Character Analysis
Mary's sixteen, the second oldest of the sisters. At one point, she's described as having a "tight-lipped and tight-assed" expression. Unlike Therese, she's totally interested in her appearance. She spends a lot of time fixing her hair and looking into one of those mirrors that has light bulbs that simulate different times of day, indoors and outdoors. Despite her mother's prohibitions, she hoards makeup:
[…] Peter Sissen found Mary Lisbon's secret cache of cosmetics tied up in a sock under the sink; tubes of red lipstick and the second skin of blush and base, and the depilatory was what informed us she had a mustache we had never seen. (1.11)
She's so self-conscious about her teeth (apparently all the sisters have two extra canines) that she makes an appointment with an orthodontist without telling her parents. Many years later, the boys, in their quest for answers, meet with the orthodontist. He told them he told Mary he'd need to speak with her parents. Later, his nurse told him that she heard Mary crying. She knew her parents couldn't afford it.
Like her sisters, Mary dresses in the way-out-of-style clothes that their mother buys them for them. But she tries to add her own touches.
Mary had spruced up her outfit with accessories: a bracelet bunch of wooden cherries the same bright red as her scarf. (3.23)
After Cecilia's suicide, Mary's best friend was so freaked out that she stopped talking to her. Mary knows how people feel about the family. When one of the boys tries to talk with her but then doesn't know what to say, Mary tells him,
"You don't have to talk to me." (3.29)
Mary seems to enjoy the group date to Homecoming, sitting on her date's lap in the car, but like him, she didn't know how to dance. She faked it, though:
Parkie Denton remembers Mary's studied movements, her poise. "She led," he said. […] During the dance, she made polite conversation, the kind beautiful women make with dukes during waltzes in old movies. She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about. She seemed to have a picture in her mind f what pattern their feet should make over the floor, of how they should look together, and she concentrated fiercely to realize it. "Her face was calm, but inside she was tense," Parkie Denton said. "Her back muscles were like piano strings." When a fast song came on, Mary danced less well. "Like old people at weddings trying it out." (3.165)
When one of the boys asks her if she's having a good time at the dance, she answers, "I'm having the best time of my life" (3.178). Shmoop finds this pretty sad. Poor Mary wants to be social, but she's not really sure how. Maybe the only dancing she's seen has been in old movies on TV. You can almost imagine her practicing dancing in her bedroom, like she secretly practices putting on makeup.
Mary still wears colorful sweaters when she goes outside to pick up the mail after her mother's imposed the lockdown. She's feeling squashed. One of the girls at school, a cheerleader, said that Mary always wanted to be a cheerleader, but her mother wouldn't let her.
After Mrs. Lisbon puts all the girls on lockdown and yanks them out of school, the boys see less of Mary. But even as things continue to go downhill, she wears colorful sweaters when she goes out to collect the mail. One of the boys breaks into Mary's locker to look for more clues.
Inside American History, amid spasmodic notes, Jerry Burden found the following doodle: a girl with pigtails is bent under the weight of a gigantic boulder. Her cheeks puff out, and her rounded lips expel steam. One widening steam cloud contains the word Pressure, darkly traced. (4.3)
No explanation necessary.
Mary is the only one that survives the sisters' mass suicide attempt. She spends two weeks in the hospital and is sent home on medication to a house with no furniture (her parents are selling the house). She sleeps in a sleeping bag on the floor and gets in the habit of taking six showers a day. She surprises everyone by showing up unannounced to take a lesson from her old singing teacher. That month, her parents watch her constantly, and the neighbors seem to think that she's doomed anyway.
Sure enough, on their way home from a party, the boys see the ambulance in front of the Lisbon house. Mary tried again, and this time she succeeded, dying from an overdose of sleeping pills. The EMTs find her dead in her sleeping bag, wearing a ton of makeup and dressed in a black dress and veil.