Adult Onset

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  “I’m not—”

  “You’re not twenty-five, you know.”

  “Daisy had a seizure.”

  “What’s that?” says her father. Bright red peaked cap, yellow windbreaker.

  “You got a new freezer?” pipes Dolly.

  “No, yes, well, I want a new freezer,” says Mary Rose.

  “Dunc, buy your daughter a freezer!”

  “What kind do you want?” says Dunc.

  “It’ll be your birthday present and your Christmas present for the next three years!” Dolly, mock fierce, slicing the air with her hand, setting her jingles to bangling.

  “Better get one with a balcony in that case!” Duncan grins.

  Mary Rose smiles. He looks good, good colour in his face.

  “Where’s Maggie?!” says Dolly, looking around, alarmed.

  “Mum, she’s home with Matt and my friend Gigi—”

  “Where’s Hilary?” asks Duncan.

  “I told you, Dunc,” says Dolly. “She’s in Winnipeg.”

  Mary Rose says, “She’s … out west.”

  “Did I tell you, I slept right through the prairies?!” exclaims Dolly.

  “How’s big Matt? You got him up on skates yet?”

  “Not yet, but—”

  “There’s no rush, Gordie Howe didn’t own a pair of skates till he was twelve—”

  “Shall we head for the Tim’s?” says Mary Rose.

  They pass a flower shop—winged Mercury is stamped on the glass, the messenger god with his meek bouquet.

  “Oh look, would Maggie like that?” Dolly’s attention has been snagged by a sparkly arrangement with a heart-shaped balloon: Forever in Our Hearts.

  “Mum, not that.”

  She shepherds them toward a sign that says Eatery with an arrow pointing down and nudges them onto the escalator.

  “Mum, hang on to the railing.”

  They make it to the food concourse. It could be worse: the bolted chairs and tables are of blond wood, the lighting is good. Her father treks over to the Tim Hortons counter between the sushi bar and the Pita Pit while she guides her mother to a banquette. Duncan rejoins them with a tea, two coffees and, tossed genially onto the table, “A whole bunch of junk.”

  “Danke schayne,” says Dolly, flirtatious. She tips a packet of Splenda into her tea and bites into a doughnut with sprinkles.

  “Mum? Why do you bother with Splenda?”

  “So I can have a doughnut.”

  “I don’t think it works that way.”

  “ ‘By your children be ye taught!’ ”

  Faux slap.

  “The gal behind the counter,” says Duncan appreciatively, “she was speaking Japanese or Swahili, I’m not sure which.”

  Dolly smiles. “So many Orientals in BC nowadays.”

  Her mother does not remember, her father needed not to know, and Mary Rose is left holding the bag. Of bones. And reading them … This is how crazy ladies are made. Best drop it.

  “They’re taking over,” says Duncan, “and that’s probably good news for the rest of us. If you really want to be bilingual nowadays, learn Mandarin.” He bites into a crueller, his eyes boyish blue.

  Dolly digs into her purse and comes out with a paperback copy of Journey to Otherwhere. On the inside cover, a Post-it Note specifies the inscription: “For Phyllis, My Best to You.” Phyllis is getting married again.

  “Your mother should be getting a percentage,” says Duncan with a wink.

  Dolly finds a Best Western pen in her purse and, as Mary Rose signs the book, chants, “I used to be Abe Mahmoud’s daughter, then I was Duncan MacKinnon’s wife, now I’m Mary Rose MacKinnon’s mother!”

  “Mum, how come you never say ‘I used to be Lily Mahmoud’s daughter’?”

  “He was head of the family.”

  “She did all the work.”

  “He came to this country with nothing and—”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “ ‘If I say black is white, it’s white.’ ”

  Duncan laughs. “Look out, Mister.”

  “Mum, that is meaningless.”

  Duncan says, “It was meaningful, all right, it meant he was the boss.”

  Don’t kick the football. “I know, Dad, and look at the result.”

  “What ‘result’?” says Dolly. “You’re the result, I’m the result, and we have Puppa to thank—”

  “Exactly.”

