Mary Cyr

by David Adams Richards

  They asked his mother; that is, Lucretia Rapone. But she just stood looking perplexed and angry that they asked her something so annoying, so Gabriella said:

  “Victor Gregario Sonora—aged fourteen years.”

  Mary Cyr watched it from her cell—she could see the procession wind its way down the hill to a graveyard; cameras from all news agencies were there too.

  She stood on her crate attempting to hear people. Wanting herself to say goodbye. But there had been so many over the years.

  “Usted pagará por eso, señora Mary,” a man said behind her.

  She turned about, startled. There, his face exhibiting surprise at her beauty, was Erappo Pole, the policeman who blew bubbles.

  Now he said it again:

  “You will pay for that, Lady Mary.”

  He didn’t think she understood, but was hoping the world heard.

  She understood and no longer cared what the world heard.

  That night twenty cameras focused on her as she was led down the street to once again meet with the prosecutor.

  “Sonríe por favor para mí si puedes—” Sharon DeRolfo said.

  Please smile for me if you can.

  At that meeting Tallagonga asked her, in fact pleaded with her, to confess, to forgo the circus of a trial, and she would see that things would go easy. She also said that her brother, Perley, was threatening to appear and trade places with her.

  “My cousin,” Mary said in a tired voice.

  “We are afraid for his safety,” Tallagonga said. “It might be better if you say you are guilty.”

  “I have been guilty all my life,” Mary Cyr said. “But I am no longer guilty—I will not be guilty anymore. You see, I saw more and much deeper than other people, so I was often accused of their crimes, but now I will be free.”

  “So the money was not to buy a child—maybe it was for drugs.”

  “Maybe it was to be given away to people you say you cherish,” Mary said. “So if you feel you are lying about it, which one of us do you think is telling the truth?”

  Mary had started going to Mass again—along with the other convicts. It was nice to sit in the seat, and have a sermon about forgiveness in a language most of which she did not understand. Everyone was at Mass—even Erappo Pole. Sometimes she was allowed to watch them set up the Mass; an altar boy brought in the chalice and set it on the white tablecloth. There was a little bell, and the water and wine sat in two little jars on the end of the table. The water looked purer than any she had ever seen, while the holy water in the little font was listless—still, she blessed herself with trepidation, hoping for her sins to be excused.

  The altar boy was so tiny he had a hard time lifting the book for the priest to kiss.

  I will be better able to cope—she thought, whenever she took the Host.

  At least, she prayed she would be.

  One night she fell asleep and dreamed she was in the great pine forest behind her house. Every pine she touched turned golden and the needles fell to the ground. At first she was thinking everything she touched turned to gold. Then she realized she had killed everything she touched. When she turned to walk back to her house, all the windows were open, and white curtains blew out into the sun. The sun as white as the Host she had taken that day, and the curtains were as white as the priest’s white vestment.

  She saw herself outside of her body staring down at herself. She looked over and Bobby was with her, holding the toy truck Maxwell—he smiled at her, as if to make her understand.

  Ah yes, Bobby is dead, she thought, and so too is little Florin. So they must be together now. And Victor—yes—there he is, on the side of the cloud.

  There were other people there too. Pedro and his wife, Alicia. Why she knew this she did not know. She only knew she would forget it once she awoke.

  She held Muggy Muffs in her arms, and the needles covered him, as well—almost, she thought, as bright as flame.

  PART THIRTEEN

  1.

  THE NIGHT SHE HAD DANCED AT THE BAR IN TRACADIE, SHE SAT alone. She drank tequila. She looked across the room when she licked the salt, drank, and then brought the glass back to the table with a kind of clink. She sucked the lemon and watched people come and go.

  Princess Diana had died a few weeks before.

  And that was where she met Lucien. He asked to sit. He lit her cigarette in the measured way of a new beau. He told her about his boat, saying: “I have to drive up later and check my boat, the Marianne—”

  “What?” she said. “You actually have a boat?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Can I see it?”

  “Of course—do you want to come with me?”

  The song was “Rock and Roll Hootchie Coo.”

  “I just don’t believe you,” she said.

  The song was “Little Darlin’.”

  “Ah, a boat is nothing,” he said. He sniffed and turned to look across the bar at the girl he was supposed to be with. The girl his boat was named after—the girl he was thinking of marrying.

  When he turned around, Mary Cyr was looking at him, with her dark, penetrating eyes. It was as if he was naked. He became as weak as a rag doll—one of those tragic ones. The kind of effect women can have on men with a glance; to make them, as Layton once wrote, as weak as piss.

  Lucien tried to speak, but only his lips moved.

  The song was “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”

  They left together. And not a man could take their eyes off of her.

  Not a man in the whole goddamn fuckin’ place.

  In so many ways, if she did not love so much, she could destroy them all.

  He took her to his thirty-two-foot lobster boat moored in Neguac, and helped her down the ladder to the bow. She smelled tar and waves and was at peace. Inside he had a ship’s log. He asked her to write in it:

  “Ta da,” she wrote, and “I knew Princess Di—she invited me to Kensington Palace.”

