Way the Crow Flies (2 page)

Through the car window, she pictures tall black letters superimposed on a background of speeding green—“Starring Madeleine McCarthy”—punctuated frame by frame by telephone poles,
Moon River, and me…
.

It is difficult to get past the opening credits so better simply to start a new movie. Pick a song to go with it. Madeleine sings, sotto voce, “
‘Que será, será
, whatever will be will—’” darn, we’re stopping.

“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream,” says her father, pulling over.

Utterly wrapped up in her movie, Madeleine has failed to notice the big strawberry ice cream cone tilting toward the highway, festive in its party hat. “Yay!” she exclaims. Her brother rolls his eyes at her.

Everything in Canada is so much bigger than it was in Germany, the cones, the cars, the “supermarkets.” She wonders what their new house will be like. And her new room—will it be pretty? Will it be big?
Que será, será…
.

“Name your poison,” says Dad at the ice cream counter, a white wooden shack. They sell fresh corn on the cob here too. The fields are full of it—the kind Europeans call Indian corn.

“Neapolitan, please,” says Madeleine.

Her father runs a hand through his sandy crewcut and smiles through his sunglasses at the fat lady in the shade behind the counter. He and her brother have matching haircuts, although Mike’s hair is even lighter. Wheat-coloured. It looks as though you could remove waxy buildup from your kitchen floor by turning him upside down and plugging him in, but his bristles are actually quite soft. He rarely allows Madeleine to touch them, however. He has strolled away now toward the highway, thumbs hooked in his belt loops—pretending he is out in the world on his own, Madeleine knows. He must be boiling in those dungarees but he won’t admit it, and he won’t wear shorts. Dad never wears shorts.

“Mike, where do you think you’re going?” she calls.

He ignores her. He is going on twelve.

She runs a hand through her hair the way Dad does, loving its silky shortness. A pixie cut is a far cry from a crewcut, but it’s also mercifully far from the waist-length braids she endured until this spring. She accidentally cut one off during crafts in school. Maman still loves her but will probably never forgive her.

Her mother waits in the Rambler. She wears the sunglasses she got on the French Riviera last summer. She looks like a movie star. Madeleine watches her adjust the rearview mirror and freshen her lipstick. Black hair, red lips, white sunglasses. Like Jackie Kennedy—“She copied me.” Mike calls her Maman, but for Madeleine she is “Maman” at home and “Mum” in public. “Mum” is more carefree than Maman—like penny loafers instead of Mary Janes. “Mum” goes better with “Dad.” Things go better with Coke.

Her father waits with his hands in the pockets of his chinos, removes his sunglasses and squints up at the blue sky, whistling a tune through his teeth. “Smell the corn,” he says. “That’s the smell of pure sunshine.” Madeleine puts her hands in the pockets of her short-shorts, squints up and inhales.

In the car, her mother blots her lips together, eyes on the mirror. Madeleine watches her retract the lipstick into its tube. Ladies have a lot of things which look like candy but are not.

Her mother has saved her braids. They are in a plastic bag in the silverware chest. Madeleine saw her toss the bag in there just before the movers came. Now her hair is somewhere on a moving van, rumbling toward them.

“Here you go, old buddy.”

Her father hands her an ice cream cone. Mike rejoins them and takes his. He has chosen chocolate as usual. “‘I’d rather fight than switch.’”

Her father has rum ’n’ raisin. Does something happen to your tastebuds when you grow up so that you like horrible flavours? Or is it particular to parents who grew up during the Depression, when an apple was a treat?

“Want a taste, sweetie?”

“Thanks, Dad.”

She always takes a lick of his ice cream and says, “That’s really good.” Bugs Bunny would say,
You lie like a rug, doc
, but in a way it
isn’t a lie because it really is good to get ice cream with your dad. And when each of you takes a taste of the other’s, it’s great. So Madeleine is not really lying.
Nyah, tell me anuddah one, doc
.

Maman never wants a cone of her own. She will share Dad’s and take bites of Mike’s and Madeleine’s. That’s another thing that happens when you grow up; at least, it happens to a great number of mothers: they no longer choose to have an ice cream cone of their own.

