Way the Crow Flies (100 page)

She is aware that the colours in the room have brightened a notch. She looks at Nina and says, “He killed her.”

She grips the armrests so hard she feels the wood giving way, melting, turning to chocolate.

I
T WAS AFTER
they had found out Mike was missing. It was before hope had begun to fade. It was years before Jack and Mimi moved into the condo. Madeleine was graduating high school in three weeks; in three weeks her life would begin. She surged with the dark and shining joy of imminent escape into the world, far from this suburb.

She was at the kitchen sink, resentfully peeling apples for her mother. From the backyard came the roar of the old lawnmower. Through the window, they saw her father crossing back and forth. “Look at your father out there mowing the lawn.”

Madeleine said, sullen, “You want me to do it instead? He won’t let me.” Her mother always talked about her father as though he were some kind of invalid—
your poor feeble father, out there pushing the mower on his crutches
. Why can’t anyone just be normal around here? Houses have lawns, men cut them. It’s not rocket science and it’s not a tragedy. There is nothing poignant about a middle-aged white man mowing his lawn. Especially when there’s a big fat swimming pool in the middle of it.

Mimi turned and smiled and Madeleine got a stab of guilt in the heart. There were tears in her mother’s eyes.
If Mike were here he would be mowing the lawn
. She felt horrible for her mother, horrible about what a horrible daughter she was, and she felt furious that her father never let her mow the lawn—as if the safe operation of a small engine with blade affixed required the presence of a Y chromosome. He told her she could be anything she wanted to be—politician, lawyer, brain surgeon, astronaut. He would send her to the moon but he didn’t trust her with a
maudit
Canadian Tire Lawn-Boy:
These things are tricky, you can lose a toe before you know it
.

She slouched toward the front door. She heard her mother’s voice from behind her, “Why don’t you ask your father if he wants to go for a walk?” She hated it when her mother tried to “encourage” her relationship with her father.
We have one, okay? And you are not the boss of it
. So—annoyed at her mother for making her annoyed at the prospect of going for a walk with her father, which was something she otherwise enjoyed doing—she headed for the back door. “You
have the nicest papa in the world,” she heard her mother say, and let the screen door slam.

She stepped out into the backyard and said, “Hey Dad, wanna go for a walk?”

He looked up from where he was crouching with the mower tilted, wiping its green-stained blade. Tightening the nut. The smell of cut grass and gasoline reached her, deeply reminiscent, reassuring … and sad. Everything is fucking sad. It’s sad to be conceived. We start to die the moment we are born.

“Sure, sweetie.”

She followed him into the garage as he wheeled the mower across the concrete to its appointed place. The smell of cool concrete—another deep suburban smell, along with the chlorine whiff, mingle of roses and other people’s suppers.

“How come you don’t buy an electric mower, Dad? They’re better for the environment. Or just get a push mower.”

“That’s not a bad idea, I like the sound of those things a whole lot better.”

They’ve had this mower since Centralia. Dad calls it “the beast.”

“I’m just waitin’ for this one to die, but Henry Froelich fixed it so well, I’m afraid it never will.”

They left the garage and walked.

It was one of those rich Ottawa sunsets. The humidity lent a ravishing quality, wet fire streaked an aqua sky. Leaves so shiny they looked waxed, sprinklers hissing, parked cars gleaming.

They talked about the future.

“Why don’t you go to New York? Wait tables and work your way up through the clubs to the
Ed Sullivan Show?”
She had moved past Ed to
Laugh-In
but she didn’t correct him.

“Or why don’t you take a raft up the Yukon River?”

They walked past the high school. A group of kids were hanging out in the parking lot, music coming from the radio of someone’s dad’s station wagon. She glanced scornfully in their direction. The cool kids. Like I care. Dating, mating—all those girls soon to be trapped. She saw gorgeous Stephen Childerhouse. He looked up and she looked quickly away; he was holding hands with Monica Goldfarb. So what? The world doesn’t exist anyway. Reality is
subjective. We are all just in a dream, and probably not our own. Don’t wake the red king. See? I don’t have to get stoned to be weird.

They got ice cream cones. He took his first lick and she turned away, because he looked so young and she felt so old.

They walked out past the edge of the housing development to where the land was still shaggy and the trees lived for themselves, trailing their leaves in the Ottawa River. Out there in the middle was a Huck Finn–sized island; why had she never snagged one of those stray logs from the match company upriver and floated across? She had always meant to, but at seventeen she wasn’t a kid any more. And it wouldn’t be much fun to do it alone. Jocelyn wasn’t that kind of friend. Madeleine had only ever had that kind of friend once.

They walked along the dirt path past a blackened spot where kids had had a campfire and she said, “Dad? Do you think it’s possible that Ricky Froelich did it?”

“Absolutely not.”

“How come they convicted him?”

“That was a travesty.”

Madeleine felt the tang and churn of something deeper than guilt. Something she could not outrun; she had to wait for it to pass, like the recurrence of a tropical disease. Shame. Her father would know nothing about it. He was clean. She watched him from the corner of her eye, willing him to keep his eyes from her. If he looked at her now he would see the dark thing. He was squinting into the sky, licking his ice cream, so innocent and unconcerned.
This Book Belongs to John McCarthy
.

“Look at that,” he said, and pointed up. She felt her darkness falling away. “Up there,” he said, “see it?”

She looked up and saw a white airplane. Silent. Slow. Wings long and tapered, clean and unencumbered by engines.

