Way the Crow Flies (12 page)

When Dad comes out he’ll buy three and she’ll have fifteen cents. Enough for a candy necklace, two Pixy Stix and two Kraft caramels, with plenty left over.

Jack’s neighbour stands almost at attention, his posture an absurd contrast with his full-length frilly apron; its print faded and freshly grease-stained, it protects an immaculate long-sleeved white shirt and narrow black tie.

“Hi, I’m your neighbour, Jack McCarthy.”

The man nods formally. “Froelich,” he says, and sticks out his hand. It would not take a rocket scientist to figure out that Froelich is not military personnel. They shake hands. “Perhaps you wonder about the dog. He is harmless.”

“That’s nice,” says Jack, “but I’m just here to say hello.” Adding, with a grin,
“Wie geht’s, Herr Froelich?”

Froelich hesitates, then, “You take a coffee, yes?” He does not wait for a reply, but turns and heads for the kitchen at the rear of the small house. Jack waits in the vestibule. A carved wooden sign hangs by the door:
“Willkommen.”
A record is playing in the living room; Jimmy Durante sounds crystal clear, Jack looks around the corner to see what kind of hi-fi it is—Telefunken, same as his own.
Eat an apple every day, take a nap at three…
. Jack whistles along under his breath and glances about. To his right, a heaped laundry basket on the stairs. In the living room, newspapers crest up against a worn armchair, toys litter the floor, which is covered by a dusty Persian rug smudged with dog hair. In the middle of it all, a playpen where two babies in diapers bounce rattles and a teething ring against the head of an older child who sits facing away from Jack. A girl, judging from the hair, not long but not short either—the extent of Jack’s lexicon of feminine coiffure. A guitar leans in one corner, a coffee table is piled with magazines and books—one
in particular catches his eye. He can smell something cooking—the simmer of an all-day soup at nine in the morning.

Froelich reappears with two mugs. “Cheers,” he says.

“Prost,”
replies Jack.

“Please to call me Henry.”

Madeleine is relieved to see her father emerge from the purple house. Coffee cups in hand, he and the bearded man peer under the hood of the wheelless car and chat, while the man points at things in the engine.

Madeleine sees her father turn, still talking, and look at her. The bearded man turns too and they start toward her across the street. When they reach the lemonade stand, her father says, “This is our
Deutsches Mädchen.”

Her parents call her this because she picked up so much of the language, courtesy of her babysitter, with whom she went everywhere—beautiful, bespectacled and bebraided Gabrielle, of the sidecar and the one-armed father.

Mr. Froelich looks down at Madeleine and says,
“Wirklich?”

“Ja,”
she answers, embarrassed.

“Und hast du Centralia gern, Madeleine?”

“Um,
Ich
… I like it okay,” she says, seeing the German words tumble away like loose bricks as she reaches for them, turning to rubble in her memory.

“You come over to our house, Madeleine, we’ll speak Deutsch, you and I.”

He buys a glass of lemonade and drinks.
“Aber das schmecht.”
His black moustache glistens, his lips are red and moist. He has a smile like Santa Claus. A thin Santa Claus, with a bald spot, a black beard and shiny dark eyes. And a bit of a stoop, as though he were leaning forward, the better to hear you. He is older than the normal dads.

“The Froelichs have a girl about your age,” says her father.

Yeah, thinks Madeleine, and she has a knife. But she says politely, “Oh.”

“Ja
, we do”—Mr. Froelich nods to her—“perhaps a little older.”

“Mr. Froelich teaches at your school.”

“How do you feel about mathematics, Madeleine?” he asks, and smiles when she makes a face.

“Maybe Mr. Froelich can give you some tutoring.” Jack turns to Froelich. “The Germans are way out in front when it comes to math, wouldn’t you say, Henry?”

Jack buys a glass of lemonade, pronounces it “ambrosia” and returns with Henry Froelich across the street to the mismatched rust and rainbow collection of car parts, vaguely recognizable as some kind of Ford. Henry turns up the cuffs of his white sleeves, just once, then proceeds to tinker and chat. Jack smiles. Only a German would wear a white shirt and tie to work on an engine.

The Froelichs have lived in the PMQs for five years. Longer than any personnel. “What do you think of the mess, Henry? Worth the price of admission?”

“I have not seen it.”

Jack is surprised. Teachers as well as VIPs from the civilian community all have the privilege of becoming associate members of the officers’ mess, and most do.

