Way the Crow Flies (93 page)

I
N POP CULTURE
and folk tales, ghosts haunt creepy houses at night, appear in old photographs of church picnics, are glimpsed in the rain-lashed beam of a headlight on a country road amid endless fields of corn. In life, they arrive when you are emptying the dryer at ten A.M.

The shadow is the same. It chooses mundane moments. Like most ghosts, it does not wish to scare you off. It needs to be seen. That’s why it has come. Imagine the sheer exhaustion of making the journey up from the shades time and again, only to have your long-lost one shriek and run away. That’s why it learns to approach in the open, when you are engaged in familiar tasks, guard down. Doing the dishes. Driving. It doesn’t necessarily want you to crash, but it does want your attention. It gets this by making the familiar shockingly unfamiliar.

Madeleine can no longer drive on the 401 where it proliferates into sixteen lanes across the top of Toronto. She can no longer see the whole road all at once, only one piece at a time—broken line, section of guardrail, whoosh of a passing car, another, another, another. These days she has to take the slow city streets all the way up to the After-Three studios in the northern suburbs, adding forty minutes to the trip. Life is too short, but she has no choice. That place from which we perceive the world—the cockpit behind the eyes, the
meness
—fragments into a multitude of formerly autonomic tasks that suddenly require volition: breathe now, blink now, beat now, steer.
Trust your instruments
. Her only real choice is to wrench the wheel into traffic. Not to do so is to prolong the terrifying paralysis of entrapment. The terrifying insanity of no choice. You have a choice. Wrench the wheel. This will make something make sense.

With multiple lanes shooting past her on both sides, Madeleine repeats random phrases, ads—“‘You deserve a break today, so get up and get away’”—until she is able to pull over or exit. Then, forehead resting against the steering wheel, parked in front of a mall where there is nothing to buy but water purification systems and barbecues that roast whole steers and bake cakes: “‘You’ll wonder
where the yellow went, the yellow went, the yellow went….’” Okay. It’s okay now.

“I’ve become neurotic. I’m going to be one of those irritating middle-aged women who’s got to have the aisle seat and can’t be trusted next to the emergency exit. I’m afraid all the time, a total coward.”

Nina is silent. Madeleine takes a breath; her eyes wander to the Georgia O’Keeffe print—bleached skull of a steer—then over to the clock, distended Dali-like through the glass water pitcher.

Nina says, “Fear isn’t the opposite of courage.”

“What?”

“It’s the prerequisite to courage.”

Madeleine dismisses this with a raised eyebrow.

“You said ‘the thing’ first happened when you were performing,” says Nina. “But did it remind you of anything? Was it familiar in any way?”

Madeleine is surprised because the answer is so close at hand—lying on the surface, like a sealed envelope on a stack of mail after the holidays. She opens it:

It was during
Bambi
. Part of a double bill with
Bambi Meets Godzilla
at the Rialto Cinema in Ottawa. Her best friend, Jocelyn, had smoked half a joint but Madeleine, being a failed druggie, hadn’t had any, so it wasn’t that. She was fifteen, Joss was sixteen.

“Wake up, wake up! Wake up, friend Owl!” cried Thumper.

At the sight of the cheery rabbit Madeleine felt her extremities cool. At the same time her face grew hot. “Are you hot?” she asked Jocelyn.

“No, it’s freezing in here.”

“I mean are you cold?”

“Are you stoned or what?”

Madeleine felt fear rise like a tide to her chin. Her heart began to ripple, then race. She became convinced she was about to die. She had in fact been diagnosed with a heart murmur—mild, the doctor had said, no impediment to athletic activity or a normal life, just have it checked as you get older. But this rippling didn’t feel familiar. Was this what a heart attack felt like? A “murmuring” heart—what was it trying to say?

“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothin’ at all!” chanted the stoned audience along with Thumper.

If I think about my heart, my heart will stop. If I don’t think about my heart, my heart will stop.

“Bird!” Bambi’s first word.

“Want some?” Jocelyn passed Madeleine the popcorn.

“Butterfly.”

Madeleine obeyed an old impulse and smelled her hands. Jocelyn didn’t notice, she was gazing up at the screen, giggling, glassy-eyed.

Madeleine rose from her body. She gripped the armrests but this only caused her to rise more swiftly.

“Wait here,” said Bambi’s mother. “I’ll go out first, and if the meadow’s safe, I’ll call you.” A shot rings out.

