Mary Cyr

by David Adams Richards

  The little guard said she would buckle up, and make sure things were safe. And so she went from cell to cell, woman to woman, to see if they were okay. Then she went upstairs and locked the big, big door. Oh yes, and then she took a pail and mop and tried to mop up the water already on the office floor.

  “Mary Cyr can fool some of you for a while, but we who know her, and her family, realize she is a sick and murderous terror.”

  It was the last thing she had taped over her breasts just three days ago.

  That made it really quite hard to breathe.

  In Mexico City, Bara decided now was the time to arrest Mr. and Mrs. DeRolfo, and tomorrow at the very latest he would let Mary Cyr go.

  But Mr. and Mrs. DeRolfo were packing—had three hundred thousand dollars in American money—and were planning to leave. They had their escape route planned and the diversion planned as well. The storm just happened to be a bonus. Those men they were to meet once they crossed the border would prove a most fateful meeting.

  But they were going north on the road toward the border. It would get dark and windy, the car would rock, and signs would fly in front of them as they went—but they would make it outside of the danger zone the first night. Then they would place a call to a woman. They would say:

  “Sorry to bother you, we are so sorry to tell you we can’t for the life of us go any farther today—the storm is too bad—we are going to put up tonight here, and leave again tomorrow, can you tell the men to wait.”

  By that time a disaster would have happened in the town of Oathoa that would implicate everyone—tar them all with the same brush.

  “Of course,” Little Boots Baron would answer. “I will tell them to wait.”

  “We are forever in your debt.”

  “Consider it paid.”

  Their bodies would be found bound and mutilated in a dumpster in a small Texas town two weeks later.

  PART FOURTEEN

  1.

  JOHN DELANO’S FINAL REPORT WAS WRITTEN FOUR MONTHS after he came back from Mexico.

  Now, of course, with all that ruin people saw a different story emerge, but as so often happens, it was too late. Now the tabloids were shifting, but their moral outrage was to them as justified as always.

  Why had they not seen it? Why did they not recognize Professor Cruise for what he was? What had Warren known that he, Greg, did not? And why did she go to Mexico? That is, the entire family’s business dynamics were scrutinized by ten million Canadians, and by just as many British and Americans, trying to figure out what someone might have done to stop this atrocity against her.

  The amazing thing was all that they had managed to find out after the fact. Was it always going to be like this—after the fact? Were you always going to say someone was great only afterwards, only after blood and darkness? And what about that man Pedro Sonora? Had he pinged his tin cup into nothing, like a man crying out to God, condemned forever to cry? Was he the final emblematic silhouette of man, banging a symbol to an empty sky?

  That was peculiar, John said, but in a way as natural as any other tragedy of conscience. That is, those who yelled loudest against her when they had the chance did not now utter a word to ask forgiveness for themselves. They were very quiet now. The Cyr pipeline that had been damaged by those who drove to the pipeline in cars that used oil, and slept in houses that needed it, and wore clothes that contained it, now issued not one statement about her. The university profs as well who spoke of progress—and said that the Cyr empire was one of failure and disaster, sitting in buildings some of which were donated by Cyr money—did not now come back to reinvestigate themselves.

  “But,” John said, “it was in actual fact building for days—the idea to break in and take her out of her cell.” He said this to the family as they sat in the big room at the front of the great house in Saint John. Fog rolled into the windows, and all around were the trappings of despair and darkness, even, or perhaps more especially, in this bastion of understated constant wealth and privilege. Nan sat at the back of the room; Perley sat in the corner on a chair by the window, his huge body almost obsolete. He was the only one brave enough, and willing enough, to trade places with her—the man picked on all his life. He had tried to fly down, but his family refused—so he had taken a plane to Toronto, and tried to get on an international flight. He was already to go. But he had no passport. He had not been able to find his. They told him he must reapply for a passport before he left the country. So Perley went back home. When he got home, he found out that John himself was going to be arrested for conspiracy because he would not leave Mexico.

  “When did they come for her?” he asked.

  “Oh—it was when they knew she was innocent,” John said. “Because they knew she was innocent.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean in the most secret part of a mob and all that a mob is party to, they very often know the one they accuse is not guilty. So taking them out of the cell is actual proof that they are innocent—it is a strange thing—if you believe in heaven, which I do, and hell—which I still worry about; and the Virgin Mary, which I do, and Christ, who I do, though I am afraid I rarely go to Mass—if you believe in that, in that, then you will see the scapegoat in the little donkey, and Mary Cyr clutching the bars of the cell and looking out on the empty street, as the crowd gathered—there is something awesome in her look—something forever luminous and determined, something forever part of our Canadian soul.”

  “Was she brave?”

  “Yes, I think she was,” John said, reaching over and taking a package of cigarettes from the pocket of his coat and lighting one. “And you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “She went to Mexico because she had to—she wanted to find out about the mine—that is why she went down—she was taking money down to give to the poor, but soon after she got there the implosion happened—so she stayed because she wanted to find out why it had happened. The idea of dropping an earring in order to meet Victor was a calculated gamble. Our sister was smarter than any of us—but she didn’t let on.”