“I haven’t a tuxedo or a—how does one say, a ‘dinner jacket’?”

“You don’t need all that nonsense,” says Jack. “Come as you are.”

Froelich glances dubiously at his filthy apron, and the two men laugh.

“What part of Germany are you from originally, Henry?”

Froelich rummages in his tool box. “The north.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Hamburg.” He holds up a spark plug. “This type is Champion.”

“Is that a fact?” Jack doesn’t press him for details. Hamburg was carpet-bombed in the summer of
’43
. If Froelich was there, he’s lucky to have survived. If he had family there, it’s a subject best avoided. “I see you’re reading
Silent Spring,”
recalling a book on the coffee table. “What’s it like?”

“My wife is reading it, she has it from the book-every-month club.”

“That’s your wife’s too, I take it.” Jack indicates the apron.

Froelich smiles and wipes his hands on the faded swirl of roses. “Actually, not.”

Jack thinks of the inside of the Froelichs’ house—lived in, to say the least—and wonders what Mrs. Froelich is like. A thick woman
with flaxen hair coming loose from a bun. Perhaps she works outside the home. Mimi is right, the Froelichs are eccentric.

He watches his neighbour bent over the engine, lips compressed in concentration. It is impossible to meet a man of his own age or older and not wonder what his war was like. And while it’s true that you might not want to dig too deeply into a German’s war record—not to mention those of their Eastern European allies—the majority of these fellows were just soldiers. Ordinary men like himself. In any case, Henry Froelich appears a bit old to have seen active duty.

“Look, we’re having a couple of people over for a barbecue tonight. How about it, Henry?”

Froelich looks up. “We should be the ones to feed you, you only now have arrived.”

It occurs to Jack that he may have just started World War Three with Mimi, but he presses on. “No big deal, come on over and take potluck.” He sets his mug down on the roof of the old jalopy. “We’ll see you tonight, eh, Henry?” Adding, as he heads back across the street, “And don’t forget to bring your wife.”

“Invite the whole street,” says Mimi, a carpet tack between her lips. “I mean it Jack,
je m’en fous.”

The kitchen curtains are already up, and the big oil painting of the Alps is hung over the fireplace—how did she manage that on her own? He watches her tap the nail into the kitchen wall with the hammer, then he hands her a wooden plate. “A little to the left,” he says. “Good.” In carved letters around its rim,
Gib uns heute unser tägliches Brot
. She has her Singer sewing machine set up in a corner of the living room, against the staircase wall, and, hanging in its usual place above, her mother’s hooked rug of bright orange lobsters in the waves.

“Why are they cooked if they’re still swimming in the ocean?” Jack always asks, and she always pinches his ear between her nails. She does so now—“Ow!”

“Dad,” says Madeleine, banging through the screen door, “can you set up the TV?”

Mimi says, “No TV during the day.”

“That shouldn’t count in daylight saving time.”

“She’s going to be a lawyer, that one,” says Mimi.

“I can at least set it up,” says Jack.

“After you get the groceries.” Mimi comes down the stepladder.

Madeleine slouches. In her hands, the pickle jar with all of eleven cents. “There’s nothing to do.”

“I’ll give you something to do,” says her mother. “You can dust the baseboards.” Madeleine heads back out the door to play. Jack catches Mimi’s eye. “Reverse psychology,” she says.

“Advanced management.” He closes in for a kiss but she fends him off and heads for the counter, where she rummages in her Yuban coffee can for a pen and writes out a grocery list. Mimi’s kitchen—indeed her house—is a model of organization, with the exception of a six-inch square by the telephone: thatch of recycled envelopes, elastic bands, welter of pencil ends and—Jack swears—inkless pens, a tin pop-up address book inscribed according to her own arcane code. The phone rings, she picks it up. “Hello? … Yes … hello Mrs. Boucher … Betty…. Please call me Mimi….” She laughs at something Betty says. “Yes, I know! … That’s right…. Well I look forward to meeting you too.” She laughs again. “That’s right, sooner than we expected”—looking daggers at Jack—“They’re all the same…. Now, you don’t have to bring a thing, there’s plenty of…. Around six and bring the kids…. All right, bye-bye.” She hangs up and turns back to Jack with both hands on her hips. “Lucky for you, Monsieur. Betty Boucher is bringing potluck. She can’t believe how Vic would tell you yes when he knows perfectly the house is still
toute bouleversée.”

