Mary Cyr

by David Adams Richards

  I didn’t look at him. I had on a pleated skirt and wore a simple ochre blouse, with just the top button undone, and a silver cross on my neck; you know, to ward off vampires.

  “That is an awful lot of money,” my love said, and he laughed uncomfortably, looking about.

  “Give it to the homeless shelter, please—the one where your nephew hands out sheets.”

  The wind came up, again, and the bushes in his little grey yard seemed to whisper and cry out like sprites from a century before. I thought of Denise Albert and tears came to my eyes. It was suddenly so gloomy and cold I wanted; well, I am unsure—perhaps to die.

  Rory gave us space to get reacquainted; went out and tried to fix a tree branch in the weakened sun.

  Then I looked back at him, kept my eyes on him. I was thinking of the athletic fund. Of the escape by night on a train covered in golden slivers of ice. I thought of how he ran away from me—and how I denied he had. How I would never tell on him, because I thought he would never tell on me.

  But the worst of all—worse than anything else—he never published my fuckin’ poem in Tickle Lace. Not a goddamn line of it.

  Finally his wife came back. I was silently staring in front of me. He sat off to the side. Neither of us was looking at the other.

  “It is so kind of you—but why did you give so much money?” she asked. “Why did you want to come here?”

  “Well, because of your book. I need to tell someone. You see there was a man who abused me too,” I said almost in a trance, “but I think I got over it.”

  “You got—over it—my good heavens,” Rory said. “Yes, we had heard something—both of us were tormented by what happened to you—so that is why you’ve come to us—you read about us in the Globe and Mail—you want us to see you through this?”

  My hands were shaking, terribly. Because you see, I am one of those very few country-bumpkin Canadians who never read the Globe and Mail, and I thought they had caught me.

  So anyway, I wore an orchid in my hair. My hair fell in front of my face, but he could see my hint of a smile. It must have looked like a shark’s smile to him, especially when the sun burst from the clouds and caught it through the wisps of sad dark tresses.

  “And why didn’t you report it—if you had just reported it,” Rory said. “Someone like us could have done something. But your family stopped you—I heard that may have happened to you,” she said with sympathy.

  She went inside and came out with her tape recorder, tested a microphone with a little whistle, and holding it up to my face and turning the tape on to Play said with such proficient intensity:

  “I was a counsellor, dear—you can trust me. Now, tell me, was it in your family?”

  I did not answer.

  “Who was it in your family—your grandfather?”

  Said nothing.

  “If you don’t tell us who it was we cannot help.”

  I realized how big a catch I was to be for her.

  Perhaps the biggest. I realized I would be known as that always—the biggest catch. I would never be one of Nigel Cruise’s great wizards after all. The ones who take over from the men. I would never be allowed to be that kind of woman who could take on sin and change the world. I would never be Mary Wollstonecraft.

  I was suddenly desperate. I listened to her tape recorder. I looked at her and realized I had seen her all my life. She was the rapacious sophomore coming out of class on a late November afternoon, having had all her prejudices recently justified by the prof.

  I tried to think of something to say. I went over all the NHL trades and thought of various Canada Cups. In fact at that moment I wanted to fall to my knees and beg forgiveness from them both. Don’t please ever think that strange.

  I had a distinct foreboding that I would be blamed unto death. I had a sudden vision, that someone, I never saw his face, would cut my hair to the bone before I was killed. Perhaps it was just the way the wind now blew in the trees.

  I was terrified I would tell on him. I didn’t want to so I bit my lip until it bled, brought forth an embroidered silk handkerchief that until that moment I didn’t even know I carried and put it to my mouth.

  Then, looking at the blood, I finally spoke, quietly:

  “I was alone, my father had just died, my mother was ostracized from the family circle—and I wanted someone to like me—a man to like me—so I always thought it was my fault—I was just a little girl and he was well over forty years old. I was in love with him he was so special—I wanted to impress him. I even wrote a poem to him once.” (I laughed gaily at this, like a meadowlark.) “You see man oh man, maybe he could have known better, and just kissed me on the cheek or something. I know now it was all my fault.”

