Jack has never been afraid to do the right thing. But it’s difficult sometimes to recognize it. Show me the right thing and I will do it. Where is up? Where is down? He longs to talk to Mimi, but he must not involve his wife. She didn’t join the armed forces, he did.
He turns, though he knows there is no one behind him. Across the parade square, the empty phone booth glows, transparent once more. The snowflakes gather on his shoulders, thickening like feathers. He stands there as his hat grows a ledge of white, and his shoulders collect frosted epaulettes. He doesn’t know what to do. He only knows what he has done.
“… And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote—
‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’”
Sir Henry Newbolt, 1862–1938
FLEXIBLE RESPONSE
“Bobby?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to make it look like we’re all fucked up here….”
Tape transcript of JFK to RFK during the
Cuban Missile Crisis, October 23, 1962
MIMI IS AWAKE before Jack. She gets up quietly and reaches for his uniform, crumpled on the floor—she will give it a quick press. As she picks up the jacket she catches a whiff of something. She holds it to her face and sniffs—urine. It takes only a moment to realize that he must have been holding one of the Froelich babies. She looks at him, pale and sleeping, his mouth open, and has a sense of the old man he will one day become. She needs to be gentle with him.
Last night she waited up for him, but when he finally came in he wasn’t hungry and he didn’t want to talk. She gave him two Aspirins; he downed them with a Scotch, and went straight up to bed. She looked in on Madeleine, and when she joined her husband he was already asleep. She waited for him to turn to her, to warm her feet, which were always like ice, but he was dead to the world. He had missed his son’s game. Now was not the time to ask him what had happened over at the Froelichs’. Whatever it was, it had made him ill. Jack was thirty-six and it was important to remember that men bottled a lot up inside, that this could take its toll. Mimi knew how to relax him but he was too sound asleep for that. Her period was late. Maybe this time…. She heard his teeth grind together briefly. She wasn’t sleepy. She stared at the white stucco ceiling, where the shadows of snowflakes fell across a stark moonlit rectangle. She could have got up for an extra blanket but she was too cold.
A baseball game was not the end of the world, but their son would only be young for a very short while. She worried that too soon he would cease to place such importance on his father’s being there to cheer him on. Already Michel was pretending that it didn’t matter—strolling in, announcing his win as though it were an afterthought and telling her he wasn’t hungry; Arnold Pinder’s father had taken them for hamburgers. That this should have caused tears to spring to her eyes, she could only put down to the emotional strain of the past week.
Mimi folds the uniform jacket onto the chair—it will have to be dry-cleaned—and heads for the bathroom. She recalls that the Froelichs’ station wagon was absent from the driveway for most of yesterday evening, and it occurs to her to wonder which of them Jack was keeping company—Henry or Karen?
In the bathroom she pees, then sees on the toilet paper a streak of watery red. She is momentarily bewildered. There have been no cramps, no bloating. She tells herself lots of women have irregular cycles, but she knows better: she has never been one of them. That’s why she and Jack have never had any “surprises.” If her period is changing, it’s because she is too, no matter how young she looks and feels. She splashes water on her face—she has no right to cry. She has two beautiful healthy children, and her neighbour has just lost her only one. It’s wrong to grieve for a child who has not even been conceived. Besides, who knows, there’s nothing to say it might not still happen. She lets the water run, and sits on the side of the tub with her face in her hands. Madeleine bangs on the door: “Maman! I have to go!”
At breakfast she persuades Michel to tell his father about the baseball game. The rain has washed away the freak snowfall and the grass is a new livid green. She dresses more carefully than usual, and kisses Jack goodbye with an extra love-bite on his ear to make him smile.
Madeleine didn’t get a chance to ask her father the questions, because Mike monopolized breakfast with a play-by-play account of his game. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, because the police don’t return to the school. When Colleen corners her at recess, Madeleine tells her what she told the police, then runs to rejoin her school friends—her light cool friends—before Colleen can thank her or rub anything off on her. The scab in the palm of her hand has begun to flake, and Madeleine picks at it as much as she dares.
For the next three days Jack sits tight, in hope that the case will be dismissed, but on Friday a date is set for a hearing. The Crown is willing to move swiftly in consideration of the fact that some witnesses may be posted before the summer is out. Perhaps they also have in mind Ricky’s extreme youth, and the fact that he has been denied bail, for the hearing is a mere three weeks away. The Froelichs’ lawyer has welcomed the speed of events, in view of the scantiness of the prosecution’s case. The Crown will seek to have Ricky tried as an adult, but editorials have already appeared in the major Toronto papers decrying this as inhumane and “an abuse of the letter, and a breach of the spirit, of the law.”
Jack does not immediately go to the police. He reasons that the whole point of a hearing is to determine whether there is enough evidence to proceed to trial. And how likely is that? Jack will act, but he will act responsibly. And that means not blowing the whistle until, and unless, absolutely necessary.
