Ann-Marie MacDonald - Adult Onset

Mary Rose pushes her sweet so-young children on the swings … A woman pushes her children on the swings while her dog dances and barks. That woman is happy .

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She gets up.

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Matthew’s whale is pinned to the corkboard next to the foot calendar — April’s watercolour is a tulip. Mary Rose makes supper while he makes construction sounds amid a rising tower of oversized Lego on the kitchen floor — he is more than ready to manipulate smaller shapes, but with his sister not yet three, the household is some months away from stocking toys suitable for choking. Maggie, rather than pursuing her career in demolition, is in the dining room, bent quietly over something at the craft table — Mary Rose’s gaze flicks to the knife block, but the scissors are safely stowed.

She joins her, and looks over her shoulder. “What are you doing, Maggie?”

“Witing.”

Swirls and hieroglyphs … the child is using a real pen — from Mary Rose’s datebook. A mosaic is taking shape beneath her little fist, coiling graphemes embedded in squares and spirals reminiscent of Hundertwasser, if Hundertwasser had decorated Egyptian tombs. Mary Rose feels her lips part as though to read aloud what is written there, but its meaning remains beneath the surface. She watches, somewhat awed, determining to be more like Hil, who allows the children to go through her purse and play with her phone and lipstick. Mary Rose does not have a “purse.” She has a bag with a different zippered pocket for everything — large enough to accommodate a manuscript should that ever become necessary again. Along with an array of pragmatica, she carries a fountain pen that she keeps meaning to fill. She ought probably to carry a Bic pen, having read it is possible to perform an emergency tracheotomy with one. Hil would scoff, but Mary Rose knows that most serious accidents happen in the home.

“Good work, Maggie.” She is so focused. Candace is here only five or six hours a week these days but it’s paying off. Mary Rose wishes she could hire Candace to look after her too — is there such a thing as nannies for grown-ups?

Of course there are, they’re called therapists.

“Sank you, Mumma.”

She returns to the kitchen, wondering if she would be capable now of witing a book with a pen. How did the Victorians do it? They went blind and died young.

She pours a Scotch and turns on CBC radio. This is … As It Happens … She dances a little, nerdily, to the familiar theme music as she tips the plate of tamari-marinated tofu cubes into the frying pan … for Tuesday, April second … and picks up the phone to call her sister in Victoria … but there is no dial tone.

“Hello?”

“Rosie?”

“Mo? I just picked up the phone to call you.”

“I just dialed you.”

“That’s so weird.”

It isn’t that weird, it happens a lot.

“How are you, Rosie Posie?”

“I’m great, I’m cooking tofu.”

“Oo, yuck.”

“I know, it’s for the kids.”

Maureen counsels inmates, parolees and burnt-out corrections officials. But who will counsel the counsellors? Duncan posed the question way back when Maureen switched her major from cartography to criminology. She did not start working outside the home, however, until her youngest was in high school. Now Maureen is the unassuming white lady at the back of the sweat lodge, the lone woman at the weekly halfway house potluck; she sings in her church choir, gardens, quilts, belongs to two book clubs and goes to Vegas twice a year with her husband. She sees the occasional ghost and sometimes continues conversations with Mary Rose that have begun telepathically.

Mo bucked the trend of her generation by marrying young and having five children. Now she is a grandmother with a boomeranging son in the basement.

“How’s Rory?”

“Oh, he’s doing pretty well, he’s working on his websites, he’s been great with Mum and Dad.”

As if Rory were a therapy dog, thinks Mary Rose. But didn’t families used to make room for that kind of thing? The homebodies who made themselves indispensable. Is Rory a homebody or a shut-in? Contented or depressed? Maybe he will fool them all and make a fortune inventing a computer game.

“Mo, do you know when Mum and Dad are going to be leaving Victoria? I’m supposed to meet their train when it stops over here.”

“I’m not sure, Mum’s misplaced the tickets.”

“You’re kidding, not again.”

“I’m actually a little concerned about them, Rosie.”

“I know, do you think Mum’s starting to lose it?” Mary Rose tops up her finger of Scotch.

“Poor Mummy, she’s been quite vague all winter.”

Maureen has always called their parents Mummy and Daddy, unlike her and Andy-Patrick, for whom they have always been Mum and Dad — if either ever sported a y, it was shed like a tail and never grew back.

“I know. She couldn’t remember the difference between Winnipeg and Calgary.” She sips guiltily.

“A lot of people are in the same boat and we’re not asking them to go for a cognitive assessment.”

Mary Rose registers the rebuke and wonders why it is that, even when she is agreeing with her older sister, she so often feels she has given offence. Yet Mo spends half her waking life with offenders. She shakes the pan and the tofu sputters. “They’re probably just in her purse.”

Mo chuckles. “I’m scared to look in there.”

Mary Rose chuckles back. “I know, God knows what might be coiled at the bottom!”

“Oh, I don’t mean that, Rosie, I just mean it would be like an archaeological dig, we’d need to get out stick pins and little labels and call in the British Museum.”

“We might find the Elgin Marbles or a piece of the True Cross.”

“We might find Jimmy Hoffa,” says Mo.

Mary Rose laughs out loud and wishes she’d said that. But then Mo might not have found it funny. She opts to push her luck. “Maybe Mum should have an MRI.”

“Why?”

“I was just thinking, do you think it’s possible she might actually be experiencing changes in her … you know that part of the brain, what’s it called, the um, the memory lobe — you know, it sounds like an endangered species?”

“No.”

She has heard a crimp in her sister’s voice. It is important not to upset Mo. She shoulders everything and it has begun to tell. She is in remission from an autoimmune disorder that the doctors finally labelled “polymyalgia” because everything hurt and they had no idea what else to call it. Stick “poly” in front of something and you know you’ve got an imposter on your hands — why not call it “everything-hurtsia”? Whatever it was, the disease grew tired of waiting for someone to guess its name and slunk away. But who knows what might awaken it?

“Good, I was hoping you’d say that, Mo. I was beginning to get worried, especially after their last visit here, Mum was so nice ! Ha.”

“Mummy has always been nice.”

Is Maureen on drugs? Or is she just … nicer than Mary Rose?

“Don’t worry, Rosie, I don’t have dementia. It’s just that Mummy is mellowing, and that used to be considered a normal part of aging …” Is Mo choking up? Oh no.

“Mo, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“It’s okay, it’s just that I remember a different Mummy than you do, Mary Rose,” sniff , “and I’m sorry that you didn’t have … what I had.”

Until I came along and wrecked it . “I know, Mo, she was, she’s still, they’re still, they’re really sweet.”

“Don’t be worried.”

“I’m not, I’m just …” irked . “She can’t seem to remember when Alexander was born or exactly when he died. Neither can Dad, but Mum keeps on—” don’t say “looping” —“returning to it. As though she gets caught in a thought-snare, and the harder she struggles to remember, the tighter the … loop gets.”