I am Mary Dunne

by Brian Moore

  And that lunch. It frightens me still to think that, drugged as I was, I might have blown the whole thing sky-high. Even now, I remember only isolated moments from that awful afternoon. There is one moment in particular: Terence sits opposite me in the booth, his head to one side, a tall Liverpool-Irish stranger who is doodling elaborate dodo birds on the tablecloth. The birds’ heads form a circle around the base of his untouched Dubonnet cocktail. And as he draws these neat, fantastic birds he is listening to my reserpine babble about how much Hat needs me, how it’s Hat’s last chance for a decent job, how I can’t walk out on Hat now, no matter how much I want to, and on and on and none of it do I remember any more, but I do remember that moment, watching Tee as he listened to me, watching him doodle the dodo birds, hearing his voice say, ‘Quite . . . Yes, quite,’ not knowing then as I do now that for Terence ‘quite’ is ‘Shut up, damn you, why did I ever get mixed up in this?’

  But that awful day, even if I had known what he was thinking I would have been incapable of changing my behaviour. I went on, boringly sleep-talking my way through lunch and, fool that I was, never even mentioned that I’d taken a pill.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. I did most of my explaining before we ate lunch. Then, Terence tells me, there was a silence until the waiter brought the food, a silence in which Terence suddenly decided he could not bear to sit there much longer, so he made a pretence of eating, swallowing a few mouthfuls, then called for the check and said if I didn’t mind he had an appointment and would I mind having my coffee alone as he had to go? And then, without waiting for my answer, put some money on the table, stood up, and said, ‘Good luck, Mary. It will be all right, you know,’ and before I, in my drugged dullness, could think to protest, he had gone. And it was then, thank God, that I had my third brief moment of clarity that afternoon for it came to me that unless I did something and at once, I would never see Terence again.

  I rose up and ran, fuddled, out into the street and there on the corner of Ninth Avenue was Terence, having just flagged down a cab. ‘Terence? Terence?’ I shouted, so loud that people turned to look at me and the taxi driver, stopping near Terence, leaned out of his cab window and pointed me out to Tee and, I remember, Tee turned and came towards me, looking worried as though I were going to make a scene.

  Like a drunk, I put my arms out and when he came up to me and did not embrace me, I reached out and caught hold of his wrist. ‘Listen,’ I said, in a stumbling voice. ‘Hat’s going to be in Ottawa next month, the twenty-fifth to the twenty-eighth. I could come down here and we could see each other?’

  When I said that, the way I said it, something happened. Tee sort of held me off and looked at me, his face puzzled. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ And I said, stammering it out, ‘Listen, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have, but I took some pill, I think, I mean I can’t think straight.’

  ‘What sort of pill?’

  ‘Reserpine, a doctor gave them to my husband once. Please, I’ll come down to New York on September 25th. Will you see me if I call you then?’

  ‘Reserpine,’ he said. ‘My God.’

  The cab he had flagged down had made a U-turn and now came up alongside us on the pavement. ‘So, you want a cab?’ the driver shouted and Terence turned, nodded, then turned back to look at me.

  ‘Please?’ I said.

  He bent down and kissed my brow as you would a child’s. ‘The twenty-fifth,’ he said. ‘All right. If you still feel like it, I’ll be here.’

  He let go of me and jumped into the cab, pulling the door shut. The cab moved away from the kerb and I tried to see him through the cab window but the sun shone at an angle, making the glass just a gleam. And the cab went off down the street. He had gone, I could no longer see him, but in that moment it was decided. I would go to Montreal with Hat but only until Hat was settled in the new job. I would not stay with him. I left Hat at that moment, although, to be honest about it, I did not know it then. I walked off down Fiftieth Street, going towards Times Square, and all I knew was that I had a small chance of being with Terence for a day or so, six weeks in the future when Hat would go to Ottawa. I was still woozy from the pill. I don’t remember what I did for the next hour or so. What I do remember is suddenly coming to in the commuter train going home to Dobbs Ferry, knowing that the pill had worn off, sitting staring out at the long rainy filmstrip of suburb going past the train window and, quietly, beginning to cry, the cry of my life, the tears that, for the next weeks, recurred and recurred, often even in front of other people. Tears that came on when I heard music (for music made me think of Terence), tears which were mixed with a sadness in those six weeks of waiting, a sad, foolish certainty that Tee had only agreed to see me that day to prevent me from making a scene, poor Tee, trapped in the street by a drugged woman who didn’t know what she was saying when she made her foolish proposal.

