I am Mary Dunne

by Brian Moore

  But El Paso is what I remember best. After the divorce in Juarez I went back to El Paso, ate lunch and then, depressed by the drummers’ atmosphere of the Hotel Cortez lobby, went out into the main plaza of El Paso, across from the hotel, to wander and wait for the plane which would take me back to New York and Terence. The plaza had trees, concrete paths, small formal plots of grass, dusty shrubs, benches with many people sitting on them, and in the hour I had to wait, I dawdled and stood, read the bitter pro-Southern Civil War inscription on the small monument on the north-western side of the square, then came to a more interesting monument, on the north-eastern side, a monument which was a little horsedrawn street car, its driver a store dummy in a Zapata hat, his reins connected to a fairly lifelike dummy mule. A plaque near the mule’s hooves explained that this was the original street car which linked El Paso and Ciudad Juarez; that it had been donated by its last owner to the city of El Paso. And there was the very car, lettered Tranvias de Ciudad Juarez, 1882. I looked at its iron guard rails and wooden panels, looked through its dusty windows and inside, more imaginative than the dummy driver, were large cardboard cutouts of the old street car’s passengers, crayon-coloured, as by a child. Two of the cutouts were of Mexican men in Zapata hats: there was a cutout of a woman with a baby in her arms and, at the rear of the car, a one-dimensional gringo gent with Vandyke beard and, by him, a boy in knickerbockers. Imaginary passengers in a real street car: cutout ghosts from those days when El Paso and Juarez were just sleepy border towns and not as now, a one-day happening for hordes of nervous strangers.

  And, while I stood there staring at the Tranvias de Ciudad Juarez as once it was, someone began to yell in Spanish. I turned to look and there, marching up and down along the lines of Mexicans who were waiting for the bus back to Juarez, was a stout young man, blond and sweating, wearing a black-and-white checked shirt, green chinos, orange work boots. In his left hand was a large open Bible and from the Spanish he shouted, I distinguished only the words, ‘Jesus – Jesus Christos’. I stared at this poor Fundamentalist shouter, bringing (he thought) God to the heathen. The Mexicans never looked at him: they stood on the pavement or sat on the public benches like cows in a field at noon. He was flies. They ignored flies. They twitched their heads and gazed about them. The bus would come, yes, the bus would come and carry them back to Juarez and, when that happened, this noise would be left behind. I remember that, at first, their silent unity reminded me of a similar silence that morning when we, the divorce seekers, sat waiting in the lobby of the Hotel Cortez, each of us knowing we were on the same quest, yet each of us alone, like people on a religious retreat in which a vow of silence and contemplation has been taken, travellers on a shameful journey who had abjured our normal American garrulity, preserving in our silence the privacy of defeat. Yet how false that silent unity seemed when, two hours later, the deed done, the papers signed, my companions returned to normal in the jitney, coming back across Rio Grande, normal being nervous jokes, normal being too informative, too eager to be at once restored to that gabby, indiscreet, phoney friendship which is the posture of Americans as travellers.

  And so, there in the Plaza San Jacinto, I admired these silent Mexicans who felt no need to joke or grin at each other as they endured the God shouts of the mad gringo. The bus would come. The Mexicans waited in patience and I, taking my cue from them, sat down on one of the public benches, knowing that my plane would also come. And, as I sat there, three little girls sat down on the bench opposite and turned their collective gaze on me. The middle one whispered something to the one on her right, who giggled and set them, all three, to giggling and then the giggles stopped and they sat, staring at me with unblinking chocolate-drop eyes in carved Indian faces. I looked at them and thought they must often see women of my sort, young, well-dressed, alone, nervous: strangers they glimpse once in the plaza, but never again. And in that moment I wondered what sort of woman they must think me to be and then began to wonder myself.

