The Way the Crow Flies Page 33

  Jack can hear him inhale—he’s smoking one of his Camels. He leans against the glass. “What’s going to happen, Si?”

  “Oh, I think it’s happening. Khrushchev will back down and Kennedy will look good at home and to NATO. It’s one for us, mate.”

  “You old cynic.”

  “I’m utterly sincere.” Simon’s tone is breezy. “Kennedy will remove the worthless Jupiter missiles from Turkey so Khrushchev can save face, but it’ll mean a tremendous loss of prestige for the Russians. Brilliant stroke of realpolitik on Kennedy’s part. If we don’t all go up in flames over the next twenty-four hours, chances are we won’t any time soon.” Simon exhales. Jack can almost smell the smoke. “Before I forget, Fried’s going to need mail—”

  “Done.”

  “Oh, had I mentioned—?”

  “No, but I figured.”

  “You’ve got a feel for tradecraft, old man,” says Simon, in a send-up of his own accent.

  “When are we going to see you up our way? Mimi would love to meet you.”

  “Is she aware of our little operation?”

  “No, but she knows I ran into you the summer before—”

  “How’s the Deutsches Mädchen?”

  “Oh she’s grand, she’s a spitfire.”

  “Chip off the old propeller, eh? Cheers, Jack.”

  “Cheers.” Jack hears the click, and hangs up. He heads to the mailbox outside the grocery store and posts Fried’s “letters.”

  Tradecraft.

  The next morning, Jack picks up the paper from the front steps. He walks slowly back up to the kitchen, eyes on the front page: SOVIET, U.S., AGREE TO HOLD PRELIMINARY TALKS ON CUBA.

  “Didn’t the milk come?” asks Mimi.

  “I guess not, I didn’t see it,” says Jack. Mimi slips past him, down to the porch, and gets the milk.

  At the table, Madeleine reaches for a fresh-baked banana muffin. Her father lifts his paper to turn a page. She freezes. Towering over the breakfast table on the front page is a photograph of children ducking and covering under their desks. It’s the exercise group. Her stomach closes.

  “Madeleine, qu’est-ce qui va pas?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then pass your brother the butter.”

  “I only asked you twice,” says Mike.

  She has the odd sense that if she reached for the butter her hand would stay where it is, and that a phantom hand would reach out. She lifts her hand and it works perfectly, but before picking up the butter she obeys the impulse to sniff her fingers quickly. Mike bursts out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” she asks.

  “Old Smeller.”

  “Stop it!”

  The newspaper comes down.

  Mike is still giggling. “Well she’s always doing that.” And he imitates her, furtively sniffing his hands, fingers curled.

  “Quit it!”

  “Simmer down now,” says her father. “Mike, don’t tease your sister.”

  Madeleine’s face feels like a heating pad, she has to go to the bathroom. Her parents are looking at her. “That’s Diane Vogel,” she confesses, pointing at a girl with her head buried in her arms, on the front page of the newspaper.

  Her father says, “Those kids are down in Florida.”

  American kids. That’s not a picture of our class at all.

  He clicks air through his teeth and gets up. “Well, looks like tensions are easing, eh? Have a good day, fellas.”

  The grade four class recites in unison, “‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the rider was lost….’” Art is always on Friday afternoons. The best pictures have been selected for the wall and for the window in the door. “‘ … for want of a rider the battle was lost, for want of the battle the war was lost….’” Madeleine has her eyes on the clipboard on Mr. March’s desk, as though her gaze could fix it there, preventing him from picking it up and reading off the names. “‘ … and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.’”

  He reaches for the clipboard. “The following little girls….”

  After supper, the hum and rattle of Mimi’s sewing machine competes with Sing along with Mitch. Madeleine watches the bright fabric passing beneath the pistoning needle, her mother’s foot working the pedal like an accelerator. She is lengthening Madeleine’s clown costume. Sewn from an old set of drapes, their indestructible muslin patterned with tropical flowers in crimson, emerald and canary-yellow, pleated and pompommed. Madeleine looks longingly at the hat—she is not allowed to wear it till Halloween. Constructed of Life magazines rolled up, shellacked and upholstered, it’s pointed like a dunce cap. She recalls that Anne Frank is somewhere in there, smothering. She takes a deep breath and looks away.

