Ann-Marie MacDonald - Adult Onset

“Gran misses me too,” said Matthew, tears filling his eyes.

Duncan reached over and stroked his head — not a bonk, no shingle, a soft pliable hand.

Dolly smacked both hers flat on the table, making the plates and the children jump. “Dunc, tell a funny story, put on some happy music!”

“You’re the boss,” he said, rising.

The room filled with the sexy, plaintive tones of Fairuz, backed by a Middle Eastern nightclub orchestra circa 1955. Dolly had fled the table — the suppository doing its work, surmised Mary Rose. Duncan returned, holding aloft several bright bottles by their necks like the spoils of war. “How about a liqueur, Hilary? You name it, I’ve got it, do you like crème de menthe?”

From “offstage” they heard Dolly burst into “Happy Birthday.” Duncan grinned conspiratorially and joined in as Dolly entered carrying a pink cake ablaze with a single fat candle in the shape of a 2. Maggie screamed in joyous comprehension that this was her second second birthday party. Dolly set the cake down and Maggie blew out the candle. “Hurray-hurray!” cried Dolly and Dunc, clapping, and breaking back into song.

At around two a.m., Mary Rose woke up in the basement guest room, surprised by pain. Her arm felt hot. She did not recall having bumped it, but she had been somewhat inebriated by the time she joined her parents in the TV room and passed out in front of Murder, She Wrote . She turned to look at Hil slumbering next to her, a sweetly perturbed expression on her beautiful face. She had begun to get lines. Just because she was younger than Mary Rose did not mean time stood still for Hilary. Would they still be together when they were her parents’ age, or would Mary Rose have wrecked it by then? Hil would become a regal old lady, Mary Rose a wizened jester. That’s if they made it through the first great winnowing — the mid-life cancer disaster that was stalking their generation.

She sat up carefully so as not to activate the comedy springs that set the bed to rocking like an on-ramp in an earthquake at the slightest twitch. She crept between Maggie, asleep with her bum sticking up in the Pack ’n Play and Matt on the fold-out IKEA chair-bed. She slipped out, closing the door carefully behind her, and into the bathroom, where she braced herself for the stab of light and looked at her arm.

No bruise. She popped an Advil — as much for the hangover she hoped to forestall as for the pain. She became aware of another feeling, in her chest … the old guilt-shame brew, as though she had done or said something obscene at the supper table — which she had not.

She killed the light and went upstairs.

From the broad staircase she emerged into the airy expanse of her parents’ home. Moonlight poured through the kitchen window and overflowed the sink.

A low pony wall defined the kitchen from the dining and living area where a set of big glass doors looked out onto the patio. Pleasant oil paintings and framed photos graced the walls and dotted end tables — Dolly and Dunc’s children, grandchildren and now a great-grandchild. Her parents had streamlined and updated, but here and there were objects that resonated at a cellular level: their honeymoon photo. Dolly beaming, waving from the train, eyes saucy with life and laughter. Duncan, amused and movie star handsome in a double-breasted suit. The air force plaque from RCAF Gimli outside Winnipeg. The cuckoo clock from the Black Forest with its rather scrotal pendula in the shape of pine cones. And Dürer’s Praying Hands , its smooth wood the colour of Dolly’s skin. Ysallem ideyki . Mary Rose did not have to look to know that stuck to the underside of every object was a Post-it Note with a name. Dolly was determined to head off squabbles among her grieving offspring, and it was a good idea provided they were able to read her writing.

She turned to the fridge, its door thick with snapshots and clippings, including an old bestseller list featuring Escape in the number one spot — it was affixed with a Virgin Mary medallion. Next to it was a picture of the Pope blessing a party of Masai warriors. She opened the freezer. Slotted between a tray of buckling ice cubes and a lump of something that looked to be swathed in surgical dressings was a zip-lock bag — a silty envelope of a yellowish substance. It resembled something you were more likely to find in a lab than a kitchen. She pressed it to her arm. The cold felt heavenly.

She took a seat at the table that was already set for breakfast — winsome hens-and-rooster placemats. Through the open window the night was humid and heavy with stars that looked ready to fall like fruit, and a fragrant breeze found her. Ottawa could be like that in summer. On the counter, beneath a glass dome, sat the remains of Maggie’s pink birthday cake — her second second birthday cake — its half-melted 2 candle making it look like a dilapidated gravestone. Mary Rose shook it off —Think nice thoughts . She was reaching for a newspaper when her mother shuffled in.

Arms lax at her sides, Dolly led with her belly, which in the past was Napoleonic but now was toddler-like. Her dusky cheeks were mooshed with sleep, her white hair steepled in an old-lady mohawk.

“What’re you doin’ up, doll? Y’hungry?” Sleepy contralto tones.

“Sorry I woke you, Mum.”

“Get out, you didn’t wake me. Here, gimme.”

Mary Rose flinched but Dolly merely took the bag and tossed it into the microwave.

“My arm is sore,” she said, lest her mother feel hurt by her reflexive withdrawl.

“Your arm?”

Dolly raised her eyebrows; she had a perfect clown face.

“You said it doesn’t bother you anymore.”

And before Mary Rose could draw back, Dolly pressed her fingertip to the top of the twin scars, and ran it down the stripe. It was such an unexpected gesture — not painful … but eerie, scar tissue being at once ultra-sensitive and numb.

Dolly said, “I remember when I was small, if I had anything that was bothering me, or even a sore throat I think it was one time, Mumma would say to me, ‘That’s your badness coming out in you.’ So I knew not to complain.”

The word was red and released a pong such that Mary Rose could smell it. Badness . “That’s what you used to tell me.”

“Did I?”

“You said that about my arm.”

“You had bone cysts—”

“Mum, how old were you when your mother said that to you?”

“Let me see, was I five or six? I was a dark little thing.”

“You couldn’t possibly have been bad.”

“Oh, I was.” A mischievous light entered Dolly’s eyes. She giggled. “I always had candy.”

“Why was that bad?”

“Well, this was during the Great Depression, no one had candy then, who was I to have candy? It made Mumma so mad, she’d grab a hold of me and holler, ‘Where’d you get the candy, demon?’ ”

“Where did you get the candy?”

Dolly got up suddenly and squirted a white stream into the palm of her hand from the recycled Jergens bottle by the sink.

Mary Rose watched her mother rub the cream into her hands. They took on the sheen of polished wood; finely veined, deeply lined.

The microwave beeped. Dolly poured the contents of the bag into a bowl with a plop . Chicken soup. She put it in front of Mary Rose, who took a spoonful. Turned out she was hungry.

“Mum, you weren’t bad.”

Dolly guffawed. “Tell Mumma that! She had twelve of us to cope with and never raised her voice.”

“You said she hollered at you.”

“Well I was a little demon! She had to slap us and, you know, keep us in line somehow, and then my sisters did a whole lot of the upbringing, my sister Sadie did a whole lot, that’s just the way it was in those days.”