Way the Crow Flies (52 page)

T
HERE IS A YELLOW BASKET
on Mr. March’s desk, brimming with bright foil-wrapped eggs on a bed of paper straw. Even to see such a thing before Easter, while it’s still Lent, is like peeking under your parents’ bed to see your Christmas presents. It’s exciting, you want to play with them, you want to laugh. Then by the end of the day you wish you had not looked.

Easter is not as crucial, still you look forward to it. Painting the hard-boiled eggs the night before, and there, in the morning, the giant chocolate bunny waiting on the coffee table, smiling merrily with his beady candy eye, a basket on his back. Madeleine always gets a bunny and Mike gets a rooster. Hidden throughout the ground floor are chocolate eggs—in shoes, in the fold-out speakers of the hi-fi, under the base of the lamp…. Then the great hard-boiled egg battle to see whose egg can crack the others while remaining intact. But remember, all these treats are because, on Good Friday, Jesus was crucified, died and was buried, and on the third day He rose again. The idea of having Easter treats in class before He has even been nailed to the Cross is just not right.

It seems, however, that the grade fours are to have an Easter party despite the fact that today is only Wednesday—not even Holy Wednesday, there is no such thing. Things don’t get holy until tomorrow, Thursday.

But first, a spelling test. Mr. March reads out the words, clearly, ponderously, giving each syllable a chance. “Crocodile … butterfly … danger … nap … hatched … awfully … swamp … group … surface … honey … escape … taste … puff … quiet.”

The only difficult word is “quiet.” Madeleine writes “quiet,” then remembers the little devil symbol pointing his pitchfork at
the word on the page to indicate difficulty, and amends it to “queit.”

Mr. March collects the spelling tests, then pretends to be surprised at the sight of the Easter basket on his desk. “It would appear the Easter bunny has been here early.”

An obliging “ohh” from the class.

“Who knows how to hop like a bunny?”

Hands shoot up. Who cares if hopping like a bunny is a kindergarten thing to do, everyone wants to control the basket—most of the girls, that is, and Philip Pinder. Once he puts up his hand, other boys follow suit, because if Philip is doing it, it’s not sissy.

Mr. March raises his eyebrows. “I wish I could count this many hands when it’s time to name the ten provinces and their capitals.”

Even Auriel and Lisa have their hands up. So does Gordon Lawson, elbow resting politely on his desk. Madeleine is the only one without her hand up. And Claire. And Grace. That’s because Grace knows she’ll never get picked.

“Bunnies are nothing if not quiet and small,” says Mr. March in a story-time voice, not at all sarcastic, which is how you know that he can be nice sometimes. “Who is quiet and small enough to be a bunny?”

All the hands go down and the class becomes very quiet. They all start curling up at their desks, covering their heads like duck and cover. Madeleine rests her chin on her desk and blinks. She doesn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she doesn’t want to be picked and have to eat his chocolate. Claire McCarroll is the only other one not acting like a bunny.

“Claire McCarroll,” says Mr. March. “Hop to the front of the class, please.” No one can be mad at Claire for getting to be the Easter bunny. She is the quietest, after all. And the smallest. She hops to the front of the class with her hands curled under her chin like paws and everyone laughs, not meanly, happily. Claire looks solemn. She has become a bunny. When she arrives at his desk, Mr. March reaches down and pats the bunny’s head.

“Hop onto my lap, bunny.”

And the bunny does.

Mr. March smiles at the bunny. He is often kind to the gerbil too. “Now Easter bunny, I want you to distribute one egg per pupil, do you think you can do that?”

The bunny nods.

“Can you wiggle your ears?”

Claire turns her paws into tall ears and wiggles them. The class claps.

“Can you twitch your tail?”

Claire wiggles her bottom and everyone laughs, but Madeleine feels her face prickle. She pictures Claire’s underpants from the day long ago when she saw them by accident while they were doing somersaults. Mr. March puts the basket into Claire’s paws. “Hop along down the bunny trail.”

She slides off Mr. March’s lap and the skirt of her light blue dress rides up. Madeleine closes her eyes and a pattern appears against her lids, smudged so she can’t make it out. Yellow blotches, chicks maybe….

