Joyce Carol Oates - We Were The Mulvaneys

by We Were The Mulvaneys(lit)

  The Mulvaneys were in fact "well-to-do." At least, that was their local reputation. (Despite the way Corinne dressed, and her custom of shopping at discount stores.) High Point Farm was spoken of in admiring terms, and Michael Mulvaney Sr. cut a certain swath in the county, drove new cars and dressed in stylish sporty clothes (no discount stores for him); he was generous with charitable donations, and each July Fourth he opened his front pasture to the Chautauqua

  County Volunteer Firenien's annual picnic. But in private he fretted over money, the expense of keeping up a farm like High Point, leasing as much land as he could, supporting a family as "spendthrift" as theirs. (Though Michael Sr. was the most spendthrift of all.) From time to time he threatened to sell off a horse or two-or three-now the older children's interest in riding had declined, but of course everyone protested, even Mike Jr., who rarely poked his head into the horse barn any longer. And Morn became practically hysterical. That would be like an execution! That would he like selling one of us!

  Well, yes.

  In the next stall Patrick's gelding Prince was knocking about, whinnying and snorting for Marianne's attention. And so Clover and Red were stirred to demonstrate, as well. Here we are, too! Hungry! And a gang of six barn cats was gathering around Marianne, mewing and suggestively kneading the ground. Love us! Feed us! All these creatures had been fed twice that day, by Patrick and Judd, but Marianne's appearance threw their routine off kilter, or so they wished it to seem; and Marianne was far too softhearted to disappoint. As a little girl she'd made rules for hersel if she petted or fed one animal in the presence of others, she must pet and feed them all. It was what Jesus would have done had He lived intimately with animals.

  What wouldJesus do?-that's what I ask myseif 1 try, and I try, but my good intentions break down when I'm with other people. Like with the guys, you know?-it's like there's the real rue, that being with somebody like you brings out, }`vlarianne, and there's the other me that-well, that's an assholc, a real jerk. That makes me ashamed.

  His eyes lifted shyly to hers. The heavy lids, the narrow bridge of the nose, the lank hair fallen onto his forehead. His skin looked grainy, as in an old photograph. He was stretched on the step below her, his shoulders rounded, so she'd wanted to poke at him as she might have poked at Patrick to urge him to straighten his backbone, lift his shoulders. Music pounded and pulsed through the walls. It was loud enough to influence the beat of your heart, to make you sweat. He'd been drinking but wasn't drunk-was he?-and seemed instead to be speaking frankly, sincerely, as she'd never heard him speak before. Oh hadn't he meant it, any of it? Had it solely been to deceive, to manipulate?

  She could not believe that, could she?

  Not Marianne Mulvaney in whose heart Jesus Christ had dwelled for the past seventeen years, or more.

  As she left the barn, the thought touched her light and fleeting as a snowflake. Am I saying good-bye?

  Now the sky was cracked and cobbled and glowed in the west with a mysterious bruised flame on the very brink of extinction. In the front windows of the antique barn lights winked, and Marianne thought for an uneasy moment that Connne was inside; but it was only reflected light.

  Marianne unlatched the door of the antique barn with coldstiffened fingers and let herself inside. Switched on the overhead light, hoping no one in the house would notice. Hoping Corinne wouldn't grab a jacket and run out to join her.

  She'd had a thought of-what was it?-not a dream exactly but a vivid memory of a framed reproduction, a wall hanging?-one of Corinne's "bargain treasures." Suddenly it seemed urgent to find it.

  But where, amid this clutter?

  Marianne hadn't been in her mother's shop for a while. There must have been new acquisitions, it looked as if Corinne was stripping down and refinishing a weird armchair of twisted, gnarled tree limbs, like a torture machine, and there was a Shaker-style rocking chair positioned on a worktable, but Marianne couldn't be sure.

  A smell of paint solvent, varnish, furniture polish, oil-based paint (Corinne had been painting the interior of the barn a bright robin'segg blue but hadn't quite finished the task), mouse droppings, dust. That comforting smell of old things, of the past. So happy here, things are so calm and sane here Corinne would exclaim, brushing away cobwebs, dodging a drip from the ceiling, gamely clearing space for visitors to walk through the clutter, her eyes glistening like a child's. All the Mulvaney children were involved in Corinne's obsession from time to time, particularly Marianne, eager to be Mom's helper, though lacking her mother's unquestioning passion for old things, the mere look and feel and smell and heft of them; the fact, to Corinne endlessly fascinating, they were old. And abandoned by their former owners.

