Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

Scientists are supposed to be curious. Fried has not asked Jack a single question about his work or life in North America, beyond bare utilitarian queries. Jack feels invisible. He reflects on the brief paragraph he read about scientific employees. Non-social, non-participative . He has begun to smell something unpleasant in Fried’s manner. What at first seemed like fear has resolved into something resembling arrogance. Perhaps it’s mere resentment or frustration at having spent so many years in grinding servitude to the Soviet system. Perhaps the poor bastard is incapable of happiness. Jack reminds himself that Fried is a rocket scientist, not a candidate for Miss Congeniality.

But if only he would talk about bloody rockets, even in the most general terms. Jack asked him about USAF but all Fried said was, “I prefer NASA.” Jack was momentarily uplifted — here was a scientist who dreamt of working with the civilian space agency, a purist with his heart set on sending a man to the moon because it was there. But that was short-lived. Jack couldn’t pry another word from him on the subject. When Simon told him that he would be acting as a “housekeeping agent,” Jack had not realized he meant it literally. What did you do in the Cold War, Daddy? I delivered groceries.

Throughout November, Jack juggles family, work, and Fried on the side. He begins to tire, not so much from the activity as from the petty lies. They leave a residue. When Mimi massages the back of his neck out of sympathy for his extra workload in the evenings, he is unable to give in to her soothing touch. Again he feels vaguely guilty. Yet it’s not as though he’s transgressing in any way — not as though he’s having an affair. Still, he is aware of fulfilling every condition necessary for the conduct of an affair — all the trouble and none of the perks. That last thought is unworthy of him, and he resents its intrusion.

Being as adept an observer of his own behaviour as he is of others’, he is aware that his thought process has changed. He knows he is creating grooves and patterns, pathways of deceit that he has sworn to use once only and only for this purpose — yet the pathways will remain. How long before they are grown over with grass and disappear? He shrugs it off by diagnosing himself as perfectly healthy. A normal man with a decent conscience. He simply does not enjoy lying to his wife.

Finally Jack hits on a partial solution: television. He tells Simon that Fried could use one, if only to improve his English, not to mention mitigate the loneliness. He doesn’t mention that Fried seems as self-sufficient as his orchids — except in the area of transport. Simon wires the money and Jack delivers a new RCA Victor to Fried, who carefully untwines an orchid from the rabbit ears. Jack leaves him watching The Beverly Hillbillies , as impassive as ever. “See ya, Oskar, call if you need anything.” Jack smiles to himself as he pulls the door closed. Fried has not even bothered to get up and slide the deadbolt behind him.

The phone rings after midnight. Mimi gets downstairs before he does. He asks who it was but she doesn’t know. “They hung up.” It rings again. Jack grabs it and tells Oskar Fried he has the wrong number. Then he tells his wife, “That’s it for me, I’m wide awake. Think I’ll stroll around the block.”

“At this hour?”

“Sure. Nice and peaceful.”

He pulls on his trousers and heads over to the station, breaking into a run once he has rounded the corner, and returns Fried’s call from the phone booth by the parade square.

Fried has called to tell him that there is something wrong with his new television set. A picture of an Indian has appeared and will not go away. Any other time, Jack would laugh. “It’s called a test pattern, Oskar. There will not be any more television programs until morning. Go to bed now.”

IN THE PARK behind the Froelich house, the slide is only half as high because of the snow, and the swings are lodged in drifts. In backyards, small children skate, ankles collapsed inward, on postage-stamp rinks that their fathers have flooded. Claire McCarroll is among these, gingerly walking on her new blades toward her father’s outstretched hands — this is her first Canadian winter. In the McCarthys’ dining room, the heat from the Advent candles causes the brass angels to rotate on their wheel above, spinning a little faster every Sunday as one more flame is added. Madeleine and Mike take turns opening the tiny cardboard doors on the dog-eared December calendar that Mimi has stuck to the fridge for the fifth year in a row. The chocolates that came with it, hiding behind each day of the month, are long gone, but the tiny pictures remain: a dog, a candle, a Christmas tree…. All leading up to the twenty-fourth, when the Baby Jesus will be revealed. Across the top, in medieval script, are the words “Fröhliche Weihnachten .” Merry Christmas, from the land of “ O Tannenbaum .” Mimi has tried to replace the calendar with a new one but the children will not hear of it.

Jack goes to the parent-teacher interviews with Mimi and feels lighter than he has in months. Mike is doing satisfactorily but is capable of more. “He needs to apply himself,” says Miss Crane. She is concerned that he is spending more time with Arnold Pinder than is perhaps advisable. But she likes Mike. She’s not supposed to have favourites, but he is definitely one. A nice boy. A good-hearted boy. Jack glances at Mimi. She’s beaming.

Madeleine may have got off on the wrong foot but she has come up from behind to excel — her report card was worth framing. Jack looks from the officious felt animals on the bulletin board to the bland teacher sitting before him. A limp grey man with watery eyes — a walrus moustache would not be amiss. He is the type who gets picked on in the schoolyard, then grows up to take his revenge in the classroom. Somehow Jack’s daughter is managing to learn from this clown. It only makes Jack more proud of her.

By the second week, Christmas cards have accumulated on strings hung between living room and dining room, and the stockings go up over the fireplace, their names embroidered by Mimi years ago in Alberta: Papa, Maman, Michel, Madeleine . On the mantelpiece the nativity scene is set out, nestled in cotton-wool snow. Bought in Germany in ’58, it is a tableau that Madeleine never tires of contemplating. An angel watches over the wooden stable, its floor strewn with straw; in and about it, painted ceramic cattle and sheep sleep and graze while Joseph and Mary kneel at either end of the empty manger — the Baby Jesus is hiding in the drawer of Maman’s sewing table until Christmas Day. Shepherds hover outside the stable, and Madeleine changes their positions daily, along with the animals. She is sorely tempted to add an army man or two of Mike’s to the scene. The Three Wise Men make their way on camel-back from the far end of the mantelpiece, but Madeleine improvises, making them cover vast distances across the dining-room table, the desert of the kitchen floor; stranding them on top of the fridge, the North Pole— musta taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque . Sorry, God. One of the Wise Men is black with a beard and a purple robe. He is her favourite. We three kings of Orient are, smoking on a rubber cigar, it was loaded, it exploded, now we’re on yonder star… . It’s impossible not to think of those words when contemplating the nativity scene. Madeleine banishes blasphemy by thinking of the Baby Jesus, for whom she is filled with a fervent love. She kneels before the sewing table, bows her head against the drawer where He lies waiting to be born, and tears come to her eyes as she prays that this time no one will hurt Him.