Ann-Marie MacDonald - Adult Onset

Everyone knows it is better not to abuse their children; that it is worth everything to change the habits that perpetuate abuse. The world depends on it. But Mary Rose has discovered the hidden cost. It is so steep as to bankrupt the best intentions, and the worst part is that payment is due the moment the change is named. This is because to enact the change is to experience by contrast the shocking nature of what preceded it. It is to de-normalize violence; unwrap it like a dangerous gift and see it glowing, hear it blaring like a siren, feel it beating like a heart. For Mary Rose, it means betraying her own mother by mothering differently. Better.

It is possible to know all this, and yet have no place to put it. It is possible to be outside on a sunny day, but trapped inside a cave.

She looks down. Her hands look older now than her mother’s do in memory. Something needs to change. The light is red.

Good night, sweetie pie. See you in the morning .

She is looking in the window of Secrets from Your Sister. The chopstick girl sees her and waves. Mary Rose waves back and that is when she realizes she no longer has the flowers. Where have they gone?

She had them before she crossed the street. She retraces her steps east along Bloor until she reaches the corner of Bathurst. A streetcar rumbles past. She scans the busy intersection for a glimpse of yellow. But the flowers are not in the street, they are not right in front of her, they are gone. At least they weren’t run over. She stands amid the crowd waiting to cross at the lights, and experiences an odd sense that, along with the tulips, she has lost a piece of time; as though it has slipped between the tracks and been swallowed up — because, come to think of it, she cannot recall having crossed the street. She remembers standing on the other side, waiting for the light to change. And she remembers being on this side and looking in the window of Secrets. So, clearly she did cross over. Because here she is.

She walks back up Bathurst. She will pick up a second bunch from Winnie on the way home, then pop back and pay her for both — they’ll have to be red or white this time.

“Hi, Winnie.”

Winnie does not look up at first and Mary Rose is seized with an uncanny dread, one that, before it can be clothed in words, is dispelled when Winnie responds, “Hello, how are you ?”—singing it as enthusiastically as if she had not just seen Mary Rose a scant fifteen minutes ago.

It is a cultural thing, Mary Rose reflects, the super-politeness. She surveys the tubs of tulips just inside the door. “Oh, there was another yellow bunch after all.”

“You pick yellow, pretty.”

She places it on the counter, “Can you hold on to these for me, Winnie, I’ll be right back with money for two bunches.”

“No, you buy one.”

“I haven’t paid you for the first one yet.”

“You buy only one.”

“Okay, thank you so much. I’ll be right back with money for one!”

Winnie laughs. “No, no, you take, you take.”

“Really?”

Carmen is blasting through the speakers, Toreadorah! Mary Rose smiles and says, “Thank you, Winnie.”

The house is quiet but for the sound of Looney Tunes from the basement. At the kitchen table, Sue, Saleema and Gigi sit intently, each bent over a hand of cards. Gigi is teaching them to play poker. They grunt in greeting like a trio of 1960s husbands as Mary Rose enters the kitchen with a cheery, “I’m back,” proving once again that gender is a construct.

She fills a vase with water for the tulips and places them on the kitchen counter in front of the windows that are suddenly fuzzy with rain. In the centre of her visual field there appears a splotch. It grows. Sickly yellow orb, blocking her view. It is not anxiety, she is feeling none, it has to do with the high pressure system. Low pressure? She goes to the powder room and pulls up her sleeve, positioning her arm so as to see it around the big indoor sun. The scars are still there. Does the fact that she checked mean she is crazy? She feels dizzy again, but that is likely the result of having to peer around an orb. Laughter from the kitchen.

Her guests are leaving — all except Gigi, who is not really a guest but a member of the Chosen Family. Maggie hugs Colin who responds by lifting her a full four inches from the floor before toppling backwards against the wall. Sue harnesses her baby to her chest where it blinks and beams like a second head sprouting straight from her heart, and Mary Rose suddenly misses Hil with the acuteness of a thorn to her own heart. Saleema hurries downstairs from what Mary Rose is coming to think of as “the prayer room” and rushes Youssef out the door but not before he flings his arms around Matthew and gives him a kiss. Gigi helps Mary Rose pry Ryan, sobbing with middle-child rage, from the train tracks in the living room. He punches Matthew, Matthew punches him, Ryan apologizes, Matthew gives him Percy, Maggie punches Matthew, Matthew cries. Sue hustles her children out the door then turns and, taking Mary Rose’s hand in hers, says quietly, “You saved my life today.”

Mary Rose seats herself at the kitchen table behind the newspaper and runs her eyes back and forth across a column width so Gigi won’t wonder if there is a big yellow sun in her way.

“Are you okay?” asks Gigi.

“Yeah, I’m reading the paper.”

“The business section, who knew?”

“Stop hitting on Sue, she’s married.”

“I didn’t hit on Sue.”

“You flirted with her.”

“I flirted with Saleema too.”

“At least she’s divorced.”

“They’d be insulted if I didn’t flirt with them.”

Mary Rose lowers the paper. “You know how that would sound if you were a man?”

Gigi shrugs and smiles. “It would sound like it sounds.”

“Hil is sick of me.”

“She loves you.”

“I used to be the successful older man, now I’m a frustrated housewife.”

“You’re a woman, Mister. Face it.”

“That’s what Hil says.”

“We never thought we’d be able to get married. We thought we were out in the cold, so we made the cold into a party, but cold is cold and family is family and you guys are mine. I’m not a writer, I can’t say it pretty.”

“Thanks for coming when I called.”

Gigi leans down and puts an arm around her — Gigi favours butch attire but is in fact quite bosomy behind Vince’s Bowlerama. “I was coming anyway,” she says.

Mary Rose nestles into the hug. “… Hil called you.”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“It’s gonna be okay, Mister.”

Mary Rose goes upstairs and, as quietly as possible, throws up. She remains on her knees, embracing the toilet bowl — white dignity of the Virgin Mary. Our Lady loves you no matter what. She loves lesbians and lepers and leprechauns. “Dear Our Lady, please make the yellow sun go away.” Our Lady does. She brushes her teeth, no longer obliged to peer around an orb in order to see that she has burst blood vessels in her eyes with the force of retching.

She returns to the kitchen and checks the google history on her laptop. The bone cyst sites are there, she didn’t dream it, she didn’t google it in a parallel world. There is an e-mail from Maureen, in the subject line: “Found it!” She opens it to find a link to a government website. She double-clicks and a page comes up with a Maple Leaf flag on the banner and the heading CANADIAN POSTWAR MILITARY AND DEPENDANT GRAVES ABROAD. On the sidebar, a menu: What’s new? Browse by name. Browse by location . At the centre, filling the screen, is a photograph of a gravestone. Flush against the grass. It is more grey than white — no doubt with the passage of years. There is a name. Alexander Duncan MacKinnon .