The Heart Begins Here

by Jacqueline Dumas

  The petty clashes of the book world often dismayed me. As someone whose livelihood depended on satisfying a diversity of tastes, I didn’t see why there couldn’t be room for more than one or two genres. Love of spaghetti didn’t preclude an enjoyment of sushi.

  But Andaya was on a roll, and I was doing my best to listen as well as keep an eye on the irritating young couple still snickering in Lesbian Nonfiction.

  Andaya slid her pile of books onto the cash desk.

  “Hope this helps your cash flow.”

  “Thanks Andaya, your support means everything. But please take what you heard with a grain of salt. Booksellers and publishers gripe all the time to each other. It’s a ritual.”

  “Like writers, I guess.”

  19.

  HOW STUPID TO HAVE HAD that gloomy conversation with Fatima while there were customers in the store. No wonder the Dustycan bill collector had it in his head that I was shutting the doors for good. I had yet to make my decision, but should word get out that business was poor and the store might close, then people would start spreading rumours about it. Then, before you knew it, they would stop shopping here and the store would have to close.

  Andaya’s books totalled $155. Two more sales like that and I would be able to send Libida a cheque and cross-my-fingers-hope-to-die that by month’s end, which was next week, I’d have enough to pay the rent, the utilities, and a couple of other publishers, not to mention Carmen’s salary.

  “I also heard you mention this afternoon’s memorial,” said Andaya. “Did you know her well?”

  “Not really, but Wanda did.”

  “Oh dear. Do give Wanda my sympathies, will you? Good to see her at the reading the other night. I hadn’t seen her around for a while.”

  Andaya is not in the community, so no surprise that she didn’t know about Wanda and Cindy.

  “By the way,” she continued, “it may not be foremost in your mind at the moment, but how was your trip to Hawaii?”

  Dreadful, I thought.

  “Great,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m so glad. If anyone deserved a holiday, it’s you. And I want you to know that while you were away, Carmen did a wonderful job. She’s a real jewel, always so cheerful and helpful.”

  Andaya said goodbye and I turned my attention back to the remaining customers: the young couple who was now flipping through a copy of The Whole Lesbian Sex Book and the white-crossed woman who was again rooting around in Religions, where Simone Carrington was also now browsing. The white-crossed woman had abandoned the short-story collection in Humour. She wouldn’t be buying anything today.

  The two women unexpectedly bent down at the same time and knocked heads.

  “Holy Mother of God,” muttered the white-crossed woman.

  “Sorry,” said Simone, who rubbed her head and escaped to Politics.

  “Hey,” said the young man to his girlfriend. “I could get into this. You and me and Susie. What d’ya think?”

  The young woman blushed.

  “Susie and I are just friends.”

  “Yeah, but you could be hot friends.”

  She poked him in the ribs.

  He’s young, I thought. There’s hope for him. Less so for the middle-aged men who came in and planted themselves in front of the lesbian sex books, legs apart and pelvises thrust forward like they were at a public urinal. I usually asked them to leave, as their presence kept our genuine female customers away from the section.

  The white-crossed woman was perhaps less likely to shoplift than the young couple, so I moved to where I could observe them more closely. Obviously, they were not going to buy the sex guide, but he might be brash enough to steal it. I began to conspicuously rearrange the books in Gay Fiction.

  The young man smirked in my direction and slapped The Whole Lesbian Sex Book down on the bottom shelf.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said to his girlfriend.

  As they slouched their way out, the phone rang again. It was Alice, of Alice’n’Peggy.

  “We tried you at home to see how you’re doing,” said Alice. “When you didn’t answer, we thought we’d try the bookstore. What are you doing there? Did you change your mind about the funeral?”

  I explained that I was going and would be closing the store in about ten minutes.

  “Do you need a ride or anything?”

  “Thanks, but my friend, Trish, is picking me up.”

  But no sooner had I hung up than Trish called to say she was sick.

  “I would’ve called earlier but I was hoping to feel better by now,” she whispered. “Must be something going around. I’m so sorry, Sara.”

  “Not to worry. I’ll be fine on my own. There will be lots of people I know at the service.”

  Then I announced to the two remaining customers that the store was closing early.

  “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation,” said Simone Carrington. “I’m in town for the memorial, and I’d be more than happy to give you a lift.”

  I accepted the offer with thanks. Despite my assurances to Trish, I did not relish facing the pack alone.

  No sooner had I whisked the white-crossed woman out the door and put the petty cash away when the phone rang again. It was my mother, for the second time that day.

  THE MERE SOUND OF my mother’s voice had the ability to drag me back to my dreary childhood, imbuing me with the dispirited sensation of never having left home. And she had a knack for calling at inappropriate times. Mind you, there probably was no appropriate time for her to call.

  “Sorry Mom, I can’t talk right now,” I said.

  “Then why did you answer?”

  “I thought you might be a customer. I’m closing the store for the afternoon and wanted to let them know.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m on my way to a funeral.”

  “Can’t your employees keep the store open?”