  “Our sister?” Nan said.

  “Is that what I called her—our sister—well, there you go. At the end Norma van Haut was her sister I will tell you that.”

  It was all over now—all of it. That is, the protesting against her had all but stopped. And now among her adversaries there was only silence, accompanied, if they thought of it, by shame.

  When they finally came down the stairs and along the corridor and got to her cell, the little waif was sitting on the clothes crate, looking out at them with her luminous eyes. The weather had made it dark and rain swept into the cell. The lines were down. Great mad waves of water washed the streets, and here and there sparks flew up from broken wires.

  The police force had gone up to the highway to rescue people there—at the hospital, and a busload of tourists had overturned. The group of army cadets had been placed on the roads. And the streets of Oathoa were empty, except for a dog or two scurrying half mad on hind legs kicking up against the wind.

  “The main street passed the resort—narrowed and narrowed, but it finally led to the jail,” John said.

  Far down the street a little girl watched without a sound, looking over at them in awe. This was in fact Gabriella. Why was she in awe? Because, the world had stopped, and some other thing had taken hold of men.

  People had mistaken Lucretia as Florin’s mother and no one would be able to tell anyone different. Even as Gabriella followed behind and shouted pleadingly that she was not the mother. She became the mother—she became at the moment all mothers in the world—and now because of this, she had to act it out.

  Lucretia was carrying Florin in her arms along the street. A crowd of people surrounded her and jostled her. There was now such rage forming against the lady in the cell. Mary Fatima Cyr was therefore alone; except for a little female guard, in a big hat, and Erappo Pole.

  Gabriella ran back to her apartment to find Á
ngel.

  “You have to help her.”

  “Who do I have to help?”

  “The lady—in jail—no one will help if you do not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you have to,” she said.

  Erappo Pole had taken this madwoman to the child. Behind her great clouds swarmed in the sky. It was so dark that the flat sea looked angry and vampire bats with their pig-like noses skirted the heavens.

  The crowd gathered as the storm gathered. Norma van Haut and her husband ran to the jail when they saw the crowd gather. Mary Cyr was looking out at them from one side of the cell, they were looking in.

  But the crowd was too, too enraged. Constable Fey was five miles away, where the bus had overturned twenty minutes before. The heavy rain poured down over the brim of his hat. He heard his cell phone buzz and then go quiet.

  Every time the little guard tried to phone his cell phone there seemed to be nothing but a busy signal or dead air. She tried ten times.

  Worse, John Delano himself had been placed in the cell above Mary Cyr that morning.

  So there were few if any people to help.

  Still, when they tried to get to her, the big German tossed people right and left and right again, but finally went down under their assault—tried to stand and was kicked in the face until he lost consciousness.

  “Puta, puta,” they screamed.

  Mary came to the cell window, just as Ángel parked his little scooter across the street. The wind howled and the scooter toppled over. He looked at it, and then turned his attention to the crowd. He seemed to be very calm as he watched them.

  Drawing nearer he saw the face of Mary Cyr. She seemed to him to be a dove beating its broken wings against some wire cage.

  People would write for months—even years—that Ángel was captivated by her beauty at just this moment, that he could have at this moment said as the poet declared, that beauty was truth. But suddenly all the rumours he had heard about the DeRolfos became clear. He looked and saw Florin’s little body in a heap near the old donkey.

  They went to tear her—as they said: “Tear her by her tits out of the cell.”

  He followed behind them.

  He turned and was only a few inches from her face. Her beauty overwhelmed him, some said, and he protested:

  “¿Usted es una mujer inocente?”

  He asked this as a great lightning bolt flashed far away, and she could hardly make out his words.

  “You are an innocent woman?” he had asked her. His face was sad, and drenched with rain. “Please tell me you are.”

  “Sí,” she said. She smiled. Like a foreigner trying her best to understand some stranger on a train.

  They said she sat in the cell, at the last holding a comb—no one knew if it was to protect herself or comb her hair—and perhaps she did not either. She could hear them coming, and every time a door banged she trembled slightly, just as those men had trembled when they heard the clang above their heads.

  The Dutch doctor stood at the cell window, trying to fend people off. But she had no hope of doing so.

  The little guard suffered too; she ran the length of the cells and let other women out, to help her—while trying to use her billy club to protect who she thought was a vicious woman but still and all a prisoner to be protected with her life. She was Constable Fey’s fiancée. And all the while the mob got closer, and then closer. The women in the other cells came out, yelling and screaming for the mob to show decency—to show decency. They tried to protect her as they grappled with the mob along the corridor. Plants and chairs were overturned. The two women lovers came from their own cell, both with belts in their hands to swing. It did no good at all.

  Ángel followed behind, hands in his pockets, still not sure what crowd he was part of.

  However, darkness was everywhere. And very suddenly they all stopped to look in at her. She simply stared at them all—all of them. There was nothing more to say.

  Lightning flashed and ¡Viva Cristo! was illuminated. Then hailstones the size of golf balls fell.

