“Done.”
“Oh, had I mentioned—?”
“No, but I figured.”
“You’ve got a feel for tradecraft, old man,” says Simon, in a send-up of his own accent.
“When are we going to see you up our way? Mimi would love to meet you.”
“Is she aware of our little operation?”
“No, but she knows I ran into you the summer before—”
“How’s the Deutsches Mädchen?”
“Oh she’s grand, she’s a spitfire.”
“Chip off the old propeller, eh? Cheers, Jack.”
“Cheers.” Jack hears the click, and hangs up. He heads to the mailbox outside the grocery store and posts Fried’s “letters.”
Tradecraft.
The next morning, Jack picks up the paper from the front steps. He walks slowly back up to the kitchen, eyes on the front page: SOVIET, U.S., AGREE TO HOLD PRELIMINARY TALKS ON CUBA.
“Didn’t the milk come?” asks Mimi.
“I guess not, I didn’t see it,” says Jack. Mimi slips past him, down to the porch, and gets the milk.
At the table, Madeleine reaches for a fresh-baked banana muffin. Her father lifts his paper to turn a page. She freezes. Towering over the breakfast table on the front page is a photograph of children ducking and covering under their desks. It’s the exercise group. Her stomach closes.
“Madeleine, qu’est-ce qui va pas?”
“Nothing.”
“Then pass your brother the butter.”
“I only asked you twice,” says Mike.
She has the odd sense that if she reached for the butter her hand would stay where it is, and that a phantom hand would reach out. She lifts her hand and it works perfectly, but before picking up the butter she obeys the impulse to sniff her fingers quickly. Mike bursts out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” she asks.
“Old Smeller.”
“Stop it!”
The newspaper comes down.
Mike is still giggling. “Well she’s always doing that.” And he imitates her, furtively sniffing his hands, fingers curled.
“Quit it!”
“Simmer down now,” says her father. “Mike, don’t tease your sister.”
Madeleine’s face feels like a heating pad, she has to go to the bathroom. Her parents are looking at her. “That’s Diane Vogel,” she confesses, pointing at a girl with her head buried in her arms, on the front page of the newspaper.
Her father says, “Those kids are down in Florida.”
American kids. That’s not a picture of our class at all.
He clicks air through his teeth and gets up. “Well, looks like tensions are easing, eh? Have a good day, fellas.”
The grade four class recites in unison, “‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the rider was lost….’” Art is always on Friday afternoons. The best pictures have been selected for the wall and for the window in the door. “‘ … for want of a rider the battle was lost, for want of the battle the war was lost….’” Madeleine has her eyes on the clipboard on Mr. March’s desk, as though her gaze could fix it there, preventing him from picking it up and reading off the names. “‘ … and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.’”
He reaches for the clipboard. “The following little girls….”
After supper, the hum and rattle of Mimi’s sewing machine competes with Sing along with Mitch. Madeleine watches the bright fabric passing beneath the pistoning needle, her mother’s foot working the pedal like an accelerator. She is lengthening Madeleine’s clown costume. Sewn from an old set of drapes, their indestructible muslin patterned with tropical flowers in crimson, emerald and canary-yellow, pleated and pompommed. Madeleine looks longingly at the hat — she is not allowed to wear it till Halloween. Constructed of Life magazines rolled up, shellacked and upholstered, it’s pointed like a dunce cap. She recalls that Anne Frank is somewhere in there, smothering. She takes a deep breath and looks away.
“You’ll get a job at Barnum ’n’ Bailey in a costume like that,” says her father. “You’ve got the smartest maman in the world.”
On Saturday, a U-2 spy plane is shot down over Cuba, killing the pilot, and they all put their clocks back an hour, for daylight saving time. Madeleine endures figure-skating lessons at the arena, where the torment of picks and figure eights is mitigated by the presence of Auriel, who looks like a self-described “velvet sausage roll” in her tutu — and the sight of Marjorie, dander bouncing with every forward thrust, keeps them in silent stitches. Madeleine is stalwart through swimming lessons in the echoey indoor pool, survives the churning fug of the change room and emerges gratefully to watch Mike’s hockey practice, hot chocolate steaming from a paper cup in her hand, swinging the heels of her boots against the scarred bleacher boards. Mike plays defence. She relishes each crisp swoosh and slice of his skates, admiring the look of concentration on his face, his cheeks pink with exertion. Afterwards, she watches, mesmerized, as the Zamboni heals the surface of the ice. Her brother and Arnold Pinder emerge from the locker room with Roy in tow, lugging his heavy goalie equipment, and the four of them watch as the big boys power onto the ice with graceful strides, sticks pivoting from their gloved hands: passing the puck, turning on a dime to skate swiftly backwards. Ricky Froelich is among them, skirting the boards easily, dangerously, flicking his hank of hair out of his eyes with a toss of his head. He was suspended last year for fighting, but it hasn’t happened again.
In the afternoon the McCarthys go shopping in London, and at the crowded entrance to the Covent Market, Madeleine sees a young man and an old lady parading with signs, Ban the Bomb and Insects Shall Inherit the Earth.
That night, Jack sits with his wife and son on the couch and watches the Newsmagazine special on CBC. Knowlton Nash talks with White House press secretary Pierre Salinger in Washington, and a succession of officials line up to praise Khrushchev’s “statesmanlike decision” to dismantle the missiles. The relief is palpable.
“It pays to stand up to a bully, that’s what history teaches, Mike.”
Madeleine sits cross-legged on the floor, waiting for the news to be over. Jack called them in to watch “history in the making.” The main anchor, Norman DePoe, sums up: “… men are still dying in the rice paddies of Vietnam, the steaming jungles of Laos and the high thin air of the Himalayas. The little wars go on, but at least we’re not going to have the big one. At least not yet anyway, and suddenly at last there’s hope that we may be able to settle the little ones too.”
“Where’s Vietnam?” asks Mike.
“It’s in south-east Asia,” answers Jack.
“Is there a war on there?”
“There’s always a bit of a one.”
They stay tuned for Ed Sullivan.
That night, Jack tells Madeleine, “It’s all over, little buddy, nothing left to worry about.”
There will not be a nuclear war in our lifetime.
“You can wake up tomorrow and go to school feeling free as a bird,” he says. “So much for Mr. Marks.”
He turns out the light. And Madeleine’s eyes stay open.
TRICK OR TREAT
OCTOBER 31 IS THE BEST DAY of the year: Halloween. Everyone goes to school in costume. Doing normal schoolwork in a costume makes everything including arithmetic seem easier. Each class has its own Halloween party; the grade fours have bobbed for apples, and devoured a cake with orange icing brought in by Mr. March. But Madeleine is itching for the main event: nightfall. Trick or treat. She watches the clock, poised to flee with the bell.