Mary Harkness: The Quiet Witness in The Bootlegger

Overview

Mary Harkness is the first-person narrator of “The Bootlegger,” the fifth story in Amor Towles’ Table for Two. She is a museumgoer and the wife of Tommy Harkness, a man whose compulsive need for social approval leads him into a strange moral crusade. Unlike Tommy, Mary is pragmatic, observant, and emotionally grounded. She rarely intervenes directly, yet her understated actions—a kiss on the brow, a decision to keep a cassette—anchor the story’s emotional weight. Through her eyes, the reader experiences a tale of grief and forgiveness that unfolds not through grand gestures but through quiet, retrospective understanding.

Plot Role

Mary serves as both participant and reflective narrator. She accompanies Tommy to Carnegie Hall in 1996, where he becomes fixated on an older concertgoer, Arthur Fein, who secretly records performances. While Tommy reports Fein to management and police, Mary is initially aghast at her husband’s behavior. Later, as Tommy obsessively searches for Fein to apologize, Mary observes with a mixture of sympathy and private irony. She never meets Fein directly, but she receives the confiscated cassette from the police, keeping it as a hidden memento. Years afterward, she recounts the story, revealing that Tommy never fully shook the guilt—and that she, too, carries the weight of that night.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

• Patience and restraint: When Tommy announces his plan to find Fein by walking the neighborhood, Mary could have argued or revealed his missteps. Instead she thinks, “the longer it took Tommy to find Mr. Fein, the better.” This shows her deep understanding of her husband’s personality and her willingness to let his process run its course.
• Pragmatic curiosity: She opens Tommy’s briefcase to inspect his map and the manila envelope. The text states she did not hesitate “for a second.” This action reveals a practical desire to know the truth, not to manipulate.
• Protective love: After Tommy’s sleepless week, Mary leans over and kisses him on the brow, a gesture she describes as “a little smooch on the noggin.” It’s a small act that communicates reassurance without words.
• Irony and self-awareness: Mary’s narration is laced with dry humor. She compares Tommy’s determination to “death-defying acrobatics of the male ego,” and admits she emptied her wine glass after his explanation.
• Independent memory: She keeps the confiscated cassette as a private keepsake. This decision is known only to her, suggesting she values the layered meaning of the object—it represents both Tommy’s flaw and Fein’s grief.
• Respect for consequence: She never discusses the night with Tommy afterward. The story implies that both husband and wife understood some events are too painful to revisit.

Chronological Arc

1. The concert: Tommy disrupts a cello performance by Steven Isserlis to report Fein. Mary is mortified and turns her full attention to the music—an ironic act that lets her hear Bach’s prelude in G major, which later becomes a trigger for Tommy’s guilt.
2. Tommy’s depression: For a week, Tommy comes home with a hangdog expression, unable to eat or sleep. Mary watches but does not pry.
3. The search: Tommy devises a plan to canvass the Carnegie Hall neighborhood. Mary sees his map (with a scale and red checkmarks) but says nothing to dissuade him.
4. The apology: Tommy finds Fein, learns Fein’s wife is dead, and that Fein recorded the music for her when she was bedridden. Fein’s daughter Meredith curses Tommy.
5. Mary’s memento: The police give Mary the cassette that Tommy confiscated. She keeps it without telling Tommy.
6. Aftermath: Over the years, Mary notices Tommy’s pained expression whenever they pass Carnegie Hall, hear a cello, or listen to Bach—the fulfillment of Meredith’s curse.
7. Narrative frame: Mary tells the story in retrospect, years later, with a tone of resolved acceptance.

Relationships

Tommy Harkness: Mary is his emotional ballast. She understands his need for affirmation from strangers, a need she compares to his father’s. She does not try to fix him, but she absorbs his moods and offers small comforts. The bond is strong but not without tension; she judges his obsession silently, yet she remains loyal.

Arthur Fein: Mary never speaks to Fein. She knows him only through Tommy’s reports and through the cassette, which becomes a symbolic link. She respects his grief and his forgiveness of Tommy.

Meredith, Fein’s daughter: Mary has no direct encounter with Meredith. However, at the story’s close, she directly addresses Meredith, acknowledging that her curse—that Tommy would remember the incident whenever he heard Bach or a cello—came true. This suggests Mary feels a connection to the anger Meredith expressed.

The police officer: A minor figure who gives Mary the cassette, calling it “a little memento for your husband.” Mary’s decision to keep it for herself rather than give it to Tommy signals her role as a selective gatekeeper of memory.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Theme and Symbol Connections

• Grief and forgiveness: The entire story revolves around Fein’s grief for his wife and Tommy’s search for forgiveness—from Fein, from himself. Mary’s forgiveness is quieter; she forgives Tommy’s clumsiness but does not erase the memory.
• Secrecy and joy: Fein’s bootlegging was a secret labor of love. Mary’s keeping of the cassette is a secret act of preservation. Both suggest that secrecy can hold joy as well as sorrow.
• Community and connection: Carnegie Hall is a site of shared experience. Tommy breaks that community by reporting Fein, but later Fein is allowed back—a restoration of communal belonging.
• Authenticity and forgery: The Cassette is a copy of live performance, not the original. Yet it holds authentic emotion. This parallels themes of authenticity and forgery explored elsewhere in the collection, especially in “The Ballad of Timothy Touchett.”
• Generosity vs. boundaries: Tommy’s persistence can be seen as excessive generosity (he wants to make things right) that oversteps personal boundaries. Mary’s non-intervention respects his need to act, but also sets a boundary of emotional distance.

Five Book-Specific Questions and Answers

1. Why does Mary Harkness keep the cassette instead of giving it to Tommy?
Mary keeps the cassette as a private memento—a tangible link to a night that was pivotal for both of them. By withholding it, she preserves her own version of the story and maintains a small, secret power over the memory. The cassette represents the complexity of the event: it contains the music that sparked Tommy’s guilt, the evidence of Fein’s love, and the moment when her own perception shifted.

2. Does Mary ever regret not stopping Tommy from pursuing Arthur Fein?
Mary’s narration does not express explicit regret. She describes her choices with wry acceptance. However, her observation that Meredith’s curse “came true” suggests she recognizes the permanent wound the episode inflicted on Tommy. Her decision to keep the cassette might be an unspoken acknowledgment of that cost.

3. What is Mary’s attitude toward Tommy’s need for approval from strangers?
She finds it exhausting and slightly absurd. She compares it to his father’s trait, noting that Tommy “just couldn’t shake the need to fret over the opinions of others, even strangers.” Yet she accepts it as part of him. Her actions—letting him search, kissing his brow—are loving accommodations, not criticisms.

4. How does Mary’s perspective as a museumgoer influence the story?
Mary’s profession is mentioned only briefly, but it aligns with her role as a collector and observer. She curates her own memories, selecting which details to preserve (the cassette, the specific curse). Her eye for the telling, concrete image—the hangdog expression, the doorman’s surprise—gives the story its texture. She treats the past as an exhibit she can reassemble.

5. What does Mary mean when she says “a curse is the opposite of irony”?
She draws a distinction between Meredith’s deliberate wish for lasting guilt (a curse) and the ironic twist that her own embarrassment led her to actually listen to the music. Irony subverts expectation; a curse intends exactly what it says. Mary uses this observation to explain why Tommy’s suffering is not a wry joke but a genuine haunting. For more on the story’s resolution, see the ending explained page.

For further discussion of Mary’s role or other characters, visit the questions and answers section.