Way the Crow Flies (82 page)

“I saw Ricky and Rex and—”

“Who is Rex?” asks the judge, sounding exasperated.

“The dog, my lord,” says Mr. Waller. “Go on then, Madeleine.”

“And Ricky was pushing Elizabeth in her wheelchair, and Claire was on her bike and Rex was towing her up the road.”

“And they were travelling toward—in which direction were they travelling?”

“Toward the tree.”

“The willow tree.”

“Yes.”

The judge says, “The willow tree and the intersection are one and the same for your purposes, gentlemen.” He is talking to the jury. He turns back to Madeleine. “And then what did you see?”

“We—I saw, um”—Madeleine swallows—“a red-winged blackbird.” And her throat dries.

Mr. Waller doesn’t say anything. He is waiting for her to remember her lines. But Madeleine is silent. Like the frog in the cartoon, who can sing opera but, at the moment of truth, opens his mouth and says,
ribbit
.

You can hear the creak of the ceiling fan, but you can’t feel any breeze.

Mr. Waller says, “Yes, and what did you see then, when you looked at the intersection?”

Madeleine’s chest is pounding, it has started to do that on its own. She is breathing through her mouth even though that dries her throat to the point of paper—it will hurt to swallow. Like the time she had her tonsils out and could eat only ice cream.

“Madeleine?”

The judge is looking at her. “What did you see?”

“Look at me, please, Madeleine,” says Mr. Waller.

The ceiling fan grows louder in her ears. Where is Dad?

He is looking at her, his face tilted slightly. Pale and shiny.
Guts, that’s what you’ve got
. He crashed his plane.
That’s what you’re made of
. The right stuff.
The truth will always be the hardest thing
. Stab right through, like the coat hooks going straight through your back. Stab through and you will never have to go back there again. Nothing will ever press at your back again.
Do the right thing
.

Dad nods gently.
Pilot to co-pilot
. Do it your way, sweetie. Tell the truth.

And she does.

Her parents are quiet in the car. Up ahead, a pink plywood ice cream cone tilts toward the highway, but she knows they will not be stopping, because of the silence. She is relieved because she doesn’t feel like ice cream. Maman is angry. She yanked Madeleine all the way to the car, and Dad followed.

The Rambler slows and her father pulls in. “How about an ice cream?” He glances at Madeleine in the rearview mirror.

“Jack, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“She’s earned it, don’t you think?”

Madeleine forms a smile for him. He is not disappointed. He wants to get her an ice cream. Her mother says, “Jack,” but he is already getting out of the car.

She waits in silence with the back of her mother’s head.

After she told the truth, Mr. Waller sat down and the other lawyer came up to her in his gloomy black robes. “Why did you lie to the police, Madeleine?”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You’ve been a very good witness, Madeleine, you’ve told the truth. No one is going to be angry with you here today, but it is important for us to know why you told the police that you saw Ricky turn left, when you didn’t.”

“’Cause I—” Her throat was no longer dry, but neither were her eyes, they were filling up like dishes, yet she didn’t know what was so sad. As though she had just heard about a dog dying.

“Speak up, Madeleine.”

“I was worried that he would….”

“What were you worried about?”

“That he would get hanged.”

There was a sound in the room. “Order,” said the judge. “Let this child finish her testimony. You’re doing very well, Madeleine,” said the king of the frogs—he was not unkind.

“Now Madeleine,” said the winning lawyer, and Madeleine was on her guard, for he sounded as though he was trying to coax something out of her. “Who told you that?”

“No one,” she said.

“You’re under oath, young lady,” said the judge.

And suddenly it no longer counted that she was a little girl. Perhaps she wasn’t any more. Perhaps twenty years had passed and she was a grown-up, she felt her neck begin to stretch effortlessly like Alice in Wonderland’s, and her head begin to rise—soon she would be at the ceiling, getting her head chopped off by the fan.

“Who told you he would be hanged, Madeleine?” asked the lawyer. She returned to her normal size. “Everyone says it but it’s not true.”

“Can you give me an example of a particular person?”

“My brother said.”

“Your brother?”

“Yeah, Mike said.”

“And who else?”

“… My friend.”

“Which friend?”

