The Robber Bride

  "What did you do in the war?" says Roz, eager to find out more about her father.

  The two uncles laugh, and look at each other. "We was horse thieves," says Uncle George.

  "The best horse thieves," says Uncle Joe. "No. Your father, he was the best. He could steal a horse -"

  "He could steal a horse from right between your legs, you wouldn't notice," says Uncle George. "He could lie -"

  "He could lie like God himself."

  "Bite your tongue! God don't lie."

  "You're right, God says nothing. But your father, he never blinked. He could walk through a border like it wasn't there," says Uncle Joe.

  "What's a border?" asks Roz.

  "A border is a line on a map," says Uncle Joe.

  "A border is where it gets dangerous," says Uncle George. "It's where you need a passport."

  "Passport. See?" says Uncle Joe. He shows Roz his passport, with his picture in it. Then he shows her another, with the same picture but a different name. He has three of them. He fans them out like a deck of cards. Uncle George has four.

  "A man with only one passport is like a man with only one hand," he says solemnly.

  "Your father, he has more passports than anyone. The best, like I said." They raise their glasses, and drink to Roz's father.

  Roz's mother makes chicken, with mashed potatoes and gravy, and boiled carrots; she is cheerful, more cheerful than Roz has ever seen her, and urges the uncles to have more. Or maybe she's not cheerful, maybe she's nervous. She keeps looking at her watch. Roz is nervous, too: when will her father arrive?

  "He'll be here when he's here," say the uncles.

  Roz's father comes back in the middle of the night. Her mother wakes her up, and whispers, "Your father's back," almost as if she's apologizing for something, and takes Roz downstairs in her nightgown, and there he is, sitting at the table, in the third chair that was kept for him. He sits easily, filling the space, as if he's always been there. He's large and barrel-shaped, bearded, bear-headed. He smiles and holds out his arms. "Come, give Papa a kiss!"

  Roz looks around: who is this Papa? Then she understands that he means himself. It's true, what Julia Warden said: her father is a DP. She can tell by the way he talks.

  Now Roz's life has been cut in two. On one side is Roz, and her mother, and the rooming house, and the nuns and the other girls at school. This part seems already in the past, although it's still going on. That's the side where there are mostly women, women who have power, which means they have power over Roz, because even though God and Jesus are men it's her mother and the nuns who have the last word, except for the priests of course, but that's just on Sundays. On the other side is her father, filling the kitchen with his bulk, his loud voice, his multilayered smell; filling the house with it, filling up all the space in her mother's gaze so that Roz is pushed off to the edge, because her mother, who is so unbending, bends. She abdicates. She says, "Ask your father." She looks at Roz's father mutely, the same kind of mushy cow-eyed look the Virgin Mary gives the Baby Jesus or the Holy Spirit in the pictures; she dishes up his food and sets the plate before him as if it's some kind of offering.

  And there isn't less work for her now, there's more, because there are three plates instead of two, there's three of everything, and Roz's father never has to clean up. "Help your mother," he tells Roz, "in this family we help each other"; but Roz doesn't see him helping. Roz catches them hugging and kissing in the kitchen, two days after he's arrived, her father's big bear arms around her thin angular mother, and is full of disgust at her mother for being so soft, and with sorrow and jealousy and the rage of banishment.

  To punish her mother for such betrayals Roz turns away from her. She turns to the uncles, when they are there, and also, and especially, to her father. "Come sit on Papa's knee," he says. And she does, and from that safe place she regards her mother, working as hard as ever, hunched over the kitchen sink or kneeling in front of the oven, or scraping the bones off their plates into the pot of soup stock, or wiping the floor. "Make yourself useful," her mother snaps, and once Roz would have obeyed. But now her father's arms hold her tight. "I didn't see her for so long," he says. And her mother clenches her lips and says nothing, and Roz watches her with gloating triumph and thinks it serves her right.

  But when her father isn't there she has to work, the same as usual. She has to scrub and polish. If she doesn't, her mother calls her a spoiled brat. "Who was your servant last year?" she jeers. "Look at my hands!"

  The uncles move in. They've been having dinner every night, but now they move right into the house. They're living in the cellar. They have two beds down there, two army surplus cots, and two army sleeping bags as well.

