The Way the Crow Flies

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  Madeleine laughs.

  Nina asks, “Has Christine tried to choke you?”

  “Well,” says Bugs Bunny, “to know me is to stwangle me.”

  Nina waits.

  “Look, I’m not here about my relationship, no one’s is perfect. I didn’t come here so I could leave my partner of seven years. Is that like an itch on your belt? Nice work, you must be proud.”

  Nina says nothing.

  “I mean ‘notch.’”

  Nina waits.

  “Strangle is an overstatement.”

  “Does she put her hands around your neck?”

  “Maybe once or twice.”

  “Did she squeeze?”

  “Briefly. But it’s not like I’m in any danger. She’s the one who gets upset by it. And it’s my fault anyhow, I know where all her buttons are.”

  “Can you give me an example?”

  “Well. This one time….” She takes a deep breath. She has never told anyone this before, and now that she has accidentally grazed the subject, it looks different. It looks ugly. “Well…. I criticized her bean dip and she lost it.”

  “Her bean dip?”

  Madeleine nods. She sees something flicker across Nina’s face—a smile—and feels a grin stretch the ends of her mouth. She tells the rest of the story through tears of mirth.

  Christine was under a lot of pressure with her thesis. She screamed in Madeleine’s face, “You’re completely insensitive!” The demon entered Madeleine on cue and she began riffing—provoking, said Christine—“Madeleine, just grow up!”

  “‘I’m ony two and a half yeahs owd,’” said Tweety Bird.

  “Shut up, Madeleine, please!”

  Madeleine laughed like Woody and kept going—some o’ my best woik, doc. The hands clamped around Madeleine’s neck and Christine cried and throttled her for a matter of seconds. There is psychodrama. This was psychocomedy.

  Madeleine sums up, in her manly broadcaster voice, “It’s never just about the bean dip.”

  “What did you do when she began to throttle you?” asks Nina.

  “I just went … you know … really calm.”

  “Calm?”

  “Yeah. Kind of neutral, you know? Like waiting for it to be finished.”

  “As though it was familiar.”

  Madeleine stares at Nina. Feels her hands growing cool. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because of the way you describe your reaction. You don’t seem to have been surprised.”

  Madeleine takes a deep breath. “In a way I felt relieved—” she didn’t know she was going to say that.

  Nina nods.

  After a moment, Madeleine says, “So what do you make of it, doc? Am I, like, some kind of masochist? Apart from deciding to make a living as a comedian, which, it goes without saying….”

  Finally Nina says, “I don’t think labels like ‘masochistic’ are very helpful. Especially for women—or anyone for that matter.”

  “It’s my own fault, I press her buttons.”

  Nina pours a glass of spring water from the pitcher.

  “What do you think?” asks Madeleine.

  Nina takes a sip, “I think Christine has a lot of buttons.”

  Madeleine laughs.

  “Have you ever told anyone about the assaults?”

  Madeleine looks up as though she has been slapped. It has never occurred to her that the force of Christine’s grip around her neck, the thunk of her own skull against the wall, constitutes anything like abuse. Madeleine does benefits for women’s shelters. She is a grassroots feminist hailed by counterculturalistas and mainstream alike, a liberated lipstick lesbian in expensively distressed leather. “They’re not assaults,” she says.

  “What do you think of them as?”

  Madeleine’s mouth is dry but she doesn’t want to reach for the spring water. “Wow,” she drawls, “talk about a scandale,” and, resuming her news voice, “‘Feminist Egghead Assaults Funny-Girl Gal-Pal No Laughing Matter!’”

  “Madeleine—?”

  “‘Intrawoman Violence: The Hate That Dare Not Speak Its Name.’”

  “Did I upset you with my choice of word?”

  “Isn’t that why you chose it?”

  Madeleine is aware that she is behaving predictably: denial, grandiosity, self-pity, self-loathing. The whole textbook. She rises and grabs her knapsack, muttering, “I don’t need this shit,” and leaves.

