Adult Onset

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  •

  The funeral director speaks good English. He asks the young air force officer if he would like to hold the casket. Duncan reaches out and takes the small white coffin. His commanding officer is present along with the air force nurse. His wife is still in hospital, and in any case, there is no need to put her through this. Afterwards, he drives to the cemetery with the casket on the front passenger seat beside him.

  •

  Mary Rose does not dwell on her time in hospital—it seldom comes up unless she is required to enter one. The memory, while vivid, is stored in a separate file, such that were she to have a near-death experience, the repeated injuries and surgeries would not be included in the movie of her life that would flash before her eyes—though they might play as a blooper reel. The whole experience exists outside her personal timeline, because it is an anomaly: bone cysts are ahistorical. “Idiopathic, likely a congenital flaw,” said the surgeon. “That means you’re born with them,” said Dad. “It doesn’t mean you’re an idiot.” Bone cysts are a singularity, like a meteor strike: a good story on their own but unlinked to the main narrative. She was past thirty before an old slow penny dropped: the bone from the bone bank hadn’t come from some plucky donor’s kneecap, as cheerfully shared as a pint of blood. It had been cadaver bone. That may be why the tissue failed to grow with her.

  She cannot remember a time before the age of ten when she did not have a “sore arm.” It was normal for her, she thought everyone had one. It was an artifact among her and her siblings: “Mary Rose’s sore arm.” Even Andy-Patrick respected her sorearm and would punch the other one. Hot and searing, or cold grey thudding; one kind of pain had more blood and bruise in it, the other more bone. It came and went.

  Her first memory of the searing dates from the summer she was four. They had moved from Germany to Canada, and were “down home” on Cape Breton Island in the broad bosom of Dolly’s family on the beautiful Bras d’Or lakes. Cabins called bungalows dotted the clearing on a hill above the shore. A brook ran pure and cold through the trees, spanned by a tiny footbridge and lined with moss-cushioned rocks, the ground itself springy with life. It wasn’t the Black Forest—you were more apt to meet a fairy than a talking wolf—but it was enchanted in its own way. Down on the shore, dozens of cousins sprinted and leapt from the rickety wharf, the older ones drove the boat, and there was always pop. At night, she counted her mosquito bites and wondered where to sleep. Her sister was housed with the older kids, her mother with her own sisters, and her father had yet to arrive—he would join them when his leave started.

  Dolly was beloved in her family but, being both junior and female, reverted in their company to the status more of a younger sister than a mother, with the consequence that, while food was celebrated, luscious and Lebanese—spits turning on the fire, picnic tables groaning, coolers overflowing—Mary Rose at times went to bed hungry. At four, she felt it would be rude to ask for food, it would be like saying, “You haven’t fed me,” and that would be rude. The men and boys were served first—sah t’ein!—and by the time Mary Rose understood that it was suppertime, somehow it was over. It would be all right when Dad arrived. She would sit on his lap and eat from his plate, and at night he would tuck her in, somewhere. In the meantime, she was free to roam, the salt water healed all scrapes and the green world of the woods beckoned.

  One afternoon, he arrived. “Dad!” Like a prince, strolling down the winding dirt drive beneath the canopy of pines and birches. Like a movie star, a god. He gave all the kids airplane swings, grasping them by ankle and wrist, all the cousins lining up, “Unca Dunc!” His was the only blond head in a sea of ebony, his the only blue eyes amid lustrous brown, “Swing me, swing me!” Tirelessly he swung them. He swung her round and round and it was tummy-thrilling, until fire broke out inside her arm. Snapped into flame like a twig, it leapt and spread. When he set her down, she held her arm by the elbow. She did not throw up.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is it your arm? Let’s see. Is it okay?”

  She didn’t want to hurt his feelings by making him think he had hurt her. “Yes.”

  “Can you bend it?”

  She did not want him to go away and stop playing. She bent it. And asked for another airplane swing because he looked worried. She offered her right wrist this time and, too late, realized her mistake, for while the right arm was fine, the left one swung out; round and round it flew, unable to make its own way back to her side. She waited for the swing to end.

