“I’m Vivien.”
The girl runs back to Rick, grabs the handles of his chair and hurtles them both forward.
“Mush,” he says.
“I’m mushing, I’m mushing!”
Madeleine follows them. They stop up near the house at a picnic table under which sits a cooler. Rick slowly, carefully rolls a cigarette from a pouch of Drum tobacco.
Vivien asks, “Are you the one on TV?”
Madeleine is taken by surprise. “Sometimes, yeah.”
The little girl laughs and hurls herself at Rick’s lap.
Rick puts the cigarette between his lips and looks up at Madeleine. “Everyone thinks you’re funny now but they didn’t know-you-when, eh?” He uses both hands to light it with a lighter.
Madeleine puts the hat on the picnic table.
As Rick exhales, the smoke mingles with the freshness of the evening, the charcoal from the grill. Colleen is cooking something in foil. It smells wonderful.
Madeleine says, “That was my dad’s hat.”
Rick says, “What can I get you to drink?” Vivien announces, “We have beer, Dr Pepper, Mountain Dew and chocolate milk.”
“I’ll have what you’re having.”
The child bounds toward the house. The dog flops, still wet and grinning, at Rick’s feet. Madeleine sits facing the lake and says, “He’s the one who waved at you that day.” It feels so small. The words are tiny. Not difficult to say. Not hard at all.
Rick looks away, following the smoke with his eyes as it drifts toward the water. His profile is so pure, cut with the finest instruments, eyes gleaming like jet. He raises the heel of his hand and wipes them. He could have been anything he wanted to be.
A sizzle behind her as Colleen turns the foil package. Madeleine is weeping now too. Because the pines smell so vivid. Because his face is so familiar. Because it’s summer and the evening sun is all the clothes you need and school doesn’t start for a long time.
“I know what happened …,” she says. And down in the schoolyard a boy on a red motor scooter is giving everyone rides. “And I think I know what happened … to your dad.” But that’s too much. What happened to Mr. Froelich and the children he loved … is too much.
“I’m sorry,” she says, getting up. “I’ll put it in a letter.”
She is about to leave but the child is there, offering her an iridium-blue tin cup.
“How come you’re crying?”
Madeleine takes the cup and replies, “Aw it’s okay, it’s….”
Rick says, “Her daddy died.”
The child puts her arms around Madeleine’s waist. When will Colleen turn from the grill and drive a knife into Madeleine’s back?
Madeleine says, “It’s okay, hey, cheers Vivien.”
They clink cups and Madeleine drinks. A dreadful candy clash. “It’s great, what is it?”
“My secret recipe,” she replies, moustached now in mauve. “Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper and then you put in a bit of real pepper.”
“Wow.”
The child disappears back into the house.
“Max,” says Rick, “get Papa a cool one.” The dog gets up, walks to the cooler, opens it with his nose, lifts out a can of Moosehead beer and brings it over. “Good boy,” says Rick, popping the tab.
“How did you get him to do that?”
He points his thumb at Colleen. “I’m just the guinea pig, she’s the genius. Guide dogs, eh? ‘Special skills for special needs.’”
“You train dogs to get beer for blind people?”
Rick laughs, and Madeleine sees the side of Colleen’s mouth rise. The same thin scar at the corner. Same rusty thatch of hair.
He has multiple sclerosis — MS. Diagnosed a few years after he got out of prison. He had been working with horses again up until then. “Out west,” he says.
Out on the lake a loon flies low across the water, feet skimming to a landing. It releases its effortless liquid cry and is answered within moments from farther down the shore.
“Here!” says Vivien, and thrusts a guitar almost the size of herself into Rick’s arms. He takes the pick from behind the strings of an upper fret, places it between his teeth and begins to tune the instrument. He strums—“Not so good at picking any more, eh? But I can still chord some.”
“How’s your mum?” ventures Madeleine.
“She’s great,” he replies, “still crazy after all these years.”
“She runs a nuthouse,” says Colleen.
“A halfway house,” says Rick. “For bag ladies. In Toronto.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah. Look her up if you ever lose your marbles.”
Vivien says, “Gran is a Quaker.”
“How about your baby brothers?”
“Roger and Carl.” Rick shakes his head and smiles. Colleen is chuckling.
“Carl’s a biker—” Rick starts laughing. Colleen pokes the coals, laughing now too. “And Roger’s a cop.” He begins to strum a series of chords.
Madeleine asks quietly, “What about Elizabeth?”
Neither of them answers, and Madeleine is somewhat relieved that they seem not to have heard her. But after a moment he says to his guitar, “She died, pal.”
He starts playing a tune. The little girl takes two spoons from the table and starts rattling time with them, a serious expression on her face.
Rick says, “Lizzie got flu.”
“She was too sad to get better,” explains Vivien. “She’s with her dog Rex now.”
Madeleine gets up and goes to Colleen. “I’m going to leave now. I’ll put it all in a letter for you. I’m going to get in touch with the McCarrolls too.”
Colleen finally looks at her. Madeleine is startled, the way she was when she was a child. Wolf eyes.
Colleen reaches into her pocket for her knife. Yellowed bone handle, thumb-faded. Blade curved with age. She slits open the foil and steam escapes. Two big trout.
“Ricky and Viv caught them,” she says. She reseals the foil and lifts the package onto a platter. “You’re funny, I guess you know that, eh?”
“I know it’s weird, me just showing up like this out of the blue—”
“No, I mean … you’re good at what you do.” And now Colleen is smiling. She sets the platter on the table. “Want to see the dogs?”
“Okay.”
Rick and Vivien sing softly, “‘So hoist up the John B. sail. See how the mainsail sets. Call for the captain ashore, let me go home…’”
The two women walk up to the kennels. Soft muzzles at the fence, a Bremen choir of barking. Colleen unlocks the gate and holds out her hand to Madeleine, palm up. There is the scar. Madeleine takes the hand and squeezes it, then lets go and follows her friend along the dog runs, hands out for licks and pats, wet teeth grazing her flesh.
Colleen says, “Tell me now.”
Madeleine does. It doesn’t take long.
The fish is still warm when they return to the table and join the others.
~ ~ ~
AN AIR-RAID SIREN is a beam of sound more terrifying than any other. During the Second World War it was terrifying but now it is more terrifying, because it was a normal sunny day until the siren went off. Birds were flying, the fields were buzzing and kids were riding bikes. The siren screams over wading pools and backyard barbecues, it says, I was here all along, you knew this could happen. It pauses for breath, resumes its pitiful rise, mourning its own obscenity, mounting to obliteration. It is everywhere — it makes all places into the same place, turns everyone into the same person. It says, Run to where there is no shelter. When the planes come, run, but only because you are alive and an animal.
And then it stops. The summer sky is empty. Turn on the radio, the television. Come up from the basement, get up from the ground. It was a birds’ nest. In the siren atop the wooden telephone pole that stands near the gates to the old air force station at Centralia. Crows. Who knew the old siren was operational after all these years?