Grace Novotny has one pink streamer in the handlebar grip of her beat-up bicycle. She stands astride the bike at the edge of the grassy circle that borders Madeleine’s backyard. It’s raining again. Some kids might chant, “Who rides a bike on a day like this?” the way kids do to try to make you feel like a weirdo. Grace has no raincoat on. She has her hand between her legs—she often clutches herself quite absently like that. She reminds Madeleine of an old rubber doll, naked but for one plastic shoe, hair uncurling, abandoned at the bottom of a toy box. It’s after school on Friday and Madeleine is in her red raincoat and sou’wester. She has been dissecting a golf ball she found in the grass. Mike has told her there is nitroglycerine at its core; perhaps she will make a bomb.
“Hi Grace.” Grace doesn’t seem to notice the rain. The hem on her wet dress is uneven. Madeleine asks, “Hey Grace, where’d you get the streamer?”
Grace runs her fingers through the pink plastic strands and looks away. “Someone gave it to me.”
“Who?”
“Someone.”
Madeleine says, “You stole it.”
“I did not!” Grace pelts the words, stamping her foot the way Marjorie does, as though expecting you to scat like a cat. When Grace does it, though, it’s not sharp, it’s just raggedy.
“Then where’d you get it?” asks Madeleine again.
“She gave it to me.”
“Who? Claire?”
“I found it.”
“Liar.” Madeleine feels a little mean—Grace is an easy target. “Tell me, Grace.”
Grace jumps on the seat of her bike, bouncing up and down on it hard on purpose as she rides away—that must hurt.
“Madeleine. Viens, c’est l’heure du dîner.”
Supper that night is quiet. Madeleine keeps waiting for something to happen, but nothing does.
“Pass the peas, please,” says Mike. Her father doesn’t criticize him for sprinkling sugar on them.
Madeleine wishes the radio were on, even the boring news. The rain is not comforting against the window, it’s a monotonous reminder that there’s nothing to talk about.
“You’ve got Scouts tonight, is that right, Mike?” asks Jack. Mike grunts in the affirmative, but her father doesn’
t reprimand him. Something is terribly wrong with this picture. Her father is being extra nice, covering something over, as if he’s leading up to telling them some awful news—he has a terminal disease. What if he only has a year to live?
“Pass the butter, sweetie.”
It’s too much. Her face crumples, tears drop onto her tepid canned peas; even in the midst of her grief, she notices and wonders if she’ll get out of eating them.
“What’s wrong, little buddy?”
“Madeleine, qu’est-ce que tu as?”
Mike rolls his eyes.
“Shut up!” she screams at him savagely. Her father gives Mike a look, then opens his arms to Madeleine. She climbs onto his lap and weeps into his shoulder. “I’m sorry!”
“What are you sorry for, old buddy?” His amused voice, the one that tells you it’s time to worry because he’s reassuring you.
“Nothing!” She weeps, grinding her fist into her cheek. When she looks up, they are alone at the table.
“Tell me what you did in school today.”
Today Madeleine watched for the police through the window. “Nothing,” she says.
“Did you sing? Did you do arithmetic? Draw pictures?”
“Art’s on Friday.”
“Well, tell me what you drew last Friday.”
“It was on Thursday. I didn’t get a star though.”
“That’s okay, art is subjective. Do you know what subjective is?”
“No.”
“It means a matter of opinion. Art is a matter of opinion.”
“The butterflies got a star.”
“Butterflies. Not terribly original.”
“They were yellow, they were really good.”
“What did you draw?”
She tells him about Robin crying, “Holy Thursday, Batman!” He laughs. She feels better.
“Humour is often underrated,” he says. “But it’s the hardest thing of all.”
He tells her about the old vaudevillians like Bob Hope working their way up, second by second, to a golden three-minute routine packed with reliable laughs. “Comedy is the brain surgery of the performing arts.”
“Are they going to hang Ricky Froelich?”
“No, no, no, they won’t do that.”
“Um. How do you know?” She tries to make her voice sound polite, so as not to seem rude in questioning his judgement.
“Well, first of all, he’s a juvenile.”
“A delinquent?”
“No, no, juvenile just means that you’re not yet an adult, so you can’t be punished as an adult.”
“Do they ever hang kids?” asks Madeleine, knowing that she will soon be ordered to “think nice thoughts.”
He sounds a little insulted when he replies, “Of course not, the chances of that happening nowadays are virtually nil.”
Like the chances they’ll drop the bomb.
“First of all, the case probably won’t even go to trial. You see, there has to be what’s called a hearing, and that’s when the judge’ll say, ‘Listen fellas, there’s no direct evidence here—’”
“It’s all circumstantial.” The kind Perry Mason deals with.
“That’s right, and he’ll throw it out.”
Madeleine says, “Want to watch Rocky and Bullwinkle?”
They watch as Boris Badenov and his evil Russian girlfriend, Natasha, try to sabotage a circus act, only to be foiled by J. Rocket Squirrel and his trusty moose companion. During the commercial, Madeleine asks, “But what if they don’t throw Ricky out?”
“No jury in its right mind would convict him on no evidence.”
“Yeah, but if they did?”
He looks her in the eye, and for the first time he speaks to her in the man-to-man voice. She feels her spine straighten, knowing it means he believes she can take it like a man.
