Adult Onset

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  She never knows when it might strike. The rage. And when it does, she loses her grip on herself—literally. At times, she could swear she sees another self—shiny black phantom, faceless, as though clad in a bodysuit—leaping out of her, pulling the rest of her in its wake. Over the edge.

  If someone had injected her with a potion labelled Mr. Hyde, it would make sense, for the rage always feels like it comes out of nowhere. It is only afterwards that she recognizes that whole sections of her brain have been shut down, whole circuit boards. For example, she loses language. Gone. It is akin to what used to happen to her in the bad old days when a strip of world would cease to exist in her visual field, just as though it had never been. Or, equally disconcerting, when a giant yellow orb would appear right in front of her, blocking her view—it was like trying to see around a big yellow sun. “Incomplete classic migraine,” said the ophthalmologist. “Panic attack,” said Dr. Judy, and asked if she would like to “see someone.” But Mary Rose knew they were really evil spells—she needed a sorcerer, not a shrink.

  Those times are like dreams or the pain of surgery however—they get filed separately. She has undone many evil spells since becoming a mother—even so, there is still a spinning wheel somewhere in the kingdom and she never knows when she might prick her finger …

  There is nothing wrong with her life. She has a loving partner and two healthy, beautiful children. She has put money into education funds, she has put photos into albums. She can make pancakes without a recipe, she knows where the IKEA Allen key is, and has memorized the international laundry symbols—she has not Polaroided her shoes, she has her inner Martha Stewart in check. That is a slippery slope: you start making your own ricotta, next thing you know you’re in jail.

  •

  That spring they place a stone on his grave. They bring the children. He says to his little one, “Stand close to Mummy, Mister. That’s right.”

  Then he takes a photograph of his wife, and children.

  •

  She wakes at three a.m., curled cold on the La-Z-Boy couch, and goes calmly up to bed.

  •

  Other Mary Rose never became Mary-Rose-Who-Died, because she was born dead. This blurred the notion that she had ever been alive and potentially someone. Not baptized. Therefore not fully named. As if her name had been laid over her like a sheet that kept slipping off. Nothing sticks to a dead baby.

  Journey to Otherwhere

  Her father was showing her a brochure, St. Gilda’s Academy for Girls is among the top private schools in the country. Set amidst the beautiful Laurentian Mountains …

  When she found her voice, she said, “It makes absolutely no sense, why would you send me to a Catholic school, we’re supposed to be atheists.”

  “You won’t be required to attend church—”

  “If I’m anything, I’m Hindu. What if I decide to become devout?”

  She saw him almost laugh and felt a glimmer of hope, but he continued. “Kitty, it’s my fault, I’ve deprived you of a normal life—”

  “I don’t want a normal life.”

  He shook his head. “Aunt Fiona’s right—”

  “She’s not my aunt.” Next thing she knew, Dad would be telling her to call that woman Mom.

  He looked sad now. “It’s not fair to you, Kitty, I’ve tried to turn you into a little version of myself—”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, if that’s what you choose later on, but so far, whether you realize it or not, you haven’t had any choice—”

  “Then let me choose! I choose you, I don’t choose that school!”

  He regarded her sadly. “Kitty, have you ever heard the expression, ‘I must be cruel to be kind’?”

  “It sounds like something grown-ups say when they want to get their way and have their kid feel sorry for them at the same time.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not going to win an argument with you.” His smile was wistful. “You’re like your mother.”

  She could not explain why this made her so angry that for a split second all she saw was a flash of black.

  He continued. “You can either pack your things yourself or Ravi will send them along later.”

  At the mention of Ravi, something terrible happened. Kitty started to cry. Kitty McRae never cried. It broke over her with the inexorability of one of the floods she had witnessed.

  He winced and rose from the leather armchair. “I’m sorry, sweetie pie. I’m not much good to you sometimes.” She balled her fists against her eyes until the pain doused her tears, then called after his retreating back, “You wouldn’t send me away if I were a boy!”

  Her father paused but did not turn. His shoulders sagged and she saw a shred of silver, no larger than a hanky, flee his side as he went out the door, leaving her in the room that had always been the safest place in the whole wide world. Until ten minutes ago.

