Dolly won.
Her datebook is in the dishwasher. Mercifully unwashed. She opens it to the current week on two pages, then refers back to the foot calendar and is about to transcribe her parents’ arrival information when she stalls. It takes her Executive Function a moment to process what she sees on the foot calendar: April seventh does not fall on a Sunday. She looks back at her datebook: yes it does. What is happening? Her vision begins to constrict. Today is Thursday, you know this to be true. Hi there, and happy Thursday. Her heart levitates, sheds weight within her chest and begins to flutter. Breathe. You have not entered a parallel world, you are not dead behind a soundproof time-plate, you are not suffering amnesia pursuant to a psychotic break; the foot calendar is a year out of date. April is the foolest month …
“All aboard, Teletubbies!” Woo-woo!
Chicken, broccoli and quinoa. Successful bath time. Successful bedtime. She successfully downloads the form from the Canada Post website. Prints it. Signs it. Hears Maggie. Heads upstairs, stepping over Daisy flaked out on the landing. Matthew’s beloved unicorn is still playing its tune—he must have rewound it—she can see the sound spiralling, a crystal crown of thorns. Before she reaches the end of the hall, however, she realizes the music is coming from Maggie’s room. Anger fizzes even as she understands it to be unfounded; impossible for Maggie to have climbed from her crib, seized the unicorn, then scaled the bars upon her return. Matthew must have placed it there—such a sweetheart.
She enters Maggie’s room to see the unicorn revolving on the windowsill, and Maggie asleep. Her face is like a flower—as though in answer to the question posed by the first line of the unicorn’s song. Mary Rose is surprised by an ache in her upper respiratory tract. She reaches down and strokes the baby brow. How can someone so small wield such power? The discomfort in her chest abates just as Mary Rose identifies it as love.
•
She got very hungry the night of the surgery. Next to her on the bed lay a button on an electrical cord. It was a bell. She waited a long time before pressing it. When she did, nothing happened at first. After a while the night nurse came and Mary Rose asked her for some food. The night nurse said it couldn’t be done. Mary Rose asked her for some toast—she had never felt such hunger, it may have been the painkillers. The nurse said no. Something took over, and Mary Rose insisted, offering to make it herself. The nurse may have thought she was being sarcastic, because Mary Rose could not get out of bed on her own. The nurse left, exasperated.
After a while, she returned with a plastic plate of buttered toast and a cup of apple juice. Mary Rose thanked her, intensely grateful. The nurse left and she devoured the toast and drank the juice, then immediately vomited it back onto the plate and covered it with the napkin. She pressed the button. The nurse came and saw what had happened. Mary Rose apologized. The nurse cleared away the plate and left without a word. Mary Rose did not know if she rang the bell again, but she needed more drugs. The nurse did not return.
She was in her red flannel nightgown with the zillion tiny yellow flowers. Pain came on. Shocking, no time to put up a hand. Pain claimed her. Obliterated her. She was no one.
Suddenly the ceiling was gone. High above and all around was the night, black prairie overarching and stubbled with stars. She felt suspended, and yet so Held. The pain was far below and she knew everything would always be all right. The universe loved her.
•
Just after 1:00 a.m. she gives in and gets out of bed, tired but not sleepy. It is an hour earlier in Winnipeg, Hil’s final dress rehearsal will have just wrapped up—now is an ideal time to call. She gets voice mail and leaves a message. “Hi darling, just phoning to say hi, hope you had a great final dress tonight.”
She should start working—Alice Munro did some of her best work while her kids were sleeping. She sets her laptop on the kitchen table, creates a new document and, after some considerable thought, entitles it “Book.” The cursor blinks.
She calls again in case Hil hasn’t heard her phone. “Hi, you’ve reached Hilary. Go ahead and leave a message.” Hil’s musical voice, something caressing in it yet forthright.
“Hi, sweetheart, it’s me again, everything’s fine here just maybe give me a call when you get in.” It’s after midnight out there, where is she?
