Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“I’m actually in crisis,” says Madeleine, looking up into the most familiar, most radiant face — most amused too. “In pain. I’m on the brink of a nervous breakdown. How come I’m having such a good time?”

“Because you’re a happy person,” says Olivia. “That’s your guilty secret.”

Madeleine smiles. Closes her eyes, tastes sweet water. “You’re so sweet,” she says. You run so sweet and clear . She opens her eyes, keeps them open. “C’est pour toi.” Don’t talk. Take what you want .

In between, there is the guided tour of small scars. Have you ever noticed that many people have a tiny one over an eye? At the outer edge of brow, the bony orbit doing its job, taking the brunt of whatever was hurtling toward the eye — a branch, a ball, hockey stick, a paw—

“I got this playing badminton when I was nine,” says Olivia. “My mother put a butterfly Band-Aid on it and I felt really important.”

“Wounded in action,” says Madeleine.

“Where’d you get this?” She holds Madeleine’s left hand, palm up, tracing the lifeline and its pale shadow with her finger.

“ Ci pa gran chouz,” says Madeleine. Olivia smiles but doesn’t ask what kind of French that is. “A knife did it.”

Olivia raises an eyebrow. “Presumably someone was holding it at the time.”

On guard! “Colleen.”

“Who was Colleen?”

“My best friend,” says Madeleine. Says her heart. “We became … seurs de san.”

Olivia hesitates, then, “Blood sisters?”

Madeleine nods. “When I was nine. Colleen Froelich.” Pellegrim . The name arrives from the back of her mind, dusty but intact.

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have a sister out there somewhere.”

Olivia smells like sand and salt, a tang of sweat and Chanel. Old-fashioned feminine. Skilfully juxtaposed with the pink hair and multiple earrings.

The aroma of smoked sardines floats in. Olivia joins Madeleine at the window, chin on the sill. On the next balcony over, small silvery bodies hang pegged like socks to the clothesline. Olivia calls, “Avelino! Hey, Avelino!”

A stocky, charred-looking man in car-greasy overalls steps onto the sardine balcony and squints in their direction.

“Toss me one, pal,” calls Olivia.

Pal .

Avelino plucks two fish from the line, turns to her, rehearses a toss, then releases them. Madeleine ducks. Olivia catches one fish, the other lands on the floor. “Obrigado!”

They eat off a ratty bamboo placemat on the futon, with bread and olives and the rest of the bad wine.

Being lovers with Olivia is like wrapping the present and tying on the bow after you have been enjoying it for years. Backwards, perfect. Everyone should fall in love with a friend.

“Why did your parents call you ‘Olivia’?”

A loaf of bread, a smoked sardine and thou.

“My father loved Shakespeare and my mother loved olives.”

Here is love’s guilty secret: it doesn’t hurt. It has been right in front of her.

IN MY DREAM, I am travelling through woods at night. The vegetation is very green despite the darkness. Leaves and branches swish past with the intimate indoor clarity of movie sound. Rex is walking beside me, I can hear the crackle of his paws through the undergrowth, smell his breath, meaty and warm, feel his fur. I know the trees are watching. There is a level of dread but I realize it’s part of the ordinary condition of dogs and trees. I think to myself, dogs and trees are very brave. We come to a clearing. A canopy of mist — no, light — over a child lying on the grass. A girl in a blue dress. Rex looks up at me. His face so kind and concerned. Expectant too. I recognize the child. It’s me. The grass around her begins to bend and flatten. I wake up, terrified.

“What is it?” asks Nina.

“The blue dress,” says Madeleine, and weeps.

Blue dress is one of those details that come alive only when they are released into speech. Like the princess in the glass coffin. Open the lid, remove the apple from her mouth, release the word into air. Watch it reunite with its companions, form clusters of meaning.

Blue dress might have remained preserved under glass, like the exhibits in a museum case — hollow eggs, pinned moths. Mute about meadows and nests and the warm hides of deer who bend to drink from a stream in springtime. Showing, but not telling.

The blue dress was Claire’s, of course — Madeleine knows that, never forgot it — but it’s surprising how information can lie quietly dispersed for a lifetime. She has never forgotten what happened in the classroom after three, but she has remained immune to its meaning. It has lain dormant in its cocoon of silence.

“What about the blue dress, Madeleine?”

“It was hers.”

“Whose?”

This immunity to meaning is not amnesia, it is craftier and harder to “snap out of.” Because you are awake and sane. There was no tornado, no looking glass or rabbit hole. There is just a room at the top of your mind with a lot of stuff that never got put away. Like toys that lie inert, waiting for midnight.

“Claire.” The word is a small cry, a bird escaping her throat.

“What about Claire, Madeleine?”

She hears a moan, it has come from her but reminds her of someone else…. “She was murdered?” In her voice she hears the interrogative inflection of a child, cadence of bewilderment and fear, whose fault is it? Mine?

“I know,” says Nina. “I’m so sorry.”

“She was strangled?” She begins to rock.

“Madeleine?” says Nina gently.

Madeleine looks up and takes the box of tissues from Nina’s outstretched hand. “I’m sorry.”

… Reminds her of Grace, voice veering, eyes unmoored and swerving. Like a trapped dog.

“Why are you sorry?”

“I don’t know,” she sobs.

Grace Novotny . Why does Madeleine remember the names of kids from grade four when she can’t remember the names of people she bonded with six weeks ago on a film set? Marjorie Nolan, Grace Novotny, Joyce Nutt, Diane Vogel. The following little girls… .“I testified at the trial.”

She tells about Ricky’s alibi, the air force man who waved but never came forward. She tells about her lie, and how she reversed it on the stand. About how her father revealed to her the secret of how to recognize the right thing. It was simple: the right thing would always be the hardest.

“Poor little thing,” says Nina.

Madeleine stops rocking and allows her eyes to rest on the painting of the bleached skull, relieved to have told the story, and is rewarded with a realization: “I think I still feel a lot of guilt about Ricky.” Once the words are out, she recognizes them as stunningly self-evident. “I guess I’m an open book to you, eh?”

“Perhaps, but I can only read one page at a time.”

“Oh wow, was that, like, profound or something?”

Nina waits. Madeleine fiddles with the rake in the miniature sandbox, feeling very small. “Nina … what if I get better and … I’m not funny any more? What if I can’t work? What if I have to go back to school and become a lawyer or a pharmacist or something?”

Nina holds the pink stone in the palm of her hand, gently weighing it, and says, “When did you first want to be a comedian?”

“Oh, when I was about, like … I was five or something. I stood on a kitchen chair and told jokes.”