Joyce Carol Oates - We Were The Mulvaneys

by We Were The Mulvaneys(lit)

  Oh, she should have been more syinpathetic!-Michael Mu!vaney, a disowned son of a Catholic working-class family in Pittsburgh, had reimagined himself as a small-town American businessman who owned property, had money and influence, was "known" and "liked" and "respected" in his community. He'd been a loner in his late adolescence, and was now a "family man." If he'd never be one of the wealthier citizens of Mt. Ephraim and vicinity he had a chance of becoming one of the "well-to-do"-"sornething of a country squire." Or, if not quite even that, at least a friend, a friendly acquaintance, a social equal of such. At first Corinne in her awkward way tried to tease him-"Darling, aren't we enough for you? Your family, your animals? High Point Farm and its debts?" But Michael had only grimaced, hadn't laughed. Nor was he in a mood to be consoled when, year following year, into the 1970s, on or about March 12, the membership committee of the Club proposed its candidates for balloting, and Michael Mulvaney was overlooked.

  Secretly relieved, Corinne would say, incensed, "Those snobs! Self-important, selfish snobs! What do you care? We love you."

  Michael would only shrug irritably, and turn away. No kisses from Whistle right now, no hugs and jokes. No thanks.

  Corinne would glimpse her husband outside, in his work clothes, lugging bales of hay, buckets of water into the horse barn. Exercising the horses in the back pasture, with the boys. He'd rise early to clean out the horses' stalls, feed and bathe and groom the horses-these arduous, least-favorite chores the responsibility, of course, of his children. But there Michael was, working off nervous energy in the barn. He's that hurt, that furious Corinne thought, shocked. It struck her to the heart, left her weak, disoriented, that, to Michael Mulvaney, after all, his family wasn't quite enough.

  Then, March 1973, a call caine, from the Club, followed by an absurdly self-important registered letter, and Michael Mulvaney was in.

  (No secret that Michael's sponsor was his old friend and business associate, a fellow officer in the Odd Fellows, Morton Pringle. Mort who was chief counsel for the First Bank of Chautauqua and who'd hired Mulvaney Roofing for work he'd admired, and recommended to his well-to--do friends. One day, Michael would inadvertently learn that his candidacy at the Mt. Ephraim Country Club had not been unanimously supported. Out of deference to Mort Pnngle, and because Michael was, in fact, a well-liked person in Mt. Ephraim, no one had actually blackballed him; but several members hadn't voted. They'd gone onto the record as abstains.)

  Corinne wasn't happy about the invitation, still less about her husband's excitement at receiving it, at last. Where was his pride? Where was his character? How could he want to waste his hard- earned money (twenty-five hundred dollars for "induction fees," six hundred dollars annual dues!) when High Point Farm's expenditures were relentless, not to mention the children, a family of four healthy active children costs. "We've gotten along for almost twenty years without belonging to the Mt. Ephraim Country Club-why join now? Who cares?" Corinne demanded.

  Clearly, Michael Mulvaney cared.

  Connne, a Democrat and a liberal, the sort of Protestant who allowed no one to stand between her and God, argued, furthermore, that the Club was un-American, unchristian, immoral-"For whites only! And all male! Women can belong only as adjuncts to their spouses or male relatives!"

  "So what?" Michael said.

  "So what? Don't you understand?"

  "Corinne, it's a private club. It's friends who've gotten together, who want a clubhouse, essentially. When the Club was founded, in 1925, there were only twelve men-they were friends. And, eventually-"

  "Stop! I can't believe what I'm hearing! You, Michael Mulvaney-a bigot. A sexist. A snob."

  "What the hell, Corinne?-I can't join the Women's Garden Club, or the Women's League of Voters-"

  "League of Women Voters-"

  "I can't join a Negro fraternity, or the Knights of Columbus.

  There are exclusively Jewish country clubs, there are Italian-American clubs, what's the problem?"

  "It's un-American, that's the problem!"

  "It's American, in fact: all kinds of organizations, private clubs, even secret clubs. It's people making their own decisions about who they want as friends."

  `Friends'?-it's as much about keeping people out. It's cruel, it's discriminatory. Look how they kept you waiting for years-how hurt you were. How you tned, you campaigned-"

  Heatedly Michael said, "Never mind about me! We're talking principles here. First principles. The right of a group of people to-"

  "To exclude others, for their own self-promotion. For `business' purposes. And to drink. I've heard tales about those country club bashes-"

  "Corinne, everybody drinks. Anybody who wants to, drinks. Our friends drink."

  "Your friends drink-"

  "They're your friends, too! Drinking is hardly a monopoly of the country club set."

  "Michael, this ridiculous club discriminates against two members of your own family! Marianne and I, being `female,' can't even enter by the front door! We have to enter by a side door, through the `1-mily entrance.' Were you aware of that?"