  "Just till they get on their feet," says Roz's father. "Till the ship comes in."

  "What ship?" says Roz's mother. "It'll be a frosty Friday when any ship of theirs makes it to land." But she says this indulgently, and she cooks for them and asks them to have some more, and washes their sheets, and says not a word about the smoking, and the drinking too, which goes on down in the cellar with roars of laughter coming up the stairs. The uncles don't have to help clean up, either. When Roz asks why, all her mother will say is that they saved her father's life, during the war.

  "We saved each other's life," says Uncle George. "I saved Joe's, Joe saved your father's, your father saved mine."

  "They never caught us," says Uncle Joe. "Not once."

  "Dummkopf, if they did we wouldn't be here," says Uncle George.

  Aggie's grip on the roomers is slipping, because it's no longer the same rules for everyone. It doesn't help that the uncles don't pay rent, or that they slam the front door, hurrying in and out. They have places to go, they have things to do. Unnamed places, unspecified things. They have friends to meet, a friend from New York, a friend from Switzerland, a friend from Germany. They have lived in New York, and in London, and in Paris too. Other places. They refer with nostalgia to bars and hotels and racetracks in a dozen cities.

  Miss Hines complains about the noise: do they have to shout at each other, and in foreign languages too? But Mrs. Morley jokes around with them, and sometimes joins them for a drink, when Roz's father is home and they're all in the kitchen. She comes mincing down the stairs in her high heels, jingling her bracelets, and says she doesn't mind a drop, now and then.

  "She can sure hold her liquor," says Uncle Joe.

  "She's a babe," says Uncle George.

  "What's a babe?" says Roz.

  "There's ladies, there's women, and there's babes," says Uncle George. "Your mother is a lady. That one, she's a babe."

  Mr. Carruthers knows about the drinking that's going on in the cellar, and in the kitchen too. He can smell the smoke. He's still not supposed to drink or smoke in his own room but he starts doing it, more than he did before. One afternoon he opens his door and corners Roz in the front hall.

  "Those men are Jews," he whispers. Beer fumes fill the air. "We sacrificed our life for this country and they're handing it over to the Jews!"

  Roz is galvanized. She runs to find the uncles, and asks them right away. If they really are Jews she might take a crack at converting them, and astonish Sister Conception.

  "Me, I'm a U.S. citizen," says Uncle George, laughing a little. "I got the passport to prove it. Joe, he's a Jew."

  "I'm a Hungarian, he's a Pole," says Uncle Joe. "I'm a Yugoslav, he's a Dutchman. This other passport says I'm Spanish. Your father now, he's half a German. The other half, that's the Jew."

  This is a shock to Roz. She feels disappointment - no spiritual triumphs for her, because she could never hope to change her father in any way, she can see that - and then guilt: what if the Sisters find out? Worse, what if they've known all along and haven't told her? She pictures the malicious glee on Julia Warden's face, the whisperings that will go on behind her back.

  She must look dismayed, because Uncle George says, "Better to be a Jew than a murderer. They murdered six million, over there."
r />   "Five," says Uncle Joe. "The rest was other things. Gypsies and homos."

  "Five, six, who's counting?"

  "Six what?" says Roz.

  "Jews," says Uncle George. "They burnt them in ovens, they piled them up in heaps. Little Rozzie-lind, you wouldn't want to know. If they got their hands on you, back over there, they'd make you into a lampshade."

  He doesn't explain to Roz that it would just be the skin. She has a picture of her entire body turned into a lampshade, with a lightbulb inside it and the light beaming out from her eyes and nostrils and ears and mouth. She must look terrified, because Uncle Joe says, "Don't scare the kid. All of that, it's over."

  "Why?" says Roz. "Why would they?" But neither of them answers.

  "It's not over till it's over," says Uncle George gloomily.

  Roz has the feeling that someone has been lying to her. Not just about her father: about the war too, and about God. The starving orphans were bad enough but they weren't the whole story. What else has been going on, with the ovens and the heaps and the lampshades, and why has God allowed it?

