Way the Crow Flies (91 page)

Nina says, “You don’t want to be a vegetarian and you don’t want to be heterosexual—”

“I wouldn’t actually mind being vegetarian, I’m kind of interested in that, just not the hairy-leg kind.”

Nina narrows her eyes.

Madeleine says, “You suppressed a smile just now. Either that or you’re offended ’cause beneath your hemp-and-linen leisure suit you’re sporting a pelt like a Sasquatch.”

Nina smiles, says, “Madeleine, I’m going to take a chance and guess that you’re not here about your diet or your sexual orientation, or your profession. Or even your driving habits.”

“So why am I here?”

“That’s what I’m hoping we’ll work toward.”

“No, can you please just take a wild therapeutic guess?”

Nina says, “You want to go forward. But something is stopping you. You feel as though you should know what it is, but you can’t make it out. It’s like trying to identify an elephant when all you can see is one square inch of it.”

Madeleine is tempted to yield to something. Repose. The promise of it makes her newly aware that she is fatigued. “Or looking at a mountain from an inch away,” she says.

Christine had mixed feelings about Madeleine going into therapy.

On the one hand: “Good.”

“Why?” said Madeleine. “You think I’m that fucked up?”

“I think you have … issues.”

“Gesundheit.”

On the other hand: “Is this just an elaborate way of leaving me?”

“What? Christine, what are you—?” If Madeleine were Christine she would say, “Why is everything always about you?” But Madeleine never thinks of the right thing to say in the moment. Unless she is in front of hundreds of strangers.

“Christine, have you seen my keys?”

“Where did you leave them?”

That’s not what I asked you
.

“They’re right in front of you, Madeleine.”

So they are
.

“Why do you think you’re here, Madeleine?”

“Gee, doc, if I knew dat, would I be here in de foist place?”

“That’s very good.”

“Thank you.”

“You sound just like him.”

“Want to see me do Woody Woodpecker?”

“I’ve seen you.”

“Oh. Right, you’ve seen After-Three.”

“I’ve seen you live too.”

“Are you stalking me or what?” Nina just smiles. Madeleine says, “Want to see my evil-out-of-synch-ventriloquist-puppet laughter?”

“I’ve seen it.”

“Want to see me do it naked?”

“I’ve seen you do it topless.”

“Oh. Terrifying, eh?”

“It was very very funny. Madeleine—”

“Nina, are you American?”

“Originally, yes.”

“Where you from?”

“Pittsburgh.”

“My condolences.”

“It’s actually quite nice.”

“Got you.”

Nina smiles. “A little.”

“I’m just saying that our relationship, as it grows and matures and … deepens, will inevitably … change.”

“Just say it, Madeleine, you’re leaving me.”

“What? No! Christine, we can still—we can live together, we can still go camping.”

Christine rolls her eyes, pours herself another glass of wine and doesn’t bother to set the bottle down. She is defending her thesis next week. Madeleine hates herself for wishing Christine would shed ten pounds, feminists are not supposed to feel that way.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?” asks Madeleine, innocent distraction, reminding herself of someone—

“Like you hate me.”

—her dad. “I don’t hate you.”

Christine glares over the rim of her wineglass. Madeleine feels like a weasel, knowing she is lying but unable to say exactly where the lie is, frisking herself to find it. “I just think we should each be free to—”

“Fuck around,” says Christine. “That’s what you want, just say it, you get paid for saying horrible things all the time.” Here we go. “Go ahead, Madeleine, say it in a funny voice.”

Christine is right. But Madeleine doesn’t know how to deviate from the script.

“Where are you going?”

“Out to get cream.”

“Bullshit, Madeleine, do you ever not lie? ‘Hello,’ she lied.”

“We’re out of cream.”

“We’re out of a lot of things.”

Madeleine feels as though she’s leading a double life. Loathsome guilty troll at home. Successful ray of sunshine to the rest of the world. The one who makes it look easy. The person who looks “exactly like my cousin/my best friend in high school/my boyfriend’s sister, maybe you know her.” Photos are produced from wallets and purses; Madeleine never fails to be amazed at the total lack of physical resemblance, and she never fails to smile and say, “Wow, that’s amazing.” Madeleine is familiar. Maybe that’s why she gets away with so much. Why the audience is willing to follow her so far from home. Why there seem to be so many of her. While she fears there may be none at all. Pied Piper without a pipe.

Nina balances a smooth pink stone the size of an egg in the palm of her hand and asks, “Who’s Maurice?”

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Don’t pathologize my work.”

Nina waits.

“I made him up, that’s my job, I make up weird shit all the time, it’s what I get paid for.”

Nina waits.

“I kind of based him on a yucky teacher I had.”

Pad thai will forever taste of conjugal discontent.

“You’ve got so much to say to everyone else, pretend I’m a stranger, Madeleine. Pretend I’m the goddamn waiter.”

She has never told Christine about Mr. March. She has never told anyone, not really. Not much to tell. Dirty old man she never thinks about any more.

