At the top of the page, she wrote her name. Mary. A name million’s have claimed. She’d read a poem somewhere saying a “no name” was better than a name—because something about wheeling with the stars—but all she could think was how she was already sick of her “no name” at seventeen.

Then she wrote the date. April. She checked her phone. Twelfth. She heard the back door. She put the pen down even though Mr. Hozar said it was alright that she worked on her therapy assignment because the boys would take care of themselves—mostly.

“They’re in the alley,” Mr. Hozar said in a way that meant she should go watch them.

Mary grabbed her notebook and pen and stood.

“Donna and I will be back around two, maybe three. She told you everything else… Routine, food, bedtime?” The Hozar’s had a strict nightly bedtime routine that involved visualization journaling, affirmations, and other bullshit. “Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Okay. Okay! Exciting! See you later!”

“Wait! Where’s Molly?” she asked. “I thought there was a dog?”

“Oh.” Mr. Hozar grabbed the lint brush from the stand at the front door. “She died. If you have time to do the dandelions, you’ll see she’s buried where the doghouse used to be.” He placed the lint brush back in the drawer. “It’s funny, we almost named her Mary! Molly. Mary. Molly… Well. Too-de-loo.”

Mary took out her pen and wrote, 1. I usually see the worst in people.

 

The boys Mary had to babysit were at the far end of the alley. They had stood a recycling box on top of a trash can in order to pluck nearly every crab apple from a fenced off tree. They had chucked these apples to oblivion against the opposite neighbor’s fence. Flies swarmed in the light.

“Mary?” the older boy called.

Mary took out her pen. 2. Money is good at making people do what they don’t want to do. The faster she got to a hundred the quicker she’d be done with the assignment her therapist gave her. She put the book back in her jacket pocket and started to jog towards the boys. Then she was on the ground and looking at her palms which were scratched white and turning red.

The boys made it over to her quickly. “You okay?”

“I’m okay.” She brushed her hands on her jeans.

“She looks pale,” said the younger boy, Reid.

“What?” she asked even though she heard.

The boy in blue—she forgot his name—leaned to whisper into the Reid’s ear. Mary heard the word “demented,” and then they asked her what day it was.

“God, kid. I didn’t hit my head. I just tripped over―” Mary looked back for the thing she wanted to say she’d tripped over. But nothing was there. Her laces were untied.

The boy in blue, a real bag of bones, pointed to a wagon at the end of the alley. “You want a ride around the block?”

Reid added. “On our wagon? We can tug you.” He pointed to their bikes among the apples and upturned trash.

“You mean tow?” Mary clarified.

He shrugged, “Tow. Tug. Tow.”

“Say tow,” she said.

“The rope attached to the saddle is called a trace or a tug. We don’t have reins, so you’re wrong.”

“Are you horses or people?”

Reid was about eight. He liked this question a lot. Mary could tell.

It was the golden hour for sidewalk traffic. All the old people had pulled out their walking poles from the hall closets and all the young people were taking photos of the sky. The boys said she was very heavy. Her limbs hung out the side and there was lots of sand in the wagon. Mary would say, “mush, mush,” as the boys strained to pull her along. She wrote in her notebook. 5. I have trouble sleeping… 8. My favourite sound is the seal of a jam jar popping… 10. After grade eleven, I will be in grade twelve. After that, who knows… 13. I have contributed to killing (stepping on ants, plastic, meat consumption) much more than I have contributed to living (I don’t even know what examples to put here.) She was having trouble working on her therapy assignment because she kept looking at her name at the top of the page. Mary. She had started to write it in various ways on the back page of her journal. Mary. Mary. Mary. Then she wrote Molly. Molly. Mary. Blending the two. Making one look like the other and the other like the one. The boys were also distracting her with riddles.

“Pretend this was a train and we got in a crash,” said the older one. “Every single person dies. Who survives?”

“Me. I’m invincible,” she said.

“You almost died in the alley, shut up.”

“If everyone… I don’t know.”

“Are you even gonna try?” he asked in a whiny way that made him sound like his younger brother.

She pretended to think about it for another minute even though she forgot the question. “I really don’t know,” she admitted.

