Way the Crow Flies (30 page)

If you had shown a much younger Mimi McCarthy, Marguerite Leblanc, as she was then, photos of her life now—dancing beneath a crystal chandelier at the officers’ mess with a handsome man in uniform, keeping house with all the modern conveniences, her children both with their own rooms, European travel, her name on a joint account—she would have thought it was a fairy tale. Not that she hadn’t set her sights on it to begin with. Marguerite
became Mimi long before she met Jack. When she was about Madeleine’s age, in fact. Mimi reaches for the Palmolive and runs the tap over the breakfast dishes.

She was the only girl in her family to leave her hometown, to pursue post-secondary education, the only one to go overseas. The war helped a lot of young people to break free, but Mimi’s get-up-and-go did the rest. She loves her sisters, she even loves most of her sisters-in-law, she is glad they’re happy, but she would not trade places with them for anything. She has kept her figure, she is still in love with her husband and, at thirty-six, she yearns for another child.

The desire is romantic, almost erotic—caught up in how she feels about her husband, still her date, still fun, but completely her own. She imagines how much easier it would be with the next baby, knowing all she knows now. She enjoyed the first two, of course, but she was so far from home. Washington, then Alberta. No one told her what it would be like. There was no one to take the baby for a moment; no one to see what needed to be done and simply do it, on days when the house resembled an asylum—nothing but crying and spilling and spitting up, until she too sat and cried. No one just to be there. Only your own mother and sisters can do that, and they were half a continent away. In the air force, wives go to great lengths to help one another, with no expectation of it being reciprocated in this posting, knowing that someone will help them when they need it down the line. But friends can only do so much.

Not every woman is cut out for this life. A few buckle—divorce is rare, the strain shows in other ways. Mimi has seen it: the too-cheerful voice on the phone in mid-afternoon; the first drink of the day as a reward for housework, the second as an accompaniment to
As the World Turns;
the nap before her husband gets home; until one day she sleeps through, and he finds himself opening a can for himself and the kids and making her coffee before the guests arrive—“She’s just a little under the weather.” And to be fair, not all husbands are equal. It takes two to make an unhappy marriage. Mimi is lucky.

She looks out her kitchen window while she scrubs the frying pan; the rubber gloves spare her hands. A bird flutters past, a sparrow with grass in its beak. Across the street, the Froelich boy lifts his sister into the old station wagon, then puts her wheelchair in the
back, the way he does every morning. He kisses his mother goodbye and sets off running through the park behind his house, to catch the school bus. Mimi’s own children have already left for school and, although high-school classes start later, he will just make it. Karen Froelich bundles the two babies into a basinette in the back seat, then pulls out of the driveway.

She must have a job of some kind. It would explain the state of the Froelich household—Mimi caught a glimpse when she returned Karen’s chili non-carne pot. Karen probably takes the children to a babysitter, then goes to work. The Froelichs don’t appear to have two incomes; still…. Mimi returns the steel wool to the side of the sink, reminding herself to pick up some little tray or holder for it next time she’s in town. The babies are foster children, that much is known. Betty, Elaine and Vimy were all in Centralia when the infants arrived on the scene. Where do they come from? An unwed mother? People are paid to foster children, aren’t they? In which case, why does Karen Froelich work? The Froelichs don’t attend church. Either church. Are they atheists? She must remember to ask Vimy Woodley.

She scoops soggy bread and bits of shell from the drain and pushes back a strand of hair with her wrist. Mimi stopped working when she got married, and what woman would choose to work once she had a child? At first she wondered how Karen Froelich managed, what with the babies and a handicapped child, but now she suspects that the woman simply doesn’t manage. Has chosen not to. Poor Henry.

One morning, Mimi saw their girl Colleen heading up the street in the opposite direction from the school. Mimi lifted the phone receiver with her soapy glove, only to recall that the child’s mother was not at home. She dialled the school instead and asked for Mr. Froelich, embarrassed but feeling responsible even if the mother did not. Henry answered that Colleen was home from school today, not feeling well. When she delicately informed him that his daughter had left the PMQs along with her dog, Henry had said not to worry, the fresh air would do her good. Well,
chacun à son goût
. But it’s not surprising that the child goes around like a ragamuffin. Mimi sweeps the floor.

