Adult Onset

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  “Rosie. She was depressed.”

  “Of course. I know that, I guess … I just never really connected those dots before.”

  Mo sighs again. “I see what you mean. Mummy could hardly get up off the couch. Of course it could have happened. Cripes. I’m sorry.”

  Mary Rose says, “I forgive you,” and chuckles. But Mo is silent. “Mo? It’s actually one of my favourite memories.” Her triumph in getting her older sister to admit to the “balcony scene” is short lived. Now she feels guilty for making Maureen feel guilty.

  “Mo, what time is their train, I can’t get a straight answer out of Mum.”

  “Don’t worry about any of that, Rosie, I’ll let you know as soon as I know.”

  That’s more like it. Efficient Mo. The-boss-of-me-Mo.

  “Thanks.”

  “Now, try to be early. I’m afraid Mummy may wander and Daddy will carry the bags himself and run into difficulty.” Die of a heart attack in public, leaving Mum lost and keening. Or making loads of new friends. “I’m not crying, don’t you cry!”

  She glimpses Matthew heading into the powder room and resolves to bite the bullet and start potty training Maggie first thing tomorrow—Hil is right, it isn’t fair to hold her back.

  “I’ll be there. Wait, when?”

  “Sometime this weekend—I’ll let you know for sure. Have a good evening, Rosie Posie.” Mo has to go, she is at work after all, it’s three hours earlier out in Victoria.

  “Oh, Daisy almost bit the mailman.”

  “I hate our mailman,” says Mo with sudden bitterness.

  She is on Lipitor—so are Dad and Andy-Patrick, while Mum is on something for her adult onset diabetes. Mary Rose is the only one not on meds. She pours another fingernail.

  “Why?”

  “He kicked Molly Doodle.”

  Molly Doodle is a cairn terrier, every bit as territorial as Daisy, but at nine pounds, while her transgressions might cost a new pair of pants, Daisy’s will cost her her life. “That’s horrible.” A howl arises from the bathroom—“I gotta go.”

  She rushes in. Matthew is standing with his pants down, crying. He has peed all over the floor, having been unable to get the child-locked toilet lid open.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart, that wasn’t your fault, come let’s get you changed.”

  She rescues the tofu and steams some green beans. After supper, the marathon that is bedtime is achieved with the usual gnashing of teeth and rending of towels, splashing, laughing, screaming; toothpaste is ingested, hair is combed, a flood averted, jim-jammies are snuggled into, stories read, songs sung, glasses of water fetched and mopped up. In due course, they are in bed.

  She kisses Matthew on the forehead. “Good night, sweetie pie.”

  “G’night, Mumma.” His words are muffled by his thumb as he slips it into his mouth. He is only five. There will be time enough to worry about orthodontics and oral fixations later. He has every right to self-soothe.

  She winds his glass unicorn and it tinkles his favourite tune. It was her first gift to him, and he keeps it on his windowsill where it prisms the light each morning.

  She slips into Maggie’s room and sees she is asleep, baby brows furrowed, sucking intently on a soother. She reaches down to stroke her back, but the child pulls away.

  She sighs.

  Is it that Maggie is a girl? That isn’t supposed to be a problem for card-carrying feminists. From the start, Mary Rose was aware of a gap between her and her daughter; lapses on her own part that no one ever saw and which would never be termed “neglect.” Her gaze for Matthew was glued, unbroken, she fed on the sight of her child and he was securely tethered, brave in that beam. Then there was Maggie. Crying inconsolably in her arms. Angrily. She cried whether Mary Rose picked her up or not. Whether she stroked her, fed her, changed her, rocked her, bounced … Everyone talks about that magic “baby smell.” Matthew had it and so, supposedly, did Maggie, but not for Mary Rose. Sometimes—and this is chilling—she even forgot Maggie was there. Perhaps deep down she really is jealous of Hil for having borne a child—even so, Mary Rose is convinced that what was a soul-shifting miracle for Hil would have been, for her, annihilation. Mind the gap.

  She waited for it to close, come together and heal like an incision. But with time, absence took on substance. A layer formed like a soapy film, then hardened into Plexiglas: My baby doesn’t like me.

