Way the Crow Flies (11 page)

She laughs with the people behind the counter, and neglects to add that it was the
maudits Anglais
who kicked her people out in the first place. Americans tend to be more responsive than English Canadians to that part of the story, having seen fit to kick the damned English out themselves.

Jack enjoys teasing her when they’re alone. “You’re my prisoner,” he’ll say. “My rightful booty.” If he really wants to get a rise out of her, he describes the French as a defeated people and says, “It’s lucky for you the British were so superior or you and I would never have met.” He knows he has won if he can get her to whack him. “That was always the trouble with the French. Too emotional.” That’s Mimi. Spitfire.

Jack and Mimi both come from New Brunswick’s Atlantic coast. But they didn’t meet there—she was French, he was English, why would they meet? He was working in a cardboard factory alongside three older men. At seventeen, he was the only one who still had all his fingers. When he realized he was also the only one who could read and write, he left. Lied about his age, joined the air force, crashed and remustered. When he and Mimi met in ’44 at the dance in Yorkshire, where he was a supply officer and she was a nurse’s aide at Number 6 Bomber Group, it seemed like a very small world indeed. Small world, big war. Lucky for them.

“This sure is a beautiful part of the country,” says Jack to the man behind the counter.

“Oh, this is God’s country,” replies the man, topping up Jack’s coffee.

It’s simple, really: if you like people they will probably like you back. It helps that Jack and Mimi’s children are polite and answer in full sentences. It helps that their daughter is pretty and their son is handsome.

“What are you going to be when you grow up, young fella?” asks a man in the booth behind them, a farmer in rubber boots and John Deere cap.

Mike answers, “I’m going to fly Sabres, sir.”

“Well now,” says the man, nodding.

“That’s the stuff,” says Jack.

It helps that Jack and his wife are attractive. Not just because Mimi is slim and stylish with her pumps and pencil skirt. Not because he is blue-eyed and relaxed—effortless gentleman, a natural polish that goes well with his mill-town respect for work and working people. They are attractive because they are in love.

It has worked. The dream. Post-war boom, the kids, the car, all the stuff that is supposed to make people happy. The stuff that has
begun to weigh on some people—alcoholics in grey flannel suits, mad housewives—it has all made Jack and Mimi very happy. They couldn’t care less about “stuff” and perhaps that is their secret. They are rich, they are fabulously wealthy. And they know it. They hold hands under the counter and chat with the locals.

Madeleine says, “I’m probably going to be in the secret service,” and everyone laughs. She smiles politely. It feels good to make people laugh, even if you are not sure what’s so funny.

Dessert is on the house. Welcome back to Canada.

They pull into their driveway as the sun begins to undo itself across the sky. Madeleine’s interior movie music swells at the sight of its slow swoon over the PMQs; light spears the windshield, piercing her heart. Tonight they will sleep in their own beds in their own house for the first time since Germany.

In the basement, her father roots around in one of the boxes and Madeleine watches as he comes out with something more miraculous than a live rabbit. “The baseball gloves!” He tosses her one and they go out behind the house into the grassy circle. Mike is off with his new friend so she has Dad and the game of catch all to herself. The good smack in the palm, just this side of painful; the whizzing overarm return that he plucks easily from the air. The sun sinks between them so neither has it in their eyes, because when you play catch with your dad, everything is fair.

Oh no, here comes Mike with Roy Noonan. They have baseball mitts, they’re going to wreck the game.

But they don’t. The circle widens, the four of them toss the ball and an easy rhythm is established—thwack, pause, lift, whish, the ball cresting from glove to glove like a dolphin. Neither Mike nor Roy seems the slightest bit embarrassed to be playing with a kid sister, and the fact that Madeleine is a girl occasions no comment until, when the sun has faded to the point where they can no longer see the ball, and they follow Dad back to the house, she hears Roy Noonan say, “Your sister’s pretty good for a girl.”

And Mike’s reply, “Yeah, I know.”

What, about this day, has not been perfect?

When the kids have gone to bed, Mimi makes tea and Jack plugs in the hi-fi they bought in Germany. The station comes in crystal clear. “‘Unforgettable … that’s what you are.’” She sets the mugs down on the floor, he opens his arms and they dance under the sixty-watt bulb, swaying slowly in a clear patch among the boxes. “‘Unforgettable, though near or far….’” Her fingers curl through his, she brushes her face against his neck, his hand finds the small of her back, she is perfect.

