Adult Onset

  She enters the store with its savvy range of lingerie and everyday “intimate wear”—she brought her own mother here in January. An efficient young woman in heels and a topknot secured by chopsticks greets her with a smile of recognition and Mary Rose prepares to receive serenely the forthcoming gush of admiration along with the inevitable query, “When’s the third one coming out?” But the young woman says, “You’re Dolly’s daughter.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How is she?”

  When she has finished bringing the young woman up to date on her mother, she is told, “I’ll need more than five minutes to do a proper fitting on you.” She turns an appraising eye on Mary Rose’s chest as though seeing right through to the faded, ill-fitting sports bra. “I’ll book you in.” As though for a procedure.

  “That’s okay, I’ll pop by later.” Pop. Her mother’s word.

  She tries to flee but is snagged by a lacy confection as ornate as it is insubstantial. Hil would look over-the-top in this. Worth its weightlessness in back rubs …

  “That cut would be great on you,” says the girl, “you’re on the small side and super fit.”

  “Not for me. My partner.”

  The young woman does not bat an eye. “Your wife will love it.” Mary Rose looks at her sharply, but clearly no irony has been intended in the young woman’s use of the W-word. Mary Rose is suddenly aware of having missed a beat, finding herself once again scrambling to keep up with a world she helped to change.

  “Doesn’t my … wife have to be here to get fitted?”

  “No, it’s for you.”

  It all happens so fast. Suddenly Mary Rose is back on the street with a tissue-wrapped girly sex costume. She stuffs it into her fleece-lined L.L. Bean three-season jacket, hops on her bike and rides with renewed energy up Howland Avenue against the flow of one-way cars.

  Aunt Sadie had an arranged marriage that blossomed into love twenty-five years in when she threw a knife at Uncle Leo. He ducked. The relationship with Renée lasted well beyond the best-before date and likely would have ended sooner had Dolly and Duncan not been so opposed to it and all that it represented. Renée saw her through the worst of it; they weathered the storm together, tenderly at first in their apartment, then in their own house, neither of which Dolly and Duncan ever visited. As a card-carrying feminist, Mary Rose ought to have clued in after the first time Renée smacked her. But there were extenuating circumstances … alcohol, professional recognition (Mary Rose’s), depression (Renée’s) … as well as Mary Rose’s maddening capacity to find fault with someone just when she had managed to get all their attention. Smack. And to be fair, Hil had smacked her too, once or twice in the early days. Mary Rose could get anyone to hit her. She could probably have got Mother Teresa to hit her.

  She lets go of the handlebars and relaxes, surfing the speed bumps through the Annex with its big old Victorian houses. Someone in a Volvo drives by, it looks like Margaret Atwood. It is Margaret Atwood.

  She puts her bike in the shed, enters her house and tiptoes up the back steps to see Candace and Maggie at the small wooden craft table in the corner of the dining room. Candace hands Maggie the cap from a marker and waits while she snaps it into place. It takes ages. Then she hands her another and waits. Maggie is completely focused. Candace, completely calm.

  Upstairs in her walk-in closet, she takes the ridiculous bit of fluff from Secrets from Your Sister and hides it behind a pair of brogues in her hanging shoe shelf. It will be safe there until she finds time to return it, first making sure chopstick girl is not on duty.

  Downstairs, the message light on the phone is blinking.

  “It’s Mum, you’re not there.” Click.

  “You’re still not there? Did you get the packeege?” Click.

  An automaton. “To claim your prize, press two—”

  And one from her old pal, Gigi, in her spicy tones. “Hi, Mister, I’m making a pot of spaghetti, should I bring it to you or do you want to grab the kids and come here?” Gigi must be on hiatus between episodes of the cop show she’s running as production manager—not that wrangling a fictional SWAT team has ever stopped her making a batch of meatballs. It might be fun to get together—then again it might be too demanding to be around someone with a fully functional social life.

  She reaches into her pocket to pay her nanny.

  “Thanks, Candace, see you next Tuesday.”

  “Don’t you need me tomorrow night?”

  “Oh yeah, the movie, see you.”