  She did not cry.

  “Want another one, sweetie?”

  “No thanks, that was fun.”

  Then they went swimming. The cold felt good. Like an injured dog, she hid the pain as though it were to do with shame. But by nightfall she could not conceal her need to support the arm by holding it against her body with the good one and her mother asked what she had been up to. “Nothing.”

  The Bras d’Or lakes are not lakes at all, but an inland sea where fresh and salt water merge. The name means Arm of Gold.

  The next day, her mother fashioned Mary Rose’s first sling from a colourful nylon scarf. It stopped hurting after a while and they forgot about it. Until the next sling.

  The bone cysts were diagnosed in the nick of time thanks to another miracle. On the frozen waters of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School, ten-year-old Mary Rose MacKinnon slipped and fell the first time. It was a fall that would eventually lead to a doctor, a diagnosis and cure. Our Lady made her break her arm.

  It was during recess. She was in grade six, a good student, excelling at History, her ostracism now to do with high marks—no one could have suspected she used to be slow. She had one friend in class, a somewhat sinister bookish girl named Jocelyn Fish, but when it came to recess, it was more fun to play with the younger kids. She was among a group taking running slides on a strip of ice beside the yellow brick wall of the school, and was on her third turn when she fell and the burning broke out. It went swiftly from red to black, became V-shaped and loud. It grew bigger than she was, like a monster in a dream, until she was within a kind of enclosure looking out at the throbbing air; with something hard lodged in her arm, something that did not love her, something that did not know who she was or that she was anyone. She leaned against the wall and waited for it to stop. She held it by the wrist. The bell rang.

  The arm was heavy, and after recess could not take itself out of her jacket on its own. She looked down at her hand, limp and yoked to the pain farther up. The hand looked worried. It looked rather ashamed too, for feeling fine—like a friend who is with you when you get run over. She sat at her desk but could not concentrate on the Boston Tea Party. When the hand moved, it made the pain wake up and scream, so it kept its head down. The pain would not go away. It made her have to go to the bathroom, pressed against her like a scary mentally retarded kid, getting heavier like a wet coat, getting darker, it gave her no choice but to go to the teacher and say, “I hurt my arm.”

  The teacher knew her mother was away in Cape Breton visiting family, and she remarked to the new principal that Mary Rose was “just looking for some TLC.” Mary Rose did not know what the initials stood for, but smiled and nodded in order to make up for the bad manners of her arm, and the principal sent her home. “Tell your father you pulled a muscle.”

  Sister O’Halloran might have called the doctor, but she had been transferred to Africa where they needed her more. The muscle refused to heal, despite the massages administered by her father, and by her older sister, Maureen, when he called her in to help, “Maureen, I need you.” There was a bit of a lump where the muscle was swollen, he gave it special attention. She stayed very still. This was what a pulled muscle felt like. She did not cry, sissies cry, crying feels like throwing up through your eyes.

  “Thanks, Dad, that feels better now.”

  He did not know how to tie a sling, so he used a length of duct tape to secure her arm to her side. “How’s that?”
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  “Way better.” And it was.

  When her mother came home, she fashioned one from a nylon scarf—paisley this time—which made it feel even better because Mum, being a nurse, was an expert and Mary Rose got her second sling.

  It was still tender a few weeks later when she fell again. It was now Christmas holidays. She tripped on the picks of her new skates—they had appeared under the tree, her first pair of “girl’s skates.” White, high-heeled and treacherous, figure skates nonetheless spared one the shame of being seen in “boy’s skates.” They were brand new and she had smiled hard to ward off the pathos occasioned by the thought of how sad her parents would be to see her disappointment. Andy-Patrick got a set of Hot Wheels complete with carrying case.

