The Heart Begins Here

by Jacqueline Dumas

  To everyone’s credit, no one but his mother laughed, and later I heard Wanda compliment the woman on her beautiful handiwork.

  Just as Peach’s reading was coming to an end, Wanda pushed me aside and reached out—the poet in the oversized coat was lowering himself onto a corner of the card table—but she was too late. He crashed to the floor with the table beneath him, spraying his entourage, the floor, and the surrounding bookshelves with gobs of cheese and wine-soaked crackers and what was left of Wanda’s cup of white wine.

  That was it, the final straw. Wanda shouted at everyone to leave. “Folks, thank you very much! This evening has come to an end.”

  She held the door open as she ushered them out. “Thank you, thank you for coming.”

  As the confused crowd filed out, Fang stood at the door handing out his sheets of poems.

  Wanda’s sales projection had been dead-on. Although some fifty people had squeezed into the bookstore that night, I managed to sell two books, both mass-market paperbacks, for a total of $16.98.

  Over the next months, and after another couple of uninspired events, I did my best to read the works of prospective authors in advance, thus ascertaining which ones suited the mandate of the bookstore. By then, Wanda had stopped arriving early to help me set up. She would show up just in time for the reading and sometimes help clean up after the customers had left.

  I became wary of travelling out-of-town writers. Local writers could draw their friends and relatives to an event, but few customers would sacrifice a cozy winter’s evening before the fire or a long, cool summer’s evening in the river valley to come out for an author they’d never heard of writing about things they didn’t care about.

  When one of these out-of-towners called, the tone tended to be deceptively casual: “I just happen to be passing through, but I could make time to stop by your store and do a reading”—as if a favour were being bestowed upon me. The author would then claim to have dozens of close friends and relatives, who for mysterious reasons failed to materialize on the actual night of the reading.

  In an attempt to forestall hurt feelings, I would try to explain away the poor turnout as anything but lack of interest, weather being the default excuse. It was too miserable out, or it was too beautiful. “You can’t get anyone to budge after it snows,” I’d say, or “The summers are so short here that everyone is out getting a bit of sun.” Or I’d blame the long weekend, the hockey game, a popular play, or the ballet that had fallen on the same night, even the symphony. Once I even cited a Cutest Pet Contest. I blamed the lack of interest on anything other than the fact that most people in our city of almost one million would rather watch reruns of Perry Mason than attend an evening of rhymed poetry.

  Not that there was anything wrong with rhymed poetry. But I had learned my lesson.

  3.

  WITHIN THE FIRST YEAR OF OPENING my doors, my vision of a store that promoted women’s writing expanded to include books on progressive politics, books for gay men, and a carefully chosen selection of children’s books. Once I was focused on the books I believed in, the store blossomed, both creatively and socially, and for its first few years, it became the supportive and safe space that Wanda had envisioned. As a bonus, the community I had been searching for without knowing, found me. Soon customers were pitching in to help organize readings and other events. Every December 6, we held a special ceremony to remember the fourteen women murdered at the École Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989. One evening, we held a Women of the Left Bank gathering to which customers came dressed as their favourite writers from pre-war Paris. Djuna Barnes showed up, as did Janet Flanner and Natalie Barney. Two Gertrude-Stein-Alice-B.-Toklas couples came, as well as one James Joyce in drag. Wanda and I appeared as Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach. Each “writer” read from her own work. For the first time since I had given up my teaching job, going to work had become both fun and meaningful.

  However, things had already begun to change in the book industry. Big publishers were increasingly gobbling up smaller ones, retail chains were expanding, and more and more people were buying their books off the Internet. And as the store approached its seven-year mark, I started to worry in earnest about its future.

  About the same time as I started to worry about the store, I began to notice changes in Wanda’s behaviour.

  I should have paid more attention to the signs.

  THE FIRST SIGN OCCURRED on Valentine’s Day. I lost my special ring, the one Wanda had given me when I moved in with her. It was silver with a lapis lazuli setting of a labrys, and I was desperate to find it. As well as being the first meaningful gift from Wanda, it symbolized my new-found lesbian identity.

