Standing on a chair to reach her closet shelf, she stows the tattered game of Snakes and Ladders, then Monopoly—the British version, with pound notes and London street names—and the mystical game of Chinese checkers, with its precious store of coloured marbles, Do not play with them outside. She lines up her Narnia books on the shelf in the correct order. Given to her by a second cousin of her father’s who is a Jesuit priest in Toronto. “Thank you Father What’s-His-Name, these are the best books I’ve ever read.”
She is perfectly happy thus employed, whiling away the time until Auriel and Lisa return from their baseball tournament, so she is surprised when her mother calls from downstairs, “Madeleine, there’s a friend here to see you.”
Surprise gives way to alarm as she tries to imagine who might be calling on her. Colleen? Elizabeth? Both? She slowly descends the stairs.
“Hi, I’m Marjorie Nolan,” says the girl at the bottom of the three kitchen steps. “Welcome to Centralia, Madeleine.”
“Marjorie’s maman told her there was a little girl her age just up the street.”
Madeleine looks at her mother. I’m not a little girl.
Her mother takes Madeleine’s face between her hands and kisses the top of her head. “Go on out and play, chérie, it’s a beautiful day,” and pats her on the bottom. Marjorie Nolan smiles up at her, but Madeleine is doubtful. Marjorie has blonde ringlets and is wearing a dress in the summer holidays. Her hair and her short puffed sleeves give her a strange outdated look, like Pollyanna. Madeleine doesn’t wish to be mean but she can tell right away that Marjorie is not her type.
“Would you like me to show you around, Madeleine?”
“Okay.”
“Have fun, girls. Nice to meet you, Marjorie.”
They walk, and Marjorie proceeds to give a guided tour of the PMQs. “Over there is the CO’s house.”
“Yeah, I know,” says Madeleine. Everyone knows that the detached house with the biggest lawn—the one with the flagpole—is the commanding officer’s.
Marjorie gestures. “And across the street, just behind the purple house, is the park with the swings and teeter-totters and things.”
“I know, I went there already.” She isn’t trying to be rude, but it’s hot and she would rather be reading or running through the sprinkler. It’s too soon to leave Marjorie, however, so she says, “Want to run through the sprinkler?”
Marjorie giggles and looks down at her dress, “I don’t think so, Madeleine.” She sounds as though she’s imitating a grown-up who is amused by something a kid has said.
“If you look to your right, across the highway and the railroad tracks,” says Marjorie, “you’ll see Pop’s Candy Store. It’s not part of the base. Teenagers hang out there. I don’t advise it.”
Madeleine gazes with longing at the bottle of Mountain Dew emblazoned across the screen door of Pop’s. Then she looks back at the yellow ringlets bobbing on Marjorie’s shoulders. At Marjorie’s smile, pursed and waxy like a doll’s. It comes unbidden to her mind: Margarine. “What do you want to do now?” she asks Margarine.
Margarine replies, “We’re doing it, silly.”
Madeleine resigns herself to walking one more loop of houses before making her escape.
“That’s where Grace Novotny lives.” Marjorie has stopped to stare at a pale pink duplex. They are in the far section of PMQs, on the opposite side of the school from Madeleine’s house, an area laid out in mirror image to her own. This is where the noncommissioned ranks live, not that it matters. It’s about skill, not rank. “We all depend on one another,” says her father. “A pilot may outrank his ground crew, but his life is in their hands.” This isn’t the army, “where all you have to have is a pulse.” So Madeleine is taken aback when Marjorie says, “Grace’s dad’s just a corporal.” She has never heard anyone compare ranks before. The dads are always introduced as Mr. So-and-So, never by rank.
Marjorie says, “My dad’s a squadron leader.”
Madeleine doesn’t reply, “Mine’s a wing commander,” because it would sound as though she were showing off. She can’t help it if the only rank on the base higher than her father’s is the CO’s, and anyway, what’s the big deal?
The pale pink house and lawn are the same as all the others, decently mown. A jumble of bikes and trikes leans against one wall, and in the driveway sits a big Mercury Meteor convertible with white leather seats and a pair of dice hanging from the rearview mirror.
