The Way the Crow Flies

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  As they pull away, Madeleine folds her arms on the open window frame, rests her chin and watches the Froelichs recede into the night. Colleen raises her hand so Madeleine does too, and waves goodbye.

  But Colleen is not waving. She is simply holding her hand up, perfectly still. Like an Indian in a western: How. Confident that she will not be giving offence by following Colleen’s lead, Madeleine stills her own hand. And in doing so, she realizes that Colleen is not saying How. She is showing Madeleine the scar in the palm of her hand.

  The Rambler rounds a bend in the track, and the light of the Froelichs’ patch of world disappears.

  When they pull into the driveway, Madeleine says, “Dad, I just remembered something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not allowed to play with Colleen.”

  “You’re not? Who told you that?”

  “Maman.”

  Jack hesitates. The lights are off in the house, Mimi and Mike are still out. He says, “Well, I won’t mention it if you don’t.”

  When he makes love to his wife that night, he imagines a thinner woman—her hair less rich, her cheek almost gaunt, her body less supple—a woman less beautiful than his wife.

  TO TELL THE TRUTH

  “Huck, they couldn’t anybody get you to tell, could they?”

  “Get me to tell? Why, if I wanted that half-breed to drownd me they could get me to tell …”

  “Well, that’s all right then. I reckon we’re safe as long as we keep mum. But let’s swear again, anyway. It’s more surer!”

  “I’m agreed.”

  Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

  THE BOUCHERS’ HOUSE sits blank at the corner of Columbia and St. Lawrence. Like Lisa’s and Colleen’s and Claire’s, it no longer remembers Madeleine or how she so often entered its front door and played in its rooms and backyard. Her footprints and those of her friends, the echoes of their voices etched in the air, all have disappeared. The houses are waiting for the next families to move in and to believe that they own them, that the things they do beneath those roofs and on those lawns, the games, the meals, Christmases and dreams, are tangible, indelible. Where do they go? All the remember-whens?

  The night before Madeleine is to testify at Ricky’s trial, Mimi makes her favourite supper: wiener schnitzel. She takes it straight from the frying pan and puts it onto Madeleine’s plate, saying, “What would you like to wear tomorrow, ma p’tite?”

  “Something not too scratchy,” says Madeleine.

  Mike says, “How come I can’t go?”

  “You’ve got baseball practice,” says Jack.

  “I quit.”

  “That’s what you think,” Jack says, and salts his schnitzel.

  Madeleine looks up at her father to see how angry he is, and he smiles at her.

  “Madeleine wants me to come,” Mike says gruffly. “Don’t you?”

  Madeleine looks from her father to her brother and mumbles, “Yeah.”

  “See?” says Mike.

  Jack ignores the boy.

  Madeleine says, “How come I have to testify when I already told the police?”

  “That’s part of our justice system,” says Jack. “The accused and the public have the right to hear all the evidence in open court.” It will all be over soon. “And you’ll be under oath.”

  “Do I have to swear on the Bible?”

  “Yup,” says Jack. “Just tell the truth, like you did last Halloween,” he tells her.

  Madeleine’s stomach closes.

  Mimi says, “What about last Halloween?”

  Jack says, “That’s classified,” and winks at Madeleine. She forms a smile with one side of her mouth. He reaches over and pats her on the head, saying, “We’re right proud of you, sweetie.”

  “I’ve got a stomach ache.”

  “You’ve got butterflies in your stomach,” he says. “That’s natural.” Madeleine sees butterflies—a storm of them—yellow…. “Just tell the truth.”

  Mike says, “You better or they’ll hang him.”

  Jack slaps the table, and Mimi jumps along with the cutlery. “That’s not true,” he says. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Everyone’s saying it.”

  “Who’s everyone? Arnold Pinder’s father? Answer me.”

  “Jack,” says Mimi.

  Jack takes a breath and says to his wife, “What’s for dessert?”