  Some palm trees were uprooted, telephone wires came tumbling oddly down, and live wires flashed and bobbled on the streets. The donkey bayed against the onslaught, looking as if its hair was going to be ripped off. She felt sorry for the donkey, as it fell forward onto its head, and could not lift itself again. That is what she had been looking at when she first saw them coming up the street.

  At the end there was a gash and blood coming from Norma van Haut’s face, flowing freely—that was the picture in the News of the World. And in the Spanish paper this headline: “Intentó protegerla con su vida.”

  And yes, that was true.

  Norma van Haut had tried to save her, yelling:

  “Cometes un error.”

  “Lo siento—por todo,” Mary Cyr said, when they forced themselves into the cell.

  I am sorry—for everything.

  “Tú no estás perdonado,” Lucretia said.

  She had to say it. It was her moment.

  You are not forgiven. Or in a more personal way: I do not forgive you! She wore the designer sunglasses and the watch Mary had given her—in fact, she had combed her own hair to be like Ms. Cyr’s for her picture that would appear two days later in Gringo Magazine.

  “A mother finds her child.”

  * * *

  —

  Greg ran most of the business now. He had much to deal with. The protests against his company’s plans to build a pipeline had come to a head during the crisis with his prodigal cousin. It had caused much of what Greg called “sour press.” The protesters had destroyed six of his trucks and had tried to sabotage a rail line. That was when they could say that Mary Cyr was a deplorable human and link her to the Cyr Corporation. (Greg took measures to distance himself from his cousin, just as he had always done—and he didn’t think she knew.)

  He was sorry for that now. They were all sorry for that now. In fact, he was sure some might plan to write a book in order to exonerate themselves.

  Or perhaps not.

  He looked over all the files. He looked over the mounds of newspaper reports—the idea that a hurricane had happened so the police were busy elsewhere; that the streets had flooded so mad people were left to their own devices.

  The barber had closed for the day, and had run into the street with a pair of scissors, which he would never have done if the man whose hair he was cutting had not jumped up to see what the commotion was.

  The power went out.

  Was that an act of God? He wasn’t sure.

  Greg would have to get in touch with the Dutch doctor and thank her for doing what she could. Of course Delano too—yes, why hadn’t he thought too much of him? Both of them had risked death protecting her. Delano, who was suffering from a bad heart, had stayed when he was ordered to leave.

  And that young Angel Gloton! Was that his name? Strangely you hear of people you would never have known existed—but there he was. He punched three men silly and then hit a fourth and almost knocked him cold, before he was thrown down and booted unconscious. It was as if he hadn’t made his mind up until the very last moment what side he would fight on.

  What had started it all—Greg was trying to determine this. But all he remembered about Mary Cyr was the leaf that had fallen into her auburn hair at sunset, when snow fell and the sky in the distance was pink over the black tree line. He should have helped her, held her in his arms, and taken her home. But of course he did not. He was unfortunately not like that.

  * * *

  —

  So this is what happened.

  Earlier that day Lucretia was driven in a car to the DeRolfo house. Gidgit had prayed all night in the chapel. There was a smell of sweet flowers and the chapel lights were on. And she blessed herself.

  When she heard the car pull up, she left the chapel with her dark kerchief over her head. She met Lucretia in the foyer, and grabbed her with both hands.

  “We have found your child,” Gid
git said. She said it quickly, almost indecipherably, so that Lucretia, spellbound at being here, did not understand.

  “¿Perdón?” Lucretia said.

  Gidgit kissed her suddenly and told her, with tears in her eyes, to prepare herself for another tragic day.

  “¿Dónde está mi hijo? ¿Dónde está mi hijo?” Lucretia said, looking around in sudden terror.

  “Ven te llevaremos a él,” Gidgit said.

  The rain and wind had started, when Lucretia was taken to the dump. She was confused because she wore her best shoes and dress. She looked at them in sudden contempt.

  “No aquí,” Gidgit said, tears in her eyes. “Por favor.”

  Lucretia was taken to the dump.

  There, amid seagulls overhead, and rats running across the garbage, the wind coming up, and mounds of garbage ready to fall and slide into the ravine where desperate people made their homes, she was shown the boy’s tiny body, covered in rat bites.

  “Mi hijo,” she whispered.

  There was silence as she carried her child, decomposing and filled with rat bites, back over the streets. She was an ancient mother, a mother in the age of Boadicea. And those that gathered about her as she laid the child down near the road to the jail were silent.

  The rain was so vicious it was difficult to make out one person from another. The wind broke limbs from trees. Lucretia suddenly seemed naked within a flash of lightning.

  Over the severe, desperate wind people could hear her wailing.

  No one could silence her, and no one could comfort her anymore.

  “She is not the mother,” Gabriella said. “She is not the mother.” But no one wanted to hear, no one cared.

  Men told each other they must take action. They must, or be damned for being cowards. They started toward the cell grim and determined, their bodies exhibiting a kind of hysteria. Mary Fatima Cyr looked out at them, her shining eyes wide and curious.

  Mary Cyr’s middle name was Fatima because Nan had insisted on it. And Elaine had said of course.