I am Mary Dunne

by Brian Moore

  There are more things in

  life than

  Instant

  Suck-cess.

  And I remember as I sat there staring at him, angry tears in my eyes, the Chopin unheard, Tee, poor Tee turned and looked at me and I saw that Mad Twin had been wrong again, Tee had not judged me, he never judges me and who was I to sit meanly in judgment on him, I who would run to the window and jump if anything happened to him, for what I said to Hat long ago is still true, Terence is my saviour, he restoreth my soul, he has made me happy and I should be ashamed of myself for wanting him to be old Fëdor (my God, I thought, imagine going to bed with that bearded madman with his gambling and his sick lusts after small girls). What normal woman would want a genius as a mate, what does it matter what posterity says about Tee, will I be around to hear the silence of those future years, of course I won’t.

  I had turned my head away so that Tee would not see my tears and now I wiped my eyes and looked back at him, but suddenly (I know, it doesn’t sound sensible) but, anyway, I caught him looking at me in a very cold, curious way and I thought, yes he thinks I’m going mad, he’s trying to find out how shaky I am. And as I stared at him he smiled, falsely, and I smiled back because I was afraid of him, yes, afraid, even though I knew that only a mad person would be afraid of Tee. So, therefore, I was mad, and I smiled and smiled and hoped I could deceive him for unless I kept my mad side under control, even Tee, good sweet Terence, would pick up the telephone and call in doctors who would sign papers (for your own good, Mary) and have me taken away and locked up in an asylum.

  And if they do lock me up, then I really will lose my mind because I am the sort of person who is very susceptible to environment and if I were to be locked up with a bunch of mad people I would start mimicking them, (that sounds mad: ‘mimicking them’), I mean if I am put in among people like that it could upset me so much that I really would become ill, I mean temporarily deranged, and that could become permanent, permanently deranged, and then they would throw away the key and as all this rushed around in my head while I sat there cravenly smiling at Terence, my enemy, I began in my mind to say an act of contrition, oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having sinned against Thee, because Thou art so good I will never more offend Thee and I will amend my life.

  And now, Sweet Mother of God, it was really Down Tilt, I was slipping over the cliff edge, smiling at Tee who had got up from the daybed and was coming towards me and I smiled to him, hello there, hello, I am all right, I was only joking about forgetting my name today, it was just a joke, Terence my love, I am fine, see, I am smiling at you and now you stretch out your hand to take mine, but if I let you hold my hand you will discover that I am trembling and of course that’s why you want to take my hand to see if it is trembling, yes, you don’t want to hold my hand in a loving way, you want it as a doctor does, to feel my pulse but I am on to that, my love, and so I embrace you hard and press myself against you, press so hard I control my shaking hands and I kiss you and pull you down on top of me on the daybed, pretending I am hot and excited and then break away from you and go to pull down the blind while behind me I hear a noise which means you are undressing.

  I remember standing there at the window in a sudden lucid moment, divorced from my fear, and I remember thinking: I am getting ready to make love to Terence, just as though I were a prostitute, for I am not doing it for love, or even for tenderness, but simply to prevent him knowing the state I’m in.

  I turned around, and was going to say something, I think I was even going to confide in you, Tee, but there you were, waiting, and again I was afraid and so I began to pose for you as you sat there on the daybed, I began to take off my clothes, first my skirt, then my suit jacket, then my bra, standing there in panties, garter belt, and stockings, looking down at you with an actressy smile, turning away from you, showing you my bum as I peeled off my panties, and you had your pants off too, you sat there in your shirt with your prick sticking up inquiringly from under the shirt-tail and as you took off your shirt, I began to take off my garter belt and stockings and my face was close to your naked belly as you pulled your shirt off and I remembered my doom dream, when naked is panic, when naked is the dooms, the glooms, the nightmare in which I see myself in unknown hotel rooms with nameless men: the men differ but I am always the same. I come from the bathroom, naked, my hair down to my hips, my make-up on straight, I go towards the bed and the man stands up. He is naked and his prick is stiff. Naked means no sleep; stiff prick means fuck: it means finishing myself off in the bathroom, later: or lie awake, unfinished, the man asleep beside me and I awake; a sad, female animal.