“You want a baby from Centralia?” he says.

“I wouldn’t mind a little Centralia baby.”

“A little chipmunk?”

“I love you, Jack.”

“Welcome home, Missus.” He holds her closer. She kisses his neck lightly in the spot where the soft bristles of his hairline begin.
“Je t’aime, Mimi
,” he whispers in his shy French, bad English accent; she smiles into his shoulder. “‘That’s why, darling, it’s incredible, that someone so unforgettable….’”

He could take her upstairs now, but Nat King Cole is singing and, just as on their honeymoon in Montreal, there is the delicious confidence of putting off the moment. Life is long, I am going to make love to you for years and years…. “‘thinks that I am unforgettable too.

“Dad?” through the slats at the top of the stairs.

He looks up. “What are you doing awake, old buddy?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got butterflies,” says Madeleine.

Mimi heads for the staircase. “You’re cold in those baby-dolls.”

“No I’m not!” Madeleine loves her baby-dolls. They are the closest thing to Steve McQueen sleepwear—boxer shorts and undershirt.

“Where’s old Bugsy?” asks Jack.

Madeleine’s heart leaps. “I don’t know. I had him yesterday when we came into the house.”

“Well where did you leave him?” Jack glances about.

“I don’t know.” Her eyes fill with tears.

Mimi mutters,
“Mon Dieu
, Jack, you could leave the well enough alone.” But she joins the search while Madeleine sits, stricken, on the stairs.

Maman does not like Bugs. She thinks he’s unsanitary. He has never been washed because there is a small record player or something in his stomach—when you pull his string he says several typical Bugs Bunny things. These days his voice sounds far away, his words obscured by static as though he were sending a radio message from outer space,
who toined out da lights?

Jack is bent down looking under the couch when Mike’s voice comes from the top of the stairs: “He’s in my room where you left him.”

“Michel,” says Mimi, “what are you doing up?”

“I can’t sleep with all the noise,” he says, joining his sister on the landing in his cowboy pajamas.

Madeleine runs to her brother’s room. Bugs is lying face down on the floor as though he’s been shot. She turns him over and he looks as amused as ever,
Gee, doc, I didn’t know you cared
. She picks him up and hugs him, wondering if Mike will be angry with her for snooping in his room. Bugs is the evidence.

But Mike isn’t angry. He climbs back in bed, saying, “’Night, squirt.”

Who is this nice Mike? Where’s the one who used to get so mad at her? The brother who played with her and tortured her, the one she bit, leaving tooth-marks in his arm? Two tears run down her cheeks as her father picks her up and carries her to bed.

“What’s wrong, old buddy?”

She doesn’t know how to blame it on Mike because, after all, he has been perfectly nice. “I was just sad about Bugs. He’s getting old.”

Jack tucks the covers around her. “He looks pretty spry to me. He’s got bags of mileage in him yet. Besides, Bugsy was never born, so you know what that means.”

“What?”

“He’s going to live forever.” He sits on the side of her bed and says, “Now you snuggle down and go to sleep so you can wake up fresh as a daisy, ’cause I’ll tell you what, tomorrow night we’re going to have a barbecue and you can invite your new buddies.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“’Night-night, now.”

“I made you some hot,” says Mimi, handing him a fresh mug.

He sips and says, “Oh, I invited someone for supper tomorrow night.”

“What?”

“Vic Boucher and—”

“Oh, Jack—”

“It doesn’t have to be a big deal—”

“It’s a big deal”—nodding, holding out her arms, surveying the chaos. Today she unpacked everyone’s clothes, did the beds, unpacked the kitchen, washed every utensil, pot, plate and pan, but the rest of the house…. “You want me to entertain like this?”

“I’ll throw something on the barbecue.”

“What am I going to do to you?”—losing syntax when she’s upset.

“I don’t know, what
are
you going to do to me?” He winks.

“Tu sais c’que je veux dire
, how can you invite people when”—throwing up her hands—“oh Jack … who are they?”

He follows her upstairs and her rant becomes a whisper, then disappears behind the bathroom door. He goes into their room and places his gift on her vanity table. A little something he has been carrying in his shaving kit since Europe.

