Adult Onset

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  It was like being in an orphanage. It was alluring, and Mary Rose was dimly aware that she oughtn’t to allow the others to believe she was truly one of them. She needed to remember that she would be going home to her real life … she would not remain here in their dear dilapidated child’s realm. They were like a community of damaged toys. Friendly, fun, but take care lest they lull you into forgetting your life as a real child, hard as that life may be sometimes, tempting as it may be to stay in the land of lost toys …

  They ate at a long low table, seated on child-size wooden chairs. On the first night, the leader girl in the blue robe suddenly peed, right at the table. Then she rose and cleaned it up efficiently, without the slightest embarrassment. None of the other children took much notice. She explained genially to Mary Rose, “I was born with syphilis.”

  Mary Rose politely ignored the pee the next night. She could have got used to it, but she was discharged soon after.

  She had a checkup a month later, and an X-ray twice a year after that, in case the cysts came back. There was a chance they would if the bone from the donor didn’t grow with her.

  •

  Youssef and Matthew have built a jungle-farm-airport in the living room which is being threatened by a snake that eats airplanes while Maggie is down for her blessed afternoon nap. Mary Rose has had time to reflect on the debacle with the boots this morning; clearly, she displaced her old anger at her mother onto her child, the ladybug boots having acted as a trigger owing to their association with Dolly—not to mention the ringing of the goddam phone. Armed thus with self-analysis, she speaks the words aloud, “Never touch your child in anger,” as she applies a fresh bandage to her pierced finger and wonders how people who are less aware and educated than she is manage to avoid murdering their offspring. She frightened Maggie, but didn’t actually hurt her—not to the point of physical harm. If the bar for child abuse were that low, nine out of ten parents would be behind actual bars. She gets the Krazy Glue out of the “it” drawer and glues her thumb to her index finger. Then she glues the unicorn head to her thumb. Then she glues the head to the body.

  She calls Kate and cancels tonight’s movie date—Water is supposed to be amazing, but she is simply too tired for child brides and adult conversation. She unglues her hand from the phone. The doorbell rings, Daisy goes crazy, and Mary Rose lets Saleema in. Today’s hijab is a dazzling emerald, and she says in her hurried, worried way, “I have to pray, where can I go?”

  Mary Rose shows her upstairs to the small sitting room off her bedroom. “Use the Pilates mat if you like.”

  Downstairs, she puts the kettle on in anticipation of Saleema’s grateful acceptance of a cup of tea for which she has no time, and reflects that her Muslim friend is praying to Allah a few feet from the bedroom of a lawfully married lesbian couple, and for a moment Mary Rose cannot think of a single way in which life could possibly get better.

  “I’m done, thanks,” says Saleema, hurrying back down the hall, hijab billowing about her like a nun’s habit of old—if nuns’ habits had been electric green—and takes the steaming mug, “I’ll just sit for a second.” She talks happily of her parents and sisters in the UAE, of a life on the move from Somalia to Vancouver, Saskatoon then Toronto. She is pretty and bespectacled and dark brown, her hands never still, her brow slightly furrowed even when she laughs, which is often. There is an ease between them and it strikes Mary Rose that she never imagined she would have a friend who was an engineer.

  A battle cry from upstairs—Maggie is awake and ready to vault from her crib. Saleema is leaving with Youssef and she says something in Arabic that sounds familiar.

  “What did you say?” asks Mary Rose.

  “Ysallem ideyki, it means—”

  “Bless your hands.”

  “That’s right.”

  “My mum used to say that. Why did you say it just now?”

  Saleema laughs. “Because I know you’ve got them full!”

  Mary Rose watches them leave down the flagstone path and registers a sadness. Perhaps even envy … Although why does she assume that Saleema’s mother never needed to hate her? She remembers to call Candace and cancel tonight’s child-care. Thirty bucks kill-fee down the drain.

  That night on the phone, Hil says, “I thought you were going to a movie with Kate and Bridget.”

  “I’m too tired to go out. How did you even know about the movie plan?”

