The Way the Crow Flies Page 23

  “Where did you get these bruises?” asks Mimi, examining Madeleine’s upper arm.

  “Just hacking around,” says Madeleine. “Auriel and I were giving Indian sunburns.” Which is not a lie, they have done so on occasion.

  Mimi narrows her eyes. “Vraiment?”

  Madeleine blushes. Does Maman notice that the bruise is the shape of a grown-up’s hand? But Mimi says, “Are you sure you haven’t been playing with that one across the street?”

  “Who?”

  “Colleen.”

  “No.”

  “Well just remember, Colleen Froelich is too old for you.”

  Mimi turns back to the stove in time to save the Hollandaise sauce.

  “How was school today?” asks Jack over supper.

  “It was good.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Turkeys.” Madeleine reaches for her glass of milk and knocks it over. “Woops!” Mimi catches the glass before it tumbles to the floor, and Jack shoots his chair back to spare his trousers.

  “Butterfingers,” says Mike.

  “Michael, help your mother,” says Jack.

  Tears spring to Madeleine’s eyes. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t cry over spilt milk, sweetie.”

  Mimi takes a tea towel, goes down on one knee and dabs at Madeleine’s blouse. Her daughter bursts into tears. Mimi puts her arms around her and pats her back, and Madeleine covers her eyes and wails. “Madeleine, qu’est-ce qu’il ya?” Mimi takes her gently by the shoulders and looks at her. “Eh? Dis à maman.” But her little girl turns away and goes to her father. He has his arms open. She climbs onto his lap and begins immediately to calm down. Jack winks over Madeleine’s head at Mimi. Mimi smiles for him, and turns back to the sink.

  Mike rolls his eyes as he wipes up the milk. Madeleine’s humiliation is compounded by the knowledge that her brother is right; she’s crying for no reason, proving what a girl she is.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie-pie?” asks Dad.

  She answers, “I don’t want you to die,” triggering fresh sobs.

  Jack chuckles and ruffles her hair. “I’m not gonna die!” He makes her box him to show what a tough old rooster he is. “Tough old roosters don’t die in a hurry, that’s it, hit me right here.”

  After supper he plays with them—her favourite game from when she and Mike were little. Dad is the spider. His spider fingers curl slowly in the air, the suspense builds, you wait for him to strike, wanting to run away, wanting to wait till the last second, “Gotcha!” Then he tickles you until your stomach aches from laughing, and the only way to make him stop is for whoever is free at the moment to give him a kiss.

  “Mike, Mike! Kiss Dad!”

  But Mike won’t, he’s too old to give Dad a kiss.

  “No fair!” she cries, “I kissed him for you!”

  “So?” says Mike from the couch, “C’est la guerre,” and he flips through The Economist.

  The spider has her by the ankles, she’s trying to get out of the quicksand, clawing the rug, “Maman! Donne un bec à papa! Vite!”

  A moment’s respite. Then, oh no! The spider is tickling again—it’s great, it makes you crazy—

  “Mike!” Now the spider has her by the arms—“Maman!” Laughing—Now he pulls her into jail—“Somebody!” Now he clamps her between his knees in a vise grip. Madeleine stops laughing. She keeps the smile on her face but her stomach has dropped. Dad is tickling and she writhes and laughs, acting normal, but she is feeling hot and not very well, she cannot move. His knees are pinned on either side of her hips.

  “The woolly spider’s got you now,” he growls, as usual.

  Let me go.

  “Maman!” she calls, laughing like a girl who is playing with her dad.

  Those are Dad’s trousers right in front of her. What if she bumps into him? The hot smell is around her, the living room is getting dark. He leans forward and gives her a whisker rub.

  “What’s all the commotion?” Maman appears in the doorway, her yellow rubber gloves dripping.

  “Kiss Dad,” Madeleine says, quiet now, making a smile.

  Maman kisses him and the spider lets go. Madeleine smiles at him in appreciation of her favourite game. He laughs, pats her on the head and picks up his newspaper again. Madeleine heads for the front door.

  “Madeleine, attends une minute,” says Maman, looking down from the top of the three steps.