Jack takes the grocery list and gives her a kiss. The women have figured it out, they always do. He heads for the door, shoving the list into his pocket full of dimes. Which reminds him, he ought to call Simon.

From the big grassy circle behind the houses, Madeleine sees her father pulling away up the street in the car, and runs to see if she can tag along. But as she rounds the house, she sees the wheelchair across the street. Gleaming. Occupied.

She slows to a walk. Shoves her hands into her shallow shorts pockets, glancing casually from side to side, trying not to stare as she
strolls down her driveway toward her bike lying at the side of the road. She sits cross-legged next to it, takes three marbles from her pocket and, as though it was her intention all along, begins to carve out a course in the cindery gravel. She steals a glance. It’s a girl in the wheelchair.

She looks back down and flicks one smoky marble into another, sending it spiralling into a little hole. She glances up again. The girl is very thin. Her head lolls gently to one side, she has a lot of light brown wavy hair and her skin is very white. The hair is neatly brushed but appears to be too big for her head, which is too big for her body. Her freshly ironed blouse fits her like a loose wrapper. Her arms seem to be in constant slow motion—as though she were under water. A shawl covers her legs despite the warm weather, and Madeleine can see the tips of her narrow feet in white sandals, one crossed over the other. She is strapped in by a seat belt. Otherwise she would probably slide right out of her chair and onto the grass. It’s impossible to tell how old she is. Madeleine looks back down at her marbles.

“Ayyyy….”

She looks up at the sound, which is like a gentle groan. The wheelchair girl raises an arm—her wrist looks permanently bent, her hand clumsily closed. Is she waving? Is she looking at me?

“Ayyy!” An old-young quaver.

Madeleine lifts a hand. “… Hi.”

Head rolling, the girl says, “Umeeah.”

“… Pardon?”

The girl’s head jerks back and, suddenly loose and loud: “Haahaaahhh!”

Madeleine is alarmed. Is the girl in pain? The corner of her mouth is pulled up. Is she laughing? At what? Well, she’s retarded, maybe everything is funny to her. Madeleine gets up. Now the sound is like moaning, but it’s only the dregs of the girl’s laughter—a naked sound and infinitely gentle, it makes Madeleine feel afraid that someone may come along and do something terrible to the girl. It makes her want to go back inside her own house. But the wheelchair girl waves her closed hand again and repeats, “Umeah!” …
Come here!

Madeleine picks up her bike and mounts it. She clothespinned a playing card to one of her spokes this morning—the joker—and it
makes a putt-putt sound now as she coasts across the street. As she nears, she notices something unusual about the girl’s chair—its wheels are attached by two heavy-duty coiled springs. Perhaps it’s some kind of souped-up wheelchair. She realizes now that the girl wasn’t waving; she’s holding something. Offering it. Madeleine hopes it isn’t a sweaty candy.

“What is it?” she asks in a kind tone of voice, leaning forward on her handlebars. The girl’s eyes slide like marbles, then her chin drops to her chest and she appears to be looking for something in the grass, her head moving from side to side. As Madeleine draws closer up the driveway, she sees that the girl is actually looking at her out the corner of her eye. The way a bird might.

Madeleine hesitates, about to turn back—

“Wayyy!” The girl flails her hand. Clear drool flows from the corner of her mouth.

Madeleine comes closer. “Watcha got?”

The screen door of the purple house flies open and the German shepherd bounds out. Madeleine feels for her pedals but her feet get tangled up in her bike and she topples backward. The dog barks and lunges. Madeleine covers her face and feels the soft tongue on her elbows—the feel of pinkness—and an ache at the back of her skull where she has banged it on the driveway.

“You shouldn’t never run away from a dog when it’s chasing you,” says a dead-level voice. “It just makes them chase you more.”

Madeleine uncovers her face and looks up. The girl with the knife. Blue eyes. Husky eyes.

She sits up. The dog’s tongue pulsates like a slice of wet ham between his fangs, and he stares off past her shoulder the way dogs do.

The girl says, “What do you want, kid?” She has the knife in one hand, a whittled stick in the other, its tip white and pointed.

Madeleine swallows. “What’s your dog’s name?” The girl squints and fires a neat round of spit from the side of her mouth. Madeleine wonders, does she cut her own hair with that knife? Shaggy rust to just below the ears.