The Heart Begins Here

by Jacqueline Dumas

  Wanda returned with a smile on her face just as Kimmy arrived with the wine. I nodded to him to go ahead and pour. Why bother sampling it?

  “Everything okay with the client?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” said Wanda.

  She raised her glass. “Cheers.”

  When the food arrived, Wanda tore into it like a grizzly in springtime, this despite her earlier professed lack of hunger. Soon, she was singing Mama’s praises to the surrounding tables with a new-found exuberance that I could only assume was related to the phone call, and by the end of the meal, she had befriended the three people at the next table and ordered a round of cognac for all.

  I picked away at my food, and because I was driving, limited myself to a single glass of wine. Wanda finished off the bottle.

  Back at the hotel, I brought it up again: “About that client….”

  Which is when Wanda finally said it out loud. “I’m in love with her,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. It is what it is. We’re in love. Cindy and I are in love.”

  Her voice actually lilted when she said the name, “Cindy.”

  “Would you like some wine?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I think I need some.”

  She poured us each a glass.

  I took a sip and worked up my courage.

  “Okay, Wanda, tell me. When did you stop loving me?” I asked.

  “I’ve never stopped loving you, Sarie…. It’s just that I’m not in love with you anymore.”

  “Cut the crap.”

  “It’s the truth,” she said. “If I could change anything I would, but you know it doesn’t work that way…. Despite what you think, I do love you…. But let’s face it, we’ve become more like companions than lovers. And then, we both know our sex life was never that great to begin with….”

  Had Wanda set out to deliberately injure me, she could not have done better. Had she been pretending all those times? Or was she lying now to justify her unfaithfulness?

  “I seem to remember you liking it well enough,” I said.

  Wine sloshed over the rim of Wanda’s paper cup.

  “It was pretty good at first, I guess...”

  She caught the drips with her finger and stuck it in her mouth.

  She “guessed?”

  As she sat there drunk, sucking her finger, Wanda actually looked pensive, like a historian trying to remember the date of a specific battle.

  “…But probably not as good as it was with Kate....”

  “Kate? You’re comparing me unfavourably to Kate the Psycho?”

  I downed my glass.

  “It’s true that Kate is kind of nuts, but the sex was hot.”

  “So, you and Cindy. I guess that’s pretty hot too.”

  My masochistic quest for truth was out of control.

  “It’s not just about sex. Cindy makes me feel worthwhile.”

  I was stunned.

  “What? I don’t make you feel worthwhile? You used to say we were soulmates.”

  “I’m sorry Sarie, I really am.”

  “If you were sorry you wouldn’t have cheated on me in the first place! And tell me this. How does Ms. Capital-Letters-LESBIAN-FEMINIST get off on chasing after a young … shallow… little fuckbunny just like those dirty old men you look down your nose at? She’s young enough to be your daughter, for god’s sake.”

  “Look, I admit I haven’t been touchy-feely-sensitive here, but I’m trying to be honest with you now, that’s all. Hard as it is, these are the facts.”

  “Yeah, right. Here’s a fact. Aging social worker in committed relationship has covert sex with nubile minister who happens to be in her own committed relationship. Side bar: Nubile minister belongs to one of those New Age churches that pretends it’s not a church but takes your money anyway.”

  I went on like the holier-than-thou moralizer that Wanda sometimes accuses me of being, as if admonitions and insults ever won back a heart.

  “Wanda, you’re an atheist for god’s sake. What’s her church anyway? The same as that goopy Tom Cruise, right? Scientology or something, right?”

  “Actually, she belongs to the Unitarian Church. And you can insult me all you like, but shut up about Cindy.”

  “Come on, Wanda, I’ve looked into those vacant blue eyes…. She’s a bimbo. Okay, maybe they’re not vacant so much as filled with everything in the world they don’t understand. You think I don’t know what’s going on here? If a young blue-eyed WASP from hoity-toity Rosedale loves you, then you can’t possibly be just another dyke from some dusty farm in Saskatchewan.”

