Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

Her heart accelerated, a creature trapped in her chest; was she going to die? An inky feeling like shame in her stomach. A person was hurrying toward her car from the gas station on the corner. Had he realized that she no longer knew how to be? No, he continued past.

Her heart slowed to a walk. The windshield wipers smeared light around the glass and she looked away, but the yellow smear followed her gaze.

“Maybe I just need glasses.”

“Has this kind of thing ever happened before?” asks the therapist.

The room is panelled in fabric and wood, soothing terracotta tones, spatial sedative. On a side table is a pitcher of spring water, a shallow box of sand with a miniature rake, and a box of Kleenex. There is a couch with a big pillow for punching, there are seashells, a crystal, an air purifier, several degrees on the wall, a Georgia O’Keeffe print. Madeleine takes a deep breath and mumbles, “Few weeks ago.”

She hears in her voice the sullen muffle of adolescence. Regression proceeding on schedule.

The therapist waits, serene in her swivel chair. Some sort of handmade-without-cruelty earrings dangle discreetly from her ears. Nina. Madeleine sits crunched in an armchair opposite. She is cottoning onto the therapy game: therapist oozes impersonal compassion until client can’t take silence any more and blurts, “I killed my mother!” But first the disclaimers: “I’m exhausted. After-Three is in production, plus I’m doing a workshop of an original alternative-theatre piece for no money — why? Because the director has pink hair.”

The therapist waits. At a dollar twenty-five a minute.

Madeleine tells what happened the last time she did stand-up:

The old Masonic Temple in downtown Toronto is packed. Light spills from the stage onto the heads and shoulders of the standing crowd. Ceiling fans spinning overhead do nothing to dispel the heat generated by hot bands, arid performance art, flaming flamenco and The Diesel Divas, a choir of heavy-set women in plaid shirts and brush cuts who sing a repertoire of sacred music by Bach. A sold-out benefit for a downtown battered women’s shelter.

Madeleine looks out over the mass of heads silhouetted and shading into darkness toward the back. Physically loose and mentally coiled, with her usual blend of butterflies and focus, this is the one place she feels thoroughly at home. The safest place on earth.

She banters with the audience, tailoring bits for them. Riffs on various news items: the search for the gay gene—“Why not search for something really useful like the stupid-driver gene?”—Reagan’s waxy nuclear buildup, Margaret Thatcher’s iron handbag, Prime Minister Mulroney as auctioneer. She takes shots at political correctness and Jerry Falwell alike, whips through Orgasms of the Rich and Famous, and Virginia Woolf Writes an Episode of Love Boat . Fizzy stuff, fun. They keep calling for “Maurice! Do Maurice!”

“You’re sick!” she calls back.

“Maurice!”

Now she knows how the Beatles felt. Bearded, high and tie-dyed, the crowd clamouring nonetheless, “‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’!”

“How’m I supposed to do Maurice? The outfit alone, come on.”

“Do the puppet! The puppet!!”

She is agile in a pair of U.S. Marine Corps surplus jungle boots. On top she wears a West German Army singlet with the eagle of the Bundesrepublik emblazoned on the chest, under which she is braless. Official Überdyke-wear.

She glances up at the neo-Gothic mouldings of the Masonic Temple. “I think it fitting that we are gathered this evening to raise some filthy lucre for a feminist cause here in a former bastion of the patriarchy.”

Applause.

Her hair is soaked and she can feel sweat trickling down her back, but someone must have switched on the air conditioner because she is suddenly chilly. She listens for the telltale laugh-killing hum of the cooling system but can’t hear it over the crowd. She takes a sip of water from a plastic bottle.

She allows her eyes to unfocus and bulge. Her chin retracts, gut swells. The audience laughs and chants, “Mau-rice! Mau-rice! Mau-rice!”

You never know what people are going to fixate on. Maurice isn’t even that funny. Someone throws a pair of panties onto the stage, but Maurice doesn’t take the bait. She releases him, puts the underpants on her head like a balaclava, then slingshots them into the wings.

She takes another sip, allowing the water to trickle down her neck, and showers with the rest, removing her shirt with masculine insouciance and using it as a towel. It’s easier to take your shirt off if you have small breasts — Madeleine wonders if she’d have the nerve to do it if she were stacked, rack and pinion. It’s also easier to come out as a lesbian if you look like the girl next door, and have a prime-time television show — it’s not like you’re going to lose your job and your apartment. Madeleine has a long list of why it’s easy for her, she keeps no account of how it’s hard.

Taking your shirt off is a cheap shot but it works — the rubber chicken of feminist comedy. She squeakily unscrews, polishes and oils her nipples, then screws them back on. The audience goes hysterical and she takes the opportunity to catch her breath — she must be tired. She doesn’t do a lot of stand-up any more, and she didn’t really have time to do this gig but was reluctant to say no to a good cause.

She paces herself. Happily this is a smoke-free venue; since it’s a feminist event, the organizers have tried to make it a hospitable environment for the smoke-intolerant. Feminism is as yet only ankle-deep in the new wave of “intolerances,” which include perfume, lactose, yeast and the presence of others enjoying a beer — part of the inevitable splintering of a movement that has achieved so much — perhaps because it has achieved so much.

Friends are here tonight. Olivia — she of the pink hair. She is an alternative-theatre director, tastefully pierced, whom Madeleine met when Christine got her to direct a Komedy Kabaret for International Women’s Day. Also out there somewhere is Madeleine’s high school friend Tommy, as is her main After-Three man, Tony, along with friends from many of the circles that overlap and proliferate to make community. Christine is not here—“You don’t mind, do you, sweetie? I’ve seen that material before and I’ve got a paper due.”

Madeleine waits till the crowd is quiet, then breaks into her trademark evil-out-of-synch-ventriloquist-puppet laughter.

They are still laughing when she experiences an odd sensation: as though she has just come to. She wonders how long it’s been since she did the puppet-laughter thing. It can’t have been more than seconds, because the laughter is just peaking, but she feels as though it were ages ago. She continues grinning demonically and takes the opportunity to look for a square of light under the exit sign. There must be a door open, admitting the sharp April night — it’s freezing in here, her sweat has turned icy; then she becomes aware of a collective motion out there among the dark heads and shoulders, small shapes fluttering like leaves — people are fanning themselves with their programs.

She blinks the sweat from her eyes and feels the salt sting. “If these walls could talk, eh? I wonder what the Masons talked about that was so secret. Or maybe it’s the idea of secrecy, it gives you power. That’d be so typical WASP, not even to have any secrets, just let the rest of us keep jamming our ears up against the wall with a glass, hoping to hear how to invest or which judge is going to hear our case or how to get our Yorkshire pudding to come out right. Maybe they just bowled in here. Did the secret handshake.” She does a secret handshake that takes over her whole body.