  WEDNESDAY

  I’m a Baby. I Can Drive Your Car. (And Maybe You’ll Love Me.)

  It is sleeting. The kitchen windows are streaky grey. On the craft table, she checks out Maggie’s masterpiece. The page is now covered with her “witing.” Is it possible, she wonders, that Maggie can actually wead what she has witten? Is it a form of infantile literacy that she will unlearn as she grows older? Perhaps the child is an amanuensis, channelling a chronicle from another world, secrets of the universe from the nibs of babes, if only we had the means to translate … a cosmic Rosetta stone. She ought to jot that idea down for the third in the trilogy. But she remains motionless before the page, her gaze semi-focused … and it comes true: there is a secret message. It shimmers beneath the veil of colour, surfaces, and Mary Rose is able to read it: NOTICE OF SUSPENSION OF HOME DELIVERY.

  Maggie is in her high chair, redistributing her oatmeal around her Bunnykins bowl.

  “Maggie, this is beautiful work, but you took Mumma’s piece of paper from the table.”

  Maggie replies, “Bunny is packing the car.”

  “Maggie—”

  I’m not angry. She is a baby, and she has made something beautiful. “Is it for Mummy, for when she gets home?” Maggie shakes her head with a sly smile. Mary Rose smiles back because she knows her patience with the boots and the walking to school yesterday and her phenomenal forbearance with the form just now are about to be rewarded. Maggie’s masterpiece has been lovingly rendered for her: Mumma.

  “Candies,” says Maggie.

  Mary Rose feels the smile curdle on her lips. “That’s so nice, Maggie, Candace will be so happy.”

  Maggie picks up her bowl and displays it, sufficiently empty now to reveal the Bunnykin family loading a picnic into the back of their VW Beetle—the manufacturers were apparently unaware that the trunk in a Bug is up front, a flaw that Mary Rose suspects will make it a collectors’ item. She takes it from Maggie before she can drop it—meanwhile, Matthew’s porridge is growing cold. She goes to the foot of the stairs and calls him. No answer. She goes up to his room.

  He is sitting on the edge of his bed, having struggled into his undershirt and pants, one sock on—he has begun dressing himself, and Mary Rose has learned to let inside-out shirts and odd socks lie.

  “Do you need help, sweetheart?”

  He starts crying.

  “Matthew, love, what’s the matter?”

  His distress always exerts a mortal pressure on her heart, as if the spot reserved for him were pre-tenderized from some previous injury. He does not answer, his head is down.

  “What is it, honeybun, is it Tico?” She peers into the plastic network of tunnels and cubbies, but the hamster is curled and breathing in its pod. Thank God.

  She joins him on the side of his bed. His little hand is closed over something.

  “What are you holding?”

  He moans.

  She makes to pry open his hand gently, but he pulls away—not before she glimpses what is in it. Glass.

  “Are you cut?”

  He shakes his head bu
t will not meet her eye.

  She glances toward his windowsill. The glass unicorn is standing there, headless.

  No! “What happened?”

  He shakes his head.

  She keeps her voice level. “Did Maggie come in your room and drop your unicorn?”

  No answer.

  She gets up. Before she is out the door, it is out of her, “Maggie!”

  “No!” screams Matthew—he sounds hysterical—“No, No!” and with each word he strikes his head with his fist.

  She rushes to his side and catches his arm. “It’s okay, sweetheart, it was an accident, here, give it to Mumma please, I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

  She puts her arm around him and he opens his hand. She takes the glass head with its tiny horn. Nothing a little Krazy Glue won’t fix. She slips it into her pocket.

  “Mumma can fix that.”

  “I don’t want you to fix it.”

  “Matthew, why not?”

  He clamps his lips together.

  She kisses the top of his head.

  He stiffens. “I don’t like it when you yell.”

  ——

  She drives her son to school, then heads for Whole Foods. Halfway through tony Yorkville, she slows as she passes the hypnotism building. Remarkably, there is a parking spot available right out front. It is a sign. She is about to back in when she sees her accountant coming out—she puts it in forward and drives off.

