Ann-Marie MacDonald - Adult Onset

Ring-ring!

•

Her daughter arrives home from school.

“Are you feeling better, Mummy?”

“Look after your sister.”

At her age she was already helping to raise the younger ones. Her own mother was a married woman at twelve.

Before her husband gets home from work, she dresses, puts on her lipstick and steps into a pair of pumps. “Come help me with supper, Maureen.” Then she takes a rag and cleans the tiny handprints and mucousy smears from the glass door to the balcony.

He comes in and kisses her. “Boy, something sure smells good, Missus!” He tosses his uniform hat to the hall tree hook and catches the little one up in his arms—“Hey Mister, how’s my little scallywag?”

“Maureen,” says Dolly. “Set the table.”

•

“Maggie, it’s time to go, please put the marker down and come to Mumma.”

Maggie does. Wow. Then she goes, without being asked, to the top of the four steps that lead from the kitchen down to the back door and sits smiling at Mary Rose. There is something a little disconcerting in that smile almost … mocking. If it were Matthew, Mary Rose would describe it as mischievous. Thus armed with awareness of her own double standard, she smiles back and stations herself on a lower step. Daisy pushes past them both and sits expectantly, tail sweeping the doormat in anticipation of a walk. Mary Rose takes one small foot in one hand and one winter boot in the other — they will pick up Matthew and stop at the post office on the way home and submit the form, which reminds her, she’ll need to grab it from the kitchen table before they go out the door — and goes to slip it on, but Maggie wriggles free and seizes a ladybug boot from the rack. Mary Rose decides not to insist. It is warm enough for rubber boots, indeed it’s balmy out.

“Okay, Maggie, but wear these boots instead.” Durable, tasteful L.L. Bean boots with reflectors.

“Not these boots, Mumma.”

“Yes, these are your rain boots, Maggie.”

“I will wear Sitdy boots.”

Another full sentence. Very good.

“No, sweetheart.”

She takes hold again of Maggie’s foot and is rewarded with a sharp kick.

“NO!”

Breathe .

When Matthew was this age, Mary Rose was like Daisy: he could poke her in the eye, pull her tail, nothing riled her. Maggie is a different story. And Mary Rose is a different dog. “Maggie, you may not kick Mumma.”

“Me may!”

Kick .

The trick is not to mind it. She has seized the little foot once more and manages now to get the Bean boot onto it, but as she reaches for the other boot, Maggie kicks off the first and looks at her with frank and infuriating glee. It is a look of entitlement that makes Mary Rose see red — how dare this child assume anything about the safety of this world or her right to the good things of it? Maggie laughs and grabs the ladybug boot. Mary Rose grabs it back. Maggie kicks her—

“STOP IT!” Mary Rose whacks the boot against the step, grazing the little legs. Maggie freezes. Daisy barks, her tail still going.

Breathe .

“I will let go of your foot now, Maggie, but you must not kick.”

She lets go.

Maggie does not kick.

“Good, Maggie.”

“Sitdy boots.”

Mary Rose sighs. If she gives in now, she will have taught her child to get her way by kicking. On the other hand, maybe she ought to reward the child for not kicking just now. She should have dispatched the “Sitdy” boots to the Goodwill the moment her parents left in January. Shiny red with big black eyes and antennae, ladybug, ladybug, fly away home!

“Okay.” She holds the ladybugs just out of reach. “What do you say?”

“Peace?”

She hands them over.

“Sank you, Mumma.”

“You’re welcome.”

She resists helping, aware that Maggie’s determination to dress herself is developmentally appropriate. She waits. And reflects that child rearing resembles war: long stretches of boredom punctuated by all hell breaking loose. At last the boot is on.

“Good, Maggie. Let Mumma do the other one.”

“No sank you.”

A War and Peace later, the boot is on.

“Wake up, Daisy, we’re going now.”

Maggie stands and smiles up at her proudly. How could Mary Rose have seen anything but variations on a theme of joy in her child’s smile? A block of sunlight has barged through the back-door window and it softens upon contact with the child, making of staticky stray hairs a halo for her toddler-plump face, shiny red mouth, green lights in her eyes. She has a dimple. The boots are on the wrong feet.

Why can’t Mary Rose enjoy the moment? This is the sweet time. She knows it. Can see it from the outside. Mother and child on the steps. Look, Mumma, I did it, Me-self . The mother is healthy, youthful. It is a nice house. It is a nice day. A nice dog. Just add feelings.

The boots will get bigger. The little shoes in the rack will give way to ever-larger shoes. Increments of time marching away to adulthood and beyond, then gone. Know it now. Feel it.

Dead. Flat and grey, like sheet metal pressing against her chest where spongy feelings ought to be. Are other people just pretending to have feelings, she wonders? Or do they really feel them? Everything is fine — shiny ladybug, silky head, mother on the steps. But the mother has a blank look on her face. Smile: Tick . Now get behind it. It is only a moment. And the next, and the next, and the next, passing, frame by frame by … Can you catch one of those moments, catch it like the window of a passing train, catch one and get into Time?

But the train disappears, the prairie is empty but for the tracks, silent now, though still hot to the touch. Vibrating.

•

As long as she stays lying down, nothing bad will happen.

Bang. Bang, bang .

•

They were halfway to the school when Maggie insisted on walking, which was, of course, another good sign, but anyone who has ever walked from A to B with a toddler knows how non-linear it can be, not to mention hard on the back. Now Mary Rose buckles her safely back into the stroller as they wait to cross the speedway that is Spadina Avenue.

She joins the lively scene outside the old rectory that houses Matthew’s Montessori school, and chats with the other parents and nannies milling about. Several, like her, are on foot with dogs and younger siblings, some are on bicycles, others in vans and environmentally sensitive SUVs. There’s Keith — Kevin? — again. He is approaching her, smiling. Mary Rose quickly turns to the mom next to her and asks out of the side of her mouth, “Is it Keith or Kevin?”

“Philip,” says Saleema.

“Mary Rose, sorry I accosted you like that, you must get sick of people asking when the third one’s coming out.”

She smiles back. “Not at all, Philip, it’s … nice to be asked.”

He is a cell biologist.

“Why did I think you were a cartoonist?” she says.

He looks at her oddly. “I wanted to be a cartoonist.”

Philip rides his bike year-round, and Mary Rose is familiar with his nose in every season, sunburnt in summer, frost-nipped and drippy in winter as he hauls his twin girls in a covered kid cart. Maybe he is on sabbatical. Or maybe he is a stay-at-home dad … making snacks, taking whacks, wondering if he’ll ever get any me-time, wishing his wife would pay just a little more attention to him and just a little less to the children when she gets home in the evening … Which of them requires the back rub?

“I can’t wait to read it,” he says. “My whole book club is ready to pounce.”

Mary Rose is speaking with a heterosexual man who is in a book club. O brave new world that has such people in it!