Dear Hearts

by Barbara Miller Biles

  “We can use your help,” Quinn says to Dennis, as he and the girl get up to leave. “There’s a meeting Thursday night, over at Sal’s. Stop around.”

  Geneva claims she has a headache and tells Dennis he need not take her home. She’ll rest in peace on the bus and then she’ll bury herself in The Red and the Black, though she doesn’t tell Dennis that.

  “Oh my God!” says Geneva. Julien Sorel takes a pistol and shoots Mme. de Rênal, right while she is praying in church. The Marquis de la Mole had written to Mme. de Rênal, at Julien’s suggestion (the fool), asking for a reference before approving the marriage to his daughter Mathilde. Mme. de Rênal wrote back and, under the duress of her priest, portrayed Julien as an opportunist, using the women of each household as a means of stepping up in the world.

  Julien’s opportunity to marry Mathilde is ruined. But to shoot Mme. de Rênal? Is he crazy? He is tried for murder, even though Mme. de Rênal is not dead, and he invites his own execution, says he deserves it. The French and their romantic beheadings! In spite of the fact that both his lovers work for his release, that they each consider suicide as a resolution, and that Julien has a brief belief that he has learned what is important in life; in spite of the presence, befitting any rock star, of fawning women at his trial, he does lose his head. Then Mathilde takes his head, kisses it (ew) and buries it with ceremony in the cave that Julien claimed was his place of peace and happiness, where he was least ambitious. And Mme. de Rênal dies three days later, probably from heartbreak.

  The Red and the Black. Done! One thing is certain. All this dying is for the birds. Geneva will stick with the French nonetheless—for now anyway. She’ll read Madame Bovary next; apparently scandalous in 1857 and it still might be juicy. She’ll check out Flaubert’s story about a woman who is bored and unhappy with middle-class life and looks for passion and love outside of marriage (she’s married to some kind of doctor). This reminds Geneva of a life with Dennis, probably a boring and unhappy one.

  Last semester Geneva studied the movement from Romanticism to Realism and Impressionism. She has a print in her room of Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass: two fashionably clothed men in black and grey frock coats (1860s Parisian), and a nude woman, a bather, done in warm fleshy tones. Considered offensive at the time, critics asked who was for lunch. The trio contradicts this slur with a look of modern consciousness and engagement in conversation. The woman looks alert, only temporarily distracted, like she is attending to the click of a camera, but she is as free as the men, even freer, unhampered by the usual ankle length, long-sleeved dress and underpinnings of corset and petticoats and stockings, not to mention boots.

  Geneva now has a personal take, a new perspective on Manet’s trio and a new curiosity about a female in the background, a fourth figure coming out of the water but already covered up in a white chemise. Why is she ignored in critiques? Where does she fit in, other than for artistic balance?

  Marrying Stationery

  DEATH IS A HARSH FORM of escape. Witness Marriage A-la-Mode, writes Geneva Roberts. This is her final term paper (she’s an art history major), and she must finish before the day is out. She has to put wedding plans with Kevin Renfrew and stale dreams of Quinn Munroe out of her mind. Kevin slumps on the couch in her apartment, smelling of Old Spice and reading The Godfather. He puckers his lips to the air every so often.

  There’s a moral to the story when you marry for money. Geneva is reviewing William Hogarth’s Marriage A-la-Mode, though it is hard to stay focused on Hogarth or on her chosen topic of Paintings Within Painting: Symbolism in Sequential Art. Her essay is on Hogarth’s series of six paintings or engravings, which tell the story of an arranged marriage, consolidated with a pile of gold, and set on a course of infidelity, syphilis, murder, capital punishment, and suicide—so-called standard fare for eighteenth-century upper-class English and so unlike the fate of Katharine Ross in The Graduate, who escapes from her parents’ approved and promoted wedding by running away with Dustin Hoffman. Simon and Garfunkel sing “Mrs. Robinson,” but they could just as easily sing “Here’s to you, Mrs. Roberts.” Not that Geneva’s mother would ever consider seducing Kevin. Not that Geneva would ever run away with Quinn.

