Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [149]
“Billy,” she calls. But he can’t hear her, he’s inside. She walks unsteadily towards the house; she thinks she’s going to faint. She reaches the kitchen, then calls again. He must have fallen asleep. Heavily she goes up the stairs.
Billy isn’t there. He isn’t anywhere in the room, and when she looks into Zenia’s room he isn’t there either. Why would she expect him to be?
Zenia is gone also. They are both gone. They aren’t in the house.
Charis runs, she runs gasping, down towards the ferry dock. She knows now. It’s finally happened: Billy has been kidnapped. When she reaches the dock the ferry is hooting, it’s pulling away, and there is Billy standing on it, with two strange men close to him. Two men in overcoats, just the way they would look. Beside him is Zenia. She must have told, she must have turned him in.
Billy doesn’t wave. He doesn’t want the two men to know Charis has anything to do with him. He’s trying to protect her.
She walks slowly back to the house, goes slowly into it. She searches it from top to bottom, looking for a note, but there is nothing. In the sink she finds the bread knife, with blood on the blade.
It was Zenia. Zenia murdered her chickens.
Maybe Billy wasn’t kidnapped. Maybe he’s run away. He’s run away with Zenia. That’s what he meant by no scars: there are no scars on Zenia. He knows because he’s looked. He has looked at Zenia’s body, all over it, with the light on. He knows everything there is to know about that body. He has been inside it.
Charis sits at the kitchen table, banging her head softly against it, trying to drive out thought. But she thinks anyway. If there are no scars there must be no cancer. Zenia doesn’t have cancer, just as Billy said. But if that’s true, what has Charis been doing for the past six months? Being a fool, that’s what. Being stupid. Being so deeply stupid it’s a wonder she has a brain at all.
Being betrayed. For how long, how many times? He tried to tell her. He tried to make Zenia go away, but then it was too late.
As for the dead chickens and the bread knife, it’s a message. Slit your wrists. She hears a voice, a voice from a long time ago, more than one voice. You are so stupid. You can’t win this fight. Not in this life. She’s had almost enough of this life anyway; maybe it’s time for the next one. Zenia has taken away the part of herself she needs in order to live. She is dumb, she is a failure, she is an idiot. The bad things that have happened to her are a punishment, they are to teach her a lesson. The lesson is that she might as well give up.
That is Karen speaking. Karen is back, Karen has control of their body. Karen is angry with her, Karen is desolate, Karen is sick with disgust, Karen wants them to die. She wants to kill their body. Already she has the bread knife in her hand, moving it towards their shared arm. But if she does that, their baby will die too, and Charis refuses to let that happen. She calls all of her strength, all of her inner healing light, her grandmother’s fierce blue light, into her hands; she wrestles Karen silently for possession of the knife. When she gets it, she pushes Karen away from her as hard as she can, back down into the shadows. Then she throws the knife out the door.
She waits for Billy to come back. She knows he won’t, but she waits anyway. She sits at the kitchen table, willing her body not to move, not moving. She waits all afternoon. Then she goes to bed.
By the next day she’s no longer so spaced out. Instead she’s frantic. The worst thing is not knowing. Maybe she’s misjudged Billy, maybe he hasn’t run away with Zenia. Maybe he’s in prison, having his throat cut in the showers. Maybe he’s dead.
She calls all the numbers scribbled on the wall beside their phone. She asks,