Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“I’m not crying,” answers Madeleine, lifting her chin for a topcoat of clear gloss applied by the girl’s middle finger.

Madeleine feels the graze of a nail along her lip, then the French girl kisses her on the mouth — taste of chemical cherry, cigarette juice, and so soft, a wet pillow—“Don’t be sad, eh?” she says to Madeleine, stroking her hair, and kisses her again.

Madeleine kisses her back, melting into her mouth. The Québécoise slides her hand down Madeleine’s hip, around behind, and pulls her close.

“You want to come home with me, baby? C’est quoi ton nom?”

“I can’t,” says Madeleine, ducking out of the bathroom.

Back at the table, Mike and Jocelyn are resting. Jocelyn is flushed, laughing. Mike takes a haul of his beer, allows it to trickle down his neck and pats it on like aftershave, singing, “‘There’s something about an Aqua Vulva man.’”

Jocelyn turns and sees Madeleine. “Oh my God.”

Mike takes one look at her and fumbles in his pocket for his hanky. “You look like a two-dollar whore.” He wets the hanky with his tongue the way Dad used to. “I let you out of my sight for one second—”

He goes to dab at her face, but Madeleine escapes to the bar and checks herself out in the mirror— sacrebleu . Mike appears over her shoulder and laughs. She looks like a raccoon and her mouth is all smeary. She grabs his hanky, douses it in beer and wipes the lipstick off. The crotch of her jeans has gone smeary too, but thank goodness that’s invisible, thank goodness girls don’t get public hard-ons.

Madeleine sees the young woman in the mirror — she has returned to her table and is necking with a big guy with a dirty blond braid down his back. Madeleine thinks of the waiter back at Le Hibou. I should do it with him. Why not? Someone’s got to be the first. At least he doesn’t go to her school, and she won’t have to let him be her boyfriend.

At three-thirty A.M. Mike requests a song from the band. Little Richard and the Big Bopper give way to a French Canadian folk song. The singer laments, close in to the mike, “Un Canadien errant, banni de son pays… .” Madeleine cringes — this is so corny. Any second now, a separatist is going to jump up and throw them out of here. “Parcourait en pleurant, des pays étrangérs….” A simple tune, like the best folk songs the world over — I have lost my home, I long for my home, my home exists now only in memory.

Maman always sang the original, “un Acadien.” But Mike will soon be un Canadien errant . Vietnam — it doesn’t get more errant than that. And where are he and Madeleine from, anyhow? Say goodbye to the house, kids… .

Mike puts his arms around Madeleine and slow-dances with her. His hair is wet with sweat, the back of his neck pink. He drops his head to his sister’s shoulder. She laces her fingers together between his shoulder blades — he does have shoulder blades in there somewhere, beneath the muscle, soft and hard all at once, my big brother. He still smells nice even through the Hai Karate, the beer, the bourbon and sweat. He smells fresh — the freshness of hide ’n’ seek at night in summer, the smell of grass stains, of swimming in the lake, and sun-baked sand dunes, their sleeping bags side by side — where have those times gone? Qui peut dire où vont les fleurs?

Madeleine is drunk for the first time in her life. She strokes the back of her brother’s brush cut — stupid idiot, Michel, why do you have to go away? Why do you want to hurt anyone? I know that’s not why you’re going, why are you going? His buzzed hair is soft, a thick and delicate carpet. They will not know you are different from the others, Mike. They will not know you are kind. She bites the inside of her mouth but it does no good, she is drunk, her famous ability to go neutral has dissolved, mascara traces clown tears down her cheeks. Sarge, I’m hit .

Mike raises his head, beams into her face — kisses her on the cheek. “Stunned one,” he says, and holds out his arm to Jocelyn to join them. The three of them sway in place, arms around one another, to the rest of the song.

They travel across the bridge back to Ottawa in the pockmarked Nova. Madeleine drives — she is the least drunk, and in no danger of losing her licence, because she doesn’t have one. She turns along the river and follows the curving parkway past the prime minister’s residence, past the governor general’s and through Rockcliffe Park. Jocelyn’s parents are divorced, she lives with her dad, she has no curfew — paradise. Madeleine pulls up in front of her house among the embassies.

“Pretty ritzy,” says Mike. “I’ll see you to the door.”

He and Jocelyn stand under the porch light, kissing. Madeleine is shocked. Jocelyn reaches behind, opens the front door and slides in, Mike slides in after her.

Madeleine waits. She rests her head against the steering wheel, because she gets the spins when she leans back against the headrest. She falls asleep and Miss Lang, the Brown Owl, arrives in her wedding gown and Brownie beret. She smiles slyly and says, “Of course you know what hibou means in English?”

Madeleine replies, “It means ‘owl.’”

Miss Lang winks. “And what do owls say?”

“Who.”

“Who killed me, Madeleine?”

Mike wakes her, pulling her from the undertow. “Move over, Rob.”

He drives them back to the suburbs as the sun comes up — big lawns dewy and rich in the morning mist, backyard pools slumbering under blue plastic covers. He drops her just as their father pulls out of the garage in his Oldsmobile, the automatic door closing behind, his wheels yielding, cushiony, over the curb of the driveway. Jack turns to Madeleine and touches two fingers to his forehead in the old casual salute. He doesn’t look at Mike.

Madeleine says, “He’s going golfing.”

“Give Maman a kiss for me, eh?” says Mike. “Je t’aime.”

Then he drove away.

HIS PARENTS CANNOT SAY, “When Mike died,” because if he is dead, he did not “die,” he was killed. But they cannot say, “When Mike was killed,” because they don’t know for certain that he was. They don’t say, “When Mike went missing,” because that sounds as though he simply wandered off.

When is mourning?

When you are waiting, watching to see a flower open, a leaf unfurl, or attending the slow folding down of a dear, dear one who seems so much better today, the waiting is painstaking. This long blossoming, or extinguishing of a beloved face feels endless; each small movement gauged, exaggerated, compared or denied, but one thing is sure — the plant will open, your dear one will die, it is only a question of when, and of many acts of loving vigilance.

Absence is different. You can’t watch over an absence. Care for it, help it on its journey, love it. You can only watch life flow around both hope and dread, softening edges, eroding grain by grain all expectation, awaiting the merciful time, which may never come, when one can say, he is gone .

The soreness deep in the chest. The falling asleep over a book, unable to keep one’s lids open, only to reawaken deep in the night with a fresh release of sorrow. Slow, warm, adrenal. Like a gentle hand. Wake up. Wake up, friend owl . Sore, sore sorrow.

And still there is no funeral, no emptying of grief; no shaking droplets from the trees, followed by the steaming up of loss, gentle respiration of memory. Grief-in-waiting is a tap left dripping, the unstaunched hope, drop by drop, perhaps, he might, what if, it could . Friends can only do so much. Those who are experienced, unembarrassed by grief, know not to dispense bromides, wear long faces or chat with plastered grins. They behave like good dance partners. Life goes on. That’s the way it is. You do not forget, neither do you dwell; be there, that is all. Stop with the casseroles and too frequent phone calls after a while, but do not disappear. Be there.