The Way the Crow Flies Read online

  Praise for The Way the Crow Flies

  “One of the finest novels I’ve read in a long, long time…. The Way the Crow Flies is a brilliant portrayal of child abuse and its consequences, but it is much more than that. It is a fiercely intelligent look at childhood, marriage, families, the 1960s, the Cold War and the fear and isolation that are part of the human condition. More than 50 years ago, after Dorothy Parker read William Styron’s first novel, Lie Down in Darkness, she said of its young author, ‘He writes like a god.’ I thought of that phrase often as I read The Way the Crow Flies, for it is not only beautifully written; it is equally beautiful in its conception, its compassion, its wisdom, even in its anger and pain. Don’t miss it.”—The Washington Post

  “Every bit as luminous and poignant as Fall On Your Knees…. The Way the Crow Flies is … liberally sprinkled with small yet resonant grace notes, seemingly offhand observations about matters or sentiments or feelings that will cause you to trip, to stop dead, to smile and say: that’s the way it was, I remember now.”—The Hamilton Spectator

  “MacDonald is an expert storyteller…. The finale comes as a thunderclap, rearranging the reader’s vision of everything that has gone before. It’s a powerful story, delicately layered with complex secrets, told with a masterful command of narrative and a strong moral message.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “A gripping, twisty plot with powerful undercurrents of anger, abuse and even murder … MacDonald is a stunningly good writer…. The Way the Crow Flies … secures for MacDonald a place, forever, in Canadian literature.”—Calgary Herald

  “The pages practically turn themselves … irresistibly readable…. [MacDonald has] written a love song to the innocence and optimism of the post-war generation.”—Elm Street

  “[MacDonald’s] prose has a heart-poundingly powerful effect…. Evokes the time and place meticulously … a huge accomplishment from an awesome talent.”—NOW (Toronto)

  “[MacDonald’s] prose … is always right and true, clean and penetrating.”

  —Winnipeg Free Press

  “The Way the Crow Flies is a beautiful, compelling and heartbreaking story of a young girl’s loss of innocence and a murder that is to haunt her for the next twenty years…. Her vivid imagination breathes life into her characters and their world: the baby powder and Brylcreem smell of a teenage boy, the vivid pink streamers on a child’s bicycle, the pale perfection of a robin’s egg.”—Homemakers

  “The most exciting thing about The Way the Crow Flies … is how big it is. Big as in expansive in human feeling and experience, and weighty with moral and meaning—though not ponderous or pretentious…. It never drags. Its superb, cinematic crafting moves us swiftly from scene to scene…. The Way the Crow Flies … is stunning proof of MacDonald’s abilities…. [It] is a fantastic novel, not only because it is humorous and sad and suspenseful and entertaining. It is a fantastic novel because it reminds us, as Canadians, of our citizenship in the world.”—The Gazette (Montreal)

  “Extravagantly ambitious…. At the centre … moves MacDonald’s central and wonderful creation, Madeleine McCarthy. Restless, intelligent and wryly observant, this nine-year-old braves adversity … with authentic resilience and complexity…. She is at once sophisticated and uncomprehending in ways that ring terribly true. Hers is the consciousness that renders this novel compelling…. This gothic bildungsroman satisfies.”—The Globe and Mail

  “Extraordinary in its scope and unerringly accurate in its portrayal of life on an air force station in the early 1960s…. It’s all we could have hoped for and more from MacDonald. The Way the Crow Flies deserves the BEST accolade found in the term bestseller.”

  —The Chronicle-Herald (Halifax)

  “There is something to MacDonald’s stories, to the outsized tragedy, the awful inevitability, the need to tell and be told, that draws our hunger and our hope toward her midnight visions.”—The Georgia Straight (Vancouver)

  “MacDonald gives us a totally believable child in a series of brilliantly coloured, action-filled vignettes, kaleidoscopic, fast-moving, as compelling as watching a film…. By any standard The Way the Crow Flies is a remarkable achievement.”—Books in Canada

  “MacDonald’s story is absorbing, and her writing perceptive and sometimes poetic. The Way the Crow Flies is a thoughtful look at a time and place now gone forever, and the traces that can never be erased.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “Ann-Marie MacDonald’s second novel is a riveting story, her writing is superlative and her heroine is high-minded and intelligent, a veritable Alice in Wonderland as unforgettable as Scout or Salinger’s Phoebe. MacDonald’s book is brilliant on so many levels…. MacDonald creates a perfect time-warped world, authentic and exact.”