  I couldn’t believe I had just said that. But what did it matter anymore? All was lost now.

  Wanda drained her cup and tossed it into the wastepaper basket.

  “Okay, Sara, you win. You’re right. Everything you say is true.”

  She sighed like she didn’t care anymore.

  I had won but felt no triumph.

  “Although I fail to see how Cindy can be both a bimbo and hoity-toity at the same time,” Wanda continued. She retrieved her cup from the wastepaper basket and filled it again.

  How could Wanda drink so much and not slur her words?

  “And for the record, she’s originally from Toronto, but it’s Bennington Heights, one community over from Rosedale. And I’m sorry, but we’ve fallen in love. I’m sorry—really truly sorry—but until you and I landed in Maui, I didn’t realize just how much I am in love with her. I am totally, completely, off-my-rocker in love with her, and she loves me. She loves me so much that she refuses to sneak around anymore, and I’m sick and tired of it too. When you and I get home, Cindy and I are moving in together. We’ve decided. She’s probably telling Freddie this very moment, as we speak.”

  “So that’s what the phone call at Mama’s was about…. In the middle of our anniversary celebration, you were arranging the details.”

  “Oh, get off your preachy high horse, Sarie. Anyway, Cindy’s not the villain here. It’s me. I should’ve told you months ago, but I’ve been too big of a coward, and too greedy. The truth is, I wanted to keep you both. So, there you have it. The unvarnished truth. There’s nothing more to say, except that I’m worried sick about her.”

  “What? You think Freddie will hurt her?”

  But it wasn’t Freddie that Wanda was afraid of. Cindy’s ex-husband had been threatening her, calling at all hours of the night and day. She was terrified he would show up on her doorstep.

  “Does he live in town?”

  “No, out east, way out east. Moncton.”

  “Isn’t that where Freddie’s from?”

  “Yes. It’s where they met.”

  I HAD CAUGHT SNATCHES of the story from customers who gossiped as they browsed among the bookshelves. Freddie back home visiting friends…. Cindy, married at the time, living next door to the friends….

  A love story ironically parallel to mine and Wanda’s.

  Wanda filled in the details.

  Freddie and Cindy had maintained a long-distance relationship until Cindy moved out west for good. Her divorce was almost finalized now, except she was still in a custody battle for her son.

  Cindy had a child?

  Adam, who was six years old. When Cindy got her legal separation, a New Brunswick judge had awarded the ex-husband sole custody of the boy. Cindy had been fighting the judgment ever since and was in debt up to her eyeballs because of it. But attitudes seemed to be changing. Her lawyer thought the appeals court judge was leaning towards reversing the lower court decision. The judgment was due any day now, and the ex had ratcheted up his harassment accordingly.

  Had Cindy reported the threats?

  Of course, but her lawyer said they couldn’t do much because it was all mostly innuendo. Nothing concrete. In any case, she didn’t want to make a big fuss beca
use of Adam. She wanted to avoid any extra trauma for him.

  “Has the ex been violent in the past?” I asked.

  “How the hell should I know, Sara? She’s afraid of him, isn’t that enough? She left him once and moved back in because of some misguided notion that every boy needs a father. Then, when she met Freddie, her perspective changed. She returned for Adam two months after coming out west, but by then it was too late. She had lost custody. That was four years ago. And it’s not as if the asshole ever showed any real interest in the boy. As far as we know, it’s the grandmother who looks after him, the ex’s mother. I’m telling you Sarie, I’m worried sick about her in that creaky old house. She’s frightened and I’m too far away to do anything about it.”

  “At least Freddie’s with her.”

  “And that’s another thing. Who knows what Freddie will do when she finds out about us. Leave in a huff, maybe worse. Cindy says she’s not afraid of Freddie, but who knows. Oh, what a stinking mess I’ve made of everything.”

  “We’ll be home soon.”

