SSC (2012) Adult Onset (43 page)

“She’s staying over, the kids are in bed, we’re in the basement watching
Mamma Mia!
again. Do you want to say hi?”

“I believe you. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine, it’s all pretty banal.” Hil is silent. Mary Rose adds, “Not in the Hannah Arendt sense of the word.”

“Call me from the train station tomorrow.”

“I will, what’re you eating?”

“Perogies, I’m on a break.”

“Winnipeg’s got the best perogies. I’m surprised you could find them in Calgary.”

“I love you, have a nice evening.”

“Have a good preview.” She holds the phone out. “Say hi, Gigi.”

“Hi, Gigi,” calls Gigi at the phone.

Daisy levers herself up onto the couch and wedges between them, next to the popcorn.

Winnie is smiling down at her, as if Mary Rose were much smaller and unable to see over the counter, saying, “You pick yellow.” Winnie’s voice deepens demonically, her smile undertows to a frown as she adds, “You put him in de gwound.” Mary Rose wakes in a sweat, her heart pounding. But there is another sound behind it—and she realizes it was this other sound that woke her. A thud-thudding accompanied by a kind of guttural clicking. It is a completely new sound. She gets up. It is coming from the landing. She goes to the top of the stairs and looks down.

“Daisy?”

Daisy appears very old and grey under the fluorescents of the Veterinary Emergency Clinic, but she is panting affably, cold-nosed and alert, huddled between Mary Rose’s knees. If Gigi hadn’t been sleeping over, Mary Rose would not have been able to rush the dog to the clinic—it is almost as though Daisy waited till it was safe.

“Good girl, Daze.”

Sometime after 2:00, the vet examines her and listens, unfazed,
to Mary Rose’s account: she got up to find Daisy lying on her side on the landing, limbs spasming, mouth foaming, eyes rolled back.

He says, “Best not to let her sleep near the stairs from now on.” And writes a prescription for anti-seizure medication.

“Does she have epilepsy?”

“In a dog of her age, it’s more likely to be a tumour.”

“You mean … a brain tumour?”

“We can’t say without an X-ray.”

He tells her an X-ray would require that Daisy undergo general anaesthetic, which poses its own risks.

“And what if it does turn out to be a tumour? Can you operate?”

“I’m sure if you look hard enough, you’ll find a vet who’s willing to operate. Personally, I wouldn’t.”

Fucking prick. Mary Rose is blanched with rage, can barely get out the words. “Because she’s a pit bull?”

He looks bemused. “Because she’s old.”

He has freckles. He is pale. Younger than she first thought. “What would you do?” she asks.

“Take her home and love her.”

She puts Daisy’s bed in the living room and closes the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs. She gets down on the floor, spoons around the dog and cups the old helmety head in her palm, feels the warm weight of it. “I’m here, Daisy,” she whispers. “I’m here.”

A
t ten-thirty on Sunday, April 7, Mary Rose MacKinnon gets off the subway and walks the underground maze to Union Station. She passes a Laura Secord candy store and pauses. Laura Secord was a Canadian farm girl who tipped off the British that the Americans were about to attack across the Niagara River in the War of 1812. Somehow she came to be synonymous with candy. Maybe that was her reward for saving the British Empire. In the window is a chocolate Scrabble game. Mary Rose hesitates, then resists buying it for her mother. She has been a crusader against Dolly’s sugar addiction, why become an enabler now? “Who gave you the candy?!”

“General Brock. His pockets were always full of it.” She buys a coffee at the Croissant Tree from a woman burdened with life-altering beauty, and waits in the stray subordinate clause of Arrivals.

She is early. She steps into a bookstore. Soon she will be able to walk into bookstores without a pang. Eventually her books will go out of print and no one will ask, “In the third one, will Kitty do this/see that …?” She buys her father a book.
Payback
, by Margaret Atwood. Now she has nothing for her mother.

She has left Maggie and Matt with Gigi, the three of them doting on Daisy, plying her with treats, encircling her with train tracks and towers and totems—both Elmos were going. Hilary will be home Thursday. Mary Rose needs to remember to send flowers for her opening. She needs to remember to buy eggs on the way home; they are going to decorate them for Easter. An echoey announcement darkens the fluorescent air, “Train incomprehensible from incomprehensible is now incomprehensible.”

