Jack eats his ice cream, one hand on the wheel, and makes a mental note to start jogging again once they get settled in. Over the past month his sisters-in-law, les belles-soeurs, have fed him like a prize calf. Flour, maple sugar, potato, pork and clams—the possible permutations are dizzying, delicious. And fattening. It seems there is nothing that cannot be transformed into poutine. What is poutine? It is what you make when you make poutine.
He has only had to loosen his belt by one notch, but Jack has a beautiful wife. One who still runs into the water like a girl, bikini-svelte despite two children, breaststroking through the waves, keeping her head up so as not to spoil her “do.” Yes, he’ll start running again once they get to their new home.
Behind him, his son’s voice, disgusted. “Madeleine, it’s melting right down your arm.”
“No it’s not.”
“Maman,” says Mike, leaning forward, “Madeleine fait un mess!”
“I am not making a mess!” Licking her wrist, salty skin and murky vanilla.
Mimi reaches back with a wet-nap. “Tiens.”
Madeleine takes it and wipes her hand. She tries to get Mike to hold her ice cream cone but he says, “No way, it’s all gobbed.” So Mimi holds it and, while Madeleine wipes her hands, she licks the ice cream drips. It is also a characteristic of mothers that they don’t mind eating their child’s soggy ice cream cone.
Madeleine returns the wet-nap in exchange for her ice cream but feels suddenly unwell. It’s the wet-nap smell. Pre-moistened for your convenience. Disinfects too. The smell reminds Madeleine of throw-up. That’s because, when you get carsick and throw up, your mother wipes your face with a wet-nap, so of course wet-naps come to stand for throw-up. They smell more like throw-up than throw-up. She passes the ice cream back to her mother.
“I’m full,” she says.
Mike says, “She’s gonna barf.”
“I am not, Mike, don’t say ‘barf.’”
“You just said it. Barf.”
“That’s enough, Mike,” says Jack, and Mike stops.
Mimi turns and looks back at Madeleine with the are-you-going-to-throw-up? expression. It makes her have to throw up. Her eyes water. She puts her face to the open window and drinks in the fresh air. Wills herself not to think of anything sickening. Like the time a girl threw up in kindergarten and it hit the floor with a splash, don’t think about that. Mike has retreated as far as possible to his side of the seat. Madeleine turns carefully and focuses on the back of Dad’s head. That’s better.
As seen from the back seat of the car, it is as recognizable, as much “him,” as his face. As unmistakeable as your own car in a parking lot. His head, squarish, clean. It says what it means, you don’t have to figure it out. His shoulders under his checked short-sleeved shirt. Elbow out the window, halo of light brown hairs combed by the wind, right hand on the wheel, glint of his university ring. Old Spice. Across the back of his neck, one faint line—a seam that stays paler than his sunburn. The back of Dad’s head. It’s the other side of his face—his other face. In fact, he has told you he has eyes back there. This is reassuring. It means he knows who starts most of the fights in the back seat.
“Mike, quit it!” cries Madeleine.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Mike, don’t tease your sister.”
“Dad, I’m not teasing her, she pinched me.”
“Madeleine, don’t torment your brother.” Maman does not have eyes in the back of her head or she wouldn’t say such a thing.
Mike crosses his eyes at her.
“Mike!” Her eight-year-old shriek like a handsaw. “Stop it!”
“Tenez-vous tranquilles maintenant, hein? Your father’s driving,” says Maman.
Madeleine has seen the muscles in her father’s neck contract at her screech, and she softens. She doesn’t want to make him have to pull over and face the back seat. That means a spoiled treat, and a good dose of shame for having ruined such a nice drive through such lovely scenery. His voice will be disappointed, his blue eyes bewildered. Especially his left one with the light scar that traverses his brow. The lid droops slightly, so that his left eye always looks a little sad.
“Chantons, les enfants,” says Maman. And they sing.
“‘Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar, and be better off than you are …?’”