What is surprising is that Ricky Froelich is so well turned out. Vimy has joked that she and Hal can’t find a thing wrong with him,
although she was a little concerned when he and Marsha started going steady. He comes from a “different” sort of family, said Elaine Ridelle over a hand of bridge, to which Vimy replied, “Don’t we all.” But in any case, the Woodleys will be posted this spring and that will be that. Another advantage of living on the move.

Mimi puts the broom away and turns to the calendar on the fridge, where each square is packed with her tiny writing—the Oktoberfest dance at the mess, the church bazaar, hockey and figure skating, volunteering at the hospital in Exeter, Vimy’s cocktail party in honour of the visiting air vice marshal, dentist appointments, Brownies, Scouts, Jack’s trip to Winnipeg, Jack’s trip to Toronto, the first curling bonspiel, hair appointment…. She circles Thanksgiving and jots down “Bouchers,” because Betty has confirmed that they’ll be coming. She hesitates, and adds “McCarrolls?” then picks up the phone to call her young next-door neighbour, Dot Bryson. The girlish voice answers and Mimi hears the baby screeching in the background. She tells the young woman to bring the child and come keep her company: “You’ll be doing me a favour.” Mimi smiles into the phone—she can almost hear tears of relief in the voice at the other end.

She puts the kettle on, then bends to the cupboard under the sink where she keeps her hideous hausfrau clothes and begins to pull out Mason jars and line them up on the counter. She will can for five days. Chow-chow, red chili, corn relish, dills, bread-and-butter pickles and Jack’s favourite, mustard pickles. Next week is
confitures
.

Thanksgiving falls on October 8 this year, and there will be a turkey draw at the mess as usual, with so many birds on hand that everyone is bound to go home with a Butterball. The social highlight of October, however, is Oktoberfest. The strong local German immigrant flavour, combined with the fact that so many personnel and their wives are veterans of German postings, means that Centralia’s is bound to be something special. The officers’ mess has been gearing up for weeks. Jack has tried to persuade Henry Froelich to bring his wife and join the party.

“Ach
, I don’t have—”

“You don’t need a tuxedo,” said Jack, adding with a wink, “Besides, it’s Oktoberfest, you can wear lederhosen.”

Henry Froelich smiled and shook his head. “I think no.”

“I’m sorry, I forgot,” said Jack. “You’re from northern Germany, you wouldn’t be caught dead in lederhosen.”

They were having an after-supper glass of Froelich’s homemade wine in the McCarthys’ driveway. Henry had Jack’s lawnmower in pieces.

“What’s your better half got to say about it?”

“My …?”

“Your wife, Karen. Does she like to dance?”

“She prefers the less formal occasion.”

Jack nodded. “Like this,” breathing in the early autumn evening.

“Just so,” said Henry, and bent to his work, wiping grass and grease from the blade. Jack watched him for a while, his immaculate cuffs turned up once at the wrists, fingers stained with grease, shirt and tie protected by the old apron.

“Tell me, Henry, are you ever going to drive that thing or are you planning to donate it to the Smithsonian?” Jack nodded across the street to the Froelich driveway, where a litter of auto parts was growing around the hybrid chassis now recognizable as a ’36 Ford Coupe; its doors and fenders, its broad running boards and low-slung front end, all scavenged from different wrecks and welded together. In the midst of it all was Henry’s son, bent over the engine. “Like father like son, eh?”

Froelich smiled, obviously pleased. “It’s for my boy, when he is sixteen. That is when I go completely grey, when he will be driving.”

“Hank, I’m getting worried; that car is like the loaves and fishes, every time I look there’s more of it. I just hope you don’t get as interested in my lawnmower as you are in that car, or I’ll be up to my knees in grass next summer.”

“Don’t worry, Jack, your Lawn-Boy is very much less interesting than the Froelich-wagen. You maybe like to know that when finished, this car will contain parts from many other makes of automobiles, as well as a secret ingredient from a washing machine to improve fuel efficiency.”

“Wow, really?”

“Nein.”

Jack laughed.

“I will work on your car next,” said Henry.

“Nein
, yourself!”

Jack sipped the wine and blinked at the taste—terrible stuff.

Henry asked, “How do you like the wine? We pick ourselves the chokecherries at the Pinery.”