They watched in silence. Unhurriedly she banked, dove, looped up and paused, offering her smooth breast to the sky before swooning back into the arms of gravity, her dance partner.

“Now, that’s flying,” said Jack.

N
INA DIDN’T THINK
she should be alone this evening. Suggested she call a friend, and gave Madeleine her home number “in case you need to talk.” She asked if Madeleine was prepared to find out that Mr. March had died.

“That doesn’t matter, I still have to tell what he did.”

“I think you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that you may not find exactly what you expect.”

“Why, you think Ricky did it?”

“That’s not what I’m saying, Madeleine.”

“Well what the fuck are you saying?!”

“I’m saying—I’m asking. Where are you in all this?”

But Madeleine didn’t understand the question. And she was late, late for a very important date.

Out into the blinding street, people spilling across the intersection, light refracting off windshields and hoods. She can’t seem to get an entire lungful of air. It’s a beautiful day, not too hot, mid-June. Her eyes are up to their old tricks, this time seeing words that aren’t there, shivering letters stencilled on a restaurant window,
It’s Cruel Inside…
. She runs down the leafy Annex sidewalk. She wishes she had her bike, she runs faster—

“Hi Madeleine!”

“Hi Jim,” she calls in return, but doesn’t pause. He has a baby in a Snugli, when did that happen?

Her hands twist as though they could unscrew themselves, she gulps air, just north of Bloor now, still running, the heels of her
Quatre Cents Coups
sandals pounding—this is the way to feel that your feet will not be chopped off….

There has been enough talking. It’s time to do the right thing.

She runs up the steps of her veranda. Her bike is not there, that’s because she left it locked to a parking meter outside Nina’s. Up the
inside stairs two and three at a time. On the carpet in the middle of the empty room, the red light of the answering machine is blinking. She picks up and dials.

It could have been me.

It would have been me.

It should have been me.

She has called 911 this time. “… only for genuine emergencies,” says the female voice.

“This is an emergency.”

“Call your local police division, I’ll give you the—”

“I’ve already called them, they did dick!”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to—”

Madeleine slams down the phone and dials 411.

There are places and moments that are definitive. Like old photos, they can tell us where we come from….

“… thank you, here’s your number—”

She is from a summer afternoon, the late August light that makes the corn glisten in the fields; her mother in the rearview mirror, lips arched to receive a fresh coat of red.

“You have reached the Ontario Provincial Po—”

“Hello, I’d like to report a—”

“If you have a touchtone phone, and know the extension of the department….”

She is from a street of Technicolor houses where she pedals toward a man in a beautiful blue uniform and hat; he leans forward, arms wide to catch her.
Do it your way, sweetie
.

“I have information about a murder.”

“Go ahead.”

She is from the jab of a coat hook next to her spine.

“… the Froelich case, yes….” She is from a secret. “… a teacher called Mr. March, he’s retired now, but—” How is she to get back there? “I called last week, someone was going to—you should have a file….” To the meadow in springtime. To Colleen and Rex … school-day quiet. “March. Like the month.” As she follows Colleen across the field to the meadow on the other side. Watch for something gleaming in last year’s grass. Something pink and winking back the sun, that will be her streamer.

“I don’t have a record of your call, Mrs. McCarthy, can you hold, please.”

Muzak in her ear. She sits cross-legged, gazing at the geometry on her carpet. She is gathering the facts, she can see them spread like pebbles before her, she wants to collect them in her hands but something keeps interfering, live loose ends of story snap and hiss around her, touching down, singeing the carpet. She hangs up, and stares at the phone as though it were a rat, capable of staring back. Through the beaded balcony curtain comes the sound of drumming several blocks away, the sun pink as Lik-m-aid, fizzing colour, the beads are so many candy necklaces strung end to end on shoelace licorice. She picks up the phone again and dials.

The universal voice: “Information, for what city, please?”

“Crediton.”

“For what name?”

“March. George, I think. George.”

“One moment. Here’s your number.”

It’s that simple. That possible and near. What must it be like to go through your entire adult life with one phone number? She thinks of Mr. Froelich with his “old phone number” tattooed on his arm. His chalky fingers and kind face, blackboard full of hazardous fractions behind him as he bends to touch her forehead,
“Was ist los, Mädele?”
Why is that man no longer in the world? She keys in the area code, then the number—it plays a tune, “Camptown Races.”

The beauty of the evening finds its way into her empty living room, touches the mouldings of the high Victorian ceiling, medallion at its centre. The phone rings at the other end of the line. So empty. The sound of a chain in a dry well.

“Hello?” An older lady’s voice, tentative.

“Hello … Mrs. March?”

“Yes?”

“Hi, I’m an old student of Mr. March’s.”

“Oh.” The guard drops, Madeleine can hear the smile.

“I wondered if I could speak with him.” She hears her own voice trembling, as though she were speaking into the blades of a fan. She feels herself growing smaller and smaller, will he even be
able to hear her when she finally speaks the words? And what will they be?

“Oh I’m sorry, dear,” says the lady, “George passed away.”

There are landmarks we use without thinking. You can never get lost if you can see a mountain. Now Mr. March is gone. And Madeleine no longer knows where she is; or how to get back to where she came from.
Oh dear!
cried the child when she realized she had lost her way,
Whatever will become of me?

She could have got back through him. Through the bad time to the blessed, last good time.
Centralia
. But the door in the mountain closed before she could reach it, and she can detect no opening or notch in this implacable surface.