Joyce Carol Oates - We Were The Mulvaneys

by We Were The Mulvaneys(lit)

  No. She didn't remember.

  Always, you maintain your d-gnity.

  Monday she'd be returning to school, she was determined.

  It was still February, that morning, barefoot, in her flannel nightgown, Marianne descended the stairs quietly, making her way through the slumbering house drawn by the bitter cold, thin whistling wind. All night dreams had cascaded at her like snow avalanches in the mountains. She wasn't taking the chunky beige pills Dr. Oakley had prescribed to aid sleep nor was she taking the sleek green-and-black capsules Dr. Oakley had prescribed to help restore appetite (like Morn "restoring" one of her "antiques"?) but that was Marianne's secret, one of her secrets.

  At the rear of the house, she looked out to see-yes, the space where Dad's pickup was usually parked, in front of the garage, was empty. A light burned there, Mom had left on all night. He hadn't come home.

  (Of course, there were reasons why Michael Mulvaney Sr. sometimes stayed overnight in Mt. Ephrairn, usually at the Odd Fellows Lodge where there were two or three rooms available for members. Treacherous driving conditions-hadn't it been snowing hard the night before?-it was snowing now, in snaky coils and tatters blown against the windows, drifting up against the back porch where, only yesterday, Patrick and Judd had shoveled.)

  "Dad, I'm sorry"-her lips moved, she wasn't sure if she'd spoken aloud.

  She had opened her heart to Jesus, and He had consoled her. Yes it was Marianne Mulvaney's fault that it had happened. But it was not her fault that she could not give testimony, bear witness against the boy who was her assailant.

  Strange to be awake at this hour, and downstairs, alone. The big old farmhouse creaking in the wind. How many people had lived here, died here. Since 1849. You thought such thoughts in solitude, before dawn. Before the life of the household began. Now there was only the wind, and the tick-tick-ticking of a dozen clocks to indicate that Time is a joke, doesn't exist. Yet you need to believe.

  The first time Tnsha came to stay overnight at High Point Farm, when they were in fifth grade, she'd said, shivering wide-eyed Oh! is it like this all the tinie, doesn't it scare you, Marianne? as if the wind in the chimney were a ghost, hoo-hoo-hooing through the night. Marianne had laughed, feeling flattered, superior. Everything at High Point Farm was special, even a ten-year-old knew that.

  It was true she'd be returning to school. Next week. That was arranged. First, she would have to meet with Mr. Hendrie the principal of Mt. Ephrairn High and Mrs. Langley the guidance counsellor. Marianne and her parents, that is. At least Morn, if Dad refused to come. There were so many rumors circulating, Mr. Hendrie had told Mom, so many unverified, disturbing things being said. About Marianne, and Zachary Lundt. And a group of seniors involved in drinking, late-night partying... sexual misconduct. Mr. Hendrie and Mrs. Langley hoped to discuss these matters before Marianne resumed classes and Mom would be involved, of course. Marianne had the idea that her mother had already spoken with Mr. Hendtie and Mrs. Langley on the phone at length, possibly she'd even gone to see them. Marianne didn't ask, and didn't know.

  There was also the therapist "Jill James" recommended by the minister of the little country church in South Lebanon. "Jill James"-she insisted you call her that, no formalities-was a Christian therapist, a rarity in our secular times, with a master's degree in adolescent and family counselling from the State University at Port Oriskany. She was Mom's age, maybe oldet, stout and big-boned with a broad, shiny face colored like Crayola and a handshake brisk and hearty as Dad's. Her office at the Eastgate Shopping Center was bright cheery colors, too, hanging ferns and macrame on the walls and piped-in soothing music, Marianne had seen "Jill James" just Once, and was scheduled to see her again, this very day. She'd prepared certain words she must say, repeat, offered like small semiprecious gems, all she had to offer. I don't remember. I'm as much to blame as. I was drinking, I'm so ashamed. My pride and vanity. Can't bear false witness. "Jill James" had her own words to offer, of course. For that was what they did, adults: uttered their words prepared beforehand, as you uttered yours.

  If she walked barefoot in the snow, it might be a test. In her numbed, exalted state she'd become invulnerable!

  She was standing at the window, looking out. It was still snowing, but more thinly. The wind had lessened. Beyond the barns, the eastern sky was lightening in that cracked, cobwebby way of winter mornings. A dull sun barely penetrating cloud. Marianne could not see Mt. Cataract from here, but she knew its location, its promise. A hand! A hand raised in greeting! If she set out for Mt. Cataract, thirty miles away, how far would she get?