While Claire hops up and down the aisles, Mr. March conducts the class as it sings: “‘Here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail …’” She pauses at each desk and deposits a chocolate egg. Madeleine feels hot at the pit of her stomach, her palms are moist, her fingers cold. She places them against her forehead to cool it.

She feels better by the time Claire gets to her desk, because everyone is being kind to the bunny, thanking her, even patting her. Claire’s charm bracelet gleams as she hands Madeleine the egg, and Madeleine remembers her own bracelet sitting scorned in the blue box at home. Perhaps she should wear it to Brownies tonight. She takes the egg and whispers out of the side of her mouth, “Thanks, doc, us wabbits gotta stick together,” and the bunny smiles.

“All good things must come to an end,” says Mr. March, and Claire hops back to his desk with the empty basket. “Did the Easter bunny remember to save an egg for herself?” he asks. The bunny shakes her head. “Why ever not?” he says.

Claire looks down and murmurs, “I only like the real kind,” in her soft sweet accent.

“Of course,” says Mr. March. “How could I forget: our resident ornithologist.” He scans the class and says, “Then who, pray tell, was the lucky recipient of two chocolate eggs?”

Gordon Lawson raises his hand, smiles and shrugs. The whole class goes, “Ohhhhhh!” and both Gordon and Claire blush. Auriel
whispers to Madeleine that Marjorie looks as though she has just sucked a lemon, not a chocolate, and it’s true, she does.

“Aren’t you going to eat your chocolate egg, little girl?”

Madeleine looks at the coloured tinfoil oval on her desk. “No thank you, Mr. March.”

“And why not? Am I a stranger?” Obliging laughter from the class.

“No.”

“Well?”

“I gave it up for Lent.”

“Oh. We have a devout Christian in our midst.” More laughter. “I’m not aware of having said anything amusing,” he says, looking around. “Your self-discipline is admirable, Miss McCarthy, but Easter is just a few days away. What’s wrong with celebrating the occasion with your classmates?” She swallows. He says, “Methinks you are splitting hairs.” He waits, then rolls his eyes. “That was a pun. Hairs, h-a-i-r-s, or hares, h-a-r-e-s.” Tentative laughter. “And what do we call two words that sound alike but mean different things? Miss McCarthy?”

“Twins.”

“Incorrect.” He writes the answer on the blackboard, which makes his bum jiggle. “Homophones.” He underlines it, then turns to face them. “Class?”

All: “Homophones.”

Philip Pinder shouts, “
Homo
-phones!”

Few people laugh because few get it.

“Jeez,” says Auriel as they spill out the side door, “whoever heard of getting in trouble for not eating chocolate?”

“Yeah, that’s religious prosecution,” says Lisa.

“Hey you guys,” says Madeleine, “want to roll all the way home?”

But they can’t. Lisa and Auriel have band practice. Madeleine rolls like a runaway log, as fast as she can, because tonight at seven o’clock in the schoolyard the Brownies are flying up to Guides. There will be refreshments and parents, Miss Lang’s fiancé will be in attendance, and if she hurries and changes into her play clothes right now, then rushes back, she will be able to help set up the
giant toadstool and benches, and roll out the carpet of yellow crêpe paper that she and her friends have come to think of as the “golden pathway.”

In the vestibule of Fried’s apartment building the buzzer sounds. Jack hurries across the lobby, unchanged but for the addition of a new
Look
magazine. The cover catches his eye: two photos side by side—Fidel Castro and the Canadian flag—or rather, ensign.

The elevator begins its glacial ascent and Jack wishes he had taken the stairs. He manoeuvres his wrist around the grocery bag and peers at his watch: three-fifteen. The shopping took longer than he expected; he had to wait in line while the Bavarian shopkeeper and his wife chatted with each and every customer. Jack was fuming but contained his impatience so as not to draw attention. As it is, he will have to find a way to keep Mimi from the market for a week or two—long enough for the shopkeepers not to remark, “Back already? Your husband was just here,” yet not so long that they’ll say, “We haven’t seen you since before your husband came in.” How do people conduct extramarital affairs? They become travelling salesmen.