  I had lost the ring sometime during the day. But where to start looking? Had it rolled under the front seat of the car? Slipped off at the bookstore, the grocery store, the gas station, at a parking meter? It was delusional to think I’d find the ring in the grit and slush and crusted snow of the streets, and I never did find it.

  In retrospect, Wanda was probably so distracted by then, I doubt that she even noticed its absence or would have cared.

  The second sign was more of a non-happening than an incident. From the day we had met, Wanda had become a presence in my dreams—an awareness, the sense of comfort in knowing that a familiar person is in the room with you. Now, all of a sudden, she was no longer in my dreams. I dreamed about my mother, my friend Trish, the spaniel across the street, the customers in the bookstore, and the grocery clerk on the corner with the stretched, green tattoos. Twice I even dreamed about Dan, but now even the feel of Wanda was absent from my dreams.

  The third and most mysterious sign manifested itself on the August long weekend, just before we were to leave for what would turn out to be an ill-advised holiday in Maui. Our friends, Alice’n’Peggy, had invited us to their Lac Ste. Anne cabin for an early seventh-anniversary celebration. We planned to celebrate in Maui on the actual date.

  Alice’n’Peggy are the community’s poster couple for lesbian relationship longevity, and they make a point of marking other people’s anniversaries. They also function as unofficial oral historians of the community and seem to know everything that’s going on. According to Wanda, they have been joined at the hip since meeting at the 1978 Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Behind their backs, she refers to them as the MoPo unit, short for Morality Police. “Like your mother,” says Wanda, “Alice’n’Peggy believe that a relationship should last until death-do-us-part.”

  This was the third year we had been invited to their cabin, and Wanda hadn’t been keen on going, but relented in the end.

  After a lasagne dinner (vegetarian), the pair presented us with a framed photo that had been taken the previous fall at our sixth-anniversary celebration. In the photo, Wanda and I are leaning out the side window of the cabin, and it’s one of the best ever taken of us.

  Alice’n’Peggy had mounted the photo in a polished juniper frame shaped like a heart. But they were mystified. An ugly red line now squiggled down the middle of the photo, splitting our smiling faces in two. They were certain the red line had not been there when the photo was developed nor when they had framed it.

  I made some dumb joke about creepy cosmic pranksters, but no one laughed, and Alice’n’Peggy pressed closer on the couch where they were already glued together.

  Like other things I’ve kept from her, I’ve never mentioned the lost ring or the empty dreams to Wanda, and the photo remains in the same dark corner of the basement where I shoved it that night.

  TRISH IS THE ONLY ONE of my friends to have said anything. She had it figured out the day I told her that Wanda had come home with her hair spiked and dyed red.

  “She’s cheating on you,” said Trish.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.

  Trish was obviously speaking from bitterness. She had recently been divorced. “Has Wanda been distracted? Irritable?” she a
sked.

  “Of course she has,” I said. “What do you think? She’s a social worker. For months now, she and her colleagues have been working crazy heavy caseloads, and they’ve had to survive one bout of layoffs after another. She’s burned out.”

  “Burned out. Or burning for fresh flesh?”

  “Don’t be so crude. You don’t know her.”

  “But I know you, and you’re my friend, and I care about you.”

  Trish and I have been friends since elementary school. When we were twelve, we spent the best part of a weekend sleepover practice kissing on her bed.

  The scrumptious kisses made me yearn for more and more sleepovers, sleepovers forever. Trish, on the other hand, could barely wait to try out her new skills on the skinny kid across the street—Benjamin, I think he was called.

  Now and then, throughout my teenage years, those kissing memories would burn through me as I lay in bed, keeping me awake for hours.

  Does she even remember?

  WANDA WAS DISMISSIVE of Trish from the moment they met. “I prefer not to do straight in my private life,” said Wanda.

  However, she did agree to accompany me once to a brunch at Trish’s. It was still early in our relationship.

