Way the Crow Flies (107 page)

“Was that good?”

The dog tilts her massive head attentively, ears cocked, forehead wrinkled, panting.

“You’re part alligator, aren’t you, Winnie”—scratching her behind the ears, feeling the steel-belted wall of muscle beneath the neck fur—“Aren’t you an alligator, aren’t you!”

They play tug-of-war with the one remaining towel from the bathroom, Winnie growling in a lubricious and gratifying show of viciousness. Madeleine chases her all through the empty apartment, Winnie wiping out on the hardwood, biting air with her high-pitched play-bark, leaping back in delighted fright when Madeleine springs from a cupboard, from around a corner, snarling, “I’m gonna get you, oh you better run! Run run run run!” Until they are exhausted. Now that’s therapy.

Winnie makes a beeline for the carpet and flops down the way dogs do, abandoning themselves to gravity as though they’ve been shot. She knocks over the wineglass, which breaks against the blinking answering machine. Madeleine shoos her from the broken glass, cleans up and, as an afterthought, rewinds and begins to play the messages. Nine from Shelly, five from Olivia, several from Tony. Rising urgency, common theme: Where are you? Where the hell are you? Are you okay?

Today is Thursday.

Holy shit, Batman!

The enormity of realizing that she has missed an After-Three Thursday is almost exhilarating. Like a shot of B vitamins. She will make it up to everyone. They will have scrambled and written her out of the Friday night taping, but she will scramble and squeeze back in, bursting already with generosity, ready to charge in with a bagful of one-liners to shower on her colleagues.

“This is bad,” she says to the dog, “really bad.” Winnie tilts her head. “Not you, you’re good, me bad, bad Madeleine.” She puts her hand on the phone. Make the hardest call first. Shelly. “Thufferin’ thuckotash,” she says to Winnie, lifting the phone to her ear, about to dial—but the line is dead. Not dead, someone is there—

“Hello? Hello, Olivia?”

“Oui, allô?”

“Oh hi Maman, it didn’t even ring.” She laughs, “We’re psychically linked.” If she didn’t know better, she’d swear she had forgiven her mother for yesterday—why am I so happy all of a sudden?
Your guilty secret. You’re a happy person
. “Maman?”

On the other end of the line, a pause to rival one of her dad’s. Then Maman says, “Your papa is gone,” and her voice breaks.

Madeleine’s lips part. She leans forward slowly and drops her forehead to her knee. So this is the thing, when it finally comes. She cradles the receiver against her shoulder while her mother weeps.

Your papa. Your papa…
.

W
HEN A PARENT DIES,
a planet disappears, and the night sky will never look the same again. It doesn’t matter how grown up we are when we lose one. And when both are gone it’s as though we are permanently without a kind of roof—invisible shield, first line of defence between ourselves and mortality, gone.

Madeleine’s relief at seeing her mother was a shock to herself. She craved to be scolded for her choice of wardrobe, to be informed with asperity that she was too thin, but Mimi was coming undone. Not in the presence of friends, the priest, the relatives who had begun to arrive. Only with Madeleine. For so many reasons—because Madeleine is part of Jack, part of her son, part of her, because
“tu es ma fille
,” no matter what, and only a daughter can know. Long raking sobs, makeup-ruining grief. The sight of tears trickling through her mother’s fingers, running down her hands—well preserved but older now, the polish a little starker—was the worst for Madeleine. But something surprising was happening. She had always feared she
would go to pieces when her father died, but she was discovering an unsuspected reserve of emotional endurance. It felt involuntary, as though she had been born equipped with it, like the impulse to suckle, to walk, to run—standard mammalian features. The ability to remain supple while her mother held onto her and wept; to remain patient while being told how to boil water; to know when to run her a hot bath; to be able to say, “What about his clothes?” This while a tap within her gushed, profligate sorrow—how is it possible that this strength and this grief can go together?
My dad is gone
. “Have you chosen the flowers, Maman?” His empty chair, the newspapers in the blue boxes at the foot of the driveway. “You choose, Madeleine.” His TV remote, his shoes, wrinkled across the instep, his slippers, his name on the stack of mail on the hall table.
Where is my dad?
She chooses daisies.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?”
said Mimi when Madeleine returned to her car for her suitcase and the dog.

“C’est une chienne.”
Madeleine scrambled to catch the leash as Winnie bolted toward the front door.

“It’s not yours,” said Mimi.

“A friend’s.”

“It’s not coming in the house?”

“Where do you expect her to sleep?”