  And now Terence came to me naked and I shook, but you held me, Terence, you pressed me to you and felt my shaking but you held me. I was drowning but I felt your body against mine, your body that fits mine as no other body ever did, your prick against my belly, and I knew I would not drown, for with you, naked is make it new, there is no past, you are my resurrection and my life and out of the depths I cry to you and now Terence maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he restoreth me by his fingers inside me as he kisses my breasts and neck and I take his prick in my hand and come up with him to joy, all my shaking stilled, to that joining, that Mass of the senses, that slow titillation of our parts, until I no longer have a mind, I am one with the moment as we roll and turn and now we change rhythm, we move into that hot frantic driving, to that fuck that encompasseth me, we try to prolong it, hold it back, wait, wait, and now, feeling you drive inside me, excited, excited, I cry with joy, it is not as it used to be with others, there is no fear, there is no ‘Will I and when can I and if I can’t then can I pretend it?’ I feel you know you’re close and I am close, too close, and oh, make it last, think of something else to make it last, but we drive towards it together and I feel you come and I come, we come together and I shake and shudder, I shake and shudder and shake and shake. And lie still.

  He lies beside me. There is sweat on my brow and my heart beats loud. But I am at peace.

  We slept. I woke. I looked at the clock on his work table. ‘Terence, it’s six thirty.’

  He yawned, ‘Eeeeeeaaahhh.’ He cat-rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, sat up, and switched on the light. I saw the tiger stripe of black hair which runs from his navel to his pubic bush. ‘How long did we sleep?’ he asked.

  ‘Two hours,’ I said and then, I thought, Ernie. I was going to cook the leg of lamb, but now it was too late. Terence reached over and kissed me. ‘Listen?’ I said. ‘Could you nip down to the supermarket and get us some lamb chops? I was going to cook a leg of lamb but it’s too late and the butcher’s closed –’

  He smiled and cut short my explanation by fondling my breasts. ‘ ’Ow much are these? ’Ow about a couple of nice breasts? Tasty.’

  Sometimes he puts me off with those burlesque pleasantries but this afternoon I was feeling so guilty about having to ask him to run down for the chops that I forgave him. I feel guilty with Terence. He has so much to do, yet I’m always asking him to help me with the few things I have to do. He’s organized and I’m not. I remember thinking that people like Ernie Truelove are always on time. I jumped up, grabbed my clothes, and ran for my bathroom as Tee sprinted past me like some young, naked satyr, making for the other bathroom down the hall.

  In the bathroom, I looked in the mirror. My face smiled back at me, mirroring that quotation about ‘the lineaments of gratified desire’, which described my lineaments very nicely at that moment, thank you and thank you, Mr Lavery, sir. I thought of Hat saying, ‘All you want is to be fucked, fucked, fucked until the come is running out of you,’ and yes sir, Hat, I recommend it, it does wonders for pre-menstrual tension and there in the bathroom as I began to clean my face, I thought of Terence going to get the lamb chops: he never minds doing an errand because he loves me. Mackie never minded doing errands for me: there was no chore she would not do so long as she had me to herself. In one of the rows I had with him, Jimmy said, ‘Look, you go to work with her,
you have lunch with her, you spend your evenings with her. I know, it’s not your fault. I have to study. But dammit, Mary, except for the time we’re asleep in this bed, when are you and I together? I mean, we used to talk about my job at Loblaws’, about the T. Eaton Company and the Blodgetts and Nova Scotia and school and all those things we used to laugh about. But I tell you, kid (he liked to say, I tell you, kid), I sit here night after night at dinner listening to you and Mackie going on about Canada’s Own and this one and that one, giggling away, the pair of you, and for Christ’s sake I’ve nothing to say to you now, she’s your buddy, you’re more married to her than you are to me.’