  I was a woman who had come from New York, flying thousands of miles to a city I had never seen, sleeping alone in a strange bed in a strange hotel, rising that morning to eat in silence and wait in silence with nine other nervous strangers until a jitney came to take us into a foreign country, to meet a lawyer who hurried us to a foreign court-house, where I was declared a resident of a state (Chihuahua) whose very name I had not known until that day, then was led before a judge who hurriedly unmarried me, changing my name from Bell to – what? What was my name that afternoon in the Plaza San Jacinto? I asked myself, but did not know. Was I now Phelan, no, couldn’t be that, I was divorced from Jimmy, I had to be Mary Dunne, but would I be called that or would I still be called Bell until I remarried and became Mary Lavery?

  The three little Mexican girls stared at me. They had always had their names. Soon they would take the Tranvias de Cuidad Juarez across Cordova Bridge and the Rio Grande and then they would be home in Juarez City beneath the Sierra Madre Mountains in the State of Chihuahua in the Republic of Mexico and so it was natural and right for them to be here in this dry, dusty Plaza San Jacinto, but it was not natural for me, although I too could remember when I was a little girl, not so different from them, I was Mary Dunne in Butchersville, in the Province of Nova Scotia in the Dominion of Canada and how strange it would have been for me to sit under the War Memorial Cenotaph in Confederation Square and stare at some odd Mexican lady and wonder who she was. And when I thought of that, I smiled at the little girls but the little girls did not smile back. They stared. My smile failed and it was then that I had the very first of these moments, the first because I could not blame it on a pill, I could not blame it on anything that I knew about, it simply happened and there I was, I could not remember who I was or where I was. I sat in a hot, dusty square, stared at by those childish Indian faces, a blond man shouting ‘Jesus Christos’ in back of me and it was panic, I couldn’t remember my name and I got up from the bench and ran past a line of Mexicans who sat and ignored me. (I was flies.) I ran and then stopped when I saw the front entrance of the Hotel Cortez and it came back into my mind, I am Mary Dunne. I said it over and over. I am Mary Dunne, it’s all right, I am Mary Dunne. But somehow it was not true any more and in the bus that afternoon going back to the airport, to the plane which would take me to New York and to Terence, I remember thinking for the first time what I have thought many times since. I am no longer Mary Dunne, or Mary Phelan, or Mary Bell, or even Mary Lavery. I am a changeling who has changed too often and there are moments when I cannot find my way back.

  The bus had left the Met, crossed Fifth, Madison, Park, Lexington, Third. My stop came up. I smiled at the mother of the little Indian-faced girl and the mother smiled back at me and moved her knees to let me pass. (Vaya con Dios, said the Chamber of Commerce sign, that day, long ago, as I left picturesque El Paso.)

  There was a cold spring wind as I got off the bus, cold on my thighs between my stocking tops and girdle, a cold puff of wind up my spine as I hurried to the corner and crossed on the changing light.

  Harold, our doorman, came to hold the door open for me and, as I went in, signalled that he wanted to speak to me. I thought it was probably another parcel. Harold is tall and stout; he makes me feel small. He has a trick of teetering on his heels as he talks. He teetered, looking down at me confidentially, taking a notebook from the hip pocket of his uniform. ‘Mrs Lavery, do you know, a’ (flips pages) ‘a, wait now, let’s see, this gentleman?’

  A pencilled name on the lined page: L. O. MACDUFF.

  ‘Do you know him?’ Harold asked again.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, he says he knows you. He was here asking me questions. Said he was a friend of yours.’

  Harold, looking down at me. Harold’s head is quite small, too small for the six-foot body and his football-tackle fat. The uniformed cap makes him seem older than he is. Actually he’s just a kid, not much more than twenty. ‘No,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know anyone by that name.’

&nb
sp; ‘Well, uh, uh, I phoned up on the house phone, you weren’t there, I told him that, then he start ask me all kinds a questions, said he was here on a vacation, he wanted to catch you, then he wrote his name down, told me, be sure you show it to her and tell her I stopped by.’

  Robbers, more robbers, came into my mind. ‘What sort of questions?’ I asked in a shaky voice.

  ‘Well, uh, uh,’ Harold seemed embarrassed. ‘He asked if you had a job now, I mean what hours and what time your husband, I mean he ask if your husband worked at home.’

  His eyes caught mine, then avoided my frightened stare. ‘I mean, I thought he was a friend of yours, y’know.’

