SSC (2012) Adult Onset (27 page)

Maybe the crack in the Berlin Wall had been Dolly’s fear of losing her son, but she wasted no time tearing it down and driving west in a Lada. Or east in a VW … It was a miracle on the order of Our Lady of Lourdes. And Duncan followed. Or perhaps he was along for the ride in the back seat.

•

The hardest part of being in the hospital was having her father visit on his own on his way home from work.

“How’re you feelin’, sweetie pie?” He tossed his air force hat onto a hook near the door of the room she shared with Tracy-the-snowmobile-girl. “Have you had a bite to eat yet?”

She wished he would just go straight home. Now she would have to worry about him driving in the dark. It was February, five o’clock. “Not yet.”

The worry was an ache that echoed—spooned around—the physical pain: Dad’s new green Buick overturned on Days Road between the Kmart and the penitentiary. Just because there was a Dairy Queen on the corner didn’t mean you couldn’t die there.

“It’s a ten-minute drive, old buddy, I’ll be home before you know it.”

You could drown in a cup of water, five seconds was all you’d need in a car.

“I’m worried, Dad.”

“What are you worried about?” He gave her his incredulous grin. She saw his gold tooth.

She tried not to say it, but couldn’t help it this time. “What if you have an accident?”

“Are you kiddin’?” he said with a chuckle.

“No. I’m scared you’re going to have a car accident.”

She had never gone this far before, she felt like she was breaking a pact. Or revealing her true identity to both of them in a way that wasn’t very nice. But it felt involuntary,
I have only a moment for this transmission, I am the real Mary Rose, and I am being held prisoner on the Planet
—

“I won’t have an accident, Mister.”

“But what if you did?” And it slipped from her like something dark and dense, a lump of driftwood, charred from a long-ago campfire, “What if you died?”

He lowered his chin and regarded her from beneath hawk-like brows, mock stern. “There’s an old saying: ‘Don’t shake hands with the devil before you meet him.’ ”

She smiled, so he would believe he had reassured her.

Her supper came.

“Eat it all up now, it’ll put hair on your chest.”

Slice of turkey under sheen of gravy, ice cream scoop of mashed potato, triangle of mushy peas, individually sealed portion of applesauce, pebbled plastic cup of apple juice with a paper lid like a crinoline and bendy paper straw, some kind of cake thing. It all smelt like baby food. She glanced across at Tracy’s milkshake, sitting on her tray, beading condensation—she was asleep. Tracy could eat only milkshakes because she’d been on the back of her dad’s Ski-Doo when they went through a pasture fence at night.

Dad sat and read the paper while she ate, then she had to throw up right away.

She pushed aside the wheeled tray and begins carefully to lift her sheet and the openwork white blanket, all of it very clean and cardboardy.

“Where you goin’?”

“I have to throw up.”

He was hesitant. “Should I call the nurse?”

She walked slightly bent over, cradling the darkness on her left side.

Mum wasn’t here, she could rest when Mum was here—she was “in like Flynn” with the staff, Dad liked to say, indestructible. Her father was here on his own. Pale, fragile in his lovely uniform. Like a unicorn, too beloved to be durable. Breakable. She wished he would go home so she could know he was safe. “No, it’s okay,” she said.

It took a long time to walk across the room to the toilet, it was dizzying. There was a smell—Phisohex and rubbing alcohol, needles and fluorescent lights, white sheets. The smell of metal wheels and getting sliced open, so cold so cold so cold. She knelt at the porcelain—white dignity of the Virgin Mary.

Dad followed and stood behind her—she wanted to close the door but hadn’t managed it. She vomited, which was hard because it yanked the surgery, spasmed the streaky yellow, with each heave it seemed impossible to continue but less possible to stop—she’d had no idea how many muscles it took to throw up.

“Y’okay, sweetie?”

“Yup.”

The after-trembles were friendly, they shook her gently like a leaf, shook the slime from her lip, said,
It’s over now
. She brushed her teeth.

She felt him shadow her back to bed, a hovering presence in the shape of help, like a Guardian Angel, huge and beautiful but powerless. They loved you, but they couldn’t stop anything from happening to you. They worked for God.

