Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

They reach the sidewalk and she turns to look back but Colleen is gone.

Five days later the weather has changed. Flurries in the morning. Thick flakes have swirled outside the windows of J. A. D. McCurdy all day, and in the afternoon a dark cloud moved in and the wind picked up. The snow blows like sand across the schoolyard and gathers in miniature dunes against the slide, the pitcher’s mound, the bicycle racks and car tires. The class makes snowflakes in art. Take a piece of white construction paper; fold it neatly in two; draw one half of a snowflake; cut it out, then carefully poke the sharp end of the scissors through to make numerous tiny holes; unfold the paper. Miraculous.

The first snow is always a surprise. It comes overnight, and in the morning parents wake their children, “Come look out the window!” It covers everything — trees, houses, backyards and bikes. It brings everything and everyone together, even sounds — a fresh white muted world where the roll of tires is intimate, every whisper and bird call part of the same story. Houses and cars peer out from beneath white coverlets that pleat at eaves and headlights, and trickle into icicles. Across the lawns, now just one great lawn, curves and contours take shape, mysterious sudden swellings.

After breakfast, kids put on snowsuits and toques; padded oblong figures with penguin arms tread out into the winter sunshine, eagerly yet regretfully making the first marks. The birds have been there before them with their three-pronged prints, but otherwise the snow is pristine. Soon it will be pitted and dirty, rolled into snowmen, piled into snow forts, swished into angels, the grass exposed in patches and green slashes. There is the particular scent of soil filtered through the damp wool of scarves beaded with breathcicles, the taste of snow on woollen mittens.

By afternoon, steam rises from shining black driveways, the last white slabs slide heavily from a mailbox, a porch railing. Overheated children unzip as they swaddle home, galoshes unbuckled, hats in hand.

“This will confuse the birds,” says a lady at the PX, where Jack is buying charcoal. The McCarthys are having a barbecue tonight. “The last one of the season,” says Jack.

It is a mild evening. And although Madeleine is embarrassed to be the only family barbecuing in the shrinking snow, the chicken does smell irresistible turning on the rotisserie just outside the back door. The way her parents behave whenever they do some crazy thing like this compounds her mortification and completes her happiness. Her mother laughing unaccountably, her father winking back; Maman slipping her arms around his waist from behind, the way she does whenever he cooks or does something that is usually women’s work. He boasts that all the great chefs of the world are men, and she bites his earlobe. Madeleine and Mike exchange looks, rolling their eyes.

JACK HAS BEGUN to feel rather like a chauffeur. “Errand boy” is too negative a term, especially considering that he is Oskar Fried’s only contact. But it would help if the man were more forthcoming. Jack has put miles on the Rambler. Even in the city. Fried will not walk anywhere and he will not take a cab. He has done his best to badger Jack into allowing him to take the wheel, but Jack is not about to let Fried drive without a licence — what if they were stopped by the police?

Driving is conducive to conversation, but Fried rarely speaks. Jack endures his silent profile across the monotonous miles … Niagara Falls, the Botanical Gardens, the greenhouse at Storybook Gardens; an outing one or two afternoons a week, even dinner and a Leafs game in Toronto one night — he told Mimi he was at a function at the university. Tim Horton was in fine form and Gordie Howe at the top of his game; it might have been fun, but Fried is a dull date and Jack wished bitterly that he were there with his son instead. He provided play-by-play commentary worthy of Dick Irvin, while Fried watched his first hockey game with the rapt attention of an iguana. It was impossible to know whether or not he was enjoying himself. On the drive back to London, Fried said, “I keep this car.” “I beg your pardon?” “You borrow this car to me.” “No sir, I’m sorry.” And Fried’s silence deepened.

Fried puts away a bottle of wine, tucks into a New York strip, but nothing loosens his tongue. Jack picks up the tab — Fried seems not to carry money. And he never fails to place his grocery order over the phone, so that Jack invariably arrives at the apartment laden with bags. Cognac, fresh pouch of tobacco … it adds up.

Simon has reimbursed him, but Jack was faced with a short-term quandary that Simon could not have foreseen: Jack’s salary is deposited directly into the bank by the station accounts officer, and he and Mimi have a joint account. Not every married couple has one but every true partnership does, and that’s what Jack and Mimi have. For Jack to spend close to a hundred unaccounted-for dollars would raise a question in Mimi’s mind.

He got around this hitch by asking the flight lieutenant in the accounts office for an advance. Not unusual, not questioned. Not a problem. A week later Simon wired him the money, and Jack was able to deposit it in his bank on the same day as the rest of his pay. But when Mimi was reconciling the accounts two weeks later, at the dining-room table — he is the MBA, but she is the chief financial officer at home — she looked up and asked why there were two deposits on the same day adding up to his usual pay. He told her the accounts officer had made a mistake — shortchanged him by a hundred, then corrected it. She accepted that, and why should she not?

But it didn’t sit well with him.

When he came home from his first afternoon with Fried, he was speechless when his wife inquired over supper what he had been doing at Storybook Gardens. How did she know? Had she been in London? Had she seen him with Fried? He felt his face flush. She answered his question before he could ask. It turned out there was a wretched sticker on the rear bumper of his car. Black silhouette of a castle turret against a bright yellow background. He hadn’t noticed it when he returned to the parking lot, having waited while Fried stood silently, endlessly, before a series of potted plants in the greenhouse. He told Mimi he had grabbed a sandwich and gone there to stretch his legs between meetings. She didn’t question him, and her subsequent behaviour betrayed no suspicion. And why would she be suspicious?

Yet Jack is annoyed to have felt himself squirm guiltily at his own supper table. It didn’t feel like a “tactical” lie, it simply felt … shabby. He’s angry at Oskar Fried for steadfastly refusing to visit his home, to get over the clandestine nonsense and meet his family under a plausible and congenial cover so that Jack can reasonably be seen to be helping the man out from time to time. To “normalize relations.” He has considered confiding in Mimi but that would mean clearing it with Simon first, and he’d feel like a damn fool asking Simon permission to tell his wife because he’s feeling like a sneaky schoolboy. And Mimi should not have to worry about a Soviet defector on the run from the KGB — not after what they’ve all just been through with Cuba.

He has drawn the line at weekends and his work isn’t suffering, but he missed his son’s first hockey game of the season. When he went to Winnipeg for his meeting with the AOC of Training Command, he was relieved — four whole days without a call from Fried. Without a grocery list, or a lie. He was no one’s servant. No one’s chauffeur.