She returns from the bathroom, unzipping her own dress,
you’re cut off, monsieur
, but when she catches sight of the Chanel N
^o
5 spritz bottle she drops her arms and says, “Oh Jack.”

“I’m still mad at you,” she whispers when he turns out the light and joins her in bed.

He reaches for her, fills his hands with her breasts, miraculous, her skin warm as sand, inhales at her neck, he has shaved for her, she bites his shoulder. “Come on,” she says. “That’s right, baby,” their first night in the new house, “that’s right.” It’s so easy, like dancing with her, and when she lies beneath him and opens like a tulip Jack is glad to know she is stronger than he is, she must be to take him like that, to stay soft and welcoming the way she does, only her fingertips hard in his back, “Oh Jack….” To stay soft the harder he gets, only her fingernails and her nipples, “That’s right, that’s right….” Her mouth, her tongue, her half-closed eyes in the moonlight, face turned to one side, for no one else, for him, “Take what you want, baby, take it.
C’est pour toi.”

Madeleine is wide awake in her new room. The sheets are nervous. They don’t recognize these walls either. The pillow is stiff, no one can relax around here. The moon pours through the naked window that overlooks the grassy circle out back. She resists the urge to suck her thumb. She quit two years ago, bribed by Maman and Tante Yvonne with a brunette Barbie doll. Madeleine quit cold turkey, not because she wanted a Barbie but because she didn’t, and it was so nice and so sad of Maman to think she was buying something special for her little girl. Madeleine pretended to be thrilled with the doll, who still lives in the pink satin-lined closet she came in. Sleeps there in her wedding dress, like a vampire. All Madeleine wants for Christmas is a set of six-guns and holsters. Girls never get anything good.

She has to pee. She gets up and creeps across to the bathroom with Bugs. Sits him down facing away from the toilet. Her pee sounds loud in the empty bathroom. She flushes the toilet—Niagara Falls—closes it, climbs onto the lid and looks out the window. Across the street, the porch light is on at the purple house. The wheelchair is gone, but beneath the light and its halo of mosquitoes sits a girl. Next to her lies the German shepherd dog, asleep. The girl should be asleep too, do her parents know she is not in bed? Is she allowed to be out in the middle of the night? And is she allowed to play with that knife? She has a stick and she’s whittling it. Sharpening it.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Madeleine saw the empty wheelchair again through the bathroom window. “Dad, whose wheelchair is that?”

He glanced out the window and said, “Beats me.” And the two of them resumed shaving.

Her technique is identical to his, the only difference being that his razor makes a lovely sandpapery sound as it moves down his cheek while her razor, not containing a blade, is silent.

They wiped their faces with their towels and applied Old Spice.

At breakfast, Mimi told Jack that the kids were frightened of that big dog across the street—“No we’re not,” said Madeleine—“and all the junk in that driveway gets in my nerves.” She wanted him to go over there and find out what was with that family.

“I’ll bet they’re perfectly nice,” he said over his newspaper. “Just a bit eccentric.”

“I had enough eccentric at home,
merci
, that’s why I married you, Monsieur, to get away from eccentric.” She caught the toast as it popped.

Now Madeleine crouches behind the confetti bushes at the foot of her front lawn as her father crosses the street. The wheelchair is gone again. Tools lie scattered in the driveway next to the old wreck that sits on blocks, hood up. She curls her hands into a spyglass and watches her father knock at the screen door. What if the door opens and a long green tentacle comes out and yanks him inside? What if the person who answers the door looks perfectly normal but is really from another planet and is merely disguised as a human being? What if Dad is merely disguised as Dad and my real dad is being held prisoner on another planet? What if everyone is an alien except me and they are all merely pretending to be normal?

The door opens. A man with a dark curly beard shakes hands with Dad. A man with a beard. In a frilly apron. Of all the strangest things you could possibly see on an air force base.

Her father disappears into the purple house and Madeleine comes out from behind the bushes. Should she go after him? Should she tell her mother? She returns to her lemonade stand at the foot
of the driveway. “Two cents,” says the sign. In her empty pickle jar, nine pennies. Mike said, “Make mine a double, bartender.” And Roy Noonan paid a nickel and let her keep the change. All the other kids are either too little to have money, or too old to take notice of her. After a while, two girls her own age stop and one says, “I hope you’re washing those cups.” Girly girls.