Way the Crow Flies (48 page)

The party is just getting started.

In the officers’ mess, logs blaze in the great stone fireplace. The crystal chandelier glitters, reflecting light from candles on the dining tables, where sterling gleams on white linen amid opulent flower arrangements. Next to each place setting is a complement of noisemakers and a sparkly cardboard fez with a tassel. The buffet is resplendent. Lobsters in top hats perch on their tails, ice sculptures depict the Old Year and the New, platters of elaborately
carved tropical fruit alternate with steaming chafing dishes; cooks in white chefs’ uniforms and hats stand ready behind hips of beef and racks of lamb. Cocktails flow from the mirrored bar, waiters circulate with wine, there is punch from crystal bowls and, on the polished dance floor, a slow spin of silk butterflies and air force blue as couples swirl to the big band sounds of Gerry Tait and His Orchestra, all the way from Toronto. “‘Pennsylvania Six-Five Thousand
’
!” Above the bandstand arches a silver banner:
Nineteen Sixty-Three
.

“You smell nice,” says Jack. He can feel her smile, his chin touching the top of her hair.

It’s all worth it. The constriction of his starched collar, the slight cinch of his waistband, for which he has no one to blame but himself—this monkey suit was nice and roomy only last year. He is already formulating a New Year’s resolution to do with medicine balls and running shoes when Henry Froelich cuts in.

Mimi smiles and sweeps away with him. All the other civilians are dressed formally. But so is Hank, thinks Jack, admiring his neighbour’s old-world deportment on the dance floor. True formality comes from within, and Henry Froelich outclasses everyone with his patched elbows. Jack watches them disappear into the crowd, then moves to the bar, buys a drink for Blair McCarroll and asks Sharon to dance.

He guides her onto the floor and it’s like dancing with a pretty girl in high school to whom you are mercifully not attracted. She smiles shyly as Jack leads her in a samba, answering his questions with diffident charm and brevity; a light creature, pliable but not fragile, her laughter blithe when he spins her back to her husband. A sweet woman.

Jack raises his glass to Blair.

“Merry Christmas, sir.”

“Call me ‘Jack’ tonight, son.”

Jack tries to picture the look on McCarroll’s face when he finally tells him why he is here. Will he be offended not to have been briefed sooner? Jack places his empty glass on the bar and scans the dance floor. McCarroll will probably just nod and do his job.

The band heats up: “In the Mood.” Vic and Betty Boucher show what they can do and a space clears around them. Jack makes his
way toward his wife as the number ends but Vic beats him to it. “She’s my prisoner for the next five minutes, Jack.”

He spots Steve Ridelle, looking just as relaxed in his mess kit as he would in a golf shirt and slacks. Elaine is glowing; her blonde hair is curled in a flip, and the pale blue folds of her satin gown do nothing to minimize her eight-month pregnancy. She looks like too much of a kid, even in that gown, to be pregnant. She is sipping a Bloody Mary, “Loaded with vitamins,” she says to Jack, patting her stomach, as he comes up to greet them. He swings her onto the dance floor, over Steve’s laughter and her protestations. “No! Jack! What’m I supposed to do? The Dance of the Baby Elephants?” He spins her and she is just as nimble as if she were in a pair of dungarees, minus the weight of the new world she’s carrying.

Steve intercepts Mimi for the next dance and Jack concedes defeat. “I’m never going to get near my wife with you fellas circling all night.”

“Take a number, Jack,” says Hal Woodley.

Jack extends his hand to Hal’s wife. To dance with Vimy Woodley is to dance with a real lady. She converses graciously but easily, and makes him feel special—an up-and-coming young man. He knows that her attitude is an extension of her husband’s, and he can’t help feeling gratified.

When Jack returns to his table, Karen Froelich is there nursing a Coke. Her lipstick has worn off. He has formulated a chivalrous invitation to the effect that he can’t sit this one out when there’s a beautiful woman right here in front of him, but says simply, “Would you like to dance, Karen?”

