Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

These were only events, scattered in time. Draw them close, rub them between thumb and finger till they roll like larvae, soften like silk, distend to knot, to weave.

It takes a village to kill a child.

IN POP CULTURE and folk tales, ghosts haunt creepy houses at night, appear in old photographs of church picnics, are glimpsed in the rain-lashed beam of a headlight on a country road amid endless fields of corn. In life, they arrive when you are emptying the dryer at ten A.M.

The shadow is the same. It chooses mundane moments. Like most ghosts, it does not wish to scare you off. It needs to be seen. That’s why it has come. Imagine the sheer exhaustion of making the journey up from the shades time and again, only to have your long-lost one shriek and run away. That’s why it learns to approach in the open, when you are engaged in familiar tasks, guard down. Doing the dishes. Driving. It doesn’t necessarily want you to crash, but it does want your attention. It gets this by making the familiar shockingly unfamiliar.

Madeleine can no longer drive on the 401 where it proliferates into sixteen lanes across the top of Toronto. She can no longer see the whole road all at once, only one piece at a time — broken line, section of guardrail, whoosh of a passing car, another, another, another. These days she has to take the slow city streets all the way up to the After-Three studios in the northern suburbs, adding forty minutes to the trip. Life is too short, but she has no choice. That place from which we perceive the world — the cockpit behind the eyes, the meness —fragments into a multitude of formerly autonomic tasks that suddenly require volition: breathe now, blink now, beat now, steer. Trust your instruments . Her only real choice is to wrench the wheel into traffic. Not to do so is to prolong the terrifying paralysis of entrapment. The terrifying insanity of no choice. You have a choice. Wrench the wheel. This will make something make sense.

With multiple lanes shooting past her on both sides, Madeleine repeats random phrases, ads—“‘You deserve a break today, so get up and get away’”—until she is able to pull over or exit. Then, forehead resting against the steering wheel, parked in front of a mall where there is nothing to buy but water purification systems and barbecues that roast whole steers and bake cakes: “‘You’ll wonder where the yellow went, the yellow went, the yellow went….’” Okay. It’s okay now.

“I’ve become neurotic. I’m going to be one of those irritating middle-aged women who’s got to have the aisle seat and can’t be trusted next to the emergency exit. I’m afraid all the time, a total coward.”

Nina is silent. Madeleine takes a breath; her eyes wander to the Georgia O’Keeffe print — bleached skull of a steer — then over to the clock, distended Dali-like through the glass water pitcher.

Nina says, “Fear isn’t the opposite of courage.”

“What?”

“It’s the prerequisite to courage.”

Madeleine dismisses this with a raised eyebrow.

“You said ‘the thing’ first happened when you were performing,” says Nina. “But did it remind you of anything? Was it familiar in any way?”

Madeleine is surprised because the answer is so close at hand — lying on the surface, like a sealed envelope on a stack of mail after the holidays. She opens it:

It was during Bambi . Part of a double bill with Bambi Meets Godzilla at the Rialto Cinema in Ottawa. Her best friend, Jocelyn, had smoked half a joint but Madeleine, being a failed druggie, hadn’t had any, so it wasn’t that. She was fifteen, Joss was sixteen.

“Wake up, wake up! Wake up, friend Owl!” cried Thumper.

At the sight of the cheery rabbit Madeleine felt her extremities cool. At the same time her face grew hot. “Are you hot?” she asked Jocelyn.

“No, it’s freezing in here.”

“I mean are you cold?”

“Are you stoned or what?”

Madeleine felt fear rise like a tide to her chin. Her heart began to ripple, then race. She became convinced she was about to die. She had in fact been diagnosed with a heart murmur — mild, the doctor had said, no impediment to athletic activity or a normal life, just have it checked as you get older. But this rippling didn’t feel familiar. Was this what a heart attack felt like? A “murmuring” heart — what was it trying to say?

“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothin’ at all!” chanted the stoned audience along with Thumper.

If I think about my heart, my heart will stop. If I don’t think about my heart, my heart will stop.

“Bird!” Bambi’s first word.

“Want some?” Jocelyn passed Madeleine the popcorn.

“Butterfly.”

Madeleine obeyed an old impulse and smelled her hands. Jocelyn didn’t notice, she was gazing up at the screen, giggling, glassy-eyed.

Madeleine rose from her body. She gripped the armrests but this only caused her to rise more swiftly.

“Wait here,” said Bambi’s mother. “I’ll go out first, and if the meadow’s safe, I’ll call you.” A shot rings out.

“Faster, Bambi! Don’t look back!”

She hovered in an elastic curve high above her own hands, she could see them lying limp on the worn velvet armrests below. She must have grown, for she was stretched over several rows of seats now. It was not entirely unpleasant. Winter comes and goes. In the meadow, new grass pierces the snow. Crows sound the alarm….

“Mother! Mother!” cried Bambi. The audience laughed.

Jocelyn said, “Here, you can have the rest.” The condensation of the cold paper cup against her hand jolted Madeleine in her seat and, now that she was back, she was terrified of having left her body. Her heart beat rapidly, panting like a tongue, stinging like a cut.

She stared at the floor — sticky splotches, the popcorn tar pits. She chewed the plastic straw. She was okay.

“So …,” says Madeleine, “what? Don’t just tilt your head attentively. Give.”

Nina half smiles.

“Come on, Mona Lisa.”

“The psychiatric term is ‘depersonalization.’”

Madeleine allows her gaze to rest on the bleached skull. How did O’Keeffe manage to capture an image of serenity rather than morbidity? “So how come people get depersonalized?”

“Any number of reasons,” says Nina. “Abuse, for example.”

Madeleine feels her body temperature drop. The breath drops from her body too. She has to go to the bathroom.

Nina continues. “It’s a survival mechanism. It can feel crazy, but it originates as a pretty sane response to an insane situation. The ability to ‘leave your body’ when what is going on is intolerable.”

Madeleine feels her face grow hot. Shame is a physical condition, there ought to be an over-the-counter spray to control its embarrassing effects — so much worse than leaving your dentures in an apple.

Nina pours Madeleine some water.

Madeleine says, in a Viennese accent, “Very interestink.”

Nina picks up the pink egg and asks, “Does Maurice ever speak?”

Madeleine doesn’t answer.

“Why don’t you do any women characters?”

“Why don’t you buy a new pair of Birkenstocks, those are getting on my nerves.”

FROM ON TOP OF THE FRIDGE Mimi takes a bowl of muffin ingredients that she prepared earlier today, before driving her friend Doris to the doctor. Doris is widowed and has osteoporosis. Mimi is one of the lucky ones.

She removes the shower cap from the bowl, adds milk and eggs and stirs with the wooden spoon. She holds the phone receiver in the crook of her shoulder and talks to her sister Yvonne longdistance while she works.