Dear Mrs McCarthy,
My one regret, in all my years of friendship with Jack, is that I never had the opportunity to meet you. Jack did, however, tell me enough about you to allow me to conclude that he was indeed a very lucky man. I cannot begin to comprehend your loss, so I will say only that I am so very sorry, and hope that you will accept this small expression of what was, and always will be, my great regard for your husband. Jack was a fine man. The finest.
I read of his passing in your national newspaper to which I subscribe via the post (retired as I am, I’m afraid I mount up more than my share of newspapers. Some would say The Times of India is rather pushing it, but I have—or rather, had—friends in so many parts of the world that the obit. sections of the international press have become my way of keeping up).
This may seem an odd invitation coming from someone you’ve never met, but I extend it with all my heart: should you ever find yourself in England, please look me up. I live in one of the few remaining unspoiled corners of what used to be the English countryside, and there is not a bird nor plant with whom (I refuse to say “with which”) I am not acquainted. It would be my very great pleasure to “show you about”. As the years advance, one finds that old friends are the best friends, and I can’t help but think of you as a friend, valuing as I did so highly the friendship of your husband.
Please give my regards to the “Deutsches Mädchen”. I catch glimpses of her brilliant career from time to time, thanks to a dreadful satellite dish that I’ve done my best to conceal at the back of my cottage.
Yours very truly,
Simon Crawford
There was a return address in Shropshire. Madeleine hesitated, then tore it up.
Out the corner of her eye she sees the parish priest threading his way toward her across the room and she makes for the nearest exit. She is longing for a drink. If only Mike were here with his flask—and then, all of a sudden, he is. The photograph stops her in her tracks. She has never seen it before. It sits on its own in a frame on one of the many occasional tables that are otherwise covered with flowers and cards: Mike in uniform. USMC. Brush cut bristling beneath his hat. Dewy lips, full face, soft eyes. Lying in front of the frame, a single red rose. She reaches for more tissues, from one of several boxes strategically located throughout the room, as if it were one big therapy office.
She blows her nose, then looks up at the sound of her name. A plump but fit-looking woman with curly hair and freckles is standing in front of her. Some people don’t change.
“Auriel?”
They hug as fiercely as ten-year-olds. Auriel’s mother called her from Vancouver. “I’m so sorry, Madeleine. Your dad was always so nice.”
“He died watching All in the Family,” says Madeleine. “At least he died laughing.”
Auriel releases her, blows her nose and smiles. She looks the same only proportionately larger. Eyes still merry but steady now, perhaps she is a nurse, thinks Madeleine. Auriel’s is the kind of face you’d hope to see if you were hooked up to an IV. She’s wearing a pastel blazer over a print dress with a chiffon scarf. She looks like what she is: a suburban middle-class working mother. Backbone of the nation.
“You look fantastic,” says Madeleine intensely.
Auriel replies, equally intense, “You’re so cute on television I can’t stand it,” and they laugh and grip one another’s hands.
Auriel has three kids, and a husband called Dave. They have just been posted to headquarters in Ottawa—he works for Corrections Canada. “He’s a prison warden.”
“Whoa.”
“It’s mostly social work.”
Auriel has lived a life similar in its uprootings, its esprit de corps—and its marginality, according to mainstream society—to the one she and Madeleine knew as children.
“Auriel?” says Mimi, joining them. “C’est pas possible!” They hug.
“Hi Mrs. McCarthy.” Then, tempering her big instinctive smile, “I’m so sorry about Mr. McCarthy.”
“Thank you so much, chérie.” Mimi goes to move off but her eye is caught by a floral arrangement. “Elles sont très belles, who sent these?”
Yellow roses.
Madeleine leans in, reads the card and blinks. “They’re from Christine.”
“Ah.”
Madeleine says quickly, “I don’t know how she found out, I didn’t tell her.”
“I did,” says her mother, then turns on her spike heel and crosses the room to greet new arrivals. Madeleine is speechless.
“She looks great,” says Auriel.
“It’s the nicotine, it acts as a preservative.”
Auriel looks at her for a moment before asking, “How are you, Madeleine?” Maybe she is a nurse.
“I think I may be having a nervous breakdown, but only because I can afford one.”
“Really?”
“Naw, I’m just a bit burnt out.”
“Are you with”—she glances at the roses—“Christine?”
Madeleine sighs. “No, we … parted like two mature adults. It was ugly.”
“I was sorry to hear about your brother.”
“Thanks. I don’t want to be rude, but can we talk about you instead?”
Auriel was a nurse—“I knew it!” says Madeleine—at the National Defence Medical Centre in Ottawa when she met her husband. Military personnel and, at times, prison inmates from across the country were treated there. Dave was visiting a member of his prison population from Collins Bay Penitentiary, Kingston.
“Ricky Froelich was at Collins Bay,” says Madeleine. The two women fall silent at the mention of a name embedded so deeply in their past.