  “Didn’t you mention it?”

  Hil put them up to it.

  “I’m just going to have a quiet evening and watch Transporter 2.”

  “Why don’t you call Sue and get her to come over with her boys for supper tomorrow.”

  “It’s too much of a production.”

  “Get her to bring food.”

  “I don’t mind cooking.”

  “Order a pizza.”

  “It means the kids’ll go to bed late.”

  “Get Candace over while you and Sue go to a movie.”

  “Why Sue? Why always Sue? Sue is just so J. Crew, I can’t stand it, okay?”

  “What about Hank—?”

  “He’s in Mexico.”

  “Andrea—”

  “She’s started chemo.”

  “Oh my God, that’s right. How is she?”

  “She’s fine, I mean she feels terrible, but it’s going to be, they think it’s fine.”

  “Tell Gigi to bring over a pot of spaghetti—”

  “You don’t have to solve my life, Hil, please just understand I need some quiet time.”

  “Pay Candace to do bedtime so you can watch a movie at home on your own.”

  Why didn’t she think of that for tonight? Instead, she is paying Candace to stay away when she could have used the break.

  “You could use the break.”

  “I don’t need ‘a break,’ this is what I do, I look after the children and the house and I complain about it sometimes, can’t I even complain without you dialing 911? I’m sorry, I’m not serene Susie Homemaker, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not, Mister, you’re the one who’s …” Sigh. “I have to go.”

  “Don’t go to bed angry.”

  “I’m not going to bed, I’m on a supper break.”

  “You’re rehearsing tonight?”

  “Mister, it’s our third dress.”

  Mary Rose hears a voice in the background. Male? “Is that the stage manager?”

  “No, it’s Paul. Wait—” Hil covers the phone, says something, laughs, then, “Have a good night, love.”

  “What? Wait.”

  “What is it?”

  “I love you, sleep well. I mean—”

  “Good night.”

  She takes an Advil.

  Jason Statham successfully delivers the package in his black BMW, vanquishes a horde of martial arts villains in a warehouse with an oil-slicked floor and returns to his Mediterranean villa with its modest shoebox of memories and sleek Tuscan tiles. He obviously has a great cleaning lady. She switches it off, already craving Transporter 3.

  Journey to Otherwhere

  Kitty’s bags were packed, she had pretended to eat enough breakfast to stop Ravi fussing, and she had stolen upstairs for one last look at the study. The next time she entered this room, she would be a different girl. A St. Gilda’s girl. If that Other Kitty thought of This Kitty at all, it would be with a sigh of relief that she had left that weird kid behind. “Let the brainwashing begin,” she whispered. Bitter tears stung her eyes. She heard her father calling from downstairs. “Kitty, are you ready?”

  She looked at her mother in the silver frame—as though she could intervene and stop the execution. But her mother remained static, her smile captured long ago and put behind glass.

  Would her father be sending her away now if her mother were alive? Or would she already have been saddled with a “normal” life, staying home with her mom and waving goodbye to her dad all those years? She stared har
d at the picture, hoping to make it shimmer for a change, willing a vision, a movement of her mother’s face.

  From downstairs came the whoompf of the front door opening, followed by the dulcet tones of Aunt Fiona—she wasn’t a monster, she was far worse: she was nice. Kitty had a sinking feeling that Aunt Fiona would succeed this time in convincing her to join the so-called real world. “It’s not such a bad place, Kitty.”

  “Kitty …” called Aunt Fiona. “Shall I come up, love?”

  Kitty went to rise but found, somewhat to her perturbation, that she could not. She had been sitting cross-legged so long, perhaps it was a case of pins and needles. But there was no tingling in her toes and when she pinched her legs she felt it. She tried again to get up, tried reaching for the corner of the desk, but it was as if she could see her own phantom arms lifting and her phantom legs standing up, only to collapse back into her inert body still seated on the carpet. Paralyzed.

