Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

Mimi holds the tissue to her eyes. Madeleine reaches across the Scrabble board and takes her mother’s hand.

When she was set to return to Toronto the following week, Madeleine put her bag into the trunk in the front of her VW, closed the lid and called Winnie, who was leaning against Mimi’s legs in the doorway of the condo.

Mimi reached down and stroked the helmet-head. “Madeleine, do you mind if I hang onto her for a little while?”

“… You want to keep her?”

Mimi began to rev up: “I’m a woman alone, a dog is good protection—”

“Maman, it’s fine. But you have to give her back when Olivia comes home.”

“Olivia? Oh yes, your Spanish friend.”

“Not really, she’s just in Latin America at the moment.”

“Oh”—baby-talking to the dog—“then she won’t mind, will she? Will she, hein? Will she, will she. Ça ne dérange personne, non? Non, non, non, non— ”

“Maman?”

Mimi looked up again.

“I’ll call you when I get home.”

Madeleine pulled away, a cooler in the back seat filled with enough food to feed an Acadian family for a week.

WHEN JACK DIED, a large white bird rose and departed through the ceiling of the fully serviced condo in the suburbs of Ottawa. Camouflaged by cottony clouds, it caught a warm updraft and soared higher and higher. Wingspan of an eagle, ocean ease of a gull, white bird of great good fortune, it ascended….

… slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there

I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air .

“Look at that,” said Jack, pointing up. It was before he and Mimi moved into the condo. It was after they found out Mike was missing. It was before hope began to wane. Madeleine was surging with the dark joy of imminent blast-off into the world far from this suburb.

“It’s a glider,” said Jack.

A white airplane. Silent. Slow. Wings long and tapered, clean and unencumbered by engines. It banked and looped unhurriedly.

“Now, that’s flying.”

He licked his ice cream — rum ’n’ raisin. Madeleine, hers. Neopolitan — best of all worlds.

“Want a lick?”

“Thanks Dad, that’s really good.”

They watched as the craft arced upward, decelerating, offering its smooth breast to the sky before swooning back into the arms of gravity, as trusting, as brave as an animal or a child.

“You know, old buddy, you can be anything you want to be.”

And when Dad said it, she knew it was true.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,

Where never lark, or even eagle, flew;

And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God .

EVERYONE KNEW THAT Ricky had changed his name, but Madeleine would have remained comfortably ignorant of his new one had Auriel not said they . In that instant it arrived unbidden in Madeleine’s mind. Colleen and Ricky’s original name. How many Pellegrims could there be in Canada?

The name lay there like a smooth stone collected on holiday. She put it in a drawer of her desk and got back to work, back to her life. She turned on her computer. She put paper in the printer. She sat down and started writing.

What business are you in?

The funny business .

She phoned Shelly every ten minutes, reading her funny stuff. Then stuff that was not so funny, to which Shelly said, “No, keep it for now. It’ll get there, you just don’t know how yet.” They got together every couple of days so Madeleine could try stuff out. Stuff that didn’t require “stuff.”

What are you selling?

Stories .

From time to time she came across the smooth stone. Upon opening her desk drawer in search of a pencil, a paperclip. Sometimes it cropped up in the cutlery drawer among the knives, in the medicine cabinet, under the couch — she had bought a couch. And a bed. Her friends had held a breakup shower for her. Even Christine had given her a gift, a Braun hand mixer. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.

A week after she got home, Madeleine sat cross-legged on her old Persian carpet, eschewing her new club chair, and called longdistance information.

“For what city?”

“Winnipeg.”

“For what name?”

“Marjorie Nolan.”

“Thank you, here’s your number—”

She grabbed a pen and wrote the number on her hand.

She waited until six-thirty central time.

A woman answered, “Hello?”—querulous voice, not Marjorie’s.

“May I speak with Marjorie please?”

A rustling as the woman lowered the receiver, her voice a muffled complaint, “It’s for you-ou …,” followed by a clunk of receiver against table or floor.

After a moment, another female voice. “Hello.” Crisp. Note of exasperation. Marjorie.

“Hello, Marjorie?” said Madeleine.

“Who’s speaking please?”

Madeleine could see her — eyes tightening, ready to defend herself. “This is Madeleine McCarthy. We went to school together in Centralia.”

Half a beat, then the woman said, “I’m afraid you have the wrong number.” And hung up.

She called every Novotny in Canada. She found Grace’s father. He said he didn’t know where the hell any of them were any more, but if he ever found out….

She called the Ontario Provincial Police and asked for Missing Persons. “Name of the person?”

“Grace Novotny.” She could hear keys being tapped in the background.

Then the female officer at the other end said, “What’s the nature of your information?”

I was right . “I don’t actually have information, I just … want to know if there’s anything new.”

“We can’t release that to the public. What’s your relation to Grace Novotny?”

Madeleine’s answer came so naturally it didn’t feel like a lie. “She’s my sister.”

“Oh. Well I’m sorry, but there’s really nothing new since ’66.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Nineteen sixty-six — Grace would have been fourteen. Missing . Did she run away from home and get lost? Like Mike? Where have all the young girls gone?

Madeleine left her house, heading for River Street and the Humane Society to visit the desperate dogs. There was no song to soften or explain where some young girls went. Grace had gone to snuff.

Love can work like athletic training, or practice with a musical instrument. Train vigorously for a spell. Then rest — take off the runners, put down the violin. When you return to your sport, your scales, you will have inexplicably improved, due to the intervention of nothing but time.

Madeleine found the scroll and the candle on her carpet in her empty apartment when she returned from her father’s funeral. She read the scroll. “ Ma bien aimée , Enjoy this candle at your leisure. When it has burned down, ask me to be with you and I will give you everything I have. But please don’t take too long. I want to have kids. Or you might choose not to light it at all. It will help you to decide because I can’t. À bientôt , O.”