SSC (2012) Adult Onset

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

She chuckles in case anyone is listening.

  “Mary Rose MacKinnon, what’s your time like tomorrow afternoon?” Forthright five-foot-ten tones.

  “Oh, hi Sue, how are you?”

  “I’m taking the boys to Jungle Wall.”

  Mary Rose smiles back. “What a brilliant concept, eh? Your kids drive you up the wall so you might climb one with them.”

  Sue laughs. “The best part is Steve’s making supper afterwards.”

  “Oh Sue, I’d love that, but … I promised Saleema I’d take care of Youssef.”

  “Bring him.”

  “Oh, you know what? I just—I can’t believe I forgot, tomorrow’s Wednesday, I’m going to see Water with my friends Kate and Bridget—” Too much information, she sounds as though she is lying. “After the Youssef play date that is.” Is this her cue to invite Sue’s son Ryan to join Matthew and Youssef?

  “Water’s amazing,” says Sue. “Let’s try for the weekend, Hil’s still away, right?”

  “She’s home next week.”

  “How’re you doing on your own?” Sue’s socially appropriate solicitude, her perfectly calibrated degree of sympathetic brow-furrowing are nerve-wracking to Mary Rose.

  “Doing great.” Plastic smile. “It’s great sometimes to just, you know, do things your own way without having to check in with your partner?”

  Sue smiles back—Calvin Klein laugh lines.

  Gigi, in her self-appointed capacity as professional lesbian, has said, “You’ve just got the hots for her.” That is so not true—in fact, at this moment Mary Rose feels her smile starting to melt like a tire fire, convinced her face is emitting a bad odour. Some things really do get batter.

  “Mumma,” announces Maggie. “I will walk now.”

  “Cool boots, Maggie,” says Sue, with a wink to Mary Rose in acknowledgement perhaps that they’re on the wrong feet. “I’m going to hold you to the weekend, MacKinnon.”

  Sue jogs off, pushing the all-terrain stroller with baby Ben buckled in, five-year-old Ryan riding shotgun on the rumble step and seven-year-old Colin powering his two-wheeler on the sidewalk ahead. Super woman with a tennis diamond. Mary Rose watches and wonders, is Sue making a “special project” out of her? Does Mary Rose seem like that much of a mess? Maybe the wrong-footed boots are a sign. How’re you doing on your own? Sue is the last person to whom Mary Rose would admit the slightest maternal misgiving—the type of woman who has no clue what it’s like to go down the rabbit hole.

  Around her now, the tide of parents is turning over, older children are being dismissed. Keira has headed back inside the school with a wave. Mary Rose unhooks Daisy’s leash from the wrought iron fence post and takes Matthew’s hand as cars come and go from the curb, pulling in and out of the four lanes of rush hour. The knife thing was a fleeting unpleasantness, another unbidden thought.

  “Mumma,” says Matthew, “You’re hurting my hand.”

  Though the catastrophic thoughts intruded once or twice when Hil was pregnant, Mary Rose came to believe the magnificent world-blast of Hilary getting down on the floor and giving birth to Maggie had banished them for good, along with so many other demons that fled like rats in the wake of her new life. Now she sees herself take hold of the stroller with Maggie in it and tip it into the traffic. She banishes the image by unclipping Maggie’s seat belt and swinging her up into her arms. If anyone is watching, they will see that she loves her child.

  •

  As long as she stays lying down, nothing bad will happen. She gets up.