“Sure, Jack.”

He holds out his left hand for her and slips his right hand around her waist. She is thin. But strong. No Playtex armour—he almost wonders whether he ought to be touching her. Gerry Tait sets aside his trumpet and sings, “Fly Me to the Moon.”

They dance. She smells like soap. And something else … sandalwood? From this angle her mouth looks sad, the faint bracket at its corner, the trace of a smile. The beaded earrings are her only adornment. Along with the faint lines at the corners of her eyes. Nordic.

“Are you Icelandic?” he asks.

“Finnish. Somewhere back there.”

“I can see you on a sled. With reindeer.” Must be the Scotch talking.

She says, “You’ve got me confused with Santa Claus.”

He laughs.

She says, “Nice work if you can get it. Hip to kids, live forever, have lots of helpers.”

He laughs again.

He leads Karen back to the table just as Henry arrives with plates of food for the two of them. He watches Froelich bend and kiss his wife. Henry sits and raises his glass. “Jack, this is a wonderful party. Thank you.” Jack smiles and leaves them to eat, side by side, looking years younger in the candlelight.

Mimi looks at him over the rim of her martini glass and asks, “What were you and Karen Froelich talking about?”

He pulls her close, feels the crinkle of her dress against his stiff shirt front and whispers in her ear, “Santa Claus.” She pinches his earlobe between thumb and fingernail. He takes her glass, sets it aside and steers her onto the floor, his palm against the warm small of her back. The band plays the song Jack requested. She relaxes into him and they dance. “Unforgettable, that’s what you are….”

He whispers, “I love you.” Her scent, the softness of her hair, her dress, her breasts, even the chafing of his starched collar against his neck—“I want another baby,” he says in her ear.

She lifts her hand to stroke the back of his neck.

Just before midnight, Mimi bows to popular demand. It seems her reputation has followed her from 4 Wing. After a suitable display of resistance, she mounts the stage, confers with Gerry Tait, then takes the microphone and sings. “
‘Bei mir bist du schön
, please let me explain….’”

Applause, laughter. Henry Froelich sings along, dancing in skater-size strides with Karen in the centre of the floor.

“…
‘bei mir bist du schön
means you’re grand….’”

Mimi gets into it, head moving, fingers snapping: “‘I could say
bella, bella
, even say
wunderbar!
Each language only serves to tell you, how grand you are! …’”

In the McCarthy living room, Elizabeth and Rex are sound asleep. Colleen, Madeleine and Mike are huddled cross-legged on the floor, a sleeping bag around their shoulders. Not once throughout the entire evening has anyone thought of turning on the TV. The Advent candles cast a magical glow as Ricky Froelich strums and sings softly, “‘So hoist up the
John B
. sail. See how the mainsail sets. Call for the captain ashore, let me go home….’”.

The others join in. They sing so quietly it’s as though they are in the middle of a forest, silent but for the scurries and hoots of busy night hunters. They sing softly so as to soothe but not wake the bears in their caves, the wolves in their dens, the rabbits in their holes. They sing so as neither to douse nor fan the glowing campfire, or shake more cold from the blue-black winter sky.

“‘I feel so broke up, I want to go home….’”.

Ricky outlasts them all, picking out a tune while the others sleep in a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor. But by the time the wheels of the Rambler crunch slowly up the snowy driveway, only Rex wakes at the sound.

Jack and Mimi tiptoe up the stairs with the Froelichs right behind. They glimpse the clutter of the kitchen, where every pot and pan has been hauled out to help bang in the New Year, and stop in the living-room doorway. Mimi gestures to Karen to “come here.” She slips her arm through Karen Froelich’s and the women look in on their sleeping children. Flushed and tangled, Orange Crush moustaches, popcorn ground into the carpet, sleeping hands still clutching toys. Ricky is flaked out on the easy chair, his guitar across his knees. His eyelashes flutter; he raises his head, glances around and says, “Sorry ’bout the mess.”