  ‘Well, you’re the one who’s studying.’

  ‘And what about you? When you’re not sitting in there with Mackie, you’re out with a bunch of actors.’

  ‘I’m in acting class. The one you and Mackie so kindly arranged for me. What’s wrong, do you want me to quit acting? Do you?’

  ‘I’m not talking about acting, stop trying to change the subject.’

  ‘Who’s trying to change the subject?’

  ‘You were.’

  ‘I was not.’

  ‘You were. Anyway, I was talking about you and her. Do you realize that you and I can never sit alone in that living-room? Do you realize I never can start a conversation with you without keeping an eye out for her ladyship to walk in, plunk herself down, and listen in on every word we’re saying?’

  ‘Well, it’s her house.’

  ‘Exactly. Exactly.’

  ‘You were the one who wanted to move in here, Jimmy, not me.’

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ he would shout and run out of the bedroom.

  Yet, even in fights, we were three. After each row, when the thick silence of dissent perched over our meals, there was Mackie, passing sauce or more meat, eyes nun-glancing from Jimmy to me, maintaining a ‘tactful’ silence which, in effect, condemned Jimmy, for, in all the time she and I used to spend together, she managed to ignore the fact of my marriage, never saying anything which would connect the Maria I was for her with that guilty, young married woman, who, each evening at some point of going to bed – undressing, combing my hair, brushing my teeth – had the same small unhappy thought. I hope he doesn’t want to, tonight.

  Yet, years later, Hat screamed at me that all I had ever wanted was to be fucked, fucked, fucked. And I believed him. Just as I believed Jimmy when he said, ‘You know what you are, you’re a virgin, that’s what you are, you’re as cold as a bloody plaster saint.’ Jimmy’s right, I thought, I am cold, it’s my fault, there’s something wrong with me.

  It’s funny how I believed Jimmy, just as I believed Hat. In those days I thought men more intelligent than women. Yet, I also believed I was very intelligent. It makes me smile now to remember my lost innocence, but, when men said flattering things to me and wanted to hire me, when train conductors went out of their way to explain things for me, when other girls’ fathers acted fatherly to me, it never occurred to me that it was because of my looks. I thought myself to be too tall: I thought my nose was too big, I wanted a bobbed nose and one of those meaningless doll faces people in small towns think pretty. Even with Mackie, I thought it was my brains that attracted her. I thought she’d taken that first shine to me and hired me because she too had once worked in the same awful directory place and that she saw me as a younger version of herself. And it wasn’t until she made that strange confession four months after I first met her, that I realized my brains had nothing to do with it. She came out with it one evening when, typically, Jimmy was upstairs studying. And Mackie said, ‘I’ve been reading a book about romantic love, I mean the romantic love poets write about, a pure love that is romantic because it never can be fulfilled. Chivalric love, do you remember?’

  I said yes, although I still hadn’t caught on.

  ‘Chivalric love,’ she said. ‘Chivalric, because it is doomed. Like my love.’

  And so, surprised, stupidly, I said, ‘Your love? I didn’t know you were in love.’

  She smiled at me. ‘Oh Maria,’ she said. ‘Do you remember the first day you walked into my office in the library? Do you know what happened? I looked up at you and felt dizzy. I felt I was going to faint. I remember the first thing I thought, when the dizziness cleared, was that your coat was cheap and your shoes were worn.’

  ‘My coat?’ I said. ‘I don’t understand, what had that to do with your feeling dizzy?’

  ‘I mean,’ she said, ‘I didn’t know you at all, I’d never seen you before, but I wanted to buy you a beautiful coat and beautiful shoes; which you should have. I remember thinking I would like to see your face framed in furs.’

  ‘Mackie.’ (I was embarrassed. I remember I laughed, but she didn’t.)

