We Were The Mulvaneys

by Joyce Carol Oates

  But-what was wrong?-panicky sensations ran like ripples through the audience-the air! the air! poison! poison gas! a terrible sludgy stink like rotten eggs!

  There was a moment's collective disbelief, incredulity, as of a single great breath withheld-then eruptions of coughing, choking, outcries of astonishment and terror. Beside me Mom was gagging- tears streamed from her eyes-yet she had the presence of mind to grab me, pull me from my seat, and within seconds we were stumbling up the aisle, rushing from the auditorium gasping, choking- ahead of the crowd-bursting out into the fresh clear June air Oh, what had happened? What terrible sabotage had been done to disrupt Mt. Ephraim High's 1976 commencement?

  Within minutes the verdict was: a stink bomb.

  Prankish seniors must have set off a stink bomb, to rout their own commencement. Was such a thing possible?

  Close by, only a few blocks away, the siren at the Mt. Ephrairn Firehouse began to wail, as the first fire truck careened out of the garage to speed westward along Fifth Street.

  Luckily, no one of the more than five hundred persons in the auditorium, which included very young children and numerous senior citizens, was injured in the stampede to escape. Edt doors were quickly flung open, rows of coughing, choking people filed out Onto pavement or grass to recover within minutes. The most extreme symptoms were vomiting and hysteria Most victims were merely nauseated, not incapable of breathing but revulsed by the foul air they had no choice but to breathe. The greatest concentration of the chemical bomb (hydrogen sulfide: ingeniously implanted in the building's basement ventilating system) was at the front of the auditorium where the eighty-nine graduating seniors, their teachers and school district administrators were seated By the time the Patriot-Ledger printed its front-page article on the mysterious event, two days later, declaring in broad headlines STINK BOMB DISRUPTS MT. EPURAIM H.S. COMMENCEMENT, the prevailing theory was that the prank had not been committed by Mt. Ephraim seniors, not even the rowdy, sometimes nialicious boys who might have wished to pull off such a brilliant stunt (their teachers swore they simply weren't capable of concocting such a chemical bomb, let alone shrewdly timing it to detonate well into the ceremony and not at once) but by senior boys from one or another of their sports rivals in the valley-Yewville High, for instance.

  There'd been bad blood between Mt. Ephraim and Yewville since the smaller school, Mt. Ephraim, had won the Valley basketball championship that spring; obscene graffiti had been scrawled on both school buildings, and there had been several fights, and numerous threats- the more Mt. Ephraim considered it, the more it seemed obvious the stink bomb had to have been set off by Yewville, for-who else?

  Though no one had seen strangers lurking about the high school before the ceremony. And no mocking acknowledgment of the prank had come from any Yewville source.

  There were other, less convincing theories, all of them investigated by Mt. Ephrairn police and school administrators. An individual malcontent, for instance? A senior embittered by low exam grades, a romantic disappointment, fliilure to get admitted to the right college? Dislike of his teachers, his classmates? Over the weeks, months, even years, numerous theories, speculations would be discussed, for the stink bomb ofJune 19, 1976, at the Mt. Ephraim High commencement, was one of the most famous events of local history. But nothing was ever proven. There was no incriminating evidence, there were no informers. No one ever stepped forward to take credit.

  "Oh my goodness, Judd!-are you all right? Oh where is Patrick?"

  Mom was blinking dazed in sunshine, groping for my hand. I told her sure, I was O.K., I'd recovered almost immediately, whatever the gas in the auditorium was hadn't been any poison just a terrible stink. And firnny-wasn't it? A joke! People were streaming out onto the grass beside us, coughing, choking, some of them trying not to vomit, wiping their faces on their sleeves; a few were cursing; some of the seniors were laughing, recognizing it as a prank-"Wow! Wild! Far Out!" Ike Rodman marveled. Along the periphery of the gathering crowd came my brother Patrick loping like a track runner, though unhurried, in starched white shirt and chinos, and bareheaded-already he'd derobed, leaving his cap and gown on a sidewalk near a rear entrance of the school. He sighted us, Mom and me, ignored all others, frowning as if perturbed. His Pinch-frown, more a meditative glower than strong emotion. Or was he frowning in order not to smile? I stared at him in awe but he refused to meet my gaze. Mom rushed to embrace him and he let her hug him, stiff and embarrassed, looking over her shoulder; his left eye squinted nearly shut. Clever Patrick Mulvaney! He must have escaped from the stage as soon as the virulent odor began to waft from the vents, he'd even happened to have a handkerchief to press over his mouth and nose, a wetted handkerchief in flict, and he'd run immediately backstage, through a fire exit and outside, just possibly the first person to escape.

