Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [160]
In desperation he resorts to more and more open ploys. He leaves private letters lying around – the women’s letters to him, and, worse, his letters to the women – he actually makes copies! – and Roz reads them and fumes, and goes to the gym to work out, and eats chocolate mud cake afterwards, and puts the letters back where she found them and does not mention them at all. He announces a separate vacation – maybe he will take the boat on a short trip around Georgian Bay, by himself, he needs some time to unwind – and Roz pictures some loose-mouthed slut spread out on the deck of the Rosalind II, and mentally rips up the snapshot, and tells him she thinks that’s a wonderful idea because each of them could use a little space.
God only knows how much she bites her tongue. She waits until the last minute, just before he really has to elope, or else get caught screwing his latest thing in Roz’s raspberry-coloured bed in order to get Roz’s attention. Only then will she reach out a helping hand, only then will she haul him back from the brink, only then will she throw the expected tantrum. The tears Mitch sheds then are not tears of repentance. They are tears of relief.
Does Roz secretly enjoy all this? She didn’t at first. The very first time it happened she felt scooped out, disjointed, scorned and betrayed, crushed by bulldozers. She felt worthless, useless, sexless. She thought she would die. But she’s developed a knack, and therefore a taste. It’s the same as a business negotiation or a poker game. She’s always been a whiz at poker. You have to know when to up the stakes, when to call a bluff, when to fold. So she does enjoy it, some. It’s hard not to enjoy something you’re good at.
But does her enjoyment make it all right? On the contrary. It’s her enjoyment that makes it all wrong. Any old nun could tell you that, and many of them did tell Roz, once, in the earlier part of her life. If she could suffer through Mitch’s attacks like a martyr, weeping and flagellating herself – if she could let them be imposed on her, without participating at all, without colluding, without lying and concealing and smiling and playing Mitch like an oversized carp, how right it would be. She’d be suffering for love, suffering passively, instead of fighting. Fighting for herself, for her idea of who she is. The right kind of love should be selfless, for women at any rate, or so said the Sisters. The Self should be scrubbed like a floor: on both knees, with a harsh wire brush, until nothing is left of it at all.
Roz can’t do that. She can’t be selfless, she never could. Anyway her way is better. It’s harder on Mitch, perhaps, but it’s easier on her. She’s had to give up some love, of course; some of her once-boundless love for Mitch. You can’t keep a cool head when you’re drowning in love. You just thrash around a lot, and scream, and wear yourself out.
The May sunlight comes in through the window, and Mitch whistles “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” and Roz flosses her teeth quickly so Mitch won’t see her doing it when he gets out of the shower. There is nothing so dampening to lust as dental floss, in Roz’s opinion: a wide-open mouth with a piece of gooey string being manoeuvred around in it. She has always had good teeth, they are one of her features. Only recently has she begun to think they may not always be where they are right now, namely inside her mouth.
Mitch steps out of the shower and comes up behind her and encircles her with his arms, and presses her against himself, and nuzzles her hair aside and kisses her on the neck. If they hadn’t made love last night she would find this neck kiss conclusive: surely it is too courtly to be innocent! But at this preliminary stage, you never know.
“Good shower, honey?” she says. Mitch makes the noise he makes when he thinks Roz has asked a question so meaningless it doesn’t require an answer, not knowing that what she said wasn’t a question anyway but an inverted wish: translation, I hope you had a good shower, and here is your opening to complain about any little physical problems