“Every couple would survive.”

“What?”

“Every single person dies. So, all the couples live.”

Reid laughed enough for the three of them.

“Tragic,” Mary said. 

“Is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you single?” Reid asked.

“What if I’m connected to everything? Is that a double positive?”

“A double positive is just positive,” said the older boy, Nate, she remembered.

“You can’t be connected to everything,” said the younger one. “A couple is two.”

“It doesn’t have to be a couple. It could be a family. Nature. Pets…”

“Well, Molly’s dead,” he said matter-of-factly. They crested the hill.

Mary put down her notebook. “I’m sorry about that. She was a good dog.”

Reid said without turning to face her, “You only met her once.”

“Well, I could tell she was a good dog from that time alone.”

Now he turned to face her. “Are you a liar?”

“Yes.” She shivered. It was spring, but the air was still cold. “Aren’t you? Haven’t you lied?”

“Yes,” Reid admitted.

“Well, there we go.”

“You would die. In the crash,” Nate said.

“What?” Mary asked.

“Since you’re a liar. You’re a single person. You’re unconnected.”

Some man on his porch waved to Mary and the boys. He either had a tick or he winked at her. Either way, she no longer wanted to be where she was. But she didn’t know where she wanted to be instead. She did not wave back.

 

After they got back, Mary made a show of storming inside and locking herself in the bathroom. The boys stood at the door and asked her if she was okay and also if she could make them supper. Mary didn’t respond. She wanted to see how long they might remain concerned for her. It wasn’t long. She heard them go and start watching hockey on the TV. 27. Mom says I’m not her daughter, but I’m actually matter flung from all corners of the universe. It’s convenient for her that way, and for my new stepfather too. Her hand was still cold from outside and felt slow to write with. But in January she had a stroke and now listens very carefully to the things I have to say. It makes me feel bad to think the universe is her parent too. No one would be coming to check on Mary in the bathroom. Any bathroom that is. The world didn’t care much for her, she thought, she didn’t like it as a parent. Just another Mary. She left the bathroom.

 

She found Nutella on the top shelf and made herself a sandwich. She made the boys some grilled cheese. When she brought them to the living room she found Reid half off the couch watching the game while Nate was halfway sunk inside the couch and staring at the wall.

“We’re not allowed to eat in the living room,” Nate said.

Mary looked at the boys, hoping they would realize they could do otherwise now that their parents weren’t here. She noticed the couches were new. And they were white. Much unlike the last couches which Molly had chewed, pulling the fabric out in strings which looked like coarse weeds.

Nate made an “ahem,” noise with his throat—he tried to make it really deep and ended up coughing.

“Or what?” What’s gonna happen?” Mary feigned a bite out of her sandwich but the look on the boy’s faces stopped her. They looked scared to death, as if Mr. Hozar were there behind her. She turned around to make sure. He wasn’t.

Mary was holding their plates in each hand and held her sandwich by her thumb and fore finger, where it was drooping with gravity. The game went into intermission. Someone else on the TV started to speak. Mary wondered if the boys would tell on her. She guessed they would—last time when the Reid got hungry at night and she made him brush his teeth twice and his gums bled—he had told on her for that, and today Mr. Hozar reprimanded her for it.

The boys weren’t letting it show but she knew they wanted her to take a bite over the white carpet. Not only that, but that they hoped that Nutella might spill. They wanted it, bad.

Mary took the biggest bite out of her sandwich that she could. Crumbs fell into the carpet and the boys screamed with laughter. They looked at each other, their mouths little Os. Mary handed them their plates and they barely were able to swallow between bursts of laughter.

36. Mom pretends Dad never existed… 39. I will never have children. 45. I judge people who sing badly but I think it is good that people sing, even if they sing badly.