  So they argued. For days, for a week. The quarrel would flame up, then subside; like a treacherous marshland fire it would seem to have been extinguished, when it had merely gone underground. Corimme sulked, and Corinne was sarcastic, and Corinne was morally, spiritually dismayed. She knew, she knew she was right! But the children weren't eager to come to her defense. And there was Marianne's question, put to Corinne one day with dazzling simplicity: "Mom, don't you want Dad to be happy? We do."

  For even Marianne wanted to belong to the Mt. Ephraim Country Club. Especially Marianne-so many of her friends' families belonged.

  So Corinne, who was a good sport after all, bought a CONGRATTJLAT1oNs- card for Michael, got the kids to sign it, and added smudged paw prints with dogs' and cats' names attached; added a warning, in parenthesis, A woman convinced against her will is of the same opinion still. She signed the card LOVE ALWAYS YOUR ` mnsu- `and dropped it off with a bottle of champagne at Mulvaney Roofing.

  So Michael Mulvaney was inducted into the Mt. Ephraim

  Country Club one evening in May 1973. And quickly became an involved, active member, generous with his time, eager to serve on committees, offer his practical advice on such matters as building maintenance, plumbing, public relations. You would think your father is running for political oftice, Connne observed dryly to the children, he's become such a handshaker. Watching affable Michael Mulvaney, smiling, gregarious, in his navy blue blazer with brass nautical buttons and his bright plaid necktie, moving about in the atrium dining room at Sunday brunch, greeting friends, being introduced to potential friends, shaking hands, laughing, flirting with women who clearly adored him-all very innocently of course (of course!)-Corinne had to acknowledge with a sigh that the Mt. Ephraim Country Club made her husband glow with pleasure in a way that High Point Farm, for all its beauty, no longer could.

  Am I disappointed with him?-oh just a little.

  Cormnne did admire the Club, from a distance: the colonial-style building of fieldstone and spotless white clapboard, overlooking the golf course of gently rolling, sculpted-looking hills; the fir-lined gravel driveway with the ominous sign at the entrance: Mr. EPHRAIM COUNTRY CLUB PRIVATE MEMBERS AND GUESTS ONLY Of course, there were numerous decent people who belonged, people she knew well, and liked very much, as they liked her, quite apart from the Club. It was just that she couldn't overcome her prejudice against it. People whom she could respect outside the Club she did not, somehow could not, respect there. How would Jesus Christ fit in, in such a milieu? Would He have been blackballed for membership, year after year? Over time, Corinne visited the Club less and less frequently, and then only when Michael insisted. "Oh Mom, you're not trying," her shrewd children objected. But why should she try? Whom was Corinne Mulvaney hoping to impress, or deceive? True, women like Lydia Bethune were friendly enough to her, but probably (almost certainly) out of pity; she felt their eyes crawling over her, assessing.
Who was Connne Mulvaney but a gawky farm wife trying to pass herself off as someone she wasn't; someone who belonged in overalls, jeans, polyester slacks or shorts, not cotton pastels, linen skirts, "chic" black, shoes with ridiculous heels and fussy little straps. She was miserable at the Mt. Ephraim Country Club, couldn't her family see? Michael compounded her misery by insisting she was a "damned attractive woman" except why didn't she have her hair cut and styled? wear a little makeup, at least lipstick? smile more? buy some new clothes? Marianne said, "Mom, you're just as nice-looking, nicer-looking, than any of the women your age at the Club." When the other Mulvaneys laughed at this innocent slight, Corinne the loudest, Marianne quickly said, blushing, "I mean, Mom, you look just as nice as anybody. You do."

  The Mulvaneys, a family who loved to laugh, hooted with laughter at such a notion.

  Thinking of such things, smiling and grimacing to herself- Corinne wasn't prepared for-yet again!-Lydia Bethune appearing suddenly before her. Corinne came to a dead stop on the sidewalk, staring at the woman. What was this? What on earth did Mrs. Bethune the doctor's wife want with her? So commanding a presence in her russet rabbit-fur, her sleek frosted-blond hair, glowing makeup. She was smiling uneasily at Corinne, knowing how close Corinne was to bolting past her. "Corinne, please?-let me tell you-about your daughter?"

  Corinne stared at Lydia Bethune, blinking. Her luminous blue eyes had gone hard and blank-and opaque and she was gripping her packages and tote bag as if fearing the other woman might snatch them from her. "What-what about Marianne?"

  Lydia Bethune swallowed. "Well, I don't know, exactly," she said apologetically. "It's just something Priscilla mentioned and I-I've been seeing her, by accident, not in school. I mean, during school hours. I'm wondering-is anything wrong?"

  Corinne asked evenly, "Where have you been seeing Marianne?"