  “What’re you getting all worked up for now?” says her father in his innocent-bystander tone.

  “I’m not worked up, Dad.” You kicked the football.

  “In the old country—” says Dolly.

  “Please don’t tell me about good slaps.”

  “No one can tell me Puppa didn’t love Mumma—”

  “I never said—”

  “His pockets were always full of candy!”

  Duncan laughs.

  Mary Rose says, “Mum? Is that who gave you the candy?”

  Dolly’s brow creases. “What candy?”

  “… Nothing. It’s okay.” She hands the copy of Otherwhere back to her mother and it disappears into the purse.

  Duncan marshals a gruff tone. “How’s the new book coming?” Tone of high esteem.

  She does not want to hurt his feelings by telling him that she is not going to write it. “Well, in a quantum sense, it’s already out there just waiting for me to look it into existence.”

  “That’s one very sophisticated piece of procrastination.”

  They laugh.

  On the other hand, why does she assume it will hurt him if she does not write the third? Is she self-sabotaging in order to punish him? Is she still willing to do—or not do—anything to get his attention, including fail miserably?

  She gives him the Atwood book. He frowns, pleased. “What’re you spending your money for?”

  “You’ll get it back, Mary Rose,” says Dolly good-naturedly. “You’re getting the silver tea service when I go.”

  “Go where?” says Duncan.

  She chats with her father about the fascistic tendencies of the federal government and the roots of the current economic collapse. “Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove and the whole lot of them should be tried for crimes against humanity,” he says. “And that goes for Milton Friedman too.”

  “Milt Friedman,” says Dolly. “Did we know him in Germany?”

  “Like the fella says, ‘Those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.’ ” He takes a newspaper from the pocket of his jacket.

  Dolly opens her purse again.

  “What are you looking for, Mum?”

  A number of objects surface: the folded tartan tote bag, collapsible hairbrush, packet of jam from the train, the rosary, the Living with Christ pamphlet—the brown “Sunday Offering” envelope still tucked in its pages, perhaps her mother is holding out on the Church—the small grey velvet box …

  “Is that it, Mum?”

  “Is what it?”

  “Your moonstone ring.”

  “Yes, in the box.”

  “Is that what you wanted to give me?” Her mother has been carrying it around the whole time … Mary Rose prepares herself to be moved. This is what difficult mothers do in the end: bestow upon their embattled daughters a token of their love. Roll credits.

  But Dolly says, “Why would I give you that?”

  “Because … Dad gave it to you when Alexander was born, and … it was a hard time, and I was … kind of there.”

  … a fuzzy Chiclet, pussycat change purse, plastic pill container, the rosary again, mini address book from a hair salon … bits and pieces, concrete counterparts to the tiny words that have beset Mary Rose and murdered meaning in a hail of prepositions. She looks away.

  This is what you get in the end. Fragments. Parts of speech. Her mother has gone to bits. Her father is on a saner-seeming loop. He knows how to make lunch. Supper cannot be far behind. Don’t ask for the moon—or even the moonstone. Her mother has said “sorry.”
Her father has said, “Some things really do get batter.” Dear Dad, I. Maybe that was it—the whole of her reply to his touching e-mail, maybe she finished it after all. The sense of “something missing” simply comes with the existential territory. Somewhere inside she is still wailing, damp, toothless and tiny against his bare shoulder. Snap out of it, you’re forty-eight years old. Leave them alone.

  Her parents will be re-boarding the train for their home in Ottawa in less than an hour. Their home, in which they are independent and ask nothing of their children except that they visit. They have just crossed the country as they have done so many times, two little old Canadians traversing the vastness—west to east this time. When the Rockies gave way to the foothills and the forests thinned to prairie, when the train crossed the North Saskatchewan River and rolled through the outskirts of Winnipeg; past the Walmart and the McDonald’s where once there was a tavern, an arena, a rutted highway that led out onto the prairie … did her father’s hand give her mother’s a squeeze? Before she dozed off and he returned to his paper, did they think of Other Mary Rose? Did Dolly say a prayer?

