A Harsh and Private Beauty

by Kate Kelly

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Ruby, grow up! You have children to think about. Don’t expect me to come home from work every night to you gone and the kids either at your parents or with a sitter!”

  “It’s not every night, John. It’s only three times a week. I can move the lessons to the mornings and then be home for you.”

  “And what about the expense of this whole thing? And the time commitment? The concerts and the engagements, Ruby? I don’t want this. I’m trying to get ahead, to go somewhere with Decca. It’s me who pays the bills, the mortgage, and you’re out pursuing what? A career that has already passed you by?”

  She was stunned at John’s words. They were her own fears, ringing in her ears with a truth that seemed to take the strength from her knees.

  Once Ruby married, LaLiberté never had anything but encouragement for her; he never acknowledged out loud that he had been right about the effect her marriage would have on her career. The day before leaving for Toronto, she stopped by his studio. It was late morning, and Ruby had dropped the children at her mother’s house for a few hours, under the pretence of packing, and rushed to Kings Hall on Montreal’s main street, anxious to see him one last time.

  He was in his office, perusing scores, sheet music littering his desk like giant confetti. He was playing music in his head, concentrating, following the notes and rhythms with the precision of a conductor.

  “Am I disturbing you, Laylay?” Her pet name for him jumped to her lips.

  Looking up, his eyes took but a fraction of a moment to focus before his face blossomed with recognition. “No, not at all, my pet. You could never disturb me.”

  “I leave tomorrow. John and the kids and me.” Her words hung in the air between them, a broken footbridge. She rushed on “We’ll be renting a nice older home in Yorkville. I can take transit to the Conservatory. I intend to continue my training.” She was embarrassed by her prattling, painfully aware of every nuance of the moment, the smell of the small office (polish, mildew, and cologne); the dust particles, turning in the shaft of light falling across the desk; and LaLiberté’s gaze, calm but concerned. “It’s what you want, isn’t it, Laylay? That I should continue my training?”

  Laughing, he stood and moved around the desk, taking her hands in his. “Not for me, my pet, but for yourself. You must pursue the things you want in life, not what someone else wants, and certainly not an old, foolish man like me.”

  “But you’ve been so persistent. So … so demanding. I thought you would be pleased.”

  “I am pleased. If this is what you want. But it is difficult to serve two masters. You must decide what you want and follow that path without distraction. It’s a difficult thing for anyone to do.” Still holding both her hands in his, he looked into her eyes with frank regard. “You are young, my pet, and if you saw clearly, you could see your way to the finest stages in Europe.”

  There was a feeling of heaviness in the room; or perhaps the heaviness was in her heart. She could think of nothing to say, and he gently dropped her hands, returning to his seat behind the desk. “I will tell you, my pet, the saddest thing in life is to settle. To give up everything in pursuit of a dream, even if you don’t achieve it, is still a richer life than to simply accept. You are an artist, Ruby. You will find that to accept a path that is not your own will be difficult.”

  She had wanted to cry, fall into his arms like a child, and bury her face in his chest. She had wanted him to make everything better. But he was not speaking to her like the child she had been. Standing before him, she feels very much alone. The feeling tightened her chest, constricting her throat.

  “You will find your way, Ruby. We all must, and we all do. We will write, my pet. We will stay in touch. I cannot lose my star pupil!”

  With an effort, Ruby nods. There was so much she would have liked to say, but her voice was lost, like her lost saints, she thinks. Finally, she spoke, breaking the awkwardness that had filled the space between them, the words moving past the tightness around her heart. “We will stay in touch.”

  Then she moved down the blurring hallway toward Rue St. Catherine, the lump in her throat painful, her eyes smarting. She passed two young vocal students on their way to the studio, their charts held against their eager bodies, their voices harsh with enthusiasm.

  “NAN? NAN, did you say something?”

  “Did I say something?” Ruby asks, her mind clouded and sluggish with sleep, her chest tight with anxiety.

  “I thought you did.” Lisa watches Ruby struggle, feels the desperate need to connect, to reach back in time, to pull out the woman she never knew.

  “Nan?”

  “I thought it was the end of my life that day, but it was only the beginning. The beginning of another life, another chapter. And I was the author. Ha! Funny how it takes a while to figure that one out!”

  Turning to Lisa, her eyes lucid with understanding, she continues, “And that’s what you have to know, Lisa. We are the authors of our own stories. We direct them, we live them, and, ultimately, we recall them, for ourselves and for others. So the decisions we make are always the ones we are supposed to make.”

  Lisa’s face creases in confusion. She feels as if her own thoughts of the past twenty minutes have been jolted to a halt with the clarity of Ruby’s statement and with the significance of the moment. She wonders if there is an underlying meaning or order to the chaos of life, if the harsh and private beauty of someone else’s life can bring insight and direction to her own. Or is her desperate need for guidance making Ruby’s words feel more profound than they are? Either way, her grandmother’s advice resonates so profoundly that Lisa’s eyes sting with emotion; she is suddenly unable to control the thoughts she has been holding so tightly in check. She is shocked and relieved to give them voice. “Nan…”

  The strain in Lisa’s voice alarms Ruby slightly. She is still getting her bearings, unsure of the moment. She turns to take in her granddaughter, aware that Lisa is crying but confused as to the reason.