  Madeleine has always admired Bugsy’s ability to escape down convenient rabbit holes and traverse the earth underground. That is what work has been for her. Always a number of things on the go, escape routes and connecting tunnels; head popping up in the midst of a field of carrots, gorging until she is shot at, then ducking in a puff of white smoke and speeding off, looking for that left turn at Albuquerque. It worked, professionally and personally, for quite a while. Then the “things” started happening, and therapy was supposed to be another rabbit hole. But it turns out this one wasn’t dug by Bugs. It belongs to the March Hare.

  Maurice is seated at a dainty escritoire. He exudes a bland intensity. Beside him hangs a gilded cage from a stand. In it, a stuffed bird. His movements are small and lead nowhere, compelling and pointless. It becomes clear, however, that a decision has been accumulating behind his smudged glasses. Unhurriedly he opens a drawer in the tiny desk, withdraws a pair of panties, sniffs them, then returns them to the drawer.

  That is the long and short of Maurice.

  Sometimes he appears in historical garb—as a pilgrim on the Mayflower, or blinking tortoise-like from among the famous faces on Mount Rushmore. Combat soldier, Elmer the Safety Elephant, hippie. Always the glasses and grey suit predominate, with one or two touches—Quaker Oats hat; machine gun and reefer; stop sign, peace sign.

  His inertia prevails regardless of what is occurring around him: the fall of Rome, the butter scene from Last Tango in Paris, the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And whether facing a high-noon duel or bounding weightlessly over the lunar surface, glasses glinting through the window of his helmet, Maurice always knows where to find the panties—in Ben Cartwright’s saddlebag, under a moon rock—and, invariably, he sniffs them.

  He has become a cult figure. One of those characters who break free of their creators; Madeleine recently overheard a teenager on the subway say in tones of delighted disgust, “Ooo, that’s gross, that’s so Maurice!”

  A BOY IN RED JEANS disappeared into a sunny day long ago, in 1963.

  In 1973 he was quietly released from prison. He was not exonerated; he was granted parole. He had been a model prisoner and the authorities had determined that he posed no danger to the community, despite his steadfast refusal to admit guilt.

  Oceans of ink were spilled on the Richard Froelich Case, which divided professionals and lay people alike. It became the subject of after-dinner speakers at coroners’ conventions and police conferences. The pathologist from the trial published articles and gave lectures; Inspector Bradley was promoted and addressed meetings of law enforcement agencies from across Canada and the U.S. Both men tirelessly shared their experience of the investigation and trial, intensifying their efforts when books and articles began to appear accusing “the system” of having failed a possibly innocent boy.

  Over the years, whenever there was a story about a miscarriage of justice or debate about the death penalty, the Froelich case would be cited. Newspaper articles would appear alongside old school photographs of the boy and the victim. Eternally paired in grainy reproductions, their smiles more and more remote in time—his slicked-back hair from a bygone era, her Peter Pan collar. Older and older, and younger and younger.

  As time went by, the case acquired the air of legend. Articles never failed to include certain “haunting details” such as the wildflowers and the cross of bulrushes found over her body. Her underpants over her face. And “the mysterious air force man,” the passing motorist who supposedly had waved from a blue Ford Galaxy, then failed to come forward. Journalists spe
culated that he might have been the real killer. In the late seventies, a weekly news magazine ran an article that featured an interview with a retired police officer who had been a constable on the case. Lonergan revealed for the first time that the boy’s father, “a German Jew named Henry Froelich,” had claimed to have seen a war criminal driving that same car in downtown London.

  In the eighties a commission of inquiry was set up by the federal government to investigate the presence of war criminals in Canada. Parts of the report were never published, available only via the Access to Information Act, for it turned out that there were possibly thousands of war criminals in Canada—among them, concentration camp guards and an entire SS unit from Eastern Europe, members of which had claimed “conscription” and a healthy hatred of Communists among their credentials in their quest for Canadian citizenship.

