DEAR HEARTS
DEAR HEARTS
STORIES
BARBARA MILLER BILES
INANNA PUBLICATIONS AND EDUCATION INC.
TORONTO, CANADA
Copyright © 2020 Barbara Miller Biles
Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Collective Agency (Access Copyright).
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.
Cover design: Val Fullard
eBook: tikaebooks.com
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Dear hearts : stories / Barbara Miller Biles.
Names: Biles, Barbara Miller, 1946– author.
Series: Inanna poetry & fiction series.
Description: Series statement: Inanna poetry & fiction series
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200208233 |
Canadiana (ebook) 20200208268 | ISBN 9781771337533 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771337540 (epub) | ISBN 9781771337557 (Kindle) | ISBN 9781771337564 (pdf)
Classification: LCC PS8603.I55 D42 2020 | DDC C813/.6—dc23
Printed and bound in Canada
Inanna Publications and Education Inc.
210 Founders College, York University
4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada
Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax (416) 736-5765
Email: [email protected] Website: www.inanna.ca
For my Dearest Hearts,
Alison, Stephen, William and Mae.
Table of Contents
TENDER HEARTS
Lila
Silvia
Gourmet Cooking
No Regrets
Svea
Rosemary
Snipe Hunting
GENEVA STORIES
Rockin’ Around The Royal Bank of Canada
Here’s Looking At You
The Case
Gone
Vive la Révolution
Marrying Stationery
SURREAL HEARTS
Transforming Doctor Zhivago
Shifting
Flight 2100
Smile
Saving Britannica
Special Occasions
JANET STORIES
Life in Cars
Police and Matisse
Hair Matters
Jumping to Conclusions
SORRY HEARTS
Fee Fine
The Guardian
Burnt Sienna
Tattoos
Acknowledgements
TENDER HEARTS
Lila
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW about Lila as a child, look at the painting called The Two Sisters (On The Terrace), oil on canvas, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1881. Apparently they weren’t really sisters, but that’s beside the point. Like the younger girl, Lila was a delicate-looking child, but with flaxen hair and intense blue eyes. In Renoir’s painting the youngest is wearing a royal blue hat decorated with fresh garden flowers. This reminds me of Lila in two ways: first, picking crocuses along the railway tracks and then sitting in the grass, weaving crocuses and dandelions into necklaces or bracelets or coronets for our hair, her with graceful fingers, me with fumbling hands. And I think of the spray of pink carnations on her sister Iris’s casket and the vision of Lila ripping away a handful of the flowers and holding them to her breast.
We were only ten, and we were fascinated with the life of Lila’s teenage sister Iris. She had the same delicate features as Lila, but there was something steely about Iris and somehow that made the boys even more determined to capture her affection. Renoir’s older sister is wearing a scarlet hat and a corsage, front and centre, on her coat. She is beautiful, like an angel, with rosy lips and wide brows. Her eyes look off to the side as though she is remembering something warm and precious. At least that’s my impression. (Pardon the allusion.) This reminds me of Iris listening to and singing “Earth Angel” along with The Crew Cuts, over and over.
Lila and I mouthed the words to the song in her bedroom, which was next door to Iris’s. Lila did the melody and I did the doo-wop. We would stand on her bed, holding imaginary mics and at times knocking each other over and collapsing into giggles. We imagined that Iris was singing to Ronny Wilson, even though he wasn’t there.
Ronny Wilson drove by regularly on summer nights in his father’s Oldsmobile, and if Iris happened to be outside or even looking outside he would stop and honk and take her for a ride around town. Maybe even go for a pop at Shakey’s. Ronny was a serious boy, track-star muscular, with dark eyes and Brylcreemed hair. He planned to be a mechanic like his father and eventually take over Wilson Motors. He had eyes only for Iris, and Lila and I mooned over that fact. In retrospect his commitment seems a bit boring. Where was the game in it all? Perhaps Iris felt the same after Darryl Sexton came to town.
Darryl came, just for the summer, to work with his Uncle Mel and Aunt Mary in their novelty shop since Mary was now preoccupied with a new baby girl. At first Darryl helped stock the shelves with bolts of cloth, kitchen towels, colouring books and crayons, yo-yos, cheap trinkets, and wind-up toys. The Sextons were all pretty new to town and were themselves a novelty, especially Darryl. Mel’s Variety Store soon became a hangout for teenagers, especially giggling girls. Darryl was a magnet: hip, brash, and good looking. Then he switched to a job at the cemetery, which only enhanced his aura: he sported a dark tan and sun-bleached hair from the hours spent cutting grass and digging graves, shirtless and without a cap. We didn’t know why he changed jobs, and the Sextons wouldn’t say. Maybe he missed the outdoors.
