A Harsh and Private Beauty

by Kate Kelly

  Ruby’s words are measured and metered; this is a story she knows by rote.

  “Why did they return, Nan?” This part of the story has always fascinated Lisa.

  Ruby shakes her head. “I’m not sure, lovey.” Falling silent, she retreats into her seat, her thoughts spinning around old familiar questions, family mysteries, impressions that are always just beyond her grasp. Gazing out the window at a landscape she really can’t place, she leans forward to watch the sky, white vaporous clouds against a blue vastness. The same light that played across her tabletop now moves across her shoulder and upturned face, its beauty catching her breath, her thoughts. She would like to drift away, to lose herself to her thoughts, to Leland and her memories. They are growing more vivid each day while everything around her recedes as though of its own accord. But Lisa is talking to her now. Ruby recognizes the question in the tone of her voice. She is being pulled back into her body. Begrudgingly, she thinks, not yet, not when I’m on the cusp of a memory, more than a memory, something visceral, a touching, my name being spoken. Not Jack, no. “Leland?”

  “No, Mom. It’s me, Gary. And Jacklyn and Lisa.”

  “Gary? Oh, I thought you were someone else.”

  Lisa looks furtively at her father and then back to the traffic. “Do you remember where we’re going, Nan?”

  “Do I remember where we’re going?” Ruby takes stock of things—something she is used to doing these days. It will come to her, and if it doesn’t, someone will tell her, or not. It seems not to matter. “Where we’re going…”

  “Mom…”

  Holding her hand up to silence him, she asks, “What is the date today?”

  “May third. Mom…”

  “May third.” Ruby smiles. Not allowing Gary to finish his thought, she says, “It’s my mother’s birthday.”

  There is silence in the car. Gary and the girls are fearful—Jacklyn for her grandmother, Lisa for her father, and Gary for his mother. She has always been in control, quick witted and present. These episodes—a stupid word to explain the slipping away of a mind—leave him feeling frightened and helpless. Ruby is silent, as she works to bring her thoughts into the present, struggling like a fish on the end of a line, then, with an effort, splashing into the vividness of the moment.

  “What’s the date, Gary?”

  “May third, Mom.”

  “May third? It’s my mother’s birthday.”

  “That’s right, Nan.” Lisa nods, watching Ruby in the rear-view mirror. Reaching for her father’s hand, she squeezes it, trying to impart what little confidence and comfort she can.

  “We’re going to the ‘unveiling’ at Centennial Theatre, I believe.”

  “That’s right, Mom!”

  “Ha! Don’t sound so relieved, Gary. It’s irritating.” Ruby shrugs her shoulders and winks over at Jacklyn.

  The girl’s laughter fills the car. Smiling, Gary looks around at his mother, who is sitting small and defiant in the back seat. “Sorry. I’m just relieved that we’re on our way and not running behind.”

  “Or that your behind’s not running! Ha!”

  Lisa, laughing, catches a glimpse of her grandmother’s impish face in the rear-view mirror. Ruby’s eyes are still so blue and engaging at eighty-nine that she wonders what they were like when Ruby was young, when her face was unmarked by the years, when her mouth was full and smooth and her body lithe and agile. She had been beautiful. When Lisa looks in the mirror, she often finds herself trying to catch a flash of Ruby Grace in her own reflection. Lisa watches her grandmother looking out the window. She recognizes in the expression and the slight tilt of her head that Ruby is gone from the present moment, pulled into a past that seems to call to her more and more….

  “RUBY? RUBY GRACE?” Reacting to the sound of her name, Ruby turns from the small group of friends and acquaintances who frequent the Golden Cockerel nightclub in Toronto. Singing here for the last four months has given Ruby a freedom she thought she had lost forever. She has finally found an outlet for her artistic energies. She realizes that she is happy for the first time in a long while.

  “Ruby?”

  She doesn’t recognize him. His face is a little too broad to be classically handsome, but his dark eyes capture her attention. He extends his hand, and she automatically takes it in a handshake.