  Mom exclaimed, "Oh, Patrick! Thank goodness, you're safe." She laughed breathlessly, twining her arms around him as if, in fact, he might have been in danger. "What a catastrophe! You never got to give your speech. Oh but it is funny, isn't it? Who would ever think of such a trick!"

  Patrick said indifferently, "Some moronic classmates of mine, obviously.''

  On our way to the parking lot to meet up with Dad, I sidled close to Patrick to nudge him surreptitiously. My eyelids were pufly and my lips swollen and bruised as if I'd been pummelled. Coils of nausea stirred in my guts. Yet it was unqualified admiration, it was awe I felt for him. I whispered, "Jesus, P.J., did you-? Was it-you?" but Patrick merely glanced at me coolly. "Who wants to know? You?"

  As if the idea amused him, merely.

  It would be the most P.J. ever confided in me of the stink bomb episode.

  There, in the station wagon, was our father waiting for us, or in any case waiting, sitting, behind the driver's wheel but facing outward, the door open. Legs crossed, his left calf showing a raw hairy dead-white stretch of flesh between sock and pants-leg. The glauy bronze necktie was unloosened and his blue serge coat was unbuttoned. Dad was smoking, brooding; tallying up figures on a pocket calculator and jotting them down on a notepad. More than Mom's hair, his was threaded with gray like mica. It did not appear that he had been drinking-at least, no bottle was in sight-but mriuch of the strain was gone from his face and his cheeks were splotched, jowly. When he saw us, the remains of his family, Morn trotting in the lead in high-heeled white pumps, bursting with news, and Patrick in casual clothes again, and me, skinny Ranger, tagging behind, Dad blinked several times like a man who has misplaced his glasses.

  "Back so soon?"

  SNOW AFTER EASTER

  God damn!-despite his best intentions, he was late.

  He'd explained politely to Dr. Herring's assistant that he would have to leave the lab promptly at 5 P.M., which was the time at which, under the tel-ms of his employment, he should have left in any case, but the young professor, new from Harvard, kept finding more and more work for him to do; always there was more work for Patrick Mulvaney to do, sterilizing lab equipment, carefully incubating cultures, wiping up spillage and even (this afternoon!) sponge-mopping a section of the floor. And helping to record data of such exacting minuteness, Patrick felt, as he often felt in the midst of such experiments, which were essentially the counting of microbe cells with a high-tech hemocytometer, as if he were an intruder in a world that, if he descended into it for a split second, would devour him rapaciously, reducing him to mnere chemicals and a throbbing current called "life." Gazing through the powerful microscope he had to look up frequently, to break the spell; to escape a vertiginous sensation that was part dread, and part longing.

  There, the not-human.

  Marianne's bus was due at 5:05 P.M., in downtown Ithaca. Patrick had told her he'd be a few minutes late, unavoidably. But now he was very late, unable to get away from the university building until after 5:30 P.M., and it was another eight minutes running to the lot where his Jeep was parked, and another fifteen minutes getting downtown, on traffic-clogged one-way streets. He could have wept, h
e was so angry! Angiy at himself, mainly, for not being more assertive with Herring's assistant, who, he guessed, disliked him anyway, as a twenty-year-old undergraduate he couldn't quite intimidate.

  Don't make enemies! Patrick counseled himself uneasily. You will need all the help you can get.

  Since high school biology, Patrick's sophomore year, he'd known what he wanted to be: a research biologist. Not a teacher- he couldn't see himself in such a role, he hadn't the patience, or the sympathy and identification with others, younger versions of himself. God, no!-the vision filled himn with dread. (If he didn't get a Ph.D., if he had to fall back upon, for instance, high school teaching.) Pursuing truth of an unemotional, essentially unhuman nature, in the silence and isolation of the laboratory, suited him; or would suit him once he was independent enough to oversee his own ambitious experiments. He would not be inconsiderate of his young assistants, especially hapless undergraduates, though he would not get to know them personally. He would evoke no emotion in them at all.

