by Kate Kelly
“Is it the war?” she asks, eyes trained on her father’s, determined to pull the sadness from him, to bring him into the lightness of her youth.
“Yes,” he answers with a slow shrug. “It’s the war.”
“But it’s over now, and you’re here with Mommy and Edward and me.”
“That’s true, it’s over….” His thoughts hang in the air. Ruby thinks that if she can just pierce those thoughts, she could let the sadness slip from her father like a lanced boil. Still holding his hand, she watches his face for any hint, any insight.
“You’re right, sweetheart. The war is over and in the past.” Daniel’s voice is low, his words coming from a place of regret that has nothing to do with the present, with his small daughter whose eager face lights up the room. She is too young to understand, but he continues anyway. “But the things we do—the decisions we make, right or wrong, in times of distress or whenever—are forever a part of us.”
“Is that what makes you sad, the things you had to do in the war?”
“The things I’ve had to do don’t really make me sad, honey, just responsible. And responsibility is a sobering thing.” Daniel is silent for a moment, lost again to his thoughts, almost forgetting Ruby standing anxiously at his side, her face fearful and confused. Finally, Daniel rouses himself, he continues, his voice bright with forced effort. “But this isn’t for you to worry about, my little Jewel. Now, go ask Mommy when supper will be ready. I’m so hungry I could eat a horse!”
WATCHING HER FATHER’S FIGURE retreating in the distance, Ruby thinks about the mystery that is Daniel Kenny. He is her hero, her greatest fan, her anchor in this world, and yet she perceives something else in him, a pain, a vulnerability that she can never understand. He is getting smaller as the bus moves around and out of the station, his hat raised in his hand to her. And then she begins to relax in the comfort and calm of the bus as it shunts and moves, eventually smoothing out with greater speed into the flowing traffic. She is looking forward to her lesson with LeLiberté, her anticipation picking up speed with the bus itself, leaving the past and heading toward the future. Smiling, she thinks of the aria she will sing. It is always a good idea to run it over in her head, and the hours on the bus provide her with the perfect opportunity. The sheet music is in her purse somewhere. Looking around for it, she is suddenly perplexed. I know it’s here. Did I leave it at home?
“You okay, Nan?” Lisa watches Ruby searching either side of her seat. “Nan, what is it? Did you lose something?”
“My sheet music. I’m sure I brought it with me. I just want to run over it in my head, but I can’t find my purse.”
“I put it under the seat here. Don’t you remember? I can get it for you if you like, but I don’t think there’s any sheet music in it.”
There is a long pause, both women waiting for clarification. Then Ruby continues, “No, no, there is no sheet music.” Slightly confused and saddened, she nods her head and takes in the moment.
“Are you okay, Nan?” Lisa takes her grandmother’s hand, searching her face for some sort of reassurance.
“Yes, I’m okay, honey. Not to worry.” Ruby smiles and looks over her glasses into her granddaughter’s concerned face. “It’s just these old bones, always complaining about something. Either I’m moving too much or sitting too long.”
Pulling out of the station, they move from shadow to sunlight. The bus manoeuvres in and out of traffic, stopping and starting and turning until it finally reaches the ramp leading to the highway, picks up speed, and falls into a smooth rhythm heading south. Half an hour later, as they merge into the traffic on the 401, Lake Ontario opens up to them like a silver disc and follows them all the way east to Toronto, the spring sky pale and fragile against the darker depths of the water.
“Dad thinks this is a crazy idea, you know, Nan,” Lisa jokes, shrugging out of her sweater and making herself comfortable, her green eyes paling in the sunlight.
“You mean going to Chicago to visit Phoebe?” Ruby asks, her words ringing with satisfaction.
“Yeah, he thinks you should wait until Aunt Phoebe comes home. Then she can make the trip from Vancouver to visit you instead of you having to endure the bus ride and then the train.”
