Way the Crow Flies (80 page)

Colleen laughs.

Madeleine reaches for a blade of grass. “We could light outta here,” she says, chewing the tender pale shoot. Head for the territories.”

“What territories?”

“Well. You know, we could just ride away.”

Colleen takes a drag from her cigarette. “You always run into something no matter where you go. Turns out you’re someplace after all.” She exhales. “Know what I mean?”

Madeleine feels her eyes widen in mystification, but she nods and, in a tone she hopes sounds both weary and comprehending, replies, “Yeah.”

She is about to suggest that they make a fire when Colleen says, “That’s what happened when we exscaped from the training school.”

“Is that when you rode to Calgary?”

“Yeah.” Colleen spits out a speck of tobacco, narrows her eyes and runs the tip of her tongue along her lower lip. “They brung us back.”

“How come you …” Madeleine doesn’t want to sound as though she is correcting Colleen, so she likewise says, “exscaped?”

“’Cause there was one or two sick fuckers there, eh?”

Madeleine’s desire to build a fire dies even as it occurs to her to wish she had brought a jacket. When she speaks again she tries to sound casual, this time not in order to convince Colleen that she knows what Colleen is talking about, but in order to reassure herself that she does not. She forms a polite question. “What did they have?”

“Not a disease,
Dummkopf,”
replies Colleen.

Madeleine swallows and waits. She doesn’t know the way back to the car. She doesn’t know where they are or how long it has taken to get here.

“They were sick in the head,” says Colleen. “They liked little kids.”

Madeleine stares at the cold firepit and doesn’t ask.

Colleen says, “Know what I mean?” Madeleine shakes her head. “Good,” says Colleen. “Hope you never find out.” She takes a big drag.

Madeleine starts to shiver. She concentrates on the red ember glowing at the end of Colleen’s cigarette. The world seems suddenly huge and chilly, a place where she might roll and rattle about endlessly, like a marble. She watches the red dot arc from Colleen’s fingers down into the stream, where it sizzles and disappears. She wants to go home and watch television, she doesn’t want to live in a trailer after all.

Colleen stands up and makes a clicking sound with her mouth, and the pony turns and shambles up to them. Madeleine gets up. She waits for Colleen to mount first, but Colleen says, “Hop on.” Madeleine feels too heavy to jump up this time, but before she knows it Colleen is boosting her. She swings her leg over and lurches forward, grasping a handful of mane as the pony shifts his weight. Colleen says, “Hang on,” and starts to run. The pony follows, and Madeleine does hang on.

By the time they get back to the trailer it’s dark, the crickets are singing and Madeleine’s legs are still trembling, her heart still ping-ponging.

Colleen says, “You can come back and ride any time you want.”

The grown-ups are sitting out front on kitchen chairs, with glasses of wine, and Elizabeth is wrapped in a Hudson’s Bay blanket, asleep in her wheelchair. A kerosene lamp burns on a stump and
Mrs. Froelich is bent over Ricky’s guitar, strumming and singing softly, “‘Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing, where have all the flowers gone, long time ago …?’”

A lump forms in Madeleine’s throat, and she hangs back in the deeper shadow of the trailer. She watches Colleen walk into the pool of light and Mr. Froelich’s encircling arm. Madeleine skirts the light and comes up behind her father. She leans on the back of his chair and he says softly, “Did you have fun, sweetie?” She nods, even though she is behind him. They wait until the song has ended, then Jack gets up.

Karen puts her arms around him and says, “Thank you,” in his ear. He feels her about to step back again, and holds her briefly. He feels her return the pressure of his embrace for an instant, then she turns away. It has taken all of a few seconds. Henry Froelich grasps his hand with both his own.
“Danke
, Jack. You are a
mensch.”

As they pull away, Madeleine folds her arms on the open window frame, rests her chin and watches the Froelichs recede into the night. Colleen raises her hand so Madeleine does too, and waves goodbye.