  Eventually a few cases were brought to trial, and although public opinion was divided on whether these law-abiding senior citizens should be prosecuted after all these years—whether it was justice or “Jewish vendetta,” whether it was democracy at work or playing into the hands of “Soviet propaganda”—Henry Froelich’s story began to look less far-fetched. Journalists, authors and documentary filmmakers theorized about the fate of Henry Froelich, whose body had never been found. Had he stumbled on—to use a term that had become common currency—a “covert operation”? Was he a victim of RCMP dirty tricks? Was the CIA involved?

  Sporadic attempts were made to find Richard Froelich and interview him. But he had changed his name, and his whereabouts remained a mystery.

  WILD KINGDOM

  Everything that is now in space had its origins here, not in America or Russia.

  René Steenbeke, speaking of Dora

  ONE MORNING, Madeleine saw their pictures in the paper. Under the headline “Supreme Court Turns Down Bid for Appeal.” She was seventeen at the time. But Ricky was still fifteen, and Claire of course was nine.

  She glimpsed the pictures when her father turned the page at the breakfast table, then they disappeared when he folded the paper. He took it to work with him. She knew he hadn’t wanted to leave it lying around. She got up from the table.

  “You leaving already, ma p’tite?”

  “Yeah, I want to get to school early. I’m meeting Jocelyn.” Unnecessary lie, but harmless. Her first class that morning was a spare.

  “Qu’est-ce que tu as, Madeleine?”

  “Nothing’s the matter.”

  “You’re flushed, come till I feel your forehead.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She left, forgetting her lunch. She needed to go outside, where it was cool and normal. She didn’t need to read the article, the headline said it all. She didn’t want to read the fine print, to see again the words child witnesses. When her Man In Society teacher, Mr. Eagan, asked the class how many of them were familiar with the Richard Froelich case, Madeleine and two other students—one from Pakistan and one from Uganda—were the only ones who didn’t raise their hands. She drew cartoons in the back of her scribbler while the class discussed the possible miscarriage of justice.

  After supper she asked her father, “Dad, do you think it really was an air force man Ricky saw in the car?” They were in the family room, watching the new colour TV. A nature show. He didn’t seem surprised by the question.

  “If it was, you have to ask yourself why he didn’t come forward.”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Well, assuming Ricky wasn’t mistaken, I’d have to say that this air force type, whoever he was, must’ve been up to something fairly confidential.”

  “Like what?”

  He shrugged, eyes on the screen. “Government business?”

  She stared at the lurid greens and shifting blues of the television.

  “Do you think there really was a war criminal?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said, getting up to adjust the colour.

  “So you think Mr. Froelich was telling the truth?”

  “Knowing Henry Froelich,” said Jack, “there’s no doubt in my mind.”

  She started to ask another question, but they heard Mimi coming in through the garage door and Jack warned her with a look. They stopped talking and concentrated on the screen: an unspoiled tropical paradise—white sand, azure sea.

  In the kitchen, Mimi began rattling around. Emptying the dishwasher, putting away groceries.

  “He was in a camp,” said Madeleine quietly. On the screen, a sea turtle glided under water. “I saw his tattoo once.”

  “Did you?” His profile was impassive.

  “He must’ve been at Auschwitz.” She had studied the Holocaust in History. She never used the term “holocaust” at home, however, because her father objected to it: the Second World War was about a whole lot more than that. She watched the turtle sleeping on the ocean floor and heard her father say, “At first.” She looked at him, perplexed, but his gaze was on the TV and he kept it there as he spoke. “He was at a different place later.”

  “Another camp?”

  “This was no ordinary concentration camp.”

  She waited. You mean there’s such a thing as an “ordinary” concentration camp, doc?

  “Dora,” he said.

  “Who?”

  On the TV, hundreds of baby turtles flailed across the beach toward the sea. Birds dropped down, leisurely, picking them off one by one as the narrator, in measured manly tones, asserted that “only a handful” would make it.

  “Dora. Where the rockets were built.”

  “What rockets?”

  “Ever hear of guided missiles? Ever hear of Apollo?”