Billboards loom in farmers’ fields, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and Be Saved, soldier rows of leafy beets that slow down or speed up depending on whether you focus on the dirt between the rows or on the blur of green, Kodak, Dairy Queen, The Wages of Sin Is Death. Barns, neat and scrubbed. The congenial whiff of cow-pies and wood fires reminds Madeleine of home—Germany, that is. She closes her eyes. She has just said goodbye to another house, on an air force base near the Black Forest. Say goodbye to the house, kids. And they pulled away for the last time.
Each house stands mute and innocent like a poor animal left behind. The windows wide-eyed, bereft of drapes, the front-door-mouth sad and sealed. Goodbye, dear house. Thank you for all the nice times. Thank you for all the remember-whens. The sad house left behind solidifies in memory to become a monument to a former time, a marker for the place you can never get back to. That’s how it is in the air force.
This is Madeleine’s third move, and Mike’s fourth. He insists that she can’t possibly remember her first move, from Alberta to Michigan, because she was only three going on four. Yet he claims to remember his first move, from Washington, DC, to Alberta, despite the fact that he was barely three. Such are the injustices of living with an older brother.
“Dad,” says Madeleine from the back seat, “I do so remember leaving the base in Alberta, don’t I?”
“Sure you do. Remember the skating rink we made in the backyard?”
She looks pointedly at her brother. “Yup.”
“There you go. But ‘base’ is actually an American term, old buddy. The correct term is ‘station.’”
“Yeah,” says Mike.
They left Europe in June and, for the better part of two months, Mike and Madeleine were indulged by their Acadian aunts and uncles in New Brunswick, and ran wild with their cousins. Dozens of them: wild black-haired boys you are not supposed to have a crush on because you are related to them, sexy girls who shave their legs before they are twelve. They speak rapid French, just try to keep up, and if you’ve gone somewhere in a car with them, make sure you get in before it leaves again. Mike and Madeleine watched television for the first time in four years.
No one had a television set on the base in Germany. There were movies at the rec centre, reliably preceded by Looney Toons and Mickey Mouse. There were Friday night suppers with Maman, listening to Jack Benny on the radio before Dad got home from TGIF at the officers’ mess. But TV opened up a brave new world of pageboys, chiffon scarves and madras shorts, of carefree teenagers and surfboards. The cousins were more Connie Francis than Sandra Dee, more Sal Mineo than Troy Donahue, but they had roller skates, cars and Dentyne. And big fridges. Welcome to North America.
Madeleine accepts the idea that she loves them all, “parce que c’est la famille,” says her mother. “Family” has almost as mythic a ring to it as “home.” When they pulled away from Grandmaman’s old pink bungalow, Dad said, “Let’s head for home, what do you think, kids?”
Madeleine waved to Grandmaman, on the porch of the house that looked like a powdery peppermint. Big fat Grandmaman in her bungalow, brightly painted so Grandpapa could see it from his fishing boat out on the water. It was only the second time in Madeleine’s life that she remembered visiting her grandmother, but her eyes filled with tears because “Grandmaman” is another word for “home.”
“What do you say, Missus?” said Dad as they left behind the sea and dunes.
“Take me home, Jack,” said Maman, and wiped her eyes behind her sunglasses.
For a split second Madeleine imagined they were driving back to Germany. To the green lawns and white build
ings of the air force base and, in the nearby town, cobblestones, and sidewalk cafés; the tightly stitched countryside, no patch of land unspoken for, no inch uncherished, a different country every couple of hours on a Sunday drive. The German language she had taken to, the language of fairy tales—Märchen—in which she felt wrapped up and safe, like dressing up in her mother’s mouton coat. The language that made people smile in surprise—women behind shop counters, who were delighted by her proficiency and teased her parents about their bad Kanadische Deutsch as they offered tastes of cheese and, always, Schokolade für die Kinder. The first German words she and Mike learned: danke schön.
If your father is in the air force, people ask you where you are from and it’s difficult to answer. The answer becomes longer the older you get, because you move every few years. “Where are you from?” “I’m from the Royal Canadian Air Force.” The RCAF. Like a country whose bits are scattered around the globe.