  “YOUR FAULT—” Rory said, with what she assumed was love and compassion in her words. “Who was he—a neighbour, a friend, a relative most likely. Just give me his name. We will see he never has another peaceful moment as long as he lives—I will rent a car, drive to his house and knock on his door—confront him in front of his wife—I will—you see I am that brave!”

  “I don’t know if I could ever be as brave as you.” I smiled shyly, which seemed to make me even more beautiful.

  “Well, you do not have to be, dear. That’s why I’m here. I have been a social advocate all of my days. So has my husband. You are in the right place to get this done,” she said. “I will support and protect you. (Here she reached out and took my hand. She saw I was crying and began to cry as well.) “So just tell us his name. We will both of us protect you. Forever. You will never have to fear again.”

  “Tell us his name,” Cruise said softly, his eyes wide and pleading. “Why don’t you, dear, dear Ms. Cyr, just tell us his name?”

  * * *

  —

  She went dancing at a new bar in Tracadie. You could still smell the pinewood from the stage. Her left hand waved high in the air, her right was placed against her bare stomach as she whirled. She wore no panties. Her jeans were so tight men imagined her wearing nothing, and her breasts were full, her eyes were strangely wondrous. She herself looked at no one, drank tequila in a shot. It was September 1997. She wore no brassiere. Not a man could take his eyes off of her. Not a man in the whole goddamn fucking place.

  But no one there knew who she was.

  No one at all.

  PART SIX

  1.

  HERE WAS THE TIMELINE AS FAR AS JOHN COULD DISCOVER: When Mary was found to be in Mexico, in the same villa as the dead child, she was brought into custody. They boarded the plane just before it began to taxi, and she was led out in handcuffs. They were told to search the plane and they did so.

  They brought her back to Oathoa. They took her to her villa and spoke to her. Later in the day they brought her to jail, took her blue Canadian passport, and two officers looked at it. Then they telephoned someone. A man came in, looked at her a long moment. Looked at the passport. Then a woman came in. This was Isabella Tallagonga.

  She spoke to three police officers, looked Mary Cyr’s way and left. Mary stared at her full hips, which seemed to denounce Mary as she walked. This would be the woman who accused her.

  Mary sat alone in the room for an hour or more. She asked to see a lawyer, but no one paid attention. Finally she asked to see the Canadian ambassador. But the police officer she spoke to just shrugged as if he didn’t understand.

  Then the door opened. A policeman came in. She was told to stand, put her hands up on the painted hands on the wall, and was searched by a policewoman. A cavity search was performed, with sanitized gloves. Everything in that room looked green and dowdy.

  There was a lot of shuffling and boisterousness inside the small outer office. Two police officers stared at her through the window glass of the door while she was being searched. First one huge officer with a bull neck would peek in, and then a much shorter officer. Her bra had been pushed up and her skirt had been taken off. When they looked in the window, at her beautiful full breasts, she simply sta
red at them.

  Then the man in the suit came in again after she had dressed. He was Señor Gabel, the judge. He looked at her, nodded, said:

  “Señorita Mary Fatima Cyr.”

  And left.

  Doors opened and closed and she was told to sit on the hard green wooden bench again. An hour passed.

  The short police officer came in, and started searching through the clothes in her suitcase. She stared at his hands when he did this, the angry red hairs that sprouted above the latex gloves.

  “When did the boy die?” he asked her, as he looked at a pair of her shoes and then her brassiere. He looked at her with superciliousness, a noncommittal arrogance that was highly practised.

  She thought for a second they were speaking about her son, Bobby, and started to turn white and tremble. This was noticed. But the question was asked again, this time with the boy’s name. It was asked very politely.