“It belongs to one of Grace’s sisters’ boyfriends,” says Marjorie. “She has four older sisters and they’re all sluts.” The word slits the air. Madeleine looks at Marjorie—perhaps she won’t be so boring after all. She looks at the Mercury and pictures a greaser in a muscle shirt smirking behind the wheel, his arm draped around a chick, the speeding convertible piled high with girls in beehives and tight sweaters. Sluts.
“There are entirely too many children in that family, if you want my opinion,” says Marjorie.
Madeleine’s mother would say, “That’s like saying there can be too much love. Each child—chaque enfant—is a gift from God.” But Madeleine is secretly grateful that it is just she and Mike.
“Grace Novotny failed grade four last year, so she’ll be in our class even though she’s already ten, and if you want my advice, Madeleine, you’ll steer clear of her. In fact”—and she chuckles—“that’s an order.”
That settles it, Marjorie is a stupid idiot. Her saying the word “slut” cannot make up for that.
“I’m not trying to be mean, but”—Marjorie cups her hand around her mouth and whispers into Madeleine’s ear—“Grace smells.” She giggles and looks expectantly at Madeleine. Madeleine obliges with a slight smile, then Marjorie squeals, “There she is! Run away!”
Marjorie runs off down the street, but Madeleine stays and looks at the pink house. Behind the screen door stands a girl. Her features are obscured by the mesh, but Madeleine can see a mass of curls, honey-coloured, down to her shoulders. She can’t see anything weird about Grace, anything worth running away from—although she isn’t near enough to smell. Even so, smell is nothing a bath won’t fix. Unless your house smells, or you wet the bed. But the next moment, Madeleine does see something weird. It looks as though Grace is raising her hand to wave so Madeleine waves too. But Grace just puts her thumb in her mouth, and stands there sucking it. Perhaps Marjorie is right—best to avoid Grace Novotny. Don’t make fun of her, the way Marjorie does, but don’t befriend her either.
Marjorie is waiting at the bottom of the street, where a paved pathway leads between the houses to the rear of the school. “You’ll be sorry,” she chants.
“What for?”
“You shouldn’t wave at her, Maddy, that’s like petting a stray dog.”
Maddy? “I don’t care,” says Madeleine.
They walk in silence, the asphalt changing to grass as they approach and then round the sleeping school.
“Are you mad at me?” asks Marjorie, folding her hands, bouncing them against the front of her dress.
“Why should I be mad?”
“Well, are you going to make friends with Grace?”
“No.” Madeleine can hear her brother’s voice in her own. A note of masculine impatience with stupid girls. She always defends girls when Mike criticizes them, but sometimes they can be really dumb.
“Will you be my best friend?”
Madeleine doesn’t know how to answer. Kinda soon to be poppin’ the question, ain’t it, doc? She mumbles, “I don’t know.”
Then Marjorie tries to hold hands! Madeleine takes off, running to the swings, hops onto one like a cowboy onto a waiting horse and pumps till she is flying high.
Marjorie waits patiently below. “I suppose you’ve met the Froelichs,” she calls in her grown-up sarcastic voice.
Madeleine watches as Marjorie fans her dress out like a ballerina and tiptoes in a circle. Madeleine stands up on the wooden swing and pumps harder.
“The Froelichs are trash,
I’m sorry to say,” says Marjorie. “Except for Ricky, he’s a dreamboat!” She shrieks and runs to the teeter-totters.
Madeleine lets go at a great arcing height and sails through the air to a perfect landing. She joins Marjorie at the teeter-totters—at least they are doing something normal now. They rise and fall, politely avoiding giving each other the bumps.
“Whatever you do, Maddy, keep away from his sister, and I don’t mean the retarded one, I mean the mean one, Colleen, she has a knife and she’ll murdleize you with it.”
Madeleine is starting to feel ill. According to Marjorie, the PMQs are full of reeking, retarded and dangerous kids, all of whom she may already have accidentally made friends with. Not to mention Marjorie herself. Madeleine experiences a pang of longing for Germany, for the base at 4 Wing, the clean fighter jets—young pilots who swung her up into the cockpit and saluted her father. The occasional B-52—part of United States Air Force Europe, USAFE—lumbering down the runway. There is a flight of B-52s in the air at all times, they are up there now, big blind dinosaurs, landing gear closing like pincers, hard segmented bellies full of bombs. Keeping us safe.