  He was likely visiting another office—there is a payroll company in there—but she takes it as another sign: if a hypnotist can trick her into forgetting the pain in her arm, what else might they pick from her psychic pocket? Or maybe it’s a sign she shouldn’t be spending so much money at Whole Foods. She pulls a U-turn and heads back toward her own neighbourhood. It starts to rain.

  She glances in the rear-view mirror at Maggie strapped into her car seat and playing with stacking cups—she has been talking nonstop back there. There’s to be no nap this morning, perhaps after grocery shopping they’ll go to the Early Years Drop-In so Maggie can run around and build up her immune system with the germy toys. It’s in the community centre at their local park. She was last there in February, seated on a miniature chair in the stuffy gym as toddlers staggered and gnawed on things while it sleeted outside. An attractive younger—they were all younger—mum sat next to her. Her name was Anya. She was pretty but tired, her hair in a fly-away ponytail and her Lululemon yoga wear had gone through the dryer once too often. She looked as though she had probably been in peak shape two years ago. Anya started talking and Mary Rose soon realized she couldn’t stop. Her smile was lovely, chapped lips notwithstanding and she spoke rapidly, one eye on her two toddlers as she told Mary Rose all about the miscarriage she had had. Last week.

  She drives past Honest Ed’s on one side, Secrets from Your Sister on the other, and is into the strip of Korean restaurants. She turns right and the great basin that is Christie Pits Park spreads out on her left. A green gouge in the city that started out as a gravel pit, it encompasses an outdoor rink, a pool, a playground and has become the tobogganing destination of choice for new Canadians in winter, while in summer it draws shirtless self-styled soccer stars from every non-hockey-playing nation on earth. On hot nights a giant light standard reigns over the diamond where serious games are called from the booth and cheered from the hill. In the early thirties Christie Pits was the scene of a riot sparked by swastikas at a baseball game, but Toronto, like much of Canada, has cultivated a selective memory, such that few of the dog walkers down there today have any clue of its checkered past. She pulls into the big lot at Fiesta Farms supermarket—unlovely depot on the outside, garden of Eden on the inside.

  She lifts Maggie into the shopping cart seat and hands her a snack trap of organic Cheddar Bunnies. Mary Rose loves Fiesta Farms. The CBC National News anchorman shops here—he looks strange without a tie. Her elderly Italian neighbour with the Virgin Mary in her front yard shops here—

  “Hi hawney, how are you, kids okay?”

  “Hi, Daria, they’re great, say hi, Maggie.”

  Funny how you think of someone and then you run into them—

  “Hi, Dawia.”

  “Ma bellissima!” She gives Maggie a Hershey’s chocolate Kiss without asking Mary Rose—Daria is old school. “You take one for Matthew too, okay, hawney?”

  She heads up the dairy aisle and encounters a heavily tattooed musician she used to see at parties. He is sporting his signature porkpie hat but has a baby strapped to his chest. She tells him about the recyclable disposable diapers she and Hil discovered, he says it’s all about papaya these days. He is glazed in that four a.m. feeding way, they speak rapidly then move on, veterans who know enough to spare each other the niceties.

  In the pasta aisle, she sees Anya—is there something special about today? If she thinks about Renée, will she appear? Anya has her two toddlers and is looking quite attractive, not so tired, her hair is shiny. Mary Rose feels a rush of warmth. “Hi, Anya”—slowing her cart in benevolent anticipation of a chat tsunami. But Anya smiles and moves on without a flicker of recognition—Mary Rose loses sight of her behind a pyramid of Paris Toasts.

  She tries to imagine pouring her heart out about a dead baby to a strange woman, only to forget all about it. Perhaps she has done so and can’t remember. That’s what forgetting is … She stops, momentarily caught in an Escher print of her own psyche, pondering, not for the first time, the degree to which a set of agreed-upon facts, combined with functional memory, determines reality. What is it that holds her, meshed, in this moment? Why is she not falling through time in a vertigo of identity displacement? Does Anya know she is missing a piece? Has her psyche grafted a patch of donor memory over the blank spot? Or did she rip the memory out herself and suture the flaps together? Does she have a scar? Yes, but she would be at a loss to explain it. That’s what “invisible scars” are.

