Ann-Marie MacDonald - Adult Onset

“Good news,” said Dad. “You’re going to have an operation.” The miracle was accomplished. Rise and go forth!

•

This section of the Canadian military cemetery is reserved for dependants — wives and children — a tranquil corner, closer to the forest, dotted with stones and crosses, none older than the Peace itself. There is no snow, though it’s less than a week til Christmas, but the ground is hard and dull; he carries the casket across the welted grass, staring straight ahead — the mass of firs less green than grey, a dense blur.

He stands looking into the small grave. He can see roots, severed white, the earth still a living network for the trees that have been cleared in recent years to make this section of the cemetery. He hands over the casket, and they bury his son.

•

The mirror tells her there is indeed no bruise, just the faint green vein that snakes at right angles beneath the scars and disappears round the back of her arm. Mary Rose has come to see her scars as a guarantee that, should she get amnesia and wander off without her tweezers one distant demented day, she nonetheless, like Odysseus, will be recognized if she makes it back home — unibrow notwithstanding.

She lies in the dark, thinking about Hil thinking about her … but her mind keeps wandering. Has her libido fallen temporary victim to motherhood, or is this perimenopausal decline? — the descent into “even more meaningful intimacy,” to quote the earnest book that her sister Maureen sent her. I don’t want meaningful intimacy, I want sex . Or is her inability to concentrate an effect of the cobwebby plaques that even now are colonizing her cortex? Hil reassured her, and it is true: what does it matter precisely where out west she is? Mary Rose’s world is a circumscribed domestic one at the moment, a multitasky maelstrom wherein Hil is a mere binary function: here/not here. Still … it was an odd mistake. She should google it. No. That really would be demented. To google “early onset Alzheimer’s” in the middle of the night with two sleeping children and an asthmatic pit bull. She switches on the light, reaching for a book from the stack on her bedside table — she is a slow reader but always has four or five on the go — is that a sign too? She tries to focus on Drama of the Gifted Child , but her eyes rove the page. She ought to call her family doctor in the morning and see about booking a memory test — the kind where they ask you what the date is and who’s the prime minister … although the latter is something she’d prefer to forget. She trades childhood anguish for Guide to Healthy Lesbian Relationships and dozes off.

•

She was discharged from the base hospital this morning. Her husband opens the door to their apartment and extends his hand for her to precede him. He is carrying her bag. She is wearing the moonstone ring to please him. Her big girl is sitting on the couch in a velvet party dress, her hair in awkward braids parted crookedly down the middle. “You look lovely, Maureen.”

“We kept the tree up for you, Mummy.”

She opens her arms and her daughter comes to her. She tries not to let the child see she is crying.

“Mummy, are you sad because the baby boy died?”

“Don’t think about that, now,” says Duncan.

“I’m crying because I’m so happy to see you, Mo-Mo.” She releases the child and stumbles, her husband steadies her.

“I’ve been lying down too much.” She smiles. She is thinner, but she’s done her hair, and has her lipstick on. A record is playing on the hi-fi, Nat King Cole. On the coffee table are the silver tea service and a plate of store-bought ginger cookies. “Isn’t this nice,” she says. She’s not old, she’ll have another baby. Maybe even another boy .

In the corner of the living room by the glass door to the balcony stands the tree decked with paper chains and, atop it, a homemade star. On the floor, a scattering of dry needles encircles the stand. She looks at her husband. He is pale. No one has been feeding him. “Mumma could feed an army on one chicken,” she says.

He looks at a loss for a moment, then says, “Do you want to see the baby?”

What is he telling her? She feels sick. It is her badness coming out in her if she is crazy now, and it serves her right. Is she awake? The baby died .

He is staring at her. He is going to send me away . He turns toward the hallway and calls, “Armgaard.”

And with that, she understands what he means by “baby”. She watches as the same German woman, with her neat bun and capable arms, emerges from the hallway and sets down a child whose hair, at two, is not long enough to braid. It is black and thick like Dolly’s own. The child looks at Dolly and smiles. Dolly sees something in that smile … something bad is looking out from those big dark eyes … mocking her. Dolly frowns, already asking God to remove the thought from her mind — no wonder she is so bad at having babies, she does not even deserve the one she has. The child hides its face in the German woman’s apron.

“Geh zu Mutty,” says the woman with a little push.

“Nein!” yells the child.

Her husband laughs and swings the baby up into his arms. “Go ahead, Mister, give Mummy a kiss.” She clings to him, screaming, as he tilts her toward her mother. “She missed you,” he says.

But Dolly knows the truth. Her baby still doesn’t like her.

•

She wakes an hour or so later with an old clammy feeling: guilt — as though she had killed someone or molested a child and it slipped her mind. A brew of shame and pathos, it feels like a car crash in her stomach … dead father at the wheel, head flung back, mother’s face obscured, pregnant belly buckled against the dash, innocent family belongings pitifully strewn, exposed. The feeling used to greet her regularly upon waking, her own brand of morning sickness. She gets out of bed to pee — and a good thing too, because she is bleeding again. She rifles the drawer for a super jumbo tampon — so stout is it, one hardly knows whether to insert it or strap it on. She is suddenly roasting hot. Downstairs, she makes her way across the darkened living room, gouges her bare foot on a piece of Lego, knocks over Tickle Me Elmo who busts out singing, and turns the furnace off. It ceases with a sigh. In the kitchen, she gets out a box of ancient grains that failed to prevent the extinction of an entire people, and opens her Cooks Illustrated … “Rethinking Macaroni and Cheese” …

Andy-Pat gave her a fridge magnet of a dead clown with X s for eyes that says, “Can’t sleep, clowns will eat me.” She gave him one of a haggard cartoon train slouched over a beer at a bar, “The little engine that didn’t give a rat’s ass.” Just because there are no dents in Andy-Patrick’s fridge does not mean he is less dysfunctional than she is — and just because he once got the belt does not mean Dad was worse than Mum.

True, Mum was often funny. She tumbled backward off reclining chairs, did bellyflops from the wharf when the rest of the womenfolk were beached in stretch pants on the shore; committed whopping faux pas and was always the first to laugh at herself. But her rage was not funny. Unvariegated with humour. Unmarbled with the fat of mirth. “C’mere till I smash you!”

Besides, Mary Rose was merely following orders: her father always said, “Get mad at it.” Whether a math problem, hurt feelings or parallel parking. It worked for a long time.

Her mother always said, “Do your best. Then do better than your best.” The immigrant credo.

She threw the stroller at the fridge because she couldn’t find her yoga mat. Then she phoned Hil in the middle of rehearsal to ask where it was. Hil said, “It’s probably right in front of you.” And it was. It’s their joke now. Whenever she can’t find something, that is usually where it is.