On the third floor, Jack walks along the swirly carpet toward the end of the hall. He planned to get a drive with McCarroll, but when he went to find him, the clerk said McCarroll was not expected home until the dinner hour. Simon was unconcerned by the delay in briefing McCarroll. He said Fried was in no immediate danger as long as he stayed in his apartment. “The chap who saw him hasn’t a clue where to look for him.”

Jack wondered how Simon could be so sure, but wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it—he had other problems, chief among them transport. Jack had assumed that he wouldn’t need the Rambler so Mimi had taken it into Exeter for groceries this afternoon and—what else?—to take Sharon McCarroll to get her hair done because her husband was coming home this evening. Well, there was the information about the exact timing of McCarroll’s return, if only he had known how to decode it. He reflected on the vigour of the female grapevine, wondering if any man had ever managed to tap its potential.

Jack had turned his steps toward the ME section, intending to sign out a staff car, only to find that the entire fleet had been pressed
into service for the visiting air vice-marshal. The flight sergeant in charge told him, “Squadron Leader Boucher is heading into town for a meeting, sir, if you run you might catch him.” Jack didn’t run. He could not begin to imagine the web of petty deceit he would have to weave to convince Vic that he too had a meeting—not at the university, of course, that was where Vic was going—where? With whom? Someone Vic had never heard of? What was more, he was irritated by his own irrational certainty that Vic was then bound to catch him at the market with an armload of guilty groceries. He had already become more finely attuned to Vic’s manner since the “caviar and cherries” incident—trying to assess whether Vic thought he had lied to his wife. A midday trip to London on a flimsy pretext … Vic would surely tell Betty.

He left the ME section, sweating by now in his woollen uniform—too hot a day for April—and had just decided to scrub the journey into town altogether when a black staff car rolled up alongside him and a military policeman inquired if he needed a lift. The MP would not be returning until late that evening, and with a full car at that, “so I can only offer you a one-way ticket, sir.”

“I’ll take it,” said Jack, and hopped in the back. A stroke of luck. He had just remembered Fried’s Ford Galaxy. He could drive it back to Centralia. “What’s your name, corporal?”

“Novotny, sir.”

A bruiser of a fellow. Jack sat back and asked him who he liked for the Stanley Cup this year.

Now, Jack knocks at Fried’s door. And waits. Finally, the shuffling, the pause during which he feels Fried’s eye on him through the peephole. Slide of the safety chain, thunk of the deadbolt and the door opens. Fried turns without a word back toward his darkened living room and the blare of the television. The odour of stale tobacco greets Jack. He would love to go straight to the window and open it but light is verboten on account of Fried’s orchids—vampire orchids, as Jack thinks of them. There are five now, growing up their coat hangers, dark delicate flesh, thriving.

Jack dumps the bags on the kitchen counter. In order to shop today, he had to get another advance on his pay. He has to hope that Mimi doesn’t question the old “accounts-payroll mistake” excuse
when she sees the double deposit on payday. At least he needn’t worry about lipstick on his collar.

Jack has never considered adultery. Now it crosses his mind unbidden, because of the absurd situation in which he finds himself—sneaking away from work in the middle of the day, purchasing luxury items in secret, keeping a furtive rendezvous in dim rented rooms. As he puts away groceries in the refrigerator glow of Fried’s tiny kitchen, he finds himself picturing sex with a woman not his wife—right here in this cramped kitchen. Up against the counter. He takes the cognac from the bag, sticks it in the cupboard next to an identical half-full bottle, annoyed and now inconveniently aroused. He is conducting a clandestine affair. With NATO.

Jack walks back into the living room. Fried is watching
Secret Storm
. Jack shakes his head; after all, you have to laugh. He would love to tell Mimi about Fried, she’d get a kick out of it, and one day soon maybe he will be able to. A commercial comes on for Ban deodorant but Fried doesn’t take his eyes from the screen. Jack feels suddenly, oddly affectionate toward him. This is the last time he will see the man before he leaves to start working for USAF—and eventually, if Fried gets his way, NASA. He is a true eccentric, and what he lacks in charm, he clearly makes up for in courage and commitment.
It’s been a slice
, Jack wants to say. “How about a game of chess, sir?”

Fried appears at first not to have heard him. Then, as noxious strains of organ music signal the resumption of the soap opera, he says, “Shhh.”