“Faster, Bambi! Don’t look back!”

She hovered in an elastic curve high above her own hands, she could see them lying limp on the worn velvet armrests below. She must have grown, for she was stretched over several rows of seats now. It was not entirely unpleasant. Winter comes and goes. In the meadow, new grass pierces the snow. Crows sound the alarm….

“Mother! Mother!” cried Bambi. The audience laughed.

Jocelyn said, “Here, you can have the rest.” The condensation of the cold paper cup against her hand jolted Madeleine in her seat and, now that she was back, she was terrified of having left her body. Her heart beat rapidly, panting like a tongue, stinging like a cut.

She stared at the floor—sticky splotches, the popcorn tar pits. She chewed the plastic straw. She was okay.

“So …,” says Madeleine, “what? Don’t just tilt your head attentively. Give.”

Nina half smiles.

“Come on, Mona Lisa.”

“The psychiatric term is ‘depersonalization.’”

Madeleine allows her gaze to rest on the bleached skull. How did O’Keeffe manage to capture an image of serenity rather than morbidity? “So how come people get depersonalized?”

“Any number of reasons,” says Nina. “Abuse, for example.”

Madeleine feels her body temperature drop. The breath drops from her body too. She has to go to the bathroom.

Nina continues. “It’s a survival mechanism. It can feel crazy, but it originates as a pretty sane response to an insane situation. The ability to ‘leave your body’ when what is going on is intolerable.”

Madeleine feels her face grow hot. Shame is a physical condition, there ought to be an over-the-counter spray to control its embarrassing effects—so much worse than leaving your dentures in an apple.

Nina pours Madeleine some water.

Madeleine says, in a Viennese accent, “Very interestink.”

Nina picks up the pink egg and asks, “Does Maurice ever speak?”

Madeleine doesn’t answer.

“Why don’t you do any women characters?”

“Why don’t you buy a new pair of Birkenstocks, those are getting on my nerves.”

F
ROM ON TOP OF THE FRIDGE
Mimi takes a bowl of muffin ingredients that she prepared earlier today, before driving her friend Doris to the doctor. Doris is widowed and has osteoporosis. Mimi is one of the lucky ones.

She removes the shower cap from the bowl, adds milk and eggs and stirs with the wooden spoon. She holds the phone receiver in the crook of her shoulder and talks to her sister Yvonne longdistance while she works.

“Doris, she’s the one with the stutter,” says Yvonne. Mimi can hear the clickety-click of needles—Yvonne is knitting.

“Yvonne! She has a slight speech impediment.”

“She turns everything into a shaggy dog story, that one. I’m always half-dead and totally starved by the time she gets to the point.”

Mimi laughs. “She wants to know when you’re coming up again.”

“Don’t tell her!”

“She’s going to give you a card party.”

“No!”

When Yvonne asks what she’s doing, Mimi replies that she is making muffins but doesn’t say that they are for her daughter. It’s not because Jack is close by, in the living room, that Mimi doesn’t broach the subject of Madeleine—he wouldn’t understand her in any case, because of course she and Yvonne speak in French. But Mimi doesn’t discuss Madeleine with anyone; not with her husband, because he doesn’t share her feelings about what he calls their daughter’s lifestyle; and not with Yvonne, because Yvonne does. She and her sister both believe that the way Madeleine lives is a mortal sin and a total rejection of her parents and everything they taught her. Yvonne is more graphic: “She shits on it.” Yvonne feels the anger and the disgust. Everything but the love.

So when Yvonne asks, Mimi replies, “Making muffins.”

“How’s my little prince?”
Mon p’tit prince?

“He’s himself.”

“Put him on.”

Jack is in his La-Z-Boy. The condo is designed so that the kitchen opens onto the dining and living area. She can see the top of his head but she doesn’t want to wake him if he’s napping. The TV is on. She puts down the phone and goes to his chair; his eyes are closed. She turns off the TV; he opens his eyes.

“Just restin’ my eyeballs.”

“Want to say
bonjour
to Yvonne?”

“Sure.”

Within moments he is laughing. She can see his gold tooth, and a healthy colour enters his face. She spoons the batter into the muffin pan. Yvonne loves Jack as if he were her baby brother. Nothing has ever been too good for him.
Un vrai gentilhomme, Mimi, ton mari
.

