Dad’s: “There’s to be no TV while the sun’s shining outside.”
Then the whole family settled in to watch Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, in black and white.
For Madeleine, it is exquisite agony to watch the child actors who befriend the curious and resourceful young cougars and stray dogs. She burns as boys in dungarees become trapped in abandoned mine shafts, and girls nurse injured horses back to blue-ribbon health. How did those kids get to be in those shows? How can I get there? They are American, for one thing.
“When you’re older you can move to Hollywood and become an entertainer,” says her father. But Madeleine doesn’t want to wait. She yearns for a career now. In show business. It keeps her awake at night. Television fuels the flames. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in their striped jackets, straw hats and canes, cracking jokes and tap dancing. George Jessel and his cigar. Baleful Rodney Dangerfield, sorrowful Red Skelton; Don Rickles barking, Phyllis Diller carping, Anne Meara deadpanning, Joan Rivers rasping, Lucille Ball wailing. Madeleine doesn’t get most of the jokes but she gets the big thing, which is: they are funny.
Afterwards, in bed with a book, the spell of television feels remote compared to the journey into the page. To be in a book. To slip into the crease where two pages meet, to live in the place where your eyes alight upon the words to ignite a world of smoke and peril, colour and serene delight. That is a journey no one can end with the change of a channel. Enduring magic. She opens Peter Pan.
The intoxication of television, the passion of new friendship, the yearning for Neverland and the smell of new clothes on the racks at Simpson’s in downtown London, Ontario. All combine and accelerate to lift and spin her through the last weekend before school.
After back-to-school shopping in London, the McCarthys buy a picnic lunch at the big Covent Market building in the centre of town. Wurst and Brötchen from the Bavarian Delikatessen, where the ruddy-cheeked owners make a gratifying fuss over Madeleine and Mike. The smell of smoked meats and cheeses, fresh bread and mustard — it’s the smell of a Sunday drive through the Black Forest, right here in southern Ontario.
“Small world,” says Jack, when he finds out that the store owners knew the German bartender at the officers’ mess in 4 Wing. Son of a gun.
They eat their picnic at Storybook Gardens. A park at the edge of town, on the Thames River, it resembles a miniature Disneyland. There is a wooden castle with drawbridge and a little choo-choo train that runs on a real track and carries passengers under twelve around the park. There are life-size figures from nursery rhymes — the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker rock in their tub, Humpty Dumpty teeters on his wall, a dish runs away with a spoon. A big bad plaster wolf threatens three real live pigs who root about and live in miniature houses of brick, wood and straw, and a life-size witch smiles from the door of her candy-coated house. Unlike the Pied Piper, there is no room for hope that the witch may be good after all. Madeleine is disconcerted by the conspicuous absence of Hansel and Gretel. It implies that either the witch has succeeded in eating them, or they have yet to arrive; in which case, “Come here, little girl, you’ll do very well.” On the grounds there is also a greenhouse with tropical flowers, of interest only to adults.
When they return to the parking lot, a sticker has been applied to the rear bumper of the Rambler. Mimi finds it presumptuous — nothing like that would happen in Europe. Madeleine gazes at the sticker: bright yellow, it features the turreted outline of Storybook Castle and the path leading up to it, paved like Dorothy’s yellow brick road.
On their way home, Jack takes the opportunity to happen onto Morrow Street.
“Why are we turning here?” asks Mimi.
“Just getting the lay of the land. You never know, we might want to retire here one day.” He feels Mimi’s hand stroke the back of his head, and he slows as they pass a yellow brick low-rise at the end of a leafy cul-de-sac. Number 472. Manicured lawn and hedge, kidney-shaped flower beds. Mums. A circular drive leads to the front doors, which are sheltered by a porte cochère.
“I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of excitement yet,” says Mimi.
The place is like a mausoleum. Perfect. As the building recedes in the rearview mirror, Jack feels a butterfly stir in his stomach. He says, “Who wants ice cream?” A cheer goes up in the back seat.
“Jack,” says Mimi, “we’ve had a lot of treats today already.”
But it’s too late. From the back seat, Madeleine chants, “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” Mimi raises an eyebrow at her husband. Madeleine continues: “‘Are you tired and listless? Take Dodd’s Little Liver Pills for fast, effective relief.’”
Mimi and Jack exchange a look, suppressing a laugh. She says to her daughter in the mirror, “I hope you listen half so well in school this year.”
REMEMBER-WHENS
ON SUNDAY MORNING, Jack gets through the sermon at Mass by recalling Mimi in bed last night. Madeleine gets through by imagining how she would go about scaling the interior walls to the ceiling. Jack calculates in his mind how much he would need to put aside every week in order to buy his wife a mink coat. Every Christmas she warns him, as she prepares to unwrap her presents, “It better not be a you-know-what,” and throws the box at him if he has spent too much on her. She always throws the box, and sometimes weeps if it is just trop beau. What better thanks could a man hope for? It’s difficult, however, to squirrel away money when your wife is the comptroller of the family. Madeleine tugs the strangulating organza at her neck and imagines escaping on a motorcycle with Steve McQueen through a hail of bullets. “… Go in peace,” says the priest.
“Come here, Mimi.”
“Jack, what are you doing?”
“On your feet, woman.”
“Oh Jack.” And they dance. Three o’clock on Sunday afternoon. The priest has just left. He was here for brunch, and now Jack has put the soundtrack to South Pacific on the hi-fi.
“Let’s get outta here,” Madeleine says to Mike.
“Come here, you.”
“Dad!” And she dances with her father.
“You dance divinely, Missy.”
“Sissy,” Mike rhymes from the couch, for which he gets a look from Jack. A complicit look that says, being a gentleman is part of being manly even though it might seem sissyish now.
Madeleine lowers her eyes, not to look at her feet but to hide her delight as she lifts one hand to her father’s shoulder and places the other in his. When she was little she used to put her feet on his, but she is older now and her new patent-leather Mary Janes step in time with his Daks. She is still in her lacerating dress of pink spun glass, but has ceased complaining because Maman keeps telling her to offer up her suffering for the poor souls in purgatory. How many years off one’s time in the purifying flames can be bought by eight-year-old girls in scratchy dresses? The saving grace of this getup is Madeleine’s white Communion gloves: ribbed on the back like Bugs Bunny’s. Nyah, offer it up, doc. That was flippant, sorry, dear God.
Jack says to her, “That’s it, don’t think about it, just relax and feel the music.” They sweep together gracefully around the coffee table and he sings along softly with “Some Enchanted Evening”…. Mimi joins in.
“Mike, dance with your mother,” says Jack.
“Voulez-vous danser, maman?” And he offers her his hand.
“Que t’es beau, Michel.” Mimi resists kissing her son and they dance. She is teaching him to lead.