Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“Doris, she’s the one with the stutter,” says Yvonne. Mimi can hear the clickety-click of needles — Yvonne is knitting.

“Yvonne! She has a slight speech impediment.”

“She turns everything into a shaggy dog story, that one. I’m always half-dead and totally starved by the time she gets to the point.”

Mimi laughs. “She wants to know when you’re coming up again.”

“Don’t tell her!”

“She’s going to give you a card party.”

“No!”

When Yvonne asks what she’s doing, Mimi replies that she is making muffins but doesn’t say that they are for her daughter. It’s not because Jack is close by, in the living room, that Mimi doesn’t broach the subject of Madeleine — he wouldn’t understand her in any case, because of course she and Yvonne speak in French. But Mimi doesn’t discuss Madeleine with anyone; not with her husband, because he doesn’t share her feelings about what he calls their daughter’s lifestyle; and not with Yvonne, because Yvonne does. She and her sister both believe that the way Madeleine lives is a mortal sin and a total rejection of her parents and everything they taught her. Yvonne is more graphic: “She shits on it.” Yvonne feels the anger and the disgust. Everything but the love.

So when Yvonne asks, Mimi replies, “Making muffins.”

“How’s my little prince?” Mon p’tit prince?

“He’s himself.”

“Put him on.”

Jack is in his La-Z-Boy. The condo is designed so that the kitchen opens onto the dining and living area. She can see the top of his head but she doesn’t want to wake him if he’s napping. The TV is on. She puts down the phone and goes to his chair; his eyes are closed. She turns off the TV; he opens his eyes.

“Just restin’ my eyeballs.”

“Want to say bonjour to Yvonne?”

“Sure.”

Within moments he is laughing. She can see his gold tooth, and a healthy colour enters his face. She spoons the batter into the muffin pan. Yvonne loves Jack as if he were her baby brother. Nothing has ever been too good for him. Un vrai gentilhomme, Mimi, ton mari .

The last time Mimi and her sister discussed Madeleine, it was likewise over the phone. Yvonne said, “What happened to her?” She shared Mimi’s belief that the blight must be the result of something. “Did someone touch her?”

Mimi felt sick in the pit of her stomach. Something had happened to her child. Because she had failed to protect her.

Yvonne said, “She always had a secret, that one.”

Like her father , thought Mimi.

“Did you ask her father?” Yvonne continued.

Mimi was startled because at first it was as though her sister had read her mind. Then she realized what Yvonne might have meant, and she went icy. She didn’t want to have to lose her sister, so she pretended not to have heard. And perhaps Yvonne had meant something quite innocent. The line was silent for a moment, then Yvonne said, “Men are men.” She always said this in English — the way some people reserve the foulest words for a foreign language.

Yvonne must have sensed what hung in the balance, because she never again broached the subject of “what happened to Madeleine.”

Mimi stands, muffin pan in hand, poised to open the oven when the red light extinguishes. Jack laughs and says, “I don’t know, I’ll ask her”—and to Mimi, “Yvonne wants to know how come you never bring me down home any more.”

“You tell her I don’t want les belles de Bouctouche stealing you away.” The light goes out and she slides the pan into the oven.

Dark, dark, far back in the back of her mind is a shadow. She never turns to look. It wafts from time to time toward the front, where it settles momentarily, like a veil, before retreating once more. The breath that lifts the veil and carries it is shaped into words as it passes through the lacework. The words must never be spoken and she does not heed them: did my child’s father touch her?

In Centralia, the look on the child’s face when she played — wrestled — with her father. The blood on her underpants, the little lies she told. No . Mimi squeezes her eyes shut and keeps busy. This is the kind of thought sent by the Devil. In whom she does not believe — a heresy for which, perhaps, she is being punished. So she has never asked her daughter, “Did someone touch you when you were small?”

Mimi is looking forward to meeting God. He will have some questions for her, but she has a few for Him. He doesn’t know everything, He can’t. He’s not a mother.

“WHAT ON EARTH is this?” asks Christine.

“It’s a barbecue.” Madeleine is on the balcony, tilted back on a kitchen chair with the phone and a mongrel accumulation of notes, trying to write.

“Really?”

“Yeah, it even bakes cakes.”

Christine stares at her. “Why would anyone want to bake a cake on a barbecue?”

“I thought you might like it.”

“I’m not your bloody wife, Madeleine.”

If you are an aspiring alcoholic, if you were abused by your parents, if you have a mysterious chronic condition and wish to find a reason for it, move in with someone who is trying to write. You need never look farther for the source of your pain.

Madeleine says, “I’ll cook supper, I’ll make paella.” She gets up, lifts a rounded lid in the centre of the barbecue. “See?”

Christine turns and goes back inside. Madeleine experiences guilt, fear, pathos — the food groups. The beaded curtains sway provocatively in Christine’s wake, a housewarming gift from Olivia.

Madeleine has spent the afternoon writing, having promised to come in with a revised shape for the “Breaking News” sketch. She’s working on an idea for a war criminal thing — it’s all over the news, a recent rash of decrepit Nazis arrested while pruning their rose bushes in suburbs across Canada. She has also sworn to give Shelly a paragraph for Stark Raving Madeleine , and has a good excuse to figure something out because she told her friend Tommy she’d do five minutes at an AIDS benefit next Monday— Love in the Time of Latex . Conveniently, she has no time to write because evening workshop sessions have been scheduled this week on The Deer .

“Bring Olivia over after,” said Christine this morning.

“We’re working till midnight.”

“I thought you were finished at nine.”

“The schedule changed. I’m sorry, sweetie, it’ll all be over soon.”

Christine smiled. “Wait, stay in bed, I’ll bring your coffee.” She paused at the door in her burgundy robe. In the light filtering through the blinds, she looked just as she had when they met. For that first date they had planned to go to a film festival movie — Madeleine had already bought the tickets — but they didn’t make it out of Christine’s apartment for three days. They saved the movie tickets. Put them in the album with the photos that traced seven years. Holidays, birthdays, friends. The Story of Madeleine and Christine. “You know what?” said Christine. “Everything’s going to be okay. All your work. This project with Olivia is exactly what you need right now. It’s going to feed into the thing you’re working on for Shelly. It’s going to help give you your new show. And that’s going to change everything.”

“Come here.”

Christine snuggled back next to Madeleine.

But that was this morning. And who knows by what series of incremental snags and toe-pinching minutiae the day progressed to the point where they fought over a wretched barbecue?

Madeleine is due at the Darling Building in ninety minutes. No time for paella — what was I thinking? Having no time to write is almost as important as having all the time in the world. She had all day. She procrastinated elaborately, virtuosically. While cleaning the fridge, she noticed an overdue bill stuck to the door with an Emma Goldman magnet. She dutifully wrote a cheque, and stepped out to the post office for stamps.