Dear Hearts

by Barbara Miller Biles

  “Oh, it’s you. I was just dozing a little. Come in. Can I get you some tea?”

  “You know, in Spain,” she continues as she puts the kettle on, “they always have their siesta. And bull fights! Now there’s something I refused to see. Come sit down. There’s that story, you know, Death in The Afternoon. Archie fancied he’d be like Hemingway; he insisted on going and I said fine, but you’ll go without me. And he did. Damn him anyway. Pardon my French. Now he’s done it again.”

  Archie promised to be there, to hold her hand while she drifted away. She left the details to him, the itinerary so to speak, which is just the opposite of her usual tendency to obsess over dates and times and travel gear. She believes in heaven and all that, and she’s certain that it’s her destination—she’s baptized and confirmed; she’s received her confirmation for flight 2100.

  Archie was always the travel instigator. They’d get offers and brochures in the mail, and then he’d quickly decide that they would go to Istanbul or Kenya or Peking or the Galapagos. These were package deals, so the arrangements were relatively uncomplicated. But first he had to persuade Alice, then he had to let her talk through it, worry over it, fuss a little. This was not the same as worrying about something. Alice did that compulsively. This was an unspoken ritual. She would line up the reasons for not going; he would counter them. If he hadn’t played along she would have been in a quandary, left to answer her own protests, and possibly reject the trips altogether. They would have stayed home. She would not have a house full of art objects from around the world, she would not be able to regale friends with exotic stories of Masai warriors guarding their huts at night, or steamboats taking them down the Amazon with savage piranhas lurking in the water, and that deadly imitator of coral snakes, the micrurus, slithering in the nearby rain forest. She would not be able to sit in her blue rocker with her blue eyes closed and picture the giant icebergs of Greenland floating by.

  But Alice finally made it clear that they were too old for this business of taking off to other countries, and she meant business. It was hard to keep up with the other travellers, and, truth be told, it was hard to even leave the house. This was different from her standard worry routine, and Archie seemed to understand the certainty in her voice. “You’ll have to go without me. I’m finished with all that.” This, of course, was not what she really meant, the part about him going without her. Their lives had been thoroughly intertwined for fifty years. Their comings and goings were mapped out on a course that even the finest traffic controllers wouldn’t alter. The shock was that Archie actually did leave without her.

  She didn’t see it coming, didn’t really listen. After fifty years she knew, better than anyone, what Archie was about, but things slipped by her anyway. For instance, he complained about shoulder pain. That was easily explained. He had broken his collarbone after falling from the ladder. He had insisted on pruning the Manitoba maple himself—he didn’t listen to everything she dictated. He showed signs of recognizing his limitations: taking afternoon naps, hiring a school boy to cut the grass, turning down invitations to anything that ran too far into the evening.

  When the grandchildren came to visit, he didn’t turn down the usual wrestling on the carpet or trampling along the South Saskatchewan, but he cleverly redirected the children’s energy, engaged in mild deceptions, not unlike the ones Alice had used throughout her life. He did a lot of talking, a lot of kidding around the periphery of their activities, to make it seem like he was part of the action.

  “Oh, you got me!” He faked defeat from his arm chair. “And he jabs a left. He hooks with a right,” he commentated for his grandson. “Oh, she has me trapped. I’ll never get away,” he called out in a boyish whine. “Help me, Grandma!” he teased as his granddaughter pulled on his arm and his neck and his shirt, whatever she could grab, to draw him further into their play.

  Alice knew what was going on; at least that’s what she’d thought at the time. She could hear the rabble rousing from her kitchen, and she would holler at him to be more careful as though Archie were a kid himself. When he complained of sharp pains, she said it served him right. Take a little aspirin, have a good rest. What did he expect at his age? Of course he had pain in his shoulder and even down to his chest. Of course he should be tired out. Who did he think he was? At his age?

  Then, goddammit (pardon the French), he left without her. At first it seemed like a hoax, one of his silly practical jokes. Forget the invasion of urgent young men carrying a stretcher through her door. Archie was really just lingering in the zucchini patch, poking around their terraced gardens, hiding in the underbrush of willows and red dogwood and high bush cranberries. Or out on one of his jaunts down main street: into the Royal Bank, along the fronts of his commercial properties, over to Rogers Coffee Shop, into City Hall for the latest gossip on aldermanic shenanigans, then into Winnies Toys with grandchildren on his mind. At any moment he could barge in the door waving some red-tongued rubber cobra or neon dragon kite, and she could lecture him about spoiling those kids.

  Just yesterday the ladies covered her dining table with a finely woven brocade from Florence and laid out tea and coffee and dainty sandwiches and dessert squares baked by the Anglican Ladies Aid. Her guests carried silver-rimmed china plates to plush chairs or cedar lawn furniture—they are no longer of an age to stand around and mingle and flow from one group to another. They had the choice of teacups with saucers or coffee mugs, the latter being Archie’s preference, Alice’s too. In her mother’s day a mug would have been out of the question on such an occasion, but times have changed, and she likes being practical, or, as she still says to others, they like being practical. She tends to speak for both of them.