“If they convicted Ricky Froelich of murder,” he says, “the worst-case scenario would be life in prison.”
She sees Rick in black and white stripes, behind bars, a matching cap on his head, go directly to jail, do not pass go….
He leaves his tea on the coffee table and goes to the kitchen cupboard over the fridge. He pours a drink from the bottle of Scotch.
Candid Camera comes on.
“But even that won’t happen,” says Madeleine, still in man-to-man mode.
“What’s that, sweetie?” He returns to the couch. “Rub Dad’s head, eh?”
She kneels beside him and rubs his head, saying, “He won’t even go to jail.”
“No, he won’t,” says Dad and takes a sip.
Cheerful voices sing from the television, exhorting the audience to smile—You’re on Candid Camera!
“’Cause he didn’t do it,” says Madeleine. Her father gets up to raise the volume. “That’s what I told the police.”
“What’s that?” He turns to her, still bent over the TV. “What about the police, sweetheart?”
“They came to the school.”
He straightens up. “When?”
“Yesterday.”
“What for?”
“To ask questions.”
“About what?” She regrets bringing up the subject. How will she be able to confess to her father that she lied to the police? His face is red. “Who was there?”
“Just me,” Madeleine answers. “And Mr. March.”
“Who asked you the questions?”
“The one in the suit.”
“Inspector Bradley?”
“Yeah.”
“For the love of….” He places his glass down on the coffee table in a measured way that Madeleine recognizes as fury. He goes to the kitchen and removes the phone book from a drawer—not banging anything, licking his finger and flipping the pages with deliberation. It seems he isn’t angry at her after all. All the same, she has stepped through a weave of grass and fallen into a trap, it isn’t possible to know where adults have dug them. She watches him dial.
“Hello, is this George March? Jack McCarthy here, I’m Madeleine’s father….” Madeleine is too shocked to reach for a cushion. “There’s something I’d like you to explain to me….”
She has the nervous giddy feeling of when Dad is mad at something but it isn’t her—the godforsaken tent pegs! She watches the look of bewildered outrage enter his eyes. He is saying, “I’d like you to explain why I shouldn’t drive over to your house right now and break both your arms.”
She chomps the inside of her cheek and reaches for a couch cushion.
“… Oh, I think you know why, mister.”
Mister! She bites into the fabric.
“‘Exercises’? I’m not calling about schoolwork, buddy, I’m calling about what happened yesterday in your classroom after three.”
Madeleine’s eyes feel as big as saucers.
“I don’t care what the police said, the law says parents must be consulted before their children are interrogated.” His fingers are white around the receiver. “I know she told the truth, I’ve raised her to tell the truth, that’s not the point….”
Madeleine grins into the cushion, laughter frozen in her throat.
“You’ll be lucky if you still have a job by the time I’m through…. You’re damn right it won’t happen again.” And he hangs up.
Jack has his finger on the number for the local OPP detachment, but reconsiders and flips back through the white pages to find a Thomas Bradley in Exeter—call the bastard at home, get him off guard and off his ass.
Before dialling, Jack turns to his daughter and says, “What did they ask you?” All the giddy thrill drains away. Madeleine takes the cushion from her mouth and tells the truth.
“If I saw Ricky and Elizabeth and Claire all going down the road.”
“Which road?”
“Huron County road.”
“Okay.” He nods, poised to dial. “And what did you tell them?”
“I told them … I saw them.”
“Did they ask you anything else?”
Made
leine answers truthfully again, “They said, ‘Did you see which way Ricky went?’”
On the TV, a Volkswagen Beetle splits in two, drives around a telephone pole and comes together again on the other side. Laughter.
Madeleine concentrates. “And I said … yeah, I mean yes.” That too is a truthful answer, for that is what she told the police. She’s not lying to her father.
He waits.
“And I said he didn’t go with Claire ’cause I saw him and Elizabeth and Rex turn left.”
He looks different. As though he’s not looking at his old buddy—yet neither is it as though he’s looking at his little girl who has been naughty. She doesn’t recognize this look, so for a moment she doesn’t recognize herself. Who is he looking at?
Words have formed in Madeleine’s head, they are floating down toward her mouth, but that was a lie ’cause I didn’t see which way Ricky went. She opens her mouth to release them, but they are jolted back by the thunk of Dad’s hand on her head. He ruffles her hair, the weight of his hand wobbling her head on her neck.
“You know what, old buddy?” he says.
“What?” She stares at his belt buckle, the fly in amber.
“You never have to answer a grown-up’s question unless you’re in the classroom and the teacher is asking you the capital of Borneo or something.”
She looks up. He grins. She mirrors him.
“Pilot to copilot,” he says, “do you read me?”
“Roger.”
“Good stuff. Come on, let’s hop in the car and go for a spin.”
He doesn’t comment when she takes Mike’s windbreaker from the halltree and puts it on. The one with the plaid lining that matches his.
“When you go to school tomorrow, don’t mention to anyone that your dad called up the teacher and dressed him down. He’s had his punishment.”