Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

Everything is going to be fine, Centralia is going to be great.

“I’m glad to hear that, sweetie,” says Dad as she leans her bike against the porch and follows him in. Boxes and furniture crowd the rooms, awkward herds as yet untethered to walls and corners. “Mimi, I’m home.”

Already the echo in their voices has abated, absorbed by their things which have caught up to them, the rest of the family. Alive with all they have taken in over the years, these things will exhale memories of times gone by, filling the house with that untranslatable well-being the Germans call Gemütlichkeit , making it a place that is not a place at all: home.

For supper, the McCarthys have driven five miles north to the town of Exeter for burgers and shakes. Exeter is neat and prosperous, but if you hope to find an A&W you have to drive in the other direction, toward London. There is a good family restaurant, however, and the four of them slid into a booth.

The people in the restaurant knew right away that the McCarthys were from the air force station. When it comes time for dessert, they move from their booth to the counter, and Jack and Mimi chat with the owners. They always make a point of meeting local people, whether they are in Alberta or Alsace. People are people, let’s make the most of life. And they usually get a warm reception, even from those locals who are suspicious of the stream of temporary neighbours who reliably enrich the local community chest, but can otherwise unnerve the stable population. It never takes Jack and Mimi long to belong. But it is not meant to last and it usually doesn’t, beyond a Christmas card or two after the next posting.

“How’s the pie?” Jack asks.

“Homemade,” replies a woman of few words behind the counter.

“Say no more,” says Jack, and orders a slice with cheese.

Madeleine watches the man at the grill flipping burgers. Is he the woman’s husband? He is thin and she is fat. Jack Sprat… .

“What’ll it be, Madeleine?” her father asks.

She looks up into the pasty face of the woman. “Um. Do you have Neapolitan please?”

“With a cherry on top?” asks the woman, without cracking a smile.

“S’il vous plaît ,” says Madeleine without planning it.

The woman smiles and says, “Come-on-tally-voo?” then pinches Madeleine’s cheek, but not painfully. Ladies behind counters are similar the world over. They like to give you things, they like to feel a hunk of your face between thumb and forefinger.

Belonging and not belonging. Being on the outside and the inside at the same time. For Madeleine it is as natural, as negligible, as breathing. And the idea of growing up in the midst of your own past — among people who have known you all your life and believe they know what you are made of, what you are capable of — that is a suffocating thought.

“What about your IGA here?” asks Mimi. “They have a good butcher?” A rich vein of conversation opens. Butchers from here to London are discussed. This leads to children’s shoes, the school board, Prime Minister Diefenbaker, whether we’re in for a cold winter, and the space race.

“Well, Kennedy says he’s going to do it and I wouldn’t be surprised if he did,” says Jack.

“What do we want to go to the moon for, anyhow?” asks the man at the grill.

Jack replies, “’Cause if we don’t get there first, the Russkies will.”

“Well, that’s my point, eh?” says the man, wiping his hands on his white apron. “Gettin’ crowded up there.”

“Dad,” says Mike. “Not we, the Americans.”

“That’s right, Mike, and don’t you forget it.”

“Vive la différence,” says Mimi.

The woman puts a parfait glass in front of Madeleine, Neapolitan topped with chocolate sauce, whipped cream and a cherry. “Wow, thanks,” Madeleine says. The woman winks at her.

Madeleine picks up her spoon. Though she is at home everywhere and nowhere, there is the occasional sense of having misplaced something, someone. Sometimes, when the family sits down to dinner, she has the feeling that someone is missing. Who?

Jack asks where the best swimming and picnicking is to be found. Nearby on Lake Huron. He already knows this, but people like to be asked about where they live. And Mimi loves meeting people. They love her French accent and she loves that they can never guess where she is from. France? Québec? They pronounce it “Kweebec.” No, and no. Where, then? Acadia. L’Acadie . Site of le grand dérangement —the great disruption of almost two hundred years ago that inspired Longfellow’s romantic poem Evangeline . Mass expulsion of an entire nation from Canada’s east coast, a human tide that flowed south, pooled in Louisiana to fertilize a Cajun culture, then trickled back up to thrive in pockets across the Canadian Maritimes, with roots that reach back to the seventeenth century. Mimi says, “That’s why I’m so good at moving.”

She laughs with the people behind the counter, and neglects to add that it was the maudits Anglais who kicked her people out in the first place. Americans tend to be more responsive than English Canadians to that part of the story, having seen fit to kick the damned English out themselves.

Jack enjoys teasing her when they’re alone. “You’re my prisoner,” he’ll say. “My rightful booty.” If he really wants to get a rise out of her, he describes the French as a defeated people and says, “It’s lucky for you the British were so superior or you and I would never have met.” He knows he has won if he can get her to whack him. “That was always the trouble with the French. Too emotional.” That’s Mimi. Spitfire.

Jack and Mimi both come from New Brunswick’s Atlantic coast. But they didn’t meet there — she was French, he was English, why would they meet? He was working in a cardboard factory alongside three older men. At seventeen, he was the only one who still had all his fingers. When he realized he was also the only one who could read and write, he left. Lied about his age, joined the air force, crashed and remustered. When he and Mimi met in ’44 at the dance in Yorkshire, where he was a supply officer and she was a nurse’s aide at Number 6 Bomber Group, it seemed like a very small world indeed. Small world, big war. Lucky for them.

“This sure is a beautiful part of the country,” says Jack to the man behind the counter.

“Oh, this is God’s country,” replies the man, topping up Jack’s coffee.

It’s simple, really: if you like people they will probably like you back. It helps that Jack and Mimi’s children are polite and answer in full sentences. It helps that their daughter is pretty and their son is handsome.

“What are you going to be when you grow up, young fella?” asks a man in the booth behind them, a farmer in rubber boots and John Deere cap.

Mike answers, “I’m going to fly Sabres, sir.”

“Well now,” says the man, nodding.

“That’s the stuff,” says Jack.

It helps that Jack and his wife are attractive. Not just because Mimi is slim and stylish with her pumps and pencil skirt. Not because he is blue-eyed and relaxed — effortless gentleman, a natural polish that goes well with his mill-town respect for work and working people. They are attractive because they are in love.

It has worked. The dream. Post-war boom, the kids, the car, all the stuff that is supposed to make people happy. The stuff that has begun to weigh on some people — alcoholics in grey flannel suits, mad housewives — it has all made Jack and Mimi very happy. They couldn’t care less about “stuff” and perhaps that is their secret. They are rich, they are fabulously wealthy. And they know it. They hold hands under the counter and chat with the locals.