My Jean Beliveau story.

Jean Beliveau 1931-2014. (He'll always be captain of les Canadiens, as far as I'm concerned!)

From Travelling Light (2013) House of Anansi, Toronto.

First published in Night Driving (1987) Macmillan, Toronto

Yellow Dress

a short story by Peter Behrens

This time Dr. and Mrs. Ormonde had been invited to a conference in Moscow and another in Helsinki. Every time they went away routines were broken, food tasted differently, the house itself felt foreign. Silver-framed family photographs on the hall table seemed like portraits of strangers, and Ross felt he and his sister Anna were living the lives of different people, not the children who’d once lived at their address.

To make it worse, their housekeeper, Marie-Ange, had gone back to the Gaspé after her brother was killed in a fire. She had not returned, and a new woman, Mrs. O’Brien, had arrived in a taxi with her suitcase only one hour before the Ormondes left for the airport.

Ross and Anna watched from the living room window as she got out of the cab. “Ugly old hag!” Anna whispered.

The first Sunday their parents were away, Mrs. O’Brien took them to Mass at her own parish in Verdun instead of their church, the Ascension of Our Lord, in Westmount. “I’ve a daughter whom I have to keep an eye on,” Mrs. O’Brien explained.

It took three buses to get to Verdun from Westmount. On the steps outside the church after nine o’clock Mass, they were introduced to Mrs. O’Brien’s daughter, Joan. Ross thought she looked too old to be anyone’s daughter. Her hair was orange and black. She was clutching a handbag, and a missal.

“So these are the Ormondes!” Joan said. “Aren’t they sweet?”

People were already going into the church for the ten o’clock Mass. Joan dropped the missal into her purse and took out cigarettes and matches. Her slip showed beneath the hem of her dress. A button dangled from the front of her coat.

“Ah, Joan, can’t you make the effort, at least?” said Mrs. O’Brien, plucking off the loose button and nodding at two old people entering the church. 

“Look at you,” she said, turning back to Joan, who had lit a cigarette.

“What’s wrong with me?” Joan said.

Cigarette ash dribbled onto her coat and her mother swiped at it, leaving a streak of grey on the cloth.

“Did you go out last night?” said Mrs. O’Brien. “Were you alone? Did you have company?”

“No, I was watching the game. Were you?” Joan said, looking at Ross.

“Sure,” he answered. He always watched to the Saturday night game. The Canadiens were the greatest hockey team in the world, and Beliveau was the best player.

“I thought Monsieur Tremblay might call,” Joan said to her mother.

“He didn’t though, did he. Get him out of your silly head, my girl!” said Mrs. O’Brien. “Come, I don’t like this smoking in front of church.”

They trooped down the steps and began walking to the O’Briens’ flat. Ross had never been in Verdun before. The rows of three-decker houses were made of brick the colour of dried blood. In a few of the small, square front yards, crocuses were poking up through crusts of snow.

Mrs. O’Brien went into a corner shop and Joan turned to Ross. “Don’t you miss your parents?”

He did. He worried a lot about them. They might never return. There could be a plane crash.

“They have to go away,” said Anna sharply. “Daddy has to go to conferences.”

Joan laughed.

Mrs. O’Brien came out of the shop with a big bottle of ginger ale. Anna walked on ahead with the housekeeper and Joan and Ross followed a few steps behind.

“I’ll tell you,” Joan said, “I didn’t like it either. I used to hate her for going away to look after other kids. I was put with neighbours and they were not very nice.”

They had to climb a steep outside staircase. The O’Briens’ flat was on the third floor. It was dark inside, warm, and smelled of linoleum. There was a green velvet sofa in the living room, an old-fashioned radio, and a tinted photograph of Pope Pius XI.

“Sit here and I’ll bring your ginger ale,” said Mrs. O’Brien.

Joan took off her coat, sat down, and patted the space beside her on the sofa. “Come sit. Don’t be shy!” she said.

Anna ignored her and sat down in an armchair. Ross sat on the sofa. Joan’s perfume smelled like lemons. Her red nail polish was chipped. She wore a yellow dress with short sleeves. The dress needed cleaning and a seam at the shoulder was a little torn.

Joan lit a cigarette. “Who’s your favourite player?”

“Beliveau!”

She laughed. “Monsieur Tremblay says Beliveau is even better than the Rocket. How’d you like to go to the Forum? I won a pair of tickets for the fifth game. I might as well take you.”

“Who’s Monsieur Tremblay?” said Anna.

“My fiancé.”

“How come you don’t go to the game with him?” said Anna.