  “The phone!” says Kevin.

  Quinn Munroe is on the line. He is all about timing. Not long ago Geneva fantasized about wearing a full-length gown, having the full-meal deal, with Quinn at the altar and the words preconceived: with this ring I thee wed. Of course Quinn would have found it all too bourgeois.

  “I’ve been thinking about us,” he says. “I know I haven’t called in a while.” His voice turns low and nasal when he wants to seduce.

  “Mm hm.”

  “I’ve been telling my buddies what you mean to me.”

  “Mm hm.”

  “Are you alone there?”

  “Unh uh.”

  “Should I call back?”

  “I’m getting married.”

  “Oh!”

  She tries to sound like there is another reason for Quinn’s call, a diversion for Kevin’s sake. “So … Kent State?”

  “Yes, unbelievable…. But I guess there’s no point … if you’re…. Is it anyone I know?”

  “Maybe. So you’re planning a rally?” She hopes Quinn picks up on the fact that Kevin is at her elbow. “Let me know if you need help, though I guess I’ll be busy the next while.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “Okay?”

  She puts down the phone, feeling it heavy in her hand.

  “Who was that?” says Kevin.

  “Just a friend, a guy that … well we spent time together and, you know…”

  “Hm.”

  Kevin, who is in first year of law school, doesn’t ask more, doesn’t cross-examine. It is not his style. Perhaps this also explains his decision to leave school at the end of the semester to join his father’s business, Renfrew Stationery. They will expand with a second store, and then who knows? Maybe there will be more. Maybe a whole chain.

  Geneva Roberts has settled for marriage and is talking simplicity: a garden wedding, a small party of guests, a mini dress, and a handpicked bouquet. She’ll crown her brown hair with a ring of daisies. Kevin is agreeable; he has never given much thought to such an event, unlike Geneva and her best friend Darla, who have been planning since they were little girls. Darla managed the whole shebang four years ago, even though she was pregnant and, according to some, undeserving of the white veil and gown. Geneva, however, has taken a turn towards the casual, like John and Yoko.

  The Beatles “Here, There And Everywhere” will replace Wagner’s Lohengrin, and the service will be made up of Khalil Gibran’s poetry. Geneva and Kevin will write their own vows, if they can think of what to say.

  Marrying stationery seems right, in spite of Quinn Munroe. Some marry oil or cattle or even publishing, but embossed paper thrills Geneva Roberts—soon to be Geneva Renfrew. She loves the business, that is the merchandise, up front. She has always made a beeline to any store or section that displays papers, pens, and staplers, calendars, notebooks, and colourful tabs, often browsing without a purchase in mind. Now she can scan the aisles after hours and have dibs on stationery, including invitations, and can order wholesale from the catalogues.

  She has started a collection of paper: rice paper, origami paper (including silver and gold foil to make crane mobiles and place cards), the finest ecru vellum for invitations (she will do India ink calligraphy for the actual wedding details and watercolour block prints on rice paper to overlap the card face), a pack of Zig Zag left over from so-called recreational weekends (Quinn was the roll expert), and strips and scraps of old wrapping paper that she can’t bear to throw away. She keeps it all in a Bay box, under the bed.

  The roll papers seem to be all she has to show for her relationship with Quinn. She has come to her senses about him. His wiry energy, his rusty voice, and his mus
ky aftershave have always pulled her in. But being fixated on a regular no-show just doesn’t make sense, even though the sound of his voice just instigated a cover-up when really there should be none.

  “Did you know that cranes mate for life?” asks Geneva, as she begins to fold silver paper into one, intending to hang it from the lilac bushes, her essay half forgotten.

  “So do magpies,” says Kevin as he tries to continue with The Godfather.

  “And they are a symbol of peace and happiness and long life.”

  “So are bats.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Seriously, in China the bat is a symbol of good luck and happiness and long life too. I read it in National Geographic. We could cut out black bats and hang them just like we did at Halloween.”