  Is she in the sky over the prairie? The vault of the heavens that holds us all, cherishes us all. Energy energy everywhere, endlessly returning love in the form of life, even mineral life. In the guise of time. Is the train part of her? Is the grass part of her? The sound of the horn, the cattle ignoring the rude blast, the car parked at the level crossing, family inside waiting to drive safely on, all part of her? She is everywhere now. Like God.

  Dolly looks up from the depths of her purse.

  “Give me your postal code again, Mary Rose.”

  She hands back the Best Western pen and Dolly writes it in the mini address book.

  Duncan says, “I see where they’re touting the new head of the World Bank as a woman, as if that’s her only claim to fame.”

  “I think Andy-Patrick is seeing someone.”

  She sees her father contract like a salted oyster, while Dolly compresses her lips and stares out over the tabled expanse.

  Duncan is pained but polite. “What about … what was her name? Nice gal …”

  “Renée,” states Dolly.

  “Shereen,” says Mary Rose. “They broke up.”

  “We haven’t heard from your brother.”

  “We didn’t hear from Andy-Patrick the entire time we were away,” says Duncan, his voice reedy.

  “He’s been super busy,” says Mary Rose, feeling some compunction.

  Her parents will be reassured to know that she and her brother have seen one another, so she makes the recent contact sound like the norm. “He was over playing with the kids, having supper with us the other night.”

  Duncan disappears behind the business section.

  Dolly polishes off her doughnut and asks, “Have you heard from your brother?”

  Mary Rose decides that it might indeed be wise to learn Mandarin—it could be a way to stay neurologically spry.

  “Did you get the packeege I mailed you yet?”

  “Mum … No, not yet.”

  “Dammit, what in the name of time is going on?” She is getting worked up.

  “Mum, the mail has been—”

  “Duncan, do you remember the packeege I had for Mary Rose?”

  “What packeege?”

  He is getting cranky too—time for their afternoon nap.

  “Forget about it, now,” he says.

  “Forget what?”

  “The packeege.”

  “I did forget it, that’s the problem!” Tears in Dolly’s eyes, a candy sprinkle at the corner of her mouth. Oh Mum, please don’t cry at eighty-one in the Tim’s, I can’t bear it …

  “Relax now, throttle back,” Duncan instructs his wife, making a calming gesture that makes Mary Rose want to bark like crazy. Like Daisy.

  Dolly goes to say something, bites it back, sighs elaborately, and suddenly the sun comes out. “Look who’s here!”

  It’s Andy-Patrick, strolling toward them in hair-tipped splendour.

  “Well, hello, stranger!” says their father, gripping the table, rising, whacking him on the shoulder. Andy-Pat leans down to his mother, who hugs him tightly then pretends to slap him.

  He gives her a chocolate Scrabble game.

  “Where the heck did you find something like that?” Duncan smiles broadly.

  “Let’s all play, come on!” cries Dolly.

  “I don’t know if you have time before your train,” says killjoy Mary Rose.

  “We’ve got time,” says Andy-Patrick.

  “Wait now,” says Dolly, unwrapping the game, “I thought this was—oh, I’m all confused. I thought this was, this isn’t the, this is, this isn’t in German, or isn’t it?”

  Sister and brother hesitate in unison, as though syntactically stalled in the effort to sort out which of their mother’s questions is answerable.

  “Why would it be in German?” asks Duncan, as though trapped in a play by Ionesco.

  “I gave you the German Scrabble, Mum,” says Mary Rose.

  “What’s the difference?” says Duncan.

  “There are umlauts in German,” says Mary Rose, “as well as the classical extra letter—”

  “It’s German chocolate,” quips Andy-Pat, helping with the plastic wrap.

  “You gave me a German Scrabble, didn’t you, Mary Rose?”

  “That’s right, for Christmas one year.”

  “Why?” asks Dolly.

  “Because … we lived there.”

  “I know we lived there—” Dolly sounds petulant.

  “Temper down now,” says Duncan.

  “Don’t tell me to temper down.”

  “Would you like more tea, Mum?”

  “Tea nothing, listen to me now.”