  Michael Sr. took a characteristic humorous view of High Point Antiques: to him, Corinne's stock was basically junk. Some of it "O.K. junk" and sonic of it "not-bad junk" but most of it "just plain junk" of the kind you can find in anybody's attic or cellar if not the town dump. The mystique of old and abandoned was lost on him. "In my business," he said, "you provide the customer with state-of-the- art goods and labor or you're out on your ass."

  Marianne guessed that the antique barn was Cormnne's haven from the continuous intensity, the carnival atmosphere, of family life. Especially when Marianne and her brothers had been small chil- dren. There was cram and clutter and a look of a tornado having blown through in both the house and in the antique barn but in the antique barn it was quiet, at least.

  Heavy rusted wrought-iron garden furniture, a "gothic revival" settee, a "rococo revival" chair of exquisite cast-iron filigree, willow ware settees and headboards, that twisty furniture made of gnarled tree limbs with bark still intact-"naturalistic style," of the turn of the century; native willow and imported rattan and much-varnished aged wood that looked as if it would disintegrate into its molecules if anyone's weight was lowered upon it. There were dining-room sets, battered drop-leaf maplewood tables and matching chairs with split rush seats; there were stacks of dust-limp lampshades, lamps of yel- lowed carved ivory, free-standing gilt-stenciled "Doric columns," even a broken-stringed harpsichord with keys the color of English breakfast tea. There were lacquered surfaces, grimy-fabric surfaces, splotched-mirror surfaces, porcelain and marble and stone and concrete (urns, dogs, horses, a ghastly white-painted "darky" holding out a fingerless hand for an invisible horse's rein). There was a counter of shoe boxes stuffed with aged postcards dated 1905, 1911, 1923, handwritten, in the scrawled and faded and frequently indecipherable hands of strangers; penny postcards beanng vista-views of the Chautauqua Valley, photographs painted over to resemble watercolors in romantic pastel hues, selling for as little as one dollar a dozen. (If Corinne could sell them at all.) Marianne couldn't resist, pulled out a card at random, a sunset scene of canal barge, yoked mules and mule driver titled Erie Barge Canal at Yewville, !- Y., 1915. On the reverse was a message in near-invisible blue ink, in a woman's flowery hand:

  Hello Rose! Suppose you think lam dead. But I am not, very much alive instead. How are you all? & are you still in the same house? L-'t me hear from you. All O.K. here except for Ross & grand ma, no change. Love to all & the baby too. Yr. sis. Edna. It was dated Fri. P.M., July 16. Hastily Marianne put the card back in the shoe box and moved on. If she began reading through these old cards she'd lose herself for an hour.

  Some of them she'd stolen away to keep in her room. They sold so cheaply, it seemed a shame. Such tragically real and unique and irreplaceable documents. Corinne agreed they were precious but then everything in her antique barn was precious wasn't it?-that was the point of antiques wasn't it?

  Behind stacks of water-stained and -warped old books-James Fenimore Cooper's The Pathfinder, Winston Churchill's A Modern Chronicle, Hamlin Garland's A Son of the Middle Border, A Children's Garden of Poesy and several volumes of Reader's Digest Books, Information Please Almanac 1949-partly covered by a kerosene-smelling ratty old quilt, Marianne found what she was searching for. A framed reproduction of an antiquated painting by an
unknown artist, titled The Pilgrim: a romantically twilit vista of mountains, a woodland lake, light radiating from a likeness of Jesus' face in the sky falling upon a robed figure kneeling in a meadow of grazing sheep and lambs beside the glistening water. The figure was barefoot and seemed to have made her way across a rocky terrain; her profile was partly obscured by a plait of faded gold hair and a shawl modestly covering her head. Beneath the title was the caption, which Marianne found thrilling: He that loseth his life for my sake shallfind it.