  She doesn't want to think about any of it any more because it's too sad and confusing. Instead she takes to reading murder mysteries. She borrows them from Miss Hines and reads them at night, beside the streetlight coming through her attic window. She likes the furniture, and the outfits of the people in them, and the butlers and the maids. But mostly she likes the fact that there's a reason for every death, and only one murderer at a time, and things get figured out at the end, and the murderer always gets caught.

  44

  Roz walks home from school in an expectant mood. There's something going on; she isn't sure what, but she knows there's something. Something is about to happen.

  Last week, her mother said at breakfast: Mrs. Morley has been fired. What did that mean? Lost her job, but Roz had a brief vision of Mrs. Morley in flames, like an early martyr. Not that she wanted Mrs. Morley to burn up. She liked her, and also her accoutrements - her face cream samples, her costume jewellery, and especially her shoes.

  Ever since then Mrs. Morley has been dragging around the house in her quilted pink satin dressing gown. Her eyelids are puffy, her face bare of makeup; the jingling from her usual festoons of necklaces and bangles has fallen silent. She isn't supposed to eat in her room but she's doing it anyway, out of paper bags brought to her by Mr. Carruthers; there are sandwich crusts and apple cores in her wastepaper basket, but although Roz's mother must be aware of this, she isn't knocking on Mrs. Morley's door to issue the commands she's normally so fond of giving. Sometimes these paper bags contain small flat bottles that don't turn up in the wastepaper basket. In the late afternoons, still in her dressing gown, she goes down to the kitchen for short, fraught talks with Roz's mother. What is she going to do? she asks. Roz's mother purses her lips, and says she doesn't know.

  These talks are about money: without her job, Mrs. Morley won't be able to pay the rent. Roz feels sorry for her, but at the same time less friendly, because Mrs. Morley is whining and it makes Roz disdainful. If girls whine at school they get poked or slapped by the other children, or stood in a corner by the nuns.

  "She should pull herself together," Roz's mother says to Roz's father at the dinner table. Once Roz would have been the audience for such comments, but now she is just a little pitcher with big ears.

  "Have a heart, Aggie," says Roz's father. No one else ever calls Roz's mother Aggie to her face.

  "Having a heart is all very well," says Roz's mother, "but it won't put food on the table."

  But there is food on the table. Beef stew, mashed potatoes and gravy, and cooked cabbage. Roz is eating it.

  On top of Mrs. Morley being fired, Miss Hines is down with a cold. "Just pray to God she doesn't catch pneumonia," says Roz's mother. "Then we'll have two useless women on our hands."

  Roz goes into Mrs. Morley's room. Mrs. Morley is in bed, eating a sandwich; she shoves it under the covers, but smiles when she sees it's only Roz. "Honey, you should always knock before entering a lady's chamber," she says.

  "I have an idea," says Roz. "You could sell your shoes." The ones Roz means are the red satin ones with the sparkly clips. They must be very expensive.

  Mrs. Morley's smile wavers and falls. "Oh, honey," she says. "If only I could."

  As she rounds the corner to her house Roz sees a strange sight. The front lawn is covered with snow like all the other lawns, but scattered over it there are a number of coloured objects. As she gets closer she sees what they are: Mrs. Morley's dresses, Mrs. Morley's stockings, Mrs. Morley's handbags, Mrs. Morley's brassieres and underpants. Mrs. Morley's shoes. A lurid light plays round them.

  Roz goes inside, into the kitchen. Her mother is sitting white-faced and bolt upright at the kitchen table; her eyes are still as stone. In front of her is an untouched cup of tea. Miss Hines is sitting in Roz's chair, patting her mother's hand with small fluttery pats. She has a spot in pink in either cheek. She looks nervous, but also elated.

  "Your mother's had a shock," she says to Roz. "Would you like a glass of milk, dear?"

  "What are Mrs. Morley's things doing on the lawn?" says Roz.

  "What could I do?" says Miss Hines, to nobody in particular. "I couldn't help seeing them. They didn't even shut the door all the way."

  "Where is she?" asks Roz. "Where's Mrs. Morley?" Mrs. Morley must have gone away without paying the rent. "Flown the coop," is how her mother would put it. Roomers have flown the coop in that way before, leaving possessions behind them, though never out on the lawn.