Joan didn’t answer. She stabbed out her cigarette and picked up the newspaper from the floor, snapping it open and hiding behind it. All they could see were her chipped red fingernails gripping the edge of the page. Looking at Ross, Anna raised her eyebrows.

Ross heard the icebox being opened and shut and ice cubes rattling into glasses. The flat was so small he could hear the bottle being opened and ginger ale fizzing into the glasses.

“You know what?” Joan spoke from behind the newspaper. “Don’t you wish it were summer? I wish the snow was all gone and I didn’t have to wear a coat.”

Catching Ross’s eye, Anna pointed her finger at her head and twirled it around. She thought Joan was crazy. Mrs. O’Brien came in with four glasses of ginger ale on a tray.

“Joan! Put down the paper. I thought you said you weren’t going to wear that awful dress anymore.”

“Joan invited my brother to a hockey game,” said Anna primly.

“We’ll see about that,” Mrs. O’Brien said. “Why won’t you go with your precious monsieur?”

Joan was silent. Ross felt sorry for her. If she felt like taking him to a hockey game instead of Monsieur Tremblay, what was so bad about that?

Mrs. O’Brien, Ross, and Anna drank their ginger ale. Joan stayed hiding behind her newspaper.

“We’re leaving now, Joan. Mind, I don’t want to see things going on like this,” Mrs. O’Brien said. “Drink up, children.”

Mrs. O’Brien collected her heating pad, her iron pills, and an orange-juice squeezer and put everything in a shopping bag. Joan put the newspaper aside and followed them to the door. She grabbed Ross’s hand and said, “I was only joking. Monsieur Tremblay isn’t my fiancé. He’s married to someone else.”

“Come, children, we’ll miss our bus.” Mrs. O’Brien herded Ross and Anna out the door.

“Goodbye, goodbye,” Joan called gaily, as they descended the steep iron staircase.

Dr. and Mrs. Ormonde had been gone a week when Mrs. O’Brien put Anna’s red skirt into the washing machine with her white blouse. The red dye ran out, ruining the blouse. Anna was furious. “You’ll pay for it!” she yelled. When Mrs. O’Brien told her to calm down, Anna stamped around the kitchen. “Stupid old bitch! Stupid old bitch!” she screamed. When Mrs. O’Brien said to hold her tongue, Anna picked up her wet blouse and whipped it at the housekeeper. Mrs. O’Brien leapt forward and slapped her, and Anna grabbed the old woman’s hand, digging into the flesh with her fingernails. Mrs. O’Brien screamed. Anna ran down the hallway and slammed the door of her room.

Mrs. O’Brien leaned against the sink, wearily. Her eyes were very pale blue.

“She always has a big fight with someone when they go away,” said Ross.

“Why?”

Why did their parents have to go away? He knew Anna shared his anxiety, but neither of them wanted to talk about it because talking about it made the possibility of their parents not ever coming home seem more real.

When she came home from school the next afternoon, Anna apologized to Mrs. O’Brien and the housekeeper made cinnamon rolls for their tea. They were sitting at the kitchen table when the doorbell rang.

Ross went to the door and found Joan already turning away, as if she hadn’t really expected anyone to answer the bell.

It had been raining all day. The snow was gone and rainwater was sluicing the gutters. “Is my mother here?” Joan whispered, unbuttoning her raincoat. Her stockings were spattered with mud. A plastic rain bonnet was tied under her chin.

“Joan?” said Mrs. O’Brien, coming down the hall. “What do you think you’re doing here?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll only stay a while.” Joan pulled off her raincoat and was about to drape it over a chair when her mother seized it.

“Not on the furniture!”

Mrs. O’Brien opened the hall closet and placed the coat on a hanger.

Joan took off her rain bonnet. She was wearing the yellow dress. She picked up the photograph of Ross’s mother in its silver frame and gazed at it.

“Leave things be, Joan,” said Mrs. O’Brien.

“She’s like someone in a magazine,” Joan said, “with those beautiful pearls around her neck.”

Mrs. O’Brien took the picture and set it back down on the table as the kettle whistled on the stove. “You may stay for tea, Joan, but then you’ll have to take the bus home.”

As Mrs. O’Brien hurried back to the kitchen Joan stuck out her tongue. Then she winked at Ross. Standing before the hall mirror, she touched her hair. “How are you all getting along?”

“Okay.”

“No squabbles?”

“Not really.”