  “I’ve told you before, I only have one employee, and she called in sick.”

  “My feet are really bad today. There’s a big sale up at the mall and I was hoping you could take me there. My right foot is bothering me again. I can’t drive myself because of it. I’d ask Herb, but he can’t drive at all of course. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. That lots of people with no legs drive. But they need a car that’s specially equipped and it’s very expensive, you know. As it is, I can barely afford a normal car, let alone one that would accommodate a handicapped man who only lives with me for a few months of the year. I mean, it’s not like he’s my husband or anything.”

  “Look Mom, I’m kind of in a rush now.”

  “I know I know, you don’t want to be late for the funeral. And you’re right, you should never be late for a funeral. Whose funeral is it anyway? Not that dead woman’s, I hope.”

  “Aren’t all funerals for dead people?”

  “Don’t be smart. You know very well who I’m referring to. That murdered one who was in all the papers.”

  So, my mother had seen the paper, and by inference, my reported comments.

  THE MORNING’S HEADLINE: “Lesbians in Shock.” The article was by the reporter who had interviewed a reluctant me the previous morning.

  Apparently, I was on a contact list that included three males (a constitutional expert, a Sikh religious leader, and a Christian preacher) and one other female (a Real-Women-type champion of traditional family values). While no Muslim mullah had yet been added, there was sure to be one soon.

  I suspect I had first been pegged as a professional lesbian two or three years earlier when, in a moment of weakness, I had consented to sit on a panel debating the pros and cons of same-sex marriage. The other members of the panel were con, and I had dutifully countered the chapters in Leviticus about the abomination of men lying with other men with the chapters about the abomination of
eating shellfish and bacon.

  “Swear to me that you or anyone in your family has never eaten at Red Lobster,” I had challenged the Christian preacher.

  It seemed I had also said that gays should not only be allowed to join the military but should be actively recruited.

  “Gay men are more likely to bond to the death than a bunch of straight guys who can’t wait to get home to nail their wives,” I was quoted as saying. I couldn’t believe I had actually said that. It sounded more like something that Wanda would say. But since then, I routinely received a call or two whenever a “gay issue” came up in the mainstream media.

  Privately, I had come to agree with Wanda that the right to join the privileged ranks of the married and the right to legally kill other people should not be the dominant issues of the gay rights movement. Why not lobby instead for the abolition of both marriage and the military?

  Whenever one of these interviews cropped up, Wanda would tease me that my off-the-cuff remarks had qualified me to speak on behalf of the lesbians of the world. I tended to agree with her. I wondered how the lesbians of the world would feel if they knew that the practical experience of their spokesperson had been limited to what was now a single, failed lesbian relationship.

  But were the news media right? Was the general public less interested in the books that I sold than in what my friends and I might or might not do in bed? For I was rarely asked my professional opinion about the book business or for information about the readings that I hosted.

  Yesterday’s reporter was following up on Cindy’s murder. She had wanted to know what it meant to the members of the lesbian community.

  How the hell should I know? I wanted to scream, but I’ve learned not to make those sorts of comments to the media, who tend to quote verbatim when you swear or say anything ungrammatical or otherwise stupid.

  “Naturally, those who knew Cindy are extremely shocked,” I answered.

  “Were you aware that Cindy Lottridge had abandoned her husband and small child in New Brunswick to come out here with her lesbian lover?”

  “No.”

  “So, you didn’t know that at the time of her death she was trying to get custody of her son?”

  “No,” I lied again.

  “I’m surprised to hear that. My sources tell me that if anyone knows what’s going on in your community, it’s you.”

  The interview was beginning to feel like witness-box hell. I extricated myself as politely as I could and hung up the phone.

  What was I supposed to say? That of course I knew that almost two years ago Cindy Lottridge had come out west with Freddie Coyne—everyone knew that, even women who’d never met them—and furthermore, that before she was killed, Cindy had been cheating on Freddie with Wanda Wysoka, my lover and partner of seven years. Should I have confessed that when I first heard that Cindy had been killed, like everyone else, I suspected Freddie? Another black eye for the lesbian community, we all thought.

  “WHAT ABOUT YOUR TRIP?” said my mother. “Here you’ve been back two weeks already and you haven’t told me anything about it.”

  If my mother didn’t want to know that Wanda and her daughter had been a couple these seven years, then how was I to talk about the pain of Hawaii?

  “The trip was pretty good,” I said.

  “Pretty good, eh? That’s it?”

  “Good weather, good food, good beaches. You know. It’s Hawaii.”

  I promised my mother I’d call later and said goodbye.

  “Sorry about that,” I said to Simone. “My mother.”

  Simone smiled.

  “We all have mothers,” she said.

  “We’d better get going,” I said.

  It was two weeks since Cindy had been killed, an eternity ago. Time stands still in eternity.

  While Cindy was being murdered, Wanda and I were high above the Pacific Ocean on our way back from Maui, managing to not touch in our narrow economy seats. According to my calculations, we would have been two hours out of Kahului. Wanda had swallowed a couple of Gravol tablets and closed her eyes. I was probably staring out at the blinking red lights on the wing tip.

  20.

  THE MEMORIAL SERVICE WAS LATE starting, and people were fanning themselves with folded programs and glancing around for the Reverend Rosie Superstein. Simone and I were lucky to get the last two seats in the back row.

  The venue was the same as that of our monthly women’s dances. The dances, however, were always held at night, when the grime didn’t show. Now, as we sat crushed together in the packed hall, the early afternoon sun burned too bright through the streaked windows, even with dark glasses on. The doors were propped open, but the room was stuffy, and whoever had set out the stiff plastic chairs had left little room between the rows. My knees kept knocking the chair in front, my lungs inhaling other people’s stale breath. The annoying person standing behind me kept shifting her weight from foot to foot, her purse brushing the top of my head.

  All along the outside walls, latecomers jockeyed for position against the smudgy windows. Other people had snaked their way to the front and jumped up on stage to sit facing the rest of the mourners, feet dangling over the edge. Ten or twelve members of Sing Out, the local gay choir that Cindy had belonged to, were humming and comparing notes below the stage. The overflow crowd extended right out into the parking lot.

  When Simone and I arrived, people turned to stare, so in the end, it was probably a good thing that Trish hadn’t come. Trish had never met Cindy or most of the mourners and her presence might’ve been more distraction than moral support.

  As it was, people were already gossiping. It didn’t take a lip-reader: “Who’s that with Sara? So soon?”

  Trish could laugh at herself, but I didn’t know how she’d react to people speculating on the nature of her relationship with another woman. On the other hand, Simone’s detachment from the current events was calming, and being a politician, she must have been used to being stared at.

  As I sat beside her, the emotions I had been pushing back these past months rushed to the surface. The injustice of it all. I wanted to shout, to shriek my anger up to the high heavens, to run away. Instead, I sat pressed against this near-stranger in the back of the grungy hall, frozen in fury as I observed the scene like some bystander at a car wreck.

  Trish kept a journal and said it helped to sort through your feelings on paper. But how to transfer so much mess and confusion onto a piece of paper?

  In the car on the way to the service, Simone told me that she had worked with Cindy on the Intercity Antiviolence Committee, and thought it important to be at the service. She asked me what my connection was.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  According to Simone (who was in government and probably tuned into the proper channels), the coroner had released the body two days earlier.

  At the front of the hall was a table adorned with flowers and photos. Wanda was also at the front, guarded on either side by Alice’n’Peggy, Alice to the left and Peggy to the right. Evidently, the temptation of being at the centre of high drama had lowered their moral stance.

  Directly behind them was Missy, and next to Missy, the white-crossed woman who had earlier butted heads with Simone in the Religions section, and next to them, Theodora Hathaway, for once without her parents.

  Even knowing in my heart that Wanda would soon be moving out, I sat staring at the back of her head, disappointed that she could be finding more comfort in Alice’n’Peggy’s presence than in mine. I was stupidly hurt that she had turned to them for support. I should have been the one consoling her. After all, it was Wanda who had taken me on my journey of self-discovery; it was she who had opened me up to a whole new world of possibilities.

  People in back were instructed to move aside, and the coughing and whispering abruptly stopped. The service was finally starting.

&n
bsp; Alice’n’Peggy craned their necks to see what was going on.

  “Freddie has a cane,” said Alice, her voice audible in the silence.

  “She’s limping,” said Peggy from Wanda’s right.

  (Alice’n’Peggy shared a talent for stating the obvious.)

  Freddie’s walk up the aisle was the apparent signal for the choir to launch into a shaky but poignant rendition of “There You’ll Be” by Faith Hill.

  As the choir sang, I continued to stare at the back of Wanda’s head, willing her to acknowledge my presence. Her grey roots were showing.

  No point, I guessed, to try to look younger anymore.

  Not that I was getting any younger myself. I looked down to discover two new liver spots on the back of my right hand. I was getting older by the minute.

  As for poor Freddie, she looked on the verge of collapse. She looked to have lost ten or twenty pounds since the murder. (Not that she had been on the heavy side to begin with.) She was wearing a spiffy brown suit, which, in other circumstances, would have invited flirtatious glances. Now, as she steadied herself on the unfamiliar cane, her left arm cradled a brass urn like it was a small fluffy thing in need of protection. Her bruised face confirmed rumours of the vicious beating she had taken from Cindy’s ex-husband. As well as wrecking Freddie’s knee, Simone told me that the creep had broken her nose and a couple of ribs before knocking her out.

  Freddie placed the urn with Cindy’s ashes on the table with the flowers and photos and hobbled to a reserved chair in the front row. Gasps of concern broke out all around when she tripped and dropped the cane. Chair legs scraped on the hardwood floor and a few people half-stood, too far away to be of assistance, but she managed to grab a shoulder to break the fall. The young man whose shoulder she grabbed caught her and helped her to regain her balance. He hung on until she was safely folded into the aisle seat next to his.