  •

  They are under way, Matthew pushing Daisy in the stroller, Mary Rose piggybacking Maggie, who rattles with laughter like a packet of Chiclets. They stop at the park, Daisy bolts from the stroller, and Mary Rose catches the leash just in time, nearly dislocating her shoulder in the process—dogs are forbidden in the playground enclosure, and Daisy loves to hang by her jaws from the swing, a simple pleasure that makes her look all too pit-bully. Matthew runs for the swings, Maggie gives chase, falling in that weightless way of toddlers, scrambling to her feet, running, falling again like a ball of wool, getting up, running. Mary Rose hooks Daisy to the gate, leaving her to bark protectively, yearningly, and realizes the vagueness between her ears is hunger. Luckily, she has packed snacks for the children. She upends two boxes of mini-raisins into her mouth and chases them with a handful of spelt animal cookies. Matthew is already swinging, but Maggie has flipped over twice in her effort to mount a big-kid swing. Mary Rose picks her up and stuffs her into a baby swing—her protest turns to glee when she feels the pressure of Mary Rose’s hand at her back. She pushes them in tandem, one on each hand. Maggie kicks off her boots, the left one sailing right, the right one left. Matthew throws his head back, his hat falls off and his hair flies. She delivers tickles at unpredictable intervals, a squeeze at the knee, snap at the heel; they laugh and their breath bubbles up and out into the air, bits of them, their cosmic signature, the particular way in which a piece of the universe has passed through them and been changed forever just now, indelibly with every breath, propelling the message, we’re here, we’re here, we’re here!

  Mary Rose pushes her sweet so-young children on the swings … A woman pushes her children on the swings while her dog dances and barks. That woman is happy.

  •

  She gets up.

  •

  Matthew’s whale is pinned to the corkboard next to the foot calendar—April’s watercolour is a tulip. Mary Rose makes supper while he makes construction sounds amid a rising tower of oversized Lego on the kitchen floor—he is more than ready to manipulate smaller shapes, but with his sister not yet three, the household is some months away from stocking toys suitable for choking. Maggie, rather than pursuing her career in demolition, is in the dining room, bent quietly over something at the craft table—Mary Rose’s gaze flicks to the knife block, but the scissors are safely stowed.

  She joins her, and looks over her shoulder. “What are you doing, Maggie?”

  “Witing.”

  Swirls and hieroglyphs … the child is using a real pen—from Mary Rose’s datebook. A mosaic is taking shape beneath her little fist, coiling graphemes embedded in squares and spirals reminiscent of Hundertwasser, if Hundertwasser had decorated Egyptian tombs. Mary Rose feels her lips part as though to read aloud what is written there, but its meaning remains beneath the surface. She watches, somewhat awed, determining to be more like Hil, who allows the children to go through her purse and play with her phone and lipstick. Mary Rose does not have a “purse.” She has a bag with a different zippered pocket for everything—large enough to accommodate a manuscript should that ever become necessary again. Along with an array of pragmatica, she carries a fountain pen that she keeps meaning to fill. She ought probably to carry a Bic pen, having read it is possible to perform an emergency tracheotomy with one. Hil would scoff, but Mary Rose knows that most serious accidents happen in the home.

  “Good work, Maggie.” She is so focused. Candace is here only five or six hours a week these days but it’s paying off. Mary Rose wishes she could hire Candace to look after her too—is there such a thing as nannies for grown-ups?

  Of course there are, they’re called therapists.

  “Sank you, Mumma.”

  She returns to the kitchen, wondering if she would be capable now of witing a book with a pen. How did the Victorians do it? They went blind and died young.

  She pours a Scotch and turns on CBC radio. This is … As It Happens … She dances a little, nerdily, to the familiar theme music as she tips the plate of tamari-marinated tofu cubes into the frying pan … for Tuesday, April second … and picks up the phone to call her sister in Victoria … but there is no dial tone.

  “Hello?”

  “Rosie?”

  “Mo? I just picked up the phone to call you.”

  “I just dialed you.”

  “That’s so weird.”

  It isn’t that weird, it happens a lot.

  “How are you, R
osie Posie?”

  “I’m great, I’m cooking tofu.”

  “Oo, yuck.”

  “I know, it’s for the kids.”

  Maureen counsels inmates, parolees and burnt-out corrections officials. But who will counsel the counsellors? Duncan posed the question way back when Maureen switched her major from cartography to criminology. She did not start working outside the home, however, until her youngest was in high school. Now Maureen is the unassuming white lady at the back of the sweat lodge, the lone woman at the weekly halfway house potluck; she sings in her church choir, gardens, quilts, belongs to two book clubs and goes to Vegas twice a year with her husband. She sees the occasional ghost and sometimes continues conversations with Mary Rose that have begun telepathically.

  Mo bucked the trend of her generation by marrying young and having five children. Now she is a grandmother with a boomeranging son in the basement.

  “How’s Rory?”