  “Lisa….” Ruby says soothingly, awkwardly reaching to take Lisa in her arms. “Oh, honey, what is it? Have I upset you with all my prattling? You just can’t listen to an old fool like me. Ha! It just comes out of me sometimes. I have no idea what it is I’m even going to say!”

  Lisa’s mind, whirling with thought but stifled by emotion, simply lets herself lean into the warmth of her Nan. How often as a child had she sought the comfort of her grandmother’s arms: a scraped knee, a dead gold fish, a break up with a boyfriend, an argument with her mother. And now here she is again, once more seeking Ruby’s comfort.

  “Oh, Nan.” Lisa laughs weakly through her tears, her voice a thin reflection of her pain. “You’re not an old fool.”

  “Well, I am, to be blubbering on and having you in tears.” Stroking Lisa’s hair, she tucks it behind her ear and sighs. “But maybe you better tell your old Nan what the problem is. What’s got you so upset that you’re falling apart like a cheap toy at an old woman’s musings?”

  Sitting up, Lisa fumbles for a tissue. Blowing her nose, she takes a moment to calm the sea inside, whose waves are crashing against her chest in painful heaves.

  “Well, child? Out with it. What’s got you all tied up in knots like this?”

  “Nan, I found out last week … well, I think I knew before.… I just … Nan, I’m pregnant.” Lisa stares at the tissue balled up in her hand as if the words were written there.

  Ruby nods. “I see.” She is silent for a moment. “And you don’t know if you want to have the baby?”

  “It’s just such bad timing. My job, or lack thereof,” Lisa rolls her eyes, “and my relationship with Steve. Just my whole direction in life—it’s so, so … I don’t know! It feels as if I’ve lost control.”

  “Well, control is only an illusion, ha! We can control our lives no more than we can control our biological urges. We think we have c
ontrol of our own decisions, but God knows what influences those decisions: our childhood, our insecurities, our needs, our desires? Sometimes life is just one big falling house of cards. Ha!”

  “Thanks, Nan! That doesn’t make me feel any better!” Lisa wipes her tears. “Besides, I thought you just said that we were the authors of our own life. How can I write my own destiny when I don’t have control over it to begin with?”

  “I did say that, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did!” Lisa blows her nose for emphasis.

  “Well, I suppose what I mean is that although we think we make decisions and choose what our life should be, where it should go, so much of that is just mere chance. What’s that word… serendipity? Who we meet, where we go, the opportunities presented to us? I guess you could call that destiny. What we do have the control over is how we make it our own story. How we turn it into something positive. In that way, the decisions we make will always be the right ones.”

  Lisa sighs. “I think you’re talking about rationalization there, Nan.”

  “Well, yes, and the stronger your powers of rationalization, the better your life. Ha! You know, in life, if you can rationalize, then there is no room for regret.”

  “I don’t know. That sounds like cheating to me. You can’t live your life without regrets.”

  “Where did that rule come from?” Ruby turns so quickly to face her that Lisa laughs, wiping at her tears, the tissue still in her other hand.

  “It’s not a rule. It just seems that in this world, nobody can escape death, taxes, and regrets. Come on, Nan. You must have regrets. We can’t gloss over life with a magic wand that makes everything perfect, legitimizing every decision or action we’ve ever made. What’s that famous saying, ‘an unexamined life is a life not worth living?’”

  “Oh, I don’t know, honey. I think that’s a rabbit hole, re-examining your life, pulling it apart with regret. Sure go ahead and look at your life, examine it in retrospect, but not with regret. What would be the point? It’s already done. Leland always said that regrets are for the past. To live with regret is to never move forward. And if there’s one thing I know about life, it’s got to move forward. You have to go on—there’s nothing else for it!”

  “That’s true, Nan, but who lives a life without regret? Regret for what could have been, or maybe what should have been?”

  “Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Ha! What you deal with is where you are and what you have, not what could have been.”

  “But if you don’t have regrets, you will end up making the same mistakes over and over again. There’s got to be accountability. Accountability for the decisions we make.”

  “The decisions we make,” Ruby repeats, nodding to herself.

  “But I think you’re right that the decisions we make are influenced by our own needs, our own insecurities, our own ideas of right and wrong.” Lisa breaks the silence, her words as urgent as her thoughts. “I’m pregnant, and maybe subconsciously I wanted this, wanted to force some direction into my life.”

  “I understand that feeling all too well. Ha!” Ruby says. “So then, you want the baby.” A statement rather than a question.

  “Maybe … no … I don’t know. All I know is that now that it’s a reality, it feels like it’s hanging over my head like a dark cloud. I don’t know if I want this. I don’t know if I can even handle it. What kind of a mother would I be?” Lisa says, almost pleadingly. She turns away.

  “Well, you couldn’t be any worse than me.” Ruby looks at Lisa, her eyes flat as slate.

  “Oh, Nan, that’s hardly true!”

  “Is it? Is it hardly true? Now that we’re falling down the rabbit hole?”