“Honey, I’ve endured more than a ten-hour journey in my life! Besides, I’m tired of being at the retirement home. I can’t tell one day from the next when I’m there. It feels like a holding cell. Which I imagine it actually is! And all the ‘activities,’ as they call them—ha! Damn, I really don’t like them. I’ve participated in life all I want to. Now I just want to sit. I just want to be still. My whole life I’ve felt like a full-time participant, and now I just want to sit on the side lines.” She turns to Lisa. “You won’t understand what I mean, not at your age.”
“Actually, I think I do.” There is a seriousness to Lisa’s tone.
Ruby, taking in her granddaughter’s attitude, continues, “I think maybe you do, honey, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing, or a bad thing.”
Smiling, both women look out the window at the landscape moving past to the rhythm of the bus. After a moment, Lisa continues, “I was listening to one of your albums with a friend the other night.”
Ruby laughs, the sound musical and soft like wind chimes. “Really? I haven’t heard one of my albums in years. I think the last time was when Jack was alive.”
“It never ceases to amaze me, Nan, every time I hear you. My favourite is ‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’”
“I remember recording that. It was Leland’s favourite too. I don’t think you remember Leland, do you, honey?”
“Vaguely. When I see pictures of him, I seem to get an impression that I know him. He seems so familiar. But it might just be that I knew of him from Dad and you.”
“Yes, your Dad and Leland got along well. Leland was really the only father the kids knew. After John and I divorced, he had less and less to do with them. His job didn’t help, with all the travelling, but mostly I think he was embarrassed.” Ruby nods softly.
“Embarrassed? Why would he be embarrassed?” Lisa asks, intrigued.
“Embarrassed by the divorce,” Ruby answers flatly.
“You think Grandpa Grace was embarrassed by a divorce, Nan?” Lisa’s voice is louder than she intends.
“Well, I don’t think it, lovey. I know it.”
“But I don’t understand. Why would someone be embarrassed because they were divorced?” Lisa looks squarely at Ruby, her eyes tight with confusion.
“Oh, Lisa.” Ruby almost chuckles. “It was a different time—it feels like it was a different place. People back then, well, they just didn’t divorce. It was quite scandalous really. They called it the D word, the same way they called cancer the C word. People just didn’t do it. It was a black mark. I think John felt that, felt the loss, felt the failure.”
“And what about you, Nan? Did you think it was a black mark? A failure?”
After a moment, Ruby replies, “Yes, honey, I’d have to say I did. That was the thinking of the time and it’s hard to go against that.”
“Then how did you have the, the…” Lisa searches for the word. Strength? Bravery? Fortitude?
“Nerve? Ha!” Ruby finishes for her.
“Well actually, I wasn’t going to say that.”
“But that’s what it came down to, child. Plain nerve.” Ruby shakes her head, proud of her choice. For years, she has pushed it away into the recesses of her mind, but here—sequestered in their own time and place, the world outside moving by without them, her life’s memories pulsing and insinuating themselves into every moment—there seems to be no reason to deny it, or to make it something it was not. It feels good to say it, to admit it. She says it again.
“Nerve. Yes, plain and simple. My mother believed it was a selfish decision.” Ruby smiles in recollection before continuing. “Nobody I knew was divorced.
It just didn’t happen—well, not to middle-class working people. It happened to big stars or singers, but not to the everyday Catholics who went to church. Back then, people stayed married. Women stayed married. I call it nerve, other people call it selfishness, but I could never come to terms with being somewhere that felt hopeless, even if that somewhere was a marriage.”
There is a silence, both women lost in thought, and then Lisa wonders out loud: “It must have been difficult for women in the forties and fifties. There were so few options. What could women really do if they were unhappy in their marriage?”
“Not much, let me tell you! Women got married and stayed married. That was their lot in life. I always thought it was funny, you know, that in the Bible Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt. That was her lot, Lot’s wife.” Ruby falls silent for a moment. She watches the countryside pass by, but without really seeing it. “How many women turned to pillars of salt?” she continues, her voice quiet, thoughtful. “In my day, women got married and had children. And if your marriage wasn’t a good one, what could you do? Who even knew what a good marriage was? And women rarely worked out of the home. Without a husband, how could they support themselves and their children?” Ruby shakes her head. “Nope, divorce just didn’t happen in good families.”