A week after New Year’s, Jack drives to London with his daughter. They take a walk in Storybook Gardens. The animals have left for the winter and only the greenhouse is still open to visitors. The castle drawbridge is closed but they slip in through snowy hedges and walk among the silent frolicking effigies. Humpty Dumpty teeters on his wall, wearing a pointed hat of snow; the witch beckons, her palm full of white powder—Madeleine takes care to avoid her eye.

Icicles grow from Little Bo-Peep’s staff, the Cow jumps over the Moon and the Dish runs away with the Spoon, heedless of the change of weather, still in their fairy-tale finery.

On the way home, Jack takes a detour through a winter-postcard neighbourhood, cruising slowly round the cul-de-sac of Morrow Street in the twilight. He hasn’t been summoned here in weeks. In the third-floor corner window, the curtains are open, blue light plays on the glass and ceiling. On the street, one among a line of parked cars, is the bright metallic blue Ford Galaxy—on its rear bumper, a yellow sticker from Storybook Gardens. Jack pulls away. Let sleeping dogs lie.

R
EX FOUND HER.
She was in a field beyond the ravine at Rock Bass, halfway between the cornfield and the woods. German shepherds are natural trackers. It’s terrible what happens to a face after death by strangulation. He recognized her scent as being hers and not hers. The sight of her made him bark because, for Rex, it was as though she had put on a Halloween mask.

On her back, beneath a criss-cross of last year’s bulrushes, clumps of bluebells, wildflowers, April showers. Hairband not askew. Eyes closed. Eyes do not naturally close in death by strangulation.

There is nothing peaceful or natural about the faces of people who have died that way. They look terrifying. A child’s peaceful body, soft pixie cut, and a monster face. It’s as though the evil of the person who killed her has leapt onto her face. She does not look like anybody’s child. She does not look like anybody any more.

B
Y
M
ARCH IT SEEMS
as though winter will never end. But the earth knows when spring must come, and already the unseen bluebells and lily of the valley are tipped with green, tenderly curled but stirring beneath the soil. Deer can smell the trickling water, and they paw the banks for new shoots; in their nests, birds await the miracle of the first beaks to breach their shells.

It is two and a half weeks before Easter but you can still feel winter. Yesterday was warmer and it rained, but Jack Frost is back today, that’s what March is like. On the road there are still a few worms but they are frozen. Wormsicles. There is a certain kind of ice on the puddles at the side of the road, the thin glass kind, fracturing like a sugar pane when you delicately press your boot, smashing like a windshield when you jump. Later in the day, when it gets warmer, you will be able to push the puddle’s barely frozen surface and see it wrinkle and fold like a sheet. Where there is bare earth and bumpy old grass, the clumps glitter cold, fine-crunching beneath your boot, grains of glass melting from the faint heat of your foot. These are the things of March.

In the park, Madeleine notices green spears piercing the brown and yellow patches amid the receding snow, tough little crocuses; and there is the whiff of thawing dog-doo, reappearing now in wells of granular old snow. It is still cold, but not so cold that you couldn’t eat an apple outside and taste it. Not so cold that snot will freeze on your nose. Grown-ups say that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. What does that mean?

Today is the last Thursday in March. In two weeks it will be Holy Thursday. Then it will be Easter Sunday, and that means chocolate bunnies and hunting for Easter eggs—the end of Lent. Maman has been very impressed by Madeleine’s abstinence from candy, especially chocolate. But she’d had plenty of practice with the Mr. March candy. In a way Madeleine has cheated, because Lent is supposed to be hard. It occurs to her now that if she had really wanted to give up something important, she could have put her Bugs Bunny away for forty days.

She stops halfway down St. Lawrence Avenue, on her way to school, and takes a deep breath. Bugs would smother, because where would he be? In a closet? In a drawer? In the dark. No. After forty days of suffocating on his own, having no one to tell his jokes to, how could Madeleine expect they could ever be friends again? Now that would be something. To give up Bugs entirely. To give him away to a needy child overseas. To love Jesus more than Bugs. Oh no.