Every morning she leaves her house in time to join up with Lisa and Auriel and they sing all the way to school. American Bandstand rate-a-record. Madeleine throws wide her arms and belts plaintively, “‘Whe-e-e-ere the Boys Are … !’” Auriel is not shy either, she will twist right there on the side of the road, and sometimes it feels too early in the day to be laughing that hard. They have named themselves The Songelles. Spinning their hands, snapping their fingers, locomotioning all the way down the street.
If they leave for school early enough, they can double back to the corner of Algonquin Drive and the Huron County road, where the teenagers wait for the bus to high school, and catch a glimpse of Ricky Froelich and Marsha Woodley holding hands. He carries her books.
The bell rings and every morning, amid the scraping of chairs, the after-three exercises seem very far away, banished by the comfortable daily routine that begins with singing “God Save the Queen”—if you watch carefully, you will see that Claire McCarroll sings different words to it, but not loudly. American words. What’s more, there is now a gerbil living in a cage at the back of the classroom, imparting a friendly rodent smell of wood shavings. His name is Sputnik.
“Turn to page twenty-five in your Macmillan speller….”
At recess there is the minor annoyance of avoiding Marjorie Nolan, who has yet to settle with any one girl or group. “Want to come to my house for lunch, Madeleine?” Why can’t she find her own friends?
There are many girls like Marjorie: girls with pursed lips and opinions on other girls, and clothes that are clean at the end of the day, let her find them. Why is she not in Cathy Baxter’s group? They skip double-dutch and have no shortage of lesser girls willing to be ever-enders—Marjorie could start out as one of those, then move up through the ranks. The bossy girls. They always have an important secret that’s “for me to know and you to find out.” They throw underhand in baseball and have their art put up on the wall on Fridays. They are perfect for Marjorie. But although Marjorie is an excellent skipper, makes perfect paper fortune-tellers and gets hares in almost every subject, when she agrees with them or says, “I love your sweater, Cathy,” they merely pause and Cathy rolls her eyes; then they all go on with what they were talking about before they were so rudely interrupted by no one. Madeleine has begun to feel a creeping responsibility. Am I going to have to be her friend because no one else will?
“Turn to page twelve in your Canadian Treasury of Song books.” Mr. March sounds a note on his pitch pipe, raises a thick finger, brings it down, and the class sings: “‘Land of the silver birch, home of the beaver, where still the mighty moose wanders at will….’”
As the day progresses, Madeleine watches the felt animals on the bulletin board carefully.
“The following little girls will remain after three….”
Once or twice a week. Sometimes all of them, sometimes just some of them. What did those other girls do wrong today? Beautiful sad Diane Vogel, intelligent Joyce Nutt, and Grace Novotny. Not even Grace is capable of being a total reject all the time, yet she is always required to remain.
They line up at the back of the room where the coat hooks are. When it is Madeleine’s turn, she walks down the aisle and he looks at her in that unseeing way that makes her think, maybe I am just a pigment of his imagination. Auriel and Lisa don’t ask her about it any more, no one does. They are simply the little girls who are required to remain. The exercise group. No one in the class wonders what the exercise group is any more, it just is.
It’s easy to get home by twelve past three because Mr. March never keeps them more than ten minutes, so no one gets in trouble for being kept after three; because no one is late enough for their parents to notice.
“If you don’t tell them, I won’t,” says Mr. March. “Of course, that all depends on how well you do after three.”
That’s nice of him. Bad enough to get in trouble with your teacher, but who wants to get in more trouble with your parents?
A few weeks into school and it feels like months, the unstructured days of summer having given way to lessons and sports and Brownies. Madeleine and her friends are taking ballet, tap, jazz and highland dancing over at the rec centre, from a tall bony lady called Miss Jolly who looks exactly like a licorice Twizzler in her leotard. Miss Jolly laughs her toothy laugh at Madeleine’s most gracefully intended efforts. “You’re remarkably supple, Madeleine, but I’m not sure dance is your forte.” When she gets them to do the twist, Madeleine feigns a stomach ache. The thought of writhing sexily around with all the other little girls gives her a queasy after-three feeling.