Madeleine is a flirtaholic. Everyone has to have a disorder nowadays, like Brownie badges sewn up the sleeve, and that’s hers. If she were a guy she would be an asshole, but she is “endearingly feisty,” a “high-octane pixie,” and has the press to prove it. She tells herself that as long as she does most of the flirting right in front of Christine, it doesn’t count. And it never leads to anything serious like an affair. Except for that one time, which definitely didn’t count. Plus the New York thing.

Deep down, Madeleine knows that what she is addicted to are escape clauses. Backdoor rabbit holes. Flirting: the long wick that leads to the stick of dynamite that can reliably blow up your life and land you in a new one. This is for people who are terrified of being trapped—and more terrified of being abandoned. This is for people for whom sex with a familiar other becomes more and more like having their wounds probed while splayed across the gutted upholstery of a midsummer car wreck.

Some say we keep repeating patterns until we figure out what they are. Madeleine is too busy to find out. It’s all fun until someone loses an eye.

“Christine, where’s my—”

“It’s right in front of you.”

Christine doesn’t even have to look to know it.

“Is it just me or are you incredibly bored too?”

Nina is silent.

“Want to play Parcheesi? Have sex on your hand-knotted Bolivian rug?” Madeleine puffs an imaginary cigar. “Don’t worry, you’re not my type.”

“What’s your type?”

“Oh, you know, masses of pre-Raphaelite hair, tad of a drinking problem, an overdue thesis and a violent streak.”

“Is Christine violent?”

“Naw, just when I drive her insane she’s been known to”—Madeleine grins—“lose it somewhat.”

“What does that look like?”

Madeleine pauses, then springs, hands outstretched, toward Nina’s neck. “Like this!” Nina doesn’t flinch.

Madeleine laughs.

Nina asks, “Has Christine tried to choke you?”

“Well,” says Bugs Bunny, “to know me is to stwangle me.”

Nina waits.

“Look, I’m not here about my relationship, no one’s is perfect. I didn’t come here so I could leave my partner of seven years. Is that like an itch on your belt? Nice work, you must be proud.”

Nina says nothing.

“I mean ‘notch.’”

Nina waits.

“Strangle is an overstatement.”

“Does she put her hands around your neck?”

“Maybe once or twice.”

“Did she squeeze?”

“Briefly. But it’s not like I’m in any danger. She’s the one who gets upset by it. And it’s my fault anyhow, I know where all her buttons are.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Well. This one time….” She takes a deep breath. She has never told anyone this before, and now that she has accidentally grazed the subject, it looks different. It looks ugly. “Well…. I criticized her bean dip and she lost it.”

“Her bean dip?”

Madeleine nods. She sees something flicker across Nina’s face—a smile—and feels a grin stretch the ends of her mouth. She tells the rest of the story through tears of mirth.

Christine was under a lot of pressure with her thesis. She screamed in Madeleine’s face, “You’re completely insensitive!” The demon entered Madeleine on cue and she began riffing—
provoking
, said Christine—“Madeleine, just grow up!”

“‘I’m ony two and a half yeahs owd,’” said Tweety Bird.

“Shut up, Madeleine, please!”

Madeleine laughed like Woody and kept going—
some o’ my best woik, doc
. The hands clamped around Madeleine’s neck and Christine cried and throttled her for a matter of seconds. There is psychodrama. This was psychocomedy.

Madeleine sums up, in her manly broadcaster voice, “It’s never just about the bean dip.”

“What did you do when she began to throttle you?” asks Nina.

“I just went … you know … really calm.”

“Calm?”

“Yeah. Kind of neutral, you know? Like waiting for it to be finished.”

“As though it was familiar.”

Madeleine stares at Nina. Feels her hands growing cool. “Why would you say that?”

“Because of the way you describe your reaction. You don’t seem to have been surprised.”

Madeleine takes a deep breath. “In a way I felt relieved—” she didn’t know she was going to say that.

Nina nods.

After a moment, Madeleine says, “So what do you make of it, doc? Am I, like, some kind of masochist? Apart from deciding to make a living as a comedian, which, it goes without saying….”

Finally Nina says, “I don’t think labels like ‘masochistic’ are very helpful. Especially for women—or anyone for that matter.”

“It’s my own fault, I press her buttons.”

Nina pours a glass of spring water from the pitcher.

“What do you think?” asks Madeleine.

Nina takes a sip, “I think Christine has a lot of buttons.”

Madeleine laughs.

“Have you ever told anyone about the assaults?”

Madeleine looks up as though she has been slapped. It has never occurred to her that the force of Christine’s grip around her neck, the thunk of her own skull against the wall, constitutes anything like abuse. Madeleine does benefits for women’s shelters. She is a grassroots feminist hailed by counterculturalistas and mainstream alike, a liberated lipstick lesbian in expensively distressed leather.
“They’re not assaults,” she says.

“What do you think of them as?”

Madeleine’s mouth is dry but she doesn’t want to reach for the spring water. “Wow,” she drawls, “talk about a
scandale,”
and, resuming her news voice, “‘Feminist Egghead Assaults Funny-Girl Gal-Pal No Laughing Matter!’”