“Sleep?”

Mimi adhered to a Depression-era view of dogs, according to which, unless they were earning their keep, they were classed as a form of vermin and, in any case, belonged outdoors. Within seconds she was upending dining chairs onto the couch, the La-Z-Boy—
“Aide-moi, Madeleine”
—in an effort to keep the filthy animal off the upholstery.

“She’s not filthy, I gave her a bath.”

“She’s a dog,” said Mimi, barricading the loveseat. “There. Now she can come in the living room.”

Madeleine turned and called, “Winnie.” Then—zero-to-sixty alarm—“Maman, you left the door to the garage open!” She was halfway out the front door when a shriek drew her back inside to the master bedroom, where Mimi stood frozen in the doorway. Winnie was asleep on her back and snoring in the middle of the white duvet.

“Get it off, Madeleine!”

Winnie rolled over and growled when Madeleine said, “Off, Winnie. Off. Off. Get off, now, there’s a good girl. Off.”

Lip curled. Wet snarl.

Madeleine stepped back.

Mimi put her hands on her hips, raised an eyebrow, and ordered,
“Bouge-toi!”

Winnie hopped from the bed and stood gazing up at Mimi, tail wagging, big fleshy grin.

Madeleine sent her mother out to walk the dog.

“I’m not walking that thing.”

“It’s not a thing, Maman, it’s a sentient creature and it likes you.”

Mimi glared at the dog. “Well I don’t like it.
Regarde moi pas, toi.”

She heard the door close and got busy, working quickly, packing up as many of her father’s clothes as possible for the St. Vincent de Paul so her mother would not have to do it. She had emptied his hanger rail and was working her way along the closet shelf when she was momentarily defeated by an old V-neck sweater. She stood, face buried in the moth-eaten wool, and breathed in his scent. When she came across his uniform in an old square garment bag, she placed one empty sleeve against her cheek and closed her eyes—the smell of mothballs and wool, its masculine scratchiness like a five o’clock shadow. She allowed her fingers to run down the jacket front, brass buttons embossed with wings.

She lost track of time, folding, sorting, crying, until finally she heard the door—rattle of the leash, clickety-click of Winnie’s nails on the hardwood, clickety-click of her mother’s high heels. Heard Mimi scolding,
“Non
. Go ’way,
va-t’en
, I don’t want kisses from
les chiens.”

When Madeleine emerged from the bedroom, she caught her mother giving the dog a piece of barbecued chicken.

“Not the bones, Maman.”

“I wasn’t giving it—I was—it’s gone bad anyway.”

“Don’t give her rotten meat.”

“It’s fresh today!”

Madeleine’s reflex impatience melted into something familiar, but not in the context of her mother. It was … amusement. She smiled.

The table was set meticulously for one. For Madeleine. She sat down to a chicken sandwich and asked, “What are you going to do with Dad’s uniform?”

“It would have been your brother’s,” said Mimi and turned away.

Madeleine dropped the subject and picked up the newspaper.

Big Tante Yvonne flew in from New Brunswick with tiny ancient Tante Domithilde, the nun of the family. Together there was enough of them to fill two airplane seats comfortably, with the armrest up. Still, Tante Yvonne arrived with her back in spasm, a martyr to sciatica and her feet
“totalement
kaput.” She brought a dozen lobsters on dry ice and a shopping bag full of knitted Phentex slippers in various stages of completion. Tante Domithilde started baking immediately. Mimi’s brothers drove up with their wives in a convoy of Cadillacs and Continentals. Everyone but the aunts stayed at the Econo Lodge up the street, in a feat of logistics that had Madeleine on the phone for hours.

Tante Yvonne said, “What’s that thing doing in the house?”

Mimi answered, “Her name is Winnie.”

Jocelyn arrived with her husband and two kids—“We love your show, Madeleine.” Shelly, Tony, Janice, Tommy and Ilsa made the trip from Toronto. They embraced Mimi and stayed up all night in the kitchen, talking and eating with the relatives; learning from the uncles on the first night how to play Deux-Cents, learning on the second night how to cheat. Yvonne had brought her accordion and ordered Madeleine to play while she sang in honour of “’ti-Jack”
Swing la bottine!
Shelly watched it all keenly, Madeleine could see the wheels turning.

“Don’t you ever stop working?” she snapped, refilling Shelly’s teacup, spiking it with rum.

“I got the money, hon, the network is in.”

A U.S. network commitment to
Stark Raving Madeleine
, the pilot.

