SSC (2012) Adult Onset

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  She topped up her Scotch again and followed her mother into her bedroom where Dolly started going through her jewellery box. Mary Rose braced herself—what was her mother about to bestow upon her? A diamond? A dime-store bracelet? Would she be able to tell the difference?

  Dolly had moved on to a bottom drawer in her dresser and now she threw something at Mary Rose with a flapping sound. A calendar. “He painted the whole thing with his foot!”

  “Really. What happened to his arms?”

  “What was I going to give you?” Dolly dropped her arms to her sides with a jangle of bangles. “Golly Moses, Mary Roses, your mother’s losin’ ’er mind.”

  This was not different. The confusion, the juggling act. There was no new ingredient, just an old one missing: anger. Like a maze without a minotaur.

  “It’s okay, Mum.”

  From the living room came the velvet tones of Nat King Cole posing the age-old question to Mona Lisa. As though summoned, Dolly left the room. Mary Rose followed to see her father dancing a slow, bouncy circle with Maggie in his arms—the child had one hand on his shoulder and the other fastened round his thumb. She was gazing at him with a gravity and contentment that Mary Rose recognized, and she paused, held, too, by the evening light that had inhabited the room. Splendid. Impossible to believe that light could be anything but particulate, so thick and honey-sweet it was, light reflecting light, pouring through the glass doors, suffusing the room with an aching loveliness, rendering the moment at once immortal and irretrievably lost. The song ended, he set her down, and Mary Rose watched as Maggie made a run for the sun.

  “Maggie!”—Mary Rose caught her round the middle before she could bang into the glass, and the child screamed in protest.

  “Gently!” cried Duncan, his voice reedy with alarm.

  Mary Rose set Maggie down and tapped on the glass to show her the door was closed.

  “Is she all right?”

  She turned. Her father was white as paper.

  “She’s fine, Dad.”

  “Don’t be getting after her now.” His voice had splintered to a whisper.

  “I’m not, Dad, I’m not angry at her.”

  “All right, then, no paneek.” He turned to his CD tower.

  “Are you okay, Dad?”

  He cleared his throat. “Oh I’m fine, it’s just you’ve got to be careful when you grab hold of a child like that.”

  “Golly Moses,” said Dolly. “I thought she was going to run right off the balcony.”

  From the hi-fi issued sounds of impending battle, a massed drum roll heralding a blast of bagpipes.

  Duncan taped an orange cross on the glass at toddler-eye level. Dolly turned the raw kibbeh onto a serving platter, mounded it smooth and imprinted a crucifix with the edge of her hand. “In the name of the Father!” she intoned, raising her other hand in the sign of the cross and looking like the conductor of an orchestra. Duncan lowered the volume on “The Massacre at Glencoe” and they gathered round the dining table, Matthew on his booster seat, Maggie in her high chair.

  She watched as Dolly, in accordance with long custom, stood and dismembered the chicken by hand, tearing a wing from the bird and offering it to her. “You don’t want the wing? No—Maureen’s the one who likes the wing, Hilary, do you like the wing?”

  “Sure, Dolly.”

  She plopped the wing onto Hil’s plate.

  “Einmal wein, Fraulein?” said Duncan, graciously pouring Liebfraumilch into Hil’s glass—a medium-sweet German white wine to accompany raw kibbeh to the tune of muted Highland outrage.

  The table was groaning, Dolly had somehow managed to make tabbouleh along with everything else. Now she was pouring powdered milk for the children from a recycled tomato sauce bottle.

  “Mum, there’s real milk in the fridge, I brought some—”

  But Matthew drained his glass and held it out for more, while Maggie sucked hers back two-fisted from a sippy cup.

  “Is that what happened to your arm?” asked Dolly.

  Mary Rose felt her stomach drop. “What do you mean, Mum?”

  “Where’s the chow chow?” asked Duncan, looking up suddenly.

  “What do you want chow chow for?” asked Dolly.

  “For the kibbeh.”

  “You don’t eat chow chow with kibbeh,” cried Dolly, “that’s a desecration!”

  Duncan gave his grandson a crafty smile. “Eat it all up now, Matthew, it’ll put hair on your chest.”