Back in the car, Madeleine considers offering a lick to Bugs Bunny but doesn’t wish to tempt her brother’s scorn. Bugs is not a doll. He is … Bugs. He has seen better days, the tip of his orange carrot is worn white, but his big wise-guy eyes are still bright blue and his long ears still hold whatever position you bend them into. At the moment, his ears are twisted together like a braid down his back. Bavarian Bugs.

Her father starts the engine and tilts his cone toward her mother, who bites it, careful of her lipstick. He backs the station wagon toward the highway and makes a face when he sees that his rearview mirror is out of whack. He gives Maman a look and she makes a kiss with her red lips. He grins and shakes his head. Madeleine looks away, hoping they won’t get mushy.

She contemplates her ice cream cone. Neapolitan. Where to begin? She thinks of it as “cosmopolitan”—the word her father uses to describe their family. The best of all worlds.

Outside the car windows the corn catches the sun, leafy stalks gleam in three greens. Arching oaks and elms line the curving highway, the land rolls and burgeons in a way that makes you believe that, yes, the earth is a woman, and her favourite food is corn. Tall and flexed and straining, emerald citizens. Fronds spiralling, cupping upward, swaddling the tender ears, the gift-wrapped bounty. The edible sun. The McCarthys have come home. To Canada.

When you live in the air force, home is a variation on a theme. Home is Canada, from sea to sea. Home is also the particular town you came from before you got married and joined the forces. And home is whatever place you happen to be posted, whether it’s Canada, the U.S., Germany, France…. Right now, home is this sky blue 1962 Rambler station wagon.

Having adjusted his rearview mirror, Jack glances at his kids in the back seat. Peace reigns for now. Next to him, his wife opens her purse—he reaches forward and pushes in the automatic lighter on the dashboard. She glances at him, small smile as she takes the cigarette from her pack. He winks at her—
your wish is my command
. Home is this woman.

The Trans-Canada Highway has been finished: you can dip your rear wheels in the Atlantic and drive until you dip your front ones in the Pacific. The McCarthys are not going that far, although they did start this leg of their journey at the Atlantic. They have been driving for three days. Taking it easy, watching the scenery change, fir trees give way to the St. Lawrence Seaway, the narrow cultivated strips of old Québec all along the broad river, the blue shimmer of the worn Laurentian Mountains, the jet-smooth ride of the modern highway,
Bienvenue à Montréal, Welcome to Ottawa, to Kingston, to Toronto
, extending the summer holiday they spent with Mimi’s family in New Brunswick—
Nouveau-Brunswick
—salt swimming among the sandbars of the Northumberland Strait, and at night the winking lights of the ferry to Prince Edward Island. They rose early to watch the priest bless the multicoloured fishing boats on opening day,
le premier jour de pêche
. Lobster feasts and noisy card games of Deux-Cents late into the night, neighbours arriving to squeeze in at the kitchen table, placing their bets with mounds of pennies and Rummoli chips, until the fiddles and accordion came out and Mimi’s mother thumped out chords on the piano, her treble hand permanently bent into the shape of the hook she had used to make every quilt and rug in the house.
L’Acadie
.

Language was no barrier. Jack basked in the French, in the food, in the celestial confusion of a big family. Mimi’s father had been lost years before, in a storm that capsized his lobster boat, and her brothers headed the family now. Big self-made men with a chain of seafood restaurants, who took to Jack from the start, when he and Mimi returned home after the war, engaged. Things happened fast back then, everyone understood, the brothers were barely out of uniform themselves. Jack was an
Anglais
, but he was theirs and her family embraced him with a fervour equal to that which fuelled their mistrust of the English in general. They accorded him the
status of a prince and extended him the consideration usually reserved for ladies. The best of both worlds.

Jack eats his ice cream, one hand on the wheel, and makes a mental note to start jogging again once they get settled in. Over the past month his sisters-in-law,
les belles-soeurs
, have fed him like a prize calf. Flour, maple sugar, potato, pork and clams—the possible permutations are dizzying, delicious. And fattening. It seems there is nothing that cannot be transformed into
poutine
. What is
poutine?
It is what you make when you make
poutine
.

He has only had to loosen his belt by one notch, but Jack has a beautiful wife. One who still runs into the water like a girl, bikini-svelte despite two children, breaststroking through the waves, keeping her head up so as not to spoil her “do.” Yes, he’ll start running again once they get to their new home.

Behind him, his son’s voice, disgusted. “Madeleine, it’s melting right down your arm.”

“No it’s not.”

