Ann-Marie MacDonald: Way the Crow Flies

As seen from the back seat of the car, it is as recognizable, as much “him,” as his face. As unmistakeable as your own car in a parking lot. His head, squarish, clean. It says what it means, you don’t have to figure it out. His shoulders under his checked short-sleeved shirt. Elbow out the window, halo of light brown hairs combed by the wind, right hand on the wheel, glint of his university ring. Old Spice. Across the back of his neck, one faint line — a seam that stays paler than his sunburn. The back of Dad’s head. It’s the other side of his face — his other face. In fact, he has told you he has eyes back there. This is reassuring. It means he knows who starts most of the fights in the back seat.

“Mike, quit it!” cries Madeleine.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Mike, don’t tease your sister.”

“Dad, I’m not teasing her, she pinched me.”

“Madeleine, don’t torment your brother.” Maman does not have eyes in the back of her head or she wouldn’t say such a thing.

Mike crosses his eyes at her.

“Mike!” Her eight-year-old shriek like a handsaw. “Stop it!”

“Tenez-vous tranquilles maintenant, hein? Your father’s driving,” says Maman.

Madeleine has seen the muscles in her father’s neck contract at her screech, and she softens. She doesn’t want to make him have to pull over and face the back seat. That means a spoiled treat, and a good dose of shame for having ruined such a nice drive through such lovely scenery. His voice will be disappointed, his blue eyes bewildered. Especially his left one with the light scar that traverses his brow. The lid droops slightly, so that his left eye always looks a little sad.

“Chantons, les enfants,” says Maman. And they sing.

“‘Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar, and be better off than you are …?’”

Billboards loom in farmers’ fields, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and Be Saved , soldier rows of leafy beets that slow down or speed up depending on whether you focus on the dirt between the rows or on the blur of green, Kodak, Dairy Queen, The Wages of Sin Is Death . Barns, neat and scrubbed. The congenial whiff of cow-pies and wood fires reminds Madeleine of home — Germany, that is. She closes her eyes. She has just said goodbye to another house, on an air force base near the Black Forest. Say goodbye to the house, kids . And they pulled away for the last time.

Each house stands mute and innocent like a poor animal left behind. The windows wide-eyed, bereft of drapes, the front-door-mouth sad and sealed. Goodbye, dear house. Thank you for all the nice times. Thank you for all the remember-whens. The sad house left behind solidifies in memory to become a monument to a former time, a marker for the place you can never get back to. That’s how it is in the air force.

This is Madeleine’s third move, and Mike’s fourth. He insists that she can’t possibly remember her first move, from Alberta to Michigan, because she was only three going on four. Yet he claims to remember his first move, from Washington, DC, to Alberta, despite the fact that he was barely three. Such are the injustices of living with an older brother.

“Dad,” says Madeleine from the back seat, “I do so remember leaving the base in Alberta, don’t I?”

“Sure you do. Remember the skating rink we made in the backyard?”

She looks pointedly at her brother. “Yup.”

“There you go. But ‘base’ is actually an American term, old buddy. The correct term is ‘station.’”

“Yeah,” says Mike.

They left Europe in June and, for the better part of two months, Mike and Madeleine were indulged by their Acadian aunts and uncles in New Brunswick, and ran wild with their cousins. Dozens of them: wild black-haired boys you are not supposed to have a crush on because you are related to them, sexy girls who shave their legs before they are twelve. They speak rapid French, just try to keep up, and if you’ve gone somewhere in a car with them, make sure you get in before it leaves again. Mike and Madeleine watched television for the first time in four years.

No one had a television set on the base in Germany. There were movies at the rec centre, reliably preceded by Looney Toons and Mickey Mouse. There were Friday night suppers with Maman, listening to Jack Benny on the radio before Dad got home from TGIF at the officers’ mess. But TV opened up a brave new world of pageboys, chiffon scarves and madras shorts, of carefree teenagers and surfboards. The cousins were more Connie Francis than Sandra Dee, more Sal Mineo than Troy Donahue, but they had roller skates, cars and Dentyne. And big fridges. Welcome to North America.

Madeleine accepts the idea that she loves them all, “parce que c’est la famille,” says her mother. “Family” has almost as mythic a ring to it as “home.” When they pulled away from Grandmaman’s old pink bungalow, Dad said, “Let’s head for home, what do you think, kids?”

Madeleine waved to Grandmaman, on the porch of the house that looked like a powdery peppermint. Big fat Grandmaman in her bungalow, brightly painted so Grandpapa could see it from his fishing boat out on the water. It was only the second time in Madeleine’s life that she remembered visiting her grandmother, but her eyes filled with tears because “Grandmaman” is another word for “home.”

“What do you say, Missus?” said Dad as they left behind the sea and dunes.

“Take me home, Jack,” said Maman, and wiped her eyes behind her sunglasses.

For a split second Madeleine imagined they were driving back to Germany. To the green lawns and white buildings of the air force base and, in the nearby town, cobblestones, and sidewalk cafés; the tightly stitched countryside, no patch of land unspoken for, no inch uncherished, a different country every couple of hours on a Sunday drive. The German language she had taken to, the language of fairy tales— Märchen —in which she felt wrapped up and safe, like dressing up in her mother’s mouton coat. The language that made people smile in surprise — women behind shop counters, who were delighted by her proficiency and teased her parents about their bad Kanadische Deutsch as they offered tastes of cheese and, always, Schokolade für die Kinder . The first German words she and Mike learned: danke schön .

If your father is in the air force, people ask you where you are from and it’s difficult to answer. The answer becomes longer the older you get, because you move every few years. “Where are you from?” “I’m from the Royal Canadian Air Force.” The RCAF. Like a country whose bits are scattered around the globe.

Each bit, each base, looks like every other, so there is a consistency to this nation. Like walking into any Catholic church and hearing the Latin Mass, you can go to a base — station, that is — anywhere in the world and understand it: the recreation centre, the churches, the post office, bank and fire hall, the parade square, the library, the airfield, the building where your father works. And the PX for groceries and everything else—“PX” is another American term they picked up in Europe.

If you live in what are called PMQs — Permanent Married Quarters — your house will be familiar too. There’s a handful of designs, early suburban blueprints, mostly semi-detached, except for the tiny bungalows and the big house where the CO lives. Commanding officer. There is a flagpole on his lawn. By the time you’re eight years old, you have probably seen the inside of each type of house in the PMQs. Sometimes in mirror image. And yet, somehow, each house becomes unique once a family moves in. Unique smells, instant accumulation of treasures, pictures and lived-in mess, all of it emerges from cardboard boxes that kids make into forts and play in for days before they collapse, and by the time they do collapse, the house looks as though the family has always lived there, because an air force wife can put together a home inside a week.