The Robber Bride

Tony, Charis, and Roz meet at The Toxique for dinner. They all have Zenia stories to tell.

Tony waits in a hotel lobby. She’s tracking Zenia and preparing for an altercation. She carries a cordless drill, in case she has to remove the hotel door, and her father’s old German Luger, fully loaded, in her bag. She’s contemplating murder.

Two nights prior, she asks West about Zenia and why he left Tony for her. He claims it wasn’t the sex; she was “frigid” after being abused by a Greek Orthodox priest as a girl. He confesses that Zenia broke up with him because she found him “boring.” West says he loves Tony, but she still doesn’t know why he has her hotel extension written down among his papers.

Tony doesn’t know which hotel Zenia is in, or what fake name she is likely using, so she plans to stake out every hotel until she spots Zenia walking through the lobby. At that point, she doesn’t know how her plan will play out. As she sits in the hotel, trying to look inconspicuous, she feels a hand on her shoulder: It is Zenia, greeting her warmly. She gave West her number, she alleges, because she wanted Tony to call her. She has something important to discuss, so she invites Tony up to her room.

Zenia tells Tony that she faked her own death to throw off some dangerous people she had gotten involved with. She adds that Mitch’s pursuit of her was fouling her plans. When Tony blames Zenia for Mitch’s suicide, she dodges responsibility, claiming Mitch would have killed himself regardless. Back in Zenia’s presence, Tony’s bloodlust fades, seeing her instead as “magnificent” and “unique.” Zenia then asks if she can stay with Tony for a few weeks to hide from the forces that are pursuing her. She claims to know who assassinated Gerry Bull, a Canadian engineer who was developing a “supergun” for the Iraqi military. She wants to confess to a newspaper, and she just needs a safe house until her proof arrives. The moment Zenia mentions West, however—she suggests sleeping in his study—the entire story falls apart in Tony’s mind. She refuses Zenia’s request.

At that, Zenia turns vicious, hurling insults and threatening to sabotage Tony’s career. Tony musters the courage to simply walk out, exiting the hotel shaken. 

Charis recounts her Zenia story next. While she plans to confront Zenia, she must fortify herself spiritually first. She gathers meaningful objects and creates a meditation altar from which to draw positive energy. At work, Shanita, sensing something is wrong, reads Charis’s cards. She predicts a positive outcome for Charis, but someone close to her will die. Charis fears it is Billy.

She chooses a day that feels right and crosses to the mainland, making her way to the Arnold Garden Hotel. She reluctantly tells Roz about Zenia and Larry entering the hotel together. In fact, she called Larry that morning to ask Zenia’s room number. At noon, she enters the hotel and takes the elevator to the 14th floor, fighting a rising panic. When she knocks, Zenia answers, dressed in a robe and with a towel wrapped around her head. She’s been expecting Charis, having been forewarned by Larry. The room is a mess, a surprise to Tony who’d been there earlier and found the room barely touched.

Zenia tells that Charis she has AIDS, contracted from a dirty needle, and that she needs somewhere peaceful to rest before she dies: “Someplace like the Island” (469). Charis is tempted to take her in and try to heal her again, but something about Zenia’s look stops her. When she asks why Zenia lied about having cancer, Zenia turns into her true, virulent self. She tells Charis that Billy never loved her, that he was “peddling hash” right under her nose, and that he found her “stupid.” She claims she convinced Billy to turn state’s evidence, ratting out his friends to the authorities to save himself. She was working with the Mounties, she says, infiltrating the draft dodger support groups. She also tells her that Billy killed the chickens as a practical joke against Charis. Charis is filled with such rage—the rage of Karen—she imagines throwing Zenia over the balcony. As she leaves, she tells Zenia that she forgives her. Zenia scoffs, telling Charis to get a life. “I have a life” (474), she responds.

While Roz waits for Harriet’s daily report on Zenia’s whereabouts, she considers business proposals. Harriet calls, giving Roz the hotel and room information and revealing that Zenia appears to be having an affair with Larry. Roz is enraged but doesn’t know what to do. She seeks advice from her assistant, Boyd. He advises her to confront Zenia and clear the air.

Roz takes a taxi to the Arnold Garden Hotel, goes the 14th floor, and knocks on Zenia’s door prepared for battle. Zenia answers, dressed for a night out and with an open and empty suitcase on the bed. She confronts Zenia over her having a “thing” with her son Larry. Bemused, Zenia asks if Roz has had her followed again. She claims her feelings for Larry are purely “maternal,” adding that Larry approached her for information on his father. Zenia chastises Roz for not telling Larry more about him. So far, she’s given Larry a favorable impression of Mitch, but she threatens to tell him what a “twisted jerk poor Larry’s father really was” (485). They argue over Mitch’s culpability, with Roz seeing him as a victim, but Zenia denies any responsibility for his downfall. He made his own choices, she argues. She then asks Roz for a plane ticket and $50,000 in cash, or she will report Larry to the authorities for dealing cocaine. His life could be in danger, she claims, if his suppliers find out law enforcement is getting close. Roz believes Zenia is lying, but she won’t take the risk.

