SSC (2012) Adult Onset (21 page)
Read SSC (2012) Adult Onset Online
Authors: Ann-Marie MacDonald
Tags: #short story collection, #general, #Canada
She toyed with the idea of getting anger management counselling when Matthew was a baby. It was around Christmas. She was pulling out of the parking lot of a government building in suburbia where she had gone ballistic on a civil servant who informed her, after a long wait with her baby, that she would have to return with his adoption papers in order to show that she was eligible to apply for a health card on his behalf. She had taken her portable infant car seat with her infant in it and stormed out, registering split-second interruptions in her consciousness as she rode the elevator down. She got in her car and, as she pulled up to the parking booth, glanced out of habit in the rear-view mirror, only to see that there was no infant car seat snapped into the infant car seat base, and no infant. She had left him, securely buckled, on the ground, next to her parking spot. On the yellow line. She had driven all of thirty feet away. It had been all of fifteen seconds. More than enough time for hell to have opened up and swallowed him. But
he was safe. She vowed to get help. Then Maggie came along and she just got too busy again.
She never knows when it might strike. The rage. And when it does, she loses her grip on herself—literally. At times, she could swear she sees another self—shiny black phantom, faceless, as though clad in a bodysuit—leaping out of her, pulling the rest of her in its wake. Over the edge.
If someone had injected her with a potion labelled
Mr. Hyde
, it would make sense, for the rage always feels like it comes out of nowhere. It is only afterwards that she recognizes that whole sections of her brain have been shut down, whole circuit boards. For example, she loses language. Gone. It is akin to what used to happen to her in the bad old days when a strip of world would cease to exist in her visual field, just as though it had never been. Or, equally disconcerting, when a giant yellow orb would appear right in front of her, blocking her view—it was like trying to see around a big yellow sun. “Incomplete classic migraine,” said the ophthalmologist. “Panic attack,” said Dr. Judy, and asked if she would like to “see someone.” But Mary Rose knew they were really evil spells—she needed a sorcerer, not a shrink.
Those times are like dreams or the pain of surgery however—they get filed separately. She has undone many evil spells since becoming a mother—even so, there is still a spinning wheel somewhere in the kingdom and she never knows when she might prick her finger …
There is nothing wrong with her life. She has a loving partner and two healthy, beautiful children. She has put money into education funds, she has put photos into albums. She can make pancakes without a recipe, she knows where the IKEA Allen key is, and has memorized the international laundry symbols—she has not Polaroided her shoes, she has her inner Martha Stewart in check. That is a slippery slope: you start making your own ricotta, next thing you know you’re in jail.
•
That spring they place a stone on his grave. They bring the children. He says to his little one, “Stand close to Mummy, Mister. That’s right.”
Then he takes a photograph of his wife, and children.
•
She wakes at three a.m., curled cold on the La-Z-Boy couch, and goes calmly up to bed.
•
Other Mary Rose never became Mary-Rose-Who-Died, because she was born dead. This blurred the notion that she had ever been alive and potentially someone. Not baptized. Therefore not fully named. As if her name had been laid over her like a sheet that kept slipping off. Nothing sticks to a dead baby.
Journey to Otherwhere
Her father was showing her a brochure, St. Gilda’s Academy for Girls is among the top private schools in the country. Set amidst the beautiful Laurentian Mountains …
When she found her voice, she said, “It makes absolutely no sense, why would you send me to a Catholic school, we’re supposed to be atheists.”
“You won’t be required to attend church—”
“If I’m anything, I’m Hindu. What if I decide to become devout?”
She saw him almost laugh and felt a glimmer of hope, but he continued. “Kitty, it’s my fault, I’ve deprived you of a normal life—”
“I don’t want a normal life.”
He shook his head. “Aunt Fiona’s right—”
“She’s not my aunt.” Next thing she knew, Dad would be telling her to call that woman Mom.
He looked sad now. “It’s not fair to you, Kitty, I’ve tried to turn you into a little version of myself—”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, if that’s what you choose later on, but so far, whether you realize it or not, you haven’t had any choice—”
“Then let me choose! I choose you, I don’t choose that school!”
He regarded her sadly. “Kitty, have you ever heard the expression, ‘I must be cruel to be kind’?”
