Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

She is on her way to the foyer when she passes the grade eight classroom on her right and sees Mr. Froelich cleaning his blackboard. There are fractions and x’s and numbers with minuses next to them, a clash of jagged chalk smearing now into white dust, disappearing like a headache under Mr. Froelich’s smooth brushstrokes. She watches, soothed, unaware that her feet have stopped until she hears, “Why are you still here, Madeleine?”

His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. His arms are skinny white under his black hairs.

“You want to help me clean the board?” he asks. “Or maybe you better hurry home, eh? Your mutti will worry.”

But Madeleine comes in and stands beside him, watching his arm move in a broad arc across the board.

“What’s that?” she asks, aware that it is rude to ask about marks on a person’s body. It’s bad manners. But she has automatically asked Mr. Froelich about the mark on his arm without thinking, because often after the exercise group she has a feeling of just waking up, as though she has sweated out a flu in the night and may still be dreaming. And when you are dreaming, you say whatever comes into your head.

Mr. Froelich doesn’t seem offended. He glances down at his arm where the blue marks are. He says, “Oh. That’s my old phone number,” and begins to roll down his sleeve, but Madeleine reaches out and puts her hand on his arm. This also is a strange thing to do, and she is watching herself do it — you shouldn’t just go around touching people, especially grown-ups, that too is rude. But her hand rests lightly on his forearm; she is looking at the small blue numbers there.

“Does it rub off?” she asks.

“No.”

“’Cause it’s a tattoo.”

He nods.

She asks, “Were you in the SS?” It feels like a normal question.

He shakes his head. “No.”

She looks up at him. “Were there some good Nazis?”

“Not that I know of. But people are people.”

“I know.”

He waits. Looking at her, but not staring. They stay like that for a bit. He is like talcum powder, like a nice priest. The smell of chalk is gentle.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asks. “Was ist los, Mädele?”

“Nichts .”

He puts his hand out and touches her forehead. His fingers are dry and cool. She begins to wake up. “Du bist warm ,” he says.

A man’s voice behind her says, “Everything okay?”

Madeleine looks up, her hand still on Mr. Froelich’s arm. The principal, Mr. Lemmon, is standing in the doorway. He always has a five o’clock shadow and looks worried.

Mr. Froelich feels her cheek and says to Mr. Lemmon, “I wonder if she’s a little feverish.”

“Are you okay, Madeleine?” asks Mr. Lemmon.

Madeleine nods.

“Shall we walk home?” Mr. Froelich asks her.

“No thanks,” she says. “I’m going to run all the way.”

He smiles and says, “All right then, you run.”

She walks out of the room, past Mr. Lemmon. The hallway looks brighter now — she can see more of it. Perhaps someone has opened a window somewhere, it feels cooler. There is no running in the halls, and she knows Mr. Lemmon is watching, so she restrains herself until she reaches the corner, then she turns and bolts through the foyer. Past the Queen, past Prince Philip and all their fighter planes, she doesn’t slow her pace before the glass doors but runs at them, the heels of her palms thrust forward to bash down the metal bar that opens the latch. She accelerates off the steps, stretching her legs as far as possible— Elastoman! She runs, arms outflung, paper turkey fluttering from her fingers.

Halfway across the field, she sees someone emerging from the dry corn on the other side of Algonquin Drive. Colleen Froelich. She has something in her hands, a rope; green and yellow, too short for a skipping rope. And Colleen Froelich doesn’t skip. Madeleine calls to her but Colleen ignores her and keeps walking. Madeleine follows and calls again, “Hey, Colleen, watcha got?” Colleen doesn’t answer.

She tries again. “How’s Eggs?” Colleen gives no sign she has heard.

“Hey kid!” yells Madeleine, her throat seared by anger, “I asked you something!” Colleen’s back is impervious. Madeleine runs to catch up. “I said, how’s Eggs!” she screams. Dizzy with the force of it.

Colleen stops and turns around suddenly, so that Madeleine almost bumps into her and the thing she is holding. A snake. Madeleine’s anger deserts her. She doesn’t like snakes.

“What the hell’re you talking about?” says Colleen.

Madeleine takes a step back and says in a small voice, “Your dog. Eggs.”

Colleen narrows her icy blue eyes. The enormity of having messed with her dawns on Madeleine. The snake drips from Colleen’s fingers, she winds it around her wrist and says, “His name is Rex, you re tard.”

Madeleine is shocked. Colleen has used the word that people use on her own sister. Madeleine starts to say something nice about the snake, hoping to make everything all right, but Colleen turns her back and starts walking away again.

Madeleine’s anger roars back, she scoops grit from the side of the road and hurls it like shrapnel. “Everyone hates you, kid!”

That night she asks her father, “Dad, in the olden days, did people write their phone number on their arms?”

“In the olden days they didn’t have phones.” Jack gets up and puts away the Treasury of Fairytales . “Whom do you know with their phone number on their arm?”

“Mr. Froelich.”

“Mr. Froelich?”

“Yeah.” She hesitates. She doesn’t want to make her father think Mr. Froelich was a Nazi, but she needs a definite answer. “He has a tattoo.”

“A tattoo?” Jack sits back down. “What does it look like?”

“It’s blue. It’s here.” She points to her forearm.

Jack takes a breath. Holy Dinah. But he smiles at his daughter and says, “That makes sense. You’ve heard of the absent-minded professor?”

“Yeah.”

“Well that describes Mr. Froelich to a T.” He kisses her forehead. “’Night-night, sweetie.”

“Does it mean he was a Nazi?”

“No.” He has spoken too sharply, he softens his tone. “No, no, sweetie, nothing like that, don’t ever think that.”

He turns off her light and slips out. She hugs Bugs, relieved. As she closes her eyes it strikes her as odd that, within the course of only minutes, she should have had such a gentle time with Mr. Froelich, and such an opposite time with Colleen. How can Colleen and Ricky come from the same family? The only one in her family Colleen seems related to is Rex.

Mimi gets up from the kitchen table and pours Jack a cup of tea. She has been writing out cheques, paying bills.

Jack says, “Son of a gun.”

“What?”

“I think Henry Froelich is Jewish.” He pronounces it Jeweesh with his vestigial east coast accent.

“Oh Jack, everyone knows that.”

“Who’s everyone?”

“I don’t know. Vimy told me. I asked if they ever went to church and she told me Henry is Jewish. I don’t know what her excuse is.”

“Whose?”

“His wife’s.”

“No one tells me anything.”

“Well what difference does it make?”

“Nothing, except….” Mimi returns to her paperwork. She sets the baby bonus aside — Michel has grown out of his new sneakers already. Jack continues. “Henry was in a concentration camp.”

Mimi makes the sign of the cross.

Jack sighs and shakes his head. “Holy Dinah.”

“I’m glad we never went there….” She doesn’t even want to say the word. Auschwitz. “Pauvre Henry.” There are tears in her eyes.