Each bit, each base, looks like every other, so there is a consistency to this nation. Like walking into any Catholic church and hearing the Latin Mass, you can go to a base—station, that is—anywhere in the world and understand it: the recreation centre, the churches, the post office, bank and fire hall, the parade square, the library, the airfield, the building where your father works. And the PX for groceries and everything else—“PX” is another American term they picked up in Europe.
If you live in what are called PMQs—Permanent Married Quarters—your house will be familiar too. There’s a handful of designs, early suburban blueprints, mostly semi-detached, except for the tiny bungalows and the big house where the CO lives. Commanding officer. There is a flagpole on his lawn. By the time you’re eight years old, you have probably seen the inside of each type of house in the PMQs. Sometimes in mirror image. And yet, somehow, each house becomes unique once a family moves in. Unique smells, instant accumulation of treasures, pictures and lived-in mess, all of it emerges from cardboard boxes that kids make into forts and play in for days before they collapse, and by the time they do collapse, the house looks as though the family has always lived there, because an air force wife can put together a home inside a week.
Each regulation lawn bristles with individuality—bikes, strewn toys, a different car in every driveway, each refrigerator opening onto a world of its own. Some people’s fridges contain tins of Hershey’s chocolate sauce. Others contain Hershey’s tins that harbour lard and other horrible surprises; that is the McCarthys’ fridge. Madeleine’s mother wastes nothing, having grown up in the Depression. Although, considering that everyone else’s mother grew up in the Depression too, perhaps it’s an Acadian thing. Or merely Maritime—Canada’s “have-not” provinces. So, despite the uniformity of design, no two houses in the PMQs are exactly alike until that in-between time when one family moves out and the next one moves in. In that space of time the house is no one’s. It belongs to the taxpayers of Canada. During that no one’s time, the house is scrubbed, disinfected, painted white, stripped of blinds, invaded by echoes. It stands suspended, like a deconsecrated church. Not evil, just blank. Neither dead nor living. It comes alive again when a new family pulls into the driveway and says hello to it.
Madeleine reaches into her new Mickey Mouse Club knapsack for her autograph book. Everyone in her grade three class back in Germany signed it. She opens it….
Yours until Niagara Falls, wrote Sarah Dowd, the last letters tumbling down the page.
Yours till the mountains peak to see the salad dressing, love your friend forever, Judy Kinch.
Roses are red, lilies are white, I love you dear Madeleine, morning, noon and night, your best friend, Laurie Ferry.
The book is full. All have sworn to write. Madeleine and Laurie Ferry have sworn to meet on New Year’s Day of the year 2000, in the playground of their PMQs in Germany.
The printed letters look lonely all of a sudden—gay pencil-crayon colours like party decorations after the party. She closes the book, puts it away and takes a deep breath of clover air. There’s no reason to feel sad on such a beautiful day when you have your whole life ahead of you. That’s what grown-ups say. She pictures her life rolled out ahead of her like a highway. How do you know when you’re actually travelling along your life that was ahead of you but is now beneath your feet? How many more miles?
It’s hard to move into a new house without thinking of the day when you will be leaving. Say goodbye to the house, kids. And you will all be that much older. Madeleine is eight going on nine now so she will be going on twelve next time. Almost a teenager. And her parents will be older too. She tries to remember that they are younger now, but she can’t help looking at it in the opposite way: they are older than they were in the last house. And that means they will die sooner. Every house is a step closer to that terrible day. Which house will be the last? Maybe this one. The one we are on our way to say hello to.
The sun warms the lump in her throat and threatens to set tears overflowing her lids, so she closes her eyes and rests her temple against the window frame, soothed by the vibrations of the road. The wind in her hair is swift but gentle, the sun through her closed lids a kaleidoscope of reds and golds.
Outside, the afternoon intensifies. August is the true light of summer. Thick tenor saxophone light. Unlike the trumpets of spring, the strings of autumn. Visible grains of sunlight fall in slow motion, grazing skin—catch them like snowflakes on your tongue. The land is bursting, green and gold and bark. The stalks sway heavy with corn, slowing the breeze. The countryside reclines, abundant and proud like a mightily pregnant woman, lounging. “Pick your own,” say handwritten signs. Pick me.