  "In St. Ann's Church. You know-on Bayberry. Yesterday afternoon, when I dropped by. And I think today-I mean, I happened to see her go in, this morning around eleven." Lydia tried to smile at Corinne, one mother of an adolescent girl to another, but the pinkglossy smile disintegrated like wet tissue. The women regarded each other with raw, perplexed eyes.

  Corinne bit her lip, and said, trying to keep her voice from shaking, "Well. Thanks, Lydia. I do appreciate it."

  Driving to St. Anne's Corinne thought, calmly So this is how it will be revealed to me: by a stranger.

  BABIES

  Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again that tear you apart.

  Labor was the right word for it. You surely do labor. Like pushing a wagon loaded with cement blocks uphill, three wheels stuck. Grunting, sweating, straining like a sow to give birth as it's called. There came a high-pitched roaring, and a muscular contortion not to be believed like pulling yourseif inside out, like you're a glove. And then suddenly, after how many hours it would always seem suddenly, a rushing out of the tunnel into blazing, blinding light.

  Here I come, here I come, oh! here! I! COME!

  Michael Mulvaney her husband grinning and gritting his big teeth, droplets of sweat gleaming on his face like shiny transparent beetles. Oh his bloodshot eyes! No sleep for eighteen hours! Push! push! push! uuuuhhh! he and the nurse were urging like demented cheerleaders. Veins stood out on the young husband's forehead, close to bursting. Corinne I love you, love love love you, that's my girl thatagirl! that-a-girl! PUSH!

  Then suddenly it was out of her, and in others' rubber-gloved hands. The baby!-she'd almost forgotten, that was the point of this ordeal wasn't it, so much fuss-the baby, squirming amid red-slippery as a sea creature, incongruously lifted into raw air. Where did so much lung power, so much volume, come from? What if the baby had begun to wail like that, that loud, inside the womb? Corinne laughed at the thought, drunk and dazed. Janimed her scraped knuckles against her teeth and laughed, wept behind her hand. Oh God, am I worthy? Are You sure You didn't make a mistake?

  Four times Corinne would give birth. And never grow wiser. In fact each time it would seem more preposterous-she'd done so little, and reaped so much. Were she and Michael Mulvaney really good enough, strong enough, smart enough, deep enough to be entrusted with babies?

  That first time, in the Rochester hospital, March 1954, euphoria swept over her like a drug. Red-slippery baby in her arms: a boy. A boy! Michael Jr.! (In fact, was Corinne drugged? What was it- Demerol? She'd been brave and brash asking the doctor please not to sedate her, please no thanks but maybe with her anxious husband's complicity he'd dosed her anyway on the sly? guessing it would be a protracted labor hed hoped to maintain her screams at a respectable decibel level, was that it?) And there was her husband, her Michael Mulvaney she'd married after only a few months of knowing him, loving hini more than her life, her life she'd have tossed into the air confident he'd catch it, yes and she'd given birth to this astonishing kicking-crying boy-baby for his sake.

  Joking amid the sticky bedclothes, lifting the tiny baby in her anns, for always they were great kidders, a comic duo to crack up the nurses-"See what you niade me do, Michael Mulvaney!"

  They were mamed, it was quite legal. But Connne had renioved her plain, worn-gold, pawnshop--purchased wedding band months before, womed she'd never get it off her swelling fingers. The only mother in the maternity ward with no ring, just-fingers. So Michael couldn't resist quipping, loud enough to be heard through the room, "Well. Guess I'll have to marry you now, kid, eh?"

  The looks on those strangers' faces.

  So Corinne was a new mother: slightly touched by new-mother craziness. She hoped to dmgni-y herself by commenting sagely to the doctor (always, you want to impress them: men of authority) about "the sucking reflex"-"the bonding instinct"-and similar clinical- anthropological phenomena. She wanted to inipress this man she hardly knew, she'd been a college student after all, even if it was only at Fredonia State, and she'd dropped out between her junior and senior years to get married. She wasn't some immature girl like others in the maternity ward with her-seventeen, eighteen years old, just kids. She, Corinne Mulvaney, was a mature young wife of almost twenty-three.

  Plucking at the doctor's sleeve as he was about to move on, "Oh! doctor, waitl-one thing!" and he'd smiled at her breathlessness, "Yes, Corinne?" and she'd said in a rush, stammering, "Y-You don't think God made a nimstake, do you? That He might change His mind, and take our baby back?"

  Marianne, the third-born, the sole daughter, was to be the miracle baby.

  You only get one of them, once. If you're lucky. But most people aren't lucky. (So you mustn't gloat, of course.) Corinne and Michael Mulvaney seemed to understand, though they were still young parents when their daughter was born, in their twenties. This was in June 1959.