“And yours was a good family?”
“One of the best.” Ruby laughs. “Yes, one of the best.”
“So how did you find the nerve?” Lisa watches her grandmother as she gazes out the window, lost in a past that Lisa herself can only ever glimpse vicariously.
“Yes, how did I find the nerve?” Ruby repeats. “I guess I had to find it. There was no other way.” Turning, Ruby studies her granddaughter’s intent face. “I suppose I was quite independent for the time. I had something of a career in music, as small as it was. I wasn’t on the world stage or anything, but I was singing in nightclubs and working at the radio station—they called it The Nabob Hour. This was in Toronto, just before your father was born. Radio was big back then, and I was lucky to get the job.”
Ruby remembers clearly the small booth, the large condenser microphone, and the nervous feeling clawing at her stomach while she waited for the light to flash on, the one that told her she was live. Reaching all those people at one time. It never ceased to amaze her how, standing in one place, she could be in so many other places. Singing to an audience she couldn’t see. The radio was exciting and new, bringing new hopes and dreams to a career she had thought lost.
“OKAY, RUBY, YOU’RE ON IN TEN. Studio B. The boys have already set up. You want to go warm up and get ready?” Graham Fraser, program director for CKLM, sticks his head into the ready room and spots Ruby seated in the far corner, a coffee mug in her hand. She is staring gloomily at the oily residue as it circles on top of the brown liquid, turning her tender stomach.
“Sure, Graham, just give me a minute,” Ruby responds with a weak smile, unsuccessfully covering the wave of nausea flushing over her face.
“You all right?” he asks, stepping into the room to get a better look.
“Yes, it’s nothing, just a little indigestion. I was rushing to get here. You know, work, the kids, dinner, streetcars. Next week I won’t eat beforehand.”
“Yeah, life can get pretty hectic at times. Your little guys must be getting bigger, eh?”
“Francis is almost eight and Phoebe is two and a half now.”
“Yup, busy times for you. How’s John doing?”
“Great, thanks. He’s not back until Tuesday, so I’m running the show.”
“Well, if anyone is capable it’s you!” He glances at his watch. “Okay, you better get to the studio. We’ll be counting you in in less than eight now.”
Ruby rises, putting down her untouched coffee. The nausea has receded somewhat, and she can almost imagine that it was just indigestion caused by the frantic rush to feed the kids, gulp down a bite, and settle the babysitter all in an hour and a half. The children crying as she left didn’t upset her as much as frustrate her. They are well taken care of. Audrey is wonderful with them; she is a god-send to Ruby. Audrey lives two doors down, a widow who loves children and has made a career as a homemaker. Now with her own children grown, Audrey fills her days with the care of Francis and Phoebe, affording Ruby the luxury of unencumbered time to pursue her burgeoning aspirations, one of which has become Leland James.
He fills her thoughts in the same way that music fills her soul, lighting every corner of her being, bringing her into the beauty of the present more deeply with every breath she takes. He is like a drug. She, who hardly drinks, who up until recently couldn’t understand the biting necessity of need, now finds herself an addict, stealing moments, ignoring her guilt, turning life upside down, risking everything to secure her ecstasy. His voice, his laughter, his thoughts, his touch, all pull at her with a force she’s never known.
She will be meeting him after the radio show, and the anticipation helps her forget, helps her blur everything else into insipid shades.
“When will you be back?” Audrey asked earlier that evening as Ruby was gathering up her things, running her check list through her head with practised agility.
“I’m not sure. Can you stay the night?” Tucking her sheet music into her carry bag, Ruby rushed on, her lie staining her cheeks, hindering her ability to meet Audrey’s naïve goodness face on. “I’ll be going to the Lounge right after I leave the radio station, so it’ll be quite late.”
“Mommy, Mommy,” Phoebe sang, hanging onto Ruby’s purse and swinging back and forth, her baby weight tugging at Ruby’s arm.