  “Oh, he’s doing pretty well, he’s working on his websites, he’s been great with Mum and Dad.”

  As if Rory were a therapy dog, thinks Mary Rose. But didn’t families used to make room for that kind of thing? The homebodies who made themselves indispensable. Is Rory a homebody or a shut-in? Contented or depressed? Maybe he will fool them all and make a fortune inventing a computer game.

  “Mo, do you know when Mum and Dad are going to be leaving Victoria? I’m supposed to meet their train when it stops over here.”

  “I’m not sure, Mum’s misplaced the tickets.”

  “You’re kidding, not again.”

  “I’m actually a little concerned about them, Rosie.”

  “I know, do you think Mum’s starting to lose it?” Mary Rose tops up her finger of Scotch.

  “Poor Mummy, she’s been quite vague all winter.”

  Maureen has always called their parents Mummy and Daddy, unlike her and Andy-Patrick, for whom they have always been Mum and Dad—if either ever sported a y, it was shed like a tail and never grew back.

  “I know. She couldn’t remember the difference between Winnipeg and Calgary.” She sips guiltily.

  “A lot of people are in the same boat and we’re not asking them to go for a cognitive assessment.”

  Mary Rose registers the rebuke and wonders why it is that, even when she is agreeing with her older sister, she so often feels she has given offence. Yet Mo spends half her waking life with offenders. She shakes the pan and the tofu sputters. “They’re probably just in her purse.”

  Mo chuckles. “I’m scared to look in there.”

  Mary Rose chuckles back. “I know, God knows what might be coiled at the bottom!”

  “Oh, I don’t mean that, Rosie, I just mean it would be like an archaeological dig, we’d need to get out stick pins and little labels and call in the British Museum.”

  “We might find the Elgin Marbles or a piece of the True Cross.”

  “We might find Jimmy Hoffa,” says Mo.

  Mary Rose laughs out loud and wishes she’d said that. But then Mo might not have found it funny. She opts to push her luck. “Maybe Mum should have an MRI.”

  “Why?”

  “I was just thinking, do you think it’s possible she might actually be experiencing changes in her … you know that part of the brain, what’s it called, the um, the memory lobe—you know, it sounds like an endangered species?”

  “No.”

  She has heard a crimp in her sister’s voice. It is important not to upset Mo. She shoulders everything and it has begun to tell. She is in remission from an autoimmune disorder that the doctors finally labelled “polymyalgia” because everything hurt and they had no idea what else to call it. Stick “poly” in front of something and you know you’ve got an imposter on your hands—why not call it “everything-hurtsia”? Whatever it was, the disease grew tired of waiting for someone to guess its name and slunk away. But who knows what might awaken it?

  “Good, I was hoping you’d say that, Mo. I was beginning to get worried, especially after their last visit here, Mum was so nice! Ha.”

  “Mummy has always been nice.”

  Is Maureen on drugs? Or is she just … nicer than Mary Rose?

  “Don’t worry, Rosie, I don’t have dementia. It’s just that Mummy is mellowing, and that used to be considered a normal part of aging …” Is Mo choking up? Oh no.

  “Mo, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  “It’s okay, it’s just that I remember a different Mummy than you do, Mary Rose,” sniff, “and I’m sorry that you didn’t have … what I had.”

  Until I came along and wrecked it. “I know, Mo, she was, she’s still, they’re still, they’re really sweet.”

  “Don’t be worried.”

  “I’m not, I’m just …” irked. “She can’t seem to remember when Alexander was born or exactly when he died. Neither can Dad, but Mum keeps on—” don’t say “looping”—“returning to it. As though she gets caught in a thought-snare, and the harder she struggles to remember, the tighter the … loop gets.”

  “What a lovely way of putting it, Rosie, you really have a way with words.”

  “Thanks, Mo.” She sips. “Maybe if we can nail down the dates, it’ll help her let it go.”

  “There’s a great deal of unprocessed guilt there,” says Maureen.

  “And guilt is toxic.”

  “I said grief.”

  “No, you said guilt.”

  “Rosie, I know what I said.”

  “How’s Zoltan?”

  “He’s driving me crazy.”

  She chuckles. “Good.”