  I told Mad Twin to be quiet, it wasn’t a robber, it must be something else, but she wouldn’t –

  ‘What did he look like?’ I asked. And Harold pondered, screwing up his little face in a visible act of intellection. ‘Well, uh, uh, he was, uh, uh, kind of a tall gentleman, didn’t look like nobody from a collection agency, you know. I can tell those guys, they often come around and ask about the tenants.’

  ‘And he wrote his name down. And asked you to tell me he was here?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Oh, and, uh, uh, he said he’d call you. Phone, y’know.’

  ‘When?’ (I was trying to get a hold of myself: I was shaking and Harold had noticed.)

  ‘Didn’t say any special time, Mrs Lavery.’

  ‘Well, if he comes around again, you just be careful. There was another man here this morning, pretending he wanted to look at our apartment. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were collaborators, there are these gangs of apartment robbers I read about. Now – you were on this morning – do you remember sending a man up to our apartment, an old man with a little white beard?’

  Harold thinks. ‘A beard? Uh, uh, yeah, yeah, I remember. Ah, don’t worry, Mrs Lavery, we don’t let nobody go up unless the tenant is at home. I mean that’s our job, y’know.’

  ‘I know. But still, well, there are these – these crooks nowadays are very smooth. This article I was reading, well, you’d be surprised at what they get away with.’

  By now, I had offended him. He reached up his hand, tilted his cap down over his nose, scratched the back of his head, and eyed me under the tilted uniform peak of his cap in a way which said I had gone too far.

  ‘Knock wood, Mrs Lavery, we haven’t had no robberies here. Not the kind you’re talking about. No, ma’am.’

  ‘All right. Thank you, Harold.’ (Thinking: I must get upstairs, take an aspirin or something.)

  ‘That’s all right, Mrs Lavery.’

  He watched my progress towards the elevator and I knew that it would never be the same again between Harold and me. Doormen divide tenants into mad and sane and now, with my babble about crooks and magazine articles, I had crossed the line and joined the complainers, the dotty old dames, the suspicious tenants he must jolly along. From now on, he will wink behind my back as I have seen him do when old Mrs Spritzmayer goes into her plaint.

  At the elevator, a wan-looking woman in a plaid slack suit waited, tugging at a big brown poodle on a chain. As we went into the elevator together, she smiled at me. The poodle’s wet nose touched the back of my hand. I jumped.

  ‘It’s all right, he’s friendly,’ she informed me in a twangy voice. (I don’t give a damn if he’s friendly, take his great wet snout off me.)

  But, craven as we all are in the face of Man’s Best Friend, I smiled and nodded to his owner and pretended to smile at the animal, which reciprocated by shoving his nose up under my skirt. At last, she tugged on the leash. The dog yelped. She ruffled his ears affectionately as I watched for the reprieve of my floor. I got off without looking back.

  There was no paper bag on the chair in the hall. So Ella Mae had gone. I heard voices, Terence’s and some other man’s, but not what they said, for Terence’s study door was closed. I closed the front door with a bit of a slam, hoping Tee would hear. And he did. His door opened and he smiled at me. I thought: I love him.

  ‘Somebody called MacDuff rang you up,’ he told me. ‘I left the number in the living-room. He said it’s important and wants you to call. How are you?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. Two men looked out at me from Terence’s room. Beau Sales, a composer, and Sam Schactman, a choreographer. I gave them dinner here about two months ago when Terence and they started talks about a revue Tee is writing with them. I hadn’t seen them since. ‘Hi, there,’ said Beau, who is smart and showbiz, and didn’t even try to put a name on me. The other, Sam, more gemütlich, knew he should know me, my name was on the tip of his tongue. But not quite. ‘Hi, there,’ he said. ‘Ah . . .’

  ‘You remember Sam and Beau, don’t you, Martha?’ Terence said.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Hello, there.’

  Sam took the bait. ‘That’s a nice hairdo, you got there, Martha. Cool.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I looked, straight-faced, at Terence and he gave the smallest wink. Only yesterday I bet him none of his show-business friends even knew my first name. Terence remembered. Martha. I love him.