The Indians grew corn. This is the part of Ontario first taken from them by settlers. They fought here alongside the English, first against the French, then against the Americans in the War of 1812. Now there are reservations, their longhouses and villages survive as drawings in sixth-grade history books and life-size reproductions in tourist villages. Their tobacco is a big cash crop in these parts, but they don’t grow it. The ground is still full of their belongings and many places have been named for their nations and in their languages, including Canada. Some say “Canada” means “village of small huts.” Others say Portuguese fishermen named it Ca Nada: there, nothing.
Welcome to Stratford, Welcome to New Hamburg…. So many places in Canada where you feel as though the real place is in another country. If you come from London, Ontario, for instance, you might not say, “I come from London.” You might have to qualify it with “Ontario.” Having to explain this can sound apologetic even if you are perfectly happy to come from London. Ontario. New York was named after York in England, but no one ever thinks of York, England, when they think of New York. Mike would say, “That’s ’cause the States has better everything.”
Welcome to Kitchener. “Did you know Kitchener used to be called Berlin?” says her father, with a glance in the rearview mirror. “It was settled by German immigrants, but they changed the name during the First World War.”
They stop for bratwurst and crusty white rolls, just like home. Germany, that is. Madeleine knows she must cease to think of Germany as home. This is home now—what she sees out the sunny car window. Impossibly long driveways that lead to gabled farmhouses with gingerbread trim. Immense fields, endless miles between towns, so much forest and scrub unspoken for, Crown lands, shaggy and free. Three days of driving through geological eras, mile after mile and still Canada. The vastness is what sets it apart from Germany. Part of what makes it Canada. “You could take the whole of Europe and lose it here in the middle of Ontario,” says her father.
Madeleine leans her chin on the window frame. Picture the war in Europe, the planes and tanks and concentration camps, picture Anne Frank writing her diary, Hitler saluting the crowds. There is more than enough room for all of it to have happened in the province of Ontario.
“But it wouldn’t happen here,” says Madeleine.
“What wouldn’t happen?” asks Dad.
&nbs
p; “The war.”
“Which war?” says Mike.
“The Second World War.”
Mike points at her, then at his own head, and spirals his finger to indicate that she’s crazy. Madeleine controls her anger. She wants to hear her father’s answer. He says, “That particular kind of war could never happen here, sweetie, Canada is a free country.”
“If it hadn’t been for the war,” says Maman, “Papa and I would never have met”—Madeleine squirms—“and you and Michel would never have come along….” Her mother has a way of shifting a subject into a tilted version of itself. Stories of bombs and gas chambers do not go with the story of the air force dance in England where her parents met—The Story of Mimi and Jack. Maman sings, “‘Underneath the lantern, by the barrack gate….’” And that’s it for any serious discussion of the war.
Madeleine’s father is not an actual veteran, but he would have been had it not been for the airplane crash. Most of her friends’ dads are veterans—pilots and aircrew. Her German babysitter’s dad was a veteran too, of the Wehrmacht. He had one arm and their family went everywhere on a motorcycle with a sidecar. Some Canadian families made trips to see the concentration camps. Laurie Ferry saw piles of shoes at Auschwitz. But Madeleine’s father says, “There’s a difference between learning from history, and dwelling in the past.” Her mother says, “Think nice thoughts.”
Madeleine found an old Life magazine in the dentist’s waiting room on the base. On the cover was a dark-haired girl not much older than herself. Anne Frank. She stole the magazine and pored over it guiltily for weeks, until it disappeared from her room. Maman had rolled it up, along with several other magazines, in order to line a pointed clown hat as part of Madeleine’s Halloween costume.
“‘My Lili of the lamplight, my own Lili Marlene,’” sings Mimi, one hand lightly stroking the back of her husband’s head.
Jack relaxes behind the wheel. She sings the second verse in German. He is tempted to slow down, make the drive last, there is something so full about these suspended times. When it’s just the two of them and their little family on the road between postings. No neighbours, no relatives, no outside world except the one whizzing past the windows. Two drifters, off to see the world…. Benevolent unknown world. Full tank of gas. A good time to take stock. You can see who you are. You can see what you have. You have everything.