Joyce Carol Oates - We Were The Mulvaneys

by We Were The Mulvaneys(lit)

  Still, no one's fault. In nature, no one's to blame.

  "Snow after Easter-it doesn't seem fair, does it?"

  Marianne was stirring a rich dark minestrone soup in a battered pan on Patrick's hot plate, as Patrick set the table for their meal; she peered out the window where, in the streetlight below, damp snowflakes swirled like agitated moths. She hadn't sounded complaining, only wistftnl. Patrick said, incensed, "I don't much notice weather now. That's one thing I'm freed from, now I'm not a farm kid."

  Farm kid just slightly mocking. For of course the Mulvaneys of High Point Farm had never been only just farmers.

  Marianne said, "I'll never change, I'm sure. Staring up at the sky, trying to figure what's coming."

  Patrick was briskly laying out plates on the table, a folding table in the center of the book-cluttered room that was his study: the plates, slightly chipped, were cobalt-blue stoneware of sonic well-known American stock, pressed upon him by Conune when he'd moved to Ithaca. But you have to eat off something, why not something nice? The thick-plied yellow cloth napkins were from home too, and the stainless steel cutlery with the chunky carved-bone handles. Marianne had noticed, smiled, murmured something Patrick hadn't heard. Patrick was saying, in the high-toned, nasal, insufferable mode of a brother scoring points against a sister who'll always be younger than he, "But why should you care? We're free of all that. If there's a drought, or so much rain the seeds rot in the soil. If there's an infestation of tent caterpillars in the orchard, or Japanese beetles. We don't have to be superstitiOuS- like primitive people. God, what a relief, to live in a place like this, where I'm not connected, I'm not responsible, I can walk away without a backward glance. What a relief, not to have to care who you are."

  Marianne said hesitantly, "But, Patrick, you must care-?"

  "What? Why?"

  "Who you are? You must care."

  Patrick said impatiently, "I said where you are. It's a relief not to have to care where you are. All that pride we had, at home, and anxiety. l(eeping up some kind of-I don't know-model -mily life. Not that we were aware of it, even Dad and Mom. Especially Dad and Morn. As soon as I left I discovered how big the world is, you only have to reposition yourself in it. Where is just temporary, you'll be moving on."

  Making little speeches, to his perplexed sister. He supposed he was overstating the case for her sake. Look: you aren't missing much. Do I miss them?

  Supposed that Marianne's presence in these cramped quarters where he was accustomed to being blissfully alone, in truth rarely thinking of hack home, of them, of it, was making him say extravagant asinine things he didn't exactly mean.

  Marianne, however, took every statement of Patrick's seriously. He remembered that from the past: years, years, years of playing elder smarter more cynical brother to his adoring, unquestioning sister. It was flattering, but occasionally annoying. Provoking anger, you could not predict when, like the hot pounding anger he'd felt in the bus depot, seeing his sister, his own sister he loved, through the eyes of a sexual predator. Marianne was saying slowly, "I suppose I'm different. More literal. Every place I am, 1-ke, now, the Co-op, and KilbumI can't think it's temporary. Even if I left, it would still be there. The place, and the people."

  Patrick let the subject pass. He had yet to inquire much about the Green Isle Co-op apart from knowing that it provided offcampus room and board for Marianne at Kilburn State and that, by working there, she could defray sixty percent of her college costs. Just possibly he resented his sister's tender tone in speaking of it and of the companions she'd known only the previous September but clearly liked, very much. Brothers and sisters they were to her, apparently. Patrick knew the names, Abelove, Birk, Felice-Marie, Val, Glib or was it Geib. A mixed-breed spaniel named Teardrop.

  This information seemed to him more than sufficient.

  Patrick had wanted to take Marianne out to dinner that evening, to a Chinese restaurant on State Street, but she'd insisted she would make their meals while she was here. She'd seemed so emphatic over the phone, he'd given in-"Though it's a lot of trouble for you, to bring food on the bus. Couldn't we buy it here?"

  "Oh Patrick, no."

