The Way the Crow Flies

  “You got an appetite now?” She smiles. “Passe-moi mes cigarettes.”

  He reaches to the bedside table and takes a cigarette from the pack. Lights it, passes it to her. He gets up and she watches him change into civvies. She exhales and winks at him, her bra straps halfway down her arms. Kicks her panties off her right ankle and crosses her legs. “I’ll be right down. Turn the heat off under the potatoes.”

  She doesn’t want to stand up right away. She wants to stay lying down, help what’s inside her to do its work. She is reminded of what the fast girls—les guidounes—in her hometown used to say: “If you do it standing up, you won’t get pregnant.” Her own sister Yvonne was caught that way, and it would be interesting to know how many eldest children were conceived vertically. But although Mimi knows it’s nothing but an old wives’ tale, she waits a good half-hour before getting up, until she hears the screen door bang downstairs—the kids are home.

  She pulls on her skirt, buttons her blouse and picks up Jack’s uniform trousers, in a heap on the floor. Before folding them over a hanger, she removes his keys, change—a fortune in dimes—pencil stubs, paperclips, chalk—the amount of debris he manages to accumulate in the space of a day, he is still like his boyhood hero, Tom Sawyer—and a crumpled piece of paper. She is about to place it on his dresser—God knows it might contain one of his diagrams, a plan for restructuring the COS—but first, on impulse, she smooths it and reads: cherries, cognac, caviar…. She feels her face grow hot and places a hand at her neck.

  She doesn’t try to create a story for herself to explain the piece of paper. She puts it in her jewellery box. Part of being a wife is knowing when to say nothing.

  The flowers are in a vase on the kitchen table, “comme un beau centrepiece,” says Mimi, handing Madeleine a basket of biscuits chauds for the table, fresh out of the oven.

  Jack is listening to the six o’clock news and reading Look at the same time. Mike has his baseball cards at the table, Madeleine is waiting for someone to notice. How come he gets to sit there and she has to help her mother?

  “Tiens, Madeleine,” handing her the butter.

  Mimi switches off the radio and Jack snaps out of his news trance, tosses his magazine aside, rubs his hands together and says, “Look at this, oh boy.”

  Râpé, a delicious Acadian concoction of pork roast, grated potatoes and onions. Jack pats his stomach under the table and resolves to eat no more than one biscuit. If he’d had his gym gear with him today, he could have stuffed his uniform into a rucksack and run the three miles home from Exeter this afternoon, rather than taking a cab. He picks up his knife and fork. A woman like Mimi should never be taken for granted.

  She smiles at him as she sits down, and Jack realizes he has been staring at her. He smiles back and sets down his knife and fork again as she makes the sign of the cross and starts grace. “Au nom du Père, du Fils et du Saint-Esprit …” He joins her and the kids, speaking rapidly, “Bless us O Lord and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive through the bounty of Christ Our Lord amen, pass the butter Mike, what did you kids learn at school today?”

  Halfway through supper the phone rings. Jack looks up, mildly put out. Mimi answers and he waits. If it’s a hang-up, he will have to find some excuse to leave and get to the phone booth.

  “Oh hi Sharon,” says Mimi.

  Jack relaxes and resumes eating.

  “No, she isn’t,” says Mimi. “No, I haven’t…. Oh that’s all right, Sharon, no, no trouble, let me just ask her.”

  Madeleine looks up.

  Mimi asks, “Do you know where Claire McCarroll is?”

  “No,” says Madeleine.

  Mimi turns back to the phone. “No, I’m sorry, Sharon, have you tried the Froelichs? … Oh well then, I bet she’s off playing at someone’s house…. That’s right…. Will do, Sharon…. Okay, bye-bye.”

  She sits down again and Jack says, “Well madame, you’ve outdone yourself this time, they’re going to have to wheel me out of here on a stretcher.”

  “Keep your fork, prince,” says Mimi. “There’s pie.” Tarte au butterscotch.

  “Yum!” says Mike.

  Jack loosens his belt. “Do your worst.”

  “Madeleine, aide-moi,” says Mimi, handing her the kettle.

  “How come I have to make the tea? How come Mike never makes the tea? How come he never does anything around here?”

  Mike laughs. Mimi says, “He’s a boy, he has other jobs.”

  “Like what?” retorts Madeleine, and feels the burn of her mother’s red nails pinching her earlobe.