“And they have a vicious dog,” says Marjorie, teeter-tottering sidesaddle.
“No he’s not, he’s friendly.”
“He’s a German shepherd, Maddy,” says Marjorie sharply. “They can turn on you.”
Madeleine closes her eyes and pictures the beautiful trees, rose bowers and fountains of the town near 4 Wing: Baden-Baden, in the heart of the Black Forest, the Schwarzwald. A spa town full of rich old ladies and their poodles—full of spies, said her dad, “reading newspapers with eyeholes cut out.” The smell of pastry in the day and charcoal fires at night, the taste of mountain streams on a Sunday Wanderung, the language that smells like rich earth and old leather, du bist wie eine Blume….
“Oh Maddy I feel sorry for you, you have to live right across the street from the Froelichs, I hope you’re going to be all right.”
“I have to go home,” says Madeleine, dismounting, careful to hold the teeter-totter still for Marjorie.
“How come?”
“I have to have lunch.”
“But my mum is making it for us,” says Marjorie. “I already asked, and she’s made cupcakes and everything.”
“Oh.” As soon as you feel sorry for someone, you are trapped. “Okay.”
It’s only one half-hour of her life, then she’ll be home with Mike. He’s making a model airplane with his normal friend, Roy Noonan. And Dad will be there. They’ll play Chinese checkers and she will breathe the clean air of her own house. What will I say the next time Marjorie comes to call on me?
They walk across the baking green field and up St. Lawrence Avenue. Madeleine keeps her hand in her pocket in case Marjorie tries to hold it again. Marjorie lives in a yellow bungalow across the street from the little green one—it’s still empty. She runs up her front steps and opens the screen door. Madeleine follows.
Inside the house, it is dark. Madeleine’s eyes take a moment to adjust. It’s stuffy. Cigarettes, but not the refreshing kind. Stale. Plastic covers on the living-room furniture, the curtains drawn. “Right this way,” chirps Marjorie.
In the kitchen, the blinds are pulled down. “My mother gets headaches,” Marjorie says, as though she’s telling Madeleine that they have a maid and a grand piano.
Madeleine doesn’t say anything. She sits at the brown Formica table and wonders if Marjorie has any brothers and sisters. There is nothing on the table. No dishes in the dish rack, no newspapers lying around, no junk. When Madeleine’s house gets messy, her parents say, “Don’t worry, it looks lived in.” Marjorie’s house does not look lived in.
Marjorie opens the fridge. “Hmmm, let’s see.” Madeleine sees past her into the brightly lit fridge, the stainless grille of shelves. Almost empty.
Marjorie makes them peanut butter sandwiches on white bread, cut into four with the crusts off. Garnished with pimento-stuffed olives from a jar. There are no cupcakes.
Marjorie pats her mouth with a cocktail napkin. “That was delicious if I do say so myself.”
Madeleine flees without seeing Marjorie’s room. “Thanks,” she says. And runs all the way home.
“You forgot the milk.” Mimi is unpacking the groceries onto the kitchen table.
“Can’t make head or tail of your writing, Missus,” he says, biting into an apple.
She pulls out the two bags of potatoes. “Jack McCarthy, how many potatoes do you think we can eat?”
He grins. “Make poutine or something.”
“‘Make poutine,’ I’ll make you!”
“Is that a promise?”
Mike bursts through the door and up the steps. “Can Roy stay for lunch?”
“B’en sûr mon pitou.”
Mimi is ladling out the last of the tomato soup, the pyramid of ham sandwiches on the table has dwindled, Roy is on his third and Mike is reaching for another, when Madeleine arrives.
“Where were you?” Mimi asks. “Where’s your friend, does she want to stay for lunch?”
“Who?” asks Madeleine, then, “Oh, I went to her house for lunch.”
“You ate already?”
“Yeah but I’m still starved.” One last half a sandwich remains on the platter. Madeleine takes it and puts it on her plate, where it’s joined by another half. She looks up at Roy Noonan, who grunts, “You can have it, I’m full.”
“Thanks,” she says, and catches sight of Maman winking at Dad. “What’s so funny?”