  Maggie would look at her as though she knew something about her—something Mary Rose thought she had outrun long ago. She knew this was crazy, and over and over she reached for the love she was supposed to feel, the love she could see. It was like the illustration in her childhood book of fairy tales: Snow White unconscious within her glass coffin, beautiful, unreachable, a bite of poisoned apple lodged between her lips. Time and again Mary Rose reached, and time and again her hand struck glass.

  She leaves Maggie’s room and bats away the balloon that has drifted from Matthew’s. It makes its wan way down the hall like an aimless ghost, yellow head at a vacant tilt, the tinkly tune of the unicorn trailing behind, plaintive and sweet, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” She rubs her arm—dull patch of soreness, seems worse at night.

  She goes to the living room, intending to find a nice cozy murder mystery on the bookshelf, but bends to remove the expandable bumper from the coffee table. It is ugly and it is overkill and it did not prevent her child from playing with scissors. Mary Rose, like the entire baby boom generation, grew up with unpadded coffee tables and survived; no one “childproofed” in those days. She recalls the gleaming coffee table in the living room of the apartment in Germany—her first home. She can see it plainly, in black-and-white, as though in an old photograph. Like the one her father took at Alexander’s grave. In it she stands next to her sister and in front of her mother. Her hair is in a little bun, her mother’s hand rests on her shoulder, protective, reassuring, holding in place her sweater as though Dolly had just now removed it from her own shoulders and placed it warm around her child.

  And perhaps this is why Mary Rose returned to the picture over and over again—not merely for the morbid frisson that spawned an entire literary career, but because it was evidence that her mother could be gentle. Attentive. Are you cold, Mary Rose? Even though the photo was a stock image from her childhood, it is only now that she tries to imagine standing as an adult at her baby’s grave with Hilary. And taking a picture, because they know that soon they will be moving far away and will not be able to visit that grave again for many years … Maureen is right, the dates would be in the photo.

  What will become of all the old black-and-white and Kodacolor snapshots when her parents have died and she too is gone along with her siblings and their children’s children? They will be sold in bulk at an estate auction and turned into ironic greeting cards. Or merely incinerated.

  Her mother’s difficulty with before-and-after, cause-and-effect—a species of temporal dyslexia that blighted Mary Rose’s own early school career—perhaps it runs in the family, like bone cysts. See Jane run! For that matter, when exactly was Other Mary Rose born? And what did they do with her body? It was certainly not put in the ground beneath a stone.

  Mary Rose bends back down and re-fits the hideous padded bumper. Coffee tables can be lethal.

  •

  She gets up.

  She gets up.

  She gets up.

  •

  Mary Rose is changing the biodegradable bag in the recycling bin when Hil calls and asks, “How’s your arm feeling?”

  “My arm? It’s fine, why?”

  “You went to the doctor.”

  “That was last fall I saw the orthopaedic guy.”

  “Oh, what was today’s appointment?”

  “It was just … routine.”

  “What kind of routine?”

  “Fibroids, okay?” She hates even saying the word, sodden as it is with female troubles. “They’re shrinking, I’ve killed them, it’s done.”

  “Ok
ay.”

  “How’re rehearsals going?”

  “Well, we’re previewing in two nights.”

  “Oh wow, great.” Mary Rose finds a pen in the telephone drawer and makes ready to jot it in the Thursday box on the foot calendar. “So the fifth.”

  “That’s Friday.”

  “Oh, okay, Friday.”

  “Yup.”

  Mary Rose jots it in the Friday, April 6 calendar square: Hil 1st public preview. Hil is getting ahead of herself as she always does when stressed, thinking she’ll be previewing two nights from now on Thursday when in reality it’s in three nights. “Previews don’t usually start on a Friday.”

  “No, they don’t. Are you okay?” asks Hil.

  “Yes, do I sound not-okay?”

  “I just wonder if you’re in pain.”

  “I’m fine, can we not talk about my uterus?”

  Hil doesn’t laugh. Oh no. Is she going to start crying? Does she want another baby? Is she having an affair?

  “Hil? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, I’m lonely.”

  “Maggie dived right at my head in swim class today, it was hilarious …” She tells her about the swimming lesson. About Daisy’s postal parole and Maggie kicking off her boots in the park—but not about the altercation on the stairs. About Matthew’s flying whale. “The kids are so lucky to have you, so is Daisy. I miss you.”

