She looked at him very politely and said:
“One must ask why they were able to be tourists.”
Yes, she was a good hater, even if she too was partly French, and even if in her compassion she could hate no one at all. No one at all! (Which in John’s mind is what the liberal progressive thinkers, like the First Nations actor who called her a white racist, never understood.)
Once years ago she told him that secretly she had always felt sorry for President Nixon. Because a man her uncle knew, and whom she did not like at all, once said:
“We got him!”
He had come into the room saying, “We got him!” before he had even said hello. He was a tall professor named Flowers.
“You see,” Mary Cyr said to John with a wise little whisper, “that gave it all away. So I couldn’t be mean to Mr. Nixon after that.”
She told John she had tried not to tell people she had felt even the least sorry for Mr. Nixon. No one else would.
“We’ll get all the bastards,” this man said.
Mary Cyr thought for a while and then said to this man:
“He visited China.”
“What does that matter?”
“Well, have you?”
No one answered her, so she put her head down and studied her soup. Then she brightened a little and said:
“And he took his girlfriend—which was nice.”
“What girlfriend?” her mom asked.
“That one—the one they say every time he leaves to go somewhere—he is kissin’ her.”
“Oh, Mr. Kissinger.”
“Yes, that’s the one,” she answered.
It was shortly after her father had died, so surely that was why she had compassion, and people forgave her.
5.
JOHN REMEMBERED MUCH OF THIS, THIS BRILLIANT ORIGINAL love of good-heartedness—even if by now she herself had forgotten. And brilliant was the word, and love was too, even though no one took her as being brilliant or loving.
“She was hit in the head—it caused some kind of hemorrhage or something; she is as dumb as a turnip,” John was informed when he inquired about her, when she was about twelve or thirteen. That was because she would stare at the wall for days after her father died, not speaking to a soul. She at times slurred her words.
One doctor said she was suffering from a kind of epilepsy, another that she had had a trauma to the brain, and maybe even adding it up, some swelling to the brain, which caused her to imagine a past that did not exist—and one could not believe what she said.
“So do you know anything about this?” he asked.
“No—not a great deal,” John said.
“People, you see,” the doctor continued, smiling, “are probably very kind to her—but in her state she doesn’t think so, and she will never forget an injury—mark my words—she will remember the slightest injury ever since she hit her head when she was little.”
He said this both as if there was nothing that could be done for her and that he was actually happy this was so.
Her father, she once told John, had always tried to be fair.
And then she asked:
“Didn’t he?”
“Yes—I am sure of it,” John answered.
“Even with all his money? Like his two hundred dollars in his pocket or what it was?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then I will be determined to be fair.”
Then later, when she was twenty-two, and an absolutely beautiful woman, she said:
“You know I will give the world away—but I won’t if people ask me for it.”
She had begged John to marry her—why in God’s name hadn’t he? Her mother came to Canada wooed by her dad, with love letters two a day; came to a great family, and found herself in some way dwarfed by it—or at least out of place here. Her downfall was her Britishness at a time when the British were the easy target being pilloried in books and plays, shown in American movies to be treacherous; when the monarchy was looked upon as a farcical, silly thing that disregarded Quebec. And Mrs. Elaine Cyr listened to this year after year without comment; in fact, without even being allowed to agree.
But Mary would never be so accommodating.
“I will never betray you, Mom,” she said. “No matter if the world does—I will see to it that you are respected. I will take on anyone who says because you are English, you are bad.”
Still, Mary worried about the money.
“Don’t worry,” her mother said. “You’re rich enough.”
“A quarter of a million or what?” Mary Cyr asked when she was twelve. “Enough to buy a sports car or what? Because honest to God that’s all I ever want.”
She was born the day President Kennedy died. As she was slapped on the bum (perhaps she didn’t even have to be slapped) so came the word drifting up from Dallas, along the network her father and grandfather had mastered. It was a grey, cold day in New Brunswick when she was born, with little tiny pickaxes of snow falling from the blind sky. Here and there school buses were being loaded with children—and none of those children would be nearly as well to do as she was. Even naked at birth she had much more influence. Her mother cried, and cried, thinking of those women in Europe having to give birth during the Blitz or the bombing of Dresden. She cried for them, in her soul, because she heard:
“President Kennedy has died.”
Later Mary said, very seriously, that she didn’t quite get all the fuss.
“Why all the hubbub?” she said when she was nine. She told John that they were having dinner in a restaurant in Boston with an American her father knew. A senator or some such.
She tried to think of something to say about Americans.
“All the what, Mary?” her father said.
“All the hub—bbb—bub,” she answered, staring at her ice cream and moving it about with a spoon; with a red ribbon in her black hair, she lifted her eyes quickly and then lowered them. “Jackie O. Why all the fuss?” she said. She stopped moving the spoon.
“I don’t know,” the American answered. “I have never been sure myself.”
“Hubbbb-BBuuuub,” Mary said once again, and then, “you take a hub bub and I’ll take a huber bub—and I’ll be in SCOOT LUND before ya!”