“Chokecherry, eh?” Jack nodded. “Not too shabby.”

“‘Shabby’?”

“That’s the highest compliment you can get from an air force type. It means just great.”

“Good, good, I bring you a bottle, I have plenty.”

Jack said casually, “Henry, why don’t you let me treat you to the Oktoberfest dance. You and Karen come as our guests….”

Froelich slipped the blade onto its axle, reached for his wrench, tightened the bolt but didn’t reply. Jack feared he might have made a faux pas, implying a money problem, which had not been his intention. “You’d be doing us a favour. It’s just what the party needs, an honest-to-goodness German, and you wouldn’t believe the food. How long since you had a good bratwurst, eh?” Again he sensed that he’d said the wrong thing. Perhaps Henry thought he was criticizing Karen’s cooking.

Henry tossed the wrench aside and fished in his toolbox for a screwdriver. “You are very generous, Jack, and I would like on another occasion to accept your gift, but I am not German.” He snapped the lid on over the engine.

Jack flushed. What had he missed?

Henry twirled the wing nuts into place. “I am Canadian,” he said, and smiled. He pulled the cord and the motor roared to life.

On the Friday before Thanksgiving, Jack came home from beer call at the mess with an immense frozen turkey. “Mimi, I’m home!”

“Oh Jack,” she cried, “you won!”

“Yup,” he said, thunking the thing down on the kitchen table.

The young woman from next door rose with her baby. “Hi Jack. Mimi, I better run.”

Jack said, “How are you …,” and hesitated.

“Dot, you must stay,” Mimi put in, tactfully supplying the girl’s name.

“How are you settling in, Dot, okay?” Yes, her husband was in the accounts office, name of Bryson.

“Just great, Jack, thank you,” she said, blushing, then left, in keeping with domestic etiquette. Mimi saw her to the door, then returned to kiss her husband—he was so proud of that turkey, shrugging, saying, “It’s over to you now, Missus, I only dragged it home.”

She poured him a beer and teased him about forgetting the neighbour’s name, gratified that a pretty young thing like that should get barely a glance from him. He took a second glass from the shelf and poured half his beer into it for her. “I already had two at the mess. You don’t want to bring out the beast in me, do you?” He winked.

“Ça dépend.”
She clinked glasses with him.

There are men who, if they make it home for Friday night supper at all, are too “happy” or too belligerent to sit at the table and eat with their children. Snoring in their uniforms on the couch or glazed in front of the television set. Perfectly nice men, and thank goodness Mimi isn’t married to one of them. Her older sister, Yvonne, is, though; married to one of those men whom other men find harmless.

Madeleine watched her mother slide the huge turkey into the oven at noon, and when Maman said, as she always did,
“Bon
. There goes Monsieur Turkey,” Madeleine could not help but see the pallid flesh in a whole different way. Like someone’s bare backside—ashamed and curled to hide their face. And when Maman had taken the loose skin around the neck and tucked it under the body, Madeleine felt somehow that the turkey was embarrassed to be dead and naked. “I’ll call you when the neck is ready,” said Maman.

The McCarrolls were coming to Thanksgiving dinner. American Thanksgiving was not until November and, as Mimi told Sharon over the phone, “We can’t let you be the only ones in the PMQs without a turkey dinner next week.” The Bouchers were supposed to join them, and the women had pooled their card tables for the occasion, but at the last minute Betty phoned to say they were in strict quarantine. “Steve Ridelle’s threatened to paint
an X on our front door if we don’t sit tight all weekend.” Their youngest, Bea, had come down with mumps.

Twenty-four pounds of turkey and only four adults and three children. “What a feast!” said Jack.

Madeleine passed around a plate of Ritz crackers with smoked oysters, and celery sticks with Cheez Whiz. Jack lit the first fire of the season in the fireplace and poured a rye and soda for Blair. Mike joined them in the living room with a ginger ale while the women saw to the kitchen. Jack was grateful for his son’s presence, because McCarroll had not become more loquacious with the passing weeks—like pulling teeth, getting the fellow to talk. Mike kept up a steady stream of questions about flying, and it occurred to Jack that McCarroll appeared more at home chatting with the boy than he ever did at the mess with his fellow officers. Pity he didn’t have a son.