Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

She gives him a kiss and reaches for her Chatelaine . She flips through … the average salary paid to women is only half that paid to men —

“She’s just like her maman,” says Jack.

Mimi laughs. “Don’t I know that.”

“She’s a spitfire.” He gives her a kiss, then, “I didn’t mean to embarrass her.”

“I know.”

They read.

His: Since last October, the U.S. has boosted its force of military advisers to more than 10,000 and is now spending $1,000,000 daily to beat the Viet Cong… .

Hers: Thanksgiving recipes your family will love .

ONCE UPON A TIME, in a republic that no longer exists, there was a handsome and brilliant young man called Wernher von Braun. He came from an aristocratic Prussian family, and he shared the passion of his generation. Rockets. They were, as yet, merely a dream; humanity’s chance to rise far above the violence of earthly existence, to where our petty differences would shrink in the immensity of space. A dream of peace in our time. Wernher studied physics and joined a club of amateur enthusiasts who built small rockets of their own, launching them on weekends.

He caught the notice of an army officer who shared his dream and belonged to an organization with pockets deep enough to fund it. In 1936, Germany was recovering, freeing itself from the yoke of poverty. There were finally people in power — vulgar people perhaps — who nonetheless knew how to get things done. It was a wonderful time to be young.

Wernher was twenty-five years old when he was put in charge of the army’s secret project to build the biggest, most powerful rockets the world had ever known. But first they needed to find a safe place to forge their dream. Wernher’s mother said to him over Christmas dinner, “Why don’t you take a look at Peenemünde? Your grandfather used to go duck hunting up there.” Wernher fell in love at first sight with Peenemünde’s wilderness, alive with deer and birds, its lost sandy beaches and Baltic sea breezes. The first trees fell before the bulldozers on April 1. Scaffolding and test stands were raised, rail tracks were laid, barracks were built and a neo-classical campus sprang up to accommodate designers, physicists, engineers, aerodynamicists, technicians, administrators and all the gifted young people who would make the dream a reality.

The slaves came later.

BY THE FIRST WEEK of October the leaves were not yet in their glory, but they were on their way. Scarlets and fiery yellows made their appearance, acorn squash scored green and ochre, fancy orange turbans and gnarled gourds mounded up in bushel baskets out front of the IGA and on stands at the foot of farm driveways. Turnips and the last of the corn on the cob, potatoes, beets, carrots and radishes, the local bounty flush from the earth. In the small town of Exeter, the bakery smelled even more divine with the change of temperature, not yet crisp but cool enough in the mornings to contrast deliciously with warm gusts of cinnamon buns and pumpkin pies. The fall fair opened up behind the old train station and Jack took the kids; they made the rounds of the midway — bumper cars, games and a decent roller coaster designed to make you want to hold onto your cotton candy, especially if you’d already eaten it. In the PMQs women were washing windows, signing their kids up for figure skating and hockey, and reminding their husbands to put up the storm windows one of these weekends, while the men started thinking about putting the snow tires on the car.

If you had shown a much younger Mimi McCarthy, Marguerite Leblanc, as she was then, photos of her life now — dancing beneath a crystal chandelier at the officers’ mess with a handsome man in uniform, keeping house with all the modern conveniences, her children both with their own rooms, European travel, her name on a joint account — she would have thought it was a fairy tale. Not that she hadn’t set her sights on it to begin with. Marguerite became Mimi long before she met Jack. When she was about Madeleine’s age, in fact. Mimi reaches for the Palmolive and runs the tap over the breakfast dishes.

She was the only girl in her family to leave her hometown, to pursue post-secondary education, the only one to go overseas. The war helped a lot of young people to break free, but Mimi’s get-up-and-go did the rest. She loves her sisters, she even loves most of her sisters-in-law, she is glad they’re happy, but she would not trade places with them for anything. She has kept her figure, she is still in love with her husband and, at thirty-six, she yearns for another child.

The desire is romantic, almost erotic — caught up in how she feels about her husband, still her date, still fun, but completely her own. She imagines how much easier it would be with the next baby, knowing all she knows now. She enjoyed the first two, of course, but she was so far from home. Washington, then Alberta. No one told her what it would be like. There was no one to take the baby for a moment; no one to see what needed to be done and simply do it, on days when the house resembled an asylum — nothing but crying and spilling and spitting up, until she too sat and cried. No one just to be there. Only your own mother and sisters can do that, and they were half a continent away. In the air force, wives go to great lengths to help one another, with no expectation of it being reciprocated in this posting, knowing that someone will help them when they need it down the line. But friends can only do so much.

Not every woman is cut out for this life. A few buckle — divorce is rare, the strain shows in other ways. Mimi has seen it: the too-cheerful voice on the phone in mid-afternoon; the first drink of the day as a reward for housework, the second as an accompaniment to As the World Turns; the nap before her husband gets home; until one day she sleeps through, and he finds himself opening a can for himself and the kids and making her coffee before the guests arrive—“She’s just a little under the weather.” And to be fair, not all husbands are equal. It takes two to make an unhappy marriage. Mimi is lucky.

She looks out her kitchen window while she scrubs the frying pan; the rubber gloves spare her hands. A bird flutters past, a sparrow with grass in its beak. Across the street, the Froelich boy lifts his sister into the old station wagon, then puts her wheelchair in the back, the way he does every morning. He kisses his mother goodbye and sets off running through the park behind his house, to catch the school bus. Mimi’s own children have already left for school and, although high-school classes start later, he will just make it. Karen Froelich bundles the two babies into a basinette in the back seat, then pulls out of the driveway.

She must have a job of some kind. It would explain the state of the Froelich household — Mimi caught a glimpse when she returned Karen’s chili non-carne pot. Karen probably takes the children to a babysitter, then goes to work. The Froelichs don’t appear to have two incomes; still…. Mimi returns the steel wool to the side of the sink, reminding herself to pick up some little tray or holder for it next time she’s in town. The babies are foster children, that much is known. Betty, Elaine and Vimy were all in Centralia when the infants arrived on the scene. Where do they come from? An unwed mother? People are paid to foster children, aren’t they? In which case, why does Karen Froelich work? The Froelichs don’t attend church. Either church. Are they atheists? She must remember to ask Vimy Woodley.