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 Marshall 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 schooclass="underline" 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.
She felt sorry for her father. Trapped in a suburb. With a wife incapable of discussing the subject that fascinated him most. She looked at her mother, pricking the pie crust with a fork before sliding it into the oven. Mimi could not tolerate even the mention of the name Froelich.
“My mother’s way of dealing with difficult subjects was to bury them.”
Nina asks, “How did your father react when you came out?”
“Oh, he was — he wasn’t nearly as bad as Maman — my mother. He always asks how Christine is — unless my mother’s in the room, because she’ll throw a fit—”
“What does that look like?”
“Oh, oh it’s all pointy and shrill and hysterical. My dad, on the other hand, takes us for lunch when he comes to Toronto.”
“How does your mother feel about that?”
“We don’t tell her.”
“You keep it secret?”
“Not a secret, we just don’t … well, yes, okay.”
“Whose idea is that?”
“It’s not an idea, we just don’t want to deal with her freak-out.”
Madeleine recalls strolling back to her father’s hotel with him after that first visit: “How do you think Maman might feel if she knew the three of us had had lunch?” he asked.
“She’d freak.”
He smiled. “You know, when I met your mother she wasn’t much younger than you are now. Full of beans. Real little spitfire, like you. She’s never been afraid of anything. I’ve been afraid of plenty, but she … would’ve made a good officer. She’s been through a lot, your mother.” Eyes on the sky, compressing his lips. “She’s a real lady.”
She felt suddenly ashamed — sad and full of guilty love for Maman.
“Her feelings might be hurt,” she said.
Dad nodded and made his mild wincing expression. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“I won’t mention it if you don’t.”
He smiled and winked at her. Pilot to co-pilot.
“So it was your father’s idea,” says Nina.
“He’s the one who has to live with her. At least he supports my relationship.”
Nina is silent.
“What?”
“So you knew Richard Froelich.”
Madeleine nods.
“Did you know the child who was murdered?”
Madeleine shrugs. “Kind of.”
Nina waits.
Madeleine is silent.
Nina asks, “Did your father do intelligence work?”
Madeleine almost laughs. “He’s a management consultant.”
“How did he know about Project Paperclip?”
“I don’t know, he … reads a lot. Well, he reads newspapers. And Time. And The Economist….” She can almost feel the lightbulb over her head when she says, “Uncle Simon.”
“His brother?”
She shakes her head. “His old flying instructor. This glamorous David Niven kind of guy, you know? British — the ascot, moustache, the whole bit. He offered to train me as a spy.” She hits the arm of the swivel chair in delight. “Any bets he was an intelligence type!”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s dead.”
They sit silent for a few moments. Then Madeleine asks, “Have you ever heard of Dora?”
“No.”
“What were you thinking just now?”
“Oh, just that it’s an odd name.”
“The Nazis liked to give pretty names to horrible places.”
“Yes, but Dora was also the name of a patient of Freud’s.”
Christine has told Madeleine this story. Dora was a famous “hysteric.” She told Freud that her father had interfered with her sexually, and Freud believed her at first. Then he started hearing so many rape and abuse stories from so many women that he decided they were all deluded.
“Your father believed Henry Froelich.”
“Yeah. He was about the only one who did.” Madeleine looks at the ceiling, compressing her lips. “My dad is like that. Loyal.”