Adele at the End of the Day

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Adele is old, ailing, and rich. She sits alone in her luxury suite of a downtown hotel — not the stereotypical picture of neglected old age, but neglected and old for all that — at the mercy of her paid companion Florence, a religious crank lesbian, who, Adele suspects, may be plotting to kill her. Adele badly wants and needs the assistance of her adopted son, a war orphan she named Kevin, and whom she rarely sees since he decided to become “Barney.”

Kevin / Barney is a bisexual drunkard, who is trying to come to terms with a broken, never-very-successful marriage, and trying at the same time to discover his true self, of which he has always been unsure, ever since his adoption. The other half of the story is told from Adele’s perspective — reminiscences of past loves and affairs beyond counting, of a chequered career both at home and in Europe, of a marriage of convenience that has left her a rich widow, of the one true love of her life — and of Kevin.

When at last the two stories come together, both Adele’s peril and Kevin’s mystery are resolved. Of the two, Adele is far the more interesting. She is stronger, less self-pitying though with greater excuse, and has a more engrossing story to tell. “My tree of paradise was the body,” as she emphasizes both in her life story retold and in her every action. A wry view of life, relieved by a sardonic wit, makes the end of Adele’s days an unrepentant triumph.