  Mary Rose caught Hil’s eye. Had her father not heard what her mother had just asked her? Mixing up a balcony with a patio door in a moment of fear was understandable, but for her mother to forget that Mary Rose had had bone cysts … Unless he was in denial. Or keeping something from her and her siblings—a diagnosis … Alzheimer’s. She felt the old gluey sensation stir in her esophagus at the mere thought of speaking the word. But if she allowed her mother’s question to be derailed by her father, she would be enabling the family dynamic of denial and suppression.

  “I had bone cysts, Mum. Remember?”

  “Of course I do, dear, I’m your mother.”

  Relief. No need to ask her father anything point-blank, they could stick to neurology and the cosmos. She reached for the Liebfraumilch. Her parents’ wineglasses were small, in keeping with their generation—having grown up during the Great Depression when a whole family shared one pair of shoes, a china cabinet full of 1950s stemware must have looked like Versailles—thus she calculated she was really still on her first glass of wine.

  Maggie had green potatoes in her hair, Matthew was somehow already in possession of a bowl of chocolate ice cream. Duncan was regaling Hil, “I remember Gordie Howe’s last game at the Montreal Forum …”

  Was it the familiarity of the story her father was telling? Or the conflation of a patio with a balcony door, slabs of time jammed up against one another like ice on Lake Ontario … They were eating at the very table at which she had sat so often while her mother cursed her and her father sat by, eyes on the ceiling. It had served as the kitchen table back before her parents downsized. Light being what it is, those scenes were still being played out somewhere … Only time separated those events from this one. Twenty years ago, in this very seat, she was shell-shocked.

  “… The place was packed to the rafters, and Howe was going full tilt down the ice …”

  Hil was smiling with the blank politesse of the good daughter-in-law.

  “Dunc,” said Dolly.

  “And he started passing the puck from his stick to his skate, then from his skate to his other skate, then back to his stick, and he kept this up without breaking stride …” His blue eyes were hot, his smile taut.

  “Duncan, dear—”

  “And that crowd—now you have to understand, Montreal was a tough crowd, still is—well, that crowd got to its feet and gave Howe a standing ovation.”

  Mary Rose saw his gold tooth, but he did not have long to savour Howe’s triumph, for Dolly broke in, “Dunc, was it the Rh factor?”

  He blinked as though surfacing from a nap. “Was what?”

  “Mary Rose’s arm.”

  “No, no, no, you’re confusing the two. The Rh factor has to do with blood type.”

  “Then what caused the bone cysts?”

  “Nothing, you’re born with them.” He tipped the bottle over Hil’s glass but it was empty.

  “I wasn’t good at having babies.”

  “Mum, that’s not true.”

  “Does your arm ever bother you now?”

  “No, Mum.”

  “Mumma was good at having babies.”

  “Dad, is that why you got scared when I went to grab Maggie by the arm?”

  He appeared to consider this. “Now that would make sense. Knowing what we know now, about how your arm would have been fragile all along … I guess I had that in the back of my mind.” He looked up with a chuckle. “Tell you the truth, though, she’s so much like you, I was worried she was going to run right out onto the bal
cony and keep goin’ over the side.”

  Mary Rose exchanged another look with Hilary. She ought to stop obsessing over every little slip-up of her mother’s and accept the fact that both her parents were damn old and had every right to be forgetful.

  “Was it before or after Mumma died that you gave me the moonstone, Dunc?”

  “I think it was before,” he said casually, applying himself to the vigorous rearrangement of his mashed potatoes.

  “Did she die before or after we lost Alexander?”

  He set down his fork and employed the soft-pedal version of the expository tone. “It was before. I gave you the moonstone when Alexander was born. Afterwards, I took you for a few days to the Alps and that’s when we got word about your mother.”

  “Doesn’t that mean it was … after?” asked Mary Rose.

  “After what?” he asked.

  “So … what year would that have been?” Was she drunk?

  “It was after the Missile Crisis, so—no. Sorry, my mistake.” His tone was meticulous but good-natured. “I’m confusing it with the Bay of Pigs.”

  Dolly turned to Hil. “We went up the Zugspitze on a cable car and there was no toilet at the top, can you imagine that?!”

  “I don’t have to imagine it,” said Duncan with a rueful grin, “I was there.”

  Hilary said, “Dolly, it must have been terribly hard to be so far away from your own mother at that time. And then to lose her too.”

