Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“Oh my God!” cried Auriel and crumpled.

Lisa likewise crumpled. “Ricky Froelich!” They burst into giggles, joined hands and ran toward the playground, turning to shriek, “Madeleine, hurry up!”

As Madeleine caught up, Auriel grabbed her hand, and the three of them ran in a line like cut-out dolls in time to see Ricky Froelich, on his red motor scooter, zoom off behind the school with a little kid on the back. Madeleine could also see that Mike had already barged to the front of the crowd with Roy Noonan. Music was coming from somewhere — someone must have a transistor radio. Auriel seized Madeleine’s arm. “There’s Marsha Woodley.”

“She babysits us,” hissed Lisa urgently.

“Us too,” Auriel hastily put in.

Marsha Woodley. Over by the swings, remote and serene, the CO’s daughter. Flanked by two girlfriends. Twin-sets, penny loafers and ponytails. Marsha wears her cardigan draped around her shoulders, buttoned at the top, a pleated skirt and ankle socks. These girls don’t attend J. A. D. McCurdy, they go on the bus to high school. High atop Mount Olympus. The transistor is in Marsha’s hand — Dion’s irresistibly swaggering voice—“‘Well I’m the type o’ guy who will never settle down….’”

The motor scooter zooms back and deposits the little kid, and the crowd closes in. “Ricky! I’m next, take me, Ricky!”

He dismounts. A tall boy in faded jeans and a red cowboy shirt. Dreamboat. Colleen’s brother — and Elizabeth’s. Holy mackerel.

Auriel shoves Madeleine forward. “Ask him for a ride!”

“You ask him, you love him.”

“I do not!” squeals Auriel and swats Madeleine.

Madeleine watches as Ricky lets Mike sit on the scooter by himself and twist the throttle. Auriel murmurs, “He doesn’t even know I’m alive.” Ricky trots alongside the scooter, holding Mike steady.

Lisa says, “Your brother’s cute.”

“Yuck!” cries Madeleine, shocked.

“Oh Mikey,” swoons Auriel, and begins kissing her own arm.

Lisa succumbs to her raspy laugh and likewise smooches her arm: “Oh Ricky, oh Rock!”

Auriel erupts in giggles, barely able to speak. “Oh Cary Grant! Oh Gina Lollobrigida!” The two of them fall down.

Madeleine looks at her friends. They have lost their minds. Dion floats on the air, carefree and insinuating — as she watches Mike take off on his own around the schoolyard, his face red — he is trying not to smile. “‘They call me the wanderer, yeah I’m the wanderer, I roam around ’n’ round, ’n’ round, ’n’ round….’”

Madeleine says, “Do you dare me to ask for a ride?”

Auriel and Lisa sober up immediately.

As Mike comes to a stop, Madeleine walks through the crowd and straight up to Ricky Froelich. “Can I have a try?”

“Not by herself,” says Mike in his deepest voice, “she’s too little.”

“Mike, I am not!”

“She’s my sister.”

Ricky climbs back onto the scooter and turns to Madeleine. He has shiny black hair and dark brown eyes, his shirt is open at the collar. His Adam’s apple moves as he says to her, “Hop on, pal.”

Madeleine gets on the back and grasps the bar behind her. He twists the throttle and she feels herself jerked back as they accelerate across the pavement, then onto the field — it’s exactly the way she imagines surfing must feel, the rubber wheels riding waves of grass, the soft seat vibrating beneath her. “Hang onto me,” he calls over his shoulder, and speeds up. She slips her hands around his waist and threads her fingers across his stomach, warm and firm beneath his soft shirt. Her hands feel small. Panels of muscle stiffen as he leans into a turn, the feel of them reminds Madeleine of how boys look in their bathing suits — smooth chests, arc of ribcage just visible, and that line down the middle of their stomachs….

“You okay back there?”

“Yeah,” she calls.

She cannot stop smiling, her forehead against his billowing shirt, glad he cannot see her. Her hair lifts in the breeze, she leans her cheek against his shoulder blade and smells baby powder, Brylcreem; sees the sinews of his tanned forearm shift with each movement of his wrist, turning the throttle, squeezing the brake.

They speed from the grass onto asphalt and around the swings, while far away it seems the crowd of kids watches and the transistor plays. Is this what it’s like to be in a movie? To feel so private, yet with a huge audience watching?

She leans with him as they round the school, hangs on a little tighter, feels the pearly snaps of his shirt beneath her fingers; there is no time, there is only now, the sound of a motor, the breeze on her arms, the warmth of the soaked-up sun radiating from his back, the ease of his voice singing along. They come out from around the school into the full tilt of the evening sun and the ride is done.

Madeleine climbs off, her legs trembling, a stranger to gravity. She doesn’t think to thank him. She is deaf to the admiration of Auriel and Lisa. She rejoins the crowd and watches with her friends, but she feels like an emptied glass — that crestfallen feeling of walking out from a movie theatre in the middle of the day, out from the intimate matinée darkness and the smell of popcorn, which is the smell of heightened colour and sound and story, into the borderless bright of day. Bereft.

He gives a ride to every kid who wants one. Auriel, beaming and beetred; Lisa, mute with pleasure. He even gives Marjorie Nolan a ride — she has no qualms about screaming and throwing her arms around him on the pretext of being afraid of falling off. And she hangs onto his hand after her ride is done, sticking to him, trying to drag him off his bike.

Through it all, Marsha Woodley watches, exchanging murmurs with her girlfriends, who squeal every time he buzzes the swings. Marsha doesn’t squeal. She smiles and looks off to the side. Tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Licks the corner of her mouth. Pale pink lipstick.

Finally, Ricky wheels the scooter up to Marsha. He dismounts and holds it steady for her as she gets on, and this time he gets on behind her so she won’t have to straddle the seat in her skirt. He reaches his arms around her to grasp the handlebars, he tweaks the throttle, and they take off. Out of the schoolyard and up Algonquin Drive into the golden light of eight o’clock in summer.

Madeleine feels an ache. In a place she didn’t know was part of her body. Starting around the wishbone in her chest and spreading out. A plunging sadness, to do with the scent of hay and motor oil, his billowing shirt and the sight of Marsha Woodley’s skirt lapping at her knees. The crowd of kids disperses, and the three girls start for home across the green.

“I’m dying for a fag,” says Auriel, and Lisa Ridelle pulls out a pack of Popeye candy cigarettes. The three of them light up and inhale gratefully.

“Sankyou, dahling.”

“You’re velcome, dahling.”

“I’d vok a mile for a Camel.”

They walk, the toes of their runners darkening with dew, sucking their candy tubes to a point. Walking parallel some distance away is Marjorie Nolan, shadowing them. Madeleine wonders why she doesn’t just come over if she wants to walk with them. “Do you guys know that kid?” she asks.

Auriel looks across at Marjorie. “Not really, she just moved in.” Which is surprising, considering that Marjorie was such a know-it-all today.

“Do you know her?” asks Lisa.

“Sorta.”

“She looks weird.”

“What’s her name?” asks Auriel.

“Marjorie,” says Madeleine, and then, “Margarine.”

Auriel and Lisa laugh and Madeleine feels a twinge. She looks across at Marjorie, who is still not looking. Fine, don’t look, I was going to invite you to walk with us .