Way the Crow Flies (21 page)

M
ADELEINE DOES NOT NEED
to be walked to school by her father, but it was their first-day-back tradition when she was little. St. Lawrence Avenue is full of kids in new clothes—cotton dresses and ankle socks for the girls, plaid shirts and high-top sneakers for the boys—all freshly ironed, barbered, braided and brushed. Some are being walked to school by their parents, but those kids are younger than Madeleine. She had intended to go with Auriel and Lisa, but at the last minute couldn’t bear the thought of Dad watching his old buddy walk away without him.

Jack whistles through his teeth and glances about at the sunny pageant. Madeleine takes his hand to make up for the fact that she would rather not be seen walking hand-in-hand with him to grade four. He winks down at her. “Don’t be nervous, old buddy.” There is no harm in letting him think that’s why she has taken his hand. She smiles for him.

They pass the empty green bungalow on their left. Whoever moves in there will be late for school. Mike is walking up ahead with Roy Noonan, wearing his new 4 Fighter Wing baseball cap over his fresh crewcut. He has a Spiderman comic book in his schoolbag—Madeleine saw him put it there but she didn’t tell on him. Her dress has no pockets. It has a panel of crinkly fabric across the chest and a jazzy print of Africans playing bongos on the skirt—it’s okay considering that it’s a dress. She carries her white cardigan hooked by a finger over her shoulder—this is a less sissy way of carrying a cardigan, it’s the way you would carry a bomber jacket if you had one. All she wanted was penny loafers; instead Maman bought the new Mary Janes. There is no way to pretend they are anything else.

She is hot on the outside and chilly on the inside. Butterflies. Her father says the best performers get them on opening night. This is
opening day. Fresh scribblers. Fresh kids. Fresh teacher. Fresh self. She longs to let go of his hand and slant away like a kite. “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Um. Can you meet me after school and we can walk home together?”

“Don’t you think you’ll want to be with your buddies by then?”

“No.”

“Well, we’ll see. You decide at lunchtime, okay?”

She looks up at him, his eyes shaded by his hat brim. “Okay.”

He is in his summer uniform. It looks just like his other one except, instead of blue, it’s khaki. He wears his hat with the brim pulled a little lower than usual on sunny days to prevent his old eye injury from flaring into a headache. Madeleine loves his uniform—both the khaki and the dress blues—but her favourite part of it is his hat. The badge over the brim is beautiful: a red velvet crown edged in gold braid and beneath it, in brass, the albatross in flight, bold beak facing to its left. Some say it’s actually an eagle, and there are still vigorous debates about this in the mess, but according to her father any right-thinking air force man knows it’s an albatross. A bird of great good fortune. Unless you happen to kill one. Besides, an eagle is an American symbol.

Above his left breast pocket are sewn his wings. Even if an air force man is no longer a pilot, the wings remain part of his uniform. This spring, if Madeleine gets enough Brownie badges, she will fly up to Girl Guides. Then she too will have a pair of wings to pin proudly over her heart.

“Here we are,” he says. The schoolyard. The sound of the crowd rises like a wheel of gulls over a turbulence of bobbing heads, eddies of stripes, polka dots and plaid, the occasional adult sticking up like a spar. Jack surveys the scene, his hand still around Madeleine’s. He spots Mike in the crowd and touches the brim of his hat. Mike reciprocates with the bill of his baseball cap.

Madeleine says, “Well, I guess I better go,” because it seems that otherwise Dad will wait for the bell.

“All right then.” He leans down. “Do your best, sweetie. Do it your way.”

She kisses his cheek, smooth Old Spice. “’Bye Dad.”

He gives her the thumbs-up.

She enters the crowd, allowing it to close around her. She imagines that if she stood on tiptoe it would carry her along like driftwood. The shrieking is far away and in her ears all at once. She pauses at the swings to look back at her father. He is walking away up Algonquin Drive. She ought to have turned sooner and waved. You never know when will be the last time you see your dad. This could be it. The back of his head, his hat, smooth khaki uniform.
When Dad was alive
. She wants to run and take his hand again—

“Madeleine.”

She turns. “Oh, hi Marjorie.”

She bends to fiddle with her shoe strap in hopes that Marjorie will go away but Marjorie stays and says, “Oo-day oo-yay ant-way oo-tay o-gay oo-tay y-may ouse-hay or-fay unch-lay?”

“What?”