  She heard the note of grim sarcasm, the one usually reserved for politicians, the school system and—before he left home—Mike. She wondered if her father was about to get angry again, the way he had at the moon landing last summer. His anger never frightened her, however. It gave her a pang in the pit of her stomach. Something was wrong. Someone should fix it for him.

  In the kitchen, Mimi turned on the Cuisinart. It sounded like a jet engine.

  Jack said, “Dora is where it all started.” Eyes fixed on the South Pacific. “Henry Froelich was there.”

  She pictured Mr. Froelich in his white shirt, skinny tie and thick glasses, bearded and conspicuous in a row of clean-shaven scientists and engineers hunched over their computers at Mission Control, Texas.

  “It was a concentration camp,” said Jack.

  In Houston? Madeleine was beginning to feel as though she were a little stoned. A mother sea turtle began the near-futile task of digging a hole in the sand with her flippers. “Where was Dora?”

  “It was in a mountain cave.” His voice changed again. It took on the dreamy quality she recognized from childhood, his once-upon-a-time tone. “During the war,” a long time ago, “in what would later become East Germany,” in a country that no longer exists, “Hitler’s secret weapon,” there was a treasure, “built by slave labour” they toiled out of sight of sun or moon….

  The sea turtle excreted her eggs into the sandpit, hundreds of them. Buried them. And split.

  “The V-2 rocket,” said Jack. “V for Vengeance.”

  “… and the cycle of nature continues,” said the narrator. She recognized the voice. Lorne Greene. Pa from Bonanza. She turned to her father again, but he was focused on the screen, features etched in concentration, he could have been watching the President, Good evening my fellow citizens. This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba…. The surface of the sandy nest stirred. Cut to predators wheeling above. Cut back to sand, where a tiny ancient leather face breached its shell.

  Mimi called from the kitchen, “Madeleine, I need your help.”

  “I don’t suppose they’ve taught you who Wernher von Braun is at that high school of yours,” said her father, his shoulder twitching.

  “The NASA guy.”

  “That’s right. Director of the M
arshall Space Flight Center, father of the Saturn rockets that went to the moon.” Model for Donald Duck’s uncle, Professor Von Drake—but Madeleine kept mum. “Von Braun and his colleagues ran Dora during the war. Before it went underground, it was called Peenemünde.”

  Pain Amunda. “Uncle Simon was there—I mean he bombed it.”

  Jack looked at her. “That’s right.”

  “Whatever happened to him?”

  “Haven’t a clue.” He turned back to the screen. “Here’s something I don’t expect you to have learned about in school: there was a government program a few years back, in the States. The British were involved as well. So were the Canadians … to a degree. Still happening, for all we know.”

  “What was it?”

  “Project Paperclip.”

  She waited but he was silent. A commercial came on. “What did they do?” she asked.

  “They got us to the moon.”

  On TV, the Man from Glad bagged a housewife’s leaky garbage.

  “How?”

  “By importing German scientists after the war. Nazis, some of them.”

  “Was von Braun a Nazi?”

  “Darn tootin’. So was Rudolph.”

  “Who?”

  Rudolph, Donald Duck, Apollo … like something out of Mad Magazine. But he wasn’t joking. He wasn’t even using his man-to-man voice, he sounded different. Constricted. The aural equivalent of looking through a telescope from the wrong end. “That must’ve been illegal.” She knew that much from school, despite what her father liked to call the Mickey Mouse curriculum.

  “It sure was, and it’s still classified,” he said. “So not a word.”

  “Madeleine.” Maman was in the doorway with her yellow rubber gloves on.

  “How do you know about it?” she asked her father.

  He winked, and sounded like himself again. “You better go help your mother.”

  Madeleine was graduating high school in three weeks. In three weeks her life would begin. She slouched into the kitchen. Behind her she heard the TV switch off and the patio doors slide open. A short time later, she and her mother heard the roar of the old lawn-mower, and as they chopped rhubarb and peeled apples for the church bazaar they saw him through the window, crossing at intervals back and forth, closing in on a shrinking border of longer green around the swimming pool.