SSC (2012) Adult Onset (37 page)
Read SSC (2012) Adult Onset Online
Authors: Ann-Marie MacDonald
Tags: #short story collection, #general, #Canada
She comes across an online photo gallery. Dozens of infants, dressed sweetly, some are holding stuffed animals. All are dead. There are names, and dates. There are messages from bereaved parents, family and friends. Some of the babies look to be sleeping the cosmic sleep of the healthy newborn. Others have discoloured faces, features slurring, foreheads awry in contrast with little toques and pompoms. She scrolls down the silent wailing wall, past name after name after name … Beloved. Mourned.
Other Mary Rose died and began to decompose in utero, her cells undoing themselves, undertaking the journey back to potential. But she had a face. Darkening perhaps, skin melting to the touch, distorted by forceps—
don’t look
. Look. A baby. Was she cradled, swaddled before being dispatched? Was she sealed in a bag, was the bag placed in a receptacle? Or tossed? At what point did the bag lose specificity amid the hospital waste—did the janitor know the difference between it and the weight of other sealed bags with their contents of diseased tissues, discarded organs, limbs, surgical dressings, all the things that were neither sharp nor flushable? Was she compacted amid catheter tubes, uneaten hospital food, swabs, tongue depressors, paper cups, before being shovelled into the incinerator? Unbaptized, therefore unnamed, therefore no one. Or did she end up on a dissection tray before a medical student? There would have been no need to ask permission of the parents—don’t trouble them with this sort of thing, it cannot harm, can only help.
She had a face. Even if it was slipping away, no longer adhering. She had a name, even though it too did not quite stick. She dreamt. She moved. She was someone.
Your sister
.
Book Two: Escape from Otherwhere
Impossible to say whether it is day or night, a perpetual overcast has blocked the sun’s rays or trapped them here to grow stale. The ground is pitted and pocked—it could be the asphalt of an abandoned parking lot or schoolyard, except that no weeds are sprouting through the holes. It is unlike any place Kitty has ever seen on Hoam, where around each bend and over every hill is to be found a yet more perfect place for a picnic.
She resists the urge to retrace the stepping stones across the viscous stream and return to the thicket where she left Mr. Morrissey nursing his hindmost foot. She would gladly carry him all the way back through the Forgotten Wood rather than take another step into this drear place that has no name. But the Ebony Elf, though crafty, does not lie. If she says this is where Kitty will find two Black Tears, then she must press on. She fingers the vial on its silver chain around her neck and steps further into the gloom.
Kitty has seen marvels aplenty, not always pretty, so it is not the sight of the doll walking stiffly toward her across the pitiless ground that is perturbing, but the state of it. Not only is it naked, bereft even of hair, but half its moulded face appears to have melted then reset in shiny welts—the poor thing must have been thrown into the fire. Kitty waits and fights off a sense of approaching doom—after all, it is nothing but a harmless doll, lame and small. It stops in front of her. She can hear its laboured breath. It looks up at her with painted eyes that are scuffed but still discernibly blue.
“Hello, Kitty.”
Kitty freezes. How does it know her name?
“Don’t you remember me?” the thing wheezes.
Kitty shakes her head, suddenly reluctant to leave any part of herself behind here, even the sound of her voice.
The doll is sad but insistent. “Why did you send me away, Kitty?”
Kitty’s voice is barely a whisper. “I didn’t do anything to you.”
“Do you know what they did with me?”
What is this place? Is this Hell?
Suddenly it hisses, “I was incinerated.”
Kitty backs away.
“Don’t leave me,” whimpers the doll.
Suddenly its eyes flood black from lid to lid, and liquid night trickles down its damaged face. The tears! Kitty fumbles for the vial and makes a grab for the doll, but it evades her grasp, surprisingly agile.
“Not until you promise!”
“I’m not promising you anything.”
“I am not a bad thing,” rasps the demon. “But I will not give you your precious Black Tears until you have granted my wish.”
Kitty shivers. “What do you want?”
The doll tilts its head. “Don’t you remember me, Kitty?”
“I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
“I am yours.”
“No …”
“I am Susie.”
“Go away.”
“Hug me.”
Kitty is rooted to the spot, transfixed with horror and loathing. She longs to grab the fiend and hurl it, smash it against the cindery ground.
“No.”
“That is my wish.”
Kitty almost sobs with anger and revulsion, “I can’t.”
“Hold me, Kitty,” the thing wheezes, and stretches out its plastic arms.
“Never.”