Marjorie giggles. “It’s pig Latin, silly! Ig-pay atin-lay, illy-say!”

“Oh.” Madeleine looks past Marjorie to see Colleen Froelich arrive in the schoolyard. Unhurried, face slightly averted. She wears a kilt and blouse that make her tan look darker, her legs harder and leaner. Like a kid someone found in a forest and put clothes onto. She has loafers. Good and scuffed. Madeleine wonders if she has brought her knife to school. Colleen’s in grade six.

“Well oo-day oo-yay?”

“What?”

“Do you want to come to my house for lunch?!” Marjorie rolls her eyes with mock impatience. She is wearing a fluffy yellow dress.

“Hafta go home,” mumbles Madeleine, scanning the playground, desperate now for a sight of Auriel and Lisa.

“What about tomorrow?”

“I don’t know”—there they are, over by the teeter-totters—“I have to go.” She retreats, adding as politely as possible, “’Bye.” But before she can reach her friends, the bell goes.

She joins the stampede toward the steps. A row of teachers is suddenly there, a blur of instructions through a megaphone, something about grade ones on the right—the right of what? Who’s on first? Kindergartners have already been shepherded through a separate door so they won’t get trampled. “Quiet, boys
and girls!”—school is officially starting. Madeleine lines up with the grade fives by mistake, vaguely aware that something is amiss, everyone at least an inch taller than she—“Psst!” She turns to see Auriel gesturing frantically for her to “get over here, you ding-dong!” She steps out of the grade five line and Auriel grabs her by the cardigan, yanking her to the safety of grade four.

“Gosh almighty, McCarthy!” whispers Auriel.

Lisa Ridelle is doubled over, laughing her silent ghosty laugh. The three of them giggle into their hands, a whistle sounds, squads of pupils begin filing up the front steps and in through the big double doors. Madeleine follows the caravan into the future. Who will my teacher be? Will she be pretty? Will she be nice? Will I understand fractions?
Que será, será…
.

“Good morning boys and girls, my name is Mr. March.”

He is fat in a grey suit, but maybe that means he’s nice. Fat people often are.

“Good morning Mr. March”—eternal grade-school singsong.

He has brown brogues. They are dusty. Perhaps he is too fat to bend over and polish them. That was cruel, sorry dear God.

The first thing Mr. March does is move the boys to the front. “I know what boys are,” he says, revising his seating plan. He doesn’t see the need to move the girls, or perhaps he doesn’t know what they are. Madeleine is grateful because her desk is perfect: right across from Auriel, and one in front of Lisa.

A scraping of chairs; everyone rises to sing “God Save the Queen” and “The Maple Leaf Forever,” and recite the Lord’s Prayer. Then the rattle of chairs and outbreak of chit-chat as everyone sits down again. “Let’s keep it down to a dull roar, shall we?” says Mr. March.

There is a bit of dandruff on the arm of his glasses, Madeleine sees it when he walks down the rows handing out the new scribblers for spelling. Pink. “Gordon Lawson,” says Mr. March, consulting his seating plan. “Spell ‘licorice.’”

“L I … C O….” Gordon has wavy ginger hair freshly slicked, and the perfect number of freckles. “R … I … S—no, C, E.”

“Very good, sir,” says Mr. March. “The rest of you, look to Mr. Lawson. Emulate him.”

Madeleine wishes Mr. March would ask her to spell something. A pink scribbler lands on her desk.
Hilroy
is emblazoned across the cover in bold cheerful script.

The first time you open a fresh scribbler. The clean smell. The paper sheen. Large scribblers, no longer little baby scribblers with wide lines. This is grade four. Copy the beautiful cursive letters that adorn the wall above the blackboard, each one repeated in upper and lower case like mother and child, doe and fawn. Study the map of the world that is pulled down over the blackboard. Canada and the British Commonwealth are pink. Ponder the cut-outs that decorate the walls between the big windows all along one side—hams and bottles of milk, fruit and poultry and other wholesome foods; bushels and pecks, gallons and yards; isosceles triangles cavort alongside wild animals and children from other lands in Eskimo parkas and Mexican sombreros. Up at the front, near the big oak desk, a felt-lined bulletin board on an easel. The only blank surface.

