Red brick, with factory windows and a carving of a lion’s head over the main entrance, for a touch of class. One of her father’s cute ideas, to do it over; otherwise it would have been torn down. It was his first really big thing, his first indulgence; when he began playing with his money, finally, instead of just accumulating it.

She parks in the company lot,
Unauthorized Vehicles Will Be Towed
, in her own space marked
Ms. President
with its gold-lettered sign – if you’ve got it, flaunt it, although Roz constantly has to remind herself that she’s not as all-fired important as she might be tempted to think. It’s true she occasionally gets recognized in restaurants, especially after she’s been in the annual
Toronto Life
list of Toronto’s Fifty Most Influential. But if that kind of recognition is the measure of power, then Mickey Mouse is a million times more powerful than she is, and Mickey Mouse doesn’t even exist.

She checks her front teeth for lipstick in the rear-view mirror – well, these things count – and walks briskly, she hopes it looks briskly, into the reception area. Time to change the wall art in here, she’s tired of those stupid coloured squares, it looks like a tablecloth, though the thing cost a mint. A corporate tax write-off, fortunately. Canadian Art.

“Hi, Nicki,” she says to the receptionist. It’s important to remember their names. Roz has been known to print the names of new receptionists and secretaries on her wrist, in ballpoint ink, like a high school crib. If she were a man she could get away with a brief nod; but she’s not a man, and she knows a whole lot better than to try acting like one.

Nicki blinks at her and continues talking on the phone, and doesn’t smile, the stony-faced bimbette. Nicki won’t last long.

It’s complicated, being a woman boss. Women don’t look at you and think
Boss
. They look at you and think
Woman
, as in
Just another one
,
like me, and where does she get off?
None of their sexy little tricks work on you, and none of yours work on them; big blue eyes are no advantage. If you forget their birthdays your name is mud, if you bawl them out they cry, they don’t even do it in the washroom the way they would for a man but right out where you can see them, they hang their hard-luck stories on you and expect sympathy, and just try getting a cup of coffee out of them.
Lick your own stamps, lady
. They’ll bring it all right, but it’ll be cold and also they’ll hate you forever.
Who was your servant last year?
she used to say to her own mother, once she was old enough to be defiant. Exactly.

Whereas the very same women would fetch and carry for a man boss, no question. Buy the wife’s birthday present, buy the mistress’s birthday present, make the coffee, bring his slippers in her mouth, overtime no problem.

Is Roz being too negative? Could be. But she’s had some bad experiences.

Maybe she handled it wrong. She was dumber then. Threw her weight around, acted normal. Had a few tantrums.
I didn’t say tomorrow, I said now! Let’s see a little professionalism around here!
By now she knows that if you’re a woman and you hire women, you have to make them into girlfriends, into pals; you have to pretend you’re all equal, which is hard when you’re twice their age. Or else you have to baby them. You have to mother them, you have to take care of them. Roz has enough people in her life to mother already, and who is there to baby and mother and take care of her? Nobody; which is why she hired Boyce.

She takes the elevator up, and gets off on the top floor. “Hi, Suzy,” she says to the receptionist there. “How’s tricks?”

“Great, Ms. Andrews,” says Suzy, giving a dutiful smile. She’s been around longer than Nicki.

Boyce is in his office, which is right beside her own office and has
a gold-lettered title:
Assistant to Ms. President
. Boyce is always in his office when she gets to work. “Hi, Boyce,” she says to him.

“Good morning, Ms. Andrews,” says Boyce gravely, rising from behind his desk. Boyce is studiously formal. Every one of his thin chestnut-coloured hairs is in order, his shirt collar is impeccable, his suit is a masterpiece of understatement.

“Let’s run over it,” says Roz, and Boyce nods.

“Coffee?” he says.

“Boyce, you’re an angel,” says Roz, and Boyce disappears and comes back with some, it’s hot and fresh, he’s just made it. Roz has remained standing so she can now experience the pleasure of having Boyce pull out her chair for her, which he proceeds to do. Roz sits down, as gracefully as she can manage, in this skirt – Boyce brings out the lady in her, such as it is – and Boyce says, as he never fails to do, “I must say, Ms. Andrews, you’re looking very well this morning, and that’s an attractive ensemble you’re wearing.”

“Boyce, I love your tie,” Roz says, “it’s new, isn’t it?” and Boyce beams with pleasure. Or rather he glows quietly. Boyce rarely shows his teeth.

She adores Boyce! Boyce is delicious! She gets such a kick out of him, she could give him such a hug, although she would never dare to do a thing like that. She doesn’t think Boyce would stand for it. Boyce is nothing if not reserved.

Boyce is also twenty-eight, a lawyer by training, smart as a whip, and gay. He dealt with the gayness right up front, at the job interview. “You might as well know immediately,” he said to her, “it saves time-wasting speculation. I’m gay as a grig, but I won’t embarrass you in public. My straight act is impeccable. A
grig
, in case you ever wondered, can mean either a short-legged hen or a young eel. I prefer the young eel version, myself.”