  Jack tucks her into bed next to Bugs Bunny and obliges her by kissing the rabbit’s plastic cheek. “Why don’t we read something,” he says, putting down his Scotch, reaching for the book on her bedside table, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah?” He flips through the book.

  “Sometimes is it—? Can a lie ever be good?”

  He glances up. “What that’s, sweetie? What do you mean?”

  “Like. Say … in a war.”

  “You mean when a soldier is being interrogated by the enemy,”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, the best policy is to say nothing at all—apart from your name, rank and serial number. If you lie, you might get caught in it.”

  “What if there isn’t a war on?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, it’s almost never all right to lie. Lies are self-perpetuating, do you know what that means?”

  “No.”

  “It means that one lie leads to another, until you have what’s known as a domino effect.”

  Dominoes is a game. Everyone gets it for Christmas. No one knows how to play it. Now is not the time to ask about dominoes. “But Dad?” Now is also not the time to mention someone’s life depending on a lie in a courtroom, because Dad will know she is talking about Ricky Froelich and she will have no choice tomorrow but to tell what she really saw—didn’t see. Even Madeleine’s questions are lies designed to hide what she is really asking. “What if you have to tell a lie to make people believe the truth?” she asks. He lowers his glass and looks at her. From the mouths of babes. She can’t possibly know anything. He sets the book aside. “Why do you ask that?”

  Madeleine swallows.

  “Have you been reading something, old buddy? Did you see something on TV that made you wonder?”

  She nods, yes—she is not really lying. She has been reading something. She has seen things on TV. They often make her wonder.

  He takes a big breath and smiles. “You’re going to be a lawyer when you grow up.”

  “I don’t want to be a lawyer, Dad.”

  “You can be whatever you want to be, you can be an astronaut, or an engineer—”

  “I want to be a comedian.”

  “That’s right.” He laughs and rubs her head. “You’ve posed a very complex question. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”

  Madeleine feels sorry for her father. He thinks she has a good head on her shoulders. His Deutsches Mädchen. His spitfire. He doesn’t know she is a liar. His sore eye looks sad. “Thanks,” she says.

  She sees him as though through the crack in the door of a dark closet. She is in among the coats and battered board games, and he is out there sitting innocently on the edge of her bed, tucking her in. When she comes out of the closet, the shadows follow her but he doesn’t see them. Because he is good.

  He says, “That is what’s known as an ethical question.” Ethical. It sounds like gasoline. He says, “Sometimes, the truth lies somewhere in between.”

  The truth lies.

  “Sometimes, you have to assess the whole situation. Do what’s known as a cost-benefit analysis, to see how the truth will best be served. That’s also called diplomacy.”

  Sometimes, with Dad, you ask for one definition and you get the whole dictionary.

  “Nine times out of ten, however, the truth is pretty cut and dried.”

  “Like at Halloween?” she asks

  “What about Halloween?”

  “When I hit the tree and wrote stuff in soap?”

  “You wrote stuff in so
ap?”

  Madeleine reddens. “Yeah.”

  “I don’t remember that…. You soaped someone’s windows?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. Whose?”

  “… A teacher’s.”

  “I see.” He nods. “I don’t think you mentioned that.”

  Madeleine shakes her head. “But I told on myself.”

  “Good. You told your teacher? And what did he say?”

  “He said, ‘I won’t tell if you don’t.’”

  “Well, he was as good as his word. What did you write?”

  Madeleine looks at her bedspread. Chenille highways, mountain paths leading in all directions. “A word.”

  “What word?”

  “A bird.”

  “You wrote the name of a bird? What kind of bird?”

  “Um”—she swallows—“peahen.”

  “Peahen?” He smiles. “What’d you write that for?”

  Madeleine shrugs.

  “Was that something you learned in Mr. Marks’s class?”

  “March.”

  “Was that part of your science lesson?”

  “Health,” says Madeleine.

