I am Mary Dunne

by Brian Moore

  ‘Of course. Of course. I do.’

  ‘And that damn Ernie,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I asked him, but please, I don’t want to talk about deaths or funerals, about Hat, you know, I just don’t feel up to it.’

  Tee got up, shut the kitchen door, then said, ‘Look, I’ll say you’re sick, you have a sick headache or something. You don’t have to put up with that bloody man. He’s bonkers. Now don’t worry, you’re fine, you’ll be fine. Come on, we’ll go in there and you’ll say good night to him and then I’ll have a coffee with him and get rid of him.’

  ‘But I can’t do that, I can’t leave you.’

  ‘You can and you will,’ Tee said. ‘Come on, now.’

  He took my arm and opened the kitchen door and we went in to meet Ernie, who turned from the window, brandy glass in hand, and I had been right, he did wear glasses, for, as he turned to face us, he whipped off a pair with that curious, vain, guilty look of a person who is trying to conceal the fact that he wears glasses. He shut the hinges with a clack, stuffed the glasses in the side pocket of his navy blazer, advancing on us, showing his teeth in a false smile. ‘We-ell, arm-in-arm, the perfect picture of young love. I will say you two make a handsome couple. Yes, I’d say that.’

  ‘I’m afraid Mary’s not feeling well,’ Tee said. ‘She has a sort of sick headache and I’ve convinced her we wouldn’t mind if she simply says good night and climbs into bed with a couple of aspirins. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘A sick headache,’ Ernie said. ‘Well, that’s, ah, yes, that’s bad. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid I’m not much company for anyone when I’m feeling like this.’

  ‘It’s all right, don’t worry, I’m sure Ernie understands,’ Tee said, hastily.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Ernie boomed. ‘Now you go on to bed. Gee, it was great seeing you again, Maria, just great, good of you to invite me, it just about made my whole trip to New York and say, listen, I’m sorry if I went on too much about the past, etcetera, but I guess you know now that you’re on my mind most of the time. Anyway, I mustn’t keep you standing there with that splitting headache, I’ll just say good night and push on now.’

  ‘No need to rush off,’ Terence said to him. ‘Stay and have a nightcap with me. I believe Mary made coffee.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s all made.’

  ‘No, no, I really must go, I’ve imposed quite enough.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Tee said, giving in.

  ‘Yes, I must,’ Ernie said again.

  ‘Well, in that case,’ Tee said. ‘Yes, and it was, ah, yes, nice meeting you.’

  By that time, Tee, in some mysterious way, had stage-managed Ernie out of the living-room and into the hall and Ernie had picked his horrible brown cocoa straw hat off the captain’s chest by the front door. My heart stopped being so loud. My tremor diminished. ‘Yes, and nice meeting you,’ Ernie was saying to Tee. ‘As you know, I told you, I’m one of your greatest fans. Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Goodbye, Ernie,’ I said. ‘And take care.’

  ‘Goodbye, Maria. And don’t forget you promised to give me a ring when you come to Montreal.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Goodbye, then.’

  ‘Goodbye, Ernie,’ Tee said, opening the apartment door.

  ‘Oh. One thing.’ Ernie paused by the captain’s chest, hat in hand, turning back to me. ‘Just for curiosity’s sake, I mean, I was talking to Terence just now and it came up, I mean about a telegram I sent you telling you about Hat’s death. Apparently, you never received it?’

  I shook my head. Down Tilt.

  ‘Then, I mean, did you get the letter, the one I sent on a few days later?’

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘A letter Hat wrote to you the afternoon of his death.’

  ‘A letter?’ I said, dumbly.

  ‘Yes, he spent the afternoon writing it.’

  ‘But what letter, I never got any letter.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ernie, ‘I mailed it out to you. It was addressed to you, but there were no stamps on it. So, when I sent you the telegram telling you Hat was dead, I held on to the letter, thinking I’d, ah, I’d give it to you when you came up to Montreal for the funeral. Then, when you didn’t come, I mailed it on to you, here in New York.’

  ‘Where did you mail it to, what address?’

  ‘To, ah, to Gramercy Park.’

