That is Karen speaking. Karen is back, Karen has control of their body. Karen is angry with her, Karen is desolate, Karen is sick with disgust, Karen wants them to die. She wants to kill their body. Already she has the bread knife in her hand, moving it towards their shared arm. But if she does that, their baby will die too, and Charis refuses to let that happen. She calls all of her strength, all of her inner healing light, her grandmother’s fierce blue light, into her hands; she wrestles Karen silently for possession of the knife. When she gets it, she pushes Karen away from her as hard as she can, back down into the shadows. Then she throws the knife out the door.
She waits for Billy to come back: She knows he won’t, but she waits anyway. She sits at the kitchen table, willing her body not to move, not moving. She waits all afternoon. Then she goes to bed.
By the next day she’s no longer so spaced out. Instead she’s frantic. The worst thing is not knowing. Maybe she’s misjudged Billy, maybe he hasn’t run away with Zenia. Maybe he’s in prison, having his throat cut in the showers. Maybe he’s dead.
She calls all the numbers scribbled on the wall beside their phone. She asks, she leaves messages. None off his friends has heard anything, or will admit to it. Who else could know where he is, where he might have gone? Him, or Zenia, or both of them together. Who else knows Zenia?
She can think of only one person: West. West was living with Zenia before she turned up on Charis’s doorstep with a black eye. Charis views that black eye from a different angle, now. It could have had a valid reason for existing.
West teaches at the university, Zenia told her that. He teaches music or something. She wonders if he calls himself West, or Stewart. She will ask for both. It doesn’t take her long to track down his home number.
She dials, and a woman answers. Charis explains that she’s looking for Zenia.
“Looking for Zenia?” says the woman. “Now why in hell would anyone want to do that?”
“Who is this?” says Charis. “Antonia Fremont,” says Tony.
“Tony,” says Charis. Someone she knows, more or less. She doesn’t stop to wonder what Tony is doing answering West’s phone. She takes a breath. “Remember when you tried to help me, on the front lawn of McClung Hall? And I didn’t need it?”
“Yes,” says Tony guardedly.
“Well, this time I do.”
“Help with Zenia?” says Tony. “Sort of,” says Charis.
Tony says she’ll come.
XXXVIII
Tony takes the ferry to the Island. She sits at Charis’s kitchen table and drinks a cup of mint tea and listens to the whole story, nodding from time to time, with her mouth slightly open. She asks a few questions, but she doubts nothing. When Charis tells her how stupid she has been, Tony says that Charis has not been particularly stupid; no more stupid than Tony was herself. “Zenia is very good at what she does,” is how she puts it.
“But I was so sorry for her!” says Charis. Tears roll down her face; she can’t seem to stop them. Tony hands her a crumpled Kleenex.
“So was I,” she says. “She’s an expert at that:”
She explains that West couldn’t have punched Zenia in the eye, not only because West would never punch anyone in the eye but because at that time West wasn’t living with Zenia. He hadn’t been living with Zenia for over a year and a half. He had been living with Tony.
“Though I suppose he might have done it just walking along the street,” she says. “It would be a definite temptation. I don’t know what I’d do if I ran into Zenia again. Soak her with gasoline maybe. Set fire to her.”
As for Billy, Tony is of the opinion that Charis shouldn’t waste time looking for him; first, because she’ll never find him; second, because what if she did? If he’s been kidnapped by the Mounties she won’t be able to rescue him, he’s probably in some cement cubicle in Virginia by now, and if he wants to get in touch with her he will. They do allow letters. If he hasn’t been kidnapped, but has been bagged by Zenia instead, he won’t want to see Charis anyway. He’ll be feeling too guilty.
Tony knows, Tony’s been through it: it’s as if Billy has been put under a spell. But Zenia won’t be content with Billy for long. He’s too small a catch, and—Charis will excuse Tony for saying so—he was too easy. Tony has thought a lot about Zenia and has decided that Zenia likes challenges. She likes breaking and entering, she likes taking things that aren’t hers. Billy, like West, was just target practice. She probably has a row of men’s dicks nailed to her wall, like stuffed animal heads.
“Leave him alone and he’ll come home, wagging his tail behind him,” says Tony. “If he still has a tail, after Zenia gets through with him.”
Charis is astonished at the ease with which Tony expresses hostility. It can’t be good for her. But it brings an undeniable comfort.
“What if he doesn’t?” says Charis. “What if he doesn’t come back?” She is still sniffling. Tony rummages under the sink and finds her a paper towel.
Tony shrugs. “Then he doesn’t. There are other things to do.”
“But why did she murder my chickens?” says Charis. No matter how she considers this, she just can’t get her head around it. The chickens were lovely, they were innocent, they had nothing to do with stealing Billy.
“Because she’s Zenia,” says Tony. “Don’t fret about motives. Attila the Hun didn’t have motives. He just had appetites. She killed them. It speaks for itself.”
“Maybe it was because her mother was stoned to death by Roumanians, for being a gypsy,” says Charis.
“What?” says Tony. “No, she wasn’t! She was a White Russian in exile! She died in Paris, of tuberculosis!”
Then Tony begins to laugh. She laughs and laughs. “What?” says Charis. puzzled. “What is it?”
Tony makes Charis a cup of tea, and tells her to take a rest. She has to look after her health now, says Tony, because she is a mother. She wraps Charis up in a blanket and Charis lies on the living-room sofa. She feels drowsy and cared for, as if things are out of her hands.
Tony goes outside with some plastic garbage bags—Charis knows plastic is bad, but she’s found no alternative—and collects up the dead chickens. She sweeps out the chicken house. She fills a pail of water and does the best she can with the blood.
“There’s a hose,” says Charis sleepily.
“I think I got most of it,” says Tony. “What was this bread knife doing in the garden?”
Charis explains about trying to slit her wrists, and Tony doesn’t scold her. She simply says that bread knives are not a viable solution, and washes it off and puts it back in the knife rack.
After Charis has had her rest, Tony sits her down at the table again. She has a sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen. “Now, think of everything you need,” she says. “Everything practical.”
Charis thinks. She needs some white paint, for the nursery; she needs insulation for the house, because after the summer there will be a winter. She needs some loose dresses. But she can’t afford any of these things. With Billy and Zenia eating up the groceries, she hasn’t been able to save. Maybe she will have to go on welfare.
“Money,” she says slowly. She hates to say it. She doesn’t want Tony to think she’s begging.
“Good. Now, let’s think of all the ways you can get some.”
With the help of her friend Roz, whom Charis remembers dimly from McClung Hall, Tony finds Charis a lawyer, and the lawyer goes after Uncle Uern. He’s alive, though Aunt Viola is not. He’s still living in the house with the wall-to-wall and the rec room. Charis doesn’t have to go and see him—the lawyer does that for her, and reports to Tony. Charis doesn’t have to tell the whole story about Uncle Uern because everything the lawyer needs is there in the wills, her mother’s and her grandmother’s. What has happened is perfectly clear: Uncle Uern has taken the money he got from selling the farm, Charis’s money, and put it into his own business. He claims he tried to find Charis after her twenty-first birthday, but he couldn’t. Maybe this is true.