  They both laughed. What an absurd thing to have written.

  He had regained his composure. She was impressed by him. He took off his shirt. He walked about bare-chested, his tattoo of the Acadian flag above his heart. And the night smelled of the warm salt air.

  He spoke about his quota of lobster and how to get around it and take even more. That someday he would build a house. That he would have his own business.

  “But aren’t you engaged?” she said.

  He shrugged, blushed then said:

  “So what?”

  “Oh dear me.” She smiled.

  He opened a beer for her. He sat back on the small swivel chair with his hands folded behind his head, watching her. He was Lucien, the boy—long ago—who had broken little Denise Albert’s heart. The boy Denise had timidly asked to dance at the spring hop and he had said:

  “No—go away, don’t bother me.”

  Now Mary told him in a quiet, halting voice that her granddad once had a boat too.

  “Oh—what kind?” Lucien asked.

  “Oh, it’s nothing like this,” she said.

  He turned on the FM radio, and piped the music through speakers.

  “‘Five to one, baby, one to five. No one here gets out alive.’”

  She smiled. It unnerved him, so she stopped smiling.

  The night was soft. He popped another beer and then another.

  She went to the wheelhouse, and looked out the broad window, and he turned the key so the auxiliary power was on.

  “Oh,” she said.

  He came close to her. His breath was slightly laboured.

  “I can teach you,” he said. “Have you ever been out on the bay?”

  He ran his hands over the sides of her breasts, pretending to be instructing her on how to hold the wheel. She thought of dear old Nigel.

  “Me?” she said, smiling. “Out on the bay?”

  He did not know who she was. And for a while she may have forgotten as well.

  Then one day—it was in the winter and she ha
d moved into a rooming house. She was working at Doyle’s Meat Market. He had broken up with his girl—the girl who had called Mary Cyr names in the convent.

  She sat in the rooming house, and stared out the window at the bay. So he visited her. He proposed.

  “I have lots of money,” he said. “See my car?”

  “Yes, I did—it’s wonderful—and almost new—I rarely had a car that was almost new.”

  “Well, there you go,” Lucien said, proudly.

  “I wonder if I could drive it someday.” She smiled.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll teach you.”

  “I wonder if I could ever teach you,” she said.

  “Of course—sure in somethings—” he said, looking around her room, the forlorn place with snow on the aluminum porch roof.

  “What about Marianne?” she said.

  He told her a secret—he was changing the name of his boat—and if she wanted it to be named after her, they had better damn well get married. How is that for news?

  “Oh oh,” she said, “dear oh dear.”

  She looked at him, gave a slight whimsical nod, almost gone tragic in the setting sun.

  “Are we going to get married?” he said. “I have other women who want to, you know—I’m not hard up, you know.”

  2.

  SHE HAD HIS PICTURE TAKEN IN A SMALL CUBICLE IN ZELLERS. She had him sign some papers. He signed his name:

  Lucien DeCoussy.

  Then they drove to a place near Moncton for the civil ceremony. He borrowed his brother’s suit. He had big brown shoes. He asked about her family.

  “They’re a no-show,” she said. “I think they are a little bit overcome by it all.”

  “Well.” He smiled. “They have nothing to fear with me—you can tell them that!”

  It was now springtime. There was still snow in the woods—at least down over the steep bank by the motel where he carried her through the door, to the smell of carpet and dark-pine wallboard. From the back window they could see the debris of a lost winter, the old wire fence.

  The walls were grey and the television was blurry. He had bought some sparkling wine.

  “Let us drink a toast,” he said.

  After a while he asked her why she hadn’t unpacked. She asked him if they might go somewhere else.

  “But what about the oysters I ordered?”

  “Oh—oysters,” she said.

  She did not like the musty smell in the room, the smell of leftover sex from other people. He took out his big flat wallet, to look through it.

  “Where do you want to go?” he said. He had blond hair and blue eyes and was trying to be kind. He waved his hand and said:

  “I have three-hundred and ten bucks—but this here room is paid for.”

  She smiled at him sadly, almost full of love. He went to find the opener for the wine.

  “Aller gauche,” she said.

  He went to have a pee.

  “‘Dream angel, where are you’” came the song. She then went and had a pee. She felt sorry for Marianne—the girl from long ago who had teased Denise Albert to distraction because Denise had wanted to dance one dance with Marianne’s beau. Tragic.

  Yes, she thought, grabbing some toilet paper to wipe herself. I have become tragic.

  Lucien was waiting for her, naked on the bed.

  “Oh sure,” she said, as if she had forgotten why they were there. “Just a minute, please.”

  She went outside and spoke on her phone.

  She wore now a little black dress, with no underwear. She was like that at times. But she didn’t go to him. She went and sat on a chair.

  And then a limo pulled up. And the driver got out and opened the door.

  “Come along—dress—hurry up—vite!” She smiled.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  She sat with him in the back seat. She took his hand. She looked out the window when he asked questions. She remembered teaching Denise Albert how to waltz, so she would be able to waltz when he asked her. They waltzed in the room, when it was snowing outside.