He followed her into the dining room. Inside the dining room cabinet, next to the salt bowls and pepper shakers, was an envelope that had been in there as long as Ross could remember. To Whom It May Concern was written on it in his father’s handwriting. Folded inside was a sheet of paper with a typed list of phone numbers, bank accounts, names of lawyers and doctors and relatives. The envelope was to be opened if their parents did not come back.

Joan gazed at her reflection in the polished dinner table, then wandered into the living room. Taking a handful of cigarettes from a silver cigarette box, she bundled them into a tissue and placed them in her purse. “You know what? Where Monsieur Tremblay lives must be like this. If I lived here, I’d never go away.”

“They’re coming home in ten days.”

“Well, they’ll go away again,” she said. “That’s the kind of people they are.”

He followed her to the kitchen, where the housekeeper was pouring tea. Joan sat down and stirred two spoonfuls of sugar into her cup. As she spread jam on a cinnamon roll, a blob of the jam fell onto her yellow dress.

“Oh, Joan,” said Mrs. O’Brien. “Take your dress off and let me rinse it.”

Joan scraped at the blob with her knife.

“Let me have it,” said Mrs. O’Brien. She stood up. “Go into the bedroom and put on my robe.”

“I’ll wash it myself.” Joan sat back and lifted her teacup. She eyed her mother lazily.

“It has to done now, otherwise the dress will be ruined.”

Ross could see spots and stains all over the dress. It hadn’t been washed for a long time.

“Raspberry jam is the worst,” said Anna.

Joan put down her teacup and laid both hands flat on the table. She was smiling.

“Take off the dress,” said Mrs. O’Brien.

“You’ll ruin it otherwise,” said Anna.

Joan walked down the hall towards the bedroom. She didn’t come out, and when they had finished their tea, Mrs. O’Brien sent Ross and Anna outside to play.

It had stopped raining. There were puddles everywhere, water dripping from bare branches of trees. They got on their bikes and rode through the neighbourhood for the first time since autumn. The gardens all smelled of mud and the roads were strewn with wet sand left over from winter.

Anna began pedalling faster and faster, pulling ahead of him. Finally she skidded to a stop and stood waiting, astride her bike.

“They won’t come back,” she said as he rode up. “There’s nothing you can do. You can wish for them all you want but it won’t matter.”

She pedalled away and he stood gripping his handlebars. He felt helpless. He started for home. As he rode up their street he saw that everything was exactly the way it had been before: the branches bare, the smell of mud. He put his bike in the garage then found Joan sitting on a stool in the kitchen wearing a green dressing gown and reading National Geographic. She did not look up. Mrs. O’Brien was washing dishes in the sink. The damp yellow dress was spread out over the radiator. It looked like a petal from a huge flower brought down by the rain.

[ed space]

Joan came to dinner two nights later, still wearing the yellow dress. This time she brought two bottles of Black Horse ale, which she and her mother drank with their meal. Joan said she had won the pair of hockey tickets in an office pool, and Mrs. O’Brien finally agreed that she could take Ross to the Forum. But after supper he stood outside the kitchen door and heard them arguing.

“I wish you’d sold those tickets,” Mrs. O’Brien was saying. “You could do twenty-five dollars for the pair and get yourself a new dress. I’m surprised they haven’t sacked you already, going to work in rags. You’re not brushing your hair,” Mrs. O’Brien said, her voice rising. “They’ll have you in an institution before long.”

When the Ormondes were away they sent postcards. Ross received a card showing the onion domes of the Kremlin lit up at night. Then there was a postcard of their hotel: his mother had marked their room with a little X. Ross studied the cards, kept them for a few days, then tore them both into tiny pieces, which he threw out his window at night.

Next afternoon he came out of school and saw Joan O’Brien waiting at the entrance to the schoolyard. He slipped away from his friends and warily approached her.

“I was on my way home from the office,” Joan said. “To tell you the truth, I got fired a couple of weeks back, but they were still holding my hockey tickets for me.” She looked at him sternly. “Don’t go telling my mother I was fired, now. That’s our secret. All right?”

“All right,” said Ross.

She took a pair of red-white-and-blue tickets from her purse and showed them to Ross. “Now let’s go get a Coke.”

Down on Sherbrooke Street his schoolmates were waiting at the bus stops. He followed Joan into a greasy spoon where the tables smelled of harsh cleaning fluid. They sat in a booth and Joan removed her gloves. A waitress brought their Cokes in bulbous glasses stuffed with ice. Joan took the bundle of cigarettes wrapped in the tissue from her purse and lit one.

“How come you always wear the same dress?”

“Who says I do?”

“Every time I see you, you do.”

“Don’t you like it?”

“Well, it’s okay.”

