Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [154]
Like shit. Nobody is monarch of anything any more. It’s all out of control.
From here Roz can see the lake, and the future marina they’re building out of termite-riddled landfill, and the Island, where Charis has her tiny falling-apart mouse nest of a house; and, from her other window, the CN Tower – tallest lightning rod in the world – with the SkyDome stadium beside it, nose and eye, carrot and onion, phallus and ovum, pick your own symbolism, and it’s a good thing Roz didn’t invest in that one, rumour has it the backers are losing a shirt or two. If she stands in the angle of the two windows and looks north, there’s the university with its trees, golden at this time of year, and hidden behind it, Tony’s red-brick Gothic folly. Perfect for Tony though, what with the turret. She can hole herself up in there and pretend she’s invulnerable.
Roz wonders what the other two are doing right now. Are they pacing the floor like her, are they nervous? Seen from the air the three of them would form a triangle, with Roz as their apex. They could signal to each other with flashlights, like Nancy Drew the girl detective. Of course there’s always the phone.
Roz reaches for it, dials, sets it down. What can they tell her? They don’t know anything more about Zenia than she does. Less, most likely.
Roz’s hands are damp, and her underarms. Her body smells like rusty nails. Is this a hot flash, or merely the old rage coming back? She’s just jealous, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it’s not, it’s the worst, it’s the worst feeling there is – incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and focused and hard as glass, like the view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness. Which must be why it inspires so much murder: killing is the ultimate control.
Roz thinks of Zenia dead. Her actual body, dead. Dead and melting.
Not very satisfying, because if Zenia were dead she wouldn’t know it. Better to think of her ugly. Roz takes Zenia’s face, pulls down on it as if it’s putty. Some nice jowls, a double chin, a permanent scowl. Blacken a few teeth, like children’s drawings of witches. Better.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful of us all?
Depends, says the mirror. Beauty is only skin deep.
Right you are, says Roz, I’ll take some anyway. Now answer my question.
I think you’re a really terrific person, says the mirror. You’re warm and generous. You should have no difficulty at all finding some other man.
I don’t want some other man, says Roz, trying not to cry. I want Mitch.
Sorry, says the mirror. Can’t be done.
It always ends like that.
Roz blows her nose and gathers up her jacket and purse, and locks her office door. Boyce is working late, bless his fussy little argyle socks: the light’s on under his door. She wonders whether she should knock and invite him out for a drink, which he wouldn’t find it politic to refuse, and take him to the King Eddie bar and bore the pants off him.
Better not. She’ll go home and bore her kids, instead. She has a vision of herself, running down Bay Street in nothing but her orange bathrobe, tossing big handfuls of money out of a burlap bag. Divesting herself of her assets. Getting rid of all her filthy lucre. After that she could join a cult, or something. Be a monk. A monkess. A monkette. Live on dried beans. Embarrass everybody, even more than she does now. But would there be electric toothbrushes? To be holy, would you need to get plaque?
The twins are watching TV in the family room, which is decorated in Nouveau Pueblo – sand, sage, ochre, and with a genuine cactus looming