The last time Mimi and her sister discussed Madeleine, it was likewise over the phone. Yvonne said, “What happened to her?” She shared Mimi’s belief that the blight must be the result of something. “Did someone touch her?”

Mimi felt sick in the pit of her stomach. Something had happened to her child. Because she had failed to protect her.

Yvonne said, “She always had a secret, that one.”

Like her father
, thought Mimi.

“Did you ask her father?” Yvonne continued.

Mimi was startled because at first it was as though her sister had read her mind. Then she realized what Yvonne might have meant, and she went icy. She didn’t want to have to lose her sister, so she pretended not to have heard. And perhaps Yvonne had meant something quite innocent. The line was silent for a moment, then Yvonne said, “Men are men.” She always said this in English—the way some people reserve the foulest words for a foreign language.

Yvonne must have sensed what hung in the balance, because she never again broached the subject of “what happened to Madeleine.”

Mimi stands, muffin pan in hand, poised to open the oven when the red light extinguishes. Jack laughs and says, “I don’t know, I’ll ask her”—and to Mimi, “Yvonne wants to know how come you never bring me down home any more.”

“You tell her I don’t want
les belles de Bouctouche
stealing you away.” The light goes out and she slides the pan into the oven.

Dark, dark, far back in the back of her mind is a shadow. She never turns to look. It wafts from time to time toward the front, where it settles momentarily, like a veil, before retreating once more. The breath that lifts the veil and carries it is shaped into words as it passes through the lacework. The words must never be spoken and she does not heed them:
did my child’s father touch her?

In Centralia, the look on the child’s face when she played—wrestled—with her father. The blood on her underpants, the little lies she told.
No
. Mimi squeezes her eyes shut and keeps busy. This is the kind of thought sent by the Devil. In whom she does not believe—a heresy for which, perhaps, she is being punished. So she has never asked her daughter, “Did someone touch you when you were small?”

Mimi is looking forward to meeting God. He will have some questions for her, but she has a few for Him. He doesn’t know everything, He can’t. He’s not a mother.

“W
HAT ON EARTH
is this?” asks Christine.

“It’s a barbecue.” Madeleine is on the balcony, tilted back on a kitchen chair with the phone and a mongrel accumulation of notes, trying to write.

“Really?”

“Yeah, it even bakes cakes.”

Christine stares at her. “Why would anyone want to bake a cake on a barbecue?”

“I thought you might like it.”

“I’m not your bloody wife, Madeleine.”

If you are an aspiring alcoholic, if you were abused by your parents, if you have a mysterious chronic condition and wish to find a reason for it, move in with someone who is trying to write. You need never look farther for the source of your pain.

Madeleine says, “I’ll cook supper, I’ll make paella.” She gets up, lifts a rounded lid in the centre of the barbecue. “See?”

Christine turns and goes back inside. Madeleine experiences guilt, fear, pathos—the food groups. The beaded curtains sway provocatively in Christine’s wake, a housewarming gift from Olivia.

Madeleine has spent the afternoon writing, having promised to come in with a revised shape for the “Breaking News” sketch. She’s working on an idea for a war criminal thing—it’s all over the news, a recent rash of decrepit Nazis arrested while pruning their rose bushes in suburbs across Canada. She has also sworn to give Shelly a paragraph for
Stark Raving Madeleine
, and has a good excuse to figure something out because she told her friend Tommy she’d do five minutes at an AIDS benefit next Monday—
Love in the Time of Latex
. Conveniently, she has no time to write because evening workshop sessions have been scheduled this week on
The Deer
.

“Bring Olivia over after,” said Christine this morning.

“We’re working till midnight.”

“I thought you were finished at nine.”

“The schedule changed. I’m sorry, sweetie, it’ll all be over soon.”

Christine smiled. “Wait, stay in bed, I’ll bring your coffee.” She paused at the door in her burgundy robe. In the light filtering through the blinds, she looked just as she had when they met. For that first date they had planned to go to a film festival movie—Madeleine had already bought the tickets—but they didn’t make it out of Christine’s apartment for three days. They saved the movie tickets. Put them in the album with the photos that traced seven years. Holidays, birthdays, friends. The Story of Madeleine and Christine. “You know what?” said Christine. “Everything’s going to be okay. All your work. This project with Olivia is exactly what you need right now. It’s going to feed into the thing you’re working on for Shelly. It’s going to help give you your new show. And that’s going to change everything.”