  Afterwards, Wanda mocked the gathering. “Silly twaddle,” she said, “by a bunch of tittering women whose idea of fun is a guilty couple of hours away from their husbands. I wonder if he’s managed to find the eggs,” she mimicked. And, “Now I’ll be expected to serve him up something special for dessert.”

  “We should have a pyjama party,” one of the women had proposed.

  “Oh let’s, wouldn’t that be fun?” one of the others enthused.

  “A pyjama party? Sara and I have one every night,” Wanda interjected. “Except that neither of us owns a pair of pyjamas.”

  Trish, at least, laughed, but most of the other women looked confused, as if it still hadn’t sunk in that Wanda and I were a couple. One of them did catch on and tried to cut through the awkwardness by announcing that Doug-her-closest-best-friend-in-the-whole-wide-world was gay. And what she loved most about him was how he kept his private life private and respected her privacy as well.

  Wanda’s look was not difficult to read: Typical fag hag.

  The mention of Doug-the-gay-best-friend prompted one of the brunchers (who had still not caught on) to begin babbling about two women who had moved in across the street from her. “I wonder why lesbians all look alike?” she said. “Why would they want to dress like lumberjacks and chop their hair short like a man?”

  This was too much for Wanda. “Like you all don’t look the same, with your poufy hairdos and tarty little shoes. And what about those big purses you’re always forgetting in restaurants?”

  And so came the afternoon to an abrupt end, as did thoughts of any future such occasions.

  NOW TRISH WAS ACCUSING Wanda of cheating? No way. Wanda was the one who had chased after me.

  Trish shrugged. “So? She likes the chase. Listen to me, Sara. Spiked hair, red rinse. A no-brainer. Trying to look young is one of the first signs they’re up to no good. I’ll never forget the night Arnie came home looking like a fifty-year-old Tintin with a runaway hairline. He looked ridiculous with that thin, gooey nest of upswept hair, and that gut of his bulging over the belt of his ludicrously tight khakis. I should’ve tossed the prick out on his ear then and there.”

  I stood up for the team: Wanda wasn’t like that. And I was worried about her and all the crap she had to put up with at work all day. Not only was she responsible for her own clients, but she had to cover for colleagues who called in sick, which brought on even higher stress levels and led to additional sick days. Meanwhile, she had this boss who was redirecting pressure from above down to the staff, who were front line with the clients, of course. And the clients were acting up because they weren’t getting the support they needed, and so on and so on. Poor Wanda was trapped in a vicious cycle. She needed my support more than ever.

  Trish said, “I hear you, Sara. But no amount of job dissatisfaction induces a fifty-year-old to get a rad hairstyle. If anything, it’s the opposite. You’re miserable, you feel like shit, so you let yourself go. You eat and eat and forget to change your underwear. I’ll bet my buns poor Wanda is screwing someone younger. When Arnie started humping his little girlfriend, he was out almost every night—working late, of course—and when he did deign to spend an evening with me, presumably because the little girlfriend had other plans, he’d sit there flipping through ads for red convertibles with white leather seats. He even joined a gym. This, from a man who thought a walk around the block was too much exercise. And you wouldn’t believe the showers he took in a day. She was twenty-four years younger than him. Just one year older than his own daughter, I remind you. Now come on, Sara, you know the hell I went through with the kids, especially Johnny. Okay, Caitlin was angry for a while, but nothing like her brother. Actually, along with you, she was my bulwark through it all. Johnny still has issues, especially since his father, the bugger, got engaged.”

  Arnie was going to marry the girlfriend?

  “She’s three months pregnant, according to Caitlin. Go figure. Two kids of his own that he pretty much ignored while they were growing up, and then he ups and impregnates a woman the same age as his children are now…. But here’s the kicker. What’s a young thing like that see in an old fart like him in the first place? I mean, when I was her age, the idea of sex with a man that age was revolting. Re-volting.”

  Given that Trish had never liked Wanda, I took her comments with a big grain of salt. Trish thought Wanda was defensive and crude.