  Corimne had brought The Pilgrim home years ago from a flea market and hadn't sold it though the price had been lowered several times, rather conspicuously-$25, $19.98, now $12.50. (How did Corinne determine these prices, anyhow? She seemed to have, as Michael Sr. observed, an unfailing instinct for keeping them just high enough to discourage potential buyers.) Marianne recalled Patrick saying of the reproduction, What cornball stuff Mom! and she supposed she had to agree, yes it was sentimental and silly, bad as the worst of Sunday school Bible cards, Jesus floating in the sky like a balloon, the lambs gathered around the pilgrim like wooden toys with disconcertingly humanoid faces. Still, Marianne found the image fascinating, like a riddle to be decoded. Many times she'd asked Corinne who was the pilgrim, and where had she come from? She was alone-why? She seemed quite young, only a girl. Was she about to die, and that was why Jesus smiled down upon her from the clouds? Yet she did not appear injured or exhausted; in her very posture of humility, head bowed, hands clasped and uplifted in prayer, there was a suggestion of pride. Clearly the pilgrim was praying to Jesus, unaware of Him though His rays of light illuminated her out of the shadow.

  Corinne found The Pilgrim fascinating, too. She had the idea it was based on some German folktale, she didn't know why. And the caption wasn't accurate, exactly: it should have been She that loseth her life for my sake shall find it.

  Marianne drew her fingers across the glass, trailing dust. She squatted beside the painting, staring avidly at it, her eyes misting over in tears. She felt a surge of happiness sharp as pain in her heart.

  She hadn't actually seen The Pilgrim in a long time and had more or less forgotten it. Yet, evidently, she'd been thinking of it the previous night, soaking in Trisha LaPorte's bathtub. Numbed, dazed. Her thoughts flying rapidly and fluidly and without weight or seeming significance. Jesus help me, Jesus help me. Like scenes glimpsed from the window of a speeding vehicle, lacking depth and color. Like those strange fleeting faces, strangers' faces, some of them distorted and grotesque, we see as we sink exhausted into sleep. So, aniid the steaming water, above a limp-floating naked girl's body, a body at which Marianne did not look, The Pilgrim rose, took shape. It hovered suspended until finally it faded into numbness and oblivion, a gougedout hole in the very space of consciousness.

  So much to talk about! So many interruptions! Laughter, and Judd scolded by Dad for passing sausage-bits to Little Boots beneath the table, and Mom scolded by Dad Honeylove will you for God's sake stop jumping up every five minutes?-and the discovery, midmeal, that the oven was still set at four hundred degrees and the Mexican chickenshrimp-sausage casserole was beginning to bum. Marianne had helped Morn prepare supper as usual as if nothing were wrong, so perhaps nothing was wrong. In addition to the super-casserole there was grilled Parmesan-dill bread, baked butternut squash sprinkled with brown sugar, a giant tossed salad with Mom's special oil-and-vinegar dressing, homemade apple-cinnamon cobbler with vanilla ice cream. How many suppers, how many meals, here in the big cozy country kitchen at High Point Farm: you might bear the memory into eternity, yet each occasion was unique, mysterious.

  In a haze of smiling, nodding, chewing, swallowing Marianne navigated the hour-long meal. Not quite so talkative, smiling, happy as usual but maybe no one noticed? (Except Mom?) Mikey-Junior was away with his girl Trudi Hendnck (Are those two getting serious?

  Mom's worried, wondering) but all the other Mulvaneys were in their usual seats. And all hungry.

  You know you want to, why'd you come u'ith me if you don't?

  Nobody's gonna hurt you for Clrnst's sake get cool.

  Talk swirled around Mananne's head like confetti. She was listening, yet seemed not to hear. Did they glance at her oddly?-or not notice a thing? There was a buzzing in her ears remote as wasps, in summer, under the eaves. That ache like weeping in her loins. (Don't think: va-gin-a. Ugly words like ut-er-us, cut-or-is.) Marianne leapt up to save Mom a trip, carrying the heated casserole back to the table; passed the newly replenished bread basket back to Dad, the salt-free margarine, the hefty gleaming "Swedish" salad bowl. Morn was telling them excitedly of the candidate she and church friends intended to campaign for, in the upcoming Presidential election, Jimmy Carter-"A true Christian, and an intelligent, forceful man." Dad murmured in an undertone, with a wink for the kids, "Rare combo, eh?" but Mom chose to ignore the remark; tried never to argue at mealtimes, on principle. Next was talk of the icy roads, Monday morning's predicted weather (snow flumes, windchill temperatures as low as minus twenty). Talk of upcoming dental appointments (Patrick, Judd-both groaned), a vet appointment (for poor Silky, whose teeth were getting bad). Dad brought up the subject of the bid Mulvaney Roofing had made last Monday to the contractor for the St. Matthew's Hospital addition, one of seven bids from local roofers, so far as he knew; a decision was due soon, maybe this week. With a shrug of his burly shoulder meant to disguise the hope and anxiety he felt, Dad said, grinning, "Well, as the fda says, `No news is good news.' Right?" Mom inteijected in her way of thrusting her head forward, gawky-girl style, with her neighing laugh, " `No noose is good noose'-as the condeInned man said on the scaffold."

