by Ann Birch
“Yeah, it’s been a bit like the General Confession from The Book of Common Prayer.”
“‘We have done those things which we ought not to have done,’” they both say in unison. Then they laugh.
Roberta says, “It’s all about getting beyond that stupid word perfect, isn’t it?”
“A word I hate,” Carl agrees.
“Have we been channelling ‘Pygmalion’? Is that what we’ve been doing?”
“I sure as hell hope not,” Carl says. “That goddamn story. It’s affected our whole society, even people who wouldn’t know the first thing about the details. Your son’s girlfriend summed it up well at Christmastime, didn’t she, when she talked about twenty-year-olds getting Botox injections? It’s insidious. Look at all the divorces over nothing much, and the obsession with stars and what they’re wearing and who they’ve got in bed with them….” He kicks at a Tim Horton’s coffee cup that’s rolling on the subway platform.
Their train rattles westward. A pretty young woman sitting across from them does a complete makeup job, starting with foundation, followed by a tube of concealer squeezed needlessly under her lovely eyes, then eyeshadow, mascara, and lipstick. Roberta and Carl watch in silence, saying nothing except “goodbye” when Roberta gets off at the Old Mill station.
Back home, she thinks over every detail of the evening’s confessions. Hers. His. She remembers how she took his hand, how he called her “Robbie.” It was nice, comforting somehow. And his comment about “Pygmalion” echoes her own views of Ovid’s story. In its way, its theme is every bit as sick as the “Myrrha” story, just not as grisly in its details. She goes to the bookcase in her study and takes The Cretan Manuscripts from the top shelf. She wants to look again at the fresh reality Euripida brought to that stupid tale.
Yes, Roberta says to herself as she reads, Euripida understood the inevitable outcome of the Pygmalion-Galatea marriage. When Pygmalion’s perfect ivory statue becomes a real woman and, in time, a mother with leaking breasts and a bawling infant to suckle, the sculptor turns against her, unable to endure her imperfections. Undaunted, Galatea finds new life in a nearby village, makes friends with a pleasant old woman and her husband, and eventually becomes a successful writer whose poems reflect the themes of the real world around her.
25.
ROBERTA DRESSES FOR WORK, putting on a new blue wool pantsuit and twisting a red silk scarf in place as a gesture to the day. Valentine’s Day. Not a day she’s looking forward to.
As she comes down the stairs and goes into the breakfast room, she sees a thick white folded sheet of paper on the table. On the front fold is a crayon drawing of what looks like a dark brown fedora with the crown crushed in the middle. Inside is a message in handwriting that alternates word by word between Ed’s and Charlie’s. She smiles. That must have taken them a while.
Hi, Mom/Ma:
Does this image make you nostalgic? Guess our tastes have evolved these days, but our primal love for you hasn’t changed a bit.
Lots of love,
Charlie/Ed
She studies the image. What on earth does it represent? Then she remembers. Of course, it’s the Roman Ruin, one of her long-ago baking disasters.
She was just about to take the chocolate cake out of the oven. It was an easy recipe, taken from Peg Bracken’s The I Hate to Cook Book. It involved only one dish, that being the pan it was cooked in, and there was no beating of eggs or creaming of butter and sugar. All you had to do was put the ingredients in four corners of the pan and then mix them together with a big spoon. She could handle that. At least that’s what she told herself every Valentine’s Day.
As she took the cake out and set it on the granite countertop, it looked impressive, nicely risen above the edges of the pan. “Got it right this time,” she says to Ed and Charlie who are standing next to her.
Charlie’s nose barely reached the level of the counter. “Yum,” he said.
But Ed, who was a good six inches taller, saw the phenomenon unfolding in front of him. “Uh-oh,” he said, pointing to the cake’s middle, which was rapidly caving in.
James joined them. He’d been in the breakfast room, finishing a glass of prosecco from the bottle he always opened on Valentine’s Day. He placed his arms around his sons, and said, “Not to worry, it’ll taste good. It always does.”
