Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [207]
Mitch isn’t at the funeral. Roz cranes her neck, scanning for him, but there’s only a bunch of men she doesn’t know. And Tony and Charis, of course.
She wonders whether Mitch has heard, and if he has, how he’s taking it. She ought to feel that Zenia has been cleared out of the way, like a moth-eaten fur coat, a tree branch fallen across the path, but she doesn’t. Zenia dead is more of a barrier than Zenia alive; though, as she tells the shrink, she can’t explain why. Could it be remorse, because Zenia the hated rival is dead and Roz wanted her to be, and Roz is not? Possibly. You aren’t responsible for everything, says the shrink.
Surely Mitch will now change, appear, react. Wake up, as if from hypnotism. But he doesn’t phone. He makes no sign, and now it’s April, the first week, the second week, the third. When Roz calls his lawyer, finally, to find out where he is, the lawyer can’t say. Something was mentioned about a trip, he seems to recall. Where? The lawyer doesn’t know.
Where Mitch is, is in Lake Ontario. He’s been there a while. The police pick up his boat, the Rosalind II, drifting with sails furled, and eventually Mitch himself washes into shore off the Scarborough Bluffs. He has his lifejacket on, but at this time of year the hypothermia would have taken him very quickly. He must have slipped, they tell her. Slipped off and fallen in, and been unable to climb back on. There was a wind, the day he left harbour. An accident. If it had been suicide he wouldn’t have been wearing his lifejacket. Would he?
He would, he would, thinks Roz. He did that part of it for the kids. He didn’t want to leave a bad package for them. He did love them enough for that. But he knew all about the temperature of the water, he’d lectured her about it often enough. Your body heat dissipates, quick as a wink. You numb, and then you die. And so he did. That it was deliberate Roz has no doubt, but she doesn’t say. It was an accident, she tells the children. Accidents happen.
She has to tidy up after him, of course. Pick up the odds and ends. Clean up the mess. She is, after all, still his wife.
The worst thing is the apartment, the apartment he shared with Zenia. He didn’t go back to it after she left, after he chased off to Europe to find her. Some of his clothes are still in the closet – his impressive suits, his beautiful shirts, his ties. Roz folds and packs, as so often before. His shoes, emptier than empty. Wherever else he is, he isn’t here.
Zenia is a stronger presence. Most of her things are gone, but a Chinese dressing gown, rose-coloured silk with dragons embroidered on it, is hanging over a chair in the bedroom. Opium, Roz thinks, smelling it. It’s the smell that bothers Roz the most. The tumbled sheets are still on the unmade bed, there are dirty towels in the bathroom. The scene of the crime. She should never have come here, this is torture. She should have sent Dolores.
Roz gives up going to the shrink. It’s the optimism that’s getting to her, the belief that things can be fixed, which right now feels like just one more burden. All this and she’s supposed to be hopeful, too? Thanks but no thanks. So, God, she says to herself. That was some number. Fooled me! Proud of yourself? What else have you got up your sleeve? Maybe a nice war, some genocide – hey, a plague or two? She knows she shouldn’t talk this way, even to herself, it’s tempting fate, but it gets her through the day.
Getting through the day is the main thing. She puts two pending real estate deals on hold; she’s in no shape to make major decisions. The magazine can run itself until she can get around to selling it, which shouldn’t be too hard, because ever since the changes Zenia brought in it’s showing a profit. If she can’t sell it she’ll fold it up. She doesn’t have the heart to go on with a publication that has made such extravagant claims, claims she has so calamitously failed to embody in herself. Superwoman she’s not, and failed is the key word. She’s been a success at many things,