  Yet yesterday when I made that bet with Terence it was not funny, it sounded like a complaint. Perhaps part of my uncertainty about who I am these days is because, living with Terence, I am introduced to everybody as Mrs Terence Lavery. ‘You mean the Terence Lavery, the British playwright, that one?’ Yes, that one. When Terence and I meet new people, eyes go to him. If I start talking to a stranger at a party and Terence comes up, I find I may as well forget whatever it was I was saying. Oh, I suppose men still look at me, but with this difference. When they hear who I am they at once ask if Terence is with me and what he’s doing these days. Then we talk about Terence.

  ‘We won’t be much longer, will we, fellows?’ Terence asked Sam and Beau. They, eager to please him, said no, not long. I went into the living-room, where, on the writing desk, I found a pad with Terence’s handwriting on it.

  MARY

  Call L. O. MacDuff, Room 2020

  Barbizon Plaza. Says it’s urgent.

  The Barbizon Plaza’s where Janice Sloane is staying. A lot of Canadians stay there. I decided it was better to find out who L. O. MacDuff was than to stand about worrying. I got the phone book and dialled the number.

  ‘Babizon Plaza, good afternoon.’

  ‘Room 2020, please.’

  It rang and rang and rang until the operator came back on. ‘Room 2020 does not answer. Would you care to leave a message?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  (I thought I would leave my name, so that whoever it was would know I’d called.)

  ‘One moment, please.’ Click-click-click. Then a new voice, male: ‘Front desk, good afternoon.’

  ‘I’d like to leave a message for a Mr MacDuff in room 2020.’

  ‘One moment, please.’

  I waited.

  ‘Did you say MacDuff, madam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry, we don’t have a MacDuff registered.’

  ‘But I got a message from a Mr MacDuff in Room 2020.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well, who do you have in Room 2020? Perhaps my husband got the name wrong?’

  ‘I’m sorry, madam, we’re not allowed to give our guests’ room numbers.’

  ‘I see. Well, would you leave a message for whoever is in Room 2020 that Mrs Lavery called.’

  ‘Yes, madam. Mrs Lavery. Thank you.’

  I hung up and, I don’t know why, suddenly became convinced that this L. O. MacDuff person was from Butchersville, was someone my mother had instructed to look me up in New York. Then I remembered Mama and her polyp and decided, never mind what Dick says, it won’t hurt to call her. Besides I can use this MacDuff person as an excuse for calling. So I looked up her number and direct distance dialled.

  It rang, it rang.

  An operator’s voice. ‘What number are you calling, please?’

  ‘Area code 902 and the number is 678–2762.’

  ‘Thank you and
thank you for giving me the area code. That circuit is overloaded, let me try to get your number for you.’

  She dialled. I heard a number of clicks and then a crackly, small-town voice. ‘Butchersville.’

  ‘Operator, this is New York calling. We are trying to reach 678–2762. Will you try that for us, please?’

  ‘Six seven eight two seven six two,’ said the voice back home. A dialling sound. Then the phone rang in my mother’s kitchen, rang and rang and rang, while we three women, none of whom had ever seen the other, sat listening across the wires. It rang, it rang.

  ‘That would be Mrs Dunne, wouldn’t it?’ said the voice from home. I could imagine her, some Mrs Tiggy Winkle in a knitted grey cardigan, having a cup of tea as she answered the calls.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said.

  ‘Guess she’s not home,’ said Mrs Tiggy Winkle. ‘Want to leave a message?’

  Big-Time Operator relayed the question: ‘Ma’am? Care to leave your number, the party could call you back?’

  ‘No, thanks, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I could try for you in, say, half an hour?’ Big Time offered.

  ‘No, it’s all right.’

  ‘Thank you then,’ said Big Time. ‘And thank you, operator.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Mrs Tiggy Winkle. We all hung up, and I decided I would try Mama later, maybe after dinner. I tried to remember if Terence had said something about going out to a movie. I wasn’t sure. I love movies but when I’m nervous they sometimes don’t work, I can’t get with them, I simply sit in the dark, my mind dithering, waiting for them to end.