  Archie used to explain to her, to his son and daughter-in-law, to guests that would listen, that he had everything in order and, with a crazy grin, that he was ready for flight 2100.

  “Oh, don’t be so silly,” she would say, or, “No one wants to hear about that. Now when we went to China….” And then, “No, I wouldn’t want to change my life for all the tea in China,” or “Remember that song? Come along and be my China doll? Okay, okay, it was party doll.” She had heard it years ago it on her son’s record player. She had a way of moving through a conversation by association of words. You didn’t know where it would end.

  Today the table is cleared except for the china. The ladies washed it all by hand and stacked the saucers, four at a time, topped by four cups nestled sideways. “We brought a doll back for our granddaughter from China, made of papier maché, ha ha. No china doll from China. Actually, we brought an Anne of Green Gables doll with a china head from Prince Edward Island and a porcelain figurine of Marie Antoinette from France. Archie wanted to bring back this cake plate with Marie’s head smiling from the center. His idea of a souvenir. But you know there’s no one like the English for making dishes. My mother grew up near the porcelain factory in Worcester, and we still have pieces that she brought over with her. Now I’m more partial to earthenware than bone china, but you know, at times like this it’s expected.” She shrugs and hands her visitor a mug of tea. “Did you know they use ashes from animal bones? That’s why they call it bone china. A kind of cremation and recycling. My brother insists on being cremated, when the time comes, but I don’t know….” She shakes her head. “Says we use up too much land with cemeteries. I suppose he’s right. They make some very nice urns you know—beautiful plain or multiglazed earthenware—and I’m sure they come in fancy bone china as well.”

  “Pardon me? Oh no, they wouldn’t make the urns with people’s ashes, they use the urns to hold the ashes. Oh no. Goodness me.”

  “It is the strangest thing,” Alice explains. Whenever she walks from the living room (“What if it was called the dying room?” her son had once taunted as a boy) to the kitchen, she passes the corridor that leads to the oak-panelled study on one side and the red powder room opposite, then turns right to the bedrooms and a bat
hroom. Just out of the corner of her eye, she catches Archie going around the corner, perhaps out of the study. She always intends to get a cup of tea just for herself, but then she gets his mug as well, the large ceramic one, the one with Number One Grandpa printed in old English letters. She fills it to just the right level. She knows by sight just how much space to leave for two and a half teaspoons of sugar and enough milk to turn the tea to light beige. “Would you like some tea with your milk? That’s what I always say.” But his cup just sits there and gets cold, and milk forms a ring inside the mug.

  “Stupid,” she says of herself. “Damn him anyway.”

  Smile

  Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.

  —Scottish Proverb

  THE FIRST TIME SHARON THOMPSON saw him he looked just right. Just as he should. Not exactly like her father, but something about him was akin to her father, something reincarnate. It was the smile. They had the same turned-up corners of the mouth and eventually the same blue-grey eyes and sandy hair.

  Mother and son bonded immediately. She named him Dewey, meaning beloved, after scouring a book of names. Babies first present a social smile around four to six weeks. Any earlier and it is attributed to gas. But Dewey was an exception. He often seemed to be amused, to have a real sense of humour, as soon as he was brought home. He was precocious in this regard.

  Dewey would never know his grandfather since he was born three years after Alec Thompson died. Sharon, in perpetual mourning, slept with Dewey’s father, Derek, as a means of feeling close to another human being. They parted “on good terms.” Sharon was determined to avoid a marriage that might end up like the one that her parents, Alec and Agnes, had. For Dewey this meant growing up with a single mom and having occasional visits with an out-of-town dad who had moved to Toronto to pursue a career in soccer but ended up selling commercial property instead.

  When Dewey turned fifteen Sharon decided he needed a male presence, and Derek, his father, agreed. She put Dewey on a plane to Toronto for the summer holiday.

  Dewey, who is not athletic, has been forced to play soccer with his dad and swim lengths at “the club.” For some reason that even Sharon can’t fathom, she fixates on the club. “What’s with this club you go to?”

  “Keeps me from being scunnered I guess,” says Dewey.

  “Scunnered?” Sharon hears him grinning over the phone.

  “Yeah. Bored. Don’t you know? And guid words cost neathing.”

  She is amused by his Scottish accent. It distracts her from her concerns. It wasn’t easy letting go, even though she was convinced that Dewey needed his father. “Okay, smarty. I hope you’re having fun.”

  Part of Dewey’s fun at home has been collecting Spider-Man and Punisher and X-Men comics. Maybe he is still amused by them and is also stacking them up in Derek’s condo, sliding them into plastic covers, reticent to share with careless hands. Secretly Sharon considers Dewey a nerd. But that could be a good thing. Boys like him come into their own later than the norm, often in a big way. It is uncanny, though, how he has developed this other voice.

  When into the sauce her father, Alec, often slipped into a working-class brogue, a Glaswegian accent that was much thicker than his own. It was like he adopted a second voice in order to dish dissent about his wife. “Aye, the lovely Agnes says to me in so many words, ‘Yer oot yer face,’ and you know what I says to her? ‘Ah dinnae ken what yer sayin’. Drives her mad.” His state of mind inevitably morphed into melancholy, which was spurred on by headaches and retching, not to mention the resultant shame and remorse. Though he never articulated these feelings, they were palpable as he downed aspirin with pots of tea, especially in the face of Agnes’s fury. Sharon sided with her father when her mother seemed on the attack.

