Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

This is the first time he has been back to Centralia. After the crash, he wore a bandage over his eyes for six weeks. His right eye is fine; he lost some peripheral in the left; he wears prescription sunglasses for driving and otherwise none at all except for reading. If he had been operational at that point, had he been injured by flak over Europe, they would have sent him back up once he recovered. No reason you can’t drop your bomb load with an eye and a half. But he was CT’ed. Ceased Training. Like an obsolete aircraft, he was Struck Off Strength. He kept his wings but lost his aircrew category. His war was over. He was bitter at the time. He was young.

Mimi takes his hand.

Now he is back in Centralia. And Centralia is still a flying school, except these days the cadets come from NATO countries. And there are families. There are station wagons, barbecues and sprinklers. There is peace.

Most of his friends were killed.

He squeezes then releases his wife’s hand, and starts the car. He rounds slowly back between the hangars. Time to show Mimi the social hub of RCAF Centralia. It’s bound to be nice, they always are. High-polish wood and leather, sterling silver, white linen and gardenias. The officers’ mess. Worth squeezing yourself into a monkey suit, if you are an officer, and, more important, worth spending hours slipping into your best satin décolleté if you are an officer’s wife. But formal events are far from the rule. Weekly dances require nothing more than a sports jacket and tie for the men, party dresses for the wives; bingos, raffles, barbecues and corn roasts are even more casual.

Mimi considers her husband’s profile. She likes to tease him that he looks too young for her, although he is a year older. Something innocent about his blue eyes — it could be his lashes, golden brown and too long for a man. She wants to rest her head on his shoulder while he drives, the way she used to when they were courting. Feel his cheek light against her lips, his smooth shave, knowing he can feel her breath, wondering how long it will take him to pull over…. Jack looks unconcerned but she knows it means something to him, being back here. He teases her about being “dramatic” but she knows this is where he had his heart broken. Not by a woman, by an airplane.

She knows better than to talk about it, or to show him she knows by any sign other than being happy here. By plunging in and organizing their life, unpacking her formals along with the pots and pans, joining the Officers’ Wives Club, sending his uniform to the cleaners…. Something she would never tell him: she is glad not to be married to a pilot. Salt of the earth, life of the party, some of their best friends, but … the worry for the wives when the men are flying. And the waiting after work when the men are together, drinking. High-strung esprit de corps, for all her husband’s belief in how relaxed the air force is compared to the army. Mimi knows, but does not say, that men who are relaxed with other men are sometimes anything but, once they get home. She is grateful to be a wife, not a cheerleader. She has the best of both worlds: a man in uniform whose first love is his family.

She looks away, not wanting him to feel watched. He is whistling through his teeth. He’s going to be fine. I have such a good man . There is nothing more erotic than this knowledge, no Hollywood scene could rival this station wagon in the sunshine with this man and his children and the secret that only she knows: his face, hovering just above her own, deserted by his defences. At the mercy of his own strength, needing her to take it from him, keep it safe. Then give it back to him. She slips her hand onto his thigh.

Jack turns left on Alberta Street and follows the one curve on the base. A slow circular drive leads to a stone building couched in hedges and flower beds. Low-slung Frank Lloyd Wright, its granite facade a glamorous contrast to the architectural whiteout everywhere else.

“There you go, Missus,” he says.

Flagstone steps lead to a pair of oak doors. Tilted wood-framed picture windows afford a glimpse of cocktail tables and chairs between burgundy-and-blue curtains — the air force tartan. The dance floor gleams. It is possible to fall in love with your wife all over again in the time it takes to escort her up to the open doors where the sounds of a swing orchestra greet you, along with the clink of glasses, the aroma of the buffet, the laughter of men and women. Enchanted evenings.

“Bon,” says Mimi. And they drive on.

Mike says, “Where’s your building, Dad?”

“Oh we just passed it, buddy, it’s back there on the right.”

Receding through the rear window of the station wagon, a two-storey white building with a green shingled roof and concrete steps. Benign as a snowfort. That is where Jack will be running the Central Officers’ School. That is where he will fly his desk.

Mimi takes a hanky from her husband’s pocket and wipes the lipstick from his mouth, left over from their kiss at the airfield. Then she kisses him again and whispers in his ear, “Je t’aime , baby.”

Life is beautiful. He lets the steering wheel unravel beneath his palm as he completes the leisurely turn back onto Canada Avenue. He is a lucky man. He wants what he has.

He knows that, had he gone operational in ’43 , he might well have been killed. The crash spared him. He has been given the gift that many of his friends sacrificed. He has children. It ends there, there is nothing better, not fast cars or caviar, not Playboy bunnies or money. Your children. And the woman who has your children. He says softly to Mimi as she squeezes his thigh, “Behave yourself, Missus.” She glances down at his lap—“You behave, Mister”—and smiles. Pleased with herself.

As the Rambler passes the gates, the guard touches his cap and Jack lifts two fingers from the wheel.

They near the Spitfire again, and Madeleine feels the butterflies wake up in her stomach. We are finally going to our new house. Which one will it be? In Centralia there are 362 to choose from. In a variety of colours.

Opposite the Spitfire stands a wooden pole. It’s not a telephone pole, Madeleine can see that. Way up at the top is a large bird’s nest. And protruding from the mass of straw is a thrust of metal. Like a rusty mouth.

“It’s an air-raid siren,” says Mike.

It’s unlike the ones she knew in Germany — freshly painted loudspeakers mounted on concrete posts. No birds allowed.

“It’s left over from the war,” says Dad.

“Did you ever hear it?”

“Nope.”

She knows what an air-raid siren sounds like. There were drills on the base at 4 Wing. It’s a terrifying sound that makes you have to go to the bathroom. “Does it still work?” she asks.

“Who knows?” says Dad, “but it sure would give the crows a fright if it did.”

The Rambler crosses the Huron County road. No traffic on either side as far as the eye can see. MON. Madeleine turns and looks back up at the raggedy nest. Glimpse of a black wing, then a crow rises and flies away.

The Rambler enters the PMQs and Canada Avenue becomes Algonquin Drive. It leads through a little Levittown, planned suburb of semi-detached houses and bungalows in every colour of the rainbow. None of this was here in ’43 .

Each house is surrounded by a big lawn, a view of the cornfields never far away. Lawns can make slaves of their owners, but all anyone does in Centralia is water and cut, and the grass flourishes thick and green. Same with the maples that cast their twirling keys to earth, the blossom-raining elms, the shaggy bushes that erupt in snowstorms of confetti each spring, Just married! There are no fences. Crescents and bends form tulip-shapes, the whole place is hugging itself. Madeleine looks out the window at this bright new world.