  For a moment, Mary Rose’s mother is there. The one who cast her out. The one who always walked faster than she could, who got an extra ten percent off everything and always had room for one more at the table. The one who swept into her hospital room in a leopard print coat and hat and turned the figure on the bed back into Mary Rose with one bold look.

  “Mum, I gave you the German Scrabble game because I was born there.”

  “No, Mary Rose, you were born in Winnipeg.”

  Andy-Pat glances up from the chocolate game board.

  “No, Mum. That was Other Mary Rose.”

  Dolly’s eyes narrow, her mouth forms a small Oh.

  “I’m the second Mary Rose, Mum. The first one died.”

  “Did she?” Dolly’s face slackens. Not quite sad clown. Perplexed. “Why? What did I do to her?”

  Mary Rose watches darkness opening up behind her mother’s face; not the rolling thunderhead of days gone by, but a steadily oncoming darkness, close to the ground. “Mum, you didn’t do anything. It was the Rh factor, do you remember what that is?”

  “Of course I do, dear, I’m a nurse.”

  Andy-Patrick says, “Who wants to play?”

  “That’s what happened to the others too,” says Mary Rose.

  “And what happened to you, Mary Rose?”

  “… I don’t know, Mum. Did something happen to me?”

  “I did something to you, what was it now?”

  Dolly’s brow contracts, the corners of her mouth turn up with effort, like a toddler on the potty. Mary Rose stays very still, lest she startle her mother off the scent of whatever memory is nosing onto the path. In the Black Forest. Dolly’s lips part. Then, finally, “I guess it’s gone.” She leans back in her seat and chuckles. “Your mother’s losing her marbles, Mary Rose. Dunc? Dunc’re you asleep, dear?”

  “I musta bin.” He blinks, but does not meet her gaze. Andy-Patrick places chocolate tiles on chocolate trays.

  Her mother has so much unmoored guilt, she is ready to believe she baked her own children into pies. Truth is not going to come this way. Will not yield to direct inquisition. Is unspeakable. The whole fabric of Mary Rose’s life is stained with the dye of what can never be stated, a skein fr
om which she spun stories while she still could—fee-fi-fo-fum, ready or not here I come, can you guess my name? If you are going to forgive, you have to forgive what you don’t know. What you can only half see. The rest is dark matter, exerting a pull, making itself known only by the degree to which you wobble off course. Because you don’t get the whole story.

  Love is blind. Forgiveness is blind in one eye.

  “I don’t remember, Mum.”

  Dolly reaches out and places a hand on Mary Rose’s cheek. Gentle. Warm.

  “I love you, Mary Rose.”

  Your mother is leaving. Learn her face.

  “I love you too, Mum.”

  She has said it from the Tim’s and from the concourse outside the Tim’s; from the PATH and the train station above it, from the top of the CN Tower and out beyond transmission range. She has said it from a story long ago and far away across an ocean; from a living room with a coffee table and a couch and a balcony. And she knows, across the miles of underwater cable, through mists of anaesthetic, behind walls of glass and within a cave on a sunny day, from before she was born and after she died, as the message rises from one side of the bolted Formica table, ascends to the blue, the black, the forever, and descends to the other side where her mother sits, that it is true.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “Because I’m grateful to be here.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Andy-Patrick is staring at the game board. Duncan’s hand is resting on Dolly’s; his, parchmenty with age and pale with a dusting of freckles, the tip of his ring finger gone; hers, light brown and lined like seasoned wood. So many miles …

  It occurs to Mary Rose that this is the first time, outside infancy, that she has cried in front of her father. Then it occurs to her that it is the second time, because there was that time in the bathtub … It is not that she forgot—it is more a trick of filing; as though she had tossed the bathtub memory on the hall table along with the mail twenty-three years ago and there it has lain, unregarded, like Poe’s purloined letter.

  Suddenly Dolly looks straight at her.

  “I know about your mail situation, Mary Rose.” She opens her purse, and withdraws the Living with Christ pamphlet. “How do you like that, I never mailed it at all. I’ve been carrying it around this whole time.” She takes the brown “Sunday Offering” envelope from between its pages and hands it to Mary Rose.