  She hears in the silence that Hil is indeed crying. Mary Rose envies it somewhat, this ability to turn on the waterworks and get some relief and sympathy. She could use some time at the Emergency Eyewash Station herself—maybe she would sleep better.

  “I wish I could see your show, love. I know it’s going to be amazing.” She speaks in Lady Bracknell’s voice. “ ‘To lose one child may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness.’ ”

  “That’s not the line.”

  “Yes it is, it’s my favourite line.”

  “Yes, but that’s not the line. It’s ‘parent,’ not ‘child’—‘to lose one parent.’ ”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Mary Rose. I’m doing the play.”

  •

  Mary Rose is dangling by her wrists over the balcony. It is a sunny day. She can feel the bars of the railing at her back. Three storeys below, on the lawn of the apartment building, their father is playing catch with another man. Both are in white dress shirts open at the neck, their sleeves rolled up. She watches the ball arcing back and forth between them. She knows if her father looks up and sees her, she will fall. Where is Mummy?

  •

  She ought to go to bed now. But first: she removes the child lock from the toilet lid—it really is unlikely that Maggie will dive in there. And if she does, she would haul herself out again. In the kitchen, she unlatches the bin drawer and drops the ingenious bit of landfill into the garbage—Hil need never know it was in the house. Mind-buggeringly long ago, when Earth was in its infancy, chemical changes were afoot that would result in the human ability to fashion the plastic toilet-lid lock from the complex bounty of this, our planet. How long will the return journey take?

  Last summer, in her parents’ Ottawa home, she watched Dolly search frantically for her train tickets so that she would be able to tell Mary Rose exactly when she and Duncan would be stopping off in Toronto on their way out west. It was many months before their departure, but they are seniors and plan everything well in advance. She watched Dolly rifle her purse. She watched Dolly disappear into her bedroom. Heard drawers opening and closing, accompanied by the occasional, “So that’s where that is.” Finally Dolly returned to the kitchen, brandishing a green folder, “I found them.”

  She handed the folder to Mary Rose, who opened it and stared.

  “This isn’t a ticket, Mum. It’s a receipt for your cemetery plot.”

  Dolly grabbed it back—“So that’s where that is!”

  Duncan looked up from his newspaper and observed dryly, “It’s a ticket, all right. It’s a one-way ticket.” He caught Mary Rose’s eye, his face tightened to a grin, turned red, and he laughed till she saw his gold tooth. Dolly doubled over in her chair and almost peed her pants.

  The train tickets turned up soon after, just as the currently lost tickets will. Besides, replacements are easily downloadable from the VIA Rail website. Unlike the elusive packeege, which is an actual object in space, travelling at the speed of matter.

  She turns off the kitchen lights but for the one in the range hood over the stove. Now she can plainly see the school across the way and the quiet street itself, lined with parked cars, and, at the end of the block, the blinking red light at the school crossing. A young man rides past on a bike. A neighbour is out walking his aging greyhound—he rescues them, retired racers. She watches him wait patiently as the dog sniffs and ponders whether to leave a “message,” and reflects that she has lived in this house for three greyhounds.

  Upstairs, she takes an Advil before climbing into bed—she wouldn’t really call it pain but knows that any discomfort intensifies the moment one tries to sleep—and resolves to phone her mother tomorrow and be nice. She is too hard on her mother—her funny little mother with her big brown eyes and snowy old-lady hairdo. And now Mum has sent her something—a gift, however kooky or misconceived … Maybe something Dolly has made herself, another quillow—pillow-quilt combo that folds into itself like an airbag. She brushes her teeth and avoids her reflection—she does not like looking in mirrors at night. Especially when Hil is away.

  It is three hours earlier out in Victoria, she could phone her funny little mother right now, lately so much like the child she must once have been … lost amid siblings in the apartment over the barbershop in Sydney, Cape Breton. Child of a child. Little Dolly, singing for her supper … Pathos takes up residence in Mary Rose’s chest and makes room for Guilt beneath Her dark cloak. They merge. A hump on the highway at night you hit with your car, only to stop in horror and find … nothing. You drive off convinced that, contrary to all evidence, you have killed someone. A child.