  Her father grins and winks at her brother. “He’d only burn the tea, right Mike?”

  Mike grins back at him. It makes Madeleine furious. “You can’t burn tea!”

  “Don’t talk back à ton père,” says her mother, sharply.

  “Come here,” says Jack, and Madeleine climbs on his knee. Mimi leans against the counter, lights a cigarette. “Tsk-tsk-tsk, my papa would have given me a good slap.”

  He strokes Madeleine’s pixie cut. “Maman needs your help,” he says. “Me and Mike aren’t any good at that sort of thing. Did you know it’s a special treat for me every time you bring me my tea?”

  Madeleine shakes her head. She doesn’t dare speak, she might cry.

  IT WASN’T A STRANGER. It was horrible because she thought she was going to see a bird’s nest. Robin’s eggs, the colour of her dress. There are boys who smash robin’s eggs, but there was no danger of that here.

  There was the egg, held gently in the outstretched palm. It was hollow.

  “I know where there are more eggs, little girl.”

  You could see the hole in the shell where a snake had poked its tooth and sucked it out.

  “Alive ones.”

  So she leaned her bike against the maple tree at the bottom of the ravine at Rock Bass, and followed.

  FLYING UP

  A Brownie gives in to older folk. A Brownie does not give in to herself.

  Brownie law, 1958

  IT IS THE SOFTEST PART of the day; pillowy shadows have begun to gather, warm like a cashmere sweater, shapely and perfumed; the grass is still wet with the moisture of snow so recently soaked up by the soil. The days are getting longer, still light at six-thirty. The sun’s rays have turned from linen to flannel, even the gravel is painted smooth. The schoolyard is bathed in glamour, the white stucco of J. A. D. McCurdy powdered pink in the long laze toward sunset. Swings are at rest, the teeter-totters poised like a lady’s legs about to put on stockings, Hey, big boy.

  Tonight, the Brownies are flying up to Guides. Benches have been set out on the baseball diamond next to the schoolyard. Madeleine is seated already, her hair tucked neatly under her brown beret. Sewn down her sleeve are numerous badges—some hard-won, such as that sporting a needle and thread. Sacrifices have been made. And this evening, she and her friends—not including Colleen—are getting their wings. That will make two sets of wings in the McCarthy household.

  The occasion is tinged with poignancy; Miss Lang is leaving to get married. It is unlikely that an equally beautiful, kind and laughing Brown Owl will take her place. There is only one Miss Lang. She too is in her uniform this evening, her sash, emblazoned with crests and badges, across her chest.

  Madeleine arrived conscientiously early, and sat in fervent contemplation of the giant red-and-black toadstool set up on the batter’s plate. She watches now with equal fervour as Miss Lang chats with her fiancé. Madeleine swallows a lump in her throat, and blinks. Miss Lang lowers her eyes and smiles at something the fiancé says. He moves to hold her hand but she gently withdraws and reaches for her clipboard behind the toadstool. Madeleine observes him; dark crew cut, forearms muscular and lean, the cool lines of his cotton shirt, ivory chinos and desert boots. His back pocket bulges slightly over his wallet.

  Madeleine turns to look for her mother—there she is, placing a platter of pink-and-green sandwich rolls on the refreshment table. Mike has arrived as w
ell, with Roy Noonan. They are playing catch. But Dad is not here yet. Brownies and their families mill about. Even Grace’s mother is here. Madeleine expected Mrs. Novotny to be a big fat lady from having had all those babies, but she’s skinny, with ropey arms and sunken cheeks.

  There is excitement in the air. On a long folding table, the yellow paper wings sit ready to be pinned to the backs of the successful Brownies, and along the aisle, the golden pathway extends to the toadstool. Madeleine drifts into a daydream wherein she is Miss Lang in her Brown Owl uniform, with a long train attached. She walks down the aisle to where the fiancé waits at the altar, dressed in a tuxedo, smiling at her with his clean square face. “You may now kiss the bride,” intones the minister. Madeleine is startled out of her reverie by the realization that at the moment of the kiss, rather than being Miss Lang, she is kissing Miss Lang. She reverses things in her mind until she is kissing the fiancé, but the fantasy dissolves and her mind wanders.