  ‘More coffee, madame?’

  I came up from the dooms as from a dive into deep water, finding bearings in the poster of the Sainte-Chapelle on the wall opposite me. At my right hand, the waiter, middle-aged and familiar in his short red jacket, a brass coffee-pot in his hand, his face a question which asked my answer.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  He bent over me, took my cup, turning away from the table as he poured the coffee. The back of his red jacket rode up, revealing the braces which held up his black trousers, their leather stays forming a V in the middle of his back as they gripped the trouser buttons, straining against the bulge of his thickening, middle-aged back.

  In Montreal, years ago, Hat and I out walking on a Sunday morning, turning the corner of Metcalfe Street, found there in pale winter sunlight a parade. As it came close, the band struck up: it was a Shriners’ convention, old and middle-aged men from towns in the eastern United States and Canada, red fezzes incongruous on their ageing Protestant faces as, still hung-over from last night’s whoopee, they marched six abreast behind the bright uniforms and the buck strut of a teenage high-school band. Failed men, as Shriners seem to be, druggists, salesmen, shoe clerks, stepping out in the cold winter sunlight, all together now, hup-two-three-four, dispatchers, drapers, deliverymen, dentists, brothers all in the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, and as I stood on the corner of Metcalfe Street watching them march past in their red fezzes and cheap suits, seeing some of them smile shakily and wave like good sports to the good sports among the watchers in this Canadian Gay Paree where they’d convened to have some fun and good fellowship and help Little Crippled Kids, I wept, I wept, I could not explain it to Hat, how could I explain why those failures in foolish hats, those old joiners, looking so damned silly as they marched behind the blue and gold shakos of the boys in hussar uniforms from Rosewood Central High, why did they make me weep?

  I do not know. But I remembered the Shriners as I looked at the waiter’s braces showing beneath his fancy-dress red jacket, straining against his middle-aged spread, and, remembering, looking away, afraid that again, inexplicably, tears might come.

  ‘And the other lady, does she wish coffee?’

  I realized he did not know Janice had left. I looked up to tell him but as I did he turned and faced down the aisle of diners, holding up his coffee-pot, questioningly, smiling at someone who (my God, why?) was Janice coming back to our table. Who nodded to him, yes she wanted coffee. He poured some and took himself off, just as she reached our table.

  ‘May I sit down?’

  Avoiding my eye as she said it, staring instead at the wall above me.

  ‘Of course.’ Clumsy, I must struggle up, push out the table from the banquette while she, equally awkward, must wait, then edge past me, almost upsetting the cups, glasses, napkins. I pulled the table close, locking us together again.

  Wondering: is she mad? I heard all she said, I didn’t imagine it, did I, she did say those things?

  I sideglanced her, saw her touch the coffee cup’s handle with the tip of her thumb and forefinger, lift
the cup, then, her mind changed, set it back on its saucer. Surely she wasn’t going to ignore what she’d just said to me?

  Her hand, rejecting the coffee-cup, moved along the table. Her fingers gripped my wrist. ‘I’m sorry. Very, very sorry, Mary, will you forgive me?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  But I did not mean it. I do not forgive her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. She hesitated. And then, ‘Mary, do you think we could go somewhere else? I can’t talk to you with those men sitting over there. You were right. I was flirting with them. Did you get our check yet?’

  ‘I will.’ I signalled the waiter who nodded that he would come but he was waiting on an old, old man and a girl who might be the old man’s granddaughter. The old, old man was having trouble reading the menu. The waiter, helpful, bent to point out something on the printed card while I willed him to hurry, to come to us, get us out of there. Not looking at Janice, yet looking, seeing, yet pretending not to see, the flush of shame which reddened the line of her jaw as she sat there, humble, staring at the tablecloth.