  You Mulvaneys. Hot skit. The bunch of you.

  She would have to move swiftly, before Mom woke. Before

  Patrick, Judd, Mike woke. Before the day began, the clamor and commotion of early morning at High Point Farm.

  There was Troy, the border collie, handsome dog, stretched out asleep on the dog-haired carpet along the interior wall, near the heating duct, of the living room; wheezing faintly, utterly content. He hadn't noticed Marianne at all: what a watchdog. And in a sagbottomed easy chair, gazing at Marianne with unperturbed slate-blue eyes, was beautiful Snowball, purely white, with her Persian-pug nose and thick, fur-tufted paws. Snowball had been watching Marianne all along as if it weren't out of the ordinary, Marianne in her nightgown, barefoot, prowling the shadowy house.

  Can't. Can't bearfalse witness. Don't YOU understand!

  She would have said, yes of course she'd be returning to school on Monday, even as she made her way through the dining room, through the kitchen (there was Feathers on his perch, puffed out to a filmy yellow ball twice his size, tiny head tucked beneath tiny wing), into the back hail strewn with boots, curry combs, stacks of newspapers, items in transition from useful to trash, to the back door. She would open it quietly, she would step outSide.Jesus!Jesusf He was beckoning to her, He would guide her. He had been guiding her all along.

  But: she'd stepped on something, something grisly, a small rubbery thing, about the size of a grape. Stepped on it with her bare right foot and recoiled, in disgust.

  She knew what it was, before switching on the light. Ugh! Ununmistakably, a rodent's heart.

  One of the cats had left it there on the carpet. He, or she, had caught and devoured a mouse, all but the inner organs, left scattered about the house like morbidly pranicish offerings. Mariarme felt a stab of nausea even as she thought calmly It'- what cats do: their nature.

  Hadn't Morn explained to Marianne when she'd been a little, little girl. Cats aren't cruel deliberately, they're carnivores, hunters, it's their nature to catch mice, rats, even rabbits (especially, at High Point Farm, baby rabbits), and birds. If you loved a cat you would have to look the other way, accept his nature and forgive him. Like the dogs, capable of such cruelty sometimes. Even Troy, even Silky. Hunting winter-weakejied deer in the woods, circling a stricken pregnant doe tearing at her belly with their teeth to bring her down. Yelping, yipping. A frenzy of bloodlust in the snow. Muzzles wet with blood Marianne had never witnessed such a horror, but she'd seen part-devoured deer carcasses, she knew. Dogs you love, who love you, with their savage need nonetheless to dig at, gnaw at, even roll luxuriantly in the carcasses of once-living things.

  Why? Marianne had asked.

  Because, Mom had said.

  Yes hut why? Marianne asked.

  Because it's nature, honey, Mom said. And nature isn't evil.

  Snowball, flufFy--white, elegant, with her disdainful pug face and fastidious ways, had followed after Marianne and was twining herself around Marianne's leg, hoping to be petted. Marianne whispered, "Snowball, did you do this? Aren't you ashamed!" The white cat sniffed at the rubbery-red thing on the carpet with a show of slightly repelled innocence.

  Another of the cats, lean rangy bony-headed E.T., leapt from his perch on top of the refrigerator, to hurry and join them. E.T. was a neutered torn with a crackling, inquisitive purr. "E.T., did you do this?" E.T. too sniffed at the rodent remains as if he'd nev
er seen anything quite like it before, but was not actively interested. As Corinne, the mother of the household, the keeper of the family, would have sighed in these circumstances, Marianne sighed. There was relief in her annoyance, as if she'd awakened from a disagreeable trance. She had a chore to be done, however distasteful. All thought of leaving the warm house, drifting off in subzero winds into the woods beyond the back pasture, had vanished.

  With some tissue, she lifted the tiny heart from the stained carpet, and located other part-devoured innards amid the clutter in the hall, part of a sinewy little tail, and carried them at arm's length into the bathroom. Did not look at what she held but dropped it into the toilet, and flushed. A stab of nausea returned, like a fist rising from her bowels, and she saw again the shadowy backseat of the Corvette, a boy's thin-cheeked, contorted face and angry eyes. But she did not weaken. She did not gag, begin to vomit. She was all right.

