The Robber Bride

Tony tells Zenia all about her mother’s disappearance—she ran off to California with an insurance salesman—but even now, she cannot muster any anger over it. Over dinner with her father that night, he tries to reassure her that everything will be okay, but she is unconvinced. Her mother’s absence leaves a void even worse than her overbearing presence. Anthea sends postcards, gifts, and pictures, but she never visits. Over time, she moves on from the insurance salesman to another man, and another after that. A gulf opens between Tony and Griff, who has begun drinking heavily: “She had ceased to consider him her responsibility; she found him simply an irritating interruption” (172). The housekeeper Ethel becomes Tony’s primary caretaker.

Some years after her departure, Anthea drowns off the coast of Baja, California when she jumps off a yacht and never resurfaces. Tony is curious about the details but with no emotional investment. To escape her father, Tony asks to be enrolled in boarding school. After Tony’s high school graduation, Griff shoots himself with his liberated German Luger. Tony inherits money from the sale of the house along with whatever funds Anthea has left her.