  Already, they had two boys. Two boys! But where Michael Jr. and Patrick Joseph had been screamers and thrashers virtually from birth, strong-willed, stubborn, crying through the night in a contest of wills ("Pick me up! Nurse me! I know you're there!"), their intransigent male selves assertive as their tiny, floppy penises, Marianne was sweet and amiable, an angel-baby, a friendly baby. A baby, as Michael Sr. observed, who actually seemed to be on our side. Within two weeks of coming to live with them at High Point Farm, this baby slept seven hours through a night, allowing her exhausted mother and father to sleep seven hours, too. Corinne and Michael grinned at each other. "Why didn't we try one of these, right away?"

  Not that they weren't crazy about their sons, too. They were, but in a different way.

  Boy-babies: unpredictable surges of animal-energy, even in the crib. Mauling and bruising Corinne's milk-heavy breasts. With sly goo-goo eyes Love me all the same! When they slept, they did sleep hard. Especially Patrick, in his first six months. But more often there were thumps, crashes, the sound of breaking glass. Earsplitting heartrending baby-shrieks. Kicking and splashing bathwater, refusing food, refusing to be diapered, flush-faced, flailing like beached little sharks.

  Mikey-Junior, th
e firstborn, the biggest baby (nine pounds, two ounces) would come to seem in time the most distant: he'd been born, not in Mt. Ephraim, but in Rochester; in a "big-city" hospi tal; brought back to a rented duplex in an almost-slumnmy neighborhood near downtown, not to High Point Farm like the other babies. This seemed to cast him, in retrospect, in a kind of gritty urban light; amid traffic noises, frequent sirens, the isolated and mysterious shouts of unknown men in the middle of the night. Sometimes it almost seemed that Mikey had been born to strangers-young, clumsy, frightened parents who hadn't yet decided exactly whether they wanted to have children; whether all this they'd set into trio- tion by their passion for each other was serious.

  Michael Jr., Mikey-Junior, Big Guy, one day to be called "Mule" and "Number Four": all boy as a certain kind of sausage might be said to be all sausage. Uncanny how he'd resembled his young (twenty-six, and scared) father, already in the delivery room: the puggish nose, the squarish jaw, the close-set warm-chocolatey- brown eyes, the dark-red curls like wood shavings. The belligerent mouth that turned, when kissed, to sugar. Within his first year alone Mikey got his head so stuck between stair railings (in the rented duplex) his terrified father had had to remove one, to free him. He'd snatched at and trapped in his hand a bumblebee (yes, he was stung); tackled a young cat and was scratched above his right eye; hung on his mother so much she'd begun to be lopsided, with a chronic aching neck. His first words, in comical imitation of his parents' admonitions, were Mikey! Baby! and Noooo! As soon as he grew teeth he used them: gnawing at newspapers like a hungry rodent, gnawing at his crib railings, biting through a toaster cord-fortunately, the toaster hadn't been plugged in at the time. Very quickly, being mechanically-minded like his father, he learned to switch on the radio, the TV, the washing machine; to unplug the refrigerator and start it defrosting; to pick his father's jacket pockets for loose change, which with gleeful squeals he'd toss rolling and bouncing across the floor. More dangerously, he learned to turn on stove burners and the oven, to strike matches into flame. He was comnically aggressive in "protecting" his Mommy when visitors dropped by. Once the Mulvaneys moved to the country (what a wonderland for an active child, the many rooms in the old house, the outbuildings, fields and woods) he cultivated a habit of escaping parental vigilance, climbing out of his playpen and wandering off, smffing like a dog, imlexhaustibly curious. Always, Corinne was calling, "Mikey! Mikey where are you!" and trotting after him. Once, aged two, he drifted out of her sight when she was working in the garden and disappeared for ninety minutes-only to be discovered peacefully asleep in a dark, stiflingly hot corner of the hay barn by his distraught parents. Mikey-Junior was as finicky an eater (Corinne joked) as Porky Pig. Indeed, he had a cast-iron stomach: if he didn't vomit immediately after gobbling down some problematic food (for instance, rancid dog food) he digested it with no evident side effects. He weathered falls, cuts, bruises, insect bites, poison ivy and poison oak. Bouts of furious weeping passed swiftly as storm clouds scudding overhead, mio sooner gone than forgotten. Like an amphibious creature, he seemed already to know how to swim before, at the age of three, he was led gently out into shallow water at Wolf s Head Lake, hand in hand with his Dad. By the age of five, he was diving unassisted into the lake, nimble and monkeylike in imitation of Michael Sr. (at that time almost-slim, boyish, with powerful shoulders, arms and strongly muscled legs that propelled him through water hell-bent as a torpedo). A sunny, uncomplaining, good-natured child-"but, wow!" as Corinne so frequently sighed, "-two handfuls."