  Not all the rodent remains had been flushed away so she tried again, wincing at the noisy plumbing, the groaning pipes so like merriment, derision. This time, thank God, everything disappeared forever in a splashing swirl of bluish-tinged water.

  Blessed be they that mourn: for they shall he comforted.

  ASK DAD

  No one would be able to name what had happened, or would wish to name it: rape was a word that came not to be spoken at High Point Farm.

  What were the words that were spoken? I remember abuse- assault-taking advantage of-hurt. Those were words I heard, or overheard, though these too were not uttered openly (that is, in the presence of Patrick or me) as one might not speak openly of cancer, of death.

  The perpetrator, who was Zachary Lundt the son of Mortonuand Cynthia Lundt, was always referred to as he, him. Unless Dad was speaking, raging. The bastard. The son of a bitch. The fucker. (When Dad had been drinking, I mean. Other times, he wouldn't be talking much at all.)

  Eventually, of course, I would come to know what had happened to Marianne, or at least a certain sequence of "facts." At the time, however, as the last-born of the Mulvaney children, I was the last to know anything. And even then, such was our family speech code, I didn't exactly know. One morning, in the stable, I asked Patrick what was going on and Patrick squinted at me through his round wire-rimmed glasses, not missing a beat as he combed Prince, and murmured, "Who wants to know?" (This was a Mulvaney euphemism for "Mind your own business.") I said, "I want to know, for God's sake: what's going on, why's everybody tiptoeing around, what's wrong with Marianne?" Patrick moved to Prince's other side as the deep-chested mahogany-brown gelding shook his mane, shook and lifted his tail and released a torrent of steaming-hot piss. "I'm one of you," I said, hurt, "-why can't I know?"

  Patrick peered at me over Prince's sleek ripply back. He was wearing a green wool cap yanked down over his ears that gave him a squeezed furious look and his cheeks were flushed with cold. He mumbled sullenly, "Marianne's had some trouble I guess but she's O.K. now."

  "Some trouble? Marianne?"

  This was just so surprising to me, I didn't know how to react.

  Patrick shrugged. His face closed like a fist, that was the most I'd get from him.

  I knew: Marianne hadn't gone to school lately and, at least when I was home, she seemed to be hidden away in her room, with the door closed. I thought she must be sick, but Mom assured me, with a bright quick smile, "Oh, no! Button's had flu but she's just about recovered. You know this family-" Mom's fingers were fluttering the air like deranged butterflies, "-we get sick fast, and we get well fast. She'll be returnmg to school-oh, tomorrow. Or the day after."

  Mom was backing away, I tried to detain her. "Mom? How come Dad's acting so strange, too?"

  But Morn was in motion. I'd caught up with her in the back hall as she was zipping up her parka, stamping her feet into whichever pair of boots happened to be handy. Grabbed her car keys, she was late for-whatever. Called over her shoulder at me, with a worried smile, "Dad's had the flu, too. `Cap'n Mulvaney'-he'll be himself again soon!"

  Finally I cornered Mike. After supper one night when it was just Morn, Mike, P.J. and me at the table. Marianne upstairs and Dad away "on business" as Mom explained vaguely. We'd had a strained meal, poor Mom jumping up to answer the phone twice-three times-but it was never the call she expected, if in fact she expected any call. P.J. was brooding over something, staring into his plate as if into one of his fancy concepts-"infinity." Mike shoveled in his food with an angry appetite it seemed. He had a date that night with one of his girlfriends and near the end of the meal he was moving his shoulders twitchy and impatient as if he'd been sitting on the bench waiting to be called into the game and the waiting had gone on too long. As soon as he finished eating he was on his feet mumbling

  "Excuse me, Mom! Thanks!"-and Mom looked after him hurt, like she was always looking hurt these days. Mike shaved for the second time that day; then in his room he was banging around looking for something, yanked off one shirt and put on another, combed his oiled hair compulsively staring at himself in his bureau mirror and liking what he saw, but just barely. Silky nudged against Mike's legs gazing up at him with lovelorn doggy-brown eyes, but he ignored him; I wandered into Mike's room uninvited, lounged on the bed and petted Silky, a kid brother hanging out in his big brother's room. I was too shy to ask any question of Mike that might violate the code. For instance, the kid brother is risking something just initiating a conversation with a big brother who clearly has other more significant things on his mind.