  —New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal

  “[The Way the Crow Flies] centres on a painful secret that will pull most readers compulsively back to this book until the last page.”—Flare

  “[MacDonald] juggles the entire globe; keeping us keenly aware of the larger politics of this world; her characters’ privations and pain are reflections of a society that is struggling with its own loss of innocence…. All the secrets create a heartsick sense of suspense … on every page. MacDonald’s careful navigation of the minds of her people is astonishingly accurate…. This is a big, beautiful book just waiting for you to walk into its marvellous world.”—The Daily News (Halifax)

  ALSO BY ANN-MARIE MACDONALD

  Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)

  Fall On Your Knees

  For Mac and Lillian

  So many “remember-whens”

  We are doomed to choose, and every choice

  may entail an irreparable loss.

  Isaiah Berlin

  Part One

  THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND

  THE BIRDS SAW THE MURDER. Down below in the new grass, the tiny white bell-heads of the lily of the valley. It was a sunny day. Twig-crackling, early spring stirrings, spring soil smell. April. A stream through the nearby woods, so refreshing to the ear—it would be dry by the end of summer, but for now it rippled through the shade. High in the branches of an elm, that is where the birds were, perched among the many buds set to pleat like fresh hankies.

  The murder happened near a place kids called Rock Bass. In a meadow at the edge of the woods. A tamped-down spot, as though someone had had a picnic there. The crows saw what happened. Other birds were in the high branches and they saw too, but crows are different. They are interested. Other birds saw a series of actions. The crows saw the murder. A light blue cotton dress. Perfectly still now.

  From high in the tree, the crows eyed the charm bracelet glinting on her wrist. Best to wait. The silver beckoned, but best to wait.

  MANY-SPLENDOURED THINGS

  THE SUN CAME OUT after the war and our world went Technicolor. Everyone had the same idea. Let’s get married. Let’s have kids. Let’s be the ones who do it right.

  It is possible, in 1962, for a drive to be the highlight of a family week. King of the road, behind the wheel on four steel-belted tires, the sky’s the limit. Let’s just drive, we’ll find out where we’re going when we get there. How many more miles, Dad?

  Roads are endless vistas, city gives way to country barely mediated by suburbs. Suburbs are the best of both worlds, all you need is a car and the world is your oyster, your Edsel, your Chrysler, your Ford. Trust Texaco. Traffic is not what it will be, what’s more, it’s still pretty neat. There’s a ’53 Studebaker Coupe!—oh look, there’s the new Thunderbird….

  “‘This land is your land, this land is my land….’” A moving automobile is second only to the shower when it comes to singing, the miles fly by, the la
ndscape changes, they pass campers and trailers—look, another Volkswagen Beetle. It is difficult to believe that Hitler was behind something so friendly looking and familiar as a VW bug. Dad reminds the kids that dictators often appreciate good music and are kind to animals. Hitler was a vegetarian and evil. Churchill was a drunk but good. “The world isn’t black and white, kids.”

  In the back seat, Madeleine leans her head against the window frame, lulled by the vibrations. Her older brother is occupied with baseball cards, her parents are up front enjoying “the beautiful scenery.” This is an ideal time to begin her movie. She hums “Moon River,” and imagines that the audience can just see her profile, hair blowing back in the wind. They see what she sees out the window, the countryside, off to see the world, and they wonder where it is she is off to and what life will bring, there’s such a lot of world to see. They wonder, who is this dark-haired girl with the pixie cut and the wistful expression? An orphan? An only child with a dead mother and a kind father? Being sent from her boarding school to spend the summer at the country house of mysterious relatives who live next to a mansion where lives a girl a little older than herself who rides horses and wears red dungarees? We’re after the same rainbow’s end, waitin’ ’round the bend…. And they are forced to run away together and solve a mystery, my Huckleberry friend….

