Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

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?”