She calls a third time. “Hi Hil, I’m just getting a tad—I’m wondering—” She presses 3 and re-records her message, “Hi babe, just to let you know, I’m up working so any time you want to call is fine, I love you.”
She starts decalcifying the espresso machine. For that matter, the dishwasher could use a good sluicing too. It’s late, she can run both machines economically. She watches the brownish water gush from the espresso head into the waiting glass bowl.
Hil is probably out for drinks with the cast and can’t hear her phone in the noisy bar. If Mary Rose weren’t married to Hil she would probably be living alone. She wouldn’t be a mother. She would likely have finished the trilogy by now and have started a new series. Maybe she’d be a single mother with a full-time nanny. And a hot girlfriend. She has unscrewed the fridge filter, but stops with it in her hand; Hil never goes for drinks with a cast until after the first public preview, and that is not till tomorrow night. She checks her datebook to make sure, yes, there it is in the box marked Friday: Hil 1st public preview. She could be out for drinks with someone else … what was that guy’s name? The fly guy. Unless she has met with an accident … the shot of worry works instantly on her GI tract and, like her mother heeding the call of a “suppository,” she hurries to the bathroom. No sooner is she seated than she hears the phone ring—Hil, thank God.
She returns to the kitchen and the welcome blinking of the message light. “Hi Sadie, Daisy, Maureen, Mary Rose! I’m callin’ from the train, do you believe it?!” Her parents are on the move, a toy train seen from the sky, inching across the map, woo-woo! … “We’ll look for you on the seventh, the eleventh … What?” Muffled gregarious sounds. “Aren’t ya nice! Not you, Mary Rose, the little gal who just handed me a cuppa—not that you’re not nice too! You’re the nicest, Mary Rosest! See you Sunday muffle rustle click.” The skipped messages start to play, “Hi, Mister, it’s Gigi—”
She redials. “Hi, you’ve reached Hilary—” No, I have not reached Hilary. “Go ahead and leave a message.” Hil’s beautiful voice … Where is the rest of her? In someone’s arms? Or dead in a ditch? Fucking Winnipeg. Does she have ID with her? Fucking wheat fields and whiteouts.
“Hil, please call me when you get in, I’m just a teensy bit concerned, no problem, just, hope your day was great.”
She grinds her left hip into the edge of the counter, seeking to zap fear with a shock of pain. Please let Hil be having an affair, please let her not be dead. Does she have Mary Rose down as next of kin? Of course she does, they are married. As long as Hil is killed in Canada, Mary Rose will be the first to hear—although she might hear if Hil were killed in Vermont too. How long will it take the authorities to call with the news? She is freezing cold. She cannot get on a night flight because she cannot leave the children. She could phone Gigi to come over, then fly to Winnipeg—but that would prove Hil is dead. Or it would prove that Mary Rose is in the grips of a panic attack.
This knowledge does not stem the neural cascade. Her veins are running with dark chemicals—cortisol, vasopressin. The fact that she has the names of these neurotransmitters at her fingertips tells her something but not enough to make a difference. She has been triggered and there is no one she can call—her brother cannot help her, Gigi cannot help her, Santa Claus cannot help, no one can—crazy, crazy but it must be recorded, the only person who might help is her mother, sweeping into Mary Rose’s hospital room in a leopard print coat and tam—she is falling down through nothing, scrabbling air for purchase—Don’t move. This needs to run its course and Mary Rose needs to keep very still because it is very dangerous to start fleeing or fighting in the middle of the night when the children and the dog are sleep
ing and you cannot see what is after you. As long as she does not move, nothing bad will happen.
Calgary.
It is two hours earlier there. She lets out a breath she did not know she was holding, and resets her internal clock back one panic hour. When you are lost in the Black Forest, stay in one spot or you will end up going round in circles because you cannot see the sun. There will be time enough to thrash about in the underbrush if Hilary fails to call in an hour.