  “You’ll get a job at Barnum ’n’ Bailey in a costume like that,” says her father. “You’ve got the smartest maman in the world.”

  On Saturday, a U-2 spy plane is shot down over Cuba, killing the pilot, and they all put their clocks back an hour, for daylight saving time. Madeleine endures figure-skating lessons at the arena, where the torment of picks and figure eights is mitigated by the presence of Auriel, who looks like a self-described “velvet sausage roll” in her tutu—and the sight of Marjorie, dander bouncing with every forward thrust, keeps them in silent stitches. Madeleine is stalwart through swimming lessons in the echoey indoor pool, survives the churning fug of the change room and emerges gratefully to watch Mike’s hockey practice, hot chocolate steaming from a paper cup in her hand, swinging the heels of her boots against the scarred bleacher boards. Mike plays defence. She relishes each crisp swoosh and slice of his skates, admiring the look of concentration on his face, his cheeks pink with exertion. Afterwards, she watches, mesmerized, as the Zamboni heals the surface of the ice. Her brother and Arnold Pinder emerge from the locker room with Roy in tow, lugging his heavy goalie equipment, and the four of them watch as the big boys power onto the ice with graceful strides, sticks pivoting from their gloved hands: passing the puck, turning on a dime to skate swiftly backwards. Ricky Froelich is among them, skirting the boards easily, dangerously, flicking his hank of hair out of his eyes with a toss of his head. He was suspended last year for fighting, but it hasn’t happened again.

  In the afternoon the McCarthys go shopping in London, and at the crowded entrance to the Covent Market, Madeleine sees a young man and an old lady parading with signs, Ban the Bomb and Insects Shall Inherit the Earth.

  That night, Jack sits with his wife and son on the couch and watches the Newsmagazine special on CBC. Knowlton Nash talks with White House press secretary Pierre Salinger in Washington, and a succession of officials line up to praise Khrushchev’s “statesmanlike decision” to dismantle the missiles. The relief is palpable.

  “It pays to stand up to a bully, that’s what history teaches, Mike.”

  Madeleine sits cross-legged on the floor, waiting for the news to be over. Jack called them in to watch “history in the making.” The main anchor, Norman DePoe, sums up: “… men are still dying in the rice paddies of Vietnam, the steaming jungles of Laos and the high thin air of the Himalayas. The little wars go on, but at least we’re not going to have the big one. At least not yet anyway, and suddenly at last there’s hope that we may be able to settle the little ones too.”

  “Where’s Vietnam?” asks Mike.

  “It’s in south-east Asia,” answers Jack.

  “Is there a war on there?”

  “There’s always a bit of a one.”

  They stay tuned for Ed Sullivan.

  That night, Jack tells Madeleine, “It’s all over, little buddy, nothing left to worry about.”

  There will not be a nuclear war in our lifetime.

  “You can wake up tomorrow and go to school feeling free as a bird,” he says. “So much for Mr. Marks.”

  He turns out the light. And Madeleine’s eyes stay open.

  TRICK OR TREAT

  OCTOBER 31 IS THE BEST DAY of the year:
Halloween. Everyone goes to school in costume. Doing normal schoolwork in a costume makes everything including arithmetic seem easier. Each class has its own Halloween party; the grade fours have bobbed for apples, and devoured a cake with orange icing brought in by Mr. March. But Madeleine is itching for the main event: nightfall. Trick or treat. She watches the clock, poised to flee with the bell.

  “The following little girls….”

  It never crossed her mind that they would have to do exercises with their Halloween costumes on. It makes no sense. She stands against the coat hook, her head sweating under her pointed pompom hat, and waits.

  “I don’t want to be a clown.”

  It’s almost dark out. Younger children are already making the rounds, accompanied by parents and older siblings. Jack is up in Madeleine’s room, where she stands, clown hat in hand, her face glum despite her big painted smile, and framed by the ruffled collar. He wants badly to laugh but he stays solemn. “Why not, sweetie?”