  “I’ve given him an ultimatum: either he cleans out the garage or I’m dialing one-eight-hundred-got-junk. I stepped on a rake and nearly concussed myself reaching for a case of juice boxes.” Mo’s nest will never be quite empty, she still buys bulk. “How are you doing on your own with the kids, Rosie? You’re really in the trenches.”

  “It’s okay, it’s great, it’s a learning curve.”

  “I wish I were next door and could help you.”

  Mo visited the winter after Matthew was born. She cooked and cleaned and picked up six months of frozen dog poo from the backyard. They drank Ovaltine spiked with cognac and watched Pride and Prejudice; she changed diapers, organized the spice drawer and replaced the flapper thing in the downstairs toilet tank; she laughed every time Mary Rose did her impression of Melanie singing “Ruby Tuesday.” Then Maggie was born and she did the same thing, plus helped Hil with the breast pump and mended Matthew’s beloved Bun, cross-stitching into the night. But for all that, Mary Rose wound up on antibiotics both times—perhaps she too is being stalked by a Rumpelstiltskinny disease, weakening her, one dry hacking cough at a time.

  “You do help, Mo, Mum and Dad spend every winter out there practically next door to you and I don’t have to worry about a thing.” Cough.

  “Mummy and Daddy are going to need some form of assisted living soon. I wish they’d darn well move out here for good.”

  “Have you talked to Dad?”

  “He changes the subject.”

  Dolly and Dunc spent a good deal of their married life moving their family from one posting to the next. So long as another move remains on the horizon, they don’t have to think of the place they are currently living in as the last place. Or admit that the next move will be the last one. And neither does Mary Rose. But what if her parents do move out to the west coast? So much for the regular visits. Her children will miss out on whatever brief time remains with their grandparents—they’ve already lost Hil’s mother. It’ll be all packeeges and phone calls and e-mails, Dear Dad, I … She says, “I wish they’d move here.” Will she go to hell for this lie? Is it a lie?

  Silence. Then, “Rosie, you don’t mean that.”

  “I guess I don’t really.”

  “You’ve got your hands full already.”

  “I know. I wish the country wasn’t so big.”

  “I know, me too.”

  I’m going to lose my parents a
gain … my sister is taking them away.

  “I wish Zoltan were here to de-Facebook my computer.” Now that is a lie. Her brother-in-law is a highly qualified IT systems and security engineer. She doesn’t want him anywhere near her computer.

  “I can put him on the phone, he’s just driving up—”

  “No, that’s okay—”

  Calling, “Zolty!” Then, to Mary Rose, “Oh no … oh, what’s he doing? Oh for Pete’s sake, he’s taking a big Home Depot box out of the back of the Jeep—”

  “I better let you go.”

  Mary Rose loves Zoltan. He taught her to play Risk when she was eleven—doubtless more out of an excuse to spend twelve hours at a stretch in the MacKinnon house than even his considerable enthusiasm for the game. Mary Rose wonders if Andy-Patrick would be better adjusted if he had a big brother. Alexander would have been three years older than A&P. Two?

  And as though reading her mind, Maureen says, “The dates would be in the photograph Daddy took at the grave.”

  “Oh. Wow, you’re right. Mo, you’re amazing.”

  “Look for the album next time you’re in Ottawa.”

  “It’s not in the album.”

  “Did you take it out?”

  “No, Mum must’ve, it’s been gone for ages.”

  “I never liked looking at that picture.”

  “Neither did I.” Lie. “Do you think she tore it up?”

  “Well, can you blame her?”

  Of course. Mum may have got rid of the photo because it was painful. Mary Rose, with the egoism of a child, had blamed herself for its disappearance. But now it makes sense. Adult sense.

  “He was born in December,” says Mo slowly, “but they placed the stone in spring. I can almost make out the numbers …”

  “Is that around the time you hung me over the balcony?” She grins. “Rosie, why on earth would I have done that?”

  “Because you had to look after me and I was a terrible-two.”

  She hears Maureen sigh. “Okay, smarty-pants, where was Mum while this was supposedly going on?”

  “… Wow, Mo, I just realized something. I’ve always thought of the balcony as this kind of funny, bizarre thing? But … if it really happened, then it means Mum must have been really … out of it.”