To Roberta he said, “The Roman Ruin.”
“Wow,” Charlie said. “Now we can make lots of icing and fill up the centre.”
“It’ll have to cool for a while,” Roberta said. “So why don’t we walk over to the Village Café and have supper? Then we can ice it when we get back.”
The restaurant was on Bloor Street, an easy walk from the house. It was a basic place, but the food was generally good and it was cheap, and on Valentine’s Day and other state occasions, Joe, the owner, offered “bottomless Fanta” for the boys.
“Hi, folks,” Joe said as they entered. “I guess you guys want the usual, right?” He did the cooking and the serving. No wonder his broad red face was always shiny with sweat.
“Right,” they chorused.
“And hold the fries, at least for the old folks, right, boys?”
“Right.”
It was a matter of minutes, and then Joe set their sandwiches, a new bottle of ketchup, and drinks in front of them. He wore a clean T-shirt that said, “Practise safe meals. Use a condiment.” The sandwiches looked good as usual. Roberta and James usually had the peameal back bacon on rye, and Charlie and Ed had cheddar cheese with green tomato pickles on white. The bread was always thick and fresh. And Joe brought plates of fries for the boys, and one serving for the “old folks,” which he set dead centre between Roberta and James. “Just in case you change your minds,” he said.
When they got back home, the Roman Ruin was cool, and the boys got busy making a runny butter icing, trying to fill in the sunken middle but licking as much from the bowl as they put on the cake. The icing ran down the sides of the cake and made a round sticky circle on the plate so that the whole thing looked, yes, like a fedora with the top smashed in. Then, they all settled down at the breakfast-room table and devoured large pieces.
James brought out her Valentine’s card then. It was the mushiest, most expensive Hallmark card he could buy from the Value Drug Mart. Roberta and James enjoyed their laugh over the poetry scrolled between the satin heart and the embossed garlands of purple roses.
James handed her a red marking pen. “Get busy,” he said. “There’s lots of bad lines here for you to scan.”
And she obliged while James laughed and had another glass of prosecco.
“Now for your video, boys,” he said, putting the Blockbuster tape of Black Beauty into the recorder. “Your mother and I are going to bed. Long day.”
And he took the rest of the wine with them and they sat against the pillows listening to a CD of Robert Burns’s love songs. Then he rolled towards her and sang, “O my luve is like a red, red rose” into her ear. By the second stanza, he could no longer sing, and she didn’t hear him anyway, caught up as they were in the crescendo of their lovemaking.
Now, Roberta sets her sons’ card on the dining-room buffet. She goes back to the breakfast room and searches in the cupboard for the recipe for the “Roman Ruin.” Eventually, she finds the frail little paperback called The I Hate to Cook Book. There, on page 92, are the ingredients for “Cockeyed Cake” almost obliterated by greasy fingerprints across the page. Should she make it this afternoon when she gets home from work? No, she decides. James is gone, the boys have grown beyond the love for runny butter icing, and there’s no Hallmark card to laugh at.
And now that she thinks about those Hallmark cards, she realizes that her scanning of the bad lines may have hurt James. He seemed to laugh, yes, as she marked out the lapses in metre and scoffed at the cheap rhymes. She remembers his bright eyes looking at her as she made f
un of his annual gift. Were there unshed tears in those eyes? Did he see her little academic sneer as a put-down of his love?
Come back, James. Come back. I would do better, I would.
She walks to Trinity College from the Spadina station, wanting the exercise of an extra block. She strides along the south side of Bloor Street, breaking her pace only to step around a couple of bodies stretched out in filthy sleeping bags on the pavement. Across the road on the corner by the Medical Arts Building, she sees a familiar figure. It’s Big Chris from the YES program. He’s got a little stand in front of him, and he looks up from talking to someone who’s buying something and waves at her.
She crosses at the light to see what’s going on.
“Hey, Roberta! Wanna buy a poem?”
She steps in closer to get a look. “Hey, Chris! What’s up?”