Madeleine arranges her new package of Laurentian pencil crayons next to her ruler and her new plaid pencil case. The air is bright with promise, the school pervaded by the aroma of fresh pencil shavings, orange peels and floor polish. No one has yet thrown up in the hallway, occasioning the spread of coloured sawdust; rain and snow have not yet soaked and musted the coats on the hooks at the back of the room—those hooks are empty, it being still too warm for coats. It is difficult to believe, when you look out the row of big windows onto the playground and the bright PMQs beyond, that winter will really come. The seasons will change through that window, thinks Madeleine, I will turn nine through that window….

“What is the capital of Borneo, little girl?” Mr. March asks.

Madeleine starts. Is he looking at her? “Pardon?”

He rolls his eyes. “‘Beautiful dreamer,’” he sings.

The class laughs. He is handing out the scribblers for geography. Green.

“Hands?” says Mr. March. No one puts up a hand.

“How about you, …” consulting his seating plan, “Lisa Ridelle? What is the capital of Borneo?”

Lisa replies, “I don’t know,” barely audible from behind her curtain of white blonde.

Madeleine looks around. No one knows. Not even Marjorie Nolan.

“Well, you will by the time I’m finished with you, as will you all.”

Directly in front of Madeleine is Grace Novotny. The part in her hair is crooked and her pigtails are fastened with plain elastics. It’s true, Grace does smell—when Madeleine leans forward she gets a whiff. Perhaps she wets the bed. It’s a sad smell. Madeleine leans back and resists the temptation to bury her nose in the crease of her new notebook. Let everything you do be perfectly neat this year, with no crossing-out or dog ears. Let everything be spelled correctly, and do not drop this scribbler in a puddle on the way home.

“When was the War of 1812?”

Madeleine looks up but she’s safe. His head is turning like a periscope, looking for hands. A pause, then he says in a slightly weary way, “For your information, boys and girls, that was a joke.” Polite laughter.

He passes out a thick red textbook. It’s the grade four reader
Up and Away
. Madeleine opens it and is immediately engrossed in “Dale the Police Dog.” He is a German shepherd who belongs to the Mounties. He guards their stuff and stops older girls from picking on younger ones. One day a little girl goes missing. “Dale’s master let the dog sniff at the small sweater. Dale knew at once that he must go to look for someone who carried the same scent.” Dale finds her asleep out in a field. Her parents have been worried sick. Dale looks like Eggs across the street. A blue textbook lands on Madeleine’s desk with a thud and she closes the reader, aware of somehow cheating by reading ahead.

“I should make it clear right off the bat,” says Mr. March, “that I’m not partial to shilly-shallying, dilly-dallying or chin-wagging.”

Madeleine whispers to Auriel, “Except that his chin is wagging, or should I say ‘chins’?”

“What did you say?”

Madeleine looks up, crimson.

He consults the seating plan. “Madeleine McCarthy. Well well, alliteration. Can you define alliteration for me?”

He must be looking at me, thinks Madeleine, because he said my name. But it’s difficult to tell, because his glasses reflect the light and
there is nothing in the set of his large face to indicate where he might be focusing.

Madeleine answers, “Um—”

“Word whiskers.” He chants it in a fed-up way.

“It’s when—”

“Full sentences please.”

“A literation is when you throw garbage on the ground.”

No one laughs, because no one, including Madeleine, knows what alliteration is. Mr. March says, “We have a wit amongst us.”

Madeleine is mortified, but also relieved because Mr. March seems to have forgotten what he asked her in the first place. He continues handing out the blue textbooks—
Living with Arithmetic
, which makes it sound like a disease, which it is. Madeleine peeks inside. Sure enough, the enticing drawings, intriguing juxtapositions of rifles and cakes, cars and hats. “Into how many sets of 8 can you divide 120 children for square dancing?” What children? Where do they live? Are they orphans? “At the rifle range Bob scored 267 points. His father scored 423 points….” Who is Bob? Why is he allowed to have a gun? Insincere accounts of Mrs. Johnson baking pies, Mr. Green putting apples into boxes, hogs onto trucks, all a treacherous narrative veneer on the stark problems of how much, when, how long, and how many left over, the human characters mere evil imposters of numbers.

“What is the square root of forty-seven?” Mr. March asks, strolling up the aisle. Madeleine is alarmed—I didn’t know we had to do square roots in grade four. He stops at the desk of a girl with long shiny black hair.

“I don’t know,” says the girl.

“You don’t say,” says Mr. March. His voice sounds as though he has let go of his muscles. Like something heavy sliding down a hill.

The girl he asked is crying! Quietly at her desk.