Lila and I continued to believe that Iris had gone to the cemetery to visit their grandmother’s grave because her mother said it was so. Ronny Wilson liked this version as well. At least that’s what he said. It wasn’t until Lila and I became teenagers ourselves that we realized the place had a dual purpose: it was a resting place for dead bodies and a make-out place for the town’s teenagers. On the day she died, Iris rode her bike out there all on her own rather than with her usual group of friends. And Darryl Sexton drove her back with a gash in the back of her head, blood matting her hair and drool on her cherry lips. He said she slipped and fell back on her grandmother’s headstone. My dad went back to the cemetery to retrieve her bike for the family and I heard him say that it was nowhere near her grandmother’s grave. My mother told him to shush.
I think Ronny and Lila developed a bond right then and there, but it wasn’t until she turned sixteen and he was working for his dad that they considered romance. (But we didn’t use the word romance then.) They started to go together, riding around in the Oldsmobile, necking at the cemetery, listening to Bobby Darin and Connie Francis, and dancing to Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry covers at Regents’ dances. The song that really held them together though was “Teen Angel.”
They always turned up the volume and sang full volume. I wondered how Lila felt about the “own true love” part and the possibility of being a stand-in for Iris.
Lila was one of the first girls to join Ronny and his friends in the popular teen pastime of drinking and smoking in cars. She acted as if this got her into some exclusive club. I stayed out of it for the most pa
rt, but I did always go along for the ride. For Ronny it was just a phase. For Lila it was different; she saw it as a sign of sophistication and belonging that continued on past the car-riding stage. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she would say after she had already lit up.
These days people really do mind and aren’t afraid to say so, and Lila has to lean or mostly sit outside, since her balance is unreliable—with her left eyelid drooping and her tongue searching hard for the filter. Her breathing can get pretty heavy at times. When he can, Ronny will even carry her from one place to another, especially after she has had her bottle of wine. Now he drives her to the cemetery, whereas before she preferred to visit Iris during the daytime, all on her own, while Ronny worked at the garage. Ronny is one of those rare men who remain devoted to their wives no matter what.
Darryl Sexton never left town and several wives were said to enjoy his homemade wine at one time or another. It would be the ultimate betrayal if Lila became one of them.
Unlike Edgar Degas (another Impressionist), Renoir avoided the darker side of life in his paintings, but there is one portrait from 1876 called Head of a Woman that makes me think of Lila now. The woman has dark hair and brown eyes, unlike Lila, but they share that delicate look, with sad eyes and pale skin blending into an off-white dress. Everything below the eyes and in the background becomes vague and diffuse. The background has been painted using the colours of a faded field of crocuses, and the woman’s face is like a dandelion going to seed.
Silvia
HER HAIR WAS BLONDE AS A CHILD, then it went prematurely grey. Everyone thought of her as ash-blonde—beautiful but mature. In spite of her resolve to become a biologist she fell into the same trap as dozens of other girls in the sixties, believing in the whole amusing idea of free love: equal opportunity to hop in the sack with no repercussions. So funny I forgot to laugh.
Silvia got pregnant the first time out, and like her namesake, Rhea Silvia—who was seduced in the forest by the god Mars to become the mother of Romulus and Remus—she bore twins. That was the end of her own concocted tale of perpetual virginity. In Silvia’s case the seduction was in the back of a Chevy Nova at the edge of Groat Ravine. She had the choice to either end the resulting pregnancy or put her boys up for adoption. Unlike Rhea Silvia, whose boys were set adrift on the Tiber River and then rescued and suckled by the she-wolf Lupa, Silvia chose to stay with her Aunt Margaret in Toronto for a stint and from then on wondered what kind of life her boys would lead. Certainly not likely to create a city like Rome or commit fratricide.
You might consider me lucky by contrast. My first time was in a motel after the Wauneita Ball. It had all been arranged ahead of time unbeknownst to me. You must know that for a girl of the sixties, in spite of the liberation, sex was shocking the first time, as in Am I really doing this? There was less worry about contracting a venereal disease since we all believed that it couldn’t actually happen to nice girls—and AIDS was not yet around. But pregnancy, that was always possible.
In spite of the risk, I took no responsibility regarding prevention because it wouldn’t have been proper to anticipate sex. When I returned to Kelsey Hall that night I realized I still had a safe stuck inside me, filled with all the semen needed to create a child. My explanation to myself was that yes, I must be in love. So much for the free love part. Why was I lucky? No pregnancy, either the first time out or any time after.
Silvia confessed to me, once she was back in Edmonton, that she delivered and gave away her babies, and that Marty Weston was the father though he was unaware of it. Marty was a law student, destined to become Chief Judge Weston. The twins eventually found them both through Parent Finders, which was a relief and a heart stopper to Silvia and must have been a shocker to Marty.
Some claim that Rhea Silvia, instead of being seduced by Mars, was really impregnated by the demi-god Hercules, who was himself illegitimate, or even by her uncle Amulius, who had first forced her to become a Vestal Virgin so he could keep the throne of Alba Longa free of her descendants. Similarly, Marty, feeling vulnerable in his venerable position, suggested that any number of others could be the father of Silvia’s twin boys. But I knew Silvia. She was traumatized by the immediate pregnancy and had not been with any other guy for more than a year after their bout in the Chevy. And DNA proved Marty’s paternity. Now how does one prove one is the son of a god?