Jack says, “Go ahead and eat up, sweetie, it’ll put hair on your chest.”
HOW SWEET IT IS
“The struggle in and for outer space will have tremendous significance in the armed conflict of the future.”
Soviet General Pokrovsky, two days before the launch of Sputnik I,1957
“In the crucial areas of our Cold War world, first in space is first, period. Second in space is second in everything.”
Lyndon B. Johnson to John F. Kennedy, 1961
Ladies, please believe me, this is a grand way to tenderize your meat. Get out your husband’s hammer.
Heloise’s Kitchen Hints
ON THE MCCARTHYS’ LAWN, the potluck is in full swing. Betty Boucher arrived with a platter of hamburger patties ready for the grill, a potato salad and a coconut cream pie, and her husband, Vic, followed with their barbecue, their kids and a clanking burlap bag. Jack already had hot dogs on the go over the coals, with a chicken on the rotisserie, Mimi brought out devilled eggs, a shredded carrot and raisin salad, a poutine rapé and a pineapple upside-down cake—not up to her usual, but this is day two, so arrête! Vimy and Hal Woodley came with a lasagna, a tossed salad and a bottle of German wine they’d saved from their last posting. Hal is a tall, fit man in his forties, with a salt-and-pepper moustache and close-cropped grey hair. “What a pleasure to meet you, Mimi.” “Would you like a nice cold beer, Hal?” He is “Hal” to the ladies and “sir” to the men—unless he is in someone’s backyard or on the golf course, but even then it’s for him to say. The Woodleys’ eldest daughter is away at university and their younger girl is “off with her friends.” Auriel Boucher brought Lisa Ridelle, whose mother showed up to make sure it was okay and threw her arms around Mimi.
“Elaine!”
“Mimi!”
They haven’t seen one another since Alberta.
“I didn’t even recognize little Lisa!” cries Mimi. “You look grand, Elaine.”
“I’m big as a house.”
“What are you, six months?”
“Five!” Mimi insists that Elaine “go get Steve and join us, there’s plenty.” Elaine returns with her husband, a bottle of vodka, a plate of Hello Dolly squares and a snapshot of Lisa and Madeleine in the tub, age one. Madeleine and Lisa are amazed to discover that they have been friends for years. They giggle with mortified delight at the embarrassing photo, and Auriel examines it, flabbergasted. This was all clearly meant to be.
Stev
e and Jack slap one another on the back and Jack calls his son over. “Mike, this is the man who took your tonsils out in Cold Lake, say hello to Dr. Ridelle.”
Henry Froelich has brought a bottle of homemade wine, and his daughter Elizabeth in her wheelchair. His wife has brought their twin baby boys, and a pot of chili con carne. Mimi takes in Mrs. Froelich at a glance—a man’s old white shirt, faded black stirrup pants—smiles, receives the blackened pot from her and tells her the babies are beautiful—they are in rubber pants and undershirts. There are grass stains on the woman’s sneakers. “Lovely to meet you, Mrs. Froelich.”
“Please call me Karen.”
Jack makes introductions all around. The Bouchers and the Ridelles shake hands with the Froelichs and agree that of course they know one another. The Woodleys appear to be more intimately acquainted. Hal asks Froelich if “their boy” is going to play varsity basketball this year, and Vimy asks Karen about her work downtown. A moment later—in the house, tipping an aluminum mould onto a plate while Jack opens more beers—Mimi says, “She’s a funny one.”
“Who?”
“Karen Froelich.”
“Who? Oh, is she?”
“Well, you can see.” She lifts the mould deftly from the jellied salad—peas and pineapple suspended in a jiggling, faceted green mound.
“She looks all right to me,” says Jack.
“What do you mean by that?” She darts him a look, reaches for her cigarette, taps the ash.
“Well, not everyone’s got your style, baby.” He offers her a glass of beer. She shakes her head no, then takes it, sips and hands it back. Her red sleeveless blouse is turned up at the collar, her black capri pants reveal just the right amount of leg between hem and espadrille. The lipstick stain on her cigarette filter matches the kiss mark on his beer glass.
“Not to mention,” says Mimi, “have you tried her chili?”
“No, but it sure smells good.” He winks and she flushes. Like shooting fish in a barrel, getting her riled.