  She stands in her tank top and silk boxers with lavender lipstick prints and braves the mirror—Dolly always said if you stared too long in one, the devil would appear behind you, his horns framing your head. Avoiding her own gaze, she steals a look at her arm—still no bruise.

  When she went under the knife the second time, her parents told her that when she recovered she could have plastic surgery to hide the scars, including the new one on her hip, so she could wear a bikini and not feel bad. But she had soldiered on with her arm like a wounded comrade by her side since before she could remember. It had suffered. How could she strip it of its badge of courage? She had earned her stripes. Perhaps that is why she has never been tempted to get a tattoo—apart from the prospect of sagging geriatric body art—she has her scars. Carved into her skin, through muscle down to bone, sewn, sealed.

  The third scar, the one on her hip, is bravest of all, because it is the donor scar. I was a teenage bone donor. Like a B movie. Perhaps, too, the surgeries explain her failure to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs despite her status as a “boomer”: having tripped elaborately in hospital, she associates the magic carpet with pain and the frequent vomiting that racked the edges of the incision, set it to seeping, and quaked the jaundiced expanse of her chest. Not that she dwells on it.

  She opens the mirrored cabinet to put away her toothbrush and catches a movement behind her in the gloom of the walk-in closet. She freezes. The children are in the house. If there is an intruder, she has to find out. She forces herself to turn around. She switches on the light.

  Nothing.

  Ridiculous. If there were someone, Daisy would have heard them and made a meal of them by now. Still … she enters the walk-in closet and her heart leaps painfully even as her peripheral vision identifies the shrunken head of the yellow balloon. She seizes it by the ribbon as though to throttle it and drags it downstairs. Daisy’s tail thumps as she passes.

  She is relucta
nt to pierce it, so she stuffs it into the garbage. Shrivelled though it is, it takes up a lot of space, bulging with the pressure of her hand as though fighting for breath, squeaking. She feels suddenly appalled, as though she were committing some sort of bizarre infanticide. Finally, she takes a knife and puts the thing out of its misery with a pop.

  The message light on the phone is blinking in the darkness. With each pulse she experiences a spurt of adrenalin. She ought to dig out the Canada Post form right now and put it where she can’t miss it tomorrow morning when they leave to take Matthew to school. The mail devilry will resume, the freaking packeege will arrive and her mother can stop calling her about it.

  But the form is not on the kitchen table where she put it—did Candace take it? Did Maggie “clean it up”? There is no number she can phone for a new form—unless you count the call centre in New Delhi. It’s got to be somewhere—everything is—and not just in the cosmos, in this house. She hunts. Behind the piano, under the couch, in the freezer … She prowls, turning her ankle on perpetually disgruntled Percy, and lopes upstairs. Under the crib, behind the curtain, in the toilet …

  She should not be looking for the form at night. She should never look for anything at night. Sit and breathe, stop walking—like a shark, she is feeding on movement, escalating alone in the quiet house. Part of her agony is that she cannot blame Hil for the lost form. She forces herself down to the basement because she has to hit something, “Mother-fucking Jesus Christ on the cross where is that fucking piece of paper, you fucking postal fuckheads!” She assaults the metal pole in the basement with a bright orange couch cushion, but that is unsatisfactory. She grabs an empty Rubbermaid laundry basket and swings it against the pole, breaking its ergonomic handle. She needs to hurt something without breaking anything valuable like the TV, so she gives in and punches her own head as hard as she can until she sinks to the couch in relief and catches her breath.

  She toyed with the idea of getting anger management counselling when Matthew was a baby. It was around Christmas. She was pulling out of the parking lot of a government building in suburbia where she had gone ballistic on a civil servant who informed her, after a long wait with her baby, that she would have to return with his adoption papers in order to show that she was eligible to apply for a health card on his behalf. She had taken her portable infant car seat with her infant in it and stormed out, registering split-second interruptions in her consciousness as she rode the elevator down. She got in her car and, as she pulled up to the parking booth, glanced out of habit in the rear-view mirror, only to see that there was no infant car seat snapped into the infant car seat base, and no infant. She had left him, securely buckled, on the ground, next to her parking spot. On the yellow line. She had driven all of thirty feet away. It had been all of fifteen seconds. More than enough time for hell to have opened up and swallowed him. But he was safe. She vowed to get help. Then Maggie came along and she just got too busy again.