  "She won't be showing her face in this house again," says her mother.

  "Can I have her shoes?" says Roz. She's sorry she won't be seeing Mrs. Morley again, but there is no need for the shoes to go to waste.

  "Don't touch her filthy things," says her mother. "Don't lay a finger on them! They belong in the garbage, like her. That whore! If all that junk's not gone by tomorrow I'll burn it in the incinerator!"

  Miss Hines looks shocked by such strong language. "I will pray for her," she says.

  "I won't," says Roz's mother.

  Roz connects none of this with her father until he appears, later, in time for dinner. The fact that he's on time is remarkable: he isn't usually. He is subdued, and respectful towards Roz's mother, but he doesn't hug her or give her a kiss. For the first time since his return he seems almost afraid of her.

  "Here's the rent," he says. He dumps a little heap of money on the table.

  "Don't think you can buy me off," says Roz's mother. "You and that slut! It's hush money. I'm not touching one dirty cent."

  "It's not hers," says Roz's father. "I won it at poker."

  "How could you?" says Roz's mother. "After all I gave up for you! Look at my hands!"

  "She was crying," says Roz's father, as if this explains everything.

  "Crying!" says Roz's mother with scorn, as if she herself would never do such a degrading thing. "Crocodile tears! She's a man-eater."

  "I felt sorry for her," says Roz's father. "She threw herself at me. What could I do?"

  Roz's mother turns her back on him. She hunches over the stove and dishes out the stew, hitting the spoon loudly on the side of the pot, and goes through the entire dinner without speaking. At first Roz's father hardly touches his dinner - Roz knows the feeling, it's anxiety and guilt - but Roz's mother shoots him a look of concentrated disgust and points at his plate, meaning that if he doesn't eat what she's spent her whole life cooking for him he'll be in even worse trouble than he is. When her back is turned Roz's father smiles a little smile at Roz, and winks at her. Then she knows that all of this - his misery, his hangdog air - is an act, or partly an act, and that he's all right really.

  The money stays on the table. Roz eyes it: she has never seen so much money in a pile before. She would like to ask if she could have it, since neither of them seems to want it, but while she's clearing off the plates - "Help your mother," says her father - it disappears. It's in one of their pocke
ts, she knows, but which one? Her mother's, she suspects - her apron pocket, because in the following days she softens, and talks more, and life returns to normal.

  Mrs. Morley however is never seen again. Neither are her clothes and shoes. Roz misses her; she misses the pet names and hand lotion; but she knows enough not to say so.

  "A babe, like I said," says Uncle George. "Your father has a strong weakness."

  "Better he should close the door," says Uncle Joe.

  A few years later, when she was a teenager and had the benefit of girlfriends, Roz put it together: Mrs. Morley was her father's mistress. She'd read about mistresses in the murder mysteries. Mistress was the word she preferred, because it was more elevated than the other words available: "floozie," "whore," "easy lay." Those other words implied nothing but legs apart, loose flabby legs at that - weak legs, legs that did nothing but lie there, legs for sale - and smells, and random coupling, and sexual goo. Whereas mistress hinted at a certain refinement, an expensive wardrobe, a well-furnished establishment, and also at the power and cunning and beauty it took to get such things.

  Mrs. Morley hadn't had the establishment or the refinement and her beauty had been a matter of opinion, but at least she'd had the clothes, and Roz wanted to give her father some credit: he wouldn't have gone for just any old easy lay. She wanted to be proud of him. She knew her mother was in the right and her father was in the wrong; she knew her mother had been virtuous and had worked her fingers to the bone and had ruined her hands, and had been treated with ingratitude. But it was an ingratitude Roz shared. Maybe her father was a scoundrel, but he was the one she adored.

  Mrs. Morley was not the only mistress. There were others, over the years: kindly, sentimental, soft-bodied women, lazy and fond of a drink or two and of tearful movies. In later life Roz deduced their presence, by her father's intermittent jauntiness and by his absences; she even bumped into them sometimes on downtown streets, on the arm of her aging but still outrageous father. But such women came and went, whereas her mother was a constant.