  Alec had his own business, Thompson Insurance, but liked to say that there was no real insurance in life, as if he mocked his own line of work and enjoyed the irony. In retrospect Sharon admits that her father was at times morose as he plodded through the day-to-day requirements of life. He was successful in his own small way, admired in the community, but his bouts of drinking filled in unexplained gaps and probably began with a buzz of sociability on special occasions such as Christmas and New Years and Remembrance and Dominion Day. Still, she was his favoured child and she favoured him back.

  Then Alec died. Sharon’s mother, Agnes, had, by a stroke of luck, a black pillbox creation with a little black veil to screen the eyes. It was a perfect fit for Sharon, and Agnes insisted she wear it to the funeral. Sharon tried to rebel, to let her hair cascade down her back and go to the service hatless. Her father would have understood, even found a way to commend her decision, but she gave in under the strain of losing him. Really, what did it matter? In the end she put her hair in a chignon, and the veil created a refuge, a distance from those who came to grieve, not to mention a curious disembodiment, a feeling most surreal.

  Agnes had become a milliner just when hats were going out of style. Sophie’s Hats and Things was a short-lived shop in town. Before Sophie moved on she befriended Agnes Thompson, as she befriended many others, hoping to create a bank of devoted customers. Agnes was bitten by the creative bug itself and became more interested in making hats than wearing them. She convinced Sophie to share her expertise. This also coincided with her first reading of The House of Mirth and her fascination with the impossible Lily Bart, who did a stint as a milliner instead of marrying for money.

  Though Agnes had been married for all those years, she could still imagine herself starting over. She worked out of her home and made what she called mad money from friends and acquaintances. Now with Alec gone she stocks supplies and does her millinery anywhere in the house. She has created an otherworldly air, draping boas and capes and fanciful hats on mannequins. When Dewey visited as a young boy, he challenged the mostly female apparitions to duels and galactic wars. Agnes made him costumes worthy of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Now boxes of felt and straw and netting are stacked up in the master bedroom. Feathers, artificial flowers, crystal embellishments, bands and combs, stiffeners and dyes cover the vanity, while finished creations sit on wooden blocks along the wall. She mainly sells white veils for weddings and black-veiled hats for funerals.

  Dewey calls Sharon on a Saturday. “A roukie afternoon,” he reports. He and Derek have done their lengths at the club. “You won’t believe this, Mom. You really won’t. Keep the heid now.”

  “Okay. What’s up?”

  “We were looking at old photos of the club members. And who do you think was there?”

  “Dewey, just tell me. I can’t possibly guess.”

  “I’ll give you a hint.”

  “Fine.”

  “He’s a deid man. Someone near yer hert.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Grandad was a member of the swim club. 1945.”

  “Dad never lived in Toronto.”

  “Oh, yes he did. You should come see for yourself. Seein’s believin a’ the world ower.”

  “Okay, Dewey, please stop the Scottish shtick. What makes you think it’s him?”

  “I checked the records—date and place of birth for Alec Thompson. Looks like all the other early pictures of him. Ask Grandma.”

  “All right, but I’m sure you have the wrong man.”

  “Deid men dae nae herm,” says Dewey in his deepest voice.

  “What? Let me talk to your dad.”

  “He’s oot. Oot and aboot.”

  “Okay, stop Dewey. Just stop.”

  “All right, all right.”

  “Get your dad to call me, will you?”

  “Sure, but he’s probably on an all-nighter.”

  “He leaves you on your own?”

  “I’m fine. I’m not a little kid anymore. By the way he’s in pictures with this other woman.”

  “Your dad has
his own life.”

  “No, I mean Grandad. Has his arm around her, sitting cheek to cheek.”

  Derek calls her on Sunday. “A dull morning here,” he says.

  “I’ll just bet,” she replies then wants to take it back. Derek’s love life is none of her business, but it does affect their son. “So … you leave Dewey on his own?”

  “Okay, Sharon. He’s not a baby anymore, and I’m not about to treat him like one.”

  She wants to ask about the club, about Dewey’s new way of talking. Is he on something? Do father and son get high together? Derek was into that when he was younger. She wants to ask these things, but she is afraid to insult the two in their father-son bonding. Afraid to be labelled a smothering mother.

  “So, has he met any new friends?”

  “Well, I think he’s got a crush. There’s this girl at the club that he hangs out with. Penny.”

  November is a mild month. Some years they were deep in snow by this time, but this year the land is dry. They had a brief snowfall in late October, before the deciduous leaves (except the poplars) had a chance to turn to red or gold or crispy brown. Instead the frost turned them into an eerie loden green. Red apples turned copper and now hang from branches like ornaments at Christmas, shining in the afternoon sun. Grass is still green.

  Agnes is vague about Alec’s stint in Toronto. At the same time she confirms it. “He was rejected for military service because of his flat feet, so he thought about studying law. We took a break, that’s all.”