  ‘You sent the telegram there too?’ Terence asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that explains it,’ Terence said. ‘We weren’t living at Gramercy Park then. We moved here over a year ago.’

  ‘But the letter,’ I said. ‘I mean, why wasn’t it forwarded, what happened to it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Terence said.

  ‘Gee.’ Ernie shook his head. ‘You never got it? Gee, I often wondered about that letter, I even thought of getting in touch with you about it. At the inquest, you know, they asked if Hat left any message and I said “no”, because, strictly speaking, that wasn’t a message, was it?’

  Through the opened front door of the apartment I could see one of the neighbours, an old lady with a wen on her forehead, passing down towards the elevator, listening in. I leaned over, took Ernie’s sleeve, drew him back into the apartment hall and shut the door. ‘Now,’ I said. ‘What message? What inquest?’

  ‘Darling, take it easy,’ Terence said. ‘Relax, it’s all right, calm down.’

  ‘What inquest?’

  ‘Well, there was an inquest,’ Ernie said. ‘He was under psychiatric care during those last months.’

  ‘With Angus McMurtry? Dr McMurtry?’

  ‘Yes, your friend, wasn’t he?’ Ernie said. ‘He testified at the inquest, I remember he said Hat was a manic-depressive. There was the question of whether it was suicide or an accident.’

  ‘Suicide?’ I must have been too loud or quavery, for Tee patted my arm as if to quiet me.

  ‘Yes, the autopsy showed he died of a combination of barbiturates and alcohol. He started drinking again after you left, you know. And then, after a couple of bad bouts, he went back to this Dr McMurtry, and things went better for a while. He stopped drinking. But, about a week before he died, I noticed he’d begun nipping at the bottle again. And just about that time, he began talking about you. That was always a bad sign. Anyway, that Saturday afternoon, I was watching the Grey Cup game on television and he, ah, he didn’t come in to watch and that was funny, he was a football fan, as you know, but, anyway, when I went out to the kitchen to get me a beer, there he was sitting at the kitchen table with his portable and a bottle of Scotch and he’d written sheets and sheets of typescript pages, and, while I got the beer, he addressed an envelope and folded all the sheets and stuffed them in and he said, “I want to send this to New York airmail, how much do you think it will be?” Well, I have a little postage scale in my room so I took the letter and weighed it and we didn’t have enough stamps in the apartment so he said, “Look, if I don’t get to the office on Monday morning, will you promise me you’ll mail this? It’s important.” Well, of course, when I’d weighed it, I’d glanced at the address and seen it was addressed to you so I said something comical like, “I see you’re writing to my dream girl again,” but he just gave me a sour look, you know, and took up the Scotch bottle and went into the living-room and asked how the game was going. And that was it, we watched the end of the game together. I was going out to a dinner party later, it was Saturday night, you know, Saturday night in Toronto, so I showered and dressed and when I was leaving, about seven or so, Hat was still sitting at the TV set and I noticed he’d pretty well killed the bottle, so I said to him, “Look,” I said. “There’s all kinds of food in the fridge, you’d better eat some of it if you want to stay in shape.” He looked up at me and he said, “Goodbye, Ernie. Enjoy yourself.” And that was it. I went out and came back late and went to bed and it wasn’t until next morning, the Sunday, I woke up about noon and the door of his bedroom
was still shut so when I made coffee I thought I’d bring him a cup to wake him up and when I went in, there he was on the bed, lying on his stomach –’

  ‘All right,’ Terence said, ‘let’s skip the details.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, gee, sorry, Maria.’

  ‘And there was an inquest?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, like I told you. Apparently, he’d gone to bed sloshed and he took some sleeping pills, and then probably woke and took some more. You know, when he was drunk, he’d forget what he’d taken. Anyway, it was an overdose. They found about fifteen pills in his stomach. That was what did it.’

  ‘Oh, Mary,’ Terence said, for I was trembling. I must have looked as though I was about to keel over. Terence led me back into the living-room and sat me down on the sofa. Ernie came and stood at the door of the living-room. I remember looking up at Ernie, at that smug, sneaky face and I thought, was the letter sealed or did he read it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he did.