I ran into Marty once while riding an escalator at The Bay. This was before the twins had tracked him down. He commented on how young I looked. Still pretty, he said. I have a compact figure, having had no kids to stretch my stomach out of shape, and unlike Silvia I have very few grey hairs. On the other hand Marty had developed quite a belly, and his once-curly hair had receded and flattened considerably. I didn’t mention Silvia’s secret.
The twins, Troy and Hardy, are fraternal, so you are not tempted to treat them as if they are the same, whether in brain, heart, or soul. They call me Auntie as I have stuck by Silvia through thick and thin (unlike her husband). I was there for her first meeting with the boys, and I am happy to be in their lives as I have no children of my own. They were raised in a congenial family of market gardeners in Simcoe County. Troy Dobson, tall and prematurely grey like his mother, took his childhood experiences to the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph and became an expert in organic and small-scale agronomy and the marketing of fair trade agricultural products for profit in third world countries. Through his travels he met and became the husband of Luisa, a Bolivian beauty, and they in turn named their daughter Silvia.
This was before Troy found his mother. Maybe he knew about her long before he contacted her. But still, talk about coincidence.
Hardy Dobson, who looks a lot like Marty and shares many of his traits, including a large belly, has his own law practice in Barrie, specializing in international adoptions and custody battles. He has yet to get married, though he has two girls. He says he is on excellent terms with their mother.
So you see, Silvia is also a grandmother, and I am a great aunt by association.
Mars had a love affair with Venus, who, as you know, is associated with love and sexual desire. This was long before the seduction of Rhea Silvia and the birth of Romulus and Remus. You may be wondering where I am going with this. Let me remind you about free love in the sixties. Let me remind you of the long formal gown I wore, of the black strapless bra and the bikini panties to match, of the silk hose and the open-toed high heels, all chosen to impress my date and all eventually removed with his expertise and my implicit cooperation. I sometimes wonder what our children could have been like, Marty’s and mine, but I will settle for Auntie.
Gourmet Cooking
DARLENE LOOKS BEYOND THE EDGE of the campus to the gulls floating over the nearby river, then reaches for the gold-plated knocker. She is arriving early to help prepare the bastilla and the other Moroccan dishes.
She prays that his wife will not appear on the other side of the door, and her prayers are answered. He greets her with a modest grin and she scrutinizes his dark blue eyes, looking for signs of ill winds blowing from within the stucco house. She looks past the long hair and beard and catches her breath when she sees a woman with shapeless blonde hair standing almost imperceptibly behind him. “This is my wife, Joan. Joan, Darlene.”
Joan moves forward and reaches out with an awkward formality. Darlene notices an almost imperceptible tic on Joan’s cheek.
Immediately Joan says to her husband, “I need to talk to you privately. I can’t go through with this.”
There will be other guests later in the evening: the Donaldsons, both film critics; Jack Kendrick from the History Department; and others Darlene has not heard of.
Before he talks to Joan he takes Darlene to the kitchen to get her started on a search for spices and tells her how he loves to have food out, simmering all day long. He inhales deeply as though aromas have already filled the air.
Darlene studies
her professor’s list and surveys the cupboard full of spices, seven narrow cradled shelves on the door. She has just barely become acquainted with oregano and basil thanks to late-night pizza binges. She shakes an envelope out of the saffron bottle and carefully unfolds it. She spreads the torn envelope with her finger to reveal a rusty red powder. There is something of the smell of ketchup here, she thinks, then rejects the idea as entirely unsophisticated. The label says it is ground stigmas from a fall flowering plant, guaranteed to impart old world flavour. She tries the cumin, which has a flatter, slightly bitter aroma. The cumin bottle boasts that Cleopatra had her cooks add a pinch to the rich sauces she requested for Mark Antony, so Darlene inhales again and is disappointed. Not her idea of an aphrodisiac.
She hears bits of her professor’s conversation with Joan. “A way of strengthening a marriage … it’s a new world. Work with her on the bastilla…. You’ll see.” Then they discuss the drinks to be served. Joan thinks brandy would be perfect for an aperitif, and he suggests a chardonnay with the couscous. Darlene has just learned to drink a little rye with her ginger ale, which had been the drink of choice for childhood illnesses.
The professor and Joan are in the kitchen now. Joan adjusts her glasses and squints as she tries to concentrate on the recipe. “I’ve never used filo sheets before!”
“Don’t worry about that now,” he says. “Start with the chicken.”
“I like to know everything before I start.”
“Trust me,” he says. “I’ll go get the wine.”
Darlene shrugs her shoulders and waits for Joan to make a move. Joan is also a professor and works with laboratory rats at the university. She keeps careful data sheets, and Darlene knows she has a reputation for holding a reign of terror over her graduate assistants. Right now she looks defeated by bastilla.
Dear Hearts Page 1