Joyce Carol Oates - We Were The Mulvaneys

by We Were The Mulvaneys(lit)

  Patrick thought, Don't say a word.

  Patrick stood, almost overturning his chair. Marianne cowered before him, seeing something terrible in his face.

  `Dad'!-how can you call him `Dad'! He's a blind, selfish man. He's cruel. He's crazy. The way he's treated you-crazy! Why care about him, or her? Let them go."

  Patrick slammed Out of the room-into his bedroom, blindly- didn't know what he was doing-couldn't believe his anger. It had erupted so suddenly, Out of-where?

  Immediately he was ashamed of himself. Why frighten Marianne, his sister? To what purpose, saying such things to her?

  She, to whom such a filthy thing had happened.

  The terrifying possibility caine to Patrick: our lives are not our own but in the possession of others-, our parents. Our lives are defined by the whims, caprices, cruelties of others. That genetic web, the ties of blood. It was the oldest curse, older than God. Am I loved? Am I wanted? 11/ho will want me, if my parents don't?

  "No. Bulishit!"

  It was very quiet. Few in the rooming house played music, there were few audible conversations. There was not even the incessant whining of the wind of High Point Farm. Patrick, badly trembling, sat down hard on his bed-flat, lumpy mattress-threw off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He tried to calm himself He was not one to give in to emotion. Hadn't a girl called him icy-cold not long ago and the very words had thrilled him. Damn you, Pinch: why interfere? Your sister has Jesus Christ. She doesn't need yon.

  How she'd stared at him, when he'd shouted at her. Cowering, shrinking. The packet of snapshots had slipped onto the floor unnoticed by her.

  Patrick had intended that Marianne sleep in this room, in his bed; he would sleep on the sofa, uncomfortable as that would be. He'd changed the sheets, plumped up the single pillow which was a goose-feather pillow from home. The room was hardly larger than a closet, space enough for the bed, a bureau of drawers, a wicker stool he'd brought from home, painted robin's-egg blue. It smelled of damp, and of the night-he'd left the window open several inches.

  Patrick halfway expected Marianne to knock timidly on his door but there was no knock, no sound at all from the other room. He went out, to discover his sister nodding off on the sofa, limp-limbed, her head drooping and swaying. The skin of her face was waxywhite and looked tight as the skin of a drum. Her mouth was slack, her eyelids fluttering. Of course, poor Marianne was exhausted. She'd travelled hours by bus, she'd had to wait for Patrick in the depot, she'd made supper, she'd cleared and washed the dishes; she'd endured her brother's self-besotted talk all evening. Patrick went to get Corinne's rag quilt after all, from where he'd hidden it. Why not? It was warm, it was beautiful, it even smelled faintly of the dried potpourri Corinne tossed into drawers at home, like a secret blessing. He covered Marianne with the quilt, tucking it in around her shoulders. He switched off the overhead light but stood for a while watching her in the dim light of the other room, as if guarding her. The packet of snapshots lay beside her on the sofa.

  How could Patrick put his sister back on the Trailways bus tomorrow afternoon at 5:20 P.M.? How could he surrender her to-whatever was there, in Kilburn, in the Green Isle Co-op? Yet he knew he was going to.

  You have no choice Pinch instructed himself. You have your own

  "THE HUNTSMAN

  My brother Patrick first saw the German woodcut "The Huntsmafl" when he was eleven years old, sorting through a box of things Mom brought home from a fanii auction in the Valley. These were the days when we kids would search eagerly through Mom's "treasures" and if we liked anything especially- Mom would promise not to sell it.

  Sometimes, Mom took us along with her to flea markets, rummage sales, secondhand shops in the Valley, even to auctions-for years on Saturdays in summer we'd drive out, not Dad and rarely Mike but Mom, Patrick, Marianne and me. There's nothing like an auction for excitement, at least for a young kid, and people like my morn who've been "bitten by the bug." A professional auctioneer striding across a platform, microphone or megaphone in hand, booming voice like an old-style preacher's, capable of rousing your interest in the weirdest items you'd never in a million years give a second glance to except he's singled them out-an old handwringer washing machine, for instance, a tattered_yellowed wedding veil of sixty years ago you'd mistake for a mosquito netting except, in the auctioneer's words, it's

  Americana A 5hrewd auctioneer knows how to draw people into bidding against one another, almost it doesn't matter sometimes what the item is, you're in a bidding war that can escalate like a firestonn Twenty dollars I've got twenty dollars do I hear twenty:five? do I hear -wenty-five?-peeting out into the audience and there's a hand suddenly raised-Twenty-five! I've got twenty-five do I hear thirty? do I hear thirty? ladies and gentlemen do I hear thirty? Going, gc-ng-Ah, thirty! I hear thirty! For this prime piece of antique-Americana I hear thirty! Do I hear thirty-five? Do I hear thirty-five? Ladies and gentlemen, do I hear thirty-five?

  And so on.

  The summer I was six years old, Mom took me with her to a farm auction at Milburn, and among the items being sold was a palomino rocking horse, and I asked could I have it, and Morn said we'd see, so when the bidding started Mom raised my hand for me whispering Go on, Judd! You show `em, Baby! and suddenly there I was, bidding in an auction! The auctioneer grinned in our direction, took my bid and continued the bidding, the price jumped from $20 to $35 within seconds, and Mom raised my hand for me another time, and another time the auctioneer took my bid, the rocking horse was going now for $40, there were ten or so people scattered through the crowd bidding on it but as the price climbed, $45, $50, $65, everyone dropped out except a Yewville antique dealer, a woman Mom knew as a friendly rival, and me, six-year-old Judd Mulvaney at his first auction. Every time the auctioneer bawled out Do I hear-? Do I hear-? one of us would lift a hand, until at last, quicker than you'd have had time to absorb, the price for the rocking horse was $80-it was my bid-Mom whispered in my ear and I jerked my hand into the air and our "friendly rival" sat mute and unmoving-I'd won the palomino rocking horse!