  Wanda, for her part, found almost everything about Trish irritating. She hated what she called Trish’s “opinionated nattering.” Even the way Trish greeted me annoyed her: “That back-patting, upper body kind of hug that straight women do, cheeks barely touching, asses pushed out as if to avoid catching something unpleasant.” She often referred to Trish as “that-friend-of-yours-from-your former-lifestyle.”

  But Trish had me thinking. Wanda did seem to be spending a lot of time in the bathtub of late. And it had been almost a month since we had made love. I had put it down to the dreaded lesbian bed death that was said to afflict long-term couples. (I would need to ask Alice’n’Peggy about that.) In any case, by the time I got home, I was in grand-inquisitor mode.

  “HI, SWEETIE,” Wanda called out. “I’m in the bathtub.”

  Semi-pacified by the tone of her voice, I semi-stomped into the bathroom.

  “I’m really sorry, Sarie, I’ve been such a bitch lately. No, no, no, I know what you’re going to say, but don’t try and defend me. Work stress is no excuse. Will you forgive me, my little Sariekins?”

  She hadn’t called me that in ages. And stretched out in the tub, she looked so vulnerable, the sun shining through the window on her fifty-plus body and absurd young-dyke hairdo.

  “Join me?”

  I bent down and kissed her wet lips.

  What did Trish know about it anyway? I told myself as I slipped in behind my woman. Trish was part of that hypocritical straight world that Wanda was always complaining about, the misogynistic world that I had escaped when I left Dan. The woman-centred world was different. Lesbian couples were made up of equals who had opted out of the games and pretences of the sexist straight world. True, the pressures from outside could be overwhelming, even for two thoughtful and caring women, and I had yet to rid myself of the years of conditioning that had allowed my suspicions to take root.

  If I am now surprised by how long my marriage with Dan lasted, I am dumbfounded by how long it took to clue in to what Wanda was up to. It just goes to show how far we’ll go to hide from ourselves an unwanted truth. Maybe I’m more like my mother than I like to think.

  4.

  WANDA MET MY MOTHER ONCE. Not long after Wanda and I had moved in together, my mother dropped over t
o the house unannounced.

  It was a late Sunday morning, and Wanda and I were still in bed, entangled in each other’s arms. The doorbell began to ring and ring and ring. Reluctant but concerned there might be a problem, I rolled out of bed, pulled on my housecoat and went to the door.

  “Surprise!” said my mother. She held out a plate of the homemade peanut butter cookies that I haven’t liked since I was twelve years old.

  “I thought I’d come around and see your new place,” she said. “I went to old Father Pelletier’s church this morning, so I was in the neighbourhood anyway. Do you know, I haven’t been there in years? He’s mostly retired, of course, but he still says Mass now and again. Have you gone yet?”

  “To Father Pelletier’s church? No.”

  “Which church do you go to?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Oh, I guess you’re going later then. That’s the thing about living in the city. You have lots of Masses to choose from.”

  Wanda in her plaid housecoat came up behind me at that moment, hugged me from behind, and stuck out a hand in greeting. “You must be Sara’s mother,” she said. “I’m Wanda. Please come in.”

  She said, “I’m Wanda,” as if my mother should know who she was, would know her new-found status in my life. The problem was, I had neither mentioned Wanda to my mother nor explained about my mother to Wanda. It was still early in our relationship, and we hadn’t really talked about our mothers.

  My mother placed the cookies in Wanda’s outstretched hand.

  “Oh, thank you,” said Wanda.

  She gave my shoulder a squeeze.

  “Why don’t you show your mother around while I put the coffee on?”

  I had no intention of showing my mother around, but taking Wanda’s words as invitation, my mother pushed past us to begin her tour of inspection.

  I trailed after her to the basement, the most chaotic part of the house with unpacked boxes piled here and there. She took her time exploring the laundry room and guest room before heading back up to the main floor, where she then nosed around the den with the cozy back-to-back work stations. Finally, with resignation, I straggled up after her to the top-storey bedroom.