  “When did Victor die—did you intend to just leave him?”

  And that was when she found out Victor was dead.

  She looked up, trembling, and her picture was taken by Ms. DeRolfo, who was standing in the open doorway, chewing gum. That evening Ms. DeRolfo wore a white pantsuit, and a pair of gold earrings—and Mary noticed for a moment a pair of expensive patent-leather shoes.

  Then two other officers dressed in white suits came into the building—with a huge suitcase. They put it on the table, snapped the lock and opened it.

  “How much is there?” they asked.

  “Almost two million,” Mary Cyr said.

  They put her in the cell. The big officer with the bull neck, Erappo Pole. By the third evening she was charged with murder, corruption of a minor and degradation to a body

  How could she get her Plu and her diary? And suddenly John was there.

  2.

  A DAY OR SO WAS MISSING FROM THIS SCENARIO—THAT IS, JOHN did not know when they actually did charge her with the murder of the boy. Nor was he sure if it mattered now that she was charged.

  It was murky, but the timing could not have been worse for her. Her arrival in Oathoa had happened just at the crucial moment, when the court was under pressure to investigate the mining disaster and ruled that the miners’ families had legitimate claims for compensation.

  They needed to recover the bodies they said, very sternly to her—something that did not seem to matter four days before.

  The paper Gringo reported that Mary Cyr, who had sat on Tarsco’s board of governors, might well be charged with additional counts of manslaughter. Now all of Mexico wanted her blood.

  “Of course,” Fey said. “Her family owned the mine. She wanted to pay off Amigo and get away with giving only two million—we have that under good authority.” (He did not say this until he was told to say it.)

  “You have it under good authority,” John said, not even as a question, but more as an indictment against the statement. “Why would you think a woman like Mary Cyr came down here to do anything like that? I am sure she knew nothing of the coal mine. And in every document, you will find it was Amigo’s responsibility.”

  Fey looked at him, as one does someone terribly naive.

  “Oh, I see—” Fey said, “we have never seen Americanos coming here to influence us? To trifle with us?”

  “She is Canadian,” John corrected. Mildly. “Canadiense.”

  “Ah, well,” Fry said, as if to sympathize.

  “Where is the money now?” John asked.

  “It is safe—in a bank, it is hers, it will not be touched,” Fey said. “She came down to meet with the head of Amigo and give him the offer. But she had to try to seduce a child. She is a sick woman,” Fey said. “That is, there is something wrong with her. Her family tried to hide it from us, and the world” (he said this to personalize the struggle) “—so I do feel sorry for her—she never got the help she might have needed. Do you know, for instance,” he said, smiling now, quite handsomely, “about the bear trap?”

  “What bear trap?”

  “The bear trap used to mangle young girls’ legs when she was a child? And the young convent girl who roomed with her, who drowned—the Mother Superior could do nothing with her—tried to keep her on her knees and keep her out of mischief—it’s all here. It is published on the internet and will be out in a book. It will be published in New York and then we will see.”

  And he tossed John the first instalment of those speculative things about to be placed in front of the public with photos by photographer Sharon DeRolfo. It was going to be done by one of her former friends in Toronto—a man he met just once.

  John looked over the article, comments from all over Canada, most unflattering toward the Cyrs, and a picture of a young girl. It wasn’t Mary.

  Who is that? John thought, looking at a faded picture of the child, standing in small white boots in the snow, her hands in a rabbit muff.

  But after a time he realized it was the 1974 Easter Day picture of the tiny, extremely hopeful-looking Denise Albert.

  But there was one good thing Fey told him. Tallagonga had relatives in Mexico City who wanted her to keep this high-profile case in order to secure her reputation. And a prosecutor in Mexico City named Alfonso Bara, who was her rival, wanted the case there, but Tallagonga won out. So the case would proceed here.

  “What about what the German gave you?” John asked. “Doesn’t that rule out the toxicology report?”