“Shhh,” her mother said.
So she began to move the spoon again.
Then she said:
“Peace—that’s really the big thing, isn’t it, Mr. American Senator.” Then she shyly put her head down and, moving her head to the right just a tad, said as if to herself: “I mean speak of hubbub—”
Nothing better.
PART FOUR
1.
IN THE FALL, IN THAT HOUSE THEY LIVED IN THEN ON A SPLENDID bit of land overlooking the great Miramichi Bay, there was some crimson flush of sun on a leather-backed chair, and the smell of gin. Mary would always think of night when she smelled gin. Or when she drank it—and she drank “tons.” She learned to drink to take away the terrors after a certain time. That is, after her father died, and her mother was more and more excluded—until she ran away, then tried to get Mary back. But she had been away too long, and her chance had come and gone, and she was still a British citizen and Mary Cyr was a Canadian.
The driveway was long and lonely. Yet they only lived in one small part of the estate—that stretched to the grand house far beyond them. Blair’s House, it was called—after her grandfather. But he was almost never there. There was a helicopter pad but rarely a helicopter.
After a while she was invited to spend holidays at relatives’ places. Mary would wait alone, in the giant foyer of some house outside Saint John, where her cousins lived, with a suitcase and a small book bag, and people would open and close doors beyond her; hearing this she would stand up and wait, and then realize no one was coming to welcome her. Then she would hear another door open and she would stand up once again and unbutton her beautiful grey winter coat, thinking she was going to be taken in to see someone. All the presents she had saved
for, spent her own money on, wrapped by her own hands, would be sitting beside her on the bench. But another side door would close, not the door to get her, and she would patiently button up her coat and sit down again with her suitcase at her feet. “All my cousins I love,” she wrote. “I do hope they love me!”
They would remember her sooner or later, and she would be put at the very end of the table (sometimes they would have to clear a place for her) and then she would try to reach the glass of water that was hers, for the Christmas toast!
“Hurrah.”
Then she would be put on the train, and travel home after the holidays, holding some small, significant present she was given, as night formed against the telephone wires and the shadows lengthened on the trees. It did not mean that they did not love her. It did mean they were all interested in themselves, in the business, in the future—the train would rock against the icy tracks, the window covered in ice, and she would lie with her head against the leather-backed seat, dreaming of when her mother would come home.
Her grandfather lived most of the time in the Bahamas. On the stairs wall in her grandparents’ house in Saint John there was a picture of her mother speaking with Senator Jack Kennedy and Lord Beaverbrook, and another of her grandfather shaking hands with Winston Churchill. After a while her mother’s picture with Kennedy was taken down—and Mary spent the entire spring of 1976 looking for it. The idea of her mother being an outcast made Mary an outcast. Like her mom she would someday travel the world. Trying to find peace.
The evening just before dinnertime the shadows spread out from the trees, and the cement water shed looked homeless and sometimes came the cry of a frightened bird. Sometimes two frightened birds.
The pinewood was red and the setting sun came down on it, on the shale of the driveway, on the old flag, on the bitter mud that was almost frozen, and yet still perfunctory under the waning light.
“I guess we own—houses of many kinds,” Mary wrote when she was eleven.
They owned an oil refinery; they owned hundreds of thousands of hectares of land; they owned service stations, iron ore mines, docks, wharves, papers, steel, fishing camps; and yes, houses of many kinds.
2.
JOHN HAD BEEN CALLED TO HELP LOCATE HER FATHER’S BODY, because they did not want his death publicized before they were very sure. It was because of the markets, and what might or might not occur.
The Cessna was a speck far out on the ice, burning like a beacon. The snow was still numb and falling down. You started out walking toward the plane, and realized it was still miles away. The body unfortunately was never found.
Garnet had not taken the flight back. People had always said he wanted to get away because there was an old girlfriend he wanted to see that night.
“The luckiest piece of tail he ever had,” some foreman of his said.
Still, Garnet had asked her father to go and inspect the shafts, so she blamed him for Murder.
“Murder most fowl,” she wrote in her diary, and drew a little bird with an arrow through it. This diary was in John’s possession—he had found it, luckily enough, before the Mexican police.
Worse, the diary showed all of her childlikeness. That is, it still had a little lock on it. John, whether or not he was supposed to, snapped the lock and began to read. He was hoping it might be about recent events and give him a name to go by. But it was a vastly different diary.
It had almost every day of her life in it—year after year after year—not a day missed—not anything left out, although sometimes only a line or two explained the day:
April 5, 1971
Mommy made me crakkers and chese
July 17, 1972
Got to go to the beech with my big white towell
October 29, 1975
Carved a pumpkin—I put it at the end of my bed to scare the hell out of me when I wake up.
Nov 1
The boys I met out trick or treating told me that my dad is alive. Then they ran. I followed them all night—all the way to the big highway.
“Where—” I said. I said, “Where is my dad?”
June 7, 1976
They won’t let me have a dog, so I’ve captured 5 ants, and will train them to be my pets. However, I think I broke one’s leg—it’s kind of hobbling about, looking worried that the other ants will now begin to eat him.
