Travelling Light

by Peter Behrens

  Intersection

  Frances has a partner at last and pays the fertilization clinic and they have a baby girl and Frances loves their baby but the partner will sometimes remark, almost casually, that the baby is, after all, her baby, not their baby. The partner threatens to take the baby and move back to Russia or to Toronto and we see how difficult this is for Frances to hear, how vulnerable she is, how hard she works to support her little family, and we resent her partner for being cold, ungrateful, and more than a little crazy. A few days before the baby’s first birthday Frances is on a business trip to Chicago. It’s raining. The car she’s a passenger in runs a red light and gets T-boned by a truck. Frances is killed. What does her life feel like to her, approaching that intersection in the rain? Does it have a texture and a shape? Is it something she can nearly hold in her arms, like a baby?

  But Frances lives within herself — then she doesn’t — and what she knows she never tells.

  French Kids (II)

  My father was dead and I finally persuaded Mother to leave the flat, which had become too large and empty after years of being too small and crowded. Five or six different landlords had owned the building during the past few years. The heating machinery was breaking down. The janitor had died and there was no one to shovel the snow from the steps. I found her an apartment in a modern building with a doorman, just down the street from the church where she was married. On the last day of the move I was putting a last carton of odds and ends into the trunk of my rented car when I saw Daniel, one of the French kids, across the street. I had not spoken to him in twenty-five years, except once when I helped him and his brother push a car out of a snowbank. Now Daniel was also loading cardboard cartons into the trunk of a car, a Toyota, the same model my mother owned, except blue, not grey. I crossed the street and we shook hands. For years I had been taking French lessons in California; at last we spoke the same language. He said his mother was leaving the neighbourhood as well, going back to Victoriaville, where she had grown up. He was a mathematician, his brother Yvon a sound engineer. It was like an encounter with a friendly stranger, also with someone you are afraid knows you too well. I don’t know why children who share a street, a neighbourhood, prefer to ignore history until it shrivels and carries no weight and finally melts away like snow does eventually, even in Montreal, but that was what we had done and it was too late to do anything about all that now.

  YELLOW DRESS

  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 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. 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 t
hought 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 through 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 be 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.

  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 wit
h 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.”