A Harsh and Private Beauty

by Kate Kelly

  A HARSH AND PRIVATE BEAUTY

  A HARSH AND PRIVATE BEAUTY

  A NOVEL

  KATE KELLY

  INANNA PUBLICATIONS & EDUCATION INC.

  TORONTO, CANADA

  Copyright © 2019 Kate Kelly

  Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Collective Agency (Access Copyright).

  We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.

  Cover design: Val Fullard

  eBook: tikaebooks.com

  A Harsh and Private Beauty is a work of fiction. All the characters portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: A harsh and private beauty : a novel / Kate Kelly.

  Names: Kelly, Kate, 1960– author.

  Series: Inanna poetry & fiction series.

  Description: Series statement: Inanna poetry & fiction series

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190197609 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190197617 | ISBN 9781771336611 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771336628 (epub) | ISBN 9781771336635 (Kindle) | ISBN 9781771336642 (pdf)

  Classification: LCC PS8621.E5595 H37 2019 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

  210 Founders College, York University

  4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3

  Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax: (416) 736-5765

  Email: inanna.publications@inanna.ca Website: www.inanna.ca

  For Fay Galloway Campbell,

  who saw me before I saw myself

  And he rewrote the piece, pasted it up with bold fingers, went out and got drunk. To quell the pain of the irksome canker sores. How could they know he swallowed glassful after glassful to comprehend a harsh and private beauty.

  —E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

  1.

  EVERYTHING BEGINS IN LARCENY AND CHAOS, and then history legitimizes it all. Funny how Leland’s words come to me like this after all these years, after all these lives I’ve seemed to live. It all begins in larceny and chaos, and we invent the rest as we invent ourselves, as the world was invented, as the country was invented. Civilization and manners—these are nothing but the shining veneer that covers our darkest beginnings. Leland, you were right. In your joking way you always saw the truth, clearer than any philosopher, laughing over subjects, but always landing heavily on the mark. I miss that the most. I miss you the most. Would you recognize me now, Leland? Your Ruby Grace, actress and night-club singer, aware of entrances and performances, unpredictable and unconventional, is now old and frail and very civilized. My larceny and chaos is far behind me, buried beneath years of good manners. But you knew me. Just like the truths you were always uncovering, you grew to understand and to know me—insomuch as it is possible to know another person. Sometimes I think that we can’t even know ourselves; we can only know of ourselves. It was through you that I found myself. You made me laugh, Leland, at myself, at the world, at the larceny that was my heritage, buried as it was under layers of upper-middle-class morality. I am my father’s daughter. Daniel Kenny is very much part of who I am. Was that what you saw in me? Was that who you saw in me, your Ruby Grace? Oh Leland, I miss you, sitting here waiting for death, living every day a little less in the present. I can feel it slipping away. It’s hard on the children, but I can’t help it. I don’t know when looking back became more interesting than looking forward. It wasn’t when you died—God knows I was too young to pack it all in, as they say—although your absence was like a stone in my chest that never lifted, even with Jack and our years together. Was it when Jack died that I began to find comfort in the past? I began to retreat into it, like a favourite blanket pulled out from the drawers of memory and laid across my mind for warmth. Comfortable old blankets, softened with age, taken out to be shaken and refolded one after another, a reassurance of a life lived. Maxwell said that the storyteller tries to make life acceptable, but that in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw. Oh well, you see, Leland: we begin in larceny and end in larceny, stealing and debauching the truth, bending belief to our own ends. You would like that, my love, the joke in the end, our histories retold in lies.

  “MOM. MOM.” His voice is gentle but insistent, pushing into his mother’s reverie. “Mom?” It’s a question now. She is vaguely aware of a presence, but the subtle moving shadows undulating across the table are engrossing. Ruby Grace follows the shifting light, her thoughts as fluid as the movement. “Ruby.” He tries again. Ah, recognition—her eyes refocus and she finds herself seated in a room she does not quickly recognize, in a time she cannot place. Snapping back to the vividness of the light, she is reluctant to let go of her reverie. “Mom. Mom, it’s me, Gary, your son.” Unable to hide his concern, his voice rises on the last word.

  She smiles to reassure her son as well as herself—the self she had been watching as it slipped by on the smooth reflection of the table—and adjusts herself slightly in the chair. She is hoping to appear perceptive and coherent, but the effort itself leaves her feeling somehow empty. “I know it’s you, Gary. Don’t worry, I’m here.” She nods and clears her throat, watching the light playing across the table. “I know you are.” Laughing with relief, he moves to her across a distance that spans a lifetime. “Did you remember about today, Mom?”

  “Remember about today.” She repeats, not quite a question. She looks down at her hands in her lap holding her cane. They are old hands, she thinks. Can they be mine? “We are going somewhere today.” She answers, not quite a question.

  “Yes, Mom. A dedication. Your picture at Centennial Place. It’s been painted by Jason Murray and they’re unveiling it today. It will hang in the theatre for years to come. Remember, we spoke about this during the week and again last night?” Gary is patient, a learning experience. “The Centennial Theatre.”