  She was frightened now. What if she opened her mouth to scream, and nothing came out? She did not dare try, knowing that to confirm her fear would be to unlock a terror that she suddenly recognized like a long-lost enemy, and which she could smell like electricity. She looked down at the carpet. Her secret. It had never failed to soothe her and she turned to it now, perhaps for the last time, knowing that once St. Gilda’s got hold of her, she wouldn’t need magic carpets anymore, there would be neither visions nor nightmares, and if she could have, she would have run downstairs there and then and begged her father to drive her straight to the school, pausing only to grab a hairbrush from Ravi’s astonished hand.

  But she could not move. And sure enough, the scarlet threads that formed the stealthy K began to shimmer and she relaxed her gaze, allowing the colours to bleed and blur. It was working … the buzz arose behind her eyes and dripped like honey down her back, the carpet pulsed and rippled, and she experienced a soothing sense of being held by something infinitely more restful than sleep.

  She called it magic but knew it to be purely scientific—something to do with her “visual cortex, likely the occipital lobe.” That is what the doctor had said. It wasn’t a secret that she saw the carpet move—the secret was that she did it on purpose. There was no point trying to explain why, even to her father, because it was indescribable. Besides, she didn’t want him to feel there was something missing in her life with him, should she succeed in explaining how wonderful it was in there. Sometimes she thought Ravi had an inkling.

  When she had drunk her fill of solace, buoyed by colour and motion, she breathed, waiting for the waves to subside, for the blur to resolve back to pattern and for the whole to resume the solidity of an ordinary rug …

  “Kitty? There you are, it’s time to go, love.”

  Aunt Fiona’s voice was closer now; time to come back …

  But the final pulsation resulted not in the usual contraction of the carpet, but a sudden expansion in which every thread became visible and proceeded gracefully to untwine from its mate in a slow pinwheel. The whole dissolved into specks of light like stars until all that remained were two bare threads. Coiled but no longer touching, they hovered poised like serpents, then began slowly to reverse their motion. Likewise, the stardust around them set to revolving counter-clockwise as the two threads grew closer and closer to one another …

  “Kitty, are you all right?”

  Then Ravi’s voice, “It’s all right, Miss Fiona, don’t touch her.”

  Kitty reached into the slow swirl and saw her own hand, silvery and trailing at the edges, shot through with motion like the northern lights …

  “Dean, come quickly!” cried Aunt Fiona. “She’s having another seizure!”

  … and clasped the threads. At that instant, they flew together with a jolt of rare earth magnitude and she felt herself pulled into a vortex of dust and light and frantic blackitude. Along with speed, the pinwheel picked up colour and texture, a colliding scope of threads as the carpet wove itself back together again and accelerated to a tremendous stop.

  She was back in the study. Aunt Fiona needn’t worry. Dad needn’t wait. She looked up from the carpet—and straight into her own astonished eyes.

  The face was oval like Kitty’s, the nose straight to the point, the lips spare and sure, and the hair a dark mass like hers. And there was no mistaking her own eyes: one blue, the other brown. It was like looking into a mirror, except her—the other “her”—left eye was brown while the right one was blue. These were indeed her own eyes, but … reversed.

  “I’ll be right up,” came the female voice from beyond the door. It had to be Aunt Fiona, but she sounded different.

  “Where did you come from?” asked Kitty, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “I didn’t,” said the other Kitty in a husky tone, more adamant than hers. “You did.”

  Impossible, she hadn’t left the room. There was the carpet between her palms, there was the—but no … the scarlet threads that formed her initial were gone. That is, they were still there, but … Was it possible the carpet really had unravelled, then re-ravelled itself back the wrong way? Because in place of a K, there was a definite—

  “Jon! There you are, we’re waiting, honey, it’s time to go.” Kitty looked back at her doppelgänger, freshly astonished to realize that she was a he; a fact that seemed downright banal the next instant when, turning to follow the boy’s gaze, she saw, standing in the doorway, large as life, her mother.

