Ann-Marie MacDonald - Adult Onset

It is turning out to be a good day, the chill grey notwithstanding. Maggie is being really good … a real “little buddy.” Mary Rose decides not to confront her with the broken unicorn. Of course she covets her brother’s special things, she may even have broken it on purpose. She is two: capable of anything, guilty of nothing. Still, it hurts her heart when she thinks of Matthew this morning, shielding his sister, pretending he is the one who broke the unicorn.

They amble past a small art gallery and a knot of grizzled homeless men out front of St. Christopher House, to the lights—“What colour is the light, Maggie?”

“Geen.”

“Good!”

They enter the salon, athrob with an unfamiliar song that has mugged a familiar one … a folk song in whips and chains. She surveys the line of severely hip stylists, scissors nibbling at customers’ napes, blow-dryers trained on glossy heads — he is not in sight, he must be in the bathroom.

The Goth receptionist listens to Mary Rose with an empty expression. Is she stoned? Perhaps she recognizes her — she is young enough to be a fan. Her neck piercing is oddly alluring. She swivels her raven head and announces, “This lady’s looking for her brother.”

Mary Rose used to live over the Legion in an actual loft — not a “loft conversion”—on this strip before it was cool, she did radical street mime and wore a biker jacket through the winter in the days when winter was cold, she is not anyone’s “this lady”— you suburban twit, you’ll live to regret that tattoo .

The girl turns back to Mary Rose. “You just missed him, ma’am.”

What did she expect? She kicked the football again and wound up flat on her back — her brother has probably already gone home with the stylist. He may have dropped Mary Rose’s name and scored. It would not be the first time.

“Here we go home again, jiggedy jig!” she sings as she buckles Maggie back into the car seat.

“No!”

Maggie does not want to go home, she wants to see Uncle Andy-Pat. Mary Rose pulls out into traffic — she ought to call someone for an impromptu play date. Like Sue — but then she’d have to listen to her talk about her trek over the West Coast Trail with her husband, Steve, and, somehow, their two kids and the baby. The windshield is suddenly rattling with hail. Maggie stops screaming. “Maggie, look, the sky is falling.” No . “Not really, love, it is hailing.”

“Helling!” Exactly .

They could drop by Early Years — the weather is foul enough — but she might run into the happy English child-deserter. Maybe they really should drop in on Renée, she doesn’t smoke in the house anymore and the vagina sculptures have almost all sold — she tried to get Mary Rose to “sit” for one shortly before they broke up, but something told her to decline; proof there really is such a thing as a guardian angel. She dials her cell while driving but puts it on speaker.

“Hi, still feel like doing some action painting?”

“What’s that? Oh. Gee, Fluff, I’m just so tired suddenly, I could barely pick up the phone, I thought you were the cleaning lady calling back. I had to cancel, I can’t handle the stimulation.”

“Are you okay? Do you want me to drop something by?”

“Nooo.” The resigned upper register of the mild invalid. “I just need some downtime to recharge creatively.” She’s in bed with the cats, the new Alice Munro and a box of Timbits. Fair enough.

A glance in the rear-view mirror reveals Maggie asleep. “Maggie, wake up! Wake up, sweetheart!” If she naps now, she won’t nap this afternoon. “Maggie, where’s Daisy?!”

She watches as Maggie opens her eyes and registers in one bleak existential blink that there is no Dog. Her face — and perhaps, too, her faith — crumples, and she cries. It was a dirty trick, but it worked. “Daisy’s at home, sweetheart, waiting for us.”

A piteous wail rises to a howl when they make the turn onto Bathurst Street and head north.

She turns up the defogger and remembers the mulch. She’ll have to get out there and spread it over the garden before the frost hits. Then she remembers it is April. Can she blame climate change? Perhaps it is a sign that something is cooking in the back of her mind. The third in the trilogy, gestating … shifting through Time … She has the sudden conviction that it will have something to do with time travel … It makes perfect sense: from Other wheres to Other whens …

She feels around in the glove compartment for a pen. In the rear-view mirror she sees Maggie, tear-stained but calm, with a crayon in her fist.

“Maggie, give Mumma the crayon.”

“No.”

She reaches into the back, her hand like the head of an anaconda looking for prey. Her phone rings: Captain A.P. MacKinnon . It is no longer legal to use a cellphone while driving in Ontario, but she answers — after all, it’s a cop calling.

“Where the heck are you? I went all the way down to the hair salon.” He does not answer. She hears the whoosh of ambient reality at his end.

“A&P? Hello? What’s that sound, are you there?”

He is gulping air.

“Are you crying?” Oh my God, it’s Mum, it’s Dad, this is the phone call — she always thought it would be Maureen breaking the news. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing.” He gasps. “I don’t … I can’t …”

“Andy-Patrick, breathe.” No one has died. He is having a panic attack. “Where are you?”

“My car.”

“You shouldn’t be talking while driving.” She swerves to avoid a cyclist and turns onto her street. Maggie renews her protest. “I’m not talking to you till you pull over.”

“Okay. I’ve stopped.”

“Are you in park?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Now what’s wrong?”

He has been triggered — by what, he does not know — and cannot find the off switch. Maureen has her comfy autoimmune disorder, while the two younger MacKinnons are united in pointless panic: the garden-variety plunge into an “I”-free zone of bowel-searing fear. For no reason. Occasionally accompanied by visual phenomena, elevated heart rate and esophageal spasm, some restrictions may apply, see website for details . “Where are you?” she says. “I’m coming.”

“I’m on the 401 at Cobourg.”

He must have flown! “I can’t come there. I have to pick up Matthew at noon.”

She turns into her driveway and puts the car in park, jams the phone between her face and shoulder, leans into the back seat to undo the five-point restraint buckle, and Maggie knuckle-punches her in the ear. She carries her brother and her child to the back door, both of them crying.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with me, Mary Rose, I’m going to get out of my car and walk into the road, I can’t — I can’t — can’t—

“Stay in the car.” Six lanes of superhighway. “Do you hear me? Answer me.”

“Okay.”

“Now breathe through your nose, it’s going to be okay.”

She listens to his convulsive breathing as she makes it inside and up the four steps to the kitchen. Maggie allows herself to be consoled by Daisy, who goes to work on the salty toddler cheeks, while Mary Rose goes to the fridge for her daughter’s drug of choice, mango juice — it’s organic, but the mangoes come from China, so …? “Andy-Pat, are you still in counselling? Are you still seeing that therapist? What was her name?”

“Amber.”

“Is she a real therapist? She sounds like a stripper.”

He chuckles. That’s better.

“She’s real,” he says.

“Are you still seeing her?”

“No. Yeah, but …”

He has slept with her — oh for God’s sake — Mary Rose does not want to know, she wants to hunt Amber down and get her tax money back. Pin it to the corkboard next to the dead clown magnet: Amber, five thousand dollars .