“I bought this dress at Holt Renfrew,” Joan said. She puffed hard on her cigarette and the ashes fell off, dropping onto the table. “One lunchtime I went in to buy mascara. I had a few minutes so I went up to the third floor. Mother says I waste money, but what’s wasted if it makes you feel good? The first day I wore this dress Monsieur Tremblay stopped and picked me up at the bus stop when I was waiting for the bus home. He was driving his car, and he gave me a lift. We were going along St. Patrick Street and he says, ‘Joan, what a pretty new dress you have on today.’

“He drove me right home. We talked about the Canadiens. I hoped he’d pick me up again but he never has. I tried to see him at work but he’s not in my department and he’s always busy. I tried phoning him at home but his wife answered. I think she’s someone beautiful, like your mother with her pearls.”

[ed space]

That night Ross wrote his parents by flashlight, using red ink. He described Anna’s fight with the housekeeper. He told them about Monsieur Tremblay, Joan, and the yellow dress. He told them Joan would be taking him to a hockey game. He said he was looking forward to going to the Forum and watching Beliveau score goals.

Joan arrived at the house on Saturday evening wearing her overcoat with the button missing. Underneath she was wearing the yellow dress. Mrs. O’Brien said if she couldn’t look decent she couldn’t take Ross to the game. But it was too late for her to go home to change. Mrs. O’Brien took Dr. Ormonde’s clothes brush and made Joan stand in the hall while she brushed the overcoat ferociously. “You’re the one that needs a brushing!” she said. “If I was strong enough I’d take the back of this to you!”

Finally she let them go, and Ross and Joan hurried to the bus stop at the corner. The evening was cool and shiny and the sidewalks crackled with leftover grit. They caught a bus heading down Côte-des-Neiges and Joan sat with her purse on her lap, smiling and not talking. When the bus began its long swoop down the mountainside, she grabbed Ross’s hand and gave a hard squeeze. They got off at St. Catherine Street and joined the crowd streaming towards the Forum. There were policemen on horses, and the hooves made a bright, clapping sound on the road.

Inside the main door of the Forum they handed their tickets to an usher and were swept by the crowd down a passageway. As they came out into the arena, Joan took off her coat and carried it over her arm. They asked another usher for directions and were pointed towards their seats. People turned their heads to watch Joan go by. When they reached the correct row, people stood to let them pass. One or two said hello or bonsoir and Joan nodded regally and smiled.

“You promised you wouldn’t wear that thing!” said a chubby blonde woman sitting directly above them.

“Ross, this is Molly,” Joan said to Ross. “She was my best friend at the office.”

“You promised you’d turn yourself out tonight,” Molly complained, “and here you are wearing that thing. They’ll never take you back. They’re running an office, Joan, not a circus where people can wear any old thing.”

No players were on the ice yet but the stands were filling up and the arena felt alive with excitement. The ice gleamed and the air smelled of smoke and steam. Molly introduced her husband, Frank, sitting next to her. Frank worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He had binoculars on a strap around his neck.

“Let me see those, please,” Joan said.

Frank passed her the binoculars and she began scanning the rows of seats below them. Ross saw the two teams step onto the ice from opposite ends of the rink. The goalies skated slowly, like grandmothers, towards their respective nets. Beliveau was the last of the Canadiens to step on the ice, and the crowd roared.

Molly leaned over, tapped Joan’s shoulder, and pointed to a couple climbing up the stairs. The man wore a dark blue suit and a double-breasted camel-hair coat, and he carried a fedora. The woman wore a mink stole. Ross guessed it was Monsieur Tremblay and his wife. Joan stared through the binoculars. When play was about to start, Frank tapped Joan’s shoulder. He wanted his binoculars. Joan handed them over reluctantly.

Beliveau won the face-off and scooped the puck to Yvan Cournoyer, who immediately rushed in on goal. “Shoot! Shoot!” Joan screamed. Cournoyer slapped a shot but the Boston goalie trapped it casually and held on for the whistle.

Halfway through the period there was still no score, and Joan asked Frank for his binoculars. The Tremblays were seated six or seven rows below, next to a skinny little man whom Molly said was vice-president of the company.

Molly leaned over and whispered in Joan’s ear.

“I’m not going to do anything,” Joan said. She pressed the binoculars to her eyes. Tonight she smelled of warm wax, Ross thought, like candles being extinguished. Every time the Canadiens had control of the puck and pressed the Boston goal, people around them stood up. Joan stood up too but she kept the binoculars pressed to her eyes.