But Colleen is not waving. She is simply holding her hand up, perfectly still. Like an Indian in a western:
How
. Confident that she will not be giving offence by following Colleen’s lead, Madeleine stills her own hand. And in doing so, she realizes that Colleen is not saying
How
. She is showing Madeleine the scar in the palm of her hand.

The Rambler rounds a bend in the track, and the light of the Froelichs’ patch of world disappears.

When they pull into the driveway, Madeleine says, “Dad, I just remembered something.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m not allowed to play with Colleen.”

“You’re not? Who told you that?”

“Maman.”

Jack hesitates. The lights are off in the house, Mimi and Mike are still out. He says, “Well, I won’t mention it if you don’t.”

When he makes love to his wife that night, he imagines a thinner woman—her hair less rich, her cheek almost gaunt, her body less supple—a woman less beautiful than his wife.

T
HE
B
OUCHERS’
H
OUSE
sits blank at the corner of Columbia and St. Lawrence. Like Lisa’s and Colleen’s and Claire’s, it no longer remembers Madeleine or how she so often entered its front door and played in its rooms and backyard. Her footprints and those of her friends, the echoes of their voices etched in the air, all have disappeared. The houses are waiting for the next families to move in and to believe that they own them, that the things they do beneath those roofs and on those lawns, the games, the meals, Christmases and dreams, are tangible, indelible. Where do they go? All the remember-whens?

The night before Madeleine is to testify at Ricky’s trial, Mimi makes her favourite supper: wiener schnitzel. She takes it straight from the frying pan and puts it onto Madeleine’s plate, saying, “What would you like to wear tomorrow,
ma p’tite?”

“Something not too scratchy,” says Madeleine.

Mike says, “How come I can’t go?”

“You’ve got baseball practice,” says Jack.

“I quit.”

“That’s what you think,” Jack says, and salts his schnitzel.

Madeleine looks up at her father to see how angry he is, and he smiles at her.

“Madeleine wants me to come,” Mike says gruffly. “Don’t you?”

Madeleine looks from her father to her brother and mumbles, “Yeah.”

“See?” says Mike.

Jack ignores the boy.

Madeleine says, “How come I have to testify when I already told the police?”

“That’s part of our justice system,” says Jack. “The accused and the public have the right to hear all the evidence in open court.” It will all be over soon. “And you’ll be under oath.”

“Do I have to swear on the Bible?”

“Yup,” says Jack. “Just tell the truth, like you did last Halloween,” he tells her.

Madeleine’s stomach closes.

Mimi says, “What about last Halloween?”

Jack says, “That’s classified,” and winks at Madeleine. She forms a smile with one side of her mouth. He reaches over and pats her on the head, saying, “We’re right proud of you, sweetie.”

“I’ve got a stomach ache.”

“You’ve got butterflies in your stomach,” he says. “That’s natural.” Madeleine sees butterflies—a storm of them—yellow…. “Just tell the truth.”

Mike says, “You better or they’ll hang him.”

Jack slaps the table, and Mimi jumps along with the cutlery. “That’s not true,” he says. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Everyone’s saying it.”

“Who’s everyone? Arnold Pinder’s father? Answer me.”

“Jack,” says Mimi.

Jack takes a breath and says to his wife, “What’s for dessert?”

Jack tucks her into bed next to Bugs Bunny and obliges her by kissing the rabbit’s plastic cheek. “Why don’t we read something,” he says, putting down his Scotch, reaching for the book on her bedside table,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?” He flips through the book.

“Sometimes is it—? Can a lie ever be good?”

He glances up. “What that’s, sweetie? What do you mean?”

“Like. Say … in a war.”

“You mean when a soldier is being interrogated by the enemy,”

“Yeah.”

“Well, the best policy is to say nothing at all—apart from your name, rank and serial number. If you lie, you might get caught in it.”

“What if there isn’t a war on?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, it’s almost never all right to lie. Lies are self-perpetuating, do you know what that means?”

“No.”

“It means that one lie leads to another, until you have what’s known as a domino effect.”