“It sounds like something grown-ups say when they want to get their way and have their kid feel sorry for them at the same time.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going to win an argument with you.” His smile was wistful. “You’re like your mother.”
She could not explain why this made her so angry that for a split second all she saw was a flash of black.
He continued. “You can either pack your things yourself or Ravi will send them along later.”
At the mention of Ravi, something terrible happened. Kitty started to cry. Kitty McRae
never
cried. It broke over her with the inexorability of one of the floods she had witnessed.
He winced and rose from the leather armchair. “I’m sorry, sweetie pie. I’m not much good to you sometimes.” She balled her fists against her eyes until the pain doused her tears, then called after his retreating back, “You wouldn’t send me away if I were a boy!”
Her father paused but did not turn. His shoulders sagged and she saw a shred of silver, no larger than a hanky, flee his side as he went out the door, leaving her in the room that had always been the safest place in the whole wide world. Until ten minutes ago.
I’m a Baby. I Can Drive Your Car. (And Maybe You’ll Love Me.)
I
t is sleeting. The kitchen windows are streaky grey. On the craft table, she checks out Maggie’s masterpiece. The page is now covered with her “witing.” Is it possible, she wonders, that Maggie can actually wead what she has witten? Is it a form of infantile literacy that she will unlearn as she grows older? Perhaps the child is an amanuensis, channelling a chronicle from another world, secrets of the universe from the nibs of babes, if only we had the means to translate … a cosmic Rosetta stone. She ought to jot that idea down for the third in the trilogy. But she remains motionless before the page, her gaze semi-focused … and it comes true: there is a secret message. It shimmers beneath the veil of colour, surfaces, and Mary Rose is able to read it:
NOTICE OF SUSPENSION OF HOME DELIVERY
.
Maggie is in her high chair, redistributing her oatmeal around her Bunnykins bowl.
“Maggie, this is beautiful work, but you took Mumma’s piece of paper from the table.”
Maggie replies, “Bunny is packing the car.”
“Maggie—”
I’m not angry. She is a baby, and she has made something beautiful
. “Is it for Mummy, for when she gets home?” Maggie shakes her head with a sly smile. Mary Rose smiles back because she knows her patience with the boots and the walking to school yesterday and her phenomenal forbearance with the form just now are about to be rewarded. Maggie’s masterpiece has been lovingly rendered for her:
Mumma
.
“Candies,” says Maggie.
Mary Rose feels the smile curdle on her lips. “That’s so nice, Maggie, Candace will be so happy.”
Maggie picks up her bowl and displays it, sufficiently empty now to reveal the Bunnykin family loading a picnic into the back of their VW Beetle—the manufacturers were apparently unaware that the trunk in a Bug is up front, a flaw that Mary Rose suspects will make it a collectors’ item. She takes it from Maggie before she can drop it—meanwhile, Matthew’s porridge is growing cold. She goes to the foot of the stairs and calls him. No answer. She goes up to his room.
He is sitting on the edge of his bed, having struggled into his undershirt and pants, one sock on—he has begun dressing himself, and Mary Rose has learned to let inside-out shirts and odd socks lie.
“Do you need help, sweetheart?”
He starts crying.
“Matthew, love, what’s the matter?”
His distress always exerts a mortal pressure on her heart, as if the spot reserved for him were pre-tenderized from some previous injury. He does not answer, his head is down.
“What is it, honeybun, is it Tico?” She peers into the plastic network
of tunnels and cubbies, but the hamster is curled and breathing in its pod. Thank God.
She joins him on the side of his bed. His little hand is closed over something.
“What are you holding?”
He moans.
She makes to pry open his hand gently, but he pulls away—not before she glimpses what is in it. Glass.
“Are you cut?”
He shakes his head but will not meet her eye.
She glances toward his windowsill. The glass unicorn is standing there, headless.
No!
“What happened?”
He shakes his head.
She keeps her voice level. “Did Maggie come in your room and drop your unicorn?”
No answer.
She gets up. Before she is out the door, it is out of her,
“Maggie!”
“No!” screams Matthew—he sounds hysterical—“No, No!” and with each word he strikes his head with his fist.