Dad returns and hands Madeleine a triple-scoop Neapolitan, but he has not bought himself one to share with Maman. The car pulls from the gravel back onto the highway. Madeleine wishes she could accidentally drop the ice cream out the window, but that’s out of the question. So she eats the whole thing as quickly as possible.

The courtroom was as hot as an oven. Everyone was perfectly still. They were all being baked into gingerbread boys. Madeleine’s tears didn’t fall, they evaporated. She looked at Colleen.
When the oven door is opened, she will leap from the pan and run away. We will run away together
.

“Colleen,” she said.

“Colleen Froelich?”

Madeleine nodded.

“Was that a yes?”

Madeleine nodded again.

“Yes, the witness nodded yes,” said the judge. “Go on, Mr. Fraser.”

“Did Colleen tell you to lie, Madeleine?”

Madeleine didn’t answer.

The judge said, “Answer the question, Madeleine.”

But Madeleine didn’t speak or even move her head.

“Madeleine,” said the judge, “look behind you. Who is that lady?”

“Our gracious queen.”

“Do you know that we are here today in her name? When I or this gentleman asks you a question, it is exactly as though our queen were asking. Would you answer the queen?”

Madeleine nodded.

“Would you lie to our queen?”

Madeleine shook her head.

“Now, Madeleine,” said the judge, “did Colleen Froelich tell you to lie?”

Madeleine said, “I told myself.”

Dad stops the car outside Exeter so she can be sick.

Maman says to him, “I told you.”

“I don’t think you’re going to get much more out of this witness, Mr. Fraser,” said the judge, and he seemed to forget all about her once he said, “You may step down, little girl.”

Mr. Fraser turned away from her and went back to his table. Madeleine waited. There was something not finished.
He didn’t do it
. That was what she had been waiting to tell them. Ricky Froelich turned left, he did not do the murder.
Ask Elizabeth
.

She said, “Elizabeth—”

And the judge said, “The queen has finished with you for now, young lady, please step down.”

“Not the queen—!” she cried.

“Bailiff?” Mr. Plodd came walking toward her.

“Stop!” A woman had spoken, and she was making her way down the aisle. Maman.

The judge said, “Madam, please be seated.”

“C’est assez,”
said Maman, clicking toward the witness box on her high heels.

“Madam, please! Bailiff.”

Mr. Plodd reached out his hand to Madeleine, but it was slapped away and Maman’s hand was there, with its red nails. It took Madeleine by the wrist and pulled her from the box and up the aisle. A jumble of faces bobbed by—Colleen looking straight ahead, Mr. Froelich with his head down, and Dad looking at her and Maman as though they were the last two people in the world he expected to see here.

“We’ll have a short recess,” said the judge behind her.

“Jack,
allons-y!”
called Maman from the door of the courtroom.

Madeleine ran to keep up with her mother’s grip, down the waxed corridor, between the paintings of men in robes, past a name on a door that leapt out at her, F. DONNELLY, QC.

Maman wipes Madeleine’s face with a wet-nap and they get back into the car. One good thing about stopping for ice cream at that roadside place in the middle of nowhere: it means they didn’t stop for ice cream in Crediton, where Mr. March lives.

“I want us to leave tomorrow, Jack.” She unzips her dress, steps out of it, takes a hanger, sticks it into the dress as though she were handling a boning knife and jams it into the closet.

“We can’t just up and leave.” He is standing, still dressed, with his arms folded.

“Why not? You up and go to that trial any time you want.”

“It’ll be over in a few days.”

“Are you going back?” yanking off her earrings.

“I’m not leaving before it’s over.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t do that to Henry, I can’t—they’re going to have to appeal.”

“So?” She pulls her slip off over her head, turns her back to him and removes her bra.

“The guy’s broke.”

“We don’t know that.” She pulls on a nightgown.

“You haven’t seen where they’re living.”

She turns to him. “And you have.”

He hesitates, but why should he? “Yes I have, I visited them, so?” He instantly regrets the defensive
so?

“So? So what, you tell me what’s so?”

Normally he would tease her about a turn of phrase like that, but not tonight. “Nothing,” he says. “What are we talking about?”

“They’re not our family, Jack. That’s not my son.”

“The kid is innocent.”

“Maybe not.”

“He is.”

