I locked the front door, all three locks, the backdoor, the windows, the garage, the door to the garage, and the gate that leads to the garden. I got a telegram from Mary's head doctor at the sanitarium about an hour ago. Susan should be home any minute now, the best thing to do is wait by the front door and peak through the drapes every other moment to make sure she makes it in safely. I am assuming she has had an extended day at the factory, she's usually there for a 10 hour shift, but sometimes she has to stay longer to the hem the shirts that weren't finished in the day's work. At least, I hope they are keeping her there longer. Which would give me more time to turn Mary in if she dares to come back.
She's been locked away for almost three years now. Three years to a schizophrenic round out to feel like 10. I can't imagine the trickery she's thought of in the amount of time to find me to place revenge. We had been married for 13 years, I filed for divorce when I came home one evening to blood strewn in drips about the living room, smears against the walls our 8 month old son sitting in the middle of the carpet screaming with a bloody nose. Mary was passed out on the couch with a bottle of vodka dangling from her hands. Later on when I started to pack her belongings for the hospital I found an opium pipe, which was safe to conclude was something she had been regularly using.
I had my sister pick Earnest, my son, to bring him to our parent's house.She has just left after I walked her to the car. I gave my son a kiss on the forehead and told him I loved him like I never had said it before. In return he told me he was going to eat candy at Nana's and Pop Pop's, I said it was fine. But only this one time. It's difficult to arrange a stable, disciplined household for a little boy with a smile like his, if it weren't for Susan he would get everything he ever wanted in the world.
Mary knows that I am remarried now, but I don't think she is aware of it. Like a fantasy story told to her as she drifts into sleep, a story she eventually forgets the next morning. Mary and I met at a small brasserie in Paris. We were both there for the war, I was an engineer for the brute tanks that intimidated the Germans. She was a petite firecracker, singing and dancing for the troops, occasionally letting a thigh slip out from underneath her petticoat as she bit her lip and graced her breast with a snow white glove. I thought of Shakespeare when I saw this for the first time "Oh how I would like to be that glove". But after a few years of her flirtatious behavior, that glove, that lip and that thigh, I realized would never be mine. Instead I shared it with half of the men of Paris and California when we later moved back home, just as I did the first time I had laid eyes on her.
It never crossed my mind that she would be trouble.My mother hated her and my sister couldn't bear to be in the same room as her, but I was assured that there was something that they were refusing to see in her. At one point I accused my mother of being jealous of Mary. Oh boy, that did not go over well.
When I had Mary put in the hospital, it was not only for my own good, or the well being of my son, but because I was in love with Mary. I'm still in love with the Mary I once met and Susan knows this. This is one of the only reasons why we argue, with everything else, we get along peachy. I honestly thought Mary would get better over her time at the sanitarium. Though her electro-shock therapy has shown no progress. She was visited by Walter Freeman a year ago to conduct a lobotomy that only gave Mary the impression that she was God. Now she is on the lose. Penniless, even if she had money I would imagine that she would have no pockets to put it in if she escaped in her patients uniform. She had no place to go, her parents has disowned her when she put herself in the entertainment industry. Her sister is a nun that claims to be a sister to no one else but God. Which could be Mary's reasoning for embodying Christ in order to win her sister back.
The sad thing is, even though all the doors are locked, as soon as I see Mary's stark indian eyes staring at me from the porch the locked will turn unhinged. I could never turn Mary away. Always in the back of my head I know one day she will get better and possibly she will turn back into the old Mary that I used to love, the Mary that loved me back. Even if I did have to share her, I would be content knowing that the pillow next to mine is where she would chose to rest her head, and if I'm lucky I could somehow swindle my arms around her and grace her soft porcelain breast.
God knows that when Mary shows up to my door I will swing open the door and embrace her as if my Mary had come back from the dead. Luckily I don't have to succumb to my vice. I waited by the door the entire evening. When Susan came home I didn't tell her about Mary's escape. Instead I ate dinner on the couch and told her it was because I waned to listen to the radio, although the last thing I wanted to do was distract myself with famous vocalists singing renditions of old Gershwin songs.
Mary never showed up. It's been a week now and she hasn't even tried to contact me. Perhaps she's really gone this time, the doctors can't seem to find her, I've put out a missing persons report which has no leads. Knowing Mary she most likely met a man that fell for her charm and collapsed into loving her. Another shmuck like me. Susan will happy about this news. From here on I can possibly sleep a night without thinking of my Mary. Possibly.
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