She had forgotten about the gaping back of the hospital gown. She climbed onto the bed and it was sweet to lie back in the Javex sheets.

She said, “You can go home now.”

“I don’t have to go just yet.”

His light optimism was powerless here. Mum had power here—this labyrinth was her domain. Mary Rose felt bad about not showing him how reassured she was. She slept.

When she woke up, it was dark and he was gone.

•

Everything has been fine with her parents for over a decade now, but something is bothering her at the back of her mind … like one-eyed Detective Columbo, hesitating at the exit, she is aware of a blank spot. The bad time ended abruptly and everyone carried on as though nothing had happened—they turned the page. But lately she wonders if in fact they burned the book.

•

A few times, she had supper in the sunroom at the end of the hall with the other children on the ward. The big windows shone black with the February night. Here were no visitors and no grown-ups. Warm light was cast by reading lamps that squatted on mismatched end tables, a world away from fluorescent corridors and sterile hospital rooms. There were shabby easy chairs and worn toys; blocks with faded letters, a basket of old Lego, games of Chinese checkers and Monopoly—the money frayed with use. The smell was less clinical too, more a fug of flannel and crayons than Phisohex and isopropyl.

On each occasion, an inner circle of children had gathered as if the hospital were their home, and this was the playroom, where they could relax and toys might come alive at midnight. Some of the children had been admitted months before, while others were in and out on such a frequent basis they all knew one another. They were not a mean clique, however, they were more like a family with no parents. Stranded. Stoic. They were kind to one another, and they opened their circle to Mary Rose.

The leader was a girl who, though a year older, was smaller than Mary Rose and seemed like a grown-up. A nice one. She was round like a robust doll, with blue eyes and a mass of corn-coloured curls she wore in a frizzy ponytail like a pompom. Her blue sateen robe was belted snugly round her middle, she was cheerful, and she looked
after the other children—one, named Norman, had “a nervous condition.” He was prone to seizures and walked leaning sideways, unblinking. Another was so lively it was hard to believe there was anything wrong with him—he wore hard shoes with his pyjamas and slid on the freshly waxed floor.

It was like being in an orphanage. It was alluring, and Mary Rose was dimly aware that she oughtn’t to allow the others to believe she was truly one of them. She needed to remember that she would be going home to her real life … she would not remain here in their dear dilapidated child’s realm. They were like a community of damaged toys. Friendly, fun, but take care lest they lull you into forgetting your life as a real child, hard as that life may be sometimes, tempting as it may be to stay in the land of lost toys …

They ate at a long low table, seated on child-size wooden chairs. On the first night, the leader girl in the blue robe suddenly peed, right at the table. Then she rose and cleaned it up efficiently, without the slightest embarrassment. None of the other children took much notice. She explained genially to Mary Rose, “I was born with syphilis.”

Mary Rose politely ignored the pee the next night. She could have got used to it, but she was discharged soon after.

She had a checkup a month later, and an X-ray twice a year after that, in case the cysts came back. There was a chance they would if the bone from the donor didn’t grow with her.

•

Youssef and Matthew have built a jungle-farm-airport in the living room which is being threatened by a snake that eats airplanes while Maggie is down for her blessed afternoon nap. Mary Rose has had time to reflect on the debacle with the boots this morning; clearly, she displaced her old anger at her mother onto her child, the ladybug boots having acted as a trigger owing to their association with Dolly—not
to mention the ringing of the goddam phone. Armed thus with self-analysis, she speaks the words aloud, “Never touch your child in anger,” as she applies a fresh bandage to her pierced finger and wonders how people who are less aware and educated than she is manage to avoid murdering their offspring. She frightened Maggie, but didn’t actually hurt her—not to the point of physical harm. If the bar for child abuse were that low, nine out of ten parents would be behind actual bars. She gets the Krazy Glue out of the “it” drawer and glues her thumb to her index finger. Then she glues the unicorn head to her thumb. Then she glues the head to the body.