Hilary fails to call.
Mary Rose has not moved from the big black windows. Now the real fear can begin, the other was merely a rehearsal. The phone rings and, as though released by the sound, the penny drops.
“Hi, Hilly, I was just calling to see how your preview went!” She wedges the phone between ear and shoulder, unpins the foot calendar from the corkboard and thrusts it into the recycling bin. She inspects her datebook for further contagion from the out-of-joint calendar.
“Oh thank you, sweetheart, I thought maybe you forgot.”
“You didn’t get the flowers?”
“No, oh you’re so sweet, you didn’t have to send flowers.”
Mary Rose has lied with no warning and the greatest of ease—am I a psychopath? “How’d it go?!”
“Well, it went fine,” says Hil, her tone cautiously optimistic. “It hasn’t quite lifted off yet, but the beats are there, the laughs are there, and we finally got a decent wig for Maury—”
“He must love you for that.” Her smile feels leathery, stretched across her face like a cobbler’s last.
“Oh, and you know Paul?”
“Paul?”
“The tech director, you know how he told me no one has used the flies in years? Well, he was so happy he took me up and showed me the rigging.”
“He showed you his what?” She coughs.
“You sure you’re not coming down with something?”
“It’s just a cough. Don’t worry, I won’t get sick the minute you get home.”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“I’m not feeling great, but that’s normal, I spend my day with toddlers, they’re germ bags.”
“I know, that’s why you should call Judy.”
“I’ll google my symptoms.”
“Don’t google!”
“I think my mum is losing it.”
“Really?”
“She’s so forgetful now and … jovial. The other stuff has kind of gone …” She is suddenly choked up. Mourning the loss of her mother’s rage? Golly Moses.
“I don’t know how much is really gone,” says Hil.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I love your parents, they’re sweet.”
“ ‘Sweet’ like what? Like sweet old Nazis?”
She hears Hil sigh.
Don’t pick a fight on the phone in the middle of the night. “I’m sorry, Hilly.”
“It’s okay, I’m going to go to bed soon, I’ve got an interview at seven.”
Is Hil going to take refuge in an affair? I’ll know she is having an affair if she is extra nice. Or extra mean. Or if we have sex as soon as she gets home. Or if we don’t.
“It’s like she needs endless attention, even negative attention,” Mary Rose says. “Maybe she’s in her ‘second childhood.’ ”
“Maybe she never came out of her first one.”
“Oh yes she did, you didn’t know her in the rage years.”
“Children rage,” says Hil. “They just don’t usually have children of their own when they’re doing it.”
Mary Rose is suddenly craving bed. “I think I better crash, Hil, the kids’ll be up in a few hours.”
“It must have been a really hard time for you and your mum back then.”
“When?”
“In Germany.”
“I don’t remember.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry, love, we don’t have to talk about it.”
“We can talk about it, it’s all she ever talks about, everything’s a dead baby joke.”
Silence.
“She was incinerated.”
“Who was?” asks Hilary.
“Other Mary Rose.” She is surprised at the sullen note in her voice. “She told me today just like that, like we were talking about the weather.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
“What for?” Temper down, now.
“Why don’t you call Gigi?”
“Why would I call Gigi?”—she hears the ultra-expository tone taking hold—“I merely wished to tell you what my demented mother told me, if it is not too much to ask.”
“Of course it isn’t, tell me what she said.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She is being ambushed by her own words that feel cool and reasonable in the fish tank of her head until she opens her mouth, at which point they show their fangs. Hil is not the enemy. “I’m sorry. It’s like my mother has opened the lid on a big trunk of freaking tragedy and it’s all flying out in a jumble ’cause it’s not weighed down with emotion anymore, her emotion lobe is—”
“Slow down.”
“… I’m having déjà vu.”
“That’s because you already knew what happened to your sister.” Your sister.
“I did?”
“You must have, you’ve written about it.”
