Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [103]
It’s always a jump in time for Charis to see Roz’s children grown up, although of course they have grown up and she herself has watched them do it. But their aging is hard to believe. It’s like the times Augusta is in the next room and Charis walks in, expecting to see her cross-legged on the floor playing house with her Barbie doll – Charis hadn’t approved of that thing, but was too weak to forbid it – and instead finds her sitting in a chair in a wide-shouldered suit and sling-back high heels, painting her nails. Oh August! she wants to say. Where did you get those weird dress-up clothes? But those are her real clothes. It is a true head-bender to see your own daughter walking around in clothes that might have belonged to your mother.
There is Larry, then, in jeans and a fawn suede jacket, his taffy-haired head inclined towards Zenia, one of his hands on her arm. Little Larry! Serious little Larry, who would purse his mouth and frown at the very same time his twin sisters were laughing and pinching each other’s arms and telling each other they had big snots coming out of their noses. Charis has never been altogether comfortable about Larry, or rather about his rigidity. She’s always felt that a good massage therapist could do wonders. But Larry must have loosened up considerably if he’s been having lunch at the Toxique.
But what is he doing with Zenia? What is he doing with Zenia right now? He’s bending his face down, Zenia’s own face is reaching up like a tentacle, they’re kissing! Or so it appears.
“Listen lady, you want a hot dog or not?” says the vendor.
“What?” says Charis, startled.
“Crazy broad, shove off,” says the vendor. “Get back in the bin. You’re bothering the customers.”
If Charis were Roz, she’d say, What customers? But if Charis were Roz she’d be in a state of deep shock. Zenia and Larry! But she’s twice his age! thinks the vestige of Charis that remains from the time when age, in female-male relationships, was supposed to matter. The present Charis tells herself not to be judgmental. Why shouldn’t women do what men have been doing for ages, namely robbing the cradle? Age is not the point. The point is not Zenia’s age, but Zenia herself. Larry might as well be drinking liquid drain cleaner.
While Charis is having this uncharitable thought, Zenia steps sideways, off the curb, and disappears into a taxi. Larry gets in after her – so it was not a goodbye kiss – and the taxi is sucked out into the current of traffic. Charis dithers. What should she do now? Her urge is to phone Roz – Roz! Roz! Help! Come quickly! – but that would do no good, because she doesn’t know where Zenia and Larry are going; and even if she did, so what? What would Roz do? Burst into their hotel room or whatever, and say Let go of my son? Larry is twenty-two, he is an adult. He can make his own decisions.
Charis sees another taxi and runs out into the street, flailing her arms. The taxi squeals to a stop in front of her and she hurries around, opens the door, and scrambles in. “Thank you,” she gasps.
“You lucky you not dead,” says the driver, who has an accent Charis can’t identify. “So, what can I do for you?”
“Follow that taxi,” says Charis.
“What taxi?” says the driver.
So that is that, and worse, Charis feels honour-bound to pay him three dollars, because she did after all get into his cab, but she only has a five-dollar bill and a ten, and he doesn’t have change, and she doesn’t want to ask the hot dog vendor, considering what he just called her, so it ends with him saying, “Time is money, lady, do me a favour, forget it,” and there are bad feelings all round.
Luckily they are digging up Queen Street, yet again, and Zenia’s taxi is caught in the jam. After running down the street some more Charis manages to find another empty taxi, only two cars away from Zenia’s, and she flings herself into it, and together the two taxis ooze slowly through the downtown core. Zenia and Larry get out at the Arnold Garden Hotel, and so does Charis. She watches the uniformed doorman nod to them, she watches Larry