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s true. I remember I brought you the magazine article you’d asked for and then I went back and sat down at my own desk and I said to myself this girl will read the article she came to read and then she’ll go away and I’ll never see her again unless I do something about it, something extraordinary. Do you realize what happened that day, do you realize what it took for me to go back and talk to you and then, when you told me where you worked, I had this mad idea and I ran in to see McKinnon and asked for you as my assistant. Do you remember, Maria, oh, what a day that was. Chivalric love, I said. Lord, I was a knight in armour that day, I had no fear, I really bullied old McKinnon into taking you, remember?

  I sat staring at her as she told me this story. I remember thinking, why, she’s not even aware of the true meaning of what she’s saying. I remember feeling embarrassed for her, yet protective of her too, thinking she loves me and I don’t love her, doesn’t she realize I’m a married woman, poor thing, what’s why she wants Jimmy and me to live with her, she’s a Lesbian without knowing it. (I had only recently read about Lesbians, I didn’t know much about them, but after she told me her story I remember thinking there’s something morally wrong about us going on living here, using this poor woman. We should move out. And I should get some other job.)

  But I didn’t tell Jimmy what she’d said. And we didn’t move out. I chose to forget she’d ever said it. I thought her love was doomed, as she said it was. Nothing would ever come of it. Besides, I thought, how could I break it to her, how could I hurt her by telling her what I think is wrong with her?

  She said her love was chivalric. She meant it was a pure love, a love in which she loved me more than she loved herself. But, of course, she was wrong. Her love was not chivalric, it was selfish. She was pleased with herself for having captured me and carried me off into her bookstacks and into her home. As, later, she was so jealous of my love for Hat that she must tell Jimmy about it, hoping to destroy it. I remember in the cab this morning I thought of Jimmy who said he loved me, but who, in reality, wanted a face and a body which happened to be mine. Sad as it sounds, Mackie was the same. For she loved a girl she invented, a girl she called Maria. There was no Maria. There was only me.

  ‘Lamb chops,’ Terence said. ‘Want anything else?’

  He was at the bathroom door, dressed, his hair combed. I said no, I had everything. I heard the front door close and I thought damn, damn, why did I invite Ernie Truelove to dinner, how much nicer it would have been to spend tonight alone with Tee. I thought I won’t bother doing my hair, I haven’t time, I’ll wear my fall and as I said that I thought of the fall, sitting on its oval-faced styrofoam dummy head on my bedroom windowsill, I remember I thought I’ll finish up my face here in the bathroom, then put on my op-art dress, the one I got at Ohrbach’s with the short skirt, it’s swingy, and I was just lining in my mouth with my lipstick brush when I heard the doorbell. Terence forgot his wallet, I thought, he always forgets it when he changes clothes.

  ‘Door’s open,’ I shouted. I knew I hadn’t locked the catch earlier.

  I heard him come in.

  ‘Did you forget your wallet?’ I called, but there was no answer. I’d finished my mouth so I got up and went out into the hall, goin
g to the bedroom for my dress. There, facing me in the hall, was Ernie Truelove.

  And me with my terry-cloth robe open, exposing to him my bare breasts, my panties. I clutched the robe shut. I could have killed him.

  ‘Oh, gee, I’m sorry,’ he said, but his face was hanging open, his eyes were still glazed over by his staring at my breasts. I moved past him into my bedroom. I was shaking. I called, ‘I’ll be with you in a minute. Go in the living-room and, ah, get yourself a drink.’

  I heard his footsteps retreat. I started to get into my dress and, as I did, his voice boomed out. ‘Gosh, Maria, I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was early, I mean I didn’t mean to inconvenience you like this. Gosh. Listen, just pretend I’m not here, okay?’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s all right, I won’t be a minute. There’s drinks on the living-room table and ice in the kitchen fridge.’

  ‘No hurry,’ his voice boomed. And then, ‘Hey, Maria, gosh it’s good to see you again.’

  Well, you’ve certainly seen plenty of me, haven’t you, I thought, as I slipped on my op-art dress.

  ‘Your husband home?’