The grown-up social whirl is likewise in full swing. There are cocktail parties on Friday nights and a do at the mess every Saturday. Madeleine’s parents have started curling Saturday mornings, and during the week the ladies get together for coffee parties and bridge parties. The latter are the best because they happen on school nights, and involve a cornucopia of snacks and baked goods that translate into treats the following day.
One Thursday evening in late September, Mimi hosts four tables of four players each and permits Madeleine to stay up and say hello to the ladies. Madeleine looks longingly at the crystal bowls of bridge mix on every card table, at the tiered plates of gooey Nanaimo bars and buttertarts. An orange sunset chiffon cake sits proudly on a pedestal dish, and there are hot and cold hors d’oeuvres—wiener bites, Swedish meatballs, pickled things on toothpicks. The living room is bright with laughter, conversational clusters throwing off sparks like the combination of cashmere and freshly washed hair; on the buffet, the silver service glitters along with tiny glasses of crème de menthe; lipstick adorns the rims of teacups, patent-leather purses are parked on the floor like miniature cars; it all mingles with the scent of perfume and cigarette smoke, to heady effect.
Madeleine is in her polo pajamas and quilted robe. “Hello Madeleine, sweetheart, how is school treating you?” Kind, elegant Mrs. Woodley. “It’s very good, thank you.” Mrs. McCarroll is over by the fireplace listening to Mrs. Lawson, who is patting her hand—Gordon’s mother is almost as inviting as Mrs. Boucher, a comfortable-looking woman. Mrs. Noonan is nice but a bit cross-eyed. Madeleine hears Mrs. Ridelle’s voice in the kitchen, “Come on, Betty, live a little!” She is shaking an aluminum Thermos. Johnny Mathis sings on the hi-fi about wanting to have children. Madeleine is mesmerized by the scene. If she stands perfectly still and unfocuses her eyes and ears, she can see and hear everything at once:
“… cheap at half the price—”
“… get out, really?!”
“… knows how to put on the dog—”
“… posted to Brussels—”
“… hasn’t joined.”
“Who hasn’t?”
“Sylvia Nolan, she still hasn’t joined the Wives’ Club.”
“… case of nerves—”
Sylvia Nolan. Marjorie’s mother, the one with headaches. Madeleine’s eyes dart about—is Mrs. Nolan here? Is she going to tell about the exercise group? Of course not. She still hasn’t joined the Wives’ Club. And what exactly is there to tell, anyhow? Suddenly Mrs. Baxter is there, beaming down at her—a big-boned woman with big-boned blonde hair and bold red lips. “You must be friends with my Cathy.” Madeleine half smiles, at a loss how to reply. Mrs. Nutt, a slim woman at Mrs. Baxter’s side, says quietly, “You’re in Joyce’s class, how do you like grade four, dear?” “Fine, thank you.” Mrs. Nutt takes her place at a card table and says something to Mrs. Vogel, who looks like Judy Garland—beautiful and on the verge of crying from happiness. Have Joyce Nutt and Diane Vogel told their mothers about the exercise group? Are Mrs. Nutt and Mrs. Vogel talking about it right now? Are they going to tell Madeleine’s mother?
“Madeleine.”
“Oui, maman.”
It’s bedtime. Mimi wraps a chocolate ladyfinger in a cocktail napkin and gives it to Madeleine, saying, “Now straight to bed, or the bonhomme sept heures will come and get you.”
Her mother has b
een to the beauty parlour today. Her hair is perfectly and simply formed, like her green and black sleeveless dress. Madeleine walks slowly upstairs, and watches Maman thread her way through the room and take the needle off the record. She turns, claps her hands twice and announces, “Allons, les femmes, let’s get down to business.” Everyone laughs and obeys. Madeleine lingers, her eyes on Mrs. Vogel and Mrs. Nutt, willing them to move to separate tables. They do. She is relieved that Mrs. Nolan is not here, but wonders at the absence of Mrs. Novotny. Then she recalls Marjorie’s words, “Her father’s just a corporal.” Mrs. Novotny isn’t an officer’s wife, so there would appear to be no danger that Maman will hear about the exercises from her.