  What plans Patrick had! Sometimes he could not sleep, for speculating. He wanted to study the evolutionary history of a single species in its natural habitat, over a period of millennia-the development of a simple animal. Or, he wanted to study the relations between selected species and their ecology, the process of Darwinian evolution. (As the son of a devout Christian, he was fascinated by the theory of "natural selection" in which all serious scientists seemed to believe, with a very nearly religious conviction. A nundless, purposeless, mechanical process, devoid of meaning, theological or otherwise!) Or, he wanted to study cellular life, the relations between types of microbes. (Dr. Herring's work, funded by the federal government and the National Science Foundation, was a massive project in the development of new antibiotics.) Or, he wanted to study a single body organ, for instance the eye, the remarkable design of the eye, in diverse species.

  Well, more than Patrick Mulvaney could name, he wanted!

  Sometimes he realized he was arguing with Corinne, and with Marianne, not consciously, not coherently, but with much emotion. Like a young, aggrieved boy, furious at such ignorance. Don't you see how ridiculous it is to believe "man is made in the image of God"? he wanted to shout into their startled faces. How ridiculous people like you are, to believe?

  Corinne had been right: as soon as Patrick left home, aged eighteen, he ceased attending church, church of any denomination. He ceased being a Christian, nor did he so much as think in wonder or defiance or satisfaction I have ceased being a Christian. It simply fell from him, like a heavy overcoat he'd shrugged off, no longer needing its warmth or bulk to protect him.

  In late April 1978, Patrick was completing his second year of college at Cornell and his grade-point average was just.06 shy of perfect. He was proud of being alone in Ithaca, in an off-campus rooming house in the heterogeneous neighborhood known as Collegetown, yet never, or almost never, lonely; proud of keeping the Mulvaneys at a distance-the obsessive thought of family. He loved them all yet had no wish to see them frequently nor even to speak with them often. (Corinne wanted him to call weekly, Patrick compromised by calling every two or three weeks, never at the same time; he dreaded falling into a pattern that would soon become an obligation, a duty, a ritual. Since he didn't have a phone in the tworoom apartment he rented, and claimed not to have access to any phone, no one could call him.) He hadn't seen Marianne since the previous June when he'd gone (the only Mulvaney!) to her graduation at Salamanca High. He hadn't seen his parents and brother Judd for almost eight months: when he'd discovered, to his disgust, that, another time, Marianne hadn't been invited home for Christmas, he'd decided not to go home himself, calling home to deliver a chilly little message saying he had too much lab work to do. Corinne said, on the verge of tears, "Oh, Patrick-how can you?" and Patrick said stiffly, "Well, Mom-how can you?" And Corinne said, weakly, "If you mean about your sister it's just that your dad isn't ready to see her yet, I'm doing a lot of concentrated praying about it, Patrick, I want you to know, and Marianne does know, and I told her I'm sure your dad will he ready, he'll be strong enough, in a little while- maybe Easter. Patrick?" Patrick said curtly, "Good-bye, Mom. And Merry Christmas."

  Hanging up quickly before Corinne could say a word more.

  On the phone with Marianne for over an intense hour, Christmas Eve, Patrick meant to console her for the inexplicable cruelty with which their parents were treating her, but as usual with Marianne she'd ended up consoling him. "Patrick, don't worry about me, please! I'm happy. Of course I'm waiting for them to call me back but I'm not, you know, only just that-waiting. I have plenty to do. I'm living my life, and I'm happy."

  Patrick ended up believing her. At least, while they were on the phone together.

  Weird: meeting Ethel Hausmann, Corinne's cousin, with whom Marianne was living in Salamanca. "Aunt Ethel"-as she'd asked them, with a forced smile, to call her-was like a second, not-veryconvincing mother in an amateur play whipped together by Corinne herself. As if she'd grabbed hold of clumsy Ethel Hausmann-Now Ethel, you play me. Of course you can do it! Don't be bashful,for heaven's sake just try. Aunt Ethel turned out to be a big-boned, stoic, kindly woman of about fifty-two with a creased face whose habitual expression was a sad, wan hope-a look that carried with it the full won't-be-surprised expectation of disappointment. Aunt Ethel smiled, too, and often, but it was a melancholy smile, such an effort you almost could hear creaking. "Why's she so sad all the time?" Patrick asked, and Marianne put a finger to her lips to shush him, "Oh but she isn't, Patrick, not this weekend."