  “That can’t be discussed now,” Fey said.

  3.

  WHY THE TIMELINE WAS MURKY FOR JOHN WAS THAT THERE WAS stagnation once she was brought into custody. Things did stop and people did communicate with each other over what should be done. Mexico City was consulted, and so too was the Supreme Court.

  Why? Because as much as they thought she was a big fish—bigger than a flounder—the idea of the autopsy saying arsenic was immediately thought to be ridiculous. They identified other causes, and did not know if she could be held.

  “That’s the most asinine thing I have ever heard,” Tallagonga said. “He has to come up with something else or we will not hold her.” She was so furious she threw the autopsy report across the dark-oak desk, and ground her teeth and then, held one tooth with her thumb and forefinger that the grinding had made sore.

  Yet saying “We have to come up with something else” did mean she would be held.

  And that was when Erappo Pole came into the room, and said in a heartbreaking voice that he was certain the littler boy, and this is what he said: “El niño mas pequeño se ha ido.”

  The littlest boy is gone—or the littler boy is gone.

  And his chest heaved sorrowfully.

  So the idea of arsenic no longer obsessed them. The idea of the children’s deaths did—and it did not matter how they had died or went missing—she, Mary Cyr, was involved with both.

  For Tallagonga, who had like Judge Gabel often talked herself into and out of judicial procedures against certain people, this was the result of four years of flawed legal actions against DeRolfo and others. They just simply did not see it as being such.

  Others, however, in other places, did.

  So the idea that they as law officials did not know this method involving arsenic was suspect was foolish. But they had to keep going with it, as long as they had it.

  What it did do, however, is allow people in certain places in Mexico City to begin to speculate about the guilt of Mary Cyr or the innocence of someone like Carlos DeRolfo.

  “He has turned into the crookedist bastard in the world,” one of his former friends said. “A real cocksucker. And he is scared shitless of everyone, especially Hulk Hernández.”

  So to say that none of this was known was untrue. In fact all the untruth associated with the case was in a way known. Yet things were allowed to continue. Erappo Pole. who was paid some four hundred dollars a month extra for saying what Carlos DeRolfo asked him to say, did not think that he himself had done anything wrong in this case. The case was up to other people. He might know Mary C
yr was innocent, but it was not up to him to decide. Still, even Erappo Pole knew that to charge Mary Cyr was taking a big chance. And it might over time be a disaster for him. That is, once you are doing things that morally make you slide, you do slide, and the slide reaches speeds that make it hard to find traction. So you give up trying to find traction. You may have started out as a youngster thinking traction was possible. But after a while it is no longer feasible. Traction only limits the possibilities. Once this is realized the free fall is guaranteed. And this is what happened to Erappo Pole in the past twenty years. And it had all started with a wink from a man, at a fiesta, which said:

  I know you, you are a good guy—you’ll look the other way.

  And Erappo Pole had. And from that moment on, he was relied upon not only to look the other way but to make sure no one else looked either. So then, that is why things were at a stalemate initially. What Xavier had hoped and prayed for two weeks ago was that a penalty would be paid out from Canada through his office in Cancún to Amigo, and once the penalty was paid to Amigo casualties, the court would allow Ms. Cyr to receive a suspended sentence.

  This is what Xavier had worked on tirelessly, but it carried within its marrow a fatal flaw.

  4.

  SO THEN TO GO BACK A FEW WEEKS:

  Xavier had painstakingly worked something out privately the second night she was in jail. He had had the help of the Canadian ambassador, and he had phoned the one Cyr he could reach, Perley, and had spoken privately. The deal worked out was so secretive no one else knew the details. Pressure was brought to bear on both Tallagonga and the judge, Señor Gabal.

  The murder charges were ambivalent. The reports coming in said they were speculative at best, because even before John had arrived, Fey had determined the child had been outside when a struggle had occurred, something that John Delano himself had figured out within a day.