She rushes to his side and catches his arm. “It’s okay, sweetheart, it was an accident, here, give it to Mumma please, I don’t want you to cut yourself.”
She puts her arm around him and he opens his hand. She takes the glass head with its tiny horn. Nothing a little Krazy Glue won’t fix. She slips it into her pocket.
“Mumma can fix that.”
“I don’t want you to fix it.”
“Matthew, why not?”
He clamps his lips together.
She kisses the top of his head.
He stiffens. “I don’t like it when you yell.”
——
She drives her son to school, then heads for Whole Foods. Halfway through tony Yorkville, she slows as she passes the hypnotism building. Remarkably, there is a parking spot available right out front. It is a sign. She is about to back in when she sees her accountant coming out—she puts it in forward and drives off.
He was likely visiting another office—there is a payroll company in there—but she takes it as another sign: if a hypnotist can trick her into forgetting the pain in her arm, what else might they pick from her psychic pocket? Or maybe it’s a sign she shouldn’t be spending so much money at Whole Foods. She pulls a U-turn and heads back toward her own neighbourhood. It starts to rain.
She glances in the rear-view mirror at Maggie strapped into her car seat and playing with stacking cups—she has been talking nonstop back there. There’s to be no nap this morning, perhaps after grocery shopping they’ll go to the Early Years Drop-In so Maggie can run around and build up her immune system with the germy toys. It’s in the community centre at their local park. She was last there in February, seated on a miniature chair in the stuffy gym as toddlers staggered and gnawed on things while it sleeted outside. An attractive younger—they were all younger—mum sat next to her. Her name was Anya. She was pretty but tired, her hair in a fly-away ponytail and her Lululemon yoga wear had gone through the dryer once too often. She looked as though she had probably been in peak shape two years ago. Anya started talking and Mary Rose soon realized she couldn’t stop. Her smile was lovely, chapped lips notwithstanding and she spoke rapidly, one eye on her two toddlers as she told Mary Rose all about the miscarriage she had had. Last week.
She drives past Honest Ed’s on one side, Secrets from Your Sister on the other, and is into the strip of Korean restaurants. She turns right and the great basin that is Christie Pits Park spreads out
on her left. A green gouge in the city that started out as a gravel pit, it encompasses an outdoor rink, a pool, a playground and has become the tobogganing destination of choice for new Canadians in winter, while in summer it draws shirtless self-styled soccer stars from every non-hockey-playing nation on earth. On hot nights a giant light standard reigns over the diamond where serious games are called from the booth and cheered from the hill. In the early thirties Christie Pits was the scene of a riot sparked by swastikas at a baseball game, but Toronto, like much of Canada, has cultivated a selective memory, such that few of the dog walkers down there today have any clue of its checkered past. She pulls into the big lot at Fiesta Farms supermarket—unlovely depot on the outside, garden of Eden on the inside.
She lifts Maggie into the shopping cart seat and hands her a snack trap of organic Cheddar Bunnies. Mary Rose loves Fiesta Farms. The CBC National News anchorman shops here—he looks strange without a tie. Her elderly Italian neighbour with the Virgin Mary in her front yard shops here—
“Hi hawney, how are you, kids okay?”
“Hi, Daria, they’re great, say hi, Maggie.”
Funny how you think of someone and then you run into them—
“Hi, Dawia.”
“Ma bellissima!” She gives Maggie a Hershey’s chocolate Kiss without asking Mary Rose—Daria is old school. “You take one for Matthew too, okay, hawney?”
She heads up the dairy aisle and encounters a heavily tattooed musician she used to see at parties. He is sporting his signature porkpie hat but has a baby strapped to his chest. She tells him about the recyclable disposable diapers she and Hil discovered, he says it’s all about papaya these days. He is glazed in that four a.m. feeding way, they speak rapidly then move on, veterans who know enough to spare each other the niceties.
In the pasta aisle, she sees Anya—is there something special about today? If she thinks about Renée, will she appear? Anya has her two toddlers and is looking quite attractive, not so tired, her hair is shiny. Mary Rose feels a rush of warmth. “Hi, Anya”—slowing her cart in benevolent anticipation of a chat tsunami. But Anya smiles and moves on without a flicker of recognition—Mary Rose loses sight of her behind a pyramid of Paris Toasts.
