The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood Read Free Book Online Page A

her, a thin iridescent skin held in place by surface tension. She puts a lot of effort into keeping it together, her willed illusion of comfort and stability, the words flowing from left to right, the routines of love; but underneath is darkness. Menace, chaos, cities aflame, towers crashing down, the anarchy of deep water. She takes a breath to steady herself and feels the oxygen and car fumes rushing into her brain. Her legs arewavery, the façade of the street ripples, tremulous as a reflection on a pond, the weak sunlight blows away like smoke.
    Nevertheless, when Roz offers to drive her home, or wherever she’s going, Tony says she’ll walk. She needs the interlude, she needs the space, she needs to ready herself for West.
    This time the three of them don’t kiss the air. Instead they hug. Charis is shivering, despite her attempt at serenity. Roz is flippant and dismissive, but she’s holding back tears. She’ll sit in her car and cry, blotting her eyes on her bright jacket sleeve, until she’s ready to drive back to her penthouse office. Charis on the other hand will amble down to the Island ferry dock, peering into store windows and jay-walking. On the ferry she’ll watch the gulls and visualize being one, and try to put Zenia out of her mind. Tony feels protective towards the two of them. What do they know about the hard dark choices? Neither one of them is going to be a whole lot of help in the coming struggle. But then, they have nothing to lose. Nothing, or nobody. Tony does.
    She makes her way along Queen, then turns north on Spadina. She wills her feet to move, she wills the sun to shine.
He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who puts it not unto the touch, To win, or lose it all
, she repeats in her head. A bracing verse, a general favourite, a favourite of generals. What she needs is some perspective. Some
evitcepsrep
. A medicinal word.
    Gradually her heart settles. It’s soothing to be among strangers, who require from her no efforts, no explanations, no reassurances. She likes the mix on the street here, the mixed skins. Chinatown has taken over mostly, though there are still some Jewish delicatessens, and, further up and off to the side, the Portuguese and West Indian shops of the Kensington Market. Rome in the second century, Constantinople in the tenth, Vienna in the nineteenth. A crossroads. Those from other countries look as if they’re trying hard toforget something, those from here as if they’re trying hard to remember. Or maybe it’s the other way around. In any case there’s an inturned, preoccupied cast to the eyes, a sideways glancing. Music from elsewhere.
    The sidewalk is crowded with lunchtime shoppers; they avoid bumping into one another without seeming to look, as if they’re covered with cat whiskers. Tony weaves in and out, past the vegetable stores with their star fruit and lichees and long crinkly cabbages set out on stands at the front, the butchers with their glazed reddish ducks dangling in the windows, the linen shops with their cutwork tablecloths, their silk kimonos with good-luck dragons embroidered on the backs. Among Chinese people she feels the right height, although she is not unaware of how she might be viewed by some of them. A hairy white foreign devil; though she is not very hairy, as such things go, or very devilish either. Foreign, yes. Foreign here.
    It’s nearly time for her to get her hair cut, at Liliane’s, two blocks up and around the corner. They make a fuss of her there: they admire, or pretend to admire, her small feet, her tiny mole-paw hands, her flat bum, her heart-shaped mouth, so out of date among the pouty bee-stung lips of the fashion magazines. They tell her she is almost Chinese.
    Only almost, though.
Almost
is what she has always felt; approximate. Zenia has never been
almost
, even at her most fraudulent. Her fakery was deeply assumed, and even her most superficial disguises were total.
    Tony walks and walks, up