  Sounding almost hurt. In just Corinne's tone, if one or another of her children hadn't been hungry for a meal, or hadn't wanted to take time to sit down at the table and eat with the family.

  So Marianne had brought with her on the Trailways bus, in the canvas bag, two quarts of a tomato-based soup stock, raw vegetables, and macaroni; two loaves of bread she'd baked herself, zucchiniwalnut and nine-grain whole wheat; a jar of Green Isle raspberry jam; even, in a plastic bag, salad greens and vegetables. Preparing the meal in Patrick's alcove kitchen (no stove, but a double-burner hot plate, a squat little Pullman refrigerator on the floor, a small aluminum sink, a single counter and cupboard) she'd chattered to him, glowing with pleasure and purpose. Almost, she was Button Mulvaney. If Patrick didn't stare at her.

  In the bus depot, God he'd been shocked! The sight of her going through him like a sharp blade.

  Marianne?-wa.s it possible?

  In the room here when she'd removed her jacket. He'd swallowed hard, how thin she was. Upper arms no larger than his wrists. Collarbone jutting and breasts tiny as a twelve-year-old's and anyone who would gaze upon such a child with lust was sick, depraved, repellent. The spiky hair, brutally shorn at the back and sides. Faint blue veins at her temples and eyes threaded with red as if she'd gone without sleep recently. Or had been crying.

  Equally disturbing, the odd clothes. Discount-store clothes. Like no clothes worn by Cornell students, even those eager to define themselves as "characters," "freaks." The ifimsy white cotton T-shirt with the thin, loose straps and, in green stamped letters

  -S{E on the front. Sarcastically Patrick asked, "Are you in disguise, Marlanne?-as what?" He'd meant to be funny but Marianne only stared at him, confused. She'd touched her hair nervously as if trying to smooth it down. It occurred to him that she didn't know what she looked like.

  Patrick had read about rape victims, he'd done research in his methodical Pinch-style, in the Cornell psych library. Ills common for a rape victim,female or male, to avoid mirrors and direct confrontation with all images of the "self" As if- where there had been a person, there is now no one.

  Patrick offered to help Marianne prepare supper but she said she didn't need help. The minestrone was her own recipe, never the same twice. Patrick murmured he wasn't used to being waited on any longer, it made him uneasy, and something in his voice tipped off Marianne, who laughed, teasing, asking who'd been cooking for him lately? a girl? and Patrick blushed and said no one.

  Marianne smiled. "No?"

  It was true in a way. No one had cooked for Patrick here, in his own kitchen.

  They Sat down to eat. Marianne's minestrone was the most delicious soup Patrick had ever tasted: steaming-hot, in stoneware bowls, a thick broth seasoned with fresh basil and oregano, containing chunks of celery, tomato, carrots, red onion, beans, chickpeas and macaroni. The nine-grain whole wheat bread was crumbly, chewy, delicious, too. And a green salad with red leaf lettuce and endive, cucumber, pepper, alfalfa sprouts, a vinegar-and-atl dressing flavored with dill. Patrick was surprised at his appetite, his hunger. Usually he prepared for himself quick meals out of cans, dumped in a pan or stirfried in a skillet. Sat at his desk and worked as he ate, hardly tasting his food, washing it down with numerous glasses of fruit juice. Leanlimbed, lanky, with a flat stomach, Patrick had always had nearly the appetite of his heftier brother Mike but no one had seemed to notice. He ate, ate, ate and retained only ropey muscle on his bones. Marianne had always been slender, small_boned; she'd eaten sparingly, as she ate now, taking pleasure in Patrick's appetite and his reactions to her nieal-"W0W. Terrific. This is really good."

  Marianne blushed: like Corinne, she was uneasy receiving praise.

  Saying, disparagingly, "-I think I put too much oregano in the soup. If it's overdone"

  "Hell, no," Patrick said s
everely, "-it's perfect."

  Marianne smiled, laughed nervously. In the overhead light her eyes were enormous and the sockets deeply shadowed.