“I have?”
“Isn’t that what the Black Tears are?”
Mary Rose calls to mind the scene in her second book—second in a supposed trilogy. Is this what all that expensive therapy has done for Hilary?
“Really?” Mary Rose has meant to sound withering but winds up whiny. “I thought they were a plot element in a highly successful book for young adults.”
Pause.
“Hil? Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not, but I think I better go to bed now.”
She needs to segue to something safe before hanging up. “Hey, I’ve been dying to tell you, I saw something I want to get for the house. You know how I’ve always wanted a hanging rack for pots?”
“You have?”
“It would create a ton of space.”
“Where would we put it?”
“In the ceiling over the counter.”
“… Where the lights are.”
“We’d move the lights.”
“So we’re renovating again.”
“No, it’s barely—it’s tiny, I can have it done before you get home.”
“I think I’d like to be there.”
“Okay, I’ll buy the rack but I won’t install it—”
“Do you need to buy it right away?”
“Why not?”
“You buy a lot of stuff, great stuff, I consider myself lucky—”
“You think it’s trivial?”
“It’s not essential.”
“Flush toilets are not essential, airplanes are not essential.”
Hil laughs. “I’ll take the toilet over the ceiling rack, Mary Rose.”
Hil has used her full name, that tears it.
“I know it’s not a huge priority for you that we have a full set of nesting pots, but when you reach for one, it’s there. You don’t have to care because I do and now you’re saying that my concerns are trivial, well go back to your rusty old wok and see how you like it—”
“Mary Rose—”
“Or maybe Paul can hang one for you from the flies—”
“Stop it!”
She remembers.
A seared silence. The living room in Germany. In black-and-white, as if she were looking at a picture in the old photo album. This one is taken from the balcony doorway, looking in. There is the coffee table. There is the couch. There are no people, but there is a presence. A powerful sense that something has just happened. The air is pulsating. The air is shocked.
Hil breaks the silence, her voice calm. “I won’t do this anymore, Mister. I’m going to bed now. Good night.” She hangs up.
Mary Rose pounds her fist onto the inlaid cutting board b
ut it’s a half-hearted blow which fails to whet her appetite for self-battery.
She slumps to the table and googles “stillbirth.” Hundreds of sites offer themselves up, she is taken aback by the very abundance—resources for counselling and support, page after page … She wonders what, if anything, was available in her mother’s day … Apart from you’ll have more babies.
She comes across an online photo gallery. Dozens of infants, dressed sweetly, some are holding stuffed animals. All are dead. There are names, and dates. There are messages from bereaved parents, family and friends. Some of the babies look to be sleeping the cosmic sleep of the healthy newborn. Others have discoloured faces, features slurring, foreheads awry in contrast with little toques and pompoms. She scrolls down the silent wailing wall, past name after name after name … Beloved. Mourned.
Other Mary Rose died and began to decompose in utero, her cells undoing themselves, undertaking the journey back to potential. But she had a face. Darkening perhaps, skin melting to the touch, distorted by forceps—don’t look. Look. A baby. Was she cradled, swaddled before being dispatched? Was she sealed in a bag, was the bag placed in a receptacle? Or tossed? At what point did the bag lose specificity amid the hospital waste—did the janitor know the difference between it and the weight of other sealed bags with their contents of diseased tissues, discarded organs, limbs, surgical dressings, all the things that were neither sharp nor flushable? Was she compacted amid catheter tubes, uneaten hospital food, swabs, tongue depressors, paper cups, before being shovelled into the incinerator? Unbaptized, therefore unnamed, therefore no one. Or did she end up on a dissection tray before a medical student? There would have been no need to ask permission of the parents—don’t trouble them with this sort of thing, it cannot harm, can only help.
She had a face. Even if it was slipping away, no longer adhering. She had a name, even though it too did not quite stick. She dreamt. She moved. She was someone.
SSC (2012) Adult Onset Page 29