  “I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen and my country, and to help other people every day, especially those at home.” The Brownie Pledge. Forty-two girls between the ages of eight and ten have spoken it in perfect unison, their senses sharpened by the solemnity of the occasion. “Too-wit, too-wit, too-woo!”

  Miss Lang takes attendance. “Sheila Appleby.”

  “Present.”

  “Cathy Baxter.”

  “Present.”

  “Auriel Boucher.”

  “Present.”

  Each voice is a little more earnest tonight—there is no girl whose heart remains untouched by Miss Lang. She checks off the names on her clipboard. Madeleine looks around again but her father is still not here….

  “Claire McCarroll.”

  Miss Lang looks up. Heads turn, everyone looks to see where Claire is, but she is not present. Madeleine looks out across the field, but Claire is not on her way either. Up on the table, along with the wings, is a pin; it is for Claire, who will become a full Brownie tonight when Miss Lang attaches it to her chest. Claire is getting pinned.

  “Madeleine McCarthy.”

  “Present, Miss Lang.”

  Miss Lang pauses ever so briefly, with a smile, and Madeleine’s heart is pierced.

  “Marjorie Nolan.”

  “Present.”

  I will never forget you, Miss Lang, as long as we both shall live….

  “Grace Novotny.”

  “Present.”

  “Joyce Nutt.”

  “Present.”

  Grace has failed to earn her wings, but there is no such thing as a Brownie uniform big enough to fit her next year, so she will “walk up” to Guides wearing the specially issued fairy slippers made of crêpe tissue paper. Madeleine looks down the row at her—she is sucking on her fingers, sliding them in and out of her mouth. Grace Novotny—Marjorie Nolan’s bad pet.

  “Grace?” says Miss Lang.

  Grace gets up and shuffles along the row, looking down at her paper feet—they go swish swish. Marjorie joins her in the aisle. It ought to be the Sixer, Cathy Baxter, leading Grace, but Miss Lang has made an exception because the two are best friends. Grace takes Marjorie’s arm and they walk slowly up the yellow paper path—almost as though Grace were an invalid. Like in Heidi, thinks Madeleine. Grace breaks away and runs the last few steps, hurling herself at Miss Lang who, once she has regained her footing, gives Grace a big hug.

  As the Brownies begin flying up one by one, Madeleine looks toward the road, hoping to see her father drive up in the Rambler. Will he miss her wings parade? At the turn-in to the schoolyard there is a concrete stormpipe that runs under the road to the field on the other side. You can shout down it but entry has been barred by a metal grid, hung now with grass and weeds, remnants of the water that has been gushing through with the melt—if you get caught in there in spring, you drown. Everyone says a kid drowned in there one year and that’s why they put up the bars. A dog is sniffing around it—a beagle—Madeleine wonders if he is lost. She watches him squeeze through the bars.

  “That dog is trapped.”

  Madeleine has spoken it aloud, and the Brownie in front turns and draws an imaginary zipper across her mouth. Cathy Baxter, you are not the boss of me.

  The dog barks and Madeleine raises her hand. But Miss Lang doesn’t see her; she is pinning paper wings between Auriel’s shoulder blades. Auriel runs up the golden path. Madeleine lowers her hand. One by one they fly up, like proud butterflies. The dog barks a second time. Madeleine can no longer see it in the shadows of the stormpipe. The barking becomes a muffled yelp, retreating farther and farther, and she puts her hand up again, about to call out, “Miss Lang,” when a car swerves into the schoolyard and just keeps coming across the playground and onto the grass, bouncing toward them till it stops right next to the toadstool.

  Captain McCarroll arrived home from his flying trip with a new charm for his daughter’s bracelet, but he went straight back out again and began going door to door at ten to six.

  “No, dear,” said Mrs. Lawson in her doorway. McCarroll had removed his hat when she came to the door. “Wait now, I’ll ask Gordon….”

  To the Pinders. “Yes sir,” said Harvey, tucking his newspaper under his arm, “we saw her, why? Has she gone AWOL on you?” but his tone was not joking.

  “When did you see her, Mr. Pinder?”

  “Oh, some time before supper. We were out with the little go-cart when she came along, hang on”—he called over his shoulder—“Arnie! Arnie, Philip, get up here, boys!” The boys ascended the basement stairs wearing expressions of all-purpose guilt. “You know Claire McCarroll?”

  “Who?” said Arnold.