Roz has decided to pay Zenia off, wait until she leaves town, and then find out if Larry is really dealing coke. Tony is fatalistic about Zenia—nothing can be done, she thinks—but Charis believes they should be grateful that Zenia is leaving and none of them “succumbed” to their violent impulses. Their moral integrity is intact. They give thanks when suddenly Charis sits bolt upright and says that Zenia is dead. She has a premonition of Zenia’s murder. She sobs because she believes that by wishing Zenia dead, she is somehow morally responsible. They go to the hotel to verify Charis’s claim. When they go out to the courtyard, Zenia is floating dead in the fountain.

As the police converge on the scene, Roz concocts a story about forgetting her gloves at the hotel earlier that day, checking by the fountain, and discovering the body. Roz wonders who may have killed Zenia, even considering Larry a suspect if Zenia tried to blackmail him. When asked by the police, they all admit to knowing Zenia; Charis claims they were her best friends.

At home, Tony questions West about Zenia—she left a message, he tells her, but for Tony, not for him. He wants nothing to do with Zenia anymore, so he never passed on the message. Tony tells him that Zenia is dead.

Back on the Island, Charis finds her daughter August home from college for a visit. They bicker briefly about Charis’s meditation altar, but when Charis offers to make her daughter muffins, August replies, “You don’t have to keep giving me stuff, Mom…I love you anyway” (497). Charis asks if August minded not having a father when she was young—a question she’s meant to ask for years but always avoided. August concedes that perhaps when she was younger it bothered her, but now she is fine with it. Families are diverse and nontraditional these days, she adds, absolving her mother from her guilt. Later, Charis tries to imagine what form Zenia will take next, and what lesson Charis was meant to learn by Zenia’s presence in her life.

Roz speeds home, desperate to talk to Larry about Zenia’s allegations. In the kitchen, she finds Larry and Boyce. When Roz says she wants to speak to Larry privately, he says Boyce should stay. He never dealt drugs, Larry tells Roz. Zenia was the dealer, and she tried to blackmail him to conceal his secret: He is gay, and he and Boyce are moving in together.

Authorities find a suitcase full of pure heroin in Zenia’s hotel room and a used needle on the balcony. She overdosed, most likely. They also note that Zenia was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer, making suicide a definite possibility. Tony reports to them Zenia’s story about Iraq’s supergun and the murder of Gerry Bull, though she doesn’t know if any of it is true. She suspects Zenia has covered her tracks as always, leaving the authorities few clues to follow. In the end, Roz pays for a cremation, and Tony keeps the ashes in her basement.

Tony tries to trace Zenia’s history but comes up empty. She can find no record of Zenia anywhere. Tony is at the mercy of the quixotic nature of truth. She even questions the capacity of history to impart useful and tangible knowledge, as arbitrary and one-sided as it often is. Still, she persists, following the trail of stories and artifacts as they lead her through time and help her navigate the chaos. In her basement, Tony lays out a 13th-century battle on her sand-table map. The battle is a religious conflict between Catholics and Cathars, the latter led by a woman whose knights are slaughtered, and who is herself thrown into a well because, Tony thinks, religious zealots never know what to do with defiant women. She then lays out a map of Toronto, mentally ticking off all the significant landmarks: the Toxique, the hotel, her home, Roz and Charis’s homes, and McClung Hall. Somewhere in all this history and physical topography, Zenia exists, in memory and in history, and Tony feels compelled to give her an end.

On November 11, Remembrance Day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, Tony, Charis, and Roz ride the ferry across Lake Ontario bearing Zenia’s ashes. As they prepare to scatter them, Roz thinks of Zenia, Mitch, and closure; strangely, she feels gratitude, though she doesn’t know why. Tony thinks of Zenia as a fallen warrior, deserving of some kind of tribute.

Charis holds the urn over the railing, and as she is about to drop it, it suddenly splits in half. She drops it, seeing a tinge of blue light around it, and Zenia’s ashes trail off behind the ferry. At Charis’s house, Tony picks a dried flower from the yard as a memento of Zenia’s life. Zenia’s life was and always will be a mystery, and Tony cannot help but wonder how similar they all are to her in the end.