“Never is what will happen to your brother, Jon. Never was, never will be.”
Kitty is gagging as she steps forward, bends down and picks it up. She squeezes her eyes shut and hugs. The doll makes a sound—small but terrible. She hears a rustling, feels a tugging. And then it is over.
She lets go with a shudder, as though she has just been sick to her stomach, and the doll drops to the ground. Kitty’s eyes are still shut when she says, “Now give me my tears.”
When the doll does not answer, she opens her eyes and beholds the most remarkable transformation. The doll’s face is smooth and unblemished, its eyes merry blue, its mouth a rosebud. No longer naked, it is clad in a blue satin robe, fastened snugly about the waist. Kitty cries out and reaches for her. “Susie!”
This time she hugs her tenderly; her doll feels so soft, just as she used to when Kitty was much younger, before she put her down one day and never picked her up again. Her tears are warm against Kitty’s shoulder. She cradles the beloved doll and looks lovingly into her sweet eyes where the tears are flowing—crystal clear.
She flings it to the ground. “You said you would give me the tears! You lied! What am I going to do?! Now Jon will never wake up, he will never have been, and I’ll never get home!”
Kitty begins to cry. Susie takes the vial from Kitty’s hand and catches the tears as they roll from Kitty’s cheeks in fat ebony drops.
Remembered Pain
S
he feels remarkably unscathed, considering how little sleep she has had. Last night she got to the bottom of something she did not know had been bothering her; and that can be better than sleep. She stayed up till three googling postpartum depression, ultimately ordering a book on the subject. Knowledge is power. The more she understands about her mother’s traumatic history and its effect on her own mothering, the better off her children will be. And it is nice to know that the coffee in her mug is completely decalcified. She rubs her arm and places a bowl of porridge in front of Maggie in her high chair and one for Matthew on his booster seat.
“Matthew, it was so kind of you to lend Maggie your unicorn last night.”
She will send flowers to Hil for real—freesia? Something that says “I’m sorry” without saying “I’m only sending you these because I’m sorry.” Daisies?
“I didn’t lend it.”
He is gazing up at her steadily.
“You didn’t?”
How, then, did Maggie get hold of it? There is something uncanny in the question, evoking as it does the spectre of a demonically nimble toddler, dropping to the floor, padding across the hallway …
“I gave it,” says Matthew.
“Matthew, it’s yours. Mumma gave it to you.”
“I know.” He looks down.
“Mine,” states Maggie.
“Do you still feel bad about dropping it?”
Tears flood his eyes. “I pushed it.”
“Oh … Matthew, why?”
He cries.
“Oh sweetheart, it’s okay.” She strokes his head. “Matthew? Matt, honey? It’s all better now, I fixed it.”
“I didn’t want you to fix it!” He smacks away his tears.
“Gentle with yourself, Matt.”
“No!” he roars.
“No!” seconds Maggie.
She has an insurrection on her hands. She crouches before him. “Don’t you like it anymore?”
He is suddenly calm. “I did never like it, Mumma.”
She swallows. Smiles. “That’s okay, sweetheart. It’s a sad song, isn’t it.”
“Maggie likes it.”
“I like it,” says Maggie, in oddly adult tones.
She leaves the porridge pot to soak and they walk Matthew to school. Past Archie’s Variety. “ ‘Archie’s Variety,’ ” she says. The weather has
aligned with the season, older children are off to school on bikes, music thumps from the open window of a passing car—Maggie is overdressed in her snowsuit, it is going to be a lovely day. There is a darkness in Mary Rose’s stomach. “ ‘Grapefruit Moon,’ ” she says. It is good that Matthew was able to tell her the truth about the unicorn, she is a good mother. The cute guy from the bike shop is setting out his sandwich board. “ ‘Early bird tune-up special,’ ” she reads aloud. She smiles at him; he is the type of young man she hopes Maggie will bring home one day—although why does she assume her daughter will bring home a boy not a girl?
People who hate themselves are dangerous
. “ ‘Freeman Real Estate,’ ” she says. Would she know if she had stomach cancer?
“Mumma, why are you saying all the signs?” asks Matthew.
The school bus is waiting when they arrive—the field trip to the Reptile Museum! She had meant to book Candace to babysit Maggie so she could take Matthew up there by car so he wouldn’t be killed in a crash. He boards the bus, overjoyed.
