Ann-Marie MacDonald - Adult Onset

She thinks Renée may have put on a few pounds, but she looked good just now, she has grown her hair, she looks a bit like Carole King if Carole King wore a blue boiled-wool caftan and jewellery made of river rocks and computer parts. Mary Rose and Renée have been on cordial terms for years. Even Hilary has overcome her allergy to Mary Rose’s ex. Renée is someone who can make art out of anything, but when they were together she was also someone who couldn’t make anything into a job. Mary Rose was racked with guilt when she finally left, convinced Renée would fall apart, drink herself to death and wind up homeless. Spare a loonie? Renée got a full-time job at a community college and bought a condo. She kept the cats, one of which is still alive at eighteen.

Mary Rose brakes at the lights and considers heading across to Honest Ed’s, the flashing neon emporium where “only the floors are crooked!” But she would need more time for that, not to mention a GPS to find her way out again. She crosses the street and hesitates before Secrets from Your Sister. Professional bra fitters with nary a gnarly old lady in sight to bully you into the right brassiere — the word itself a burpy bugle-bleat, herald of humiliation and Aunt Sadie palpating Mary Rose’s eleven-year-old chest, “She’s gettin’ bumps, Dolly!” Mary Rose locks her bike — she is a middle-aged, very married mother, there is nothing remotely suggestive in a spontaneous bra fitting mid-week mid-morning. She could use a sturdy new bustenhalter , as they say in Germany.

She enters the store with its savvy range of lingerie and everyday “intimate wear”—she brought her own mother here in January. An efficient young woman in heels and a topknot secured by chopsticks greets her with a smile of recognition and Mary Rose prepares to receive serenely the forthcoming gush of admiration along with the inevitable query, “When’s the third one coming out?” But the young woman says, “You’re Dolly’s daughter.”

“That’s right.”

“How is she?”

When she has finished bringing the young woman up to date on her mother, she is told, “I’ll need more than five minutes to do a proper fitting on you.” She turns an appraising eye on Mary Rose’s chest as though seeing right through to the faded, ill-fitting sports bra. “I’ll book you in.” As though for a procedure .

“That’s okay, I’ll pop by later.” Pop . Her mother’s word.

She tries to flee but is snagged by a lacy confection as ornate as it is insubstantial. Hil would look over-the-top in this. Worth its weightlessness in back rubs …

“That cut would be great on you,” says the girl, “you’re on the small side and super fit.”

“Not for me. My partner.”

The young woman does not bat an eye. “Your wife will love it.” Mary Rose looks at her sharply, but clearly no irony has been intended in the young woman’s use of the W-word. Mary Rose is suddenly aware of having missed a beat, finding herself once again scrambling to keep up with a world she helped to change.

“Doesn’t my … wife have to be here to get fitted?”

“No, it’s for you.”

It all happens so fast. Suddenly Mary Rose is back on the street with a tissue-wrapped girly sex costume. She stuffs it into her fleece-lined L.L. Bean three-season jacket, hops on her bike and rides with renewed energy up Howland Avenue against the flow of one-way cars.

Aunt Sadie had an arranged marriage that blossomed into love twenty-five years in when she threw a knife at Uncle Leo. He ducked. The relationship with Renée lasted well beyond the best-before date and likely would have ended sooner had Dolly and Duncan not been so opposed to it and all that it represented. Renée saw her through the worst of it; they weathered the storm together, tenderly at first in their apartment, then in their own house, neither of which Dolly and Duncan ever visited. As a card-carrying feminist, Mary Rose ought to have clued in after the first time Renée smacked her. But there were extenuating circumstances … alcohol, professional recognition (Mary Rose’s), depression (Renée’s) … as well as Mary Rose’s maddening capacity to find fault with someone just when she had managed to get all their attention. Smack . And to be fair, Hil had smacked her too, once or twice in the early days. Mary Rose could get anyone to hit her. She could probably have got Mother Teresa to hit her.

She lets go of the handlebars and relaxes, surfing the speed bumps through the Annex with its big old Victorian houses. Someone in a Volvo drives by, it looks like Margaret Atwood. It is Margaret Atwood.

She puts her bike in the shed, enters her house and tiptoes up the back steps to see Candace and Maggie at the small wooden craft table in the corner of the dining room. Candace hands Maggie the cap from a marker and waits while she snaps it into place. It takes ages. Then she hands her another and waits. Maggie is completely focused. Candace, completely calm.

Upstairs in her walk-in closet, she takes the ridiculous bit of fluff from Secrets from Your Sister and hides it behind a pair of brogues in her hanging shoe shelf. It will be safe there until she finds time to return it, first making sure chopstick girl is not on duty.

Downstairs, the message light on the phone is blinking.

“It’s Mum, you’re not there.” Click .

“You’re still not there? Did you get the packeege?” Click .

An automaton. “To claim your prize, press two—”

And one from her old pal, Gigi, in her spicy tones. “Hi, Mister, I’m making a pot of spaghetti, should I bring it to you or do you want to grab the kids and come here?” Gigi must be on hiatus between episodes of the cop show she’s running as production manager — not that wrangling a fictional SWAT team has ever stopped her making a batch of meatballs. It might be fun to get together — then again it might be too demanding to be around someone with a fully functional social life.

She reaches into her pocket to pay her nanny.

“Thanks, Candace, see you next Tuesday.”

“Don’t you need me tomorrow night?”

“Oh yeah, the movie, see you.”

Candace leaves by the back door and Mary Rose goes out the front to check the mailbox. There is no package. There is a letter from Canada Post. She opens it: NOTICE OF SUSPENSION OF HOME DEVILRY. She blinks. DELIVERY. There follows a menu of reasons with corresponding boxes for ticking. DOG ATTACK Tick . She feels her tongue thicken, her esophagus go to glue. Daisy will be seized and destroyed. It is the law. It doesn’t matter that she’s half blind and great with kids, it doesn’t matter that she is old, she’s a pit bull.

What will they tell Matthew? Hil will be devastated, Maggie will grow up grieving and not know why. She wills herself to read on.

Her heart pounds back to life. She has merely to sign the form promising to keep Daisy out of the front yard during delivery hours in order to avoid triggering an inspection by Animal Control. The DOG BITE box is unticked. Thank God.

Pit bulls were once known as “the nanny dog” because they were so good with children. In the seventies, there was a rash of St. Bernards biting kids’ faces off, but no one ever banned them. She signs the form and puts it on a corner of the kitchen table. She and Maggie can drop it at the post office on their way to pick up Matthew from school this afternoon — there’s one at the back of the Shoppers Drug Mart on Bloor. No doubt the packeege is being held there. She’ll be able to phone her mother and break the latest loop before having to endure it in person when she meets her parents’ train next week. This week? When, precisely, are they coming?