  The waiter came, but oh, so slowly, flipping through the bills on his pad to find the right one, checking with me about the bottle of Brouilly, ‘Was it a half-bottle, madame?’ slow to add it up and, when he had finished, I left too much as tip because I couldn’t stand to wait for my change. Janice, humble, saying nothing, picked up the ten-dollar bill she had left on the table and pushed it into the open jaw of my purse.

  Then, the pair of us, awkwardly, deliberately blind and deaf to our surrounding as though the other patrons were shouting abuse at us, blundered down through the room, fleeing the place, hurrying past Owner-Headwaiter in the little foyer, up the steps and out into the street where Janice took hold of my arm, turned me in the direction of Third Avenue and, looking into my face for the first time since her return, began in a monotone, like a child reciting a memorized speech, saying something apologetic about her wanting to get back at me because what I said about Charles hurt her, although, mind you, she knew I had said what I did say without malice and for her own good.

  And then she stopped and waited for me to say something but what could I say? Anything I said might insult her all over again, so I compromised by nodding my head and saying, ‘Yes, I understand,’ and by now we were at the corner of Third Avenue and she had decided to say something else, something very important to her for she stopped walking and stood facing me for an awkward, silent moment, her eyes open in great O’s of near hysterics until she got it out. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s true, that saying. There are none so blind as those who will not see. Oh Mary, I know I deny the truth, I always did and now I know why. I do it because I’m afraid and I’m selfish and – oh, look!’

  And I, staring at her, my heart going out to her as she made this confession, startled when she suddenly said, ‘Oh, look!’ for, as she said it, her voice dropped to a whisper and she grabbed my wrist so dramatically that I was sure some horrible accident had happened just behind me, something she’d seen and I had not, so, afraid to look, I turned and saw – nothing abnormal, a girl coming out of Delight Dry Cleaners, a girl carrying a dress on a hanger, a girl whose hair and costume might cause stares some places but not here – anyway, she was no reason for Janice’s sudden spastic pause – until I looked again and the girl was Julie Harris, the actress, very slight and childish in a short-skirted dress of yellow wool, long white jacquard stockings and white Courrèges boots, her long red hair streaming free down her back, her eyes nunnishly on the pavement as she passed us by, acting out her unawareness of Janice’s vulgar nods and becks and wreathed smiles, Janice suddenly so hateful, so hicky, as she shook my wrist, whispering, ‘It is, isn’t it? Julie Harris?’

  I nodded yes, frowning at her to shut her up, but, oh God, she let go of my wrist at once and ran after Julie Harris who had stopped at the intersection, waiting for the light to change, and then I heard, ‘Excuse me, I know this is rude, but you are Julie Harris, aren’t you?’

  And Julie Harris smiled and muttered something, allowing, I suppose, as how she was Julie Harris.

  ‘But, I just had to speak to you, I just want to say how much I admire your acting. I saw you in The Lark and, yes, in Montreal I saw you in The Member of the Wedding. Anyway, I think you’re one of the finest actresses alive.’

  Julie Harris scuffed her Courrèges boot and stared at it and smiled, mumbling something that, again, I did not hear. And stepped off the pavement (thank God the light went green for her), escaping to the other side of the street. Leaving Janice in an orgasm of hero-worship and me, the third visitor on this scene, my face scrooged up in contempt.

  Janice, returning, all smiles, ‘Wasn’t that something?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Janice.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ (And, believe it or not, I don’t think she knew what I did mean.)

  ‘What do you think I mean? Running after that poor woman. “Oh, I just think you’re one of the finest actresses alive.” How could you say such a thing?’

  ‘I know,’ Janice said; she laughed, then covered her mouth with her hand, pretending embarrassment. ‘Wasn’t it terrible of me? I know she’s not great. But she is good, don’t you think? Did you see her in The Member of the Wedding?’

  ‘God, Janice, I’m not talking about that.’