“How do you know?” She looks at him. He doesn’t answer. “Madeleine was sick to her stomach because she knows you wanted her to lie.”

“I didn’t want her to—”

“What’s going on!” She has screamed at him.

He says very quietly, “Mimi,” making a calming gesture with his hand.

She screams in a whisper, “I want to know!” Slaps her hairbrush against her thigh. “Why do you care so much about that family?!”

He waits.

“You care more about that boy than you do about your own son.”

“Mimi, that’s not—”

“And you don’t want another baby.” Her face trembles, but she compresses her lips and doesn’t take her eyes off him. “Do you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s why you hardly ever—” She bites her upper lip and takes a deep breath, tears standing in her eyes.

“Mimi, what could possibly give you the idea—?” He moves to her, opening his arms.

“Don’t touch me.” Her voice has cooled. “That family, they’re having terrible trouble, but it has nothing to do with us. Does it, Jack?”

He says nothing.

She opens her jewellery box and says, “What’s this?”

A scrap of paper. “What is it?”

She hands it to him. “That’s what I’m asking to you.”

He reads:
cherries, cognac, caviar…
. Fried’s shopping list. He looks at her.

“For how long?”

He’s cautious. “What do you mean?”

Her voice is trembling. “You cut their grass, you’re at their house, you leave your office in the day—I know, I call and they can’t find you. You go in a staff car to God knows where; I answer the phone, there’s no one there.” Her voice lurches up but she catches it, poised at the edge of tears. “Goddamn, if I’m going to cry, you’re not going to see.”

“Mimi. Do you think—?” He smiles in spite of himself, knowing he sounds guilty. She turns away from him. He laughs. He sounds stupidly fake to himself; think how he must sound to her.

“Mimi, that list was for Buzz Lawson, he forgot his anniversary and I was going in to London anyhow so he asked me to pick up some—you know Buzz—Mimi, look at me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You think I’m interested in Karen Froelich?” He chuckles, but she turns and stares at him.

“You see? I didn’t even have to say her name.”

He feels his face suspended in jovial bewilderment, the picture of masculine guilt—he doesn’t need a mirror to know it.

She gets into bed. “We have to go tomorrow, Jack.”

“Mimi—”

“I’m going to sleep.” And she turns out her light.

His grin corrodes and his throat begins to rust. His eyes sting salt. If only she would turn and look at his face now. He wouldn’t try to hide it. She would say, “Jack, what’s wrong?” And he would tell her.
It was me. I waved
.

He waits, motionless, but she doesn’t turn or open her eyes, and he has lost the power of speech.

Madeleine takes a long time to fall asleep. Her parents have been fighting. She has never heard them do that before. Not for real. Maman must be terribly angry at Madeleine for lying to the police. And even angrier at Colleen for telling her to. She will never be allowed to play with Colleen Froelich ever again.

She hugs Bugs and rolls onto her stomach, where it’s safer. She remembers that Colleen will probably not want to play with her ever again anyway. And she is relieved.

She wakes up screaming and spends the rest of the night sleeping in her parents’ bed with her mother. A dog was barking in her dream. It woke her up, but she knew she must still be dreaming because, when she went to her window, her curtains lifted in a breeze she couldn’t feel. At first she thought her curtains had a new pattern, because they were covered in yellow butterflies. Then the butterflies began to move and she saw that they were real ones.

Dad picked her up out of bed and hugged her. She asked him, through hiccups, what had happened to that dog that was trapped in
the storm sewer the night of flying up. At first he didn’t seem to remember, then he said, “Oh yeah, I remember. I think the fire truck came and they got him out.”

“They did?”

“Oh yeah. They brought him home, he’s fine.”

And she didn’t ask any more questions.

Dad put her in bed with Maman and left the room. He was not in his pajamas yet. She whispered, “Maman?”

“What is it, Madeleine?”

“Can you tell me the story of Jack and Mimi?”

“Non, pas ce soir, Madeleine. Fait dodo
.”

“Sing ‘
O Mein Papa.’”

“Go to sleep, Madeleine. Think nice thoughts.”

Madeleine has a sore throat. She stands on her front lawn, staring across the street at Rex’s old front lawn. Mimi says, “Get in the car. Madeleine. I said,
viens. Main-te-nant!”