  I couldn’t believe it. There I was again, consoling Wanda, deprived of my righteous anger.

  Wanda hesitated.

  “There’s something else I need to tell you.”

  “Not another affair.”

  “No, not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “It’s about something that happened a long time ago, long before I met you…. Something I’ve never told anyone about.”

  “Another secret, you mean.”

  “I suppose so, yes. I told you I went to Europe after graduation, right? Well, that summer I fell in love. She was Italian. Her name was Angelica.”

  An irrational pang of jealousy shot through me as Wanda said the name, the way her voice softened around the consonants—Angelica. What was she trying to do to me?

  “Angelica was planning to come back to Canada with me. We were young.”

  “And?”

  “It didn’t happen. She died. She drowned. In Spain. On the Costa Brava.”

  And that was when she told me the story of Angelica. She hoped it would help me understand.

  This was too much.

  “That’s a very sad story, Wanda, but why are you telling me now? And what does it have to do with you cheating on me?”

  “I think what’s happening to me now is connected to what happened all those years ago in Spain. I can’t quite explain it, but it has to do with healing.”

  “Oh, I see. As in aging dyke revived via restorative powers of young flesh. A laying on of the hands, is it? As in, she lays her hot young hands all over you and presto! Thou art healed! I get it, Wanda. It’s about closure. You never had closure.”

  Wanda sighed. She looked weary and disheartened.

  “Cut the psychobabble. I get enough of it at work. I’m trying to tell you something important here…. It’s as if an essential part of me is still frozen to that spot on the beach where I watched Angelica drown.”

  Now what? Wanda had finally come clean, and I felt panicky. Everyone knows that dead lovers are perfect lovers—just like new lovers. How could I possibly compete with the young, exotic, tragically dead Angelica, preserved like a Botticelli Venus in Wanda’s memories, along with Wanda’s new perfect lover back home? My first instinct was to bolt out the door and run. But run where? We were on an island in the middle of the Pacific. Our flight home was a week away, and I certainly couldn’t afford another plane ticket.

  “So why do this? Why not cancel the trip?” I asked.

  “I did think about cancelling it. But I guess I fooled myself into believing that if I didn’t see Cindy for a few weeks, everything would get back to normal. And then you were looking forward to the trip and I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

  “You didn’t think I might prefer to toss out a couple of tickets than be stuck on an island with a lover who’s pining away for someone else?”

  “Look, I’ve been a total shithead, I admit it. I really am sorry, Sarie.”

  “Will you stop saying that!” I cried out.

  “I didn’t mean to fall in love with her.”

  And suddenly Wanda began to cry, big teardrops rolling down her cheeks, shoulders heaving as she tried to catch her breath. But this time, my own misery beat out the impulse to comfort her, and I escaped out to the lanai to sort out my thoughts.

  I knew that Wanda didn’t believe in working on love. “If you have to work at it, it’s not love,” she’d professed many times. Nonetheless, I continued to cling to the faint hope that despite her confession, she and I might find a way to work things out. Cindy may have brought to mind Angelica’s youthful exuberance, but Cindy would never understand where Wanda had come from, not in the intimate way that I did. For one thing, there was our shared, early experience of the world: the accumulated injuries that went back to our childhoods. It was partly what we had endured separately as girls, how we had baffled our respective parents, and sometimes our siblings, that would forever bind Wanda and me to each other.

  I could not abandon the notion that Wanda and I belonged together.

  12.

  WHEN WANDA WAS BORN, her parents had been praying for God to send them a boy. What they got instead was Wanda. By the time her two younger sisters were born, her father had settled on Wanda being the one who would make up for the other disappointments in his life—the failings, the missed opportunities, the perceived snubs.

  Wanda did not remember a time when she felt as if she truly belonged on this earth. Although family photos give evidence that she was born looking like a boy, she never felt like a boy.

