Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“… Are backbends good for you?”

“I suppose so, yeah.”

Jack turns a page of his newspaper. KHRUSHCHEV SAYS WEAPONS IN CUBA SOLELY FOR DEFENCE… .

“Do they improve your concentration?”

“What’s that, old buddy?”

“Backbends.”

“Oh, I don’t know, how would they do that?”

“By making the blood flow to your head.”

“Yeah I suppose they would. Why, have you been doing backbends?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“After school.” She adds, “On my way home.” That’s not really a lie. Mr. March’s desk is on her way home, she has to pass it in order to get to the door.

“Don’t work too hard, sweetie.” He puts down the paper because she looks so serious all of a sudden. “Listen now”—he pulls her onto his knee—“maybe it’s time to throttle back, what do you think?” He tells her to forget all about tortoises and hares for a while, because “half the battle goes on back here,” and he taps the back of his head, “while you’re out playing or in bed asleep dreaming. You’ve got to be careful not to burn the candle at both ends.”

Dad doesn’t know what backbends are. She tries not to think about them while he hugs her. They don’t belong here on his lap. Mr. March’s knees in a vise grip on her hips, “spotting” her.

“Dad, can I watch TV now?”

“Why don’t you go out and play, there won’t be many sunny days left.”

“ To Tell the Truth is on.”

“It’ll be on next week too, don’t you think, eh?”

“Yeah.” She returns his smile and gets down off the couch. Her legs feel heavy.

When she imagines telling him about the backbends, she thinks of herself doing one right in front of him, and that makes her feel sorry for him because he would be so bewildered. But Dad wasn’t wrong. She got out of tortoises.

Jack returns to his paper. Bleeding hearts in Britain are demonstrating, Ban the Bomb! Self-described Communists. That sort of leaning was understandable in the thirties but is unforgivable now. Have these people never heard of Stalin? He turns the page. Sees his daughter still standing in the middle of the room, looking a little lost. Maybe she’s had a falling-out with her friends. “Did you say there was a new girl in your class?”

Madeleine nods.

“Why don’t you go call on her. Make her feel at home.”

“Okay.”

Her legs are so heavy and the sun is so bright, it feels like miles down to the little green bungalow. She squints, feeling almost sick.

“Hello Madeleine, honey,” says Sharon McCarroll. She has the same sweet Virginia voice as Claire.

Claire McCarroll has a bedroom full of unbroken toys. Shelves of dolls, and games with no pieces missing. That’s because she is that rare and blessed creature, an only child. She doesn’t so much play with Madeleine as watch Madeleine play. She is like someone in a foreign country who knows a few polite phrases: “You can play with it.” Claire is not used to defending her stuff. She even lets Madeleine hold the bird’s nest on her dresser. It has the blue egg in it.

“Wow,” says Madeleine, “you have an Easy-Bake Oven.”

“You can play with it.”

“‘It’s Kenner! It’s fun!’” and Madeleine squawks like the cartoon bird, “Grawk!” Claire giggles and it sounds like water bubbling up. It is so sudden and happy that it makes Madeleine laugh.

“Pull my string,” says Madeleine. And Claire pulls the imaginary string. Bugs Bunny says, “Nyah, what’s up, doc?” Claire laughs again. “Pull it again.” Claire does.

It’s too nice out to play inside so Mrs. McCarroll lets them take Claire’s Easy-Bake Oven outside. They sit on the grass, peering through the oven door, waiting for the light bulb to cook the tiny angel food cake. Madeleine is in play clothes but Claire is still in her dress.

There is not a great deal to talk about.

The cake is ready. Claire opens the oven. “You can cut it,” she says, blushing.

Madeleine divides the cake scrupulously and they take as long as they can to eat it off tea-party plates. Then they do somersaults to aid digestion. Madeleine sees Claire’s underpants even though she isn’t trying to look. She imagines Claire doing a backbend at Mr. March’s desk, then closes her eyes to get rid of the picture. She squeezes them shut only to see Claire’s underpants, their pattern bright and clear on the insides of her eyelids. A storm of yellow butterflies.

That week at school, Claire is much sought after. But it wanes. She is so genuinely what she seems — quiet, shy — that there is no point continuing to make a fuss or fight over her. She never picks a best friend, which is what everyone is waiting for her to do. Offerings are made: “Claire, do you want one of my Smarties?”

“Yes please, would you like a cookie?”

Regardless of who makes the offer, Claire accepts it and offers something back. She doesn’t understand that you shouldn’t enter into any exchange with Grace Novotny, that it taints you. Claire just doesn’t get it, even after a whole week. She doesn’t join any huddles, she swings on the swing alone, not high. She may go down the slide, braking carefully with her hands on the way. And she rides to and from school on her bike every day, even though the PMQs are too close for anyone to have to ride.

Her bike has fat tires like Madeleine’s, and underneath its custom paint job perhaps it is also a Zippy Vélo. But Claire’s father painted it pink and white, a decorative diamond pattern like the Pied Piper’s cloak gracing the fenders and chain guard. It has a pink seat, pink bell, pink plastic wicker basket and — pièce de résistance — two glistening pink plastic streamers.

Claire is definitely not a reject, and since everyone kind of likes her and nobody dislikes her, no one notices that she has no friends.

GOING TO SCHOOL in the morning is often very different from coming home in the afternoon. Wednesdays are best because she never has to stay after three. No one does. Mr. March conducts the school band, and Wednesday afternoons they practise from three to four-thirty. Lisa and Auriel are in the band, playing triangle and recorder respectively, but Madeleine has managed to avoid it by promising her mother to practise her accordion faithfully. She has started lessons with Mr. Boucher.

Every morning she leaves her house in time to join up with Lisa and Auriel and they sing all the way to school. American Bandstand rate-a-record. Madeleine throws wide her arms and belts plaintively, “‘Whe-e-e-ere the Boys Are …!’” Auriel is not shy either, she will twist right there on the side of the road, and sometimes it feels too early in the day to be laughing that hard. They have named themselves The Songelles. Spinning their hands, snapping their fingers, locomotioning all the way down the street.

If they leave for school early enough, they can double back to the corner of Algonquin Drive and the Huron County road, where the teenagers wait for the bus to high school, and catch a glimpse of Ricky Froelich and Marsha Woodley holding hands. He carries her books.

The bell rings and every morning, amid the scraping of chairs, the after-three exercises seem very far away, banished by the comfortable daily routine that begins with singing “God Save the Queen”—if you watch carefully, you will see that Claire McCarroll sings different words to it, but not loudly. American words. What’s more, there is now a gerbil living in a cage at the back of the classroom, imparting a friendly rodent smell of wood shavings. His name is Sputnik.