“Madeleine, look at me.”
Madeleine crosses her eyes and stares at her mother.
Mimi laughs in spite of herself. “You’re not to play, you’re to come straight home and change, then you can play.”
“Oui, maman, comme tu veux, maman,” says Madeleine, swiping a cookie.
Mimi raises an eyebrow and takes a puff of her Cameo — this one has settled in nicely at school. No worries there. She bends and gives her daughter a kiss on the forehead. “That’s for speaking French.”
Madeleine groans but she is pleased. She feels free, it’s Friday, tonight we’ll play hide ’n’ seek in the twilight, then we’ll watch The Flintstones, and tomorrow we go camping at the Pinery on Lake Huron. She feels suddenly ten feet tall and invincible. She flies out the front door, sails off the porch, zooms zigzaggy up the street, her arms outstretched like a Spitfire — I could run and run and never get tired. Spin the earth beneath my feet like a giant marble.
Here is what happened after the bell.
It was very quiet. Mr. March sat down and scraped his chair in until his stomach met the edge of his big oak desk. Grace giggled.
“Stand up, little girl.”
His glasses glinted in the afternoon sun. Madeleine couldn’t tell if he was talking to her but, since Grace made no move to stand, Madeleine did.
Then Mr. March said, “You need to improve your powers of concentration.”
“Sorry, Mr. March.”
“Don’t be sorry, little girl, we’re going to see what can be done about you.”
“Okay.”
“Come here.”
He doesn’t sound angry. Maybe this isn’t a detention. Maybe it’s extra help. Madeleine walks down the aisle toward his desk. Grace giggles behind her. Madeleine stops in front of his desk.
“Do you know the capital of Borneo, little girl?”
“No, Mr. March.”
“Come closer.”
She comes around to the side of his desk, which is like a big enclosed cube on three sides — you could easily hide a cake underneath it. He takes his hanky from his breast pocket.
“Can you touch your toes, little girl?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
Madeleine touches her toes.
“That will help send blood to your brain,” says Mr. March.
She straightens up again.
“Can you do backbends, little girl?”
Madeleine does a backbend, ending up in an arch with her hands on the floor behind her head, her hair hanging like grass — she can easily walk around like this but she refrains, afraid of showing off by accident. Plus, even though she knows her dress is not immodestly pulled up, she feels a bit funny doing a backbend with a dress on in the classroom after three — her light blue pleated pinafore. She can hear him rustling but she can’t see anything except the upside-down door with the art papered over the window.
When she straightens up, Mr. March says, “You need to do more exercises, little girl. Show me your muscle.”
She resists the urge to turn and look behind her, because even though the glare is gone from his glasses, it really does seem as though Mr. March is looking past her at someone else. Someone called “little girl.” He reaches out and takes her by the upper arm. She tries to make a muscle but it’s difficult when your arm is being squeezed.
“Say ‘muscle,’” he says.
He doesn’t even want me to spell it, this is so easy, doc. Madeleine says, “Muscle.”
She watches his profile and waits as he squeezes her arm. She says, quietly, “Ow.”
“I’m not hurting you.”
He lets go and says, “Rub your arm. That will make it feel better.” So she does. “Rub it,” he whispers, looking straight ahead, sitting forward in his chair, belly jammed right up against his desk. He is breathing through his mouth. Maybe he has asthma.
Suddenly he sighs and turns to her and says, “I don’t see why I should tell your parents about your problem just yet, little girl. Do you?”
“Um. No sir.”
“Well we’ll see. Run along now.”
Madeleine goes back to her desk to get her homework and Grace gets up and rummages for her homework too — Grace’s notebooks are already dog-eared.
“Not you, little girl.”
And Grace sits back down.
Mr. March says, “You may stay and clean the blackboards.”
Madeleine leaves the classroom and walks by herself down the deserted afternoon hall, wondering how she can improve her powers of concentration. The word itself has a headachey sound. Why is it called a Concentration Camp? Where is Borneo?
She arrives in the foyer and looks up at the Queen. All this looked so strange and new that day long ago when she and Mike peered in. She didn’t know then that she would be the kid who acts up in class and gets a detention. She looks up at the Queen and says, “I won’t from now on, Scout’s honour,” although she is a Brownie. “Scout’s honour” is more potent than “Too-wit, too-woo,” it’s what Mike says when he’s making a solemn vow.
When she walks out onto the big front steps and sees that Auriel and Lisa have waited for her in the field, she runs to them, allowing the breeze to take away the after-three feeling.
At supper, Madeleine doesn’t have a very good appetite, despite the delicious Friday night fish and chips.
Mimi says, “Viens, let me feel your forehead.” But she doesn’t have a temperature.
Mike says with his mouth full, “Can I have your french fries?”
“Mike,” says Jack.
“What?” Bewildered, aggrieved.
Mimi looks at her daughter. “What is it, ma p’tite? Regarde-moi.”
Madeleine blushes under Maman’s gaze. She feels guilty even though she has done nothing wrong. But everyone is acting as though there were in fact something wrong. Is there? Mimi strokes her hair and says, “Hm? Dis à maman.”
Jack shakes his head discreetly across the table at Mimi. Madeleine is turned away from him and doesn’t see. She opens her mouth to confess to her mother about being kept for exercises after three, but Mimi says, “What is it, Jack?”
Jack rolls his eyes and smiles. “‘Why did you kick me under the table?’”
“Sorry,” says Mimi.
Madeleine and Mike are both bewildered now, but that’s nothing new in the land of grown-ups.
Jack removes Madeleine’s plate, handing it to her mother, and says, “What do you say, old buddy, have you got room for dessert?”
Madeleine nods yes and feels her face cool, back to normal.
After supper, Jack invites his daughter to read the funnies with him on the couch. She snuggles in and he explains the joke in Blondie, then casually inquires, “How was school today, sweetie?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine?”
“It was okay.”
“What’s on your mind, little buddy?”
“I got put in tortoises for Reading,” she mumbles.
Jack doesn’t laugh, he knows it’s serious stuff. Once he has got her to explain the rating system, he asks, “Why’d he do that?” Madeleine feels her indignation afresh, remembering now how she had planned to tell Dad all along, before the exercises made her feel grateful to Mr. March for promising not to tell.
“He made me stay after three”—it feels good to own up to it.
“What for?”
“… Exercises.”
“What kind of exercises?”
Madeleine doesn’t say “backbends.” Now that she is here sitting on the couch with Dad, she feels it was a bit bad of her to do back-bends in a dress in front of Mr. March when they weren’t even in the gym.