Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [116]
This action of Tony’s revealed a good heart; a quality much more important to Charis than Tony’s academic brilliance, which was what she was known for. Zenia was known for other things as well – most notoriously for living with Stew, right out in the open, at a time when such things were not done. So much has changed. It’s the married people, now, who are considered immoral. The nukes, they are called, for nuclear family. Radioactive, potentially lethal; a big leap from Home Sweet Home, but in Charis’s opinion more appropriate.
Zenia too has changed. In addition to being thin she’s ill, and in addition to being ill she is cowed somehow, beaten, defeated. Her shoulders hunch inwards protectively, her fingers are awkward claws, the corners of her mouth droop downwards. Charis wouldn’t have known her. It’s as if the former Zenia, the lovely Zenia, the Zenia of obvious flesh, has been burned away, leaving this bone core.
Charis doesn’t like to question – she doesn’t like to intrude on the selfhood of others – but Zenia is so drained of energy it’s unlikely she will say anything at all, otherwise. So Charis chooses something non-invasive. “What brought you to my class?” she asks.
“I heard about it from a friend,” says Zenia. Every word seems an effort. “I thought it might help.”
“Help?” says Charis.
“With the cancer,” says Zenia.
“Cancer,” says Charis. It isn’t even a question, because didn’t she know it? There’s no mistaking that whiteness, that sickly flicker. An imbalance of the soul.
Zenia smiles crookedly. “I beat it once before,” she says, “but it’s come back.”
Now Charis remembers something: didn’t Zenia disappear suddenly at the end of the year? The second year Charis lived in McClung Hall, that’s when it was: Zenia vanished without an explanation, into thin air. The girls used to talk about it over breakfast and Charis would listen in, on the rare occasions when she bothered with listening, or with breakfast. They didn’t have much there that she could eat: bran flakes was about it. The gossip was that Zenia had run away with another man, dumping Stew flat and taking some of his money as well, but now Charis divines the real truth: it was the cancer. Zenia went away without telling anyone about it because she didn’t want a lot of fuss. She went away to cure herself, and to do that you need to be alone, to be free of interruption. Charis can understand that.
“How did you do it, the first time?” says Charis.
“Do what?” says Zenia, a little sharply.
“Beat it,” says Charis. “The cancer.”
“They did an operation,” says Zenia. “They took out – they did a hysterectomy, I can never have babies. But it didn’t work. So then I went to the mountains, by myself. I stopped eating meat, I cut out alcohol. I just had to concentrate. On getting well.”
This sounds exactly right to Charis. Mountains, no meat. “And now?” she says.
“I thought I was better,” says Zenia. Her voice has sunk to a hoarse whisper. “I thought I was strong enough. So I came back. I’ve been living with Stew – with West. I guess I let him take me back into our old way of living, you know, he drinks a lot – and the cancer came back. He can’t take it – he really can’t! A lot of people can’t stand to be around sickness, they’re afraid of it.” Charis nods: she knows this, she knows this deeply, at the level of her cells. “He just denies that there’s anything wrong with me,” Zenia continues. “He tries to get me to eat … mounds of food, steak and butter, all those animal fats. They make me nauseated, I can’t, I just can’t!”
“Oh,” says Charis. This is a horrible story, and one that has the ring of truth. So few people understand about animal fats. No, more: so few people understand about anything. “How awful,” she says, which is only a pallid reflection of what she feels.