Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“Call if you need anything.”

After lunch, Jack walks with Vic Boucher back across the parade square. A group of cadets emerges from the rec centre looking freshly scrubbed, gym bags over their shoulders. A number of cars are parked out front of the PX, women coming and going, some with strollers, others balancing groceries and toddlers, stopping to chat. Jack says, “Better double-check what the wife wanted me to pick up,” as though using the pay phone were an afterthought.

But a cadet slips through the glass door and dumps a pocketful of change down the slot before Jack gets there. A Malaysian lad. Longdistance sweetheart — this could take a while.

“Come into the rec centre with me and use the one in the lounge, I’ve got the keys.”

“Naw,” says Jack. “I’ll remember once I’m in there.” And heads toward the PX.

“ À demain ,” says Vic.

Till tomorrow? Right, dinner. Jack must remember to tell Mimi the moment he gets home. We’re having guests tomorrow night . He stands in the entrance and gazes into the grocery store. Strolls up one aisle, then down another. Buys a pack of gum.

When he comes back out of the store, Vic is gone. Tiny lies the size of splinters, they must be business as usual for Simon. SOP. Jack glances at the phone booth — still occupied. He heads home. There’s no rush.

Madeleine runs as fast as she can up St. Lawrence Avenue, leaving a wake of green cuttings — it’s here! Christopher Columbus’s yellow ship rocks merrily across a painted sea on the side of the green Mayflower moving van. The rear door is already open, the ramp is down and a man in overalls is wheeling off her bike. She can feel already the spring of the saddle, pedals firm beneath her feet, trusty handlebar grips — oh my bike!

“Whose is this?” says the mover and winks, holding up the little blue bomber. He smells like tar; it’s a friendly smell.

She rides over the grass, around the house and down the driveway, her legs working like pistons, before returning to the van, torn between the open road and the open truck where all their stuff is stacked in boxes and under blankets. She watches, seated on her bike, feet flat on the ground — she will have to ask her father to raise the seat, she has grown.

Mike is there with his new friend, Roy Noonan. Madeleine can tell they are making their voices sound deeper than they really are — shortening their sentences, forcing down their pitch. Roy has a black brush cut and braces and round pink cheeks. He is holding a balsa-wood airplane and Mike is holding the remote control. They have serious blank expressions on their faces. Madeleine knows better than to hope they might let her play with them. Who cares? The moving van is here!

Men carry down huge boxes and pieces of furniture — a quilted pad slips aside to reveal Maman’s vanity table, that most intimate of altars momentarily on public view, like a lady passing a window in her lingerie. This is the first time the McCarthys have seen their own furniture since they moved from Alberta to Germany. It has been in storage. Here comes the couch where Madeleine curled up with her dad and read the paper before she could read, and that must be the glass top for the coffee table, marked FRAGILE! And what could be in the big box marked RCA VICTOR THIS SIDE UP? The television set! Cabinet of delights, last illuminated four years ago.

Things you forgot you owned are in those boxes. Our stuff. All the things we packed in Germany and all the things that slept in storage, reunited, first with one another, now with us. Toys and dolls that have made the incredible journey will emerge dapper and refreshed, “Of course we didn’t smother.” The cuckoo clock will awaken, mounted once more above the stove, a perpetual air of suspense hovering about its little door. Our own kitchen plates will smile up at us from the table, “We made it.” Our cutlery, which will sleep in new but familiar berths in the kitchen drawer, and remember those little egg cups shaped like hens? We’ll use those tomorrow morning. Here comes your own bed, borne shoulder-high in triumph down the ramp, and in that box are the precious photo albums that have evolved from black and white to colour — the next time we lift a cover, it will be to look on memories that are yet once more removed from the present. All these things have found their way to this specific spot on earth, 72 St. Lawrence Avenue, Centralia, Ontario, Canada. Our stuff.

As usual, kids gather tentatively around the van. A couple of kids who don’t count because they’re too young — their bikes still have training wheels. And the Hula Hoop girl.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

They watch the van for a while. The Hula Hoop girl has curly copper hair, freckles and cat-eye glasses. She turns and asks, “What’s your name?”

“Madeleine McCarthy. What’s yours?”

“Auriel Boucher.”

They watch the van some more.

“Where did you just move from?” asks Auriel.

“Germany.”

“We lived there too.”

“Neat. I was born in Edmonton.”

“Neat, I was born in England.”

“Neat.”

It turns out that Auriel is hilarious, and she doesn’t care if she’s fat. Plump, that is. She’s not really fat anyway, once you get to know her. And freckles are nice.

“I like your bike.”

“Thanks,” says Madeleine. “I like your top.”

“Thanks,” says Auriel. “It improves my bust.” They burst out laughing.

You can’t tell if Auriel actually has a bust behind her polka-dot pop-top, but that’s beside the point. Another girl joins them, Lisa Ridelle, in brand-new Keds.

“Hi Auriel.”

“Hi Lisa.”

“Hi,” says Madeleine.

Wispy white-blonde pageboy, pale blue eyes, Lisa laughs at everything Auriel says. Soon she is laughing at everything Madeleine says.

“You laugh exactly like Muttly on Penelope Pitstop,” says Madeleine, and Lisa laughs her rasping laugh.

“She’s right, you do!” agrees Auriel, imitating her. Madeleine joins in and they all do the wheezy laugh like the cartoon dog. They have known one another for five minutes and already they have their own laugh.

“What grade are you going into?”

“Four.”

“Me too.”

“Me three!”

Lisa can turn her eyelids inside out, it’s really creepy. “Do it again, Lisa.” Auriel knows how to paralyze your hand. “Squeeze my thumb as hard as you can. Okay, now let go but don’t straighten your fingers….” Then she tickles your wrist lightly. “Okay, now try and open your fingers.”

Madeleine can barely get them open. “Wow, I’m paralyzed.”

“Do it to me now, Auriel.”

“Want to set up a lemonade stand, you guys?” It’s a hot day, they could make a fortune. But Lisa and Auriel are going to a baseball tournament overnight in the Bouchers’ van. Auriel is catcher and Lisa plays shortstop. You can easily picture Auriel wearing the leather chest protector, the face cage and a backward cap — she would look exactly like a turtle. In a good way.

“Auriel, come get your tea, pet, Daddy’s on his way.” Auriel’s mum is calling from the Bouchers’ driveway. She stands next to the open VW van with an armload of baseball bats and shin pads. She has the same curly hair.

“Coming, Mums,” calls Auriel.

Oh, to be like Auriel Boucher and Hayley Mills, and call one’s mother “Mums.” Mrs. Boucher is a war bride, you can tell from her English accent.

The moving van is almost empty. Madeleine watches her new friends run up the street to the Bouchers’ house, just as her father rounds the corner. “Dad!” She hops on her bike and rides to him, pedalling furiously. “Dad, look!” He smiles and leans forward with his arms open as though to catch her, Zippy Vélo and all.