OF COURSE SHE KNEW WRITERS OF ALL SORTS, POLITICIANS, opera singers. She knew most of the living prime ministers—some said she had an affair with one. She sat in her room with Bobby. They lay about playing checkers, singing and making up stories. Bobby had his own Ferris wheel. Albeit a small one. Some days he just sat in it, at the top.
Doc left. The marriage was annulled.
She and Bobby would walk the road at night—just like vampires did. They would wait until the children his age went inside, after their games, their cries of confusion and delight, their yelling and laughter had subsided. Then a child would emerge just as the sun was going down over the bay, and his mother, looking not much bigger than he, both wearing ball caps. They would emerge and turn right, away from the great cottage, and go though the path that she had covered with soft pine nettles gone red in the setting sun. They would visit Jabaroo the horse; they would visit his “pile of goats.” They would sit in the barn’s hayloft and she would tell him a story about Denise Albert or Debby Dormey—her two bestest friends. She would laugh—laugh and laugh, like a little girl. They would play hide and seek among the soft worn timbers 120 years old—or if lucky see just at dawn the phantom Man O War riding the waves on its way to Quebec in 1763.
Then she would quote her favourite Nowlan poem. She would tell him the poem was better than Chaucer. But that someday she would read him Chaucer too.
He would listen to her, his mouth open in wonder at his mother—this very great lady. One night they did actually meet a she-bear roaming out near the cove. It came out on their little path, and without a second’s hesitation Mary Cyr stood in front of her son, and stared the she-bear down.
Near dawn they would come back, to this great home, and when the sun was rising Mary would tuck her son into bed, and lie beside him and sing him to sleep, and he would sleep until afternoon.
Perhaps she didn’t handle it right at all. Both the Catholic Church and social workers said she hadn’t, after Bobby died. Perhaps there never was a good way to handle it.
This was the year that Mrs. Cruise was publishing her great book.
It chronicled her advocacy for change. A feminist in the age of feminism. No one could be braver, Mary once said.
Perhaps Ms. Cruise did not know it was Mary Cyr’s family’s publishing house. Perhaps Mary Cyr who knew much about her by the detectives she hired, knew enough to care about her. Knew enough of her own betrayal.
Mary discovered that it was there, one day when she and Bobby were making a great castle with Lego. The castle was going to be big enough to sleep in—have a moat filled with crocodiles and snakes—some man-eating tigers too.
She had to protect him, and Lego was the best retardant against all things wrong.
But she left the Lego where it was.
She went to the publisher. It was a cold November afternoon and she arrived unannounced in Ottawa—on the date she had lost her virginity long ago, to a man she once worshipped in a childish way.
The editor had refused the book, but since her grandfather had major interest in the company, she asked them to please reconsider. The book was meticulously bound and ribboned. It was such an innocent affair in the end. And Rory assumed it was groundbreaking, assumed there was actually something new in it.
She picked it up, flipped through the pages—made a mark in the middle with her pen, and said: “Reconsider.”
“Reconsider—Ms. Cyr,” the editor said. “It is not the kind of book we consider here—we do mostly political books—this is a sociological study—And—” here he whispered gravely “—it calls for the government to have a policy of national euthanasia. The poor woman believes in that way she will help the world.”
“Well, so what?” Mary said flippantly.
“Well, people like your son—not in so many words but surely in the implication.”
“I am almost certain that it would. You see it’s all the rage now.” “What is?”
“Liberal Lunacy.”
“Well—what is your relationship with her?”
“I knew him once when I was young.” Mary said, and here her voice faltered.
“But he is much older than you are.”
“By centuries, it seems.”
“I had planned to send it back with a rejection slip.”
“Publish her, please. Do it for me—I will pay the publishing costs.”
“And who will I say gave the acquisition go-ahead?”
She simply wrote on the top page of Ms. Cruise’s grand opus: “Stet, Mary Fatima Cyr.”
Then turning away, she said:
“Euthanasia of Bobby—why, of course. Why didn’t I think of that.”
So she secretly helped to save Mrs. Cruise’s book with the Ottawa publisher. It was published that year. It made a splash among certain advocates. She did this for revenge against her beau. It was something she kept secret.
“I never read the fuckin book. She strikes me as a sad creature—”
She felt guilty. This started her wild excessive binge drinking, her solitary parties with Vogue magazine, and a forty of gin. In fact she ended up in detox on a summer night. Poor little Bobby watched the ambulance take her away. And Perley kept the boy for her during that stay.
Once out of detox she disappeared from view with Bobby in tow, for over eight months.