He gestures at his little stand on which are two stacks of paper stashed neatly in white stationery boxes. He’s wearing his familiar scruffy ski jacket, but on each side of the front zipper, he’s pinned a large red Valentine, cut from heavy paper. “Remember them poems we looked at last week? Well, I did them in colour on the computer at the Mission. So here’s the fucking deal. You get to choose one or the other; I give you a personal inscription on the top. And all for a loonie or any donation you wanna make. A bargoon, eh?”
Roberta sees “Come live with me and be my love” in one box, and “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” in the other. She likes the fact that he has two of the poems they studied in a session on “The World’s Best-Known Love Poetry.” And if he can make a few loonies from it, well, that makes her happy too.
“How about it, Roberta? You got a man in your life?”
“I did have one, my husband.”
“Aw, fuck, I didn’t mean to… Hey, I remember now, he died, didn’t he? That’s why you were away from the Mission for so long. So why’m I talking about selling you love poems, eh?” Big Chris reaches out his large hand wrapped in a ragged mitten and touches her sleeve. “Sorry, sorry.”
“It’s okay, Chris,” she says. “I’m okay, really.” She takes a deep breath. “And yes, there may be someone new in my life. I’m taking a chance here. But give me Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem, and I’ll tell you what to write on the top.”
So she waits while he kneels behind the tiny folding table, takes off his mittens, and with a thick-nibbed pen, inscribes, “To Carl: I love thee freely” on the top of the poem in a script remarkably like the computer font.
“Hey, it’s on the house,” Big Chris says as Roberta offers a loonie. “See you next week.”
“Thanks, Chris. Good luck with your enterprise. I really like the idea.” She moves off, making room for a grey-haired woman with a gentle face who’s been standing behind her. Does she have someone in her life to love? Or is she pretending too?
When Roberta is out of Big Chris’s range, she considers putting the poem into a recycling bin, but at the last moment, without looking at it, she tucks it into her purse.
26.
JUST INSIDE THE FRONT DOOR of Trinity College, the Porter hails Roberta. “Professor Greaves, I’ve got something for you.” On the counter in the Lodge is a huge bunch of white lilies, red roses, and little white blossoms, the name of which Roberta cannot remember.
“Got an admirer, looks like,” the Porter says. “Sign here, please.”
Bouquet in hand, she turns towards the door and almost bumps into Provost Witherspoon.
“Saw you coming up the front walk and just had to get over here,” he says. “Have you seen this?” He thrusts a copy of The Times Literary Supplement so close to her face she cannot avoid seeing the picture of herself on the front cover with the words below in huge print: “Canada’s most eminent classicist” and “Fiona Black reviews The Cretan Manuscripts.”
She’s taken aback for a minute. “I had no idea—”
“Well done, my dear,” the Provost says, beaming at her. “I know you’ll be hearing more about it.” He pumps her free hand and then pushes his copy of the TLS into it and says, “Must run now. The troops await my views on St. Paul among the Corinthians.”
In her office, she sets the flowers on her desk. They’re wrapped in a square of snow-white cloth and tied with a silk cord — clearly from an expensive florist. Could it be Carl? But why would he send her flowers? She opens the envelope attached to the cloth with a fancy silver pin and reads the card inside: “From the Faculty of English in recognition of the distinction brought to the College with your renowned translation of the Cretan manuscripts.” Well, that’s a nice tribute. But the cloying scent of the lilies chokes her. She opens a window to let in the cool morning breeze from the quadrangle.
She checks her office answering machine. Nothing there. What did she expect?
She’d better get the flowers into water, but she needs a pitcher or something. She goes next door to Joan Wishart’s office, then changes her mind — no favours needed from that woman, thank you — and moves two doors down to Doug Dunsmore’s office. There’s a moment’s pause, then Doug opens the door. His face is rather red, his tie is unknotted, and he’s running his hand through a dishevelled mop of hair. On a chair near the bookcase, Geoff Teasdale, the young lecturer in Comparative Literature, sits. He’s flipping through the pages of a book, but Roberta notes that it’s upside down.