Mary washed the plates. Then she sat and wrote out her name some more, Mary, Mary, Mary. The Devils lost to the Flames even though they were winning by two before the third. By then she had started to break apart the letters. She circled an overlapping A and an R because it looked like a flower. She looked at the yard. There were clumps of fresh dirt sprinkled with fertilizer over the yellow patches where Molly must have favoured to piss throughout the winter. She could see the fresh dirt in the back corner that must have been Molly’s grave. There was no marker. Dandelions were bleeding in from the field behind the fence. As if the weeds were attempting to storm the house. Mary made a dandelion out of the overlapping A and R. And then started to draw more, connecting the dots of Mary’s and Molly’s on the page until it looked like a mess of dandelions, like the field. She smiled at how they looked. Mr. Hozar said he’d give Mary an extra fifty bucks if she went out back and plucked the dandelions with a spade. He’d told her he had big plans for the yard this year.

“Did you guys have a little ceremony for Molly?” The boys were not in this universe. “Hey!” She got their attention and asked them again.

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

Mary looked back out at the grave. Molly must have only been a year old. The sky was much greyer, and it was nearly dusk.

“We do our grief meditation now. It’s eight-thirty,” Nate said.

“Let’s go outside,” said Mary.

“We have to do our grief mediation.” The older boy stood.

The younger one rolled off the couch and said “mediation, meditation, meditation,” repeatedly as he tented himself underneath a throw blanket using his hands and feet.

“We can do it outside. Come on.” Mary opened the door and went down the slide off the deck. The boys followed.

 

There were some wilted leaves in the grass that looked like old paper. Mary regretted leaving her book on the table. She tried to take a mental note of what she was thinking. 52. At what point is a decomposing leaf already more of what it will become than what it still is? But this wasn’t a statement. Her therapist wanted statements. But this felt like it was at the root of everything. She asked the boys this. But they only saw the leaf as a leaf.

“What if it were Molly. Let’s say.” She regretted saying this the instant she did.

The older boy was on his back running his hands through his hair. The younger one was flossing the gap between his front teeth with a blade of grass. But they were both seriously considering the question now.

“Molly was dead when she was alive,” reasoned Nate.

Reid nodded his head vigorously.

Mary thought he meant the moment the leaf fell from the tree.

“So, a leaf is no longer a leaf once it leaves the tree?” she tried.

“The leaf is dead once the tree decides to get rid of it,” Nate said.

“The leaf is dead once Dad digs the grave for it,” echoed Reid.

“After Molly dies?” Mary was confused.

“No. When Dad was making the backyard nice, and he first dug the grave.”

The boys were looking up at the grey sky—dusk seemed to have come too early. She could tell they understood what their dad had done to Molly. Mary watched them for a moment, the breeze was light, and she felt she could see them—little wisps of life. Mary had to look away. The grass did not feel any more or less warm than her hands. Reid was unperturbed but Nate had turned his face away from Mary, trying to hide his sniffling before saying, “We have to do our grief meditation now.” He stood and wiped his tears. Reid followed him inside.

She had kept the boys from meditation. She let them eat in the living room on the new couches. She probably wouldn’t force them to do their visualizations and affirmations. Mr. Hozar would not ask her to babysit again. Mary thought maybe she should steal something then. But there was nothing she wanted. She wanted less of what this was.

Mary. Molly. Mary.

She plucked a dandelion from the ground. Smelt it. Spring. Then she squeezed its stem and rubbed the white into her fingers. She smelt it. It smelt the same but sourer. More potent with life. The smell of more of what it would become. Mary stood. If a leaf is decomposing. If a leaf is less of itself than what it will become, it is being born.

Night was turning fast. She found the lawnmower on the side of the house. She primed it. It took her a few minutes before it turned over. It was dark then and there was no moon and no stars, but from the light inside the Hozar’s she could see the little yellow heads of all the dandelions in the yard. She took the grass catcher off the lawnmower. Then she went, back and forth, row after row. Lining the track of one wheel with the next. The noise hurt her ears. She saw a few neighbors framed by their massive windows watching her, obviously annoyed with the noise so late. But she focused on the front of the mower, it looked like the lawnmower was devouring the dandelions, it looked mean. But she knew she was only giving birth to more and more of them. Swallowing and spitting out their nature. The beautiful things. Their taproots would grow deeper, and new seeds would be broken open and take hold. She would be gone. The dandelions would rally. And they would storm the house.