“Madeleine—?”

“‘Intrawoman Violence: The Hate That Dare Not Speak Its Name.’”

“Did I upset you with my choice of word?”

“Isn’t that why you chose it?”

Madeleine is aware that she is behaving predictably: denial, grandiosity, self-pity, self-loathing. The whole textbook. She rises and grabs her knapsack, muttering, “I don’t need this shit,” and leaves.

Madeleine has always admired Bugsy’s ability to escape down convenient rabbit holes and traverse the earth underground. That is what work has been for her. Always a number of things on the go, escape routes and connecting tunnels; head popping up in the midst of a field of carrots, gorging until she is shot at, then ducking in a puff of white smoke and speeding off, looking for that left turn at Albuquerque. It worked, professionally and personally, for quite a while. Then the “things” started happening, and therapy was supposed to be another rabbit hole. But it turns out this one wasn’t dug by Bugs. It belongs to the March Hare.

Maurice is seated at a dainty escritoire. He exudes a bland intensity. Beside him hangs a gilded cage from a stand. In it, a stuffed bird. His movements are small and lead nowhere, compelling and pointless. It becomes clear, however, that a decision has been accumulating behind his smudged glasses. Unhurriedly he opens a drawer in the tiny desk, withdraws a pair of panties, sniffs them, then returns them to the drawer.

That is the long and short of Maurice.

Sometimes he appears in historical garb—as a pilgrim on the
Mayflower
, or blinking tortoise-like from among the famous faces on
Mount Rushmore. Combat soldier, Elmer the Safety Elephant, hippie. Always the glasses and grey suit predominate, with one or two touches—Quaker Oats hat; machine gun and reefer; stop sign, peace sign.

His inertia prevails regardless of what is occurring around him: the fall of Rome, the butter scene from
Last Tango in Paris
, the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And whether facing a high-noon duel or bounding weightlessly over the lunar surface, glasses glinting through the window of his helmet, Maurice always knows where to find the panties—in Ben Cartwright’s saddlebag, under a moon rock—and, invariably, he sniffs them.

He has become a cult figure. One of those characters who break free of their creators; Madeleine recently overheard a teenager on the subway say in tones of delighted disgust, “Ooo, that’s gross, that’s so Maurice!”

A
BOY IN RED JEANS
disappeared into a sunny day long ago, in 1963.

In 1973 he was quietly released from prison. He was not exonerated; he was granted parole. He had been a model prisoner and the authorities had determined that he posed no danger to the community, despite his steadfast refusal to admit guilt.

Oceans of ink were spilled on the Richard Froelich Case, which divided professionals and lay people alike. It became the subject of after-dinner speakers at coroners’ conventions and police conferences. The pathologist from the trial published articles and gave lectures; Inspector Bradley was promoted and addressed meetings of law enforcement agencies from across Canada and the U.S. Both men tirelessly shared their experience of the investigation and trial, intensifying their efforts when books and articles began to appear accusing “the system” of having failed a possibly innocent boy.

Over the years, whenever there was a story about a miscarriage of justice or debate about the death penalty, the Froelich case would be cited. Newspaper articles would appear alongside old school photographs of the boy and the victim. Eternally paired in grainy reproductions, their smiles more and more remote in time—his slicked-back hair from a bygone era, her Peter Pan collar. Older and older, and younger and younger.

As time went by, the case acquired the air of legend. Articles never failed to include certain “haunting details” such as the wildflowers and the cross of bulrushes found over her body. Her underpants over her face. And “the mysterious air force man,” the passing motorist who supposedly had waved from a blue Ford Galaxy, then failed to come forward. Journalists speculated that he might have been the real killer. In the late seventies, a weekly news magazine ran an article that featured an interview with a retired police officer who had been a constable on the case. Lonergan
revealed for the first time that the boy’s father, “a German Jew named Henry Froelich,” had claimed to have seen a war criminal driving that same car in downtown London.

In the eighties a commission of inquiry was set up by the federal government to investigate the presence of war criminals in Canada. Parts of the report were never published, available only via the Access to Information Act, for it turned out that there were possibly thousands of war criminals in Canada—among them, concentration camp guards and an entire SS unit from Eastern Europe, members of which had claimed “conscription” and a healthy hatred of Communists among their credentials in their quest for Canadian citizenship.

Eventually a few cases were brought to trial, and although public opinion was divided on whether these law-abiding senior citizens should be prosecuted after all these years—whether it was justice or “Jewish vendetta,” whether it was democracy at work or playing into the hands of “Soviet propaganda”—Henry Froelich’s story began to look less far-fetched. Journalists, authors and documentary filmmakers theorized about the fate of Henry Froelich, whose body had never been found. Had he stumbled on—to use a term that had become common currency—a “covert operation”? Was he a victim of RCMP dirty tricks? Was the CIA involved?

Sporadic attempts were made to find Richard Froelich and interview him. But he had changed his name, and his whereabouts remained a mystery.