Have they been having an argument about something? “Sorry to disturb you,” she says, “but I need some sort of container for those lovely flowers the English Department gave me.”
Doug has an attractive brass-plated wastebasket that he scoops up from the floor, emptying its contents into a plastic bag hanging on his coat rack. “Will this do?”
“Perfect.”
“And congratulations, Roberta. Have to tell you it was Wishart’s idea about the flowers. Just so you know to make a big fuss when you see the woman, okay?”
Roberta takes the wastebasket along the hall to the washroom where she fills it with water. The flowers look pretty in it, but the scent of the lilies reminds her of funeral homes and funeral wreaths. Oh God, will she ever be able to put the last few months behind her and move on?
She sits at her desk and reads the TLS review. She has always been a fan of the publication with its long paragraphs and erudite style, its total indifference to what John Schubert would call “the masses.” But this praise of her translation troubles her. Phrases like “mesmerizing new translation” and “exceptional accomplishment” grate. It’s only a few weeks until Mira hits the bookstands. On the one hand, all this fame may protect her from discovery. On the other hand, if her double identity is discovered, the wreckage may be even worse than she has anticipated.
She looks at her watch. No time now for further speculation. The flowers having been taken care of and the review filed in the bottom drawer of her desk, she heads off for her morning lecture in Room 101.
Just outside the door, she hears a familiar voice loud over the buzz of the others in the room. “Hey, can anyone recommend a love poem that would turn up the heat tonight? I can’t think of anything but that Ogden Nash thing, you know the one—”
She steps into the room, interrupting the laughter and catching the speaker by surprise. It’s one of her favourite students, a slender young man wearing a torn academic gown over a T-shirt that says, “I’m a born-again Christian.” His face flushes, suffusing for a moment the rash of acne on his chin.
“Thanks, Jason,” she says, putting her books and lecture notes on her desk. “You’ve set the stage for my comments today. I thought I might tell you something about the origins of St. Valentine’s Day before we move on to Ted Hughes’s translation of Ovid.
“Stories have come down to us of two men called Valentine who lived under the rule of the Roman Emperor Claudius II and who were executed by him on the same day, February 14, in 269 A.D. So I think it’s likely that there was r
eally only one individual.
“Valentine was a bishop who performed marriage ceremonies for young men and women. When Claudius, attempting to free up recruits for the Roman army, banned engagements and marriages, Valentine ignored the edict and continued to marry people.
“Claudius imprisoned Valentine, of course, and sentenced him to death. In jail, he fell in love with a blind girl, the jailer’s daughter. Just before his death, as he was put into the tumbrel to go to the place of execution, he handed her a love letter signed ‘From Your Valentine.’ It was the first handwriting she had ever seen because, as he gave the letter to her, he said a few words and miraculously restored her sight.”
“You’re kidding,” Jason says.
“You can say that,” Roberta asks, “wearing a T-shirt that indicates you’re a believer?”
The class laughs, and Jason says, “Oh please, Professor Greaves, I got it in the bin at the Goodwill. What can you expect for a loonie?”
“Not belief, evidently. And of course, the story of St. Valentine is myth. But Northrop Frye, my favourite professor from my long-ago student days, defined myth as an important story that has shaped our culture. He himself, a former minister, always referred to the Christian stories as myths; that is, important stories. Know these stories, he would say, but make up your own minds about belief. And I think all of us believe in the power of love, so we may be ready to accept the St. Valentine story and its miracle.” There is silence while they digest this. Then Roberta starts in on Ted Hughes’s translation.
Noon hour finds her at High Table in Strachan Hall, an experience she usually enjoys, even though she sympathizes with the student rant in the latest issue of Salterrae that calls High Table elitist, patriarchal, and generally contemptible. The table is “high” because it’s on a platform looking down on the undergraduate tables stretched out below. She’d be happier to have everyone on the same level, but she cannot imagine actually sitting at a student table, and she knows most of the students would be uncomfortable having to make conversation with their profs.