Small world, thinks Madeleine, and the next instant regrets it because that old saccharine song enters her head and she knows it won’t be banished in a hurry. Mr. March and his baton—It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears….
Auriel shakes her head. “That was before Dave’s time, of course. But he knew the warden.”
Madeleine holds Auriel’s gaze a moment, then asks, “Do you ever wonder who did it?”
“Can I tell you the truth, Madeleine? I don’t wonder any more, I just pray for them all.”
“Do you pray for Marjorie and Grace?”
Auriel’s forehead creases. “Why?”
Tears have filled Madeleine’s eyes at her mention of the two girls, as if they are the ones she is mourning today. She shrugs. “I just wonder sometimes, you know? … Whatever happened to those two?”
Auriel is looking at her so sympathetically that Madeleine is tempted to tell her everything. She has fought so hard to find and reassemble the many pieces of the story, to make it and herself whole again. And now she must carry it, the information lodged in her like an unexploded bomb, a live shell left over from the war. I waved. Auriel is looking at her. Auriel is the closest thing to a real sister she’s ever had. Tell.
But her mouth won’t move. She has the old familiar sense of looking out from a dark closet, but this time she recognizes it as tunnel vision. Precursor to migraine or, in Madeleine’s case, panic attack. She looks away from Auriel, and focuses on her father’s hat.
“Margarine,” says Auriel, but she says it sadly.
Madeleine smiles. “Poor old Margarine.”
“They moved when we did.”
“The Nolans? Where, do you know?” She is aware of trying not to sound too interested.
“Out west, I think. Winnipeg.”
“Oh yeah?”
“No—nearby, you know there used to be an air force station, what’s the name of that little place? Sounds like a pickle.”
“Gimli.”
“That’s it.”
“That doesn’t sound like a pickle,” says Madeleine.
“Then how did you know?” Auriel laughs. “I saw her name on a list at a nursing convention about five years ago. But she didn’t show up. She’s a geriatric nurse.”
“Oh.” Madeleine shudders.
Auriel gives her a pained smile.
“Yeah.”
She doesn’t know what became of Grace. They stand silent for a moment, then Auriel says, “I hope he’s been able to have some kind of life.”
“Who?”
“Ricky. He lives with his sister now. What was her name?”
“… Colleen.” Don’t tell me where they live.
“She was scary.”
“Remember Elizabeth?” asks Madeleine.
“Oh yeah. What a great family, really, eh? So sad. I don’t think anyone really believed he did it.”
With no warning, tears run down Madeleine’s face.
“Oh Madeleine, I’m so sorry about your dad.” Auriel hugs her again.
Madeleine sniffs. “Actually, I was thinking about Rex.” She is wiping her eyes, feeling better—out of the woods somehow—when she hears Auriel say, “They changed their name.” And she knows the thing she wanted very much not to know. Their name. How to find them.
The night after the funeral, Madeleine lies dry-eyed and sleepless with grief, on the pull-out bed in her parents’ rec room. Surrounded by bookshelves, trophies—public speaking for her, sports for Mike—and framed photos of smiling squadrons of men in uniform. Such young men. She never realized that before. Today at the church she was unable to read the speech she had written. She had composed a eulogy of remember-whens—things that remain unchanged by what her father told her. She wrote it for her mother. She got out the first few words, “My father was a good man.” And was destroyed. She pulled herself together, set aside the speech and managed to get through his favourite poem, “High Flight.”
After the funeral Mass, the graveside. Madeleine’s arm is still tender to the touch where Mimi gripped it as they lowered the casket. Gleaming mahogany. Rectangular excavation. Astroturf. Nothing to do with Jack.
Now, despite the soothing snores from Winnie, wedged beneath the covers, and the resonant purring of old Tante Yvonne in the guest room next door, the house feels too quiet. This is the true wake; the silence in the wake of departing mourners. An end to bright voices, the buoyancy of company keeping Jack afloat—he could walk in at any moment, it’s his party after all.
Madeleine can hear her mother upstairs in the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher. She looks at the digital clock. Just after three A.M. The rattle of the dishes gives way to silence. She gets out of bed and creeps upstairs.
“Tu dors pas?” Mimi is flipping through a Chatelaine magazine—“HOW TO TAKE THE MISERY OUT OF MOVING” “15-MINUTE WORKDAY DINNERS.” She is in her pale pink quilted housecoat and slippers. Madeleine is in boxers and an old T-shirt with “Joe’s Collision” printed on it.
Mimi puts the kettle on and brings out the Scrabble game. They each reach in and pull seven letters from the blue flannel Crown Royal bag. Madeleine looks down at her tray and sees, scrambled but unmistakeable, seven letters for a bonus fifty points: LESBIAN. She sighs and puts down NAIL.
“Tsk-tsk, Madeleine, you can do better than that.”
Something is different tonight—beyond the immeasurable absence of her father. Something one doesn’t notice until it ceases—like the sound of a refrigerator. Madeleine watches her mother’s long tapered nails place two letters in the interstices of three words. “AI? What the heck is AI?”