  "Shit." Mike spoke softly, but angrily. Yanking off the shirt he'd just put on, pawing through his closet for something else. He'd shaved so roughly there were pinpricks of blood on his jaws. His eyes had a yellowish cast. How long he'd ignore me, I had to wonder. It was almost fascinating, like one of P.J.'s weird experiments with pond algae.

  On the walls of Mike's room and on his bureau and windowsills were photographs, clippings, plaques, all sorts of memorabilia of his four years as a star high school athlete. (The big brassy shiny trophies were out in the living room, of course. On permanent display.

  "MULE" MIJLVANEY MOST IMPROVED ATHLETE 1971, MT. EPHRAIM CHAMBER OF COMMERCE SPORTS NIGHT. MULE MULVANEY OUTSTANDING SENIOR ATHLETE MT. EPHRAIM HIGH 1972. And more.) As a small kid I'd been in awe of my big brother Mule in his football gear, snug-fitting pants, maroon number four jersey bulked up with padded shoulders. That shiny helmet that makes players look like astronauts. We younger kids knew the players didn't have those bodies really, so padded-up, yet we reacted as if they did-so strong-looking, so confident. That was why seeing one of the players suddenly fallen and writhing with pain on the football field, like the time Mike was struck down with a broken ankle, was such a sobering sight, a ten-i-ying sight I'd remember vividly all my life. There were cries, screams. The referee's frantic whistle. Dad already pushing his way through the crowd, descending the bleachers, and Mom on her feet crying, "Oh Mikey! Oh no!"

  Mike Mulvaney was ranked one of the two or three best football players who'd ever graduated from Mt. Ephraim High, but it was generally acknowledged that his playing was erratic, reckless. He'd suddenly lose control and judgment and that's when he would get hurt. Luckily his injuries were mostly minor. What was said about him, in print and word-of-mouth, was what a "great sport" he was. Never played dirty like some of the others, never complained bitterly after a losing game. In interviews, Mike graciously attributed his sportsmanship to "ideals fostered by my dad and mom." He gave credit to Coach Hansen. He gave credit to his teachers, his minister. You'd have thought he was one of the "good, Christian" boys but the real Mike was rowdy and irreverent. When the Mt. Ephrairn Rams lost a game, which was rare, it was Mike who cheered the other guys up, and Mike who dared tease Coach himself, a bull-like local character with a notable tendency to turn sullen and morose if things didn't go quite as he wished. "Hey, Coach: lighten it!" Mike once yelled, in my hearing, "-here today gone tomorrow, what the hell?" As if this were a happy insight. And Coach and others standing around looked at Mike
and laughed.

  His senior year of high school Mike had offers of football scholarships from Michigan, Minnesota, Notre Dame, Colgate as well as each of the New York State universities, couldn't make up his mind for weeks then settled on SUNY Buffalo but didn't return after the first semester claiming college wasn't for him, and that included college football. Maybe the coach there didn't appreciate him? Maybe the university was too large? Maybe his grades, in business administration, weren't good? Whatever, Mike returned home and started work immediately at Mulvaney Roofing with Dad. Dad had wanted Mike to get a college degree but, frankly, he admitted he couldn't see how a diploma would make the slightest difference if you knew what you were doing in your trade and if you did it better than anyone else.

  That was his formula for success. The formula that had worked for Michael Mulvaney Sr.

  Finally Mike glanced at me, not glowering exactly but not smiling either. I took this as an invitation to speak. I said, "Is something going on with Marianne?" Mike was roughly zipping up a blue velour sweater, a gift from his girlfriend Trudj, and said, hotly, "Yes, something's wrong. Something's pretty fucking goddamned wrong." He turned back to his mirror, peering critically at himself. "Some son of a bitch hurt her, some guy at the school." This was such a surprise to me, so astonishing, I stanmiered, "Huh? Who?" and Mike said bitterly, "Some guy. In P.J. `s class. Some cocksucker's gonna pay for it." "But-what did he do?" I asked. Mike was running his comb another time through his curly-kinky russet-brown hair; then he slipped the comb into his back jeans pocket, like a secret weapon. He said dismissively, "Ask them. They don't want me to talk about it. To anyone." "But who was it, Mike? What happened?"-I was excited, scared. I was old enough to know of certain ways in which a girl could be hurt by a guy (I knew what rape was, more or less) but it was difficult for me to comprehend that my sister Marianne, my sister everyone liked so much, especially guys at the high school, could have been hurt in such a way.