“Really?” said Madeleine. “Who’re you going to get to write it?”

“How come you never told me you were half French?”

“Not French, Acadian.”

“Tell me about it.”

“C’est assez.”

Nina sent a card and flowers; Madeleine had cancelled her therapy appointment, and said why in a brutally curt message on Nina’s answering machine. Olivia called; she had deduced via mental telepathy that something was wrong, and tracked down the phone number in Ottawa when she couldn’t find Madeleine in Toronto. She introduced herself to Mimi over the phone and they chatted for twenty minutes in French before Olivia mentioned that she was calling from Managua. Mimi gasped—not at the thought of political peril, but at the long-distance rates—
“Madeleine, viens au téléphone, vite vite!”

Tommy handed Mimi a letter from his parents—the McCarthys and the Czerniatewiczes had never met in person. “Oh how kind,” said Mimi, opening it. “‘May God comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. In sincere sympathy, Stan and Lydia.’”

Tommy was appalled and blamed Madeleine. Mimi told him he hadn’t changed, “You’re still saucy,” and pinched his ear.

Company is what wakes and funerals are about, especially if the loved one has died “naturally” and was, at the very least, an adult. Noise, love, food, the clatter of cups and saucers—a seawall, notched with perforations to let manageable amounts of grief through at a time. For three days the condo was Grand Central Station. Madeleine took refuge in manning the rented coffee urn, and passing plates of squares to the endless stream of relatives, friends, neighbours and co-workers.

Fran: “We follow your brilliant career, dear.”

Doris: “When are you moving to the States?”

Phyllis: “Don’t be in a hurry to get married.”

Doris: “Phyllis, she’s gay.”

Tante Yvonne: “You’re not still, tsk-tsk-tsk.”

Grizzled Tante Domithilde: “Don’t let the bastards get you down,
ma p’tite.”

Fran: “In our day we weren’t allowed to be gay, dear, no one had a lifestyle then. You just keep doing what you’re doing, you’re grand.”

Hugs and more hugs, fat-lady kisses like fresh-baked buns. The lesbian from Mimi’s office showed up with her “partner”—Madeleine will never get used to that word—“We love your show.”
The priest, the mailman, the lady from Mimi’s bank, the entire Catholic Women’s League and half of Ottawa paid their respects, thank goodness it was June and people could flow in and out through the patio doors. Nice men in light summer suits smelling of clean cotton, cigars and manly hair product. Firm warm handshakes. Old bomber pilots and retired management executives. Jack would have loved every minute of it.

It’s the second evening in visitation room B of the Hartley and Finch Funeral Home. Flowers from the Ridelles, the Bouchers, the Woodleys and others from postings past. Even Hans and Brigitte have sent a card from Germany—Madeleine’s old babysitter, Gabrielle, has five children now. Madeleine is avoiding the half-open casket resting at one end of the crowded but hushed room between two sprays of daisies; the flowers could not contrast more vividly with the morose Muzak piped at an annoyingly subliminal level—murky interfaith organ-noodling. Who authorized that? She is thinking of tracking down one of the sombre men who no longer call themselves undertakers, and telling him to play the Stones or something instead. This music, the waxy makeup on her father’s face, his hands folded as though in prayer—who do these people think he was? None of it has anything to do with him. Except his blue air force hat resting on the lower, closed half of the casket. Like a fig leaf, she thinks. Then realizes that, despite her grief, she is still wadded in shock.

She turns away and finds herself facing the photo wall—arranged around a framed picture of Jack as a pilot officer cadet in training. Impossibly young in his uniform and wedge cap, left eye bright, unscathed. She and Mimi spent a day arranging reproductions on a large sheet of bristol board, displayed now on an easel. Wedding photo, a shot of the whole family on a picnic in the Black Forest…. They had several slides made into prints. The four of them at the Eiffel Tower, she and Mike in the waves of the Riviera …
that was the day you got lost, remember?
As she gazes at the photos, she can hear the hum of the slide projector in the dark.
So many remember-whens
. There is the picture of herself and Jack standing in front of the statue of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. A shadow spills across her
father’s trouser leg and the skirt of her dress—the silhouette of head and raised elbows. Uncle Simon. Mimi selected that one, and Madeleine wondered if she remembered who had taken it. Yesterday she was cleaning up between onslaughts of company and found a card in the garbage. She fished it out, figuring her mother had tossed it away by accident. On the cover was an old-fashioned pastel scene of an English country garden—quaint cottage spilling over with rosebushes. Inside, in a neat, efficient hand: