As the author of two collections of short stories and a former CBC Radio writer and commentator, Regina resident Pat Krause would be used to approaching her subjects from a detached point of view. With Acts of Love, however, her creative project becomes explicitly personal, for the book centres on her journey alongside her husband, Frank, as he grapples with cancer during what was supposed to have been their golden years. Although told from Krause's point of view, the narrative is driven by a close and tight partnership that spans decades: the author and her husband are still, in their sixties, the bantering and besotted lovers they were in their teens. The busy scenes after Frank's demise, when his widow realizes that "[h]alf a couple has double the chores" (4) and that maintaining her smile takes work, are at the same time quiet, void of the electric joy that fizzled between the pair. But Acts of Love is about more than an ending: it remembers beginnings and honours continuity.
Recounting her early childhood spent first in Alabama and then the Canadian Prairies, Krause invites the reader to mark the parallels between her father--Allan Blair, one-time director of Saskatchewan's advanced cancer treatment services--and her husband. Both love cars, for instance, and both suffer untimely deaths, her father of a heart attack before Krause is an adult. The impact of that early loss flits in the shadows of the memoir: "If my father were still living," the author reflects at one point,
"he'd be almost ninety-four. Frank looks nearly that old when he stops laughing. More than a quarter of a century added to his sixty-seven years by cancer. I shut my eyes and hear my father softly singing: "Hear the wind blow, love/ Hear the wind blow." (158)
Haunting his daughter still are her memories of Blair's flirtations with death when, as an ambitious scientist with a young family, he volunteered himself as a test subject for an experiment concerning the effects of black widow spider venom on humans. The "what ifs" obsess Krause: what if his participation somehow contributed physiologically to her father's later death? Blair's risks seem particularly cruel in light of Frank's unwilling descent into a fatal illness. In an ironic (and perhaps comforting) twist, Frank undergoes chemotherapy at a clinic named after his father-in-law.
Long before Frank's illness, though, there was a youthful and, if not romantic, jaunty courtship between "Butterball" and the lad nicknamed Eyeball. The author sums up their beginnings in a typically playful style: "Who: Eyeball. What: Lust at first sight. Where: Detention Room. When: Grade Nine. Why: So some other girl won't grab him" (192). It takes a couple of years, a horrific first meal of perogies at Eyeball's parents' house and the author's conversion to Catholicism before the two are married, but the wait, Krause assures, is well worth it. Frank goes on to a long career as a manager in the airline industry; Krause, to journalism and writing. Their work lives are scarcely mentioned, however, nor does Krause address motherhood except superficially--the focus is largely on the couple and how illness both reinforces and changes their relationship.
Krause and her husband are in Florida when Frank is stricken with what they first suspect to be food poisoning. A week after their return to Canada, the diagnosis is a tumour in the small intestine. Despite surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, his cancer persists. Shared memories and a comfortable sense of humour help them deal with the looming break-up of their solid partnership. Mining the past becomes an exercise for them to indulge in when Frank's condition prevents them from getting out in the world, as when they sit in their kitchen beneath a poster depicting Florida's sunny climes and visualize themselves walking along the beach once again:
"Got to shade my eyes from the sun." He looks at his digital watch. "Think we can do the two miles to Point of Rocks, touch the stone wall for good luck, and be back in an hour for our swim and rejuvenation rest?"
"Give me a hand jumping the stream of sulphurous water in the storm channel, and let's take off," I say. We grin at each other. (138)
The exchange is typical of the light banter that helps define their marriage. Humour is also, of course, a coping mechanism. Yet Acts of Love uses dry wit ("Getting Frank's weight up cooking his favourite meals is fattening. He's lost thirteen pounds and I've found them" [138]) without undermining the pain of impending loss. This because of the author's constant awareness that no amount of wordplay can save Frank's body: "There is no cure for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma," she says bluntly (168), and later, "How tightly can I hold you and not crush your ribs, cut off your ragged breath?" (202).
Their corporeal partnership may end, but Krause's love and respect for Frank endures, proving her conviction that "[t]rue love is a tangerine tent that can't be torn down by a gale or tornado" (56). This touching memoir gives readers glimpses of a humble man's courage when faced with an unbeatable adversary, and of a private language spoken between lovers.
Andrea Belcham is a Quebec-based editor and reviewer.