  The “Waltz of the Blue Danube” was playing when she hit the ice face down at Kingston Memorial Arena. She was with a friend of sorts—a nice girl whose parents knew hers via the air force. She nearly threw up when she smacked to her stomach, but as long as you don’t cry, nothing will be wrong. Still, the darkness flared in her arm and she knew she had pulled the muscle again. She took the arm out of the sleeve, tucked it inside her fuzzy jacket and went to the friend’s home as planned. It was a two-storey house with a family room, in a subdivision on the other side of Kingston. They had a colour TV set.

  By bedtime, the pain was cold and metallic like an aircraft wing, but quiet as long as she lay still. She felt very rude the next morning when she failed to eat the Lucky Charms and asked the friend’s mother if she could go home. It was inconvenient—the dad had not planned on driving her till after lunch. Mary Rose said, “I forgot, I’m supposed to go home for lunch.” She felt the disapproval of the mum and the annoyance of the dad. She could tell they thought she was lying—she was, but she was also at a loss to explain that she was not a liar. It did not occur to her to tell them her arm hurt.

  She was not invited back. But she had known she had to go home at all costs. The friend’s kitchen was too bright. There were too many echoes, the ceiling was crooked. And the shape in her arm was a black triangle. Her mother was home this time.

  But her father resumed first aid duties.

  “I think I pulled the muscle again.”

  She did not move during the massages. Get mad at it. Still, it seemed unfair that it should hurt more this time. After a while she said, “It’s okay, you can stop massaging now if you’re tired.”

  “I’m not tired, sweetie.”

  “You can stop now, Dad. It feels better.”

  Another scarf, another sling. Her third. It did not get better.

  “I guess I’ll call Dr. Ferry,” said her mother.

  He came to the house. Mary Rose liked him, he always treated her as if she was a cool kid and it didn’t matter if she was a girl or a boy. Dr. Ferry examined her arm and said, “I thought I told you to quit jumping off the roof.” She grinned and felt better.

  He took her mother aside in the front hall—they often joked together, both being medical types, but this time Mary Rose felt giddy as she heard his tone and caught some of the words, “… you telling me she’s … and you didn’t … till now? … what can happen? … what it could be?!” He was scolding her mother. No one did that—except, occasionally, her father, with a smack of his hand on the kitchen table, “That’s enough, now, Missus.”

  An X-ray was ordered and it turned out she had bone cysts; her arm had been special all along, but too modest to boast. Her mother liked to tell the story. “Dr. Ferry really gave me what for. It turned out her arm was broken all along! But how could we know? She never cried, she never complained!” Mary Rose basked in the account of her own heroism, humbled before the majesty of her “high pain threshold,” so chose not to remind her mother that even Andy-Patrick knew about sorearm.

  “Good news,” said Dad. “You’re going to have an operation.” The miracle was accomplished. Rise and go forth!

  •

  This section of the Canadian military cemetery is reserved for dependants—wives and children—a tranquil corner, closer to the forest, dotted with stones and crosses, none older than the Peace itself. There is no snow, though it’s less than a week til Christmas, but the ground is hard and dull; he carries the casket across the welted grass, staring straight ahead—the mass of firs less green than grey, a dense blur.

  He stands looking into the small grave. He can see roots, severed white, the earth still a living network for the trees that have been cleared in recent years to make this section of the cemetery. He hands over the casket, and they bury his son.

  •

  The mirror tells her there is indeed no bruise, just the faint green vein that snakes at right angles beneath the scars and disappears round the back of her arm. Mary Rose has come to see her scars as a guarantee that, should she get amnesia and wander off without her tweezers one distant demented day, she nonetheless, like Odysseus, will be recognized if she makes it back home—unibrow notwithstanding.