  Patrick reiterated how happy he was at Cornell, how rarely he was lonely. Marianne's wistful smile seemed to inquire -3ut don't you miss me?-he took no notice. He was feeling rather boastftil, a quiet boy running at the mouth, in the way of stiff shy vain young men who imagine themselves brilliant, and are so perceived by others. He spoke warmly if vaguely of his fellow tenants in the house, foreign students so much more serious than most American students. Civilization, for them, was a very different matter than it was for Americans, Patrick believed. We tend to take it for granted, it'sjust there. We tend to think it'sfor us, a gift. But others, from the East especially, seem to know something else. "Almost, when you talk with them," Patrick said earnestly, "you get the impression they're shielding us-I mean, a kid like me. Typical spoiled American kid like me."

  "Oh, Patrick," Marianne laughed, with sisterly reproach, "-you're hardly typical."

  Patrick said loftily, "I don't want to be. But I see the world through the prism of my culture, not through `objective' eyes."

  "But why would anyone else be more `objective'? I don't understand."

  "Because their civilizations are older, more fatalistic. It's like contingency in evolutionary theory-sheer chance. There seems to be design, in fact it's ingenious design, no mere human brain could have devised it, there seems to be `intelligence' manifested-but it's the accidental, mechanical accumulation of `natural selection' over a period of millions of years. No God, only just nature. And accident." Patrick spoke dogmatically, in the tone of Dr. Herring in the lecture hail. Marianne was sitting meekly hunched at the table, bone-sharp elbows on the table, eyes downcast and forehead creased. She'd virtually stopped eating.

  Shyly she said, "My friend Abelove-that's his last name, he's called by his last name-he's executive director of the Co-op-he says that evolution and creation can be reconciled. Evolution through nature and creation through-"

  "God?-don't be silly," Patrick said, snorting in derision.

  "-I'm not sure how to explain it-"

  "I'm sure you aren't!"

  "It's just that there are different ways of perceiving the same thing," Marianne said uncertainly. "I mean-aren't there?"

  "There are scientifically demonstrable ways, and there are superstitious, self-deluding ways," Patrick said curtly. "You can choose one or the other but not both."

  Marianne stood from the table, shakily. Patrick thought she was going to walk away but instead she went to slice more bread, he'd eaten all the slices she'd laid out.

  When Marianne returned to the table, Patrick made an effort to speak more moderately. Really, he wasn't a bully, so hotheaded!- he'd be ashamed of himself afterward. It was Pinch-instinct, screwing up his face like a spoiled brat. There were excellent reasons why people like his sister-and his mother, and her mother-in fact, most of humanity-believed what they believed, in the face of reason itself they believed because, like children, they were terrified of the dark. Mistaking the luminosity of an inhuman and implacable Truth for mere dark.

  In high school, Patrick had read Charles Darwin's great works

  The Ortgin of Species, The Voyage of the Beagle. James Watson's Double

  Helix which his biology teacher had given him, as an acknowledgment of Patrick's special status. Darwin the visionary, Watson and

  Crick the careerists. Well, science was both, wasn't it?The, Patrick

  Mulvaney, didn't intend to separate the two.

  Marianne was an avid listener as Patrick spoke of his courses, his professors, his work; she didn't inquire into his grades, but Patrick informed her-all A's, through three semesters of five three-credit courses each, except for goddamned organic chemistry where he'd managed only an A-, in a pack of premed majors some of whom were rumored to have cheated on the final-well, not only on the final.

  But Patrick, flush-faced, indignant, didn't want to go into that.

  The cheating, dishonesty, cynicism, beer-drinking drug-taking sexual promiscuity of his undergraduate classmates-not all, but a sizable percentage-no, Patrick didn't want to go into that.