  But Janice pretended not to hear me. Grinning, she drew me to her, holding my wrist in false collusion. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Come on, now. Famous people just live for praise. You know that.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I told her, wondering, as I said it, how on earth we got sidetracked like this.

  ‘Well, they do. Especially actors. They’re so dumb.’

  She stopped and said, ‘Oops. Present company excepted. Anyway, you weren’t just an actress, you did so many other things. I’m sorry.’

  Smiling with the pretty woman’s confidence that she will be forgiven. But I stood there thinking, you silly bitch, if you have such a low opinion of actresses then explain to me why you run after them in the street. I despised her, I despised myself for being a friend of a person who would interrupt herself to run after a celebrity. Anyone who would do a thing like that was not worth my attention, I decided, and so, unable even to look at her, I turned away from her and looked instead into the window of Delight Dry Cleaners which was a mistake, for the Negro delivery man inside stopped his job of covering cleaned garments in cellophane bags and began making sucking motions with his lips, pretending to kiss me through the window-pane, an action which, stupid as I was with pre-menstrual tension, frightened me, making me start and turn back towards Janice and so run full tilt into her next question.

  ‘All right, Mary. Look, let me begin all over again. Do you have a date or could you speak, say, another hour with me?’

  Flustered by the deliveryman’s gestures, not expecting Janice to ask this, I couldn’t think of an excuse so, weakly, I said, ‘No, I’m not busy,’ and of course she looked delighted and said, ‘Wonderful. Let’s go somewhere quiet.’

  My apartment was quiet, but by then I realized what a mistake I’d made. Better some place neutral. ‘What about Central Park?’ I asked her. ‘It’s a nice day, we could get some air?’

  ‘Good. Let me get us a cab.’ And, with that, she stepped off the pavement, waving, into the traffic coming up Third. One cab, empty, slewed in ahead of her with a great flounce of its body and squeal of brakes. As I went towards it, Delight Dry blew me a mocking kiss goodbye. Appropriate, for now I really was stuck with Janice. ‘Central Park, please,’ I said to the driver. ‘Whichever’s the nearest entrance.’

  ‘You want to go to the Zoo?’

  ‘No, just the nearest entrance.’

  ‘I mean, it depends on what you want to do. I mean, maybe you want a cup of coffee, something to eat, maybe you just want to see some kids play ball. I mean there’s all kinds things to do, you know what I mean?’

  ‘Just the nearest entrance, please.’

  ‘Okay. Only trying t
o help, you know.’

  ‘We’d like a quiet place,’ Janice said, cravenly.

  ‘Thank you, lady.’ He turned to me. ‘You should of told me that, I mean you want a quiet place, I take you to the Ramble, you know, that’s paths to walk, rustic, like they say. Real nice, you’ll like it.’

  Two gabby cab drivers in one day. I have all the luck. The nearest goddam entrance, you stupid bastard, Mad Twin yelled inside me. But I bottled her up and slumped on the seat, letting him get away with it.

  ‘The Ramble, imagine,’ Janice said. ‘It sounds so British. The Ramble.’

  ‘It’s one of the most dangerous parts of the park,’ I said, which was a mistake, for, of course, he picked that up and said, ‘That’s right, lady, there was a murder in the Ramble, a couple of years ago, yes, it was a college professor, you know he was killed, nobody knows who done it, they found a woman’s shoe near there, at first they thought some woman done it, you know.’ And on and on. I suspect his plan was to talk us all the way up to the Ramble which was probably on his way home. And then, almost equally infuriating, Janice started to talk back to him. She’s one of those people if she’s out with you, she’ll ignore you completely the minute a waitress or a cab driver starts talking to her. She feels guilty about asking them to do things for her so she pretends an interest in them which is completely phoney. Anyway, she and the driver nattered away to each other all the way up to the Ramble, which is a maze within the park, trees, little winding paths, wooden fences, rustic bridges, glades, all of which make excellent cover for the queers who use it as a place of assignment, loitering palely along its paths, looking over the field, so to speak. It’s a part of the park I hate. When Terence and I first discovered the park as a place to be together in, we walked over every section. There were some we only did once. The Ramble was one of them.