  Candace leaves by the back door and Mary Rose goes out the front to check the mailbox. There is no package. There is a letter from Canada Post. She opens it: NOTICE OF SUSPENSION OF HOME DEVILRY. She blinks. DELIVERY. There follows a menu of reasons with corresponding boxes for ticking. DOG ATTACK Tick. She feels her tongue thicken, her esophagus go to glue. Daisy will be seized and destroyed. It is the law. It doesn’t matter that she’s half blind and great with kids, it doesn’t matter that she is old, she’s a pit bull.

  What will they tell Matthew? Hil will be devastated, Maggie will grow up grieving and not know why. She wills herself to read on.

  Her heart pounds back to life. She has merely to sign the form promising to keep Daisy out of the front yard during delivery hours in order to avoid triggering an inspection by Animal Control. The DOG BITE box is unticked. Thank God.

  Pit bulls were once known as “the nanny dog” because they were so good with children. In the seventies, there was a rash of St. Bernards biting kids’ faces off, but no one ever banned them. She signs the form and puts it on a corner of the kitchen table. She and Maggie can drop it at the post office on their way to pick up Matthew from school this afternoon—there’s one at the back of the Shoppers Drug Mart on Bloor. No doubt the packeege is being held there. She’ll be able to phone her mother and break the latest loop before having to endure it in person when she meets her parents’ train next week. This week? When, precisely, are they coming?

  Ring-ring!

  •

  Her daughter arrives home from school.

  “Are you feeling better, Mummy?”

  “Look after your sister.”

  At her age she was already helping to raise the younger ones. Her own mother was a married woman at twelve.

  Before her husband gets home from work, she dresses, puts on her lipstick and steps into a pair of pumps. “Come help me with supper, Maureen.” Then she takes a rag and cleans the tiny handprints and mucousy smears from the glass door to the balcony.

  He comes in and kisses her. “Boy, something sure smells good, Missus!” He tosses his uniform hat to the hall tree hook and catches the little one up in his arms—“Hey Mister, how’s my little scallywag?”

  “Maureen,” says Dolly. “Set the table.”

  •

  “Maggie, it’s time to go, please put the marker down and come to Mumma.”

  Maggie does. Wow. Then she goes, without being asked, to the top of the four steps that lead from the kitchen down to the back door and sits smiling at Mary Rose. There is something a little disconcerting in that smile almost … mocking. If it were Matthew, Mary Rose would describe it as mischievous. Thus armed with awareness of her own double standard, she smiles back and stations herself on a lower step. Daisy pushes past them both and sits expectantly, tail sweeping the doormat in anticipation of a walk. Mary Rose takes one small foot in one hand and one winter boot in the other—they will pick up Matthew and stop at the post office on the way home and submit the form, which reminds her, she’ll need to grab it from the kitchen table before they go out the door—and goes to slip it on, but Maggie wriggles free and seizes a ladybug boot from the rack. Mary Rose decides not to insist. It is warm enough for rubber boots, indeed it’s balmy out.

  “Okay, Maggie, but wear these boots instead.” Durable, tasteful L.L. Bean boots with reflectors.

  “Not these boots, Mumma.”

  “Yes, these are your rain boots, Maggie.”

  “I wi
ll wear Sitdy boots.”

  Another full sentence. Very good.

  “No, sweetheart.”

  She takes hold again of Maggie’s foot and is rewarded with a sharp kick.

  “NO!”

  Breathe.

  When Matthew was this age, Mary Rose was like Daisy: he could poke her in the eye, pull her tail, nothing riled her. Maggie is a different story. And Mary Rose is a different dog. “Maggie, you may not kick Mumma.”

  “Me may!”

  Kick.

  The trick is not to mind it. She has seized the little foot once more and manages now to get the Bean boot onto it, but as she reaches for the other boot, Maggie kicks off the first and looks at her with frank and infuriating glee. It is a look of entitlement that makes Mary Rose see red—how dare this child assume anything about the safety of this world or her right to the good things of it? Maggie laughs and grabs the ladybug boot. Mary Rose grabs it back. Maggie kicks her—

  “STOP IT!” Mary Rose whacks the boot against the step, grazing the little legs. Maggie freezes. Daisy barks, her tail still going.