  Through the car window, she pictures tall black letters superimposed on a background of speeding green—“Starring Madeleine McCarthy”—punctuated frame by frame by telephone poles, Moon River, and me….

  It is difficult to get past the opening credits so better simply to start a new movie. Pick a song to go with it. Madeleine sings, sotto voce, “‘Que será, será, whatever will be will—’” darn, we’re stopping.

  “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream,” says her father, pulling over.

  Utterly wrapped up in her movie, Madeleine has failed to notice the big strawberry ice cream cone tilting toward the highway, festive in its party hat. “Yay!” she exclaims. Her brother rolls his eyes at her.

  Everything in Canada is so much bigger than it was in Germany, the cones, the cars, the “supermarkets.” She wonders what their new house will be like. And her new room—will it be pretty? Will it be big? Que será, será….

  “Name your poison,” says Dad at the ice cream counter, a white wooden shack. They sell fresh corn on the cob here too. The fields are full of it—the kind Europeans call Indian corn.

  “Neapolitan, please,” says Madeleine.

  Her father runs a hand through his sandy crewcut and smiles through his sunglasses at the fat lady in the shade behind the counter. He and her brother have matching haircuts, although Mike’s hair is even lighter. Wheat-coloured. It looks as though you could remove waxy buildup from your kitchen floor by turning him upside down and plugging him in, but his bristles are actually quite soft. He rarely allows Madeleine to touch them, however. He has strolled away now toward the highway, thumbs hooked in his belt loops—pretending he is out in the world on his own, Madeleine knows. He must be boiling in those dungarees but he won’t admit it, and he won’t wear shorts. Dad never wears shorts.

  “Mike, where do you think you’re going?” she calls.

  He ignores her. He is going on twelve.

  She runs a hand through her hair the way Dad does, loving its silky shortness. A pixie cut is a far cry from a crewcut, but it’s also mercifully far from the waist-length braids she endured until this spring. She accidentally cut one off during crafts in school. Maman still loves her but will probably never forgive her.

  Her mother waits in the Rambler. She wears the sunglasses she got on the French Riviera last summer. She looks like a movie star. Madeleine watches her adjust the rearview mirror and freshen her lipstick. Black hair, red lips, white sunglasses. Like Jackie Kennedy—“She copied me.” Mike calls her Maman, but for Madeleine she is “Maman” at home and “Mum” in public. “Mum” is more carefree than Maman—like penny loafers instead of Mary Janes. “Mum” goes better with “Dad.” Things go better with Coke.

  Her father waits with his hands in the pockets of his chinos, removes his sunglasses and squints up at the blue sky, whistling a tune through his teeth. “Smell the corn,” he says. “That’s the smell of pure sunshine.” Madeleine puts her hands in the pockets of her short-shorts, squints up and inhales.

  In the car, her mother blots her lips together, eyes on the mirror. Madeleine watches her retract the lipstick into its tube. Ladies have a lot of things which look like candy but are not.

  Her mother has saved her braids. They are in a plastic bag in the silverware chest. Madeleine saw her toss the bag in there just before the movers came. Now her hair is somewhere on a moving van, rumbling toward them.

  “Here you go, old buddy.”

  Her father hands her an ice cream cone. Mike rejoins them and takes his. He has chosen chocolate as usual. “‘I’d rather fight than switch.’”

  Her father has rum ’n’ raisin. Does something happen to your tastebuds when you grow up so that you like horrible flavours? Or is it particular to parents who grew up during the Depression, when an apple was a treat?

  “Want a taste, sweetie?”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  She always takes a lick of his ice cream and says, “That’s really good.” Bugs Bunny would say, You lie like a rug, doc, but in a way it isn’t a lie because it really is good to get ice cream with your dad. And when each of you takes a taste of the other’s, it’s great. So Madeleine is not really lying. Nyah, tell me anuddah one, doc.

