Ann-Marie MacDonald - Adult Onset

“Kitty …” called Aunt Fiona. “Shall I come up, love?”

Kitty went to rise but found, somewhat to her perturbation, that she could not. She had been sitting cross-legged so long, perhaps it was a case of pins and needles. But there was no tingling in her toes and when she pinched her legs she felt it. She tried again to get up, tried reaching for the corner of the desk, but it was as if she could see her own phantom arms lifting and her phantom legs standing up, only to collapse back into her inert body still seated on the carpet. Paralyzed.

She was frightened now. What if she opened her mouth to scream, and nothing came out? She did not dare try, knowing that to confirm her fear would be to unlock a terror that she suddenly recognized like a long-lost enemy, and which she could smell like electricity. She looked down at the carpet. Her secret. It had never failed to soothe her and she turned to it now, perhaps for the last time, knowing that once St. Gilda’s got hold of her, she wouldn’t need magic carpets anymore, there would be neither visions nor nightmares, and if she could have, she would have run downstairs there and then and begged her father to drive her straight to the school, pausing only to grab a hairbrush from Ravi’s astonished hand.

But she could not move. And sure enough, the scarlet threads that formed the stealthy K began to shimmer and she relaxed her gaze, allowing the colours to bleed and blur. It was working … the buzz arose behind her eyes and dripped like honey down her back, the carpet pulsed and rippled, and she experienced a soothing sense of being held by something infinitely more restful than sleep.

She called it magic but knew it to be purely scientific — something to do with her “visual cortex, likely the occipital lobe.” That is what the doctor had said. It wasn’t a secret that she saw the carpet move — the secret was that she did it on purpose. There was no point trying to explain why, even to her father, because it was indescribable. Besides, she didn’t want him to feel there was something missing in her life with him, should she succeed in explaining how wonderful it was in there. Sometimes she thought Ravi had an inkling.

When she had drunk her fill of solace, buoyed by colour and motion, she breathed, waiting for the waves to subside, for the blur to resolve back to pattern and for the whole to resume the solidity of an ordinary rug …

“Kitty? There you are, it’s time to go, love.”

Aunt Fiona’s voice was closer now; time to come back …

But the final pulsation resulted not in the usual contraction of the carpet, but a sudden expansion in which every thread became visible and proceeded gracefully to untwine from its mate in a slow pinwheel. The whole dissolved into specks of light like stars until all that remained were two bare threads. Coiled but no longer touching, they hovered poised like serpents, then began slowly to reverse their motion. Likewise, the stardust around them set to revolving counter-clockwise as the two threads grew closer and closer to one another …

“Kitty, are you all right?”

Then Ravi’s voice, “It’s all right, Miss Fiona, don’t touch her.”

Kitty reached into the slow swirl and saw her own hand, silvery and trailing at the edges, shot through with motion like the northern lights …

“Dean, come quickly!” cried Aunt Fiona. “She’s having another seizure!”

… and clasped the threads. At that instant, they flew together with a jolt of rare earth magnitude and she felt herself pulled into a vortex of dust and light and frantic blackitude. Along with speed, the pinwheel picked up colour and texture, a colliding scope of threads as the carpet wove itself back together again and accelerated to a tremendous stop.

She was back in the study. Aunt Fiona needn’t worry. Dad needn’t wait. She looked up from the carpet — and straight into her own astonished eyes.

The face was oval like Kitty’s, the nose straight to the point, the lips spare and sure, and the hair a dark mass like hers. And there was no mistaking her own eyes: one blue, the other brown. It was like looking into a mirror, except her — the other “her”—left eye was brown while the right one was blue. These were indeed her own eyes, but … reversed.

“I’ll be right up,” came the female voice from beyond the door. It had to be Aunt Fiona, but she sounded different.

“Where did you come from?” asked Kitty, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I didn’t,” said the other Kitty in a husky tone, more adamant than hers. “You did.”

Impossible, she hadn’t left the room. There was the carpet between her palms, there was the — but no … the scarlet threads that formed her initial were gone. That is, they were still there, but … Was it possible the carpet really had unravelled, then re-ravelled itself back the wrong way? Because in place of a K , there was a definite—

“Jon! There you are, we’re waiting, honey, it’s time to go.” Kitty looked back at her doppelgänger, freshly astonished to realize that she was a he; a fact that seemed downright banal the next instant when, turning to follow the boy’s gaze, she saw, standing in the doorway, large as life, her mother.

Cooks Irritated

She leaves Daisy leashed outside the Starbucks, in her pink fun-fur coat. The snow has melted and it is too warm for the coat, but it makes her look less like a pit bull. Somewhere online Mary Rose could probably buy a pink fun-fur muzzle. A fuzzle.

She manoevers the stroller through the door and looks around for a table. The place is packed. The bag lady with the elephant ankles heaves herself out of a chair and makes for the door. Mary Rose makes their way over to the newly vacated spot, digs a baby wipe out of the diaper bag and runs it over the tabletop and chair before sitting.

She waits. She commits to a latte. “Can I have your name for the cup?”

“No, thank you.”

The young man in the green apron regards her with equal parts surprise and pity. “No problem.” He smiles. Smirks? “You can be smiley face.” And he draws one on her cup. Why is she here? There is a better café across the street — Starbucks’ pro — gay marriage stance notwithstanding.

“Hi!”

She turns warily. Another nice young man in a green apron. “You’re Dolly’s daughter! How is she?”

“She’s great, thanks.” Brittle smile.

His name is Daniel. For some reason, Mary Rose remembers this but has trouble recalling which city her own wife is in — what is this thing called “brain”?

“Smiley face?” chirps the barista.

She slinks over and claims her cup.

Maggie dissects a muffin. Mary Rose takes out her antique flip-phone and calls her brother’s BlackBerry. “You’ve reached Captain MacKinnon, liaison officer for the federal government and special envoy to the provincial legislature …”

“Hi, A&P, it’s Mister Sister, just making sure we’re on the same page re the Starbucks at Bloor and Howland, see you soon.”

His phone is probably being monitored by CSIS which will pass on the info to the CIA which will hand it to the NSA which will alert the RCMP and he will be disciplined for using it for personal calls. Then renditioned to Syria once they discover he is half Mahmoud. And it will be her fault. Maybe he has left a message on her home voice mail. But why would he do that when he obviously has her cell number?

Maggie is through with her muffin and bored with the sugar packets, her best-before fast approaching. Nearby, a fashionably ill-shaven metrosexual in tapered brogues is fussing with his iPhone and preparing to pounce on her table the moment she stirs. She avoids his eye and calls the home voice mail on the off chance … there is indeed a message from Andy-Pat. He sounds busy. Preoccupied with manly concerns. Keeping-the-world-safe-for-women-and-children concerns. His ceremony in Kingston went “later than originally scheduled” and he “had to crash with a colleague” and drive straight back to Queen’s Park this morning for an “important” meeting. “Hope you get this in time, Mister, I don’t have your cell number with me.”