  Aunt Ethel had the Hausmann features Corinne called "lethal"- she was long-jawed, long-nosed and horsey-toothed, with pale blue protuberant eyes. (These eyes were uncannily like Corinne's, except the light had drained from them.) Where, for all her slapdash ways, Cormne was a good-looking woman, Aunt Ethel was franldy homely. She was slope-busted, stout, with a smell as of rusted nails. One of those whom life has passed by as if literally she'd been standing on the weed-edged sidewalk in front of her aluminum-sided "bungalow" in Salamanca and watched helplessly as it passed, a procession of fascinating strangers without the slightest interest in, or awareness of, her.

  Not married, no child. Unlike her cousin Corinne, Aunt Ethel wasn't even a faithful churchgoer.

  For all of her adult life, three full decades, and more, Aunt Ethel had worked for Dr. Briscoe, a local podiatrist-"He prefers not to be called afoot doctor." Just the way Aunt Ethel spoke, defensive yet proud, with a wistful undercurrent of hurt, Patrick understood that the woman was in love with Briscoe, whoever he was.

  "You mustn't laugh at Aunt Ethel," Marianne told Patrick when they were alone. "She's a good, generous woman, just like Mom said. She let me keep Muffin!"

  "That is good of her," Patrick said neutrally.

  Near as he could gather from his three days, two nights as a not- very-comfortable houseguest of Aunt Ethel's, all she really provided for Marianne was a dreary little room at the rear of her dreary little house that smelled (oh why did he have this notion?-yet it was unshakable) of rusted nails. In exchange, Marianne. was an uncomplaining, bright and tireless and reliable servant.

  Or, maybe, slave?

  "Oh Patrick, no." Marianne's eyes brimmed with tears when Patrick made this suggestion, Pinch-style, rather mean and sly out of the corner of his mouth.

  Ethel Hausmann had spoken vaguely of "hoping to assist" with Marianne's college expenses but in the end, apparently, near as Patrick could gather, nothing came of it. (Nor could the Mulvaneys help, much: by summer 1977, Mulvaney Roofing was in what Corinne nervously called a "temporary slough" and Michael Sr. was hoping to sell five or ten acres of flirniland "if he can get a decent price." By fall 1977, Red, Prince, and Molly-O had all been sold.) Now Marianne worked part-time, was a part-time student at Kilbum State College, in a small rural town near the Pennsylvania border, two hundred miles south and west of Ithaca. Patrick had intended to drive down to see her but always he'd been busy, distracted by work of his
own. On the phone he chided Marianne, "You deserve better than Kilburn State, for God's sake," as if it were Marianne's -iult she'd ended up there and not, for instance, at glamorous Cornell. Marianne insisted she was happy at Kilburn, she'd made friends and liked all her professors and believed they liked her. And please remember that her high school grades hadn't been spectacular. At Kilburn, Marianne was enrolled in a historyeducation program, and lived in a co-op, miles from campus, to econonuze on expenses. When they spoke on the phone, Patrick could hear energetic voices in the background, a dog barking, a clatter of kitchen noise, radio music. Often he had to ask Marianne to speak louder, he couldn't hear. "It sounds like a railway station," he complained.

  What he meant was it sounded like a big noisy happy family.

  By the time Patrick drove to the bus station, parked hisJeep and rushed into the Trailways waiting room it was almost 6 P.M. As in one of his nightmares, he'd arrived so late!-and he'd been thinking uneasily of Marianne all day, in fact for days, since they'd made arrangements the week before. What would she think, that Patrick had forgotten her after all? He'd told her not to take a taxi, not to spend the money, he wanted to pick her up, he'd be there.

  Entering the waiting room, Patrick almost collided with passengers on their way out. An announcer's nasal voice intoned Albany! White Plains! New York City! Where was Marianne? He didn't see her. A girl turned, pretty, snub-nosed-not his sister. Another girl, a young woman carrying a baby. Their eyes lighted upon him, friendly and curious. But Patrick was too distracted to take much notice. He stood in the center of the crowded waiting room, peering about. He was breathless, excited, irritable; he imagined (but was it only imagination?) his hands, even his hair stank of the lab. (He had a habit of running his fingers swiftly through his hair sometimes as he worked.) His glasses steamed faintly. The peripheral vision in his left eye was weak, and weaker still when he was exhausted or rattled, so he turned unconsciously to his left, turning his entire body, frowning- where was Marianne? Hadn't she come to Ithaca, after all?