“Let go, Phoebe!” Ruby’s voice was harsh with impatience and stress. Then she added, more tenderly, “Mommy has to go to work. You stay here with Audrey and Francis and be a good girl.” Untangling Phoebe from the purse and, after a quick kiss, moving her toward Audrey, Ruby looked at Francis. “Francis, you be a big boy now and watch your sister and help Audrey, okay?”
Audrey smiled, lifting Phoebe into her arms. “She’ll be fine. As soon as you leave, we’re going to play Old Maid and then have a bath. It will be lots of fun, right Phoebe?” Audrey kissed the little girl’s dark hair. Phoebe nodded, buried tight against Audrey’s sweater, tears gathering in her eyes.
Francis came in from the hallway, taking up a silent stance of independence beside Audrey as the three of them watched Ruby run down the steps toward the street. Turning, Ruby raised her hand, the sense of freedom soothing her anxiety like a salve and spreading across her face in a moment of genuine happiness. Audrey returned her wave and smiled, hiking Phoebe’s small body up against her. Then she closed the door, happy to be needed.
READYING HERSELF before the microphone, focused on the music she is about to sing, Ruby feels a sense of calm come over her. More and more she is appreciating what she is singing—blues and jazz, her father’s favourite music. He loved the melancholy of the blues, the excitement of jazz. “Jazz is a sensual thing, Ruby, full of physical passion and creativity. But you couldn’t have jazz without blues; there is no joy without pain. They come from the very deepest part of the individual, and there is nothing else like them.”
She is pleasantly surprised to find her father’s enthusiasm seeping into her understanding of the music. Ruby relates to the blues; it is sultry, sad, and painful, yet it keeps moving, finding beauty in the harsh struggle of life. It is the sound of the soul that will not be defeated, and her voice hangs on the notes with the pain of her own struggle. “Love will make you drink and gamble/ make you stay out all night long/ Love will make you do things/ you know is wrong.”
She knows that loving Leland is wrong, but there is no escaping it. She needs him; she wants him, as she has wanted nothing else.
“NAN. NAN?” Lisa touches Ruby’s hand. “Nan?”
Startled, Ruby turns. “Phoebe, honey. Where are we?”
Gently, Lisa replies, “Nan, it’s me, Lisa. We’re o
n the bus.”
“Lisa.” Ruby’s expression has not changed. “Lisa, Gary’s daughter.”
“Yes, Nan. I’m your granddaughter. I’m your son Gary’s daughter.”
“Yes, Lisa, Gary’s daughter.” Nodding her head then looking down at her hands, Ruby continues, “Francis never had children. Two marriages and no children.” There is a long silence. Ruby’s mind tumbling along with the movement of the bus, unable to land on any one thought, consumed by a sense of fault, of confusion. Lisa cannot help. Holding Ruby’s hand, she can only wait, a comfort in companionship. When she continues, Ruby’s voice is strained with effort. “And Phoebe has a daughter.”
“Yes, she does.” Lisa smiles. “Do you remember her name, Nan?”
“Phoebe’s daughter is Jacklyn.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I never knew where Phoebe got that name from. Jacklyn. At first, I wasn’t so sure about it really—ha! But now I like the name very much, and I wonder at my own hesitation. I suppose children grow into their names, don’t they?”
“Yes, I imagine they do,” Lisa answers with a smile. “Jacklyn has two children of her own now. Do you remember their names?”
“Jeremy and Alex,” Ruby answers with a proud nod. “I’m a great-grandmother.”
“That’s right.” Lisa smiles again. Pushing her hair from her forehead, she looks out the window. Her reflection and that of her grandmother are side by side on the glass, vague ghosts against the landscape.
“You don’t have children do you, Lisa?” Ruby asks, her voice husky with confusion.
“No. I don’t.” Lisa turns from the window and continues patiently, “I’m not married.”
“Well, honey, you don’t have to be married to have children. Those days are long gone!” Ruby says with such enthusiasm that Lisa laughs with genuine amusement, dissolving the fear and worry of a moment ago.
“You’re right, Nan. Those days are long gone. I don’t have any children. Yet.”