  Madeleine thinks. “I grew out of it.”

  “I think it fits you fine.”

  She looks down.

  He asks, “What would you rather go as?”

  “A golfer.”

  “A golfer? How come?”

  “I don’t know”—which is the truth.

  “Well now, I have a set of golf clubs and a golf bag and we could fix you up with a cap and a moustache and whatnot …”

  Madeleine brightens—a moustache?

  “… but do you think that might kind of hurt Maman’s feelings?”

  Oh. Madeleine hadn’t thought of that. She feels suddenly terribly sad for Maman, when she thinks of how Mr. March touched the beautiful clown costume she sewed. She says, “I could be a clown going golfing.”

  Now he laughs. “Yeah, you could.”

  “With a moustache.”

  “Sure.”

  They go into the bathroom and Jack wipes the red lipstick from her face—grinds it off with a face cloth, then takes one of Mimi’s eyebrow pencils and draws a handlebar moustache on her upper lip. She goes into her room and gets her pillow. Stuffs it under her costume, then enters her parents’ room and stands in front of the full-length mirror. She is Mr. March dressed up as a clown disguised with a moustache going golfing. She smiles. “Thanks Dad.”

  She shoulders her golf bag and sets out with Auriel and Lisa. Auriel is a Hawaiian dancer with a coconut bra, and Lisa is Judy Jetson with go-go boots. Madeleine has taken only the putter so the bag won’t be too heavy—she will use it for candy. Her Unicef box jingles already with pennies that Dad put in “to get the ball rolling.” The PMQs are aglow with grinning pumpkins, alive with ghosts and skeletons, cowboys, Indians, pirates and fairies. Mike is dressed as a bedraggled soldier of fortune, despite his father’s offer to help rig him out as Billy Bishop. Arnold Pinder wears his dad’s camouflaged hunting outfit and totes a BB gun. Both boys have streaked burnt cork under their eyes. Roy Noonan is dressed as a hot dog.

  After trick-or-treating at a couple of houses, Madeleine drifts away from her friends, drawn by a sudden urge to try out her golf swing in the park. “Fore!” she yells, and swings into the darkness. The iron weight pulls her around full circle. Grace and Marjorie scurry past. Marjorie is a pregnant lady, Grace is a teenager with a stuffed bosom and smeary lipstick. Marjorie turns and spits, “Watch what you’re doing, Madeleine!” Madeleine swings and swings until she is dizzy, and discovers a new kind of crazy laughter as a runaway ventriloquist puppet—opening and closing her mechanical jaw, head jerking back and forth in time with her evil laughter. She laughs out of the park and down St. Lawrence Avenue, past Claire McCarroll in her bunny costume holding her dad’s hand.

  At the bottom of St. Lawrence she runs into a bear—just someone in an old raccoon coat, a paper bag over their head, with eyeholes. As Mr. March might say, this individual has not made much of an effort.

  “What brings you out this evening?” inquires Mr. March with an English accent disguised as a clown with a moustache going golfing.

  “Free stuff, what else?” Colleen Froelich. Who would have thought she would stoop to something as fun and normal as trick-or-treating?

  They are at the schoolyard. Madeleine dropped a bar of soap into her golf bag before she left home, so she must have known she was going to do something bad, though she’d no plans to use it. She tips the bag over and some rockets and crappy candy kisses tumble out along with the soap. She has lost her Unicef box. She takes the soap and writes PEAHEN all over the grade four windows, staggering, scrawling and calling out like a parrot in a pirate movie, “Peahen! Peahen! Grawk!”

  Colleen says, “You’re crazy.”

  Madeleine collapses on the ground beside her, giggling uncontrollably. “Why thank you, Peahen.”

  “What’s ‘peahen’ supposed to mean?”

  “Hmmm, qu’est-ce que c’est la ‘peahen’?”

