Adult Onset

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In the midway of this, our mortal life, Mary Rose MacKinnon is at her cheerful kitchen table checking e-mail. It is Monday. Her two-year-old is busy driving a doll stroller into the baseboard, so she has a few minutes.

Your 99 friends are waiting to join you on Facebook. She deletes it, flinches at another invitation to appear at a literary festival, skims her five-year-old’s school newsletter online and signs up to accompany his class to the reptile museum. She skips guiltily over unanswered messages and cute links sent by friends — including one from her brother that shows a fat woman whose naked torso looks like Homer Simpson’s face — and is about to close it down when her laptop bings in time with the oven and the incoming e-mail catches her eye. It is highlighted in queasy cyber yellow and bears a dialogue box: Mail thinks this is junk. She eyes it gingerly, fearing a virus or another ad for Viagra. It is from some joker — as her father would say — with the address [email protected] and in the subject line:

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