  “Ta da.”

  He now realized it was probably a joke his friends had played on him. He kept saying:

  “Where is Hermanigile—wait until I get my hands on him. I’ll ring his skinny little neck.”

  She patted his hand.

  “Yes,” she said, “don’t be afraid.”

  “Me—afraid?” His chest heaved out. He smiled.

  3.

  IN THE SMALL AIRPORT—ON THE OUT-OF-THE-WAY AIRSTRIP against the soft spring sky—they waited. And waited.

  “What are we doing?” he asked.

  “Waiting,” she said. She looked at her watch.

  A sock hop too and the song “Endless Love”—a song that was for the summer, the trees bountiful and the earth gone sweet.

  “Do you remember her—Denise?”

  “Denise—no—well, I knew many Denises.”

  “Oh dear,” she said.

  They were silent for a long time. She smoked a cigarette, and then looked at him, quizzically.

  “Would you ever light a dog on fire?”

  “A dog on fire—no!”

  “Thank God for that,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  When the plane landed, he became confused. His eyes got large and he looked all around to try to see someone.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “My plane.”

  “Your plane?” he said.

  “Yes, one of them,” she said, remembering the artist’s son, and the party she had begged Nan to let her go to when she was fifteen. (When she already had a child hidden at home.)

  Now that little girl was a ghost.

  And perhaps so was she.

  She sat down in front of him. She took something out of her purse and handed it to him.

  “What is this?”

  “Your passport.”

  The shoes he had borrowed from his brother hurt his feet, and they flew away.

  In Spain she went to bed early—after she said she could pee standing up. The night was gentle.

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  “Tomorrow what?” he asked, staring at her in a kind of deep fear.

  “Tomorrow we look for Paco—and if we find him—well, I think you are strong enough to beat him up—you are Lucien DeCoussy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Lucien DeCoussy, I know you are no pussy.” She smiled.

  * * *

  —

  So they began their search. To the many Dénia bars and night places and drove all the way to Benidorm.

  They did not find Paco either—well, they found twenty-four Pacos, and more than a few of them gigolos, but not any of them the right one. A Paco with the studious look of a lounge lizard smiled at them when they mentioned her mother, as if not only should he know her but they would find the stories about it amusing. But no, he was not the Paco either, though he started to tap his fingers on the bar quickly as if he was playing the bongos for them. Then he began to sing a Spanish lament so they would stay. But it did not entice them. A golden chain dangled from his neck, his hair was slicked back and peppered with just a tad of grey that he had tried to hide. The sun was going down over the red buildings when they left.

  They drank most nights at the Blue Trumpeta. They would walk to it after supper—poor Lucien followed her about. He did not know how not to.

  The bar was always lively, with many expat Germans, and a few Dutchwomen. Englishmen trying to be proper, the scent of their empire gone, their hair sticking up in rude little tuffs, their women willing to be seduced by young energetic Spaniards who pretended to be socialists and concerned for the world.

  Then one evening she was about to leave. But turned around quite startled and asked the bartender, where in the world did he get that bottle.

  He took it down and handed it to her. She held it for the very first time in years.

  “We found that in the sea,” h
e said. “It was washed up onshore.”

  “Where’s the letter?” she asked.

  “What letter?”

  “The letter that said, ‘You be a renegade and I’ll be renegadier than you. Just you wait and see!’”

  “How did you ever know that?”

  “I am like that—at times.”

  4.

  SHE WROTE IN HER DIARY THAT THEY WENT TO THE OLIVE grove that her family once owned. And she walked too along the back roads on a journey to somewhere, stood in orange groves when the sun came out. All of this was seen and known. But then one evening—when the sun was setting over the hills behind them, she wanted to see the place her mother wanted to buy. ¡Dios mío!, which was far away up in the hills, secluded and empty with the sky pale and the farmhouse white and brown. It was cold, the sky a temperamental cooling pink and the wind smelling of the sea. She drove the small Fiat up to it, past the last of the night lights on the hills, and Lucien got out. She was, she said, trying to find things for him to do. He felt out of place—worse, she was filthy rich and that seemed almost worse than he being poor, because now he remembered all that he had bragged about and he felt ashamed. He felt shame as he said for—

  “Allumant sa cigarette avec un sourire.”

  Yes, she remembered his tossed-off, ordinary arrogance when he lit her cigarette with a smile.

  Did she want him to feel this shame, she asked her diary. Did she or not?

  No, of course she did not.

  Still, it was a question the diary answered this way:

  “Oh, little Denise—my favourite Acadian girl in the world must have felt shame when she walked across the room and asked him to dance—when her only friend in the whole school was the awkward maudit anglais, who had taught her to waltz against the Panamanian moon that desperate night so, so long ago so he would take the time to waltz with her. But you see—you see, he could have been so kind, two weeks before she died—but he said NO.

  “Ah you see, people do not think I loved the French, but how could I not love the French when I loved her.”