Way the Crow Flies Read Free Page A

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