  “Very funny.”

  Geneva contemplates the marrying-for-life idea. Her mother, Mrs. Roberts, who is indeed a lifer, is keen about the wedding and not against marrying stationery either. The Renfrews in Red Deer are bigger than the Roberts in Bradshaw, and they are providing Dom Perignon, like a sacrament, to be served immediately after the ceremony in the garden. Mrs. Roberts would like a bigger guest list though, and she really was counting on seeing Geneva walk down the aisle of St. Stephen’s Anglican (and who is this Khalil Gibran?). Mr. Roberts, who is closer to Geneva’s heart, is agnostic and likes to question God’s existence, but Mrs. Roberts tends to think he does this just for sport. He accompanies her to the odd Sunday service just to keep her happy and in denial. Kevin’s parents are Anglican too but are used to catering to their son. “That’s just the way he is,” they are probably saying, “but he’ll come around.”

  Kevin indulges in oppositional humour—he has been testing his parents since he was a boy—and this suits Geneva’s current sardonic state. But how romantic are bats? Couldn’t he be a little more Ryan O’Neal to her Ali MacGraw? Couldn’t they have a little more Love Story minus the tragic death?

  Of course one can be delusional about love for love’s sake, she continues to write. Considered a twentieth-century descendent of William Hogarth’s sequential art, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat is an example of 1930s serialized masochism. It consists of a comic strip in which Krazy Kat continues to believe that Ignatz Mouse really adores him(her) and shows it by hurling bricks at Krazy Kat (POW). Here speech balloons and an irrational series of Arizona landscapes replace the kind of background symbolism, the paintings within the paintings, used in Hogarth’s work. Officer Bull Pupp completes the comic triangle; he continually chases and tries to jail Ignatz while Krazy Kat views this as an ongoing game of tag.

  “Crazy. Talk about ignoring all the signs,” says Geneva.

  “Huh?” says Kevin

  Though some of Herriman’s contemporaries associated Krazy Kat with Dada, based, I suppose, on its purely emotional and nonsensical images, I believe this comic strip, though whimsical, is a modern version of bad choices.

  Geneva holds the term paper in her hands, typed on regular stock, while she waits outside Professor Bremner’s door and reads his comments one more time.

  58%: Not a bad go re: the decline of social comment in serial art, but your focus on love and marriage is beside the point. This is, after all, an art course. Would like to see your analysis of composition and iconography. Dada, of course, self-destructed once it became acceptable. This is not up to your usual standards. Stop by and we’ll talk.

  Her initial response was, “Oh shit.” Her future in both art and life seemed muddy. But Dr. Bremner’s comments held intriguing undercurrents. He would like to hear more of her opinions. He recognized her high standards and he wanted to talk.

  She fantasized that he would be her confessor, that he would forgive her for her long-time obsession with Quinn Munroe and her pliant behavior whenever he deemed to call, forgive her for her love of paper, her fondness for material things that could lead to a dubious marriage, and forgive her for writing such an unfocused essay and for not knowing more about Dada, and for not realizing he had an interest in her. Please forgive her.

  Kevin Renfrew is on the line. Not long ago Geneva fantasized about a garden wedding and a life in stationery.

  “I’ve been thinking about us,” he says.

  “Mm hm.”

  “I’ve been having second thoughts. Even third and fourth ones.”

  “Mm hm.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Uh no.”

  “Okay. Is it someone I know?”

  “Not really.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Just so you know I have a chance to raise my final mark. I’m doing a paper on the series of eight pictures in A Rake’s Progress. And did you know about William Hogarth’s own infidelity?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, just so you know.”

  SURREAL HEARTS

  Transforming Doctor Zhivago

  AT THE EDGE OF ANNA’S GARDEN was the small windowless shed that they never discussed; it was simply enmeshed in their daily surroundings. In fact, when she read one of Zhivago’s poems in which he described her working in the garden, she noticed that he wrote about every bush and tree and building that surrounded her except this one shed. His words painted the landscape, eliminating one unsubstantiated part. The shed did not seem to exist for him, which was just what Anna wanted—at least in the beginning.