  Lisa takes Ruby’s hand, pulled by the tone in her grandmother’s voice. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Nan.”

  “No, honey, don’t apologize for that. That seems to be the problem when you get to be my age: nobody wants to upset you. Well, I’ve lived this long, a little upsetting isn’t going to make me or break me! And Leland was right—regrets are for living in the past. But these days, that’s where I seem to find myself anyway! Ha!”

  Ruby shakes her head, absently caressing Lisa’s hand as it lays in her own, her mind wandering through the years. An image of Phoebe as a child comes to the forefront, then her daughter as a baby, and now her granddaughter carrying a baby. “Life is too hurried; we rush past it too quickly, never knowing what is important until it’s already gone by. And where are we rushing to so quickly?”

  “Aunt Phoebe and Chicago?” Lisa teases, trying to lighten the mood that has descended on Ruby, threatening to pull her into yet another silence that Lisa cannot penetrate.

  “Phoebe. Phoebe was a good child. A good baby. Hardly cried, you know. I would hear her in the mornings, in her crib, months old and laughing and cooing to herself until I came in to get her. Never demanding.”

  “She was a little cutie too, Nan. I love that picture of the three of them: Dad as a baby in Aunt Phoebe’s lap while Uncle Frank looks on.”

  “Phoebe told me once that I was too busy pursuing my own life to be concerned with hers….” Ruby nods to herself as she stares out the window, her eyes focused but unseeing. In a monotone voice, deep in reflection, she continues, “But I don’t think it was that. I think deep down, at the baser level, I was afraid of my daughter.”

  “You were afraid of your daughter?” Lisa’s voice, loaded with incredulity, is just above a whisper. Now the question has been laid out between them, exposed and blatant.

  There is a silence that seems to expand the distance between them, between expectancy and reluctance, between understanding and admitting, between elucidation and fear. For Ruby, it is a fear of exposing the darkness of her innermost thoughts, inexcusably hurtful and damaging thoughts that she has been unable to escape. Phoebe carrying the pain of a childhood emotionally marginalized, striving to be accepted, to be understood, to be nurtured and indulged, to be loved.

  “Nan?” Lisa is insistent, afraid that Ruby has slipped from the moment, afraid to lose the thread of understanding. She is looking for a glimpse into her aunt’s strained relationship with her mother, with her brothers. “You were afraid of your daughter, Phoebe?”

  “Would you ladies like another drink?”

  Ruby and Lisa look up at the same moment, the attitude in their features, the tilt of their heads, matching them through generations. They are both shocked to realize that they are still in the bar car, their drinks and surroundings forgotten in the heat of the moment.

  Ruby smiles up at the attendant, her stage presence ever at the ready. She nods. “Why yes, dear. I’ll have another of whatever I was drinking, and my granddaughter will have a milk.”

  “Nan! I don’t want milk!” Lowering her voice and looking around the car, Lisa continues. “Do you have Pepsi?”

  “Yes, in the can.”

  “Great. I’ll have a Pepsi. In the can. Thank you.”

  Turning back to Ruby, Lisa can see that the insight is lost, the veil falling back in place, her grandmother’s cheerful expression replacing the darker one of moments before.

  8.

  THE NORTH STATE STREET flower shop bell rings as Daniel opens the door, hurrying in from the cold November morning, his three-year-old daughter Ruby in his arms. Closing the door with his foot, he swings Ruby up and through the air in one fluid, athletic movement. Childish laughter floods the room, and Dean O’Banion, entering the shop from the back room, laughs at the expression of sheer joy on Ruby’s face. Swinging Ruby again in a long arc, Daniel slows his movement and deposits her firmly on her feet before him. Ruby’s face is flushed, both from the cold morning and the excitement of the ride, her dark hair escaping the confines of her woollen hat. She beams with adoration up at her father, happy to be out with him and away from the house on Maple Street, where the blinds are drawn and the rooms are quiet and sad.

&
nbsp; She knows her brother is gone; she’s just not sure where. His clothes are still there and his crib is still in his room, where mommy sits rocking, waiting for him maybe, his favourite teddy bear on her lap. Ruby knows it’s his favourite because even though he can’t speak yet—except for the “da, da, da,” that makes her laugh—every time she holds Teddy up to him, he always reaches for it. Sometimes he reaches so far forward that he topples right over, rolling like a sausage onto his stomach, his hand still reaching for Teddy, his smile showing two small white teeth breaking the gum. He never cries, her little brother; he is always smiling, and his smile gets even bigger when he sees Teddy. That’s how she knows….

  “And how is our beautiful wee princess today?” Dean O’Banion asks, crouching down and taking Ruby’s chin in his hand, his face large and looming before her. “Oh, you sure are a beauty, aren’t you, Ruby girl?” He lapses into his phony Irish accent. Kissing her forehead, Dean stands, smiling at Daniel. He is dressed in the white smock he wears when he arranges flowers, his shears still in his left hand. “I imagine she’ll keep you busy with the boys in a few years.”

  “Yes, I’m sure she will,” Daniel answers, smiling down at his daughter.