  “What, Mum?”

  Mimi walks down the steps and says gently, “You’re too big to play like that with your father.”

  Madeleine runs across the street and cuts through the Froelichs’ yard to the park beyond, with the swings and the merry-go-round. She sits against a big tree. An oak. It hears her. She is too big. Maman knows there was something bad about that game. If you play with your dad and he bumps against you and you feel his thing, it’s because you are too big to be playing with your father.

  But Madeleine didn’t bump against him. It’s up to her, however, to make sure it never happens, because it would not be his fault. She would have only herself to blame. Her mother knows what Madeleine knows. Games where you are trapped between his knees are not good. Her father is too innocent to know it’s a bad game. Dad doesn’t know what could happen. He doesn’t know what you know. He would be helpless while you bumped against his trousers, he would be bewildered with a thing in his pants. Madeleine presses her back against the good bark and cries with her forehead on her knees. The tree hears her. Poor Dad. Poor Dad.

  “Jack,” says Mimi in bed that night.

  “Yeah?”

  “Madeleine’s too old for those games.”

  “What games?” he asks, scanning his Time. The U.S. policy of merely trying to isolate—or contain—Cuba has had dismal results….

  “Tickling games, I saw the look on her face.”

  He lowers his magazine. “You mean the old woolly spider?”

  “Yes. She’s too old, she was embarrassed.”

  “Was she?”

  “Oh yes, I think she only plays to please you.”

  Jack blinks. “Really?”

  She smiles at him. “I hate to break the news, Papa,” she says, “but your little girl is growing up.”

  “You think I embarrassed her?”

  “A little bit, yes.”

  He takes it in. “But it’s okay to play with her otherwise,” he says.

  She smiles. “You don’t have to lose your old buddy. But you want to leave some room for your young lady.”

  She gives him a kiss and reaches for her Chatelaine. She flips through … the average salary paid to women is only half that paid to men—

  “She’s just like her maman,” says Jack.

  Mimi laughs. “Don’t I know that.”

  “She’s a spitfire.” He gives her a kiss, then, “I didn’t mean to embarrass her.”

  “I know.”

  They read.

  His: Since last October, the U.S. has boosted its force of military advisers to more than 10,000 and is now spending $1,000,000 daily to beat the Viet Cong….

  Hers: Thanksgiving recipes your family will love.

  ONCE UPON A TIME, in a republic that no longer exists, there was a handsome and brilliant young man called Wernher von Braun. He came from an aristocratic Prussian family, and he shared the passion of his generation. Rockets. They were, as yet, merely a dream; humanity’s chance to rise far above the violence of earthly existence, to where our petty differences would shrink in the immensity of space. A dream of peace in our time. Wernher studied physics and joined a club of amateur enthusiasts who built small rockets of their own, launching them on weekends.

  He caught the notice of an army officer who shared his dream and belonged to an organization with pockets deep enough to fund it. In 1936, Germany was recovering, freeing itself from the yoke of poverty. There were finally people in power—vulgar people perhaps—who nonetheless knew how to get things done. It was a wonderful time to be young.

 
Wernher was twenty-five years old when he was put in charge of the army’s secret project to build the biggest, most powerful rockets the world had ever known. But first they needed to find a safe place to forge their dream. Wernher’s mother said to him over Christmas dinner, “Why don’t you take a look at Peenemünde? Your grandfather used to go duck hunting up there.” Wernher fell in love at first sight with Peenemünde’s wilderness, alive with deer and birds, its lost sandy beaches and Baltic sea breezes. The first trees fell before the bulldozers on April 1. Scaffolding and test stands were raised, rail tracks were laid, barracks were built and a neo-classical campus sprang up to accommodate designers, physicists, engineers, aerodynamicists, technicians, administrators and all the gifted young people who would make the dream a reality.

  The slaves came later.

  OKTOBERFEST

  At the altar the future splinters gloriously into a spectrum of split-level houses filled with appliances, rosy-cheeked children and boyishly handsome husbands. At a time in history when a girl, according to the latest predictions, can live to be a hundred years old, she really only has plans for the first forty years of her life…. We’re trapping them in a marriage marathon.