She is here to meet her parents. She has known them all her life, what if she does not recognize them? What if they do not recognize her? Maybe she is the imposter. Maybe she really was killed in the street yesterday and she will see them but they will not see her. She will follow them frantically into the PATH all the way to the Tim Hortons, screaming unheard at their retreating backs. She looks up at the light in the ceiling high overhead and wills her vision not to constrict—tunnelling is a sign of an anxiety attack. She is not aware of feeling anxiety. Which is perhpas a sign.

Where are her parents? Their train has arrived.
To lose one parent may be counted a misfortune, to lose two …
The crowd balloons past her.

“Golly Moses, Mary Roses!”

“Hi, Mum.”

Hug. She dreamt it all, none of it ever happened. It was all a mid-life childhood abuse fantasy born of the desire to make sense of her own bad behaviour by pinning it on her parents. Baby Boomers, unite!

Bonk on the head. “Hi, Dad.”

“Where are the kids?!” Dolly looks around, alarmed, as if Mary Rose had only moments ago abandoned them.

“They’re home with a friend.”

“Why didn’t you bring them?”

“I’m sorry, I just … wanted to … not.”

Dolly is resplendent in leopard print beret, velour hoodie, gold bangles, an eighteen-karat Holy Mother round her neck and stretchy pants. “Oh, doll, you’re exhausted.”

“I’m not—”

“You’re not twenty-five, you know.”

“Daisy had a seizure.”

“What’s that?” says her father. Bright red peaked cap, yellow windbreaker.

“You got a new freezer?” pipes Dolly.

“No, yes, well, I want a new freezer,” says Mary Rose.

“Dunc, buy your daughter a freezer!”

“What kind do you want?” says Dunc.

“It’ll be your birthday present and your Christmas present for the next three years!” Dolly, mock fierce, slicing the air with her hand, setting her jingles to bangling.

“Better get one with a balcony in that case!” Duncan grins.

Mary Rose smiles. He looks good, good colour in his face.

“Where’s Maggie?!” says Dolly, looking around, alarmed.

“Mum, she’s home with Matt and my friend Gigi—”

“Where’s Hilary?” asks Duncan.

“I told you, Dunc,” says Dolly. “She’s in Winnipeg.”

Mary Rose says, “She’s … out west.”

“Did I tell you, I slept right through the prairies?!” exclaims Dolly.

“How’s big Matt? You got him up on skates yet?”

“Not yet, but—”

“There’s no rush, Gordie Howe didn’t own a pair of skates till he was twelve—”

“Shall we head for the Tim’s?” says Mary Rose.

They pass a flower shop—winged Mercury is stamped on the glass, the messenger god with his meek bouquet.

“Oh look, would Maggie like that?” Dolly’s attention has been snagged by a sparkly arrangement with a heart-shaped balloon:
Forever in Our Hearts
.

“Mum, not that.”

She shepherds them toward a sign that says Eatery with an arrow pointing down and nudges them onto the escalator.

“Mum, hang on to the railing.”

They make it to the food concourse. It could be worse: the bolted chairs and tables are of blond wood, the lighting is good. Her father treks over to the Tim Hortons counter between the sushi bar and the Pita Pit while she guides her mother to a banquette. Duncan rejoins them with a tea, two coffees and, tossed genially onto the table, “A whole bunch of junk.”

“Danke schayne,”
says Dolly, flirtatious. She tips a packet of Splenda into her tea and bites into a doughnut with sprinkles.

“Mum? Why do you bother with Splenda?”

“So I can have a doughnut.”

“I don’t think it works that way.”

“ ‘By your children be ye taught!’ ”

Faux slap.

“The gal behind the counter,” says Duncan appreciatively, “she was speaking Japanese or Swahili, I’m not sure which.”

Dolly smiles. “So many Orientals in BC nowadays.”

Her mother does not remember, her father needed not to know, and Mary Rose is left holding the bag. Of bones. And reading them … This is how crazy ladies are made. Best drop it.

“They’re taking over,” says Duncan, “and that’s probably good news for the rest of us. If you really want to be bilingual nowadays, learn Mandarin.” He bites into a crueller, his eyes boyish blue.

Dolly digs into her purse and comes out with a paperback copy of
Journey to Otherwhere
. On the inside cover, a Post-it Note specifies the inscription: “For Phyllis, My Best to You.” Phyllis is getting married again.

“Your mother should be getting a percentage,” says Duncan with a wink.

Dolly finds a Best Western pen in her purse and, as Mary Rose signs the book, chants, “I used to be Abe Mahmoud’s daughter, then I was Duncan MacKinnon’s wife, now I’m Mary Rose MacKinnon’s mother!”

“Mum, how come you never say ‘I used to be Lily Mahmoud’s daughter’?”