  Breathe.

  “I will let go of your foot now, Maggie, but you must not kick.”

  She lets go.

  Maggie does not kick.

  “Good, Maggie.”

  “Sitdy boots.”

  Mary Rose sighs. If she gives in now, she will have taught her child to get her way by kicking. On the other hand, maybe she ought to reward the child for not kicking just now. She should have dispatched the “Sitdy” boots to the Goodwill the moment her parents left in January. Shiny red with big black eyes and antennae, ladybug, ladybug, fly away home!

  “Okay.” She holds the ladybugs just out of reach. “What do you say?”

  “Peace?”

  She hands them over.

  “Sank you, Mumma.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She resists helping, aware that Maggie’s determination to dress herself is developmentally appropriate. She waits. And reflects that child rearing resembles war: long stretches of boredom punctuated by all hell breaking loose. At last the boot is on.

  “Good, Maggie. Let Mumma do the other one.”

  “No sank you.”

  A War and Peace later, the boot is on.

  “Wake up, Daisy, we’re going now.”

  Maggie stands and smiles up at her proudly. How could Mary Rose have seen anything but variations on a theme of joy in her child’s smile? A block of sunlight has barged through the back-door window and it softens upon contact with the child, making of staticky stray hairs a halo for her toddler-plump face, shiny red mouth, green lights in her eyes. She has a dimple. The boots are on the wrong feet.

  Why can’t Mary Rose enjoy the moment? This is the sweet time. She knows it. Can see it from the outside. Mother and child on the steps. Look, Mumma, I did it, Me-self. The mother is healthy, youthful. It is a nice house. It is a nice day. A nice dog. Just add feelings.

  The boots will get bigger. The little shoes in the rack will give way to ever-larger shoes. Increments of time marching away to adulthood and beyond, then gone. Know it now. Feel it.

  Dead. Flat and grey, like sheet metal pressing against her chest where spongy feelings ought to be. Are other people just pretending to have feelings, she wonders? Or do they really feel them? Everything is fine—shiny ladybug, silky head, mother on the steps. But the mother has a blank look on her face. Smile: Tick. Now get behind it. It is only a moment. And the next, and the next, and the next, passing, frame by frame by … Can you catch one of those moments, catch it like the window of a passing train, catch one and get into Time?

  But the train disappears, the prairie is empty but for the tracks, silent now, though still hot to the touch. Vibrating.

  •

  As long as she stays lying down, nothing bad will happen.

  Bang. Bang, bang.

  •

  They were halfway to the school when Maggie insisted on walking, which was, of course, another good sign, but anyone who has ever walked from A to B with a toddler knows how non-linear it can be, not to mention hard on the back. Now Mary Rose buckles her safely back into the stroller as they wait to cross the speedway that is Spadina Avenue.

  She joins the lively scene outside the old rectory that houses Matthew’s Montessori school, and chats with the other parents and nannies milling about. Several, like her, are on foot with dogs and younger siblings, some are on bicycles, others in vans and environmentally sensitive SUVs. There’s Keith—Kevin?—again. He is approaching her, smiling. Mary Rose quickly turns to the mom next to her and asks out of the side of her mouth, “Is it Keith or Kevin?”

  “Philip,” says Saleema.

  “Mary Rose, sorry I accosted you like that, you must get sick of people asking when the third one’s coming out.”

  She smiles back. “Not at all, Philip, it’s … nice to be asked.”

  He is a cell biologist.

  “Why did I think you were a cartoonist?” she says.

  He looks at her oddly. “I wanted to be a cartoonist.”

  Philip rides his bike year-round, and Mary Rose is familiar with his nose in every season, sunburnt in summer, frost-nipped and drippy in winter as he hauls his twin girls in a covered kid cart. Maybe he is on sabbatical. Or maybe he is a stay-at-home dad … making snacks, taking whacks, wondering if he’ll ever get any me-time, wishing his wife would pay just a little more attention to him and just a little less to the children when she gets home in the evening … Which of them requires the back rub?

