“A Life Force salad,” says Zenia, and laughs. For the first time Charis is not delighted to hear this laughter, welcome as it ought to be. There’s something about it she doesn’t understand. It’s like a joke she’s not getting.
The salad is raisins and grated carrots, with a lemon juice and honey dressing. The carrots themselves are Charis’s own, from the box of damp sand in the root cellar lean-to; already they’re beginning to grow small white whiskers, which shows they’re still alive. Charis and Zenia eat the salad, and the lima beans and boiled potatoes, by themselves, because Billy says he has to go out that night. He has a meeting.
“He goes to a lot of meetings,” murmurs Zenia, as Billy is putting on his jacket. She has given up trying to be nice to Billy, since she wasn’t getting any results; now she’s taken to speaking of him in the third person even when he’s standing right there. It creates a circle, a circle of language, with Zenia and Charis on the inside of it and Billy on the outside. Charis wishes she wouldn’t do it; on the other hand, in a way Billy has only himself to blame.
Billy gives Zenia a dirty look. “At least I don’t just sit around on my butt, like some,” he says angrily. He too speaks only to Charis.
“Be careful,” Charis says. She means about going into the city, but Billy takes it as a reproof.
“Have a real good time with your sick friend,” he says nastily. Zenia smiles to herself, a tiny bitter smile. The door slams behind him, rattling the glass in the windows.
“I think I should leave,” says Zenia, when they are eating some of the applesauce Charis bottled earlier in the fall.
“But where would you live?” says Charis, dismayed. “Oh. I could find a place,” says Zenia.
“But you don’t have any money!” says Charis.
“I could get a job of some sort,” says Zenia. “I’m good at that. I can always lick ass somewhere, I know how to get jobs:’ She coughs, muffling her face in her spindly-fingered hands. “Sorry,” she says. She takes a bird-sip of water.
“Oh, no,” says Charis. “You can’t do that! You’re not well enough yet! You will be soon,” she adds, because she doesn’t want to sound negative. It’s health and not sickness that must be reinforced.
Zenia smiles thinly. “Maybe,” she says. “But Karen, really—don’t worry about me. It’s not your problem.”
“Charis,” says Charis. Zenia has trouble remembering her real name.
And yes, it is her problem, because she has taken it upon herself. Then Zenia says something worse. “It’s not just that he hates me,” she says. Her tongue comes out, licking the applesauce off the tip of her spoon. “The fact is, he can hardly keep his hands off me.”
“West?” says Charis. A cold finger runs down her back. Zenia smiles. “No,” she says. “I mean Billy. Surely you’ve noticed it.”
Charis can feel the skin of her entire face sliding down in dismay. She has noticed nothing. But why hasn’t she? It’s obvious to her, now that Zenia’s said it—the energy that leaps out of Billy’s finger-ends and hair whenever Zenia is near. A sexual bristling, like tomcats. “What do you mean?” she says.
“He wants to haul me into bed,” says Zenia. Her voice is lightly regretful. “He wants to jump me.”
“He loves you?” says Charis. Her entire body has gone slack, as if her bones have melted. Dread is what she feels. Billy loves me, she protests silently. “Billy loves me,” she says, in a choked voice. “He says so.” She sounds to herself like a whiny child. And when was the last time he said that?
“Oh, it’s not love,” says Zenia gently. “Not what he feels for me, I mean. It’s hate. Sometimes it’s so hard for men to tell the difference. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“What are you talking about?” Charis whispers.
Zenia laughs. “‘Come on, you’re not a baby. He loves your ass. Or some other body part, how would I know? Anyway, for sure it’s not your soul, it’s not you. If you didn’t put out he’d just take anyway. I’ve watched him, he’s a greedy shit, they’re all just rapists at heart. You’re an innocent, Karen. Believe me, there’s only one thing any man ever wants from a woman, and that’s sex. How much you can get them to pay for it is the important thing.”
“Don’t say that,” says Charis. “Don’t say it!” She can feel something breaking in her, collapsing, a huge iridescent balloon ripped and greying like a punctured lung. What’s left, if you take away love? Just brutality. Just shame. Just ferocity. Just pain. What becomes of her gifts then, her garden, her chickens, her eggs? All her acts of careful tending. She’s shaking now, she feels sick to her stomach.
“I’m just a realist, that’s all,” says Zenia. “The one reason he wants to stick his dick into me is that he can’t. Don’t worry, he’ll forget all about it after I’ve left. They have short memories. That’s why I want to go, Karen—it’s for you.” She’s still smiling. She looks at Charis, and her face against the weak light of the ceiling bulb is in darkness, with only her eyes gleaming, red as in car headlights, and the look goes into Charis, down and down. It’s a resigned look. Zenia is accepting her own death.
“But you’ll die,” says Charis. She can’t let that happen. “Don’t give up!” She starts to cry. She clutches Zenia’s hand, or Zenia clutches hers, and the two of them hang onto each other’s hands across the tableful of dirty dishes.
Charis lies awake in the night. Billy has come back, long after she went to bed, but he hasn’t reached for her. Instead he turned away in bed and closed himself off and went to sleep. It’s like that a lot, these days. It’s as if they’ve had a fight. But now she knows there’s another reason too: she is not wanted. It’s Zenia who is the wanted one.
But Billy wants Zenia with his body only. That’s why he’s so rude to her—his body is divided from his spirit. That’s why he’s being so cold to Charis, as well: his body wants Charis out of the way, so he can grab Zenia, shove her up against the kitchen counter, take hold of her against her will, even though she’s so ill. Maybe he doesn’t know that’s what he wants. But it is.
A wind has come up. Charis listens to it scraping through the bare trees, and to the cold waves slapping against the shore. Someone is coming towards her across the lake, her bare feet touching the tops of the waves, her nightgown tattered by the years of weathering, her colourless hair floating. Charis closes her eyes, focusing on the inner picture, trying to see who it is. Inside her head there’s moonlight, obscured by scudding clouds; but now the sky lightens and she can see the face.
It’s Karen, it’s banished Karen. She has travelled a long distance. Now she’s coming nearer, with that cowed, powerless face Charis used to see in the rnirror looming up to her own face, blown towards her through the darkness like an ousted ghost, towards this house where she has been islanded, thinking herself safe; demanding to enter her, to rejoin her, to share in her body once again.
Charis is not Karen. She has not been Karen for a long time, and she never wants to be Karen again. She pushes away with all her strength, pushes down towards the water, but this time Karen will not go under. She drifts closer and closer, and her mouth opens. She wants to speak.
Karen was born to the wrong parents. That’s what Charis’s grandmother said could happen, and it is what Charis believes as well. Such people have to look for a long time, they have to search out and identify their right parents. Or else they have to go through life without.
Karen was seven when she met her grandmother for the first time. On that day she wore a cotton dress with smocking across the front and a sash, and matching hairbows on the ends of her pale blonde pigtails, which were braided so tight her eyes felt slanted. Her mother had starched the dress, and it was stiff and also a little sticky because of the damp late June heat. They took the train, and when Karen got up off the hot plush seat she had to peel the skirt of the dress off the backs of her legs. That hurt, but she knew better than to say so.