  ‘Was the letter sealed, I mean the letter to me?’

  ‘Sure, gosh, yes, of course. All I did was put stamps on it.’

  I looked at Terence, who sat beside me on the sofa, his arm around me. ‘Tee, what if the letter is still there, I mean at the Gramercy Park address?’

  ‘No, no,’ Terence said. ‘The mail has all been forwarded to us. They still send it on, even the junk mail.’

  ‘Was there a return address on the letter?’ I asked Ernie.

  ‘I don’t remember, ah, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then, maybe the letter’s in the Dead Letter Office?’ I said.

  ‘Hardly.’ Ernie shook his head. ‘No, I happen to know that after six months the post office destroys them.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Look, Mary,’ Terence said. ‘I don’t want to make an issue of this, but the point is, Hat is dead, this letter didn’t exist for you until Ernie brought it up. I very much doubt that you could ever find it now and, even if you did, what good would it do to read it?’

  ‘Well, it might answer the question of suicide, for one thing,’ Ernie said.

  ‘And what good will that do anybody? He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘It would set my mind at rest,’ Ernie said.

  ‘And Mary’s mind? What if the letter’s a diatribe against her? You were telling us earlier that nobody loves Mary the way you do, well if you love her so much, Mister Truelove, I don’t know why you’re so anxious that she read a letter which might hurt her.’

  ‘Touché,’ Ernie said, loudly. ‘Yes, touché. And I notice you’re no different from anybody else, Terence, despite the fact that you’re supposed to be a creative and sensitive person. You couldn’t resist getting that dig in about my name, could you?’

  ‘You wet idiot,’ Terence said. ‘Who cares about you or your name?’

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please, just don’t fight.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ Terence said, but Ernie wasn’t having any of that, he was all heavy breathing and drunk stare, his head lowering as though he were going to charge. ‘Oh, yes, let’s not fight,’ he mimicked me. ‘Yes, let’s shove everything under the rug and forget it. Yes, Maria, that’s your style, all right.’

  Terence stood up, suddenly. Ernie at once backed off, hunching his shoulders in a defensive boxer’s stance. ‘Terence,’ I said. I was hysterical. ‘For God’s sake,’ I said.

  ‘All right,’ Terence said. ‘But he’d better leave.’

  ‘Yes, get rid of me,’ Ernie jeered. ‘It’s painful to be reminded, isn’t it?’

  ‘Out,’ Terence said. He moved on Ernie and, at that moment, the tension inside me, my hammering heart, my shaking, my wanting to scream, to weep, all of that, all of what I call Mad Twin exploded in me and I (or Mad Twin) got up, pushed myself between the two men, pushing Terence away, taking hold of Ernie Truelove by the front of his blazer and shaking him, yes, shaking him hard, while a voice I did not know as mine shouted out, ‘What do you mean, my style, what am I to be reminded of? Did you read Hat’s letter or didn’t you?’

  And as I shouted this at Ernie, Terence had taken hold of me and was pulling me away, saying, ‘Mary, come on, darling, come on, get a hold of yourself, darling.’

  ‘No, no, I want to know; he’s just accused me of causing somebody’s death, he’s just said it was suicide. Well, was it?’

  ‘Nobody knows, it was probably an accident,’ Terence said.

  But Mad Twin would not be calmed. ‘All right, but what about this letter, what did it say? I bet he knows, I’m sure he read it before he mailed it, he’s the sort who would read it, you did read it, didn’t you?’

  Ernie: his head jerked up as though I had aimed a blow at him. His stare: drunken, dulled, yet frightened by my hysteria. ‘Golly, Maria. Honest. Cross my heart, I didn’t.’

  ‘Are you sure? Listen, I’d rather you had, I mean, I want to know.’

  ‘Word of honour, Maria, I never read it.’

  ‘But it was a long letter, you know that much? Sheets and sheets, you said.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘Well, then, what do you think was in it? What did he say about me in those months, what did he say at the end?’

  ‘Do you really think you should go on with this?’ Terence asked.

  ‘I have to, I have to know, I mean was it suicide, or wasn’t it? Was it because of my leaving him, or what? I’ve got the rest of my life to worry about this.’