  “I can’t wait to read it,” he says. “My whole book club is ready to pounce.”

  Mary Rose is speaking with a heterosexual man who is in a book club. O brave new world that has such people in it!

  The glass door to the lower level of the school opens and the pre-elementary “Casa” children begin making their exit, each pausing to shake hands with the teacher before being dismissed. Mary Rose spots Matthew waiting his turn, in animated conversation with Saleema’s son.

  “Saleema, can we borrow Youssef this afternoon?”

  “That would be awesome,” replies Saleema in her usual tone of urgency—as though she operates at a constant level of orange alert. “But can it be tomorrow? I have to shop with my mother then.” Her mother is seated inside a Toyota Matrix at the curb with its lights flashing. Her chador is black to the ankles, unlike Saleema’s fuchsia head scarf.

  “Your mum can come play at our house too.”

  Saleema laughs. She is an engineer. She can use the laughs.

  The steps are suddenly full of small children clutching artwork and being claimed by caregivers. Several of the little ones surround Daisy, jamming the sidewalk, Mary Rose untangles the leash from the stroller and the children. Maggie cries out for inclusion and control, “You can pat my dog!”—desperation is the mother of syntax. She will be joining her brother here next fall and Mary Rose’s life will change again. Another shoe size.

  The teacher looks up between handshakes. “Hi, Mary Rose, how are you?”

  Keira is a young woman with a huge smile and in full, pregnant bloom with her first child.

  “I’m terrific, Keira, you look great!”

  Mary Rose sees what Keira sees, hears what she hears: a happy, energetic mother with two beautiful, healthy children. Keira is sweet, smart and decent like the rest of the faculty and staff—Mary Rose has often wished she could enrol herself here and start school all over again, peeling carrots, tracing letters, learning grace and courtesy and big bang theory in a sane environment.

  “Mumma!”

  He still runs to her every day. That will change in a couple of years too. He thrusts his construction paper at her.

  “Oh my goodness.”

  “It’s a whale.”

  “It is beautiful, sweetheart.”

  “Maffew!” Maggie has leaned forward and bellowed at ten decibels. A few adults turn and laugh, so does Mary Rose.

  Saleema says, “She is so m
uch like you, Mary Rose,” as she hustles her son over to the Matrix.

  “Thanks, Saleema. I think.” She turns back to Matthew, catches sight of Keira again and sees a knife slide into her pregnant belly—she blinks reflexively with a sudden intake of breath and turns away. “Matthew, don’t tease your sister, sweetheart.”

  He is bobbing and weaving in front of the stroller just out of reach, Mary Rose can hear the scream taking shape inside Maggie’s laughter. He dances in close and Maggie gets a clump of his hair. Now he is screaming. “Maggie, no!” hollers Mary Rose. Eleven decibels—she glances round to see if any of the other parents is looking at her. Does she sound too angry? Sue catches her eye and waves. Did she hear? Mary Rose smiles and ducks on the pretext of untangling Daisy—she has to be feeling really good about herself to feel okay around Sue. With her high blond ponytail, tall Hunter rain boots, down vest and all-round air of private school confidence, Sue is the type of woman Mary Rose would never know if it weren’t for their children. She is like Hilary minus theatre plus student council. Indeed, they both have startling blue eyes and project an aura of command. It would stand to reason that Mary Rose ought to feel at home around Sue, but she feels plungingly inadequate. Worse: shamefully homosexual. Something in Sue’s demeanour triggers the old self-loathing … the Lisa Snodgrass effect. Remembered shame. She has confessed a sanitized version of this to Gigi, “I’m still afraid of WASPs even though I’m married to one.” Daisy barks her high-pitched play bark two inches from Mary Rose’s head—the aural effect of a garden spade to the ear—and she straightens with a wince. Matthew has his hands clapped to the sides of his head.

  “Daisy, gentle-speak, you hurt Matthew’s ears.”

  “No, you did,” he says.

  She chuckles in case anyone is listening.