At the end of the period Boston was ahead by one goal. The Tremblays rose from their seats.

“Want a Coke? Want a hot dog?” Joan asked Ross.

They went downstairs and behind the stands, where the concessions and restrooms were. The cement floor was strewn with litter that had been flattened by thousands of pairs of shoes. Ross noticed the Tremblays in front of one of the booths, sipping drinks from plastic cups. Monsieur wore his camel-hair overcoat draped elegantly across his shoulders, like a cloak.

 “Why did he have to bring her?” Joan said. “What am I supposed to do now?”

“Want a Coke?” said Ross. “I’ll buy you one. I have money.”

Then Molly appeared out of the crowd and took Joan’s elbow. Molly began steering her towards the ladies’ room. “We’ll see you back at the seats,” Molly told Ross. “Can you find your own way?”

“Sure.”

Ross joined the line at a concession stand and bought two Cokes in plastic cups. The Tremblays were a few feet away, talking with another well-dressed couple.

A buzzer sounded and people began pressing into the passageway that led to the arena. The second period was about to start. Ross found himself squeezed right behind the Tremblays, close enough to catch a whiff of Madame Tremblay’s perfume, the same as his mother’s: Chanel No. 5.

The crowd was eager to see the face-off and he was being pushed right up against Monsieur Tremblay.  The two cups of Coke were very full. He hadn’t had time to snap the lids on and the first time he spilled some, it was an accident. The puck was dropped and the crowd roared and he couldn’t see a thing. Then he spilled out another splash of Coke onto Monsieur’s camel-hair coat. He did it deliberately, not thinking why he was doing it, and not caring if he was caught. It soaked into the camelshair coat which was the color of butter, almost. Little brown drops dripped from the hem. But Monsieur didn’t turn around--he hadn’t felt a thing. Ross knew all about spilled Coke--it was sticky. It made a mess. He kept sloshing Coke out as they started up the steep arena stairs. He was right behind the Tremblays but they didn’t turn around, like everyone else they were in a hurry to get back to their seats and enjoy the rest of the game.  He had splashed out half of the Coke in both cups before the Tremblays reached their row and people started standing up to allow the couple to get to their seats.

What was left of the Coke he dumped into one cup, dropping the empty on the stairs. When he reached his seat he handed the Coke to Joan and she immediately asked for a straw, which he had forgotten to get, but she drank it anyway, and her eyes kept shifting back and forth, back and forth between the action on the ice and the Tremblays.

In the intermission between the second and third periods the Tremblays stayed in their seats. Frank brought hot dogs for Ross and Joan and Molly. Joan kept the binoculars pressed so hard to her face that they left red rings around her eyes.

“You look like a bird,” said Molly. “A flamingo or something, like in Florida.”

At the beginning of the third period the Canadiens scored two quick goals. Boston came back and tied the game. With two minutes of play left, Ross watched Beliveau charge down the ice, nuzzling the puck on his stick. Beliveau lured the Boston goalie from his crease, shouldered aside a defenceman, and made a deke that had the goalie sprawling on the ice. Then Beliveau flipped the puck over the goalie’s prone body into the net.

Everyone was on their feet cheering. Seven rows below, Monsieur Tremblay was hugging his wife. On the ice the Canadiens were dancing on their skate blades and touching Beliveau with the tips of their sticks, hoping for a piece of his magic.

With one minute left in the game, the Tremblays left their seats and began moving towards the exit. Monsieur had a cigar in his mouth; his wife was holding his arm. That was when Joan called, “Hello, Monsieur Tremblay! Hello!”

Monsieur Tremblay glanced over his shoulder. He smiled and waved vaguely in their direction and kept going down the stairs.

 “He didn’t see me,” Joan said. “He didn’t know it was me.” She stood up quickly but Molly and Frank grabbed one of her arms each and pulled her back into her seat as the crowd began chanting, counting down the last few seconds on the clock.

The siren sounded and the Boston players left the ice and fled down a passageway to their dressing room. The Canadiens clustered in front of their bench, hugging their goalie, slapping each other’s pads, congratulating each other. People were chanting, “Bel-i-veau! Bel-i-veau!” Joan was the only person in the whole Forum still in her seat. Her coat had fallen on the floor. Ross picked it up and Molly took it from him.

The crowd roared even louder as Beliveau was pushed out from the knot of teammates and started skating a slow victory lap around the rink with long, effortless strides. Beliveau dipped his head from time to time, acknowledging the cheering, and Ross, who couldn’t take his eyes from the team captain, felt love sweeping through his body, like wind snapping and tugging at a flag.

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