“Madeleine, vite, vite. Bonne nuit, ma p’tite.”
“Do you know the capital of Borneo, little girl?”
Madeleine only tells her father the good stuff. She doesn’t mope in front of him any more. She doesn’t want him to think their plan isn’t working. It’s working. She is only ever a tortoise for a couple of days, then gets promoted back to dolphins. But never to hares. It would be sad for him to think he hadn’t fixed the problem. He has fixed it. And when she is with him, the after-three exercises become a very small and separate thing.
She helps him mow the lawn, with her hands next to his on the bar, and they discuss things over the roar of the motor. She tells him about the kids in her class—the bossy girls and the Philip Pinder boys and the rest except, of course, the exercise group—and he teaches her new words, “peer pressure” and “group dynamics.” He helps her write a speech on the topic of humour, laughter as the great “panacea.” She is mercilessly mocked in school for her use of such a big word, and responds by using it as frequently as possible, regardless of context. She and her father speculate as to why God allows war and cancer and the suffering of innocent dogs, they discuss what she will do when she grows up, going over the pros and cons of various professions—conducting what he calls a cost-benefit analysis. He asks where she wants to be in five years, they assess short-term versus long-term goals and how they can all lead to Ed Sullivan. One Saturday they pack a lunch and hike for miles on dirt roads far from the base, just the two of them with a Thermos of Nestlé’s Quik and a supply of peanut-butter sandwiches. Times like this become memories almost instantly, part of a gilded past that somehow coexists with the present. Remember-whens to look back on even as they are happening, bittersweet and aglow with sunshine fading to sepia—the late September dust suspended in the wake of a single passing car, leafy smell in the air, blue sky reflected in his sunglasses.
She keeps meaning to ask him what the capital of Borneo is, but she always forgets.
“The following little girls will remain after the bell. Diane Vogel, Grace Novotny, Joyce Nutt, Madeleine McCarthy and Marjorie Nolan.”
Marjorie looks around proudly and her dimples appear. When her eyes meet Madeleine’s she looks away haughtily. Only Margarine Nolan could possibly be proud of being chosen for the exercise group. Madeleine feels her face grow hot at the realization that Marjorie has no idea what the exercise group really is. What if she tells on us? Tells what?
They line up along the coat hooks. Madeleine leans back until she feels the hook grind against her spine, then slip sideways to find a spot between her ribs. Like a chicken carcass.
You stand against the coat hooks until he calls you. Or until he tells you to sit back down at your desk and write a spot quiz. Then he lines up the rosebuds on his desk and you all go up and take one, and leave. “Side door, little girls.”
Diane Vogel is up there behind the big oak desk with him. Madeleine watches and waits. I wonder what kind of exercises he makes the other girls do? Do they do the same ones I do? Do they think they’re in the smart group, or the stupid group? Or the bad group? Which group am I in?
Grace Novotny does backbends behind his desk while he spots her, holding her steady between his knees so she won’t fall. He doesn’t want any foolish accidents.
Joyce Nutt does backbends too, but beside his desk, never behind it. And he doesn’t spot her. Doesn’t he care if she falls?
Madeleine glances down the line. There are five of us now in the exercise group. Almost enough for a six in a Brownie pack. And we are all Brownies, although we will certainly get our wings and fly up to Guides this spring. Except for Grace—she may have to walk up.
No one talks, not even Marjorie. Her lips are compressed as though to prevent herself from talking. She has figured out that this is a rule, and once Marjorie knows something is a rule, she goes around like a monitor.
Everyone waits while Grace does her exercises. All you hear is the sound of the gerbil burrowing in his cage and the sound of Mr. March breathing—it’s hard work for him.
Three minutes past three. The cutout turkeys are up on the wall in anticipation of Thanksgiving. Smiling and dressed like the people who are going to eat them. Happy pilgrims on their way to get their heads chopped off. There are also horns of plenty with squashes and corn tumbling out.
Grace Novotny walks back up to the coat hooks.