  “Health? What’s that got to do with health?”

  “Exercises.”

  “What exercises?”

  “For muscles.”

  “What’s a peahen got to do with that?”

  “It’s a girl peacock.”

  “I know what it is, I just don’t see what it’s got to do with health class.”

  Madeleine doesn’t say anything. Jack looks at her. “No wonder you soaped his window.”

  Madeleine waits.

  “It was wrong, but you owned up to it.”

  She nods.

  “It takes guts to tell the truth sometimes. That’s what you’ve got. Let me tell you something, old buddy. If you ever find yourself wondering what’s the right thing to do—because, as you get older, you’ll find the truth is not always what it seems—when you find yourself in a tough situation, just ask yourself, ‘What is the hardest thing I could do right now? What is the toughest choice I could make?’ And that’s how you’ll know the difference between the truth and a whole bunch of … excuses. The truth will always be the hardest thing.”

  His knuckles are white around his glass, with its slick of ice and amber at the bottom.

  “’Night-night, sweetie.”

  REGINA VS RICHARD FROELICH

  ‘Give your evidence,’ said the King, ‘and don’t be nervous or I’ll have you executed on the spot.’

  Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  MADELEINE IS STANDING on a box in the witness box. It’s like a penalty box for one.

  “Speak up.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I said, what is your name, little girl?”

  Madeleine looks up at the judge. He has a big frog face.

  “Madeleine McCarthy.”

  “These gentlemen want to hear you—” Off to one side, on chairs ranged like bleachers, a bunch of old men sit facing her. They already look disappointed.

  “The jury needs to hear you,” says the judge. “What is your name?”

  “MADELEINE McCARTHY!”

  He looks startled. Titters from the audience. Madeleine looks out; smiling faces. Where is Dad? Where is her mother?

  “Well, Madeleine, how old are you?”

  “NINE!” Laughter.

  “Order, please.”

  She is not trying to be funny, only obedient. But the judge doesn’t sound mad. “You don’t need to speak quite so loudly, Madeleine.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s all right. Do you know what it means to take an oath?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does it mean?”

  Ricky Froelich is sitting at a table in front. He is taller. Bony. He is looking at her, but it doesn’t seem as though he is looking at anyone he knows. She smiles at him.

  “I don’t think I will swear this child,” says the judge.

  Madeleine looks up again—what was the question? She is in trouble now. A tortoise in the court of King Arthur.

  “My lord, that is entirely up to your discretion,” says Mr. Waller—he is Ricky’s lawyer. He has bags under his eyes but his black gown shimmers and floats when he moves. “Though I would like the child to be sworn if possible.”

  “I know you would like it, Mr. Waller, but that is not why we are here. What grade are you in, Madeleine?”

  “I’m going into grade five, your honour.” Not too loud, not too soft, look at the judge, pay attention or you will not get to swear.

  “My lord,” says the judge to her.

  “Pardon?”

  “In Canada a judge is addressed as ‘my lord,’ or ‘sir.’”

  “My lord,” trying not to do an English accent—don’t be smart.

  “We have television to thank,” he says, and people titter again.

  There’s Dad. Sitting next to Maman, a few rows behind Mr. Froelich and Colleen. He winks at her. She smiles back as discreetly as she can, and feels like a puppet.

  “What does it mean to take an oath, Madeleine?”

  “It means you swear to tell the truth.”

  “To tell the truth,” he says. “And what is that?”

  Is this a trick question? Is he talking about the TV show To Tell the Truth? Will the real Madeleine McCarthy please stand up? What does he mean?

  “What is To Tell the Truth?” she repeats.

  “Do you know the difference between a lie and the truth?”

  “Yes your ma—my lord.” Your majesty?!

  “What is the difference?”

  “The truth is when you say what happened when someone asks you, and you don’t leave anything out just to try and make them believe something else, and you don’t act like they’re only asking you only one exact thing, you have to tell everything and that’s what ‘the whole truth’ means.” She takes a breath. She feels clearer, as though she has just woken up.