  On that day Anna stroked the muslin curtain as she gazed through the window of her country cottage out to the drifting snow. Snow had wafted off the heavy branches of the willow tree and piled up around the trunk, glistening in the sunlight. Hoarfrost decorated the windowpane and, since she felt feverish, she pressed her nose, then her forehead, then each cheek, along with the palms of her hands, against the frosted glass.

  Doctor Zhivago emerged from the thick pine forest in a sleigh pulled by a dappled grey stallion. A fur collar and cap framed his mustache and beard, and a fur blanket, studded with gems of ice, lay across his lap. He reined in his horse, dismounted, and walked over to the huge drift by the willow tree.

  Anna’s long hair rippled down her back and tickled her spine as she dropped her gown to the floor. She slipped through the glass and bounded toward the deepest layers of downy snow.

  His furs had fallen in clumps around his feet as he reached out to her and guided her further into the drift. His whiskers grazed her lips and down across her breasts.

  Snow fluttered with their movements; some flakes melded one to another, creating webs of intricate designs, while others formed soft cushions or floated with the wind.

  Afterward Anna helped Zhivago gather up his clothing and, since they dared not sleep in a winter storm, she slipped back through her window, trickled ice water across the wooden sill and floor, and waited to let him in through the door.

  First he unhooked his horse from the sleigh and led it toward a shed for shelter for the night. There were two sheds. The one with the window had hay and straw spread around the floor for the sorrel mare that stood inside. The other was small and windowless and padlocked and apparently inaccessible, so Zhivago passed it by.

  She greeted him at the door. “Will you have some hot tea?” she asked, holding out a ceramic cup. “And by the way, I am Anna.”

  “Thank you. It is good to be here, Anna.”

  A thick candle burned upon the wooden table. She could see it reflected in Zhivago’s discerning eyes. The stone fireplace crackled with the remains of the midday fire. As darkness crept through the cottage, he built a new fire and the two of them sat contented, like old friends, entertained by the ravishing beauty of the flames and the impetuous music of combustion coming from the logs.

  “I have prepared a table over by the window for you. You’ll get the afternoon sun.”

  He looked over to see a table with precious paper and a pen and an oil lamp, placed there for him to write, into darkness of night if he
wished. He smiled, then took his balalaika from his satchel and played for her until the fire had almost expired. After all, she had been waiting for him for a very long time.

  When spring arrived, Anna tended to her garden: she hoed the weeds, carried buckets of water from the rain barrel, and thinned the patches of vegetables. In autumn she harvested onions, potatoes, turnips, and beets to make soups and stews in a simmering pot. She ground the hastily stored grains of wheat and rye, and created dark, heavy loaves of bread. Sometimes Zhivago headed into the forest and brought back a rabbit or a pheasant to roast in the fireplace; bones were later added to the pot.

  In the midst of her outdoor labours, Anna often sensed him watching her through the window. Her mouth would curve into an enigmatic smile, half for herself and half for Zhivago, and then they would resume their tasks, he with his melancholy poems, she with the crumbling earth.

  At night she would lie in their bed of down and watch him with his head bent over papers; sometimes he wrote feverishly and sometimes he stared out into the darkness. When he put out the oil lamp to join her they would cling together as though they were alone in the world, like Adam and Eve.

  However, as time passed, the prairie earth seemed ever more demanding, begging for sustenance. Anna’s bones ached and her mind seemed to evaporate along with the morning dew.

  One day, after a long walk through the crumbling leaves of the forest, Zhivago returned looking expectant and hungry, as usual. Anna watched him as he approached the cottage. His face turned quizzical, and then his eyes narrowed with concern as though he sensed something had gone awry. For one thing Anna knew smoke was not spiralling up the chimney from their perpetual fire. For another, she saw that the normally padlocked shed door was flapping in the breeze. Zhivago quickened his step. A faint rumbling was coming from the shed, but still he bypassed it and hurried to the cottage.