The Robber Bride

Winter on the Island is hard. The drafty house has no insulation, farm chores are difficult in the frigid weather, and there is barely enough food for three people. Meanwhile, Zenia still shows no sign of leaving. She plays the self-pity card, which is exactly the right strategy to evoke Charis’s sympathy. In the Spring, however, Charis tells Billy and Zenia about the baby, resolving to finally evict Zenia from the house. Zenia reacts with a sneer: “‘Well,’ she says, ‘you’ve certainly screwed up!’” (305). Still clinging to the idea that she can stay in Charis’s house, Zenia suggests Charis have an abortion. Later, when Charis tells Billy about the baby, he panics. That night, Charis sleepwalks into the garden. As she wakes, she sees Zenia outside, smoking. Zenia is cruel, chastising Charis for her “do-gooder act” and telling her to mind her own business.

The next evening, Billy comes home drunk. He becomes verbally and physically abusive, even trying to knee Charis in the stomach. Finally, he breaks down in sobs, crying, “There’s no scars…Nothing. There’s no scars at all” (308). The following morning, Charis goes out to the henhouse and finds the hens all dead, their throats cut. When she goes back into the house, both Zenia and Billy are gone. She runs to the dock and sees the ferry pulling away. Standing on the deck are Billy and Zenia. At first, she imagines Billy has been arrested and that Zenia has turned him in, but then the true meaning of Billy’s words falls on her like an anvil: No scars. Zenia has no surgery scars meaning she never had cancer. She also finds a bloody knife in the kitchen and realizes Zenia has killed the chickens. Charis feels like a fool and, in a moment of despair, contemplates suicide, but she resists for the sake of the baby. The next day, the possibility of Billy being taken into custody seems all too real, so she tries calling Billy’s friends, but no one knows anything. In desperation, she calls West, whom Zenia accused of giving her a black eye. Tony answers, and Charis asks for help. The moment she mentions Zenia, Tony agrees to help her.

Charis confesses the whole story. Tony assures her that she’s not stupid, but that Zenia is “very good at what she does” (312). She counsels Charis to simply wait—Billy will either come home or he won’t. She suspects that West and Billy are simply “target practice” for Zenia, and that she has her sights set on larger prey. As they compare stories of Zenia’s mother, Tony realizes they’ve both been duped.

Tony then helps Charis prioritize her needs, and the primary need is money. Tony and Roz find Charis a lawyer who goes after Uncle Vern and the money he stole from the sale of the farm. She uses the remaining inheritance to buy the house, and Roz helps her to renovate it. August’s birth grounds Charis in the present, and she vows her daughter will have a better childhood than she did. Tony and Roz are godparents.

Now in the present, Charis resolves to enter the hotel and confront Zenia, which is necessary to exorcise her lingering presence once and for all. August is old enough not to be harmed by Zenia, and the mystery of Billy’s disappearance still haunts Charis years later.

Roz paces around her office waiting for a report from her private detective. She imagines Zenia dead or, even better, ugly. With nothing else to do, she goes home and wanders the house, mentally redecorating and thinking of Mitch. In the basement are physical reminders of Mitch, including his law books and yachting manuals. She turns her focus instead to the books and games of her children’s youth. She remembers Tony reading The Robber Bridegroom to her twin girls when they were young, though they insisted that every character in the story be female; so Roz reimagines the story with Zenia in the lead role, a wicked stranger who lures her victims to her secret lair and kills them. But maybe mythologizing Zenia is too good for her, thinks Roz. In Roz’s mind, maybe Zenia is no more than an “up-market slut.”

Roz’s life before Zenia is one of luxury and extravagance but also of humiliation. Her husband, Mitch, cheats on her and only comes back when his current affair becomes more trouble than it is worth. Then he swears his love to Roz and promises she’s the “most important woman in his life” (332), until it happens again. This is his pattern. She finally begins to fight back, ignoring him, refusing to care about his affairs, buying new dresses, and filling her time with her own preoccupations. Sensing she doesn’t need him anymore makes Mitch desperate. He makes the signs of his cheating more obvious, hoping Roz will make a scene, but she refuses to take the bait. Despite the brinksmanship, however, she still loves him. After Mitch leaves for work, Roz bids good morning to her kids, a ritual that fills her with joy. Despite all the grief Mitch has given her, her family makes it all worth it.

Mitch and Roz meet for lunch at an upscale seafood restaurant. The arty décor intimidates Roz in whom the shame of being an immigrant—not high-class or blue blooded enough, Roz believes—always lingers. As a young woman—unmarried, much to her mother’s dismay—she works in her father’s real estate development business, learning the ropes from the ground up. At that time, Mitch is a young lawyer in the firm that handles her father’s real estate contracts. He asks her out; she is thrilled but intimidated by his good looks. After dinner, they go to Mitch’s apartment, but as things begin to get intimate, he tells her he wants to marry her. They eventually marry, although Roz’s father is suspicious that Mitch is after his money. Shortly into their marriage, Roz begins to suspect the same thing.

At lunch, they are served by Zenia, who claims to be a journalist doing research for an article on sexual harassment. Zenia tells Roz that her father saved her during the war. Roz is confused and skeptical but just intrigued enough to want to hear the story. 

As a child, Roz lives in a rooming house run by her mother; her father is off fighting the war. When the war is over, however, he doesn’t return, but her mother keeps the house prepared in case he does. Apart from Roz and her mother, the other “roomers” are Miss Hines, who works at a shoe store and reads detective novels; Mr. Carruthers, a World War I veteran with a leg full of shrapnel; and Mrs. Morley, who’s divorced and sells cosmetics. Roz gets along well with Mrs. Morley who dotes on her, gives her samples of perfume, and takes her to the movies.

Roz’s neighborhood is a mixture of Catholics, Protestants, and war refugees. Roz’s mother is a strict Catholic, suspicious of other denominations, and although Roz goes to Catholic school, part of her feels isolated from her peers: “So she would push and shove, trying to break her way in” (360). As a girl, Roz has many questions about religion. She wonders about the virgin birth, the nature of sacrifice, who sits on the left hand of God, and why the Jews are to blame for Jesus’s crucifixion, according to the nuns, when the Roman soldiers actually did it.

One day, Roz comes home from school and finds two strangers in her kitchen. Her mother has gone to get food. They introduce themselves as Uncle George and Uncle Joe, although Roz has no uncles that she’s aware of. They both have the shabby look of “DPs”: displaced persons who are refugees from World War II. When her mother returns, she tells Roz the men are friends of her father’s and that he will be returning soon. The men explain that Roz’s father was a “horse thief,” and a “liar” who could “walk through a border like it wasn’t there” (366). He also carries many passports with a variety of identities. That night, her father returns. He also has the look and speech of a DP.

Her father’s presence fills Roz with anger over the way he monopolizes her mother’s time and her mother’s complete abdication to his will. She vents her anger on her mother, ignoring her and favoring her father and her “uncles,” who drop cryptic hints about their experiences during the war. When Mr. Carruthers tells Roz that George and Joe are Jews, she is shocked to find out her father is half Jewish as well. George and Joe tell her about the Holocaust, but her belief in a benevolent God makes the idea of genocide too much to process. She begins reading Miss Hines’s murder mysteries because the murders are always solved at the end.