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:
Yes, now you know—I have a bit of money—not too much—somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred or so million. My family has about nine billion. I think—not really that sure.
She placed her feet flat on the floor. And wiggled her two big toes.
What was toe in Spanish—she hadn’t the foggiest. Puntera, was that it?
There was the sound of the Mediterranean against the night’s black shore. And some people were making too much noise on the beach, with a patio light shining. There was a loud Spanish curse, and a slovenly inebriated woman walked by.
“Hell—where’s Franco when you need him,” Mary said.
“Pardon?” he asked.
“Infierno—¿dónde es Franco cuando lo necesitas?” she said.
She looked at him and gave a plaintive little smile—a little whimsical dash of teeth, her hair falling over her bright face. And then she went and got herself a glass of wine. Would this marriage last? She was praying it would last the night.
He could not say anything—he had lost his voice. He was petrified. She opened the bottle, with her back to him. It made a glorious pop. Then silence.
“When it is silent in a villa, you can sense the cold on your feet,” she whispered.
The night was filled with the scent of glory and wine, and deep darkness down on the stone steps that led to the shore.
Oh God, if this could only last, she thought.
In her diary she wrote that she wasn’t talking about her marriage.
Only about the night.
Her first husband was different. John drove down the highway, in his own car, with his .38 on the seat. Walked into the house, grabbed him by the neck, put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
It wasn’t loaded.
It was, as far as he could think, perhaps the worst thing he would ever do. He told no one about it—not even himself.
“I’ll sue—I’ll sue—I’ll sue the whole family for every cent they have—” the man said.
John went back to his house, and sat in the corner shaking.
“I did not do that,” he told himself.
That is, if you asked him tomorrow to swear on a Bible that he had not done this, he would. Sometimes you just cannot admit to what you turned into, even if it was only for a second.
That’s why Mary ended up forgiving them all. Perhaps even herself.