  THURSDAY

  Cooks Irritated

  She leaves Daisy leashed outside the Starbucks, in her pink fun-fur coat. The snow has melted and it is too warm for the coat, but it makes her look less like a pit bull. Somewhere online Mary Rose could probably buy a pink fun-fur muzzle. A fuzzle.

  She manoevers the stroller through the door and looks around for a table. The place is packed. The bag lady with the elephant ankles heaves herself out of a chair and makes for the door. Mary Rose makes their way over to the newly vacated spot, digs a baby wipe out of the diaper bag and runs it over the tabletop and chair before sitting.

  She waits. She commits to a latte. “Can I have your name for the cup?”

  “No, thank you.”

  The young man in the green apron regards her with equal parts surprise and pity. “No problem.” He smiles. Smirks? “You can be smiley face.” And he draws one on her cup. Why is she here? There is a better café across the street—Starbucks’ pro–gay marriage stance notwithstanding.

  “Hi!”

  She turns warily. Another nice young man in a green apron. “You’re Dolly’s daughter! How is she?”

  “She’s great, thanks.” Brittle smile.

  His name is Daniel. For some reason, Mary Rose remembers this but has trouble recalling which city her own wife is in—what is this thing called “brain”?

  “Smiley face?” chirps the barista.

  She slinks over and claims her cup.

  Maggie dissects a muffin. Mary Rose takes out her antique flip-phone and calls her brother’s BlackBerry. “You’ve reached Captain MacKinnon, liaison officer for the federal government and special envoy to the provincial legislature …”

  “Hi, A&P, it’s Mister Sister, just making sure we’re on the same page re the Starbucks at Bloor and Howland, see you soon.”

  His phone is probably being monitored by CSIS which will pass on the info to the CIA which will hand it to the NSA which will alert the RCMP and he will be disciplined for using it for personal calls. Then renditioned to Syria once they discover he is half Mahmoud. And it will be her fault. Maybe he has left a message on her home voice mail. But why would he do that when he obviously has her cell number?

  Maggie is through with her muffin and bored with the sugar packets, her best-before fast approaching. Nearby, a fashionably ill-shaven metrosexual in tapered brogues is fussing with his iPhone and preparing to pounce on her table the moment she stirs. She avoids his eye and calls the home voice mail on the off chance … there is indeed a message from Andy-Pat. He sounds busy. Pr
eoccupied with manly concerns. Keeping-the-world-safe-for-women-and-children concerns. His ceremony in Kingston went “later than originally scheduled” and he “had to crash with a colleague” and drive straight back to Queen’s Park this morning for an “important” meeting. “Hope you get this in time, Mister, I don’t have your cell number with me.”

  She sweeps crumbs, crystals and stir sticks into a paper napkin—as the mist leaves no scar, so I with my toddler—but Mr. Metrosexual descends, blocking her cumbersome exit. Does he want me to leave or not?!

  “Excuse me,” he says in the arrogant tones of the freshly minted thirty-something.

  In a previous era, a guy like this would have had to be gay or Italian, but because of the sacrifices Mary Rose and her generation made, he is free to be straight. He flaunts his phone—the type of guy who, if he ever bothered to open a book, would tap the page.

  “Are you MR MacKinnon?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my God, I love your books, they saved me, wow I can’t believe I’m meeting you, I just texted my girlfriend and she freaked.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I—I’m sorry, this is so rude, but can I get a picture with you?”

  “Sure.”

  She puts her arm around him and smiles. He holds the phone in his outstretched hand and flashes.

  “When’s the next one coming out?”

  Such an intelligent, sensitive young man. Some things do get better.

  “I’m not sure,” she says. “I’m hoping I’m writing it right now in a parallel universe.”

  He smiles politely, but remains in earnest. “I know I shouldn’t ask. But will Kitty get to see her mother’s face in the third one?”

  Mary Rose hesitates. It is as though they are discussing family members she hasn’t seen in a long time. “But she did see her mother. In book one.”

  The young man is respectful yet firm. “No. She saw Jon’s mother. But that’s not really her mother. Not her mother from her own world. Not the mother who can see her back.”