  The judge nods. “I wish more adults had a similar grasp. What grade are you in, Madeleine—rather, who is your teacher?”

  “My teacher last year was Mr. March.”

  “Did you like him?”

  “No,” she says, and everyone laughs.

  “Order please, ladies and gentlemen, I would ask you to remember why you are here.” He looks back at her. “You are being truthful, Madeleine, that’s good.”

  Halfway toward the back, Jack smiles and feels his face relax back into flesh. It had tightened across his bones like a burn; he was shocked, like everyone else in this room, by what a little girl said this morning under oath.

  “You live in the Permanent Married Quarters with your family?”

  “Yes sir,” replies Madeleine.

  “Do you go to Sunday school?”

  “We call it catechism.”

  “What church do you go to?”

  “We’re Catholic.”

  “Roman Catholic, I see. I think this girl might understand.”

  Who is he talking to?

  Jack licks the corner of his mouth. A young child, no older than his daughter—a friend of hers if he is not mistaken, pretty little thing; Marjorie. Where did she get her dreadful story? He watched the jury turn to stone as the child testified. But if Madeleine is sworn, her testimony will count. All Rick needs is reasonable doubt. And Madeleine will provide that. She will corroborate what Elizabeth Froelich so painfully tried to communicate to the jury this morning. Karen was there to translate. The Crown turned this to his advantage, claiming the mother was putting words in her daughter’s mouth, since she was the only one who could understand what the poor girl was saying. It ended with Elizabeth in tears, her testimony struck and Mr. Waller—and, by extension, Karen Froelich—chastised by the judge for subjecting a “poor crippled child” to such an ordeal.

  The judge turns to Madeleine again. “Do you know you are under obligation here to tell the truth?”

  �
�Yes, my lord,” says Madeleine.

  “Do you understand that?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is that brooch you are wearing?”

  “It’s a lighthouse.”

  “Where is it from?”

  “It’s from Acadia”—this poor brooch was touched by Mr. March—“my mother is Acadian.” Mr. March never would have touched it if I weren’t ashamed to speak French. “We speak French,” she says.

  “I think we should swear this little girl.”

  I passed.

  Jack wipes a trickle of sweat from his temple. It’s almost over. He longs to undo the top button of his shirt but he doesn’t wish to worry Mimi, sitting next to him; he’s been a little short of breath lately. The little girl, Marjorie, was convincing. And the statement taken from the absent one, Grace…. Jack shivers. Innocent children. How could they know of such things?

  “Bailiff?” says the judge.

  A pot-bellied man in a uniform approaches Madeleine. He looks like Mr. Plodd, the policeman in Noddy. He has handcuffs on his belt and carries a big book in his hands.

  Jack stares at the back of Froelich’s head, then Rick’s. Froelich is a good man, but naive. Where is the boy from? Where was he before the age of twelve? In some institution. Terrible things may have happened to him there. Children learn what they live. Jack knows Rick is innocent of the murder charge, but is it possible that what those little girls said is true? Has he interfered with children? With Madeleine?

  “Place your right hand on the Bible.”

  Jack watches as his daughter is sworn. If anyone has touched her…. He feels—almost hears—something bend, like a twig, in his left temple. He blinks. He sees his daughter suppressing a grin as she listens to the bailiff—he can tell she is trying not to laugh. She’s fine. This experience will roll right off her back. He would know if anyone had touched her—Mimi would know…. But something must have happened to those other two little girls. Where were their parents? Jack glanced at Squadron Leader Nolan’s face while his daughter gave her testimony. Where was he? If Ricky Froelich molested those children, he deserves to be up there. With that thought, something releases at the base of Jack’s skull. His headache—the low-grade one he has ceased to notice—unlocks and begins mercifully to seep away, like runoff down a grate.