Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [100]
Such as West or Zenia, Zenia and West. She broods about them too much, them and their entangled bodies. Action would be better. She thinks about going over to their apartment (she knows where they’re living, it wasn’t hard to find out, West is listed in the university directory) and confronting Zenia. But what would she say? Give him back? Zenia would just laugh. “He’s a free agent,” she would say. “He’s a grown-up, he can make his own choices.” Or something like that. And if she were to turn up on Zenia’s doorstep, to whine and beg and plead, wouldn’t that be just what Zenia wanted?
She recalls a conversation she had with Zenia, early on, in the days when they were drinking coffee at Christie’s and Zenia was such a friend.
“Which would you rather have?” said Zenia. “From other people. Love, respect, or fear?”
“Respect,” said Tony. “No. Love.”
“Not me,” said Zenia. “I’d choose fear.”
“Why?” said Tony.
“It works better,” said Zenia. “It’s the only thing that works.”
Tony remembers having been impressed by this answer. But it wasn’t fear through which Zenia had stolen West. Not a show of strength. On the contrary, it was a show of weakness. The ultimate weapon.
She could always take the gun.
For almost a year there was no word from West; no mention – for instance – of lawyers or divorce; not even any petitions about the spinet and the lute, which Tony was holding captive in her new living room. Tony knew why West was so wordless. It was because he felt too awful about what he’d done, or rather what had been done to him. He felt too ashamed.
After a while he began to leave timid messages with Tony’s answering service, suggesting they get together for a beer. Tony did not reply, not because she was angry with him – she wouldn’t have been angry with him if he’d been run over by a truck, and she viewed seduction by Zenia as analogous – but because she couldn’t imagine what form any conversation between the two of them might take. How are you and Fine would about cover it. Thus when he finally turned up at her door, her new house door, the door of her nunnery, she simply stared at him.
“Let me in?” said West. Tony could tell at a glance that it was all finished between Zenia and West. She could tell from the colour of his skin, which was a light greenish grey, and from his sagging shoulders and dejected mouth. He’d been dismissed, sacked, ejected. He’d been kicked in the nuts.
He looked so pitiful, so pulled apart – as if he’d been on the rack, as if every one of his bones had been disconnected from every other bone, leaving only a kind of anatomical jelly – that of course she let him in. Into her home, into her kitchen, where she made him a hot drink, and ultimately into her bed, where he clutched her, shivering. It was not a sexual clutch, it was the clutch of a man drowning. But Tony was in no danger of being dragged down. She felt, if anything, strangely dry; strangely detached from him. He might be drowning, but this time she was standing on the beach. Worse: with binoculars.
She began again to cook small dinners, to boil breakfast eggs. She remembered how to care for him, how to pat him back into shape, and she did it again; but this time with fewer illusions. She still loved him, but she didn’t believe he would ever love her in return, not to the same extent. How could he, after what he’d been through? Could a man with one leg tap-dance?
Nor could she trust him. He might crawl out of his depression, tell her how good she was, bring home treats for supper, go through the routines; but if Zenia were to return, from wherever she had gone – and even West didn’t seem to know – then all of these fond habits would count for nothing. He was only on loan. Zenia was his addiction; one sip of her and he’d be gone. He’d be like a dog summoned by a supersonic whistle, inaudible to human ears. He would run off.
She never mentioned Zenia: to dwell on her might be to invoke her. But when Zenia died, when she was blown