  She smiles, nodding. “Yes, the theatre. I’ve always loved the theatre! There is always something wonderful about the ability to suspend reality. Don’t you think, Gary?”

  “Yeah, I think suspending reality is always a good thing to be able to do.” Smiling, Gary continues. “We are headed to the theatre now, Mom, because the unveiling is today.”

  “Unveiling? My God, it sounds like a Middle Eastern wedding. The unveiling. It’s just a painting of me, an old woman. Ha! I don’t know why we need all the pomp and circumstance.” She shakes her head, enjoying the indignant sound of her own voice.

  “They want to honour you, Mom, and all the years you gave to the theatre. You were the biggest star who ever performed there, and they’re proud of that and of you.” Moving toward her, he continues. “Come on. We don’t want to be late.” He extends his hand. He is strong and competent, solid, this son who stands before her, past his youth, age moving in and taking up residence around his eyes, making its presence known.

  “Do you think they are going to present me with flowers at this ‘unveiling,’ Gary? Because if they do, I hope you told them about my aversion to roses. Just can’t abide the smell of those flowers.” She shakes her head for emphasis. “It just makes me plain gag. Ha!”
>
  “Yes, Mom, I think I may have mentioned the fact that you suffer from a unique aversion to the common rose.” Gary smiles indulgently, his brown eyes alive with humour as he looks at Ruby.

  “Well, I don’t know about it being unique.” She fires back. “Maybe it is, although I have never minded being different. In fact, you could say I have a strong aversion to conformity as well.” She nods, looking at her son, her gaze level. “I like to think outside the box.”

  “Mom, you are so outside the box you wouldn’t recognize one if you saw one!” Gary laughs.

  “No, Gary, that’s not true. I know what the box looks like. I even know what it feels like. But the next box I’ll ever be in will be my coffin! Ha!” She bangs her hand on the table for emphasis.

  “Mom!”

  Ruby holds up her hand, warding off his objection. “I know, I know. Don’t worry, son, it’s only black humour.” She takes his hand again. “Well, if you’re finished with all this chit chat, we should get a move on. We don’t want to be late. Although, I imagine they’ll hold the ‘unveiling’ for me. I’m an old woman—I move slowly.” Pulling on her son’s hand, she eases herself up from the chair. “I’ll never live to be as old as I feel, Gary.”

  “Mom, you’ve been saying that for the past twenty years.” “Well, it’s true. Just wait for the day you wake up and your body doesn’t feel like your own! Then you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

  “Actually old lady, I think I do.”

  She looks at her son, at the handsome structure of his face softened now with the years. “You look like your father, Gary. You look like him and you sound like him. You’re a good boy, a good son. You always have been, but I don’t think I’ve ever really told you that, have I?”

  Gary, taken aback by Ruby’s sudden intensity, smiles awkwardly. When he speaks, his voice contains a forced joviality. “Well, thanks. It’s nice to know I’m appreciated.”

  “Yes, yes, you are, appreciated that is, and it’s important for you to know that. Life is just too busy sometimes, and we forget to tell our children the things they need to hear. Important things. I’ll have to have a good talk with Phoebe and Francis. I wish your brothers and sisters didn’t live so far away, but at least you’re here.” She pats his hand and looks up into his eyes, taking in his features, his hair, slowly receding to reveal his broad forehead. “We repeat ourselves in our children don’t we, son?”

  “Yes, we do,” Gary answers, looking at his mother, this woman who has always been an enigma to him, so familiar and yet so unknown.

  “Speaking of children, is Lisa with you? And where is Bernadette?” Ruby asks sharply, looking around. Her abruptness changing the mood of a moment ago.

  “Berny couldn’t get away from the school. Department meetings and Principal meetings—you name it and she’s got to be there.”

  “That’s right, Bernadette is the new principal. Good for her! I like to see a woman in charge. Ha! In my day there were no women principals, only men. Bernadette deserves it; she’s worked hard all these years.

  “Yes, she has.” Gary smiles as he thinks about his wife last September, setting off for her first day of school as the new principal. She hadn’t slept a wink the night before, and in the morning as she stood before the hall mirror scrutinizing herself one last time, Gary could see the little girl she must have been on her first day of Kindergarten. “Don’t worry, honey, you look great. You’re going to make the most wonderful principal. You’ve worked so hard for this, and no one deserves it more than you.” Standing behind her and watching her worried expression turn to an impish smile, he wrapped his arms around her and, leaning forward, placed his head next to hers. “If I was a teenage boy again, I’d get into trouble just to sit in your office.”

  “Well that’s because it’s been so long since you were a teenage boy—you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bernadette laughed, breaking out of his embrace. “But if you keep this up I’ll be late for work and then you will be in trouble.”

  “I can only hope.” Gary smiled wickedly.

  “Well, I’m glad to see that you’re feeling like your old self.” Laying her palm against Gary’s unshaven face, she asks, “What time is your MRI today?”

  Rousing himself from the memory, Gary continues, aware that his mother is watching and waiting.