  "Oh, Morn!" everyone brayed.

  Except Marianne, who smiled vaguely. Knowing she'd hurt her mother's feelings earlier, that exchange about Feathers. Though she couldn't remember any longer what either of them had said.

  Patrick tried to initiate a discussion of time travel but Dad laughed scornfully, pointing out it was bad enough we have so many useless overpriced places to travel to now, let alone going back and fo,ward in time. Mom remarked it would make her so nervous, plunging into the unknown-"The `known' is about all I can handle." Patrick sulked they never took anything seriously and Dad said in fact they took everything seriously except not at inealtimes. Going on then to tell a new joke ("There's these identical-looking skunks, one's a Republican and the other's a Democrat, meet in a bar") he'd heard in the club locker room that afternoon and everyone laughed, or made laughinggroaning sounds, and Marianne too smiled though preoccupied with passing the salad bowl. And replenishing the bread basket lined with bright pumpkin-decorated paper napkins from Hallowe'en. Patrick observed dryly, "Is Homo sapiens the only species that laughs? What's the evolutionary advantage in laughing, does anyone know?"

  Mom said thoughtfully, "Laughing is a way of getting out of yourself, laughing at yourself-mankind's foibles, pretensions." Dad said, "Hell, it's a way of letting off steam. Nervous tension." Judd said, "It's just something that happens, you can't force it." Patrick said, "But why? Why does it happen? What's the point?" Mom said, sighing, laying a hand on Patrick's arm, "Oh, well, Pinch-if you have to ask, you'll never know." And everyone laughed at Patrick who was blushing, embarrassed.

  Everyone except Marianne who was at the counter cutting more slices of bread. She smiled, and returned to her seat. What had they been talking about?

  It's as ifl am already gone.Just my body in its place.

  She'd seen Patrick glancing at her, sidelong. Not a word from him. There was the Mulvaney cork bulletin board on the wall. Festooned with color snapshots, clippings, blue and red ribbons, Dad's Chamber of Commerce "medal," dried wildflowers, gorgeous seedcatalogue pictures of tomatoes, snapdragons, columbine. Beneath what was visible were more items and beneath those probably more. Like archeological strata. A recent history of the Mulvaneys. The bulletin board had been there forever, Morn's contribution to the household. At its center was a large calendar with the handprinted * * * WORK SCHEDU
LE * * * above. High Point Farm had to be run like a boot camp, the elder Mulvaneys believed, or chaos would sweep in and bear them all away like a flood. So painstakingly, with the judiciousness of Solomon, Corinne drew up each month a schedule of chores-house chores, mealtime chores, trash-related chores, all variety of outdoor/ seasonal chores, horse chores, cow chores, barn chores, pet chores, and what was unclassifiable-"misc." chores. (These, the Mulvaney children agreed, could be the most treacherous. Helping Mom clean out the cellar, for instance. Helping Mom sand, scrape, caulk, paint in the antique barn. Helping Mom put flea collars on all the dogs and cats in a single afternoon.) Like any month, February 1976 presented itself to the neutral eye as a phenomenon of white squares arranged symmetrically along proportionate grids as if time were a matter of division, finite and exacting; each square mastered by Corirme Mulvaney's meticulous hand-printing. Corinne was fiimous for her terrible fairmindedness, as Dad said she spared no one the worst, not even herself and him.

  True, the Mulvaneys sometimes made deals with one another, switched chores without Mom's approval. So long as the chores got done there was no problem but when the * * * WORK SCHEDULE * * * failed in any particular, as Dad said there was hell to pay.