  Instead he told Marianne of his hopes for a career: after his B.A. he would enter a Ph.D. program, possibly here at Cornell where he could work with Maynard Herring, one of the most distinguished of living microbiologists (who'd already singled out Patrick Mulvaney as bright, promising); he would win a fellowship, or if not a fellowship a teaching assistantship; he would complete his Ph.D. in three years-"If all goes as planned." Earnestly Patrick spoke of certain mysteries of science that intrigued him: why viruses can't replicate themselves, for instance, but have to insert their genetic information into a host and force the host to reproduce the virus; how can so many totally disparate components-microorganisms, chemicals, atoms-constitute an individual human being, with a unified personality? And what is "personality," given such a galaxy of components? Why have so many plant and animal species become extinct?-more than ninety percent of all species that have ever lived. And what does it mean in evolutionary terms that the maternal egg is so much more influential in reproduction than the pater- nal, thousands of times larger than the paternal, and containing all the cellular mitochondria? And how did such an extraordinary organ as the eye evolve, in so many disparate species of creatures, through tniilions of years, out of sheer blind undifferentiated matter?

  Marianne interrupted to ask, with sisterly solicitude, "Your eye, Patrick-is it all right?"

  Patrick stared at her. "My eye? What?"

  "Your-you know," she said, faltering. "Your injured eye."

  Patrick scowled, shoving his glasses against the bridge of his nose. He was hufl-, indignant. "We're not discussing my ridiculous eye," he said, "-we're discussing the phenomenon of eye. It's so amazing. How a mechanism so intricate and ingenious evolved out of blind matter. Who could have imagined an eye, eyesight, in the dark?"

  Marianne had risen unobtrusively to clear the table. She shook her head, with a wan smile. "Someone with an ingenious imagination," she said softly.

  "Hrnnim! Very funny, Mariaime."

  Vehemently Patrick continued to speak, not knowing what he said or why, at this moment, he was driven to say it; the words long pent-up, the solitude of his life erupting suddenly, in a passion he hadn't known he possessed. Marianne moved quietly and surely clearing the table, rinsing the dishes, all the while listening to Patrick, murmuring words of assent or surprise, occasionally wincing as if his sharp words hurt. Somehow Patrick had swerved from the subject of science's great mysteries to humankind's collective failure. These were thoughts he'd had numerous times, in high school even, but he'd never spoken of them to another person before. "Look, it's so damned depressing! Why after all this time, all that science has discovered, the human race is so-.ignorant. So superstitious and cruel. Consider: the Nazis murdered sixteen million men, women, and children; Stalin murdered twenty million; even more millions-more!-were victims of Chinese Communist `ideology.' Just in the twentieth century alone. Our civilized century. That's the mystery, not nature-why human beings are so vile."

  Marianne had come to stand staring at Patrick, her eyes almost frightened. "Patrick, you sound so angry."

  "Shouldn't I be? Why aren't you?"

  Patrick had risen from the table, trembling. He'd had no idea he was so angry, a pulse beating in his left eye, furiously.

  Quickly, without a word, Marianne came to him. Gripped his arms and on her toes leaned against him, pressing her cool, thin cheek against his. Not quite an embrace but it was comforting, consoling.

  I love you. We love each other. That's enough.

  He wanted to believe her, she insisted she was happy.

  She was happy, her soul shining in her deep-socketed eyes.

  Last time Patrick had spoken with his mother on the phone, mentioning Marianne's upcoming visit to Ithaca, Connne said evasively, guiltily, Oh give Marianne our lo
ve! She's doing very well at that little college, she'll make a wondeiful teacher I'm sure. Judd and I are going to drive down some weekend soon. A pause and a choked-pleading voice, Hon, I wouldn't inte-fere with your sister jf I were you and Patrick said coolly, Yes, but you aren't me, Mom. And I'm not you.

  What secrets lay between them, Mom and Button?-mOther and daughter?

  Just possibly, none.

  MMMMM SUCKS COCK! That time, at the start of gym class, at the high school, Patrick swung around the row of lockers and saw a friend of his hastily rubbing something off the corrugated front of Patrick's locker with the flat of his hand, a look of distaste on his friend's face and Patrick walked by pretending he'd seen nothing. Afterward unable to face the friend. Could not recall whether, from that day until graduation, he'd ever spoken to him again.

  Would he die for Marianne, yes he believed he would.

  Yet: had he ever confronted Zachary Lundt, or any of the pack of guys who were Zachary's friends and who, it was rumored, would "stand up for Zach" if the police investigated?no, he had not.