  “You were wonderful tonight.” He says, leaning forward to be heard.

  “Thank you…?” There is a question in her voice.

  “Oh, sorry, I’m Leland James. I’ve heard you before, but tonight when you sang, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” I decided I wanted to meet you. So I could thank you in person.” They are still holding hands. He watches her eyes, dark irises exploding like universes into the blue liquid surrounding them. She extracts her hand, awkwardly but reluctantly.

  “Well, you’re welcome, Leland James.” Not quite sure what else to say, she looks around to break the connection. The night club is busy; the small tables are crammed with drinks, ashtrays, and laughter, the excitement of life buzzing through the thick blue smoke that circles up like morning mist, smudging all lines. Turning back to Leland, Ruby searches for something to say. Finally, she asks, “Are you here by yourself?”

  “No. I brought along some friends. Well, business associates really.” His mouth is close to her ear, his breath warm and sweet with liquor. “We were working late and needed a diversion so I suggested The Cockerel and luckily you were here.”

  “Well, I’m glad to be a diversion.” Ruby smiles, nodding. Then, almost as an afterthought, she adds, “That’s what music should be, an escape from the pressures of life.” A moment passes. They stand in awkward silence until Sarah Vaughan’s voice floats around them, distinct and lyrical, a recording Ruby recognizes. Tilting her head slightly, drawn to the sound that pulls at her soul, listening with her whole body, she is lost. “I don’t know why/ but I’m feeling so sad/ I long to try something/ I’ve never had.”

  “Sarah Vaughan.” Leland nods, captivated by the music as well as the woman before him. “‘Lover Man,’” he says slowly and evenly, “one of my favourite songs. You sound a little like her, you know. I think it’s those low notes, the way she hits them, very sweet, very compelling.” He watches her, his dark eyes bright with mischief and invitation.

  “I’ll take that as a great compliment. I love the sound of her voice—deep and sad and yet so full of beauty at the same time—but I don’t think I’m quite that sultry.” Ruby’s mind floods with thoughts of her father: his love for the blues and his passion for jazz. Music had been such a part of him that she can’t think of one without the other. “Blues is about the heart, Ruby, and jazz is about the head. But they are both the sound of the soul.”

  Listening, she aches with the memories that are evoked by every nuance of the music; every note holds something of him. Closing her eyes, she sighs, lost in the feeling of the music. The memory of her father swims closer to the surface of her mind. Floating up to her, he is as tangible as the smoke in the room. Only music can do this, she thinks, transport one back in time and place, to memories and emotions. She can hear her father regaling her with stories about jazz clubs and speakeasies, and the sounds of Billie Holiday, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith filling her childhood home. The sound of the music, of blues and jazz—the crazy, moody, heart-wrenching beauty, developing out of everything and nothing, out of the physical and the intellectual, out of passion and pain—always brings her back.

  “Just listen to that, Ruby.” She is five years old and listening to the gramophone with her father. Rather, he is listening while she is whirling around to the music. It is a recording of “The Mojo Boogie” by J.B. Lenior, whose voice is full of fearlessness and hope, always hope. “This is the sound of every man’s soul, Ruby. It’s the music of a people, the uneven, gritty flavour of the world.” Her father laughed. “Isn’t it great!”
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br />   “You have a beautiful smile, Ruby Grace.” Leland’s voice so close, his breath on her hair, brings her back to the night club and the simmering excitement in the room.

  “Thank you.” She pushes her hair from her face, unsure what else to say.

  “You’re welcome,” Leland answers, his intensity drawing her in with a curious force.

  They are silent for a moment as Ruby returns his gaze. Then, “It was a pleasure to meet you … Leland.” Almost dismissively, Ruby turns back to the small group of friends. Feeling off balance and distracted, it takes a moment for her to insert herself back into the conversation and the buzz of the nightclub.