  Philip said nothing, eyes darting. Harvey flicked him on the ear. “She came by while we were working on the go-cart. On her bike. Did either of you see her after that?”

  “No sir,” grunted Arnold. Philip shook his head.

  “Sorry sir,” said Harvey.

  “Around what time was this?” asked Captain McCarroll.

  “Oh, this afternoon, three-fifteen, three forty-five? Four?”

  “Thanks.” McCarroll was on his way.

  Harvey grabbed his windbreaker and headed for his car, telling Captain McCarroll he’d have a look around the area, “in case she’s off on a little adventure.”

  To the Froelichs.

  He knew his wife had already phoned. None of Karen Froelich’s children were able to help him—Rick was off playing basketball in London and Colleen had taken her sister to the station library. Karen called down the basement stairs, “Hank.” Henry Froelich emerged from the basement, toolbox in hand, and when Karen told him why Blair McCarroll was there, he took off his apron and proceeded to search for his car keys among the stuff on the kitchen table. McCarroll hurried home on foot to see if his daughter had returned in the meantime.

  And so it went, until the streets of the PMQs were full of dads behind the wheels of crawling cars, going door to door, playground to playground, peering between houses, eventually with an eye on the ditch.

  Jack had raised the window on his screen door to get the warm spring air flowing through the house, then he set out walking down St. Lawrence Avenue a few minutes behind his wife and children. On the way, he saw McCarroll’s car parked in the driveway. He was back. He’d be going to the schoolyard too, with his little girl, and Jack would take the opportunity for a private word. He would need only to say, “I have a special task for you, McCarroll, concerning a mutual friend.” McCarroll would know that Jack was the “officer of superior rank” who was overdue briefing him, and Jack would have fulfilled the favour he had promised Simon. Over and out.

  As he neared the little green bungalow, Jack saw McCarroll come out of his house—still in uniform at ten to seven—toss his hat onto the passenger side and get into his car. He drove up the street toward Jack, who waved. McCarroll jerked to a stop alongside him. Jack bent to the open window, about to deliver his simple message, but the words died on his lips. McCarroll was
chalky white.

  His little girl had not come home yet. Jack got in the car beside him, tossing McCarroll’s hat into the back seat. The police had told Blair that they could not consider her “missing” after merely three hours. Jack did not remark on the stupidity of this, not wanting to stoke McCarroll’s distress. Instead, he asked, “Have you called the service police?” They drove to the MPs’ office, where Corporal Novotny climbed immediately into his patrol car and radioed another to join the search.

  They had just driven past the willow tree, crawling south along the Huron County road, when Jack suggested Blair turn back and head for the schoolyard where the Brownies were gathered. They could ask Claire’s assembled friends if they knew where she might be.

  The driver’s door opens as the car lurches to a halt beside the toadstool. Madeleine watches as Mr. McCarroll gets out, along with a second man from the passenger side. Dad. A winged Brownie has stopped short on the golden pathway; everyone waits while Mr. McCarroll speaks quietly to Miss Lang. Behind the two of them, the sun is setting fast. It will be dark before the Brownies have their refreshments. Madeleine waits to catch her father’s eye, but he looks past her at her mother.

  “Attention Brownies,” says Miss Lang. “Mr. McCarroll would like to know if anyone has seen Claire recently?”

  Recently. When you are nine or ten years old, “recently” means a minute ago. Certainly it refers to nothing that occurred before supper or in the remote reaches of this afternoon. No hands go up.

  Mr. McCarroll turns to them. “Girls and boys—”

  Madeleine looks at Lisa Ridelle, Lisa looks back and they burst into stifled giggles. Boys?! There are no boys in Brownies! Madeleine looks up. Her father is staring at her now, one eyebrow slightly raised. She stops giggling.

  “I would appreciate knowing,” continues Mr. McCarroll, unaware of his gaffe, “if any of you saw Claire today at any time at all.”

  Several hands go up. She was seen by almost everyone at school today. She was seen afterwards in the schoolyard by Madeleine, Marjorie—who jogs Grace’s memory with a jab—and by Cathy Baxter and the other girls who were helping Miss Lang. Diane Vogel saw her out her living-room window, talking into a drainpipe in the ditch near the corner of Columbia Drive and St. Lawrence—it must have been between three-thirty and four because her mother was watching Secret Storm. Madeleine’s hand is still up and Miss Lang says, “Yes Madeleine?”