The Last Dance

By Julie Richard

Beatrice had finally found people with whom she could spend boring nights. People who needed to get out, socialize, and have fun, just like her! She needed that. She needed kids like her who could teach her how to have a good time in a village that had nothing but woods, deserted streets, and a huge beach.
Beatrice had grown fond of that beach. So close to home, that place could go from a paradise in the daytimewhere one could bathe in the sun, swim, breathe in fresh air, and relaxto a play area at night where one could meet up with friends, express, and experiment.
A gang like the one Beatrice was in would intimidate most, but fortunately for Beatrice, her cousin Claudette was part of it and a very good friend now. Besides, that gang had introduced her to the best part of her life now. This thing was better than world peace; this was sacred, and everyone in her gang was doing it: weed.

Based on a true story, The Last Dance is about Beatrice Orchard: a teenager trapped in a dysfunctional family searching in her small conventional village back in the late 1960s for a way to forget her problems at home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465398345

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Copyright © 2011 by Julie Richard.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011960692

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4653-9833-8

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4653-9832-1

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-9834-5

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CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1 A Cold Move

Chapter 2 Rabbit

Chapter 3 Brand-New Beginning

Chapter 4 The Smell of Mud

Chapter 5 One Pot, Two Pigs

Chapter 6 I Roger That

Chapter 7 Slow Dance

Chapter 8 Dreamless Night

Chapter 9 Autumn Leaf

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

For as long as anyone could remember, she had always loved bright red or pink. Furniture, decorations, clothes, anything she owned was bright red or pink. She hated black, black cars mostly. They would frighten her. She had a hard time stepping foot in one. It was like she didn’t have room for dark colors in her life. Everything surrounding her was in bright colors. If it wasn’t, she would paint it! Growing up, I just thought she found those colors beautiful. I knew I did. But as time passed, I realized something. She could be surrounded by bright colors all she wanted, but her thoughts were dark, always very dark.

She was an elderly woman called Brenda. Around town, Brenda was known as being a little odd: dressing differently, like she was a blooming twenty-five-year-old in the year 1986; going up and down streets collecting empty bottles, like every one of them was worth a fortune; hiding money in the fridge, like no one could be trusted in this world; and having a quaint taste for decor, by turning her whole apartment as a Christmas tree in December. However, because she was very caring and gentle, people paid no attention to her strange behaviors and weren’t confronting her about them either. The ones who knew her well loved her for who she was.

Brenda was a strong and dynamic lady for her age. At seventy years old, she could bike and walk for hours. Walking was what she did best: walking to visit friends, walking for pleasure, walking to do chores, or walking to pass time. She would buy only a couple of things at a time at the grocery store, just so she could walk back not too long after. In fact, she wouldn’t just lift the grocery bags; Brenda would hold on to them and carry them with her to her apartment at the other end of town! The weight of the grocery bags though was nothing compared to the weight of her past, resting in her pretty head.

Brenda sure was physically strong, but she was very mentally fragile. She had never gotten the strength to put her past behind her nor beside her. Her past had taken the lead. The most surprising thing of all was how she got by. Living alone for many years, the only thing keeping her company was that past: a dreadful thought, an awful memory. In fact, the ones who knew her well didn’t just love her for who she was, they also knew that her past was the reason why she was strange: Brenda had a troubled mind, out of her control—haunted.

By dragging her horrible past along for too many years, Brenda had lost her ability to think clearly and do what was socially expected. Her mind was filled with nothing but that bitter memory, making her lose control of her thoughts. It had made her live the majority of her life with a constant rage and a heavy heart. Sad to say, Brenda had been roughly guided by her disordered mind through the majority of her adulthood and elder years.

To make everything worst, in the year 2004, her usual disordered mind started to get forgetful. Her mental problems literally got the best of her. In December, Brenda hadn’t even realized it was Christmastime, leaving her apartment short of decorations and making people worry. A choice had to be made. She wasn’t much of a fan, but for her safety, she had been forced to move in a nursing home. Bringing her pictures and her big bright-red rocking chair with her, Brenda got used to forget, forget, and forget some more. Like many of the victims suffering from dementia, Brenda couldn’t remember a thing from the day before, but she surely could remember every little detail from the past. A memory problem couldn’t even shake her out of that misery. So much that it seemed she was reliving it, never leaving it—a part of her now.

Like every other person living in a nursing home, she had started to spend her days talking. Talking her past out like a story for the person sitting on the chair next to hers. It could be another nursing home resident, it could be a staff member, it could be a visitor coming to see her, or it could even be a total stranger. The person listening to her talk could change multiple times a day, but the story was the same, one time after another. With her day-to-day memory lost, that story was the only thing she had left for her to remember and the only thing worth saying to everyone as often as she could.

Being her granddaughter, I have heard the story quite often enough, but it was only in the past few years that I understood the impact of it all. It was only in the past few years that I got how she hadn’t always been this way and why this story plundered my grandmother’s life.

CHAPTER 1

A Cold Move

It started back in February 1963. If the wind wasn’t too strong, in the city of Moncton, New Brunswick, you could hear the whistle of the steam train around noon every day. The city had just been placed on the Trans-Canada Highway network and was opening the doors of its new institution l’Université de Moncton. With the politics and the growing industries, there was enough in that city for one never to get bored, but behind all that commotion, Brenda had only one thing in mind: her family. She had been living in the city for the past ten years and had been married for the past eight. Earnest, her husband, was a veteran from the Second World War and a man with many problems. Their three children had never stopped him from drinking too frequently nor from physically and emotionally abusing his own wife.