  “Oh it was, dear, it really was! And Hilary, you would know, wouldn’t you, doll, you must miss your mother terribly.”

  Hil nodded.

  Dolly continued, “She was a lovely lady, I was right fond of Patricia, and you know how proud she was of you, Hilary. I think Maggie looks a little like her, do you see it too?”

  Hil began to cry. Mary Rose made a move to take her hand but knocked over her wineglass. Dolly rose and embraced Hil. “She’s with you, dear.” She spoke quietly. “She’s looking after you. And you know, you might find she’s taking care of you now in ways that she couldn’t when she was here.” Hil buried her face in Dolly’s shoulder.

  “Mummy, what’s wrong?” asked Matthew. He now had a full chocolate beard.

  “Nothing, sweetheart.” Hil blew her nose on her napkin. “I’m fine, I just miss Gran.”

  “Gran misses me too,” said Matthew, tears filling his eyes.

  Duncan reached over and stroked his head—not a bonk, no shingle, a soft pliable hand.

  Dolly smacked both hers flat on the table, making the plates and the children jump. “Dunc, tell a funny story, put on some happy music!”

  “You’re the boss,” he said, rising.

  The room filled with the sexy, plaintive tones of Fairuz, backed by a Middle Eastern nightclub orchestra circa 1955. Dolly had fled the table—the suppository doing its work, surmised Mary Rose. Duncan returned, holding aloft several bright bottles by their necks like the spoils of war. “How about a liqueur, Hilary? You name it, I’ve got it, do you like crème de menthe?”

  From “offstage” they heard Dolly burst into “Happy Birthday.” Duncan grinned conspiratorially and joined in as Dolly entered carrying a pink cake ablaze with a single fat candle in the shape of a 2. Maggie screamed in joyous comprehension that this was her second second birthday party. Dolly set the cake down and Maggie blew out the candle. “Hurray-hurray!” cried Dolly and Dunc, clapping, and breaking back into song.

  At around two a.m., Mary Rose woke up in the basement guest room, surprised by pain. Her arm felt hot. She did not recall having bumped it, but she had been somewhat inebriated by the time she joined her parents in the TV room and passed out in front of Murder, She Wrote. She turned to look at Hil slumbering next to her, a sweetly perturbed expression on her beautiful face. She had begun to get lines. Just because she was younger than Mary Rose did not mean time stood still for Hilary. Would they still be together when they were her parents’ age, or would Mary Rose have wrecked it by then? Hil would become a regal old lady, Mary Rose a wizened jester. That’s if they made it through the first great winnowing—the mid-life cancer disaster that was stalking their generation.

  She sat up carefully so as not to activate the comedy springs that set the bed to rocking like an on-ramp in an earthquake at the slightest twitch. She crept between Maggie, asleep with her bum sticking up in the Pack ’n Play and Matt on the fold-out IKEA chair-bed. She slipped out, closing the door carefully behind her, and into the bathroom, where she braced herself for the stab of light and looked at her arm.

  No bruise. She popped an Advil—as much for the hangover she hoped to forestall as for the pain. She became aware of another feeling, in her chest … the old guilt-shame brew, as though she had done or said something obscene at the supper table—which she had not.

  She killed the light and went upstairs.

  From the broad staircase she emerged into the airy expanse of her parents’ home. Moonlight poured through the kitchen window and overflowed the sink.

  A low pony wall defined the kitchen from the dining and living area where a set of big glass doors looked out onto the patio. Pleasant oil paintings and framed photos graced the walls and dotted end tables—Dolly and Dunc’s children, grandchildren and now a great-grandchild. Her parents had streamlined and updated, but here and there were objects that resonated at a cellular level: their honeymoon photo. Dolly beaming, waving from the train, eyes saucy with life and laughter. Duncan, amused and movie star handsome in a double-breasted suit. The air force plaque from RCAF Gimli outside Winnipeg. The cuckoo clock from the Black Forest with its rather scrotal pendula in the shape of pine cones. And Dürer’s Praying Hands, its smooth wood the colour of Dolly’s skin. Ysallem ideyki. Mary Rose did not have to look to know that stuck to the underside of every object was a Post-it Note with a name. Dolly was determined to head off squabbles among her grieving offspring, and it was a good idea provided they were able to read her writing.