She calls Kate and cancels tonight’s movie date
—Water
is supposed to be amazing, but she is simply too tired for child brides and adult conversation. She unglues her hand from the phone. The doorbell rings, Daisy goes crazy, and Mary Rose lets Saleema in. Today’s hijab is a dazzling emerald, and she says in her hurried, worried way, “I have to pray, where can I go?”

Mary Rose shows her upstairs to the small sitting room off her bedroom. “Use the Pilates mat if you like.”

Downstairs, she puts the kettle on in anticipation of Saleema’s grateful acceptance of a cup of tea for which she has no time, and reflects that her Muslim friend is praying to Allah a few feet from the bedroom of a lawfully married lesbian couple, and for a moment Mary Rose cannot think of a single way in which life could possibly get better.

“I’m done, thanks,” says Saleema, hurrying back down the hall, hijab billowing about her like a nun’s habit of old—if nuns’ habits had been electric green—and takes the steaming mug, “I’ll just sit for a second.” She talks happily of her parents and sisters in the UAE, of a life on the move from Somalia to Vancouver, Saskatoon then Toronto. She is pretty and bespectacled and dark brown, her hands never still, her brow slightly furrowed even when she laughs, which is often. There is an ease between them and it strikes Mary Rose that she never imagined she would have a friend who was an engineer.

A battle cry from upstairs—Maggie is awake and ready to vault from her crib. Saleema is leaving with Youssef and she says something in Arabic that sounds familiar.

“What did you say?” asks Mary Rose.

“Ysallem ideyki, it means—”

“Bless your hands.”

“That’s right.”

“My mum used to say that. Why did you say it just now?”

Saleema laughs. “Because I know you’ve got them full!”

Mary Rose watches them leave down the flagstone path and registers a sadness. Perhaps even envy … Although why does she assume that Saleema’s mother never needed to hate her? She remembers to call Candace and cancel tonight’s child-care. Thirty bucks kill-fee down the drain.

That night on the phone, Hil says, “I thought you were going to a movie with Kate and Bridget.”

“I’m too tired to go out. How did you even know about the movie plan?”

“Didn’t you mention it?”

Hil put them up to it.

“I’m just going to have a quiet evening and watch
Transporter
2.”

“Why don’t you call Sue and get her to come over with her boys for supper tomorrow.”

“It’s too much of a production.”

“Get her to bring food.”

“I don’t mind cooking.”

“Order a pizza.”

“It means the kids’ll go to bed late.”

“Get Candace over while you and Sue go to a movie.”

“Why Sue? Why always Sue? Sue is just so J. Crew, I can’t stand it, okay?”

“What about Hank—?”

“He’s in Mexico.”

“Andrea—”

“She’s started chemo.”

“Oh my God, that’s right. How is she?”

“She’s fine, I mean she feels terrible, but it’s going to be, they think it’s fine.”

“Tell Gigi to bring over a pot of spaghetti—”

“You don’t have to solve my life, Hil, please just understand I need some quiet time.”

“Pay Candace to do bedtime so you can watch a movie at home on your own.”

Why didn’t she think of that for tonight? Instead, she is paying Candace to stay away when she could have used the break.

“You could use the break.”

“I don’t need ‘a break,’ this is what I do, I look after the children and the house and I complain about it sometimes, can’t I even complain without you dialing 911? I’m sorry, I’m not serene Susie Homemaker, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not, Mister, you’re the one who’s …”
Sigh
. “I have to go.”

“Don’t go to bed angry.”

“I’m not going to bed, I’m on a supper break.”

“You’re rehearsing tonight?”

“Mister, it’s our third dress.”

Mary Rose hears a voice in the background. Male? “Is that the stage manager?”

“No, it’s Paul. Wait—” Hil covers the phone, says something, laughs, then, “Have a good night, love.”

“What? Wait.”

“What is it?”

“I love you, sleep well. I mean—”

“Good night.”

She takes an Advil.

Jason Statham successfully delivers the package in his black BMW, vanquishes a horde of martial arts villains in a warehouse with an oil-slicked floor and returns to his Mediterranean villa with its modest shoebox of memories and sleek Tuscan tiles. He obviously has a great cleaning lady. She switches it off, already craving
Transporter 3
.