Keira smiles, one hand on her big belly. “We have too many volunteers already, Mary Rose, don’t worry for a second!” She watches the pregnant young woman board and a doom opens within her, surely the vehicle is marked for death. Sue is waving to her from a window—she is seated between Matthew and Ryan. Sue is not the sort of person to be killed in a bus rollover. As long as Sue is on the bus, Matthew will probably not die. Mary Rose breathes out, then smiles and waves with the other parents as the big yellow bus pulls away. Her heart pounds as she watches a multitude of mittened hands in the rear window waving back.
At home, a message from Gigi, “Hi, Mister, offer’s still good, call me.”
What is she talking about? Much as she loves Gigi, her old buddy is among the ranks of those child-free friends who have time to go to movies mid-week and sit around leaving cryptic messages for people. She unbundles Maggie from her sweltering snowsuit and goes about
rustling up a healthy snack. The late night is catching up with her, she is dying for a nap.
You’re not twenty-five, you know
. Twenty minutes is all she needs. She has committed to eliminating the morning nap and she will stick to it. Quit googling and go to bed early tonight.
Craving sleep the way a vampire craves darkness, Mary Rose wills herself to the craft table, where she does a Ravensburger puzzle with Maggie. When claustrophobia becomes acute, she slips away and checks her e-mail.
Hi Rosie,
Mummy and Daddy will be arriving in Toronto on Sunday at 11:00 a.m. They had a wonderful time out here and I think they’re in good shape for the trip. I know they’re looking forward to seeing you. You’re doing such a hard job right now, Rosie-Posie, no one knows unless they’ve been through it … and then they forget! I’ve probably forgotten how hard it was too, but at least I know that I’ve forgotten. How’s that for logic?
How’s Daisy? You can ship her out here if they order her destroyed. I’m serious, we will be a station on the underground pit bull railroad!
Love,
Mo
There is one from Andy-Pat: a link to a site where an elephant is painting a watercolour. He is so far out of the loop, she is going to yank him back in—why should she have to go down to the train station of the cross all by herself this Sunday?
APB all fraternal units: Mum and Dad stopping over by train on seventh at eleven hundred hours. Mustering for coffee and confusion at Union Station.
xomr
On the other hand, why should she facilitate his relationship with her parents? That’s what daughters have always done. What is the point of having lived a brave countercultural life if she is going to do the womany thing now and make her brother look good? The prodigal son: all he has to do is show up and a calf dies.
Delete
.
Hi Mo,
Thanks, I’ll keep you posted on Daisy. I’m going postal today to pick up the “mystery package”—I hope it’s there. I can’t bear the thought of Mum finding out that whatever it is she wanted to give me might be lost in the great shuffle called life. Maybe she “mailed” it into the garbage—you know, one of those complicated bins with a different opening for every kind of waste
She deletes the last bit and sends it.
Dear Dad,
I
She did not save the registered letter from her father. It arrived at her basement apartment more than twenty years ago on legal-size foolscap a week after she came out to her parents; she read it once then tore it up, aware of neither anger nor sorrow, only a belief that, while they were merely paper and ink to her, the words might hurt him terribly one day when her real father came back—how sad for Dad should he ever have to know what he had done to his daughter. It strikes her now that if she had spoken this thought aloud to a friend at the time, she might have recognized it as denial. Perhaps that is why we keep certain things to ourselves; so that we may also keep them
from
ourselves.
One day, a year or so into the fatwa, she phoned him from the home she had recently made with Renée. Renée concurred that, of Mary
Rose’s two parents, Duncan was the sane one; she had met them, Mary Rose having smuggled her home as a “friend” in the early days. Mary Rose felt sure that, but for her mother, her father would be able to refer to Renée as her “friend” and turn a bland eye on their shared bedroom. He would visit their home and take them for lovely lunches. He would never need to name—or curse—a thing. After all, he had seen it in her. Groomed her. He nicknamed her Mister and trained her to be better than a boy, never to take a back seat to one. Mary Rose and Duncan were signatories to the secret pact between certain lesbians and their fathers: Notwithstanding her overt feminism, the daughter, in exchange for throwing women under the bus as the inferior sex—along with any competing brothers—is granted honorary-son status. For his part, not only is he seen to be the enlightened father of a high-achieving woman, he gets to keep his throne because his lesbian daughter is neither a man nor in danger of bringing one home. All of this could have continued without anyone ever having to say the L-word. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. Why should father and daughter be kept apart by a cruel, crude mother? So one spring day, she phoned and asked him to come see her … She has not thought about that conversation in many years. She may have torn it up along with the letter. She types …