  She turned to the fridge, its door thick with snapshots and clippings, including an old bestseller list featuring Escape in the number one spot—it was affixed with a Virgin Mary medallion. Next to it was a picture of the Pope blessing a party of Masai warriors. She opened the freezer. Slotted between a tray of buckling ice cubes and a lump of something that looked to be swathed in surgical dressings was a zip-lock bag—a silty envelope of a yellowish substance. It resembled something you were more likely to find in a lab than a kitchen. She pressed it to her arm. The cold felt heavenly.

  She took a seat at the table that was already set for breakfast—winsome hens-and-rooster placemats. Through the open window the night was humid and heavy with stars that looked ready to fall like fruit, and a fragrant breeze found her. Ottawa could be like that in summer. On the counter, beneath a glass dome, sat the remains of Maggie’s pink birthday cake—her second second birthday cake—its half-melted 2 candle making it look like a dilapidated gravestone. Mary Rose shook it off—Think nice thoughts. She was reaching for a newspaper when her mother shuffled in.

  Arms lax at her sides, Dolly led with her belly, which in the past was Napoleonic but now was toddler-like. Her dusky cheeks were mooshed with sleep, her white hair steepled in an old-lady mohawk.

  “What’re you doin’ up, doll? Y’hungry?” Sleepy contralto tones.

  “Sorry I woke you, Mum.”

  “Get out, you didn’t wake me. Here, gimme.”

  Mary Rose flinched but Dolly merely took the bag and tossed it into the microwave.

  “My arm is sore,” she said, lest her mother feel hurt by her reflexive withdrawl.

  “Your arm?”

  Dolly raised her eyebrows; she had a perfect clown face.

  “You said it doesn’t bother you anymore.”

  And before Mary Rose could draw back, Dolly pressed her fingertip to the top of the twin scars, and ran it down the stripe. It was such an unexpected gesture—not painful … but eerie, scar tissue being at once ultra-sensitive and numb.

  Dolly said, �
��I remember when I was small, if I had anything that was bothering me, or even a sore throat I think it was one time, Mumma would say to me, ‘That’s your badness coming out in you.’ So I knew not to complain.”

  The word was red and released a pong such that Mary Rose could smell it. Badness. “That’s what you used to tell me.”

  “Did I?”

  “You said that about my arm.”

  “You had bone cysts—”

  “Mum, how old were you when your mother said that to you?”

  “Let me see, was I five or six? I was a dark little thing.”

  “You couldn’t possibly have been bad.”

  “Oh, I was.” A mischievous light entered Dolly’s eyes. She giggled. “I always had candy.”

  “Why was that bad?”

  “Well, this was during the Great Depression, no one had candy then, who was I to have candy? It made Mumma so mad, she’d grab a hold of me and holler, ‘Where’d you get the candy, demon?’ ”

  “Where did you get the candy?”

  Dolly got up suddenly and squirted a white stream into the palm of her hand from the recycled Jergens bottle by the sink.

  Mary Rose watched her mother rub the cream into her hands. They took on the sheen of polished wood; finely veined, deeply lined.

  The microwave beeped. Dolly poured the contents of the bag into a bowl with a plop. Chicken soup. She put it in front of Mary Rose, who took a spoonful. Turned out she was hungry.

  “Mum, you weren’t bad.”

  Dolly guffawed. “Tell Mumma that! She had twelve of us to cope with and never raised her voice.”

  “You said she hollered at you.”

  “Well I was a little demon! She had to slap us and, you know, keep us in line somehow, and then my sisters did a whole lot of the upbringing, my sister Sadie did a whole lot, that’s just the way it was in those days.”

  “Who gave you the candy?”

  “His pockets were always full of candy.”

  “Whose?”

  Dolly’s brow furrowed. Mary Rose waited. Her arm throbbed. “Let me see till I get hold of it …” Dolly blinked a few times in quick succession. Then her face cleared and she turned back to Mary Rose. “I guess it’s gone. What’ll we do now, you want to play Scrabble?” Dolly went down to the rec room and came back with the German edition of Scrabble that Mary Rose had given her one Christmas, having lugged it all the way from a book festival in Munich. It was still in plastic—Dolly unwrapped it and they played with ü’s and too many z’s.