  Chatelaine, July 1962

  BY THE FIRST WEEK of October the leaves were not yet in their glory, but they were on their way. Scarlets and fiery yellows made their appearance, acorn squash scored green and ochre, fancy orange turbans and gnarled gourds mounded up in bushel baskets out front of the IGA and on stands at the foot of farm driveways. Turnips and the last of the corn on the cob, potatoes, beets, carrots and radishes, the local bounty flush from the earth. In the small town of Exeter, the bakery smelled even more divine with the change of temperature, not yet crisp but cool enough in the mornings to contrast deliciously with warm gusts of cinnamon buns and pumpkin pies. The fall fair opened up behind the old train station and Jack took the kids; they made the rounds of the midway—bumper cars, games and a decent roller coaster designed to make you want to hold onto your cotton candy, especially if you’d already eaten it. In the PMQs women were washing windows, signing their kids up for figure skating and hockey, and reminding their husbands to put up the storm windows one of these weekends, while the men started thinking about putting the snow tires on the car.

  If you had shown a much younger Mimi McCarthy, Marguerite Leblanc, as she was then, photos of her life now—dancing beneath a crystal chandelier at the officers’ mess with a handsome man in uniform, keeping house with all the modern conveniences, her children both with their own rooms, European travel, her name on a joint account—she would have thought it was a fairy tale. Not that she hadn’t set her sights on it to begin with. Marguerite became Mimi long before she met Jack. When she was about Madeleine’s age, in fact. Mimi reaches for the Palmolive and runs the tap over the breakfast dishes.

  She was the only girl in her family to leave her hometown, to pursue post-secondary education, the only one to go overseas. The war helped a lot of young people to break free, but Mimi’s get-up-and-go did the rest. She loves her sisters, she even loves most of her sisters-in-law, she is glad they’re happy, but she would not trade places with them for anything. She has kept her figure, she is still in love with her husband and, at thirty-six, she yearns for another child.

  The desire is romantic, almost erotic—caught up in how she feels about her husband, still her date, still fun, but completely her own. She imagines how much easier it would be with the next baby, knowing all she knows now. She enjoyed the first two, of course, but she was so far from home. Washington, then Alberta. No one told her what it would be like. There was no one to take the baby for a moment; no one to see what needed to be done and simply do it, on days when the house resembled an asylum—nothing but crying and spilling and spitting up, until she too sat and cried. No one just to be there. Only your own mother and sisters can do that, and they were half a continent away. In the air force, wives go to great lengths to help one another, with no expectation of it being reciprocated in this posting, knowing that someone will help them when they need it down the line. But friends can only do so much.

  Not every woman is cut out for this life. A few buckle—divorce is rare, the strain shows in other ways. Mimi has seen it: the too-cheerful voice on the phone in mid-afternoon; the first drink of the day as a reward for housework, the second as an accompaniment to As the World Turns; the nap before her husband gets home; until one day she sleeps through, and he finds himself opening a can for himself and the kids and making her coffee before the guests arrive—“She’s just a little under the weather.” And to be fair, not all husbands are equal. It takes two to make an unhappy marriage. Mimi is lucky.

  She looks out her kitchen window while she scrubs the frying pan; the rubber gloves spare her hands. A bird flutters past, a sparrow with grass in its beak. Across the street, the Froelich boy lifts his sister into the old station wagon, then puts her wheelchair in the back, the way he does every morning. He kisses his mother goodbye and sets off running through the park behind his house, to catch the school bus. Mimi’s own children have already left for school and, although high-school classes start later, he will just make it. Karen Froelich bundles the two babies into a basinette in the back seat, then pulls out of the driveway.

  She must have a job of some kind. It would explain the state of the Froelich household—Mimi caught a glimpse when she returned Karen’s chili non-carne pot. Karen probably takes the children to a babysitter, then goes to work. The Froelichs don’t appear to have two incomes; still…. Mimi returns the steel wool to the side of the sink, reminding herself to pick up some little tray or holder for it next time she’s in town. The babies are foster children, that much is known. Betty, Elaine and Vimy were all in Centralia when the infants arrived on the scene. Where do they come from? An unwed mother? People are paid to foster children, aren’t they? In which case, why does Karen Froelich work? The Froelichs don’t attend church. Either church. Are they atheists? She must remember to ask Vimy Woodley.

