Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“Oh Mimi’s been an angel,” says Sharon.

Jack has put Mrs. McCarroll’s boarding pass and itinerary on the coffee table. McCarroll is in civvies. Jack is in uniform; it’s just before ten A.M. He has used his rank as a senior officer to scrounge a more direct flight to the States for Sharon. The least he can do.

Sharon is staring down at her coffee table. She seems lost in its glossy surface, her smile only now beginning to fade. No one says anything. Jack wonders if he ought to leave after all. Tears fall on the glass tabletop. A moan, childlike, comes from somewhere — from her. Her face is half hidden by the forward fall of light brown hair. The moan rises, patient, relaxed even, until it’s a wail; she doesn’t cover her face, she is past that. Jack glances from Sharon to her husband, but Blair just watches her for a moment before putting an arm around her and taking her hand in his. The top of her head touches his chin. He stares down and off to the side; only one can cry at a time.

Jack hesitates, then gets up carefully. But Blair has done this a hundred times now, so has his wife; their movements are practised, her grief is shocking and intimate only to an outsider. Jack waits for an appropriate moment to exit. Why does the earth open and take some lives and leave others intact? The earth opened and took their child. My child happened not to be taken. He reaches for his hat on the couch—

“Would you like some coffee, Jack? I was just going to make some,” says Blair.

Jack is taken by surprise, uncertain how to answer — surely he should not stay a moment longer. But Sharon blows her nose, looks up and, with a smile to her husband—“I’ll make it, hon.”

Jack has an interview with the police at ten-thirty, but he is not about to run out on these two if company is what they want. Sharon turns and walks toward the kitchen, only a step or two away in the tiny bungalow, and Jack hears the tap go on. He sits down again. The police have everyone filing one by one into various offices at the mess, the language school and the curling arena — something to do with the investigation. Whatever it is, it must be pretty straightforward; the interviews are spaced a couple of minutes apart. He checks his watch discreetly — it’s five past ten.

From where Jack is sitting he can glimpse Sharon’s movements, bare arms, dark A-line dress, hair falling back from her face as she reaches up to the cupboards. McCarroll’s wife is so pretty it breaks your heart. He feels his throat constrict, he leans forward, coughs. “So Blair, you’ll be joining Sharon soon, I take it.”

“That’s right, her folks’ll meet her and I’ll join her later with Claire.”

The fragile refraction of a normal conversation. With Claire . A man joining his wife, bringing their child. Jack is very careful. Blair is very careful.

“It’s a decent flight she’s on,” says Jack.

“Yeah, thanks Jack.”

“Oh don’t thank me, you’re lucky, that’s all,” and so that his foolish words don’t hang in the air, he adds quickly, “Virginia is beautiful, I hear.”

“It’s God’s country.”

Silence.

There is a packing box in the corner of the room. Labelled “Toys” in red felt-tip pen. Soon the McCarrolls will be gone. Jack sees the room empty, white and waiting, the way it was before they arrived. The way it will be when the next family moves in, their temporary things anchored to the walls, the floors.

Their conversation is in disguise. It drapes itself in the tones and emphases of a different type of conversation — one you might have at the water cooler — in order to give manageable shape to … what? A ghost. Grief.

“Keepin’ us informed,” says Blair, nodding.

“What’s that?” says Jack.

“The police. They’ve been real good about keeping us informed.”

The disguise is slipping. Keeping us informed . Jack can’t think what to say. Behind the mask of their conversation is what has been in this room all along: absence. They are keeping her alive with their chat, with the promise of coffee in a moment, with the box marked “Toys.” The police, the investigation, all the tasks — even accompanying her body down to the States — it all amounts to a busy scaffolding, a sturdy context for her continued existence. Soon the tasks will be finished, and the whole skeletal structure will stand empty. Silent. Keeping us informed . Impossible for the father to talk about what the doctor found — what the police informed him the doctor found. And yet impossible for the father not to talk about his daughter. Last week she baked brownies for show-and-tell, she got eight out of ten on her spelling test and he helped her with a book report on Black Beauty —the teacher has not yet marked the book reports but the father is sure she did well. Two days ago she exhibited vaginal bruising and bleeding sustained just before she died, as well as thumb marks on her neck; she was listed as a “healthy normal prepubescent female” on her autopsy report. That’s what’s new. That’s what she has done lately. He has to talk about his child. He has to be careful, that’s all.

“They’ve got some good men there, the OPP,” says Jack.

“Oh yeah.” Blair nods. “They’re sharp.”

“That’s for darn sure.”

“I just hope they find their damn war criminal so they can get on with finding….”

Jack has been feeling slightly disoriented. He realizes it now as he blinks at McCarroll and says, “What’s that?”

“Police told me the Froelich boy saw a car on the road that afternoon, a blue Ford, and Henry says it belongs to some war criminal he saw last week, or — I can’t make it out, it doesn’t matter.” His voice drops off and his head droops.

Jack parts his lips — they stick as though with glue. “I haven’t heard anything about a war criminal.”

“I think it’s on the QT.”

From the kitchen comes the sound of the fridge door opening, something being poured, milk.

Blair says, “I thought Henry might’ve mentioned it.”

Jack’s face is on fire. He looks down at the smear on the coffee table from Sharon’s tears, and clears his throat. “What’s Hank saying exactly?”

“Well,” says Blair, relaxing back in his chair — it’s a relief, this part of the story, it’s clean, not obscene, interesting even. “He’s saying this car, this brand-new blue Ford — you know the new Galaxy coupe — came down the road the boy was on — he was out running like he does with his sister and his dog, you know? And he says this car comes along with an air force man in it who waved, but the boy couldn’t tell who it was on account of the sun was on the windshield—”

“How do you take your coffee, Jack?” Sharon is here with a tray. Her eyes are puffy but she’s smiling. Jack makes a move to help but she sets the tray down. “You men just sit and relax.”

Claire would have grown up to be just as pretty, thinks Jack, just as much that rare find, a sweet and happy wife. They will have more children, surely. Jack says, “Cream, two sugars, thank you Sharon.”

“Thanks hon,” says Blair.

Both men watch Sharon fix the coffees, her wrist stirring, fingers clinking the spoon against the rim. They each take a mug and she turns and walks back toward the kitchen with the tray, but pauses halfway, as though she has forgotten something. She stands for a moment, her back to them, unmoving. They watch her. After a moment she continues into the kitchen.

Jack says, “What about this — war criminal? Is that what you said?”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” says Blair. “Henry Froelich says he saw this character in London a couple of weeks ago, same car, same dent, right down to the bumper sticker and a number or two on the plate. Told the police about it, that’s how come I know. Said this fella was a Nazi. Knew him in a camp in the war.”