Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [161]
“I thought we could have lunch,” says Mitch. Roz notes the formulation: not Would you like to have lunch or I am inviting you to lunch. No room here for a yes or no from her, no room for a rejection: Mitch is nothing if not directive. But at the same time her heart turns over, because she doesn’t get invitations like this from him very often. She looks at his face in the mirror, and he smiles at her. She always finds his mirror reflection disconcerting. Lopsided, because she isn’t used to seeing him that way around and he looks reversed. But nobody’s symmetrical.
She suppresses the desire to say, Judas Priest, how come I rate all of a sudden? Is hell freezing over, or what? Instead she says, “Honey, that would be great! I’d love it!”
Roz sits on the bath stool, a converted Victorian commode, and watches Mitch while he shaves. She adores watching him shave! All that wild white foam, a sort of caveman beard, and the way he contorts his face to get at the hidden stubble. She has to admit he’s not only distinguished, he’s still what you’d call handsome, though his skin is getting redder and his blue eyes are paling. Ruggedly handsome, they might say in a men’s clothing ad, though they’d be talking about the sheepskin coat. The sheepskin coat, the sheepskin gloves, the calfskin briefcase: that’s Mitch’s style. He has many items of good-taste expensive leather. He’s not going bald yet, praise the Lord, not that Roz would mind but men seem to, and she hopes if he does start to shed that he won’t get his armpit transplanted to the top of his head. Though he’s showing some pepper and salt in the sideburns. Roz checks him over for rust spots, the way she would a car.
What she’s really waiting for though is the aftershave. Which one will he pick, and where will he put it? Ah! Nothing too seductive, just some stuff he got in England, heather or something. The outdoor mode. And nothing below the neck. Roz sighs with relief.
She does love him. She loves him still. She can’t afford to go overboard, is all.
But maybe, underneath, she loves him too much. Maybe it’s her excessive love that pushes him away.
After Mitch is out of the bathroom Roz continues with her own preparations, the creams and lotions and perfumes that should never be seen by Mitch. They belong behind the scenes, as at theatres. Roz collects perfumes the way other people collect stamps, she’s a sucker for anything new that comes out. She has three rows of them, three rows of cunning little bottles, sorted into categories that she thinks of as Flower Arranging, Executive Briskness, and Heavy Petting. Today, in honour of her lunch with Mitch, she chooses Shalimar, from the Heavy Petting section. But it’s a bit too sultry for the middle of the day so she cuts it with something from Flower Arranging. Then, suited and made up but wearing her bedroom slippers and carrying her high heels, she descends to do her mother routine in the kitchen. Mitch, needless to say, is already out the door. He has a breakfast meeting.
“Hi, kids,” says Roz. There they are, all three of them, bless their greedy overnourished hearts, gobbling down the Rice Krispies with brown sugar and bananas on top, supervised by Dolores, who is from the Philippines and is, Roz hopes, beginning to get over her culture shock. “Hi, Dolores.”
Dolores fills Roz with anxiety and misgiving: should Dolores be here? Will Western culture corrupt her? Is Roz paying her enough? Does Dolores secretly hate them all? Is she happy, and, if not, is it Roz’s fault? Roz has had spates of thinking they shouldn’t have a live-in housekeeper. But when they don’t, there’s no one to do the kids’ lunches and handle the illnesses and last-minute emergencies except Roz, and Roz becomes over-organized and can’t pay enough attention to Mitch, and Mitch gets very short-tempered.
Roz makes the rounds of the kitchen table, bestowing smooches. Larry is fourteen going on fifteen and embarrassed by her, but he endures. The twins kiss her back, briefly, milkily. “Mom,” says Erin, “you smell like