Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [201]
“But what about the picture?” says Roz. “Her family?”
“Oh, Roz,” says Harriet. “Pictures are a dime a dozen. Whose word have you got for it that those people were her family?”
“She knew about my father,” says Roz. She’s reluctant to let go.
“So did I,” said Harriet. “Come on, Roz, there are hints about all that in every magazine interview you’ve ever given. What did she tell you about him that any twelve-year-old with an active imagination wouldn’t have been able to make up?”
“You’re right,” sighs Roz, “but there was so much detail.”
“She’s very good,” Harriet agrees.
London proves more fruitful: Zenia did indeed work for a magazine there; she appears to have written some of the articles she’s claimed as hers, though by no means all of them. The ones on clothing, yes; the ones on political hot spots, no. The ones with men’s names actually seem to have been written by the men in question, although three out of the five are dead. She made a brief traverse through the gossip columns when her name was linked with that of a cabinet minister; the phrase “good friend” was used, and marriage was subsequently hinted at but did not take place. Then there was a scandal when it came to light that Zenia had been seeing a Soviet cultural attaché at the same time. “Seeing” was a euphemism. There was a lot of political name-calling, and the usual English tabloid foxhunting and muckraking. After that incident Zenia had dropped out of sight.
“Did she really travel to all those countries?” says Roz.
“How much money do you want to spend?” asks Harriet.
Knowing about the flimsiness of Zenia’s façade is no help to Roz at all. She’s stalemated. If she tells Mitch about the lies it will just come across as jealousy.
It is jealousy. Roz is so jealous she can’t think straight. Some nights she cries with rage, others with sorrow. She walks around in a red fog of anger, in a grey mist of self-pity, and she hates herself for both. She calls on her stubbornness, her will to fight, but who exactly is her enemy? She can’t fight Mitch, because she wants him back. Maybe if she holds her fire long enough, this will all blow over. Mitch will fizzle out like a barbecue in the rain, he’ll come back home as he has before, wanting her to disentangle him from Zenia, wanting to be saved. And Roz will do it, though this time it won’t be so easy. He’s violated something, some unwritten contract, some form of trust. He’s never moved out before. The other women were a game to him but Zenia is serious business.
There’s another way it could play: Zenia would divest herself of Mitch. She would throw him out the window, as he has thrown many. Mitch would get his comeuppance. Roz would get revenge.
In public Roz maintains her grin, her tooth-filled grin. The muscles of her jaws ache with it. She wishes to preserve her dignity, put up a bold front. But that’s not so easy, with her chest ripped open like this and her heart exposed for all to surely see; her heart, which is on fire and dripping blood.
She can’t expect much pity from her friends, the ones who used to tell her to dump Mitch. She sees now what they’d meant: Dump him before he dumps you!
But she didn’t listen. Instead she’d kept on playing the knife-thrower’s assistant, in her sparkly costume, with her arms and legs splayed out, standing still and smiling while the knives thudded into the wall, tracing the outline of her body. Flinch and you’re dead. It was inevitable that one day, by accident or on purpose, she’d get hit.
Tony phones her. So does Charis. She hears the concern in their voices: they know something, they’ve heard. But she puts them off, she holds them at arm’s length. One touch of their compassion now would do her in.
Three months go by. Roz straightens