“Maman,” says Mike, leaning forward,
“Madeleine fait un mess!”

“I am not making a mess!” Licking her wrist, salty skin and murky vanilla.

Mimi reaches back with a wet-nap.
“Tiens.”

Madeleine takes it and wipes her hand. She tries to get Mike to hold her ice cream cone but he says, “No way, it’s all gobbed.” So Mimi holds it and, while Madeleine wipes her hands, she licks the ice cream drips. It is also a characteristic of mothers that they don’t mind eating their child’s soggy ice cream cone.

Madeleine returns the wet-nap in exchange for her ice cream but feels suddenly unwell. It’s the wet-nap smell. Pre-moistened for your convenience. Disinfects too. The smell reminds Madeleine of throw-up. That’s because, when you get carsick and throw up, your mother wipes your face with a wet-nap, so of course wet-naps come to stand for throw-up. They smell more like throw-up than throw-up. She passes the ice cream back to her mother.

“I’m full,” she says.

Mike says, “She’s gonna barf.”

“I am not, Mike, don’t say ‘barf.’”

“You just said it. Barf.”

“That’s enough, Mike,” says Jack, and Mike stops.

Mimi turns and looks back at Madeleine with the are-you-going-to-throw-up? expression. It makes her have to throw up. Her eyes water. She puts her face to the open window and drinks in the fresh air. Wills herself not to think of anything sickening. Like the time a girl threw up in kindergarten and it hit the floor with a
splash
, don’t think about that. Mike has retreated as far as possible to his side of the seat. Madeleine turns carefully and focuses on the back of Dad’s head. That’s better.

As seen from the back seat of the car, it is as recognizable, as much “him,” as his face. As unmistakeable as your own car in a parking lot. His head, squarish, clean. It says what it means, you don’t have to figure it out. His shoulders under his checked short-sleeved shirt. Elbow out the window, halo of light brown hairs combed by the wind, right hand on the wheel, glint of his university ring. Old Spice. Across the back of his neck, one faint line—a seam that stays paler than his sunburn. The back of Dad’s head. It’s the other side of his face—his other face. In fact, he has told you he has eyes back there. This is reassuring. It means he knows who starts most of the fights in the back seat.

“Mike, quit it!” cries Madeleine.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Mike, don’t tease your sister.”

“Dad, I’m not teasing her, she pinched me.”

“Madeleine, don’t torment your brother.” Maman does not have eyes in the back of her head or she wouldn’t say such a thing.

Mike crosses his eyes at her.

“Mike!” Her eight-year-old shriek like a handsaw. “Stop it!”

“Tenez-vous tranquilles maintenant, hein?
Your father’s driving,” says Maman.

Madeleine has seen the muscles in her father’s neck contract at her screech, and she softens. She doesn’t want to make him have to pull over and face the back seat. That means a spoiled treat, and a good dose of shame for having ruined such a nice drive through such lovely scenery. His voice will be disappointed, his blue eyes bewildered. Especially his left one with the light scar that traverses his brow. The lid droops slightly, so that his left eye always looks a little sad.

“Chantons, les enfants,”
says Maman. And they sing.

“‘Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar, and be better off than you are …?’”

Billboards loom in farmers’ fields,
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and Be Saved
, soldier rows of leafy beets that slow down or speed up depending on whether you focus on the dirt between the rows or on the blur of green,
Kodak, Dairy Queen, The Wages of Sin Is Death
. Barns, neat and scrubbed. The congenial whiff of cow-pies and wood fires reminds Madeleine of home—Germany, that is. She closes her eyes. She has just said goodbye to another house, on an air force base near the Black Forest.
Say goodbye to the house, kids
. And they pulled away for the last time.

Each house stands mute and innocent like a poor animal left behind. The windows wide-eyed, bereft of drapes, the front-door-mouth sad and sealed. Goodbye, dear house. Thank you for all the nice times. Thank you for all the remember-whens. The sad house left behind solidifies in memory to become a monument to a former time, a marker for the place you can never get back to. That’s how it is in the air force.

This is Madeleine’s third move, and Mike’s fourth. He insists that she can’t possibly remember her first move, from Alberta to Michigan, because she was only three going on four. Yet he claims to remember his first move, from Washington, DC, to Alberta, despite the fact that he was barely three. Such are the injustices of living with an older brother.