  Amused, Leland moves through the low hum of conversation and chemistry that hovers in the air with the smoke, back to his table, to his associates and his scotch. He returns almost every evening that Ruby performs. At first, she is annoyed with him, with his self-assured countenance and constant smiling, but soon she begins to look for him. On the evenings he is not there she finds the night club and the singing unfulfilling. It is disconcerting that so much of her time is being taken up wondering about and hoping to see Leland James. What am I doing? I’m a married woman with two small children, daydreaming like a schoolgirl about a man I hardly know.

  It is 1950, and Ruby and John Grace have been married for seven years. Last year John took the transfer from Montreal to Toronto that Deca records had offered him, moving his wife and young family from Outremont to Yorkville. Oh, how she had fought that move, even while she recognized it as John’s attempt to start fresh, to save the marriage.

  “But, John, I don’t want to move to Toronto. My life is here; my parents are here. Who will help with the kids when you’re on the road and I have an engagement? It’s just too far away from everything! Except for Bob and Sophie Brant, I don’t know anyone there.” Ruby’s voice raised in pitch on her last few words, her eyes smarting with frustration and impotence.

  “You’ll meet new people; you’ll make new friends. I’m sure LeLiberté can give you a letter of introduction or something. Didn’t you study in Toronto for a while? It’ll be fine. You’ll find opportunities.” John, turning back to his small desk, dismissed Ruby and any further discussion.

  “No, John. It’s not the same. I don’t want to go.” But her words fell on deaf ears. She knew the move was imminent, and, truthfully, if she moved aside her fear, she was excited. The opportunity for change in her life was one she can’t ignore. Over the years, unhappiness had settled gradually onto her shoulders like a shroud. She would try anything to shake it. The birth of her son Francis did little to change the dread she felt, seeping into and around her. The miscarriage and then Phoebe’s birth four years later seemed only to heighten these feelings. Little did she know that it would take the move to Toronto and the reintroduction to jazz, blues, and Leland James to enable her to once again feel the light of hope, the exhilaration of longing.

  THE SONG IS GEORGE GERSHWIN’S “Summertime,” first performed as a lullaby by Abbie Mitchell in the opera, Porgy and Bess, in 1935. She is lost in the runs, the notes forming in her head like colours, some bright and sharp, others muted and dissipating. It is a song of atmosphere, a spiritual in the style of the African-American folk music of the era, sung slowly and easily, leaning more to blues than jazz, evoking the Deep South, the languid humidity, the sultry heat. But more than this, the song brings back, sharp and immediate, the memory of hearing it sung for the first time at the Colonial Theatre in Boston.

  “Jeanie, Boston is only a few hours from here. Let’s take the kids and see the performance. It’s important, this music. It’s something they will always remember.”

  It is 1935 and Ruby is almost fourteen when her father, mother, and younger brother, Edward make the trip from their summer home in Maine to Boston Massachusetts, “the city on the hill,” to hear the first American folk opera. It’s late September, but the heat of summer clings to the days with a force that seems unreal; only the evenings, cooling quickly with the setting sun, bring a respite to the heat. Pulling her favourite lavender sweater around her shoulders, Ruby settles in beside her father. “This theatre is so beautiful isn’t it, Dad?” Ruby says, looking around and taking in the deep red curtains, the vaulted ceiling, the gilded columns.

  “Yes, it is, honey,” Daniel says, his voice edged with excitement. He is unable to sit without fidgeting while they wait for the lights to dim. He has read about the opera, which has received excellent reviews. He’s anxious to experience one of his favourite novels, Dubose Heyward’s Porgy, on the stage and set to music.

  While his decision to take the family to this musical was spontaneous and out of character, his love for the music is something Ruby recognized and appreciated. The following year, Billie Holiday recorded “Summertime,” and it rocketed to twelfth on the charts. It is this recording that Daniel played over and over again through the years. Although it eventually became one of jazz’s most famous songs of all time—covered by Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and the like—Ruby has always associated the song with the Billie Holiday recording. Its influence can be heard in her rendition tonight.

