Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [118]
The hens fluster and racket and abuse one another, and chase the one with the grub. Charis once thought it might be a good spiritual discipline to refuse to feed her hens anything she wouldn’t eat herself, but she has since decided that this would be pointless. The ground-up shells, for instance, the crushed bones – hens need them to make eggs, but Charis doesn’t.
It’s the wrong season of the year to be turning the garden. She should wait till spring, when the new weeds poke through; she’ll have to do it all over again at that time. But this is the only way she can be out of the house without either Zenia or Billy wanting to come with her. Each is eager to be with her alone, away from the other one. If she tries to go for a walk, just to be by herself for a short time, just to unwind, there’s a rush for the door: a subdued, oblique rush (Zenia) or a gangling, obvious one (Billy). Then there’s a psychic collision, and Charis is forced to choose. It’s bothering her a lot. But luckily, neither one of them has any great desire to help her dig up the garden. Billy doesn’t like mucking in the dirt – he says why do so much work, because all that comes up is vegetables – and Zenia of course is in no shape. She is managing to take feeble, occasional walks, down to the lakeshore and back, but even those exhaust her.
Zenia has been here for a week now, sleeping on the sofa by night, resting on it by day. The evening of her arrival was almost festive – Charis ran a hot bath for her and gave her one of her own white cotton nightgowns to put on, and hung her wet clothes up on the hooks behind the stove to dry, and after Zenia was finished with the bath and had put on the nightgown Charis wrapped her in a blanket and sat her in a chair beside the stove, and combed her wet hair, and made her a hot milk with honey. It pleased Charis to do these things; she experienced herself as competent and virtuous, overflowing with good will and good energy. It pleased her to give this energy to someone so obviously in need of it as Zenia. But by the time she’d settled Zenia on the sofa and had gone upstairs to bed, Billy was angry with her, and he’s been angry ever since. He’s made it clear that he doesn’t want Zenia in the house at all.
“What’s she doing here?” he whispered that first night.
“It’s just for a bit,” said Charis, whispering too because she didn’t want Zenia to hear them and feel unwanted. “We’ve had lots of others. On the same sofa! It’s no different.”
“It’s way different,” said Billy. “They don’t have any place else to go.”
“Neither does she,” said Charis. The different thing, she was thinking, was that the others were Billy’s friends and Zenia was hers. Well, not friend exactly. Responsibility.
That was before Billy had even laid eyes on Zenia, or spoken a single word to her. The next day he’d grunted a surly “Morning” over the scrambled eggs – not home-grown, unfortunately, the hens had dried up – and the toast with apple jelly that Charis was serving to both of them. He’d hardly looked at Zenia where she sat hunched over, still in Charis’s nightgown, with a blanket wrapped around her, sipping her weak tea. If he had looked, thought Charis, he would have relented, because Zenia was so pitiable. Her eye was still discoloured and swollen, and you could practically count the blue veins on the backs of her hands.
“Get her out of here,” said Billy when Zenia had gone to the bathroom. “Just out.”
“Shh,” said Charis. “She’ll hear you!”
“What do we know about her, anyway?” said Billy.
“She has cancer,” said Charis, as if this was all anyone needed to know.
“Then she should be in a hospital,” said Billy.
“She doesn’t believe in them,” said Charis, who didn’t either.
“Bullshit,” said Billy.
This remark struck Charis as not