Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

Madeleine bends to her drawing, her tongue toying with a molar that has come loose, concentrating on the Boy Wonder disguised as a baby in a rocket-powered pram in pursuit of the Joker. The afternoon glows grey outside although it is not yet two-thirty. The patient rain embroiders the puddles that have formed in the shallow depressions at either end of the teeter-totters, beneath each swing and at the foot of the slide. Beyond the baseball diamond, the bungalows and duplexes of the PMQs are hunkered down but cheerful in their rainbow colours, all the brighter against the pewter sky.

Madeleine directs her gaze across Algonquin Drive, to the farmer’s field — the farmer with the fabled shotgun. There is activity over there. Cars are pulling up and parking on the shoulder of the road — ordinary ones and several black-and-white OPP cruisers.

She recalls the poor dog trapped in the stormpipe. Did it get out? Did it drown? She feels a terrible sorrow coming on, and consoles herself with the prospect of asking her father what happened to the dog. He’ll know. She returns her eyes to her drawing and remembers that they were supposed to do art on an Easter theme. She draws a speech bubble for Robin and in it she prints, “Holy Thursday, Batman!”

She lifts her eyes from her drawing with satisfaction and studies the back of Grace Novotny’s head and shoulders. Grace’s profile is partially visible, contorted as she is over her desk in the manner common to all when colouring. She is licking her chapped lips, breathing through her mouth because her nose is plugged. Grace doesn’t usually do anything without her eyes wandering a great deal, but today she is concentrating extra hard, perhaps because of the bandages on her hands. Madeleine can see the yellow pencil crayon sticking up from Grace’s filthy fist. What can she be drawing?

Madeleine looks out the window again and sees cars parked on both sides of the road now. In the field, a line of men in rain ponchos comes into view, walking slowly, shoulder to shoulder, across the field. They are looking for something very small, thinks Madeleine. And valuable. A watch, or a diamond.

Beside the window, Claire’s desk sits empty. It’s as though she were away sick with the flu. She will be back tomorrow.

Madeleine raises her hand. “Miss Lang, may I please sharpen my pencil?”

“Yes, Madeleine, you may.”

On her way back from the pencil sharpener, Madeleine slows when she gets to Grace’s desk and gazes in wonder on Grace’s picture. A storm of yellow butterflies.

There are so many, so many it’s dizzying, each one perfectly drawn and coloured in, each wing intricately outlined, no two the same, like snowflakes. It’s so good, you could probably make wallpaper out of it.

Miss Lang lifts the needle from the record and it’s as if the whole class has been in the court of Sleeping Beauty. Everyone looks up groggily, tousled and calm. They hand in their work, and it turns out there was some very good art done that day.

“They were looking for Claire,” says Colleen. “I seen them too.”

“That’s a dumb place to look,” says Madeleine. “Right out in the open? In a field?” They are walking up St. Lawrence Avenue. While they never leave the schoolyard together, they have taken to drifting toward one another at some point if Madeleine is on her own.

“No it isn’t,” says Colleen.

The world is suffused with rain glow, the air soft and scented, all so vivid and promising; as though the three o’clock bell had heralded a widening of the world, a release into the future, unknown and yet contained within a frame, like a movie screen. Madeleine savours a keen anticipation. Something is going to happen. Something wonderful.

She says, “It is so, Colleen, it’s dumb, because if Claire was in a field in broad daylight they’d see her right away, unless she was hiding, and who would hide in a field, and besides she’s lost and you can’t get lost in a field right across from the school.” Madeleine takes a breath and adds, “Stunned one.” She steps back, hoping for a reckoning. But Colleen neglects to take the bait.

Madeleine glances over her shoulder to see Mike and his friends following at a secure distance, like bodyguards. She is about to point them out but Colleen has said something. “What’d you say?”

“That’s because they don’t expect to find her alive,” Colleen repeats.

It takes Madeleine a moment, and then it’s as though she had stumbled down an unexpected step. And the world is a different colour. Metallic now, no longer lambent. The warm feeling of being in a movie is gone. Now she is not in anything. Except the rain. And it has no borders that mean anything at all.

That night, she requests Winnie the Pooh . There is no shame in returning to old favourites. And her father says one is never too old to appreciate great literature. She opts not to do the voices, requesting that he read it all. She contemplates the stick in the water rushing beneath the bridge and it soothes her mind. But when it comes time for him to turn out her light, she asks, “Dad, do they expect to find Claire alive?”

Jack pauses, his hand on the switch. He returns and sits on the edge of her bed.

“Sure they do.”

“Then how come they were looking for her in a field?”

He turns and glances around the room. “Where’s old Bugsy?” He finds him under the bed, plucks the nap off his ears and tucks him in beside her, saying, “They figure maybe she dropped something in the field and that’ll help them find her.”

“Maybe she left a trail.”

“Maybe she did.” Jack leans down to kiss her and she puts her arms around his neck, as she often does, refusing to let him go. He tickles her and she releases him. He makes it halfway to the door.

“What if she got kidnapped?”

“… Well there’d be a note.”

“I thought so.”

“Don’t you worry about Claire, she’ll be home before you know it.” He turns off her light.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to die soon?”

He laughs. “Are you kiddin’? Tough old roosters don’t die in a hurry.”

“Everybody dies.”

“You know what, Madeleine?” and his tone is no longer mollifying, it’s factual. “That day is so far away it’s not even worth thinking about.”

“What if there’s an air raid? Would the siren go off like in October?”

He looks her in the eye. “You know what NORAD is?” He leans in the doorway, framed by the hall light. “It’s a big early warning system that would kick into action long before anyone could get over here with a bomb. We’d send one of our fighters up to blast it out of the sky and that would be it.”

“Dad?”

“Go to sleep now, old buddy.”

“Is Claire dead?”

“Nooo!”—he chuckles—“don’t you worry, now. You know what?”

“What?”

“There’s an old saying: ‘Don’t shake hands with the Devil before you meet him.’”

Madeleine lets him believe he has comforted her. “’Night, Dad.”

Jack heads downstairs and out the door, telling Mimi he needs a breath of fresh air. He’s not lying. But he also needs to make a phone call.

Madeleine strokes Bugs’s long ears back from his merry forehead. “Don’t worry, Bugs.” She doesn’t repeat her dad’s comment about the Devil, however, because, while it’s meant to reassure you that the Devil is nowhere near, implicit is the idea that, sooner or later, you will in fact meet him.

CLAIRE’S PHOTO IS ON the cover of the London Free Press . Madeleine sees it when she opens the door to get the milk from the front step. The photo is a little smudgy because it’s a black-and-white reproduction of Claire’s school picture — the one everyone had taken in the gym last November. But it is unmistakeably Claire smiling up from the front porch next to the milk. And the caption: Missing Child . Claire is famous. Madeleine carries the paper up with the milk, exclaiming, “Extra, extra, read all about it!”