The Robber Bride

Roz wonders what the other two are doing right now. Are they pacing the floor like her, are they nervous? Seen from the air the three of them would form a triangle, with Roz as their apex. They could signal to each other with flashlights, like Nancy Drew the girl detective. Of course there’s always the phone.

Roz reaches for it, dials, sets it down. What can they tell her? They don’t know anything more about Zenia than she does. Less, most likely.

Roz’s hands are damp, and her underarms. Her body smells like rusty nails. Is this a hot flash, or merely the old rage coming back? She’s just jealous, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it’s not, it’s the worst, it’s the worst feeling there is—incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and focused and hard as glass, like the view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness. Which must be why it inspires so much murder: killing is the ultimate control.

Roz thinks of Zenia dead. Her actual body, dead. Dead and melting.

Not very satisfying, because if Zenia were dead she wouldn’t know it. Better to think of her ugly. Roz takes Zenia’s face, pulls down on it as if it’s putty. Some nice jowls, a double chin, a permanent scowl. Blacken a few teeth, like children’s drawings of witches. Better.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful of us all? Depends, says the mirror. Beauty is only skin deep.

Right you are, says Roz, I’ll take some anyway. Now answer my question.

I think you’re a really terrific person, says the mirror. You’re warm and generous. You should have no di vculty at all finding some other man.

I don’t want some other man, says Roz, trying not to cry. I want Mitch.

Sorry, says the mirror. Can’t be done. It always ends like that,

Roz blows her nose and gathers up her jacket and purse, and locks her office door. Boyce is working late, bless his fussy little argyle socks: the light’s on under his door. She wonders whether she should knock and invite him out for a drink, which he wouldn’t find it politic to refuse, and take him to the King Eddie bar and bore the pants off him.

Better not. She’ll go home and bore her kids, instead. She has a vision of herself, ru

The twins are watching TV in the family room, which is decorated in Nouveau Pueblo—sand, sage, ochre, and with a genuine cactus looming by the window, wrinkling like a morel, dying from overwatering. Roz must speak to Maria about that. Whenever Maria sees a plant, she waters it. Or else she dusts it. Roz once caught Maria going over that cactus with the vacuum cleaner, which can’t have done it any good.

“Hi Mom,” says Erin.

“Hi Mom,” says Paula. Neither of them looks at her; they’re cha

“Brain snot!” says Paula. “C’est con, (a! Hey—my turn!”

“Hi kids,” says Roz. She kicks off her tight shoes and flops down in a chair, a dull purple chair the colour of New Mexican cliff rock just after sunset, or so said the decorator. Roz wouldn’t know. She wishes Boyce were here; he’d mix her a drink. Not even mix: pour. A single malt, straight up, is what she’d like, but all of a sudden she’s too tired to get it for herself. “What’re you watching?” she says to her beautiful children. “Mom, nobody watches TV any more,” says Paula.

“We’re looking for shampoo ads,” says Erin. “We want to get rid of our flaky dandruff.”

Paula pulls her hair over one eye, like a model. “Do you suffer from ... flaky crotch dandruff?” she intones in a phoney advertising voice. They both seem to find this riotously fu

“Where’s your brother?” Roz says wearily. “My turn,” says Erin, grabbing the zapper. “Out,” says Paula. “I think:”

“Planet X,” says Erin.

“Dancing and romancing,” they say together, and giggle.

If only they would settle down, rent a nice movie, something with duets in it, Roz could make popcorn, pour melted butter on it, sit with them in warm family companionship. As in days of yore. Mary Poppins was their favourite, once; back in their fla

Some time later she finds herself holding an empty plate and wondering why there is no longer anything on it. She’s standing in the cellar, the old part, the part she’s never had redone. The storage part, with the poured cement floor and the cobwebs. The remains of Mitch’s wine collection is over in one corner: not his best wines, he took those with him when he flew the coop. Probably he drank them with Zenia. Roz hasn’t touched a single bottle of what’s left, she can’t bear to. Nor can she bear to throw it out.

Some of Mitch’s books are down here, too; his old law textbooks, his Joseph Conrads, his yacht manuals. Poor baby, he loved his boats. He thought he was a sailor at heart, though every time they went sailing something conked out. Some motor part or piece of wood, search Roz, she never got used to saying prow and stern instead of front and back. She sees herself standing on one of those boats, the Rosalind it must have been, the first one, named after her, with her nose peeling from sunburn and her shoulders freckling and Mitch’s cap tilted on her head, waving some wrench or other—This one, honey?—while they drifted towards a rocky shore—where? Lake Superior?—and Mitch bent over the motor, swearing under his breath. Was it fun? No. But she would rather be there than here.

She turns her back on Mitch’s stuff so she won’t have to look at it. It’s too doleful. There are some of the twins’ old things down here too, and some of Larry’s: his baseball glove, his board games—Admirals, Strategy, Kamikaze—foisted on him by Tony because she thought those were the kind of games he should like. The children’s books, fondly saved by Roz in the hope that someday she will have grandchildren and will read them these very same books. Do you know, sweetie—this used to be your mommy’s! “en she was a little girl. (Or your daddy’s. But Roz, although she hopes, has trouble picturing Larry as a father.)

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 A