“A three-toed sloth.” For twenty-seven points. They always play in English—a way of handicapping Mimi so as to create a more level playing field between her and her daughter.
“Maman, you don’t open up the board when you make mingy little words like that.”
“No, but I win.”
Mimi is eating day-old burnt toast—that Depression delicacy—and Madeleine has a cup of Campbell’s tomato soup with saltines. À chacun son snack.
“Have you got the Q?”
“Yeah,” sighs Madeleine, looking down at her tray: QUEER.
Mimi drapes POUTINE across the board. “Voilà, a nice long word for you.”
Face value plus fifty bonus points for using all seven letters. Madeleine watches her mother totting up the points. “You’re cheating, that’s a French word.”
“Poutine is universal language, look at the fast-food menus, it’s right next to wings.”
Madeleine lays down QUEER for a triple word score.
Her mother doesn’t bat an eye, merely says, “That’s more like,” and counts, tapping each tile with a long buffed nail. “Forty-two points.”
“Maman, you’re not smoking.” That’s what’s different about tonight.
“I quit.”
“When?”
“Today.” They play.
“XI?”
“It’s an ancient Chinese coin.”
They switch to speaking French at some point. At least, Mimi does; Madeleine limps along half and half. But she understands every word. A rough translation: “For years after we lost your brother I used to pray that I might receive a letter one day from a Vietnamese girl. I imagined that she would say, ‘I have his child. Your grandchild. May I come see you?’ And she would move here with her child—a little boy—and we would all live together. She would be my daughter-in-law. Very pretty. Long dark hair, sweet-natured. She would speak French of course, and we would become the best of friends. Her child would grow up with her and your father and me, and … we’d all live happily ever after. And then—I don’t know, maybe only last year—after your papa had his heart attack”—here Mimi pauses to wipe her eyes and Madeleine hands her a box of tissues—“I realized that this young woman I was making up … this sweet girl with the long dark hair, she was my daughter. And that”—Mimi sucks in a breath through her mouth, unlipsticked at this hour—“I already have … a beautiful daughter.”
Mimi holds the tissue to her eyes. Madeleine reaches across the Scrabble board and takes her mother’s hand.
When she was set to return to Toronto the following week, Madeleine put her bag into the trunk in the front of her VW, closed the lid and called Winnie, who was leaning against Mimi’s legs in the doorway of the condo.
Mimi reached down and stroked the helmet-head. “Madeleine, do you mind if I hang onto her for a little while?”
“… You want to keep her?”
Mimi began to rev up: “I’m a woman alone, a dog is good protection—”
“Maman, it’s fine. But you have to give her back when Olivia comes home.”
“Olivia? Oh yes, your Spanish friend.”
“Not really, she’s just in Latin America at the moment.”
“Oh”—baby-talking to the dog—“then she won’t mind, will she? Will she, hein? Will she, will she. Ça ne dérange personne, non? Non, non, non, non—”
“Maman?”
Mimi looked up again.
“I’ll call you when I get home.”
Madeleine pulled away, a cooler in the back seat filled with enough food to feed an Acadian family for a week.
HIGH FLIGHT
WHEN JACK DIED, a large white bird rose and departed through the ceiling of the fully serviced condo in the suburbs of Ottawa. Camouflaged by cottony clouds, it caught a warm updraft and soared higher and higher. Wingspan of an eagle, ocean ease of a gull, white bird of great good fortune, it ascended….
… slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
“Look at that,” said Jack, pointing up. It was before he and Mimi moved into the condo. It was after they found out Mike was missing. It was before hope began to wane. Madeleine was surging with the dark joy of imminent blast-off into the world far from this suburb.
“It’s a glider,” said Jack.
A white airplane. Silent. Slow. Wings long
and tapered, clean and unencumbered by engines. It banked and looped unhurriedly.
“Now, that’s flying.”
He licked his ice cream—rum ’n’ raisin. Madeleine, hers. Neopolitan—best of all worlds.
“Want a lick?”
“Thanks Dad, that’s really good.”
They watched as the craft arced upward, decelerating, offering its smooth breast to the sky before swooning back into the arms of gravity, as trusting, as brave as an animal or a child.
“You know, old buddy, you can be anything you want to be.”
And when Dad said it, she knew it was true.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
PRÊTE-MOI TA PLUME, POUR ÉCRIRE UN MOT
But the dark pines of your mind dip deeper
And you are sinking, sinking, sleeper
In an elementary world;
There is something down there and you want it told.
“Dark Pines Under Water,” Gwendolyn MacEwen
EVERYONE KNEW THAT Ricky had changed his name, but Madeleine would have remained comfortably ignorant of his new one had Auriel not said they. In that instant it arrived unbidden in Madeleine’s mind. Colleen and Ricky’s original name. How many Pellegrims could there be in Canada?