  In one of the photos, she is sitting on a pier in a pair of overalls rolled up above the knees. Arms and shoulders bare, she can’t have been more than six or seven years old. A fishing line stretches out from her stout little fingers into the lake. In a later black-and-white snapshot, she is on the same pier, a bit older, but with the same stocky self-assured little body, and a bowl haircut with a rooster tail just like my brother Bert had.

  Another photo, a colour one taken years later at her younger sister’s wedding, captures Wanda looking bulky and combative in a ridiculous flouncy dress that she put on to please the others. On the way home from the wedding, she backed the rental car into an alley, changed into her real identity, and tossed the bunched-up dress into a dumpster.

  She’d told me that many of her growing-up years were a blank, her remembered childhood a series of profound humiliations. One recollection was of a particular Sunday afternoon when she was small, younger even than in the photos on the pier. Her father had decreed that it was time for the family to visit the snooty relatives in town. Everyone was outside, ready to go. Her father had washed the car and shaved and put on his suit. Her mother and two sisters were wearing dresses, her mother the flowery church one. Wanda had put on a clean pair of overalls.

  Wanda’s father took one look at her and said, “You can’t go to the snooty relatives dressed like that. They’ll think we don’t have the money to buy you decent clothes.”

  “I don’t care,” Wanda had replied. “I’m not putting on any ugly old dress.”

  Her father grabbed her and pulled down her pants to spank her just as the family from the neighbouring farm was driving by in their pickup truck. The truck slowed, and the neighbour kids and their one-eyed dog gawked at her from the cargo bed in back. But Wanda didn’t cry, and she still refused to put on the dress.

  While the spanking was going on, her mother had nipped into the chicken coop to sneak a gulp or two of rotgut whiskey for the road. (The snooty relatives didn’t drink.)

  WHEN WANDA TOLD ME this story one night over a bottle of wine, it triggered a recollection from my own childhood, a recollection so strong I broke out in a sweat.

  Unlike Wanda, in my story I did cry.

  The evening was hot and muggy. My mother a
nd father were side by side on a couple of kitchen chairs out on the back porch. I had taken off my diaper. Without the thick cloth diaper, I felt light, exhilarated. I could lift my legs. I could run and jump. The air between my thighs was cool and silky.

  I was cruising for the saskatoon bushes out back when my father reached over and grabbed me by one arm and lifted me clear off my feet. No daughter of his was going to parade around naked like that.

  He put me over his knee and smacked my bare bum harder than he ever had before. Then he set me back down and pulled up my diaper. I wailed and tugged the diaper down again. He whacked me again and yanked the diaper up so hard it hurt between my legs.

  This scenario was repeated ten, twelve, twenty times. I don’t remember the outcome, but I’m sure my father won. He always won. What I do remember is how each successive blow diminished my feelings of freedom and joy until all I felt was shame and despair.

  I remember looking to my mother for help, but she was laughing so hard she could barely stay on her chair.

  Wanda was punished for not showing her girl parts. I was punished for not hiding mine.

  RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING, Wanda hated playing house with the girls. She always ran off with the boys, and at school, she played boy games with them—Scrub or Marbles at recess, Cowboys ‘n’ Indians after the final bell. Sometimes as they waited for the bus, they whittled slingshots so they could shoot stones at the magpies, and Wanda usually got the most hits.

  By grade six, some of the boys started not to like it that she was a better boy than they were. She could shoot straighter and run faster and jump higher and farther than most of them. One day, the day before her thirteenth birthday, a boy whacked her on the side of the head with a baseball bat. Afterwards, he claimed it was an accident, but Wanda knew it was because earlier in the day she had hit a homerun off his best pitch. What he had failed to grasp was that she was not interested in showing him up. She was just trying to hit the ball past the trees in center field.

  Sometimes, she would be walking in town just minding her own business and it was enough to rile people. Who did she think she was, sauntering down Main Street like she owned it? One of those times, three acne-faced boys jumped her in broad daylight and beat the shit out of her. In truth, they weren’t beating the shit out of her so much as beating the shit into her.