  Colleen leaves. Madeleine lies on her back in the schoolyard in the dark, the laughter tapering off to no more than a dark trickle out the side of her mouth. Then she rises, slings the golf bag over her shoulder and follows Algonquin Drive up behind the houses, taking slap-shots, whacking pebbles with the putter as she goes. She hears one hit a garbage can. She wonders what would happen if she heard the smash of glass, and keeps on whacking. She cuts through the park and takes a swing at the oak tree. Bark flies up, exposing a slash of white. She chops and chops, each metallic blow an ache that numbs her palms, travels to her shoulders and rattles her head on its post; she chops until her bangs are slick with sweat, until her arms have turned to rubber, and she figures she has just about chopped that tree right down.

  Mimi is surprised to find no candy in Madeleine’s golf bag. “What did you do all evening if you weren’t trick-or-treating?”

  “We gave our candy to a little kid who lost his.”

  It doesn’t feel like a lie because she didn’t think about it before she said it. She hides the bent golf club behind the furnace, and goes to bed with a stomach ache.

  “You have a stomach ache because you ate all your candy, don’t tell me des petites histoires about poor little boys losing theirs.”

  The next morning the grade four windows are perfectly clean. Maybe she didn’t soap them. Maybe it was all a dream. But after the national anthem and the Lord’s Prayer, the principal, Mr. Lemmon, comes on the PA system and announces that there has been vandalism—“wanton vandalism”—in the park, and that school property has been violated. “The offenders are invited to come forward and confess. Otherwise, shame on you.”

  Madeleine feels prickly, and clammy as though she had wet her pants, and her head feels set to burst like a smashed pumpkin.

  Before supper.

  “Dad, say someone commits vandalism, do they get sent to training school?”

  “That depends on what they did and how old they are.”

  “How old is a juvenile delinquent?”

  “Under twenty-one.”

  “Oh.”

  “And over twelve. Why?”

  “If a person was my age they wouldn’t send them to training school, would they?”

  “Well, what did this eight-year-old person do?”

  “I’m almost nine.”

  Jack refrains from smiling. “What did this almost-nine-year-old do?”

  “Nothing. But what if they broke something or something?”

  “Well. I’d have to say that, unless it was something of great value, something that couldn’t be fixed”—it can be fixed. Windows get washed, tree bark grows back—“or unless it was a person who was harmed … I’d say it would be sufficient for the guilty party to apologize.”

  “But no one knows they did it.”

  “All the more reason they should come clean.”

  “Confess?”

  “Yup. Do the right thing.”

  She feels as though there’s a smell coming off her, and she sniffs her fingers to make sure they are clean.

  AMERICAN THANKSGIVING
>
  SHE KNOWS THAT the smell will go away if she confesses to Mr. March about the windows. Then she must go to the principal and tell about the tree.

  Mr. March’s eyes get big and round, he looks at Madeleine as though he is seeing her for the first time—like an elephant noticing a mouse.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. March.”

  It’s weird because he says, “Just forget about it, Madeleine.” He doesn’t say, “Forget about it, little girl,” he uses her name, which he never does unless he is reading it off his clipboard.

  It’s lunchtime. They are in the hallway outside the classroom. She has confessed to soaping “Peahen” all over the grade four windows. She has also confessed to dressing up as him as a clown going golfing. Throughout, he has not taken his eyes from hers. For once she can see them through his glasses. They are large and grey. As she confessed, she felt cool water pouring over her head, even though her voice was shaking.

  Mr. March glances down the empty corridor and asks, “Have you told anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Well don’t.”

  “I have to tell Mr. Lemmon.”

  “No you don’t.”

  She is surprised, then reflects that he probably wants to tell on her himself. Then he will phone her parents and tell them. “I’m going to tell my own parents,” she says.

  “What for? What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

  She goes to walk away down the hall because it’s lunchtime, but he says, “Wait a moment, Madeleine.”

  She stops, and as she turns back to him, she gets the I’m-not-hungry-any-more feeling, because she realizes that he is going to make her do exercises even though it’s not after three. Just as she had never imagined the possibility of doing exercises in a Halloween costume, she is now ambushed by the prospect of doing them at lunchtime. You can do them in a box, you can do them with a fox….

  She follows him back into the classroom, arms limp at her sides, but he just nips over to his desk and takes something from the drawer. He writes on it, then hands it to her. “You got a hundred percent on your reading comprehension, what do you think of that?”