“Come here, little girl,” says Mr. March. No one knows who he is talking to until he says, “The one in the white blouse,” and Madeleine proceeds to the front of the class.
“Do you know the capital of Borneo, little girl?”
“No, Mr. March.”
“What were the names of Columbus’s ships?”
“The Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María.”
“Correct. Let’s see if you can get two out of three. What is the word for a female peacock?”
“I don’t know, Mr. March.”
“The answer is peahen. Say peahen.”
“Peahen.”
“Say peacock.”
“Peacock.”
“Pea.”
“Pea.”
“Cock.”
“Cock.”
“Come closer. Closer. That’s it. I want to see if you’re getting any stronger. I want you to keep up with your exercises, otherwise I won’t be able to give you a passing grade in health, stand still.”
We don’t even have health as a subject; he is crazy.
“Let me feel your muscles, little girl. Oh that’s a big one. I’m not hurting you.”
His cheeks jiggle and he stares at her but it’s as if he were looking at nobody at all. Where is Madeleine? The man is touching her freshly ironed blouse; it has a brooch of the Acadian flag, white red and blue, Maman pinned it there this morning, poor Maman.
“Let me feel your chest muscles. They’re growing aren’t they, do you rub them every day? And your tummy muscles, and your—oh you’re sweating aren’t you?” Mr. March touches her underpants. It feels good.
“Do you know what will happen if your parents find out what a bad child you’ve been?”
Her head is terribly hot. She shakes her head, no.
“They’ll send you away.” Into the forest. She feels her heart beat against her ribcage, sees it huge and red pulsing against the bars of bone.
“Here, little girl, feel my muscle—that’s it—squeeze it, it’s strong.” It is rubber, there is a smell. Blank it out or you’ll throw up.
“Are you strong? Let me feel how strong you are. How hard can you squeeze?” It is loose skin on the outside and hard on the inside, it is raw.
“Rub it.”
He puts his hand around Madeleine’s and it must hurt him to rub it like that, the skin pulls away from the top of it like on a turkey neck, the hole is where he pees.
Then he pushes her away, and maybe he will call the next little girl up to his desk and maybe he won’t.
Madeleine walks back to the coat hooks. It takes a long time and yet her feet have not stopped walking from Mr. March’s desk, so probably it has taken the normal amount of time. She presses her spine against the hook, and the next thing she notices is that Marjorie Nolan is up behind his desk, but she doesn’t remember Marjorie being called or leaving the coat hooks; Marjorie is just there at his de
sk all of a sudden. Her legs feel heavy, tired, as if she had been standing for a long time. But it’s only seven minutes past three.
Marjorie has her hands out and Mr. March is filling them with candy—that’s not how we usually do things in the exercise group.
“I’m the candy monitor,” says Marjorie, suddenly back at the coat hooks. She struts along the line, and when she gets to Madeleine she says, “You only get it if you’re good and not stupid, so forget it, Madeleine.”
Madeleine wants to say, “I don’t give a care,” but her lips are dry.
Marjorie licks a red Smartie, applies it as lipstick, then pops it into her mouth and crunches it. “You’ll be sorry, Madeleine.”
Out the side door with the others. Once again Madeleine is thankful for the side door, because imagine meeting the principal, Mr. Lemmon, or Mr. Froelich, and having them wonder what it is you have been doing in the classroom after three—behind the door with the turkeys taped over the window.
They disperse. Silent as usual, except for Marjorie, who tries to chitchat as though she were a member of a keen new club. Madeleine avoids her.
“Hi,” says Claire McCarroll. She’s riding her bike around the schoolyard, her pink streamers glittering in the breeze.
Madeleine’s head feels swampy, her underpants feel dank, she pictures their yellow butterfly pattern but remembers that those are Claire’s, not hers, hers have a ladybug pattern, Maman bought them at Woolworth’s, no one ever imagined that a teacher would touch them, that’s what happened today. Also, usually you just feel his thing poking through his trousers when you do your backbends, which are otherwise just normal backbends and the poking could be an accident or a pocket knife. Now you can never say to anyone, “Oh we just do backbends.” You can’t say anything.