  Maman never wants a cone of her own. She will share Dad’s and take bites of Mike’s and Madeleine’s. That’s another thing that happens when you grow up; at least, it happens to a great number of mothers: they no longer choose to have an ice cream cone of their own.

  Back in the car, Madeleine considers offering a lick to Bugs Bunny but doesn’t wish to tempt her brother’s scorn. Bugs is not a doll. He is … Bugs. He has seen better days, the tip of his orange carrot is worn white, but his big wise-guy eyes are still bright blue and his long ears still hold whatever position you bend them into. At the moment, his ears are twisted together like a braid down his back. Bavarian Bugs.

  Her father starts the engine and tilts his cone toward her mother, who bites it, careful of her lipstick. He backs the station wagon toward the highway and makes a face when he sees that his rearview mirror is out of whack. He gives Maman a look and she makes a kiss with her red lips. He grins and shakes his head. Madeleine looks away, hoping they won’t get mushy.

  She contemplates her ice cream cone. Neapolitan. Where to begin? She thinks of it as “cosmopolitan”—the word her father uses to describe their family. The best of all worlds.

  Outside the car windows the corn catches the sun, leafy stalks gleam in three greens. Arching oaks and elms line the curving highway, the land rolls and burgeons in a way that makes you believe that, yes, the earth is a woman, and her favourite food is corn. Tall and flexed and straining, emerald citizens. Fronds spiralling, cupping upward, swaddling the tender ears, the gift-wrapped bounty. The edible sun. The McCarthys have come home. To Canada.

  When you live in the air force, home is a variation on a theme. Home is Canada, from sea to sea. Home is also the particular town you came from before you got married and joined the forces. And home is whatever place you happen to be posted, whether it’s Canada, the U.S., Germany, France…. Right now, home is this sky blue 1962 Rambler station wagon.

  Having adjusted his rearview mirror, Jack glances at his kids in the back seat. Peace reigns for now. Next to him, his wife opens her purse—he reaches forward and pushes in the automatic lighter on the dashboard. She glances at him, small smile as she takes the cigarette from her pack. He winks at her—your wish is my command. Home is this woman.

  The Trans-Canada Highway has been finished: you can dip your rear wheels in the Atlantic and drive until you dip your front ones in the Pacific. The McCarthys are not going that far, although
they did start this leg of their journey at the Atlantic. They have been driving for three days. Taking it easy, watching the scenery change, fir trees give way to the St. Lawrence Seaway, the narrow cultivated strips of old Québec all along the broad river, the blue shimmer of the worn Laurentian Mountains, the jet-smooth ride of the modern highway, Bienvenue à Montréal, Welcome to Ottawa, to Kingston, to Toronto, extending the summer holiday they spent with Mimi’s family in New Brunswick—Nouveau-Brunswick—salt swimming among the sandbars of the Northumberland Strait, and at night the winking lights of the ferry to Prince Edward Island. They rose early to watch the priest bless the multicoloured fishing boats on opening day, le premier jour de pêche. Lobster feasts and noisy card games of Deux-Cents late into the night, neighbours arriving to squeeze in at the kitchen table, placing their bets with mounds of pennies and Rummoli chips, until the fiddles and accordion came out and Mimi’s mother thumped out chords on the piano, her treble hand permanently bent into the shape of the hook she had used to make every quilt and rug in the house. L’Acadie.

  Language was no barrier. Jack basked in the French, in the food, in the celestial confusion of a big family. Mimi’s father had been lost years before, in a storm that capsized his lobster boat, and her brothers headed the family now. Big self-made men with a chain of seafood restaurants, who took to Jack from the start, when he and Mimi returned home after the war, engaged. Things happened fast back then, everyone understood, the brothers were barely out of uniform themselves. Jack was an Anglais, but he was theirs and her family embraced him with a fervour equal to that which fuelled their mistrust of the English in general. They accorded him the status of a prince and extended him the consideration usually reserved for ladies. The best of both worlds.