August 1976
Mommy has gone away again—I am trying to sit in one place with a book on my head to balance myself—
April 29, 1978
Mr. Cruise told me, well, he just said any time you want to talk to me about your dad or mom, you come to my office and just knock.
May 4, 1978
I kind of talked a blue streak about my dad—how he was the best in the world, you wait and see!!!
September 28, 1978
I was there, so I told Mr. Cruise about my dad—and he said:
“My dear girl—my dear, dear girl” and I just went gulp—like 5 times.
November 19, 1978
Mr. Cruise took my virginity—should I tell Uncle Garnet?
November 21, 1978
Mother died today—sometime in the early morning—
Ker plunk.
3.
SO JOHN FOUND OUT MUCH, THAT HE WAS SUPPOSED OR NOT supposed to see. But much of it he knew.
For instance, she went to The Hague—but this was only mentioned by a line: “I am in The Hague—there are so many names!”
She was looking for something about Mr. Vanderflutin, who had made light of her mother at that dinner party—the first dinner party where she was allowed to sit at the big table. What she did find was something about Ernie Vanderflutin’s father, his time during the war—and a picture from 1946 of a baby being carried through the jeering crowd by its mother, whose head had just been shaved, making her look like a lonely little bird. That child was Ernest Vanderflutin. From that moment on she could not help but feel terrible sorrow for him—even a touch of love.
She found all of this out before Vanderflutin did and said nothing about it. Even when she read things he had written against her own family. Things about her adoption by Nan, which she only discovered when she was fifteen. How he laughed at them for adopting her. No matter how she thought of them, she could never partake in his hatred. To laugh at a couple who adopted a child. But then, it was not her world, the world of menopausal men. Strange how it hurt her to have him outraged at this; remembering Nan’s blessing, her present and party and yes, her attempt at love.
John saw a small ticket saved from Den Haag Moerwijk. A train station.
And rain in Amsterdam. She discovered the Dutch were so fussy that if you crossed the street against the light, which she did by mistake, they would hiss at her. That’s purity for you, ho, ho.
The ticket was unused and worth six guilders. There was some kind of trip to the forest where the palace sat. She visited Anne Frank’s house, the place she hid. Then Mary left and travelled to Paris. She had dinner somewhere near the Eiffel Tower, went to Le Select, even though by that time she deplored Jean Paul Sarte and believed he once drank a bottle of wine there. (Or this is what she said in her diary.) Like John said, she was a very good hater.
Then she drifted over to Berlin, reversing the same route the German Panzers took in 1940. She went to the Neues Museum in all her delightful innocence to see one thing.
The bust of Nefertiti.
She stared at it for two solid hours. And then, as she wrote in her diary:
“I turned and left her to herself. To herself forever, goodbye.”
4.
AT ANY RATE, THREE YEARS AFTER HER FATHER’S DEATH MARY’S life was in upheaval. Her mother had a boyfriend named Doc—some “long-dicked youngster,” or “La grande épée,” Mary overheard Garnet’s wife say one night. (Mary was not supposed to hear this.)
Still, her mother wanted to destroy herself quickly, and that was not Nan’s fault. Not Garnet’s either. Her alcoholism was full-blown now.
Why did she hook up with Doc? This was to become part of Mary’s obsession. Her note in the diary was:
“He tried to sell her Mercedes—the fight wasn’t her fault!”
Her mother and Doc had gone to Europe—to Dénia, Spain. Her mother sent her a list of Spanish words to learn, and told her that someday they would live together in Alicante, near the warm Mediterranean Sea. And won’t that be fun and lovely, her mother wrote.
“Pescado” Mary wrote in her diary a number of times, fish; and jumo naranja, orange juice.
So Mary was alone. She sat in the garden, against the evening breeze—once, she tried to kill herself by holding her breath.
John flitted through the pages of the diary—hoping to not see anything that might incriminate. But it was all a blasted incrimination of a sad life.
Then he realized this about Dénia:
Years later she would take her third husband there—the one who had chest hair. The one who was surprised that she actually had use of a Lear jet. The one John felt sorry for—
She sat in the front seat of the Lear, and he sat behind her—his whole body looking uneasy. He was actually shaking.
“Can I ask—well—who you are?” he asked. He wore his brother’s suit, and his tie was too large, and his white shirt had a stiff collar. His shoes were big, brown and seven years old—and he had worn them only two times before.
“I am your wife.”
“I know, but—is this—is this—well, is this your plane?”
“One of them—I think—yes.”
“One of them?” he asked, gulping slightly.
The one whose name she kept forgetting. The one she brought to the villa and entered the patio, the interior palm trees under the moonlight, and sat in a wicker chair, with her hands on the arms and her feet flat on the marble floor, with a sudden smile on her face at how bewildered he was that she, Mary Cyr, could simply do this. The smile, however, was not guile or triumph—it was a smile almost of resignation. As if to say:
Mary Cyr Page 13