“He was head of the family.”

“She did all the work.”

“He came to this country with nothing and—”

“I’m just saying—”

“ ‘If I say black is white, it’s white.’ ”

Duncan laughs. “Look out, Mister.”

“Mum, that is meaningless.”

Duncan says, “It was meaningful, all right, it meant he was the boss.”

Don’t kick the football
. “I know, Dad, and look at the result.”

“What ‘result’?” says Dolly. “You’re the result, I’m the result, and we have Puppa to thank—”

“Exactly.”

“What’re you getting all worked up for now?” says her father in his innocent-bystander tone.

“I’m not worked up, Dad.”
You kicked the football
.

“In the old country—” says Dolly.

“Please don’t tell me about good slaps.”

“No one can tell me Puppa didn’t love Mumma—”

“I never said—”

“His pockets were always full of candy!”

Duncan laughs.

Mary Rose says, “Mum? Is that who gave you the candy?”

Dolly’s brow creases. “What candy?”

“…  Nothing. It’s okay.” She hands the copy of
Otherwhere
back to her mother and it disappears into the purse.

Duncan marshals a gruff tone. “How’s the new book coming?” Tone of high esteem.

She does not want to hurt his feelings by telling him that she is not going to write it. “Well, in a quantum sense, it’s already out there just waiting for me to look it into existence.”

“That’s one very sophisticated piece of procrastination.”

They laugh.

On the other hand, why does she assume it will hurt him if she does not write the third? Is she self-sabotaging in order to punish him? Is she still willing to do—or not do—anything to get his attention, including fail miserably?

She gives him the Atwood book. He frowns, pleased. “What’re you spending your money for?”

“You’ll get it back, Mary Rose,” says Dolly good-naturedly. “You’re getting the silver tea service when I go.”

“Go where?” says Duncan.

She chats with her father about the fascistic tendencies of the federal government and the roots of the current economic collapse. “Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove and the whole lot of them should be tried for crimes against humanity,” he says. “And that goes for Milton Friedman too.”

“Milt Friedman,” says Dolly. “Did we know him in Germany?”

“Like the fella says, ‘Those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.’ ” He takes a newspaper from the pocket of his jacket.

Dolly opens her purse again.

“What are you looking for, Mum?”

A number of objects surface: the folded tartan tote bag, collapsible hairbrush, packet of jam from the train, the rosary, the
Living with Christ
pamphlet—the brown “Sunday Offering” envelope still tucked in its pages, perhaps her mother is holding out on the Church—the small grey velvet box …

“Is that it, Mum?”

“Is what it?”

“Your moonstone ring.”

“Yes, in the box.”

“Is that what you wanted to give me?” Her mother has been carrying it around the whole time … Mary Rose prepares herself to be moved. This is what difficult mothers do in the end: bestow upon their embattled daughters a token of their love. Roll credits.

But Dolly says, “Why would I give you that?”

“Because … Dad gave it to you when Alexander was born, and … it was a hard time, and I was … kind of there.”

… a fuzzy Chiclet, pussycat change purse, plastic pill container, the rosary again, mini address book from a hair salon … bits and pieces, concrete counterparts to the tiny words that have beset Mary Rose and murdered meaning in a hail of prepositions. She looks away.

This is what you get in the end. Fragments. Parts of speech. Her mother has gone to bits. Her father is on a saner-seeming loop. He knows how to make lunch. Supper cannot be far behind. Don’t ask for the moon—or even the moonstone. Her mother has said “sorry.” Her father has said, “Some things really do get batter.”
Dear Dad, I
. Maybe that was it—the whole of her reply to his touching e-mail, maybe she finished it after all. The sense of “something missing” simply comes with the existential territory. Somewhere inside she is still wailing, damp, toothless and tiny against his bare shoulder. Snap out of it, you’re forty-eight years old. Leave them alone.

Her parents will be re-boarding the train for their home in Ottawa in less than an hour. Their home, in which they are independent and ask nothing of their children except that they visit. They have just crossed the country as they have done so many times, two little old Canadians traversing the vastness—west to east this time. When the Rockies gave way to the foothills and the forests thinned to prairie, when the train crossed the North Saskatchewan
River and rolled through the outskirts of Winnipeg; past the Walmart and the McDonald’s where once there was a tavern, an arena, a rutted highway that led out onto the prairie … did her father’s hand give her mother’s a squeeze? Before she dozed off and he returned to his paper, did they think of Other Mary Rose? Did Dolly say a prayer?