  “Berny will meet us later today at the reception, but Lisa’s with me. We also picked up Jacklyn on the way—she didn’t want to miss today. Even though Phoebe won’t be there, her daughter will. So, both of your granddaughters are waiting in the car. Lisa pulled up in front of the doors so I could just pop in and grab you.”

  “Well, if you were hoping to make a quick getaway, you should know that at my age, nothing moves quickly.”

  “Yes, I can see that.” Holding up a black-and-gold handbag, he asks, “Did you want to take your purse?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ll need that. I had to learn to use a purse when I was young and now, I’m paralyzed without it. I don’t even know what the hell I have in it anymore. Check and see that I have some money in my wallet will you, Gary? I’ll want to give the girls some money.”

  “Mom, you don’t have to do that. Lisa and Jacklyn are both working, and they have their own money.”

  “Just check, Gary. I don’t need your permission to do what I want with my money.” Under her breath she adds, “I always give my grandchildren money—that’s what I do.”

  Gary looks through the wallet, shaking his head. “All right, all right. Yes, you have wads of money in your wallet.”

  “Good. That’s just the way I like it.”

  “Can we go now, Mom?” He hands her the purse and guides her toward the door.

  “Yes, of course. I don’t know why we’re standing here talking like this while my public awaits.”

  Shaking his head and smiling again, Gary moves his mother through the opulent lobby, past the front desk, and outside to the waiting car.

  “Have fun, Mrs. Grace!” The nurse at the desk calls after them, her smile warm and genuine.

  “Thank you, lovey,” Ruby calls over her shoulder and then says to Gary, “I wonder what she considers fun at my age, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know—getting out and socializing?”

  “Oh, I’ve done enough socializing to last me a lifetime. I just hope they’ll have some sort of spirits there. I could do with a good drink—it always makes these things go better. What’s that saying, ‘candy’s dandy but liquor is quicker’? Ha!” Ruby laughs, a dry and deep rumble.

  “That’s the saying all right. Alcohol is a social lubricant, there’s no doubt about that.”

  Raising his hand to the waiting car as they exit the front doors, Gary continues. “I’ll see what I can do for you—I’m sure there will be some quicker liquor there.” He opens the car door and helps her in, taking her cane for a moment before handing it back to her.

  “Hi, Nan. Everything all right back there?” Lisa asks, pushing her dark hair over her shoulder as she turns to look at Ruby from the driver’s seat.

  “Couldn’t be better, honey.” Leaning forward, she touches Lisa’s shoulder. “Your dad was just reminding me of the occasion, but I hadn’t forgotten.”

  “Hi, Nan.” Jacklyn smiles and reaches over to help her grandmother settle herself in the seat, the scent of Ruby’s perfume evoking a lifetime of memories.

  “Hello, honey.” Taking Jacklyn’s hand, Ruby asks, “How are the boys? I haven’t seen them in a while, have I?”

  “No, Nan, it’s been a little while since you’ve seen them. They’re getting big. Jeremy starts junior kindergarten this September and Alex will be in grade one.”

  “Where does the time go, I wonder? It feels like it was only yesterday that Phoebe was starting school, holding on to Francis for dear life as I watched them from the porch. Gary was just a baby on my
hip, biting his fist to help cut his teeth, ha!” Ruby looks at her son and sighs before continuing. “Well, it’s nice to have my two darling girls with me today for this ‘unveiling.’ You see, Gary, I haven’t forgotten.” Ruby raises her voice and her eyebrows at her son.

  “Well, good. I’m glad to hear that.” Gary buckles up and looks at Lisa. “Okay, let’s go. Did you buckle up, Mom?”

  “Yes, Gary, I did,” Ruby answers as she pulls the shoulder strap down and toward the buckle. “Well, I’m trying. These darn things can be difficult.”

  “Here, I’ll…” Jacklyn begins, leaning toward Ruby.

  “No. No, I got it.” Ruby snaps the buckle into place with a sigh and a shake of her head, grey curls dancing in the sunlight. “Praise the Lord for small miracles.” She pulls at the strap across her shoulder, readjusting it. “I didn’t hear from your mother, Jacklyn.” Turning to her son, she asks, “Will your sister be there, Gary?”

  Gary, catching Lisa’s eye, turns to Ruby. When he answers, his voice is noncommittal. “No, Mom, Phoebe couldn’t make it, remember? She’s in Chicago right now at a convention. Remember, she lives in Vancouver and it’s always difficult for her to get back to Ontario, but she couldn’t have made it anyway.” There is an extended silence; Gary and the girls wait expectantly.

  “Didn’t Mom call you, Nan? She told me she spoke to you about it.” Jacklyn’s voice, edged with concern, breaks the silence.

  “Yes, yes, she told me. That’s right—I remember now. She’s in Chicago.” Looking out the window, Ruby continues. “I was born there, you know.”

  “Yes, Mom, I do,” Gary answers patiently.

  “Not that I can remember it,” Ruby continues, as if Gary had not spoken. “Your granddad was from Chicago. Yes, that’s right—Daniel Kenny, first born American citizen of Irish stock! Ha! Met and married my mother, Jeanie, in Montreal and took her back to the States to live. Then suddenly, in ’24, they returned with me to Montreal.”