  She scoops soggy bread and bits of shell from the drain and pushes back a strand of hair with her wrist. Mimi stopped working when she got married, and what woman would choose to work once she had a child? At first she wondered how Karen Froelich managed, what with the babies and a handicapped child, but now she suspects that the woman simply doesn’t manage. Has chosen not to. Poor Henry.

  One morning, Mimi saw their girl Colleen heading up the street in the opposite direction from the school. Mimi lifted the phone receiver with her soapy glove, only to recall that the child’s mother was not at home. She dialled the school instead and asked for Mr. Froelich, embarrassed but feeling responsible even if the mother did not. Henry answered that Colleen was home from school today, not feeling well. When she delicately informed him that his daughter had left the PMQs along with her dog, Henry had said not to worry, the fresh air would do her good. Well, chacun à son goût. But it’s not surprising that the child goes around like a ragamuffin. Mimi sweeps the floor.

  What is surprising is that Ricky Froelich is so well turned out. Vimy has joked that she and Hal can’t find a thing wrong with him, although she was a little concerned when he and Marsha started going steady. He comes from a “different” sort of family, said Elaine Ridelle over a hand of bridge, to which Vimy replied, “Don’t we all.” But in any case, the Woodleys will be posted this spring and that will be that. Another advantage of living on the move.

  Mimi puts the broom away and turns to the calendar on the fridge, where each square is packed with her tiny writing—the Oktoberfest dance at the mess, the church bazaar, hockey and figure skating, volunteering at the hospital in Exeter, Vimy’s cocktail party in honour of the visiting air vice marshal, dentist appointments, Brownies, Scouts, Jack’s trip to Winnipeg, Jack’s trip to Toronto, the first curling bonspiel, hair appointment…. She circles Thanksgiving and jots down “Bouchers,” because Betty has confirmed that they’ll be coming. She hesitates, and adds “McCarrolls?” then picks up th
e phone to call her young next-door neighbour, Dot Bryson. The girlish voice answers and Mimi hears the baby screeching in the background. She tells the young woman to bring the child and come keep her company: “You’ll be doing me a favour.” Mimi smiles into the phone—she can almost hear tears of relief in the voice at the other end.

  She puts the kettle on, then bends to the cupboard under the sink where she keeps her hideous hausfrau clothes and begins to pull out Mason jars and line them up on the counter. She will can for five days. Chow-chow, red chili, corn relish, dills, bread-and-butter pickles and Jack’s favourite, mustard pickles. Next week is confitures.

  Thanksgiving falls on October 8 this year, and there will be a turkey draw at the mess as usual, with so many birds on hand that everyone is bound to go home with a Butterball. The social highlight of October, however, is Oktoberfest. The strong local German immigrant flavour, combined with the fact that so many personnel and their wives are veterans of German postings, means that Centralia’s is bound to be something special. The officers’ mess has been gearing up for weeks. Jack has tried to persuade Henry Froelich to bring his wife and join the party.

  “Ach, I don’t have—”

  “You don’t need a tuxedo,” said Jack, adding with a wink, “Besides, it’s Oktoberfest, you can wear lederhosen.”

  Henry Froelich smiled and shook his head. “I think no.”

  “I’m sorry, I forgot,” said Jack. “You’re from northern Germany, you wouldn’t be caught dead in lederhosen.”

  They were having an after-supper glass of Froelich’s homemade wine in the McCarthys’ driveway. Henry had Jack’s lawnmower in pieces.

  “What’s your better half got to say about it?”

  “My …?”

  “Your wife, Karen. Does she like to dance?”

  “She prefers the less formal occasion.”

  Jack nodded. “Like this,” breathing in the early autumn evening.

  “Just so,” said Henry, and bent to his work, wiping grass and grease from the blade. Jack watched him for a while, his immaculate cuffs turned up once at the wrists, fingers stained with grease, shirt and tie protected by the old apron.