  “Mumma,” says Maggie pleasantly. “Peace?”

  “Sure,” she says, and lets Maggie choose the pasta.

  “Sank you, Mumma.”

  Whatever Mary Rose might share incontinently with a stranger, it would not involve a dead baby—that’s her mother’s shtick. While it may seem heartless to refer to it, even inwardly, as “shtick,” it does capture the odd Borscht Belt timing and tone with which her mother has taken to repeating the tales. Like so much trauma chatter.

  She hunts for her reading glasses while scrutinizing the ingredients list on a can of tomato soup. The contents are organic, but the lining of the can contains toxins. The soup in the glass bottle, however, is not organic … She jumps when she hears her name bleated, as though speared by a gull. She turns. A beaming younger—of course—woman is towering over her, in her cart a baby, at her feet a toddler who has already begun emptying the lower shelves. She speaks in an English accent. “Maggie looks more like you all the time, Mary Rose!” She makes it sound like Mewwy Wose. “Don’t you, Miss Maggie!” The woman has large square teeth. Who is she?

  She launches into an account of her upcoming move, as though continuing an earlier conversation: her husband has been transferred to Columbus, Ohio, and has gone ahead while she stays behind with the children to sell the house and organize the move. Now is not the time for Mary Rose to practise her politically correct, “Actually, I’m not Maggie’s biological mother, I am her Other Mother.” Besides, she can’t get a word in edgewise—the woman is rabbiting along about having nearly lit her baby’s sock on fire while stirring spaghetti sauce—she hoots with laughter—she has parked on the street in front of the store and is worried she’ll get a ticket. “Back in two ticks, Mewwy Wose!” and she flits off down the aisle, rounds a pillar of kosher salt and disappears. Mary Rose looks at the children. “Hi, guys.”

  Maggie starts climbing out of the cart. Mary Rose goes to stop her but thinks better of it and heaves her out onto the floor, where she distracts the baby and plays with the toddler. Mary Rose plays peekaboo with all three. After ten minutes
she wonders if she ought to alert someone, have the woman paged. Was she cheerful or hysterical? Was she crying out for help with a smile on her face? She confessed to having almost incinerated her child—some say there are no accidents. What will become of these children if it turns out their mother has abandoned them in the pasta aisle? Will their fates be inextricably bound up with Mary Rose’s? Will what began as parallel lines become an intersection? Does it matter that it is pasta and not condiments? Just when she is set to call the manager, the woman comes flurrying back, still smiling and talking. She continues talking as Mary Rose melts away toward the hummus.

  Where did she go? Perhaps she drove away then changed her mind; or considered mounting the curb and going over the side of Christie Pits, accelerating straight down in her minivan, crashing to a stop at the base of the concrete light standard, crushed hood smoking, car horn jammed on one note. Who is helping these women? All the logorrheic ladies, gushing taps of chatter with their funny stories about pain and loss, betrayal and bewilderment—I’m not crying, don’t you cry.

  She chooses three lemons and reflects that women have their trauma chatter—like reverse Cassandras laughing at the gates, This happened this happened this happened! But what about Porkpie Hat? Does he have it better? With men it can take a different form. She thinks of her father with his family tree endlessly branching—“Look, you see here? In 1794 you have an Angus MacKinnon who is listed as possessing thirty-nine sheep, now you have to understand that in those days …” rendered in ultra-expository tones, the verbal equivalent of walking with prosthetic legs, one syllable placed laboriously after the other. With age, their lectures become islands of coherence disconnected from the mainland: “It took a government commission on systems analysis to systematically analyze …” “I’m going to wheel you into the sunroom now, Mr ___________.” Although they sound saner than the women, the men may be compelled to spread rich and creamy information over something that is howling just as hard. She stops dead in the produce section as it strikes her that the Mewwy Wose woman may indeed have been continuing an earlier conversation with her: one of which Mary Rose has no memory. What might she have poured out from the crude oil of her heart to the tall woman with the air-raid smile? She frisks her memowy but cannot come up with a single miscawwiage. And though she seeks irreverently thus to dismiss it, her hands are cold as she squeezes an avocado.