  ‘Well, if you really want to know?’ Ernie said, and stopped.

  ‘Yes, I do, go on.’

  ‘Well, he used to say, I mean, to complain that you never wrote to him.’

  ‘But why should I? We were divorced.’

  ‘I know, golly, it doesn’t make sense, I used to tell him that myself. But he kept thinking he would hear from you.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘I know, Maria, but he, well, look, you’d better believe it, he was a bit odd there at the end. I mean – oh – about ten days before he died, he got this crazy idea that you were in town. You weren’t, were you?’

  ‘In Montreal? Of course not.’

  ‘Well, Hat thought so. We phoned all the hotels and then we decided you were perhaps staying with some friends.’

  ‘We decided? What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, gee, you know, I love you too, I was interested too. And, besides, golly, well I always did old Hat’s research for him.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said and laughed. I suppose I was hysterical.

  ‘Anyway,’ Ernie said. ‘After I’d phoned and asked around I was sure Hat was wrong and I told him so. But he insisted he’d seen you coming out of the Ritz Hotel a few days before. And then – it was on the Thursday – a few days before he died – I came home one evening after work, it was about six o’clock and I went up the stairs and got out my key to open the front door and as I did I heard Hat’s voice saying from inside the apartment, “Come in, Maria.” It was spooky. I opened the door with my key and there was Hat, sitting in a chair facing the door, staring at me.’

  ‘Drunk, I should imagine,’ Tee said.

  ‘No. And you’ve never seen anybody look so disappointed. And he said to me, “She was here today. Maria was here.” ’

  ‘But that’s nonsense,’ I said. ‘He must have been drunk.’

  ‘No, wait. Here’s what he said. That morning, Thursday morning, he said he was standing in the living-room of the apartment, looking out the window. He used to do that a lot when he was depressed. He’d stand there in the living-room looking through the slats of the venetian blinds. He could see, but he couldn’t be seen. The street is at window level, do you remember, Maria?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Anyway, he was looking out the window that morning when, suddenly, he saw you coming up the street. He swore it was you, although I told him he must have made a mistake. But he said, “No, it was Maria, she was only thirty feet away. I was staring right at her through the blind. She checked the number of the b
uilding, then turned and came in and I heard her footsteps on the little flight of stairs out there. I heard her move right up to the apartment door and then she stopped. It was very quiet. I knew she was hesitating and so I said, just as I did now, ‘Come in, Maria.’ And suddenly, I heard her footsteps running downstairs again. So I opened the apartment door but she was already out of the building. I ran to the street entrance, but she had disappeared. She was nervous, I suppose. I’d be nervous too, if I was coming back to somebody.” ’

  ‘He thought I was coming back to him?’

  ‘Yes. And he said, “It’s all right, I’m expecting her any moment. I’ve been waiting here ever since.” And there he was, he’d been sitting in that chair all day, waiting.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Tee said.

  ‘And listen to this,’ Ernie said. ‘Hat sat all night in that chair, waiting for you. And all the next day, the Friday. And all Friday night. Oh, it was spooky, all right. I was worried, you know. And then, on the Saturday morning, when I got up, there he was still sitting in the chair, but now there was a change. He had a bottle of Scotch beside him and he’d had a couple of belts. And then, around noon that Saturday, he suddenly got up out of the chair and went into his room and came out with the bottle and his portable and sat down at the kitchen table. And said to me, “Well, that’s it, I guess. She decided against coming back to me. She’s left town and I’ll never see her again.” And he started to type. And then, later that afternoon, as I told you, I came into the kitchen again for a beer and there he was finishing all those sheets and I asked was he working and he said no, he’d been writing you a letter. And, honestly, Maria, this is what he said, what he really said. He said, “You see, I think there are a few things that girl should know. I mean this is the end for me. I’ve given up. I’ll never see her again. So I wrote her.” He held up all those sheets. “As you can see,” he said, “I had quite a few thoughts to get off my mind.” And then he sealed and addressed the envelope and I weighed it, as I told you, and promised to mail it for him on the Monday.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Terence said again.