Ann-Marie MacDonald - Adult Onset

This knowledge does not stem the neural cascade. Her veins are running with dark chemicals — cortisol, vasopressin. The fact that she has the names of these neurotransmitters at her fingertips tells her something but not enough to make a difference. She has been triggered and there is no one she can call — her brother cannot help her, Gigi cannot help her, Santa Claus cannot help, no one can — crazy, crazy but it must be recorded, the only person who might help is her mother, sweeping into Mary Rose’s hospital room in a leopard print coat and tam — she is falling down through nothing, scrabbling air for purchase— Don’t move . This needs to run its course and Mary Rose needs to keep very still because it is very dangerous to start fleeing or fighting in the middle of the night when the children and the dog are sleeping and you cannot see what is after you. As long as she does not move, nothing bad will happen.

Calgary.

It is two hours earlier there. She lets out a breath she did not know she was holding, and resets her internal clock back one panic hour. When you are lost in the Black Forest, stay in one spot or you will end up going round in circles because you cannot see the sun. There will be time enough to thrash about in the underbrush if Hilary fails to call in an hour.

Hilary fails to call.

Mary Rose has not moved from the big black windows. Now the real fear can begin, the other was merely a rehearsal. The phone rings and, as though released by the sound, the penny drops.

“Hi, Hilly, I was just calling to see how your preview went!” She wedges the phone between ear and shoulder, unpins the foot calendar from the corkboard and thrusts it into the recycling bin. She inspects her datebook for further contagion from the out-of-joint calendar.

“Oh thank you, sweetheart, I thought maybe you forgot.”

“You didn’t get the flowers?”

“No, oh you’re so sweet, you didn’t have to send flowers.”

Mary Rose has lied with no warning and the greatest of ease —am I a psychopath? “How’d it go?!”

“Well, it went fine,” says Hil, her tone cautiously optimistic. “It hasn’t quite lifted off yet, but the beats are there, the laughs are there, and we finally got a decent wig for Maury—”

“He must love you for that.” Her smile feels leathery, stretched across her face like a cobbler’s last.

“Oh, and you know Paul?”

“Paul?”

“The tech director, you know how he told me no one has used the flies in years? Well, he was so happy he took me up and showed me the rigging.”

“He showed you his what?” She coughs.

“You sure you’re not coming down with something?”

“It’s just a cough. Don’t worry, I won’t get sick the minute you get home.”

“That’s not what I meant—”

“I’m not feeling great, but that’s normal, I spend my day with toddlers, they’re germ bags.”

“I know, that’s why you should call Judy.”

“I’ll google my symptoms.”

“Don’t google!”

“I think my mum is losing it.”

“Really?”

“She’s so forgetful now and … jovial. The other stuff has kind of gone …” She is suddenly choked up. Mourning the loss of her mother’s rage? Golly Moses .

“I don’t know how much is really gone,” says Hil.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I love your parents, they’re sweet.”

“ ‘Sweet’ like what? Like sweet old Nazis?”

She hears Hil sigh.

Don’t pick a fight on the phone in the middle of the night. “I’m sorry, Hilly.”

“It’s okay, I’m going to go to bed soon, I’ve got an interview at seven.”

Is Hil going to take refuge in an affair? I’ll know she is having an affair if she is extra nice. Or extra mean. Or if we have sex as soon as she gets home. Or if we don’t .

“It’s like she needs endless attention, even negative attention,” Mary Rose says. “Maybe she’s in her ‘second childhood.’ ”

“Maybe she never came out of her first one.”

“Oh yes she did, you didn’t know her in the rage years.”

“Children rage,” says Hil. “They just don’t usually have children of their own when they’re doing it.”

Mary Rose is suddenly craving bed. “I think I better crash, Hil, the kids’ll be up in a few hours.”

“It must have been a really hard time for you and your mum back then.”

“When?”

“In Germany.”

“I don’t remember.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry, love, we don’t have to talk about it.”

“We can talk about it, it’s all she ever talks about, everything’s a dead baby joke.”

Silence.

“She was incinerated.”

“Who was?” asks Hilary.

“Other Mary Rose.” She is surprised at the sullen note in her voice. “She told me today just like that, like we were talking about the weather.”

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

“What for?” Temper down, now .

“Why don’t you call Gigi?”

“Why would I call Gigi?”—she hears the ultra-expository tone taking hold—“I merely wished to tell you what my demented mother told me, if it is not too much to ask.”

“Of course it isn’t, tell me what she said.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She is being ambushed by her own words that feel cool and reasonable in the fish tank of her head until she opens her mouth, at which point they show their fangs. Hil is not the enemy. “I’m sorry. It’s like my mother has opened the lid on a big trunk of freaking tragedy and it’s all flying out in a jumble ’cause it’s not weighed down with emotion anymore, her emotion lobe is—”

“Slow down.”

“… I’m having déjà vu.”

“That’s because you already knew what happened to your sister.” Your sister .

“I did?”

“You must have, you’ve written about it.”

“I have?”

“Isn’t that what the Black Tears are?”

Mary Rose calls to mind the scene in her second book — second in a supposed trilogy. Is this what all that expensive therapy has done for Hilary?

“Really?” Mary Rose has meant to sound withering but winds up whiny. “I thought they were a plot element in a highly successful book for young adults.”

Pause.

“Hil? Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not, but I think I better go to bed now.”

She needs to segue to something safe before hanging up. “Hey, I’ve been dying to tell you, I saw something I want to get for the house. You know how I’ve always wanted a hanging rack for pots?”

“You have?”

“It would create a ton of space.”

“Where would we put it?”

“In the ceiling over the counter.”

“… Where the lights are.”

“We’d move the lights.”

“So we’re renovating again.”

“No, it’s barely — it’s tiny, I can have it done before you get home.”

“I think I’d like to be there.”

“Okay, I’ll buy the rack but I won’t install it—”

“Do you need to buy it right away?”

“Why not?”

“You buy a lot of stuff, great stuff, I consider myself lucky—”

“You think it’s trivial?”

“It’s not essential.”

“Flush toilets are not essential, airplanes are not essential.”

Hil laughs. “I’ll take the toilet over the ceiling rack, Mary Rose.”

Hil has used her full name, that tears it.

“I know it’s not a huge priority for you that we have a full set of nesting pots, but when you reach for one, it’s there. You don’t have to care because I do and now you’re saying that my concerns are trivial , well go back to your rusty old wok and see how you like it—”