Dominoes is a game. Everyone gets it for Christmas. No one knows how to play it. Now is not the time to ask about dominoes. “But Dad?” Now is also not the time to mention someone’s life depending on a lie in a courtroom, because Dad will know she is talking about Ricky Froelich and she will have no choice tomorrow but to tell what she really saw—didn’t see. Even Madeleine’s questions are lies designed to hide what she is really asking. “What if you have to tell a lie to make people believe the truth?” she asks. He lowers his glass and looks at her. From the mouths of babes. She can’t possibly know anything. He sets the book aside. “Why do you ask that?”

Madeleine swallows.

“Have you been reading something, old buddy? Did you see something on TV that made you wonder?”

She nods, yes—she is not really lying. She has been reading something. She has seen things on TV. They often make her wonder.

He takes a big breath and smiles. “You’re going to be a lawyer when you grow up.”

“I don’t want to be a lawyer, Dad.”

“You can be whatever you want to be, you can be an astronaut, or an engineer—”

“I want to be a comedian.”

“That’s right.” He laughs and rubs her head. “You’ve posed a very complex question. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”

Madeleine feels sorry for her father. He thinks she has a good head on her shoulders. His
Deutsches Mädchen
. His spitfire. He doesn’t know she is a liar. His sore eye looks sad. “Thanks,” she says.

She sees him as though through the crack in the door of a dark closet. She is in among the coats and battered board games, and he is
out there sitting innocently on the edge of her bed, tucking her in. When she comes out of the closet, the shadows follow her but he doesn’t see them. Because he is good.

He says, “That is what’s known as an ethical question.”
Ethical
. It sounds like gasoline. He says, “Sometimes, the truth lies somewhere in between.”

The truth lies
.

“Sometimes, you have to assess the whole situation. Do what’s known as a cost-benefit analysis, to see how the truth will best be served. That’s also called diplomacy.”

Sometimes, with Dad, you ask for one definition and you get the whole dictionary.

“Nine times out of ten, however, the truth is pretty cut and dried.”

“Like at Halloween?” she asks

“What about Halloween?”

“When I hit the tree and wrote stuff in soap?”

“You wrote stuff in soap?”

Madeleine reddens. “Yeah.”

“I don’t remember that…. You soaped someone’s windows?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Whose?”

“… A teacher’s.”

“I see.” He nods. “I don’t think you mentioned that.”

Madeleine shakes her head. “But I told on myself.”

“Good. You told your teacher? And what did he say?”

“He said, ‘I won’t tell if you don’t.’”

“Well, he was as good as his word. What did you write?”

Madeleine looks at her bedspread. Chenille highways, mountain paths leading in all directions. “A word.”

“What word?”

“A bird.”

“You wrote the name of a bird? What kind of bird?”

“Um”—she swallows—“peahen.”

“Peahen?” He smiles. “What’d you write that for?”

Madeleine shrugs.

“Was that something you learned in Mr. Marks’s class?”

“March.”

“Was that part of your science lesson?”

“Health,” says Madeleine.

“Health? What’s that got to do with health?”

“Exercises.”

“What exercises?”

“For muscles.”

“What’s a peahen got to do with that?”

“It’s a girl peacock.”

“I know what it is, I just don’t see what it’s got to do with health class.”

Madeleine doesn’t say anything. Jack looks at her. “No wonder you soaped his window.”

Madeleine waits.

“It was wrong, but you owned up to it.”

She nods.

“It takes guts to tell the truth sometimes. That’s what you’ve got. Let me tell you something, old buddy. If you ever find yourself wondering what’s the right thing to do—because, as you get older, you’ll find the truth is not always what it seems—when you find yourself in a tough situation, just ask yourself, ‘What is the hardest thing I could do right now? What is the toughest choice I could make?’ And that’s how you’ll know the difference between the truth and a whole bunch of … excuses. The truth will always be the hardest thing.”

His knuckles are white around his glass, with its slick of ice and amber at the bottom.

“’Night-night, sweetie.”