  The jazz clubs are keeping her busy. Jazz is fun to sing, but it is the sound of the blues that resonates with Ruby. The blues is sultry and sad and painful, but it keeps moving, finding beauty in the harsh struggle of life. It is the sound of the soul that cannot be defeated, the voice of the voiceless. The older she gets, the more meaningful the music becomes. Holding on to the note just long enough to find the pain, Ruby slips through the music in spectral grace.

  The tables are full—small candles flickering, smoke hanging in the air like vapour. Ruby is living in the moment, her body following the undulating rhythms, her mind flowing around the notes like liquid. She is aware of the nuances of her voice, the colour of the music, her movement, all that is around her. She is at the centre of it all and, at the same time, observing it from a quiet corner of her mind. And through it all, she is wondering and hoping that Leland will be there.

  The song ends, the applause begins, and Ruby smiles graciously as she thanks the crowd. She is in her element, feeling alive and aware. She is totally herself, and yet not herself; she is somehow larger, a small part of something greater.

  With the second set over, she lifts the hem of her evening gown and steps from the stage, scanning the room.

  “You waiting for somebody, Ruby?” Phil Manning, her pianist asks, helping her down and sensing her anticipation. “Is John coming by tonight?”

  “No, just some friends said they might pop by.” Her lie sizzles the air around her. Damn, what is happening to me? she wonders.

  She considers compounding her lie with another, but suddenly she is saved by the sight of Leland James. “Good set, Phil. You are really on tonight, lovey.” Patting his shoulder in dismissal, she moves away before he notices the flush staining her cheeks. Making her way through the crowd, her emotions cramping in her stomach, she considers, not for the first time and not without bemusement, what she is headed for. She has a husband and two small children—her son Francis is six, and her daughter Phoebe is eighteen months—but their presence, their needs are not as pressing as the need she feels to be with this man. But to what end? Tucking a strand of hair around her ear, she pushes these thoughts from her mind. Allowing only the present to matter, she continues toward Leland, stealing what time she can to be with him.

  Leland, watching her approach, smiles. He recognizes her. She has the kind of beauty that speaks to him of truth, of meaning, that reassures him. But he is never sure exactly what it is about her. Is it the line of her movements, the unconscious lift of her hand while she talks, the corner of her mouth, the scent of her skin, rising up to meet him in the heat of the club? This is the reason men and women exist, he thinks, feeling the lure of her body like a planet caught in a gravitational pull. He is captivated by her movements, her laughter, her voice, and behind h
er eyes there is a soul that he knows, that he yearns for. Who could have known that it would be her, that Ruby Grace would be the woman to fill his head, that her presence would be the only thing to quiet his heart and centre him in his mind, in his own life?

  “My, aren’t we a bit serious tonight, Leland James? What happened, a bad day at the office?” She chides him, recognizing the gravity behind his eyes and wishing to break the tension.

  “I’m thinking serious things tonight, Ruby,” he says, looking directly at her and nodding.

  “Things like hard work and ambition or things like love and chemistry?”

  “Things like love and chemistry, although I never really gave them much thought … until now,” Leland says, dropping his voice on the last few syllables, awkward and unsure of his footing.

  Ruby waits for him to continue, the silence between them becomes deafening while he watches her in his quietly unaffected way. Finally, she can stand it no longer—she laughs and asks him, “So what do you think about love now, Leland James?”

  “I never believed in it. I never believed in chemistry or love. I have always believed in hard work and ambition, as you suggested.” He smiles, searching her eyes before he continues. “And in laughter and longing. But never love.” He feels foolish, but allows the emotion to remain, experiencing it with a degree of ironic amusement. He is after all, a realist, even though he feels like he has walked into a dream. Extending his hand, he takes Ruby’s, lifting it to his lips. “So, beautiful lady, can I buy you a drink?”

  Ruby’s laughter releases the emotion of a moment ago. “Goodness, you are corny, Leland James.”

  “Isn’t that what you find so charming about me?” His flashing look draws her toward him against her will, and she shrugs in an attempt to free herself.

  “In a word—no. It is a mystery what I find so charming about you. Or, if I find you charming at all,” she answers chidingly.