  She lies in the dark, thinking about Hil thinking about her … but her mind keeps wandering. Has her libido fallen temporary victim to motherhood, or is this perimenopausal decline?—the descent into “even more meaningful intimacy,” to quote the earnest book that her sister Maureen sent her. I don’t want meaningful intimacy, I want sex. Or is her inability to concentrate an effect of the cobwebby plaques that even now are colonizing her cortex? Hil reassured her, and it is true: what does it matter precisely where out west she is? Mary Rose’s world is a circumscribed domestic one at the moment, a multitasky maelstrom wherein Hil is a mere binary function: here/not here. Still … it was an odd mistake. She should google it. No. That really would be demented. To google “early onset Alzheimer’s” in the middle of the night with two sleeping children and an asthmatic pit bull. She switches on the light, reaching for a book from the stack on her bedside table—she is a slow reader but always has four or five on the go—is that a sign too? She tries to focus on Drama of the Gifted Child, but her eyes rove the page. She ought to call her family doctor in the morning and see about booking a memory test—the kind where they ask you what the date is and who’s the prime minister … although the latter is something she’d prefer to forget. She trades childhood anguish for Guide to Healthy Lesbian Relationships and dozes off.

  •

  She was discharged from the base hospital this morning. Her husband opens the door to their apartment and extends his hand for her to precede him. He is carrying her bag. She is wearing the moonstone ring to please him. Her big girl is sitting on the couch in a velvet party dress, her hair in awkward braids parted crookedly down the middle. “You look lovely, Maureen.”

  “We kept the tree up for you, Mummy.”

  She opens her arms and her daughter comes to her. She tries not to let the child see she is crying.

  “Mummy, are you sad because the baby boy died?”

  “Don’t think about that, now,” says Duncan.

  “I’m crying because I’m so happy to see you, Mo-Mo.” She releases the child and stumbles, her husband steadies her.

  “I’ve been lying down too much.” She smiles. She is thinner, but she’s done her hair, and has her lipstick on. A record is playing on the hi-fi, Nat King Cole. On the coffee table are the silver tea service and a plate of store-bought ginger cookies. “Isn’t this nice,” she says. She’s not old, she’ll have another baby. Maybe even another boy.

  In the corner of the living room by the glass door to the balcony stands the tree decked with paper chains and, atop it, a homemade star. On the floor, a scattering of dry needles encircles the stand. She looks at her husband. He is pale. No one has been feeding him. “Mumma could feed an army on one chicken,” she says.

  He looks at a loss for a moment, then says, “Do you want to see the baby?”

  What is he telling her? She feels sick. It is her badness coming out in her if she is crazy now, and it serves her right. Is she awake? The baby died.

  He is staring at her. He is going to send me away. He
turns toward the hallway and calls, “Armgaard.”

  And with that, she understands what he means by “baby”. She watches as the same German woman, with her neat bun and capable arms, emerges from the hallway and sets down a child whose hair, at two, is not long enough to braid. It is black and thick like Dolly’s own. The child looks at Dolly and smiles. Dolly sees something in that smile … something bad is looking out from those big dark eyes … mocking her. Dolly frowns, already asking God to remove the thought from her mind—no wonder she is so bad at having babies, she does not even deserve the one she has. The child hides its face in the German woman’s apron.

  “Geh zu Mutty,” says the woman with a little push.

  “Nein!” yells the child.

  Her husband laughs and swings the baby up into his arms. “Go ahead, Mister, give Mummy a kiss.” She clings to him, screaming, as he tilts her toward her mother. “She missed you,” he says.

  But Dolly knows the truth. Her baby still doesn’t like her.

  •

  She wakes an hour or so later with an old clammy feeling: guilt—as though she had killed someone or molested a child and it slipped her mind. A brew of shame and pathos, it feels like a car crash in her stomach … dead father at the wheel, head flung back, mother’s face obscured, pregnant belly buckled against the dash, innocent family belongings pitifully strewn, exposed. The feeling used to greet her regularly upon waking, her own brand of morning sickness. She gets out of bed to pee—and a good thing too, because she is bleeding again. She rifles the drawer for a super jumbo tampon—so stout is it, one hardly knows whether to insert it or strap it on. She is suddenly roasting hot. Downstairs, she makes her way across the darkened living room, gouges her bare foot on a piece of Lego, knocks over Tickle Me Elmo who busts out singing, and turns the furnace off. It ceases with a sigh. In the kitchen, she gets out a box of ancient grains that failed to prevent the extinction of an entire people, and opens her Cooks Illustrated … “Rethinking Macaroni and Cheese” …