  At least, there was the feeling I'd won, a kind of anxious elation. Mom hugged me and smiling people sitting around us shook my hand. I'd won!

  When we brought the rocking horse home, and Dad inspected it, it didn't seem like such a prize. A lot of the paint was flecked off and the wood was termite-ridden so th- first time I tried to rock on it, the left hindquarters fell off. "Eighty dollars for a piece of junk," Dad said, shaking his head mournfully. Morn defended what we'd done saying it was excellent practice for children-"To learn to bargain for what you want in life, and not to be cowed by other people." Dad said, "Sure, if what you think you want is what you really want. Not just termite-ridden merchandise somebody's hoping to unload on a sucker."

  Pulling a long face and winking at us kids. All n-ht! I give in. Your morn's crazy but I love her, Igive in.

  All the while I was growing up, High Point Farm was filling with "treasures" Mom had pronTlised never to sell. Or she'd fallen in love with herself and couldn't sell. Mainly clocks-all kinds of clocks-Mom described herself as a "fool about a clock"-but also odd pieces of furniture (Colt Willow Ware, antique-Americana ca. I 880s, was a favorite), watercolor landscapes of the "Chautauqua Scene" of the turn-of-the-century, mismatched Wedgwood china, music boxes that eked out raspy, rusty melodies ("Three Blind Mice" was my favorite), mirrors that yielded of their depths subtle distortions of perspective. And every kind of practical-seeming, moldering book-B utte ly Lore, Living with Horses, Restoring Antiques for Fun S Profit, Crazy for Cats!, Forty Years of Bird- Watching: A Log, Organic Farming Made Easy, Canine Capers II, How to Improve Your Vocabulary 365 Days a Year, Home Remedies- Family Health Handbook 1957. Marianne most loved niiniatures-cetatiliC clocks with delicately painted faces and almost inaudible chimes, porcelain dolls, a Gothic Revival dollhouse, glass paperweights and figurines. Patrick preferred maps, an Atlas world globe (copyright 1938), isolated volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica and Informatio
n Please!; a carved ivory chess set missing only a few pieces, a magnifying glass, a beautifully carved, now paintless wooden mallard decoy, an intermittently functioning battery-operated radio. In his tower room, over the years, dozens of previous items came and went, for Patrick was both hard to please and fickle, his Pinch-instinct was as much to reject as to accept, and by the time he left for Cornell only a few "treasures" remained-a tall cherrywood chest of drawers, the robin's-egg blue wicker stool (of a set scattered through the house, Mom had painted) For a long time "The Huntsman" hung on Patrick's wall beside his desk and when, his senior year in high school, he removed it, he didn't discard it but put it away in a closet. He'd outgrown it, but wasn't ready to part with it.

  "The Huntsman" was a reproduction of a woodcut measuring about twelve inches by fifteen, in a cracked wooden frame, a real bargain as Mom claimed-only $2.99! It was intricately drawn, striking in its details, seeming very real. Now, I'd guess that the unknown artist had been influenced by D?rer. There was the same sort of high-voltage intensity, nervous concentration. The huntsman and his prey drew the eye like a narrative about to explode into action, not just a static picture to hang on a waIl. Patrick wasn't like Mike, had no interest in owning a gun, but he became fascinated by the youthful figure of the huntsrnan on a rocky promontory, aiming his rifle at a mountain ram in the near distance, Of] a facing promontory. The drawing had been executed in the instant before the huntsman pulled the trigger-so it seemed. But was the huntsman really going to shoot? Or, just possibly, was he contemplating the handsome animal, about to change his mind and lower the rifle? Don't shoot! you wanted to shout. It was that kind of drawing: the more you studied it, as Patrick did, frowning distracted from his homework, the more like a riddle it became. The young hunter was blond, beardless, hatless, in plain clothing of a bygone era; the mountain ram was a magnificent beast with curly black wool, remarkable curling horns, a high-held head. Both huntsman and ram were similarly depicted- fastidiously drawn, in approximately the same posture. The artist surely intended them to be twins of a kind. Both were heroic figures, very male. No don't shoot! you wanted to shout. But the strain was so palpable, almost more than you could bear.

  Yet there was more, much more to see in "The Huntsman." The sky was lightly marbled with cloud. Mountain peaks (Alps?) were ringed with shreds of cloud. In the intricately rendered foreground was a woodland scene, a reflecting pool and tall rushes, grasses, ferns. If you looked really closely (as Patrick pointed out to me) you could see, in the left, lower corner, unnoticed by the huntsman, a crouching hare. And this hare too was so meticulously drawn, so alive-you'd start to wonder was that the artist's point, somehow, the hidden quivering unguessed-at life, which required patience and shrewdness to observe, wasn't being seen, at all?

  As soon as he'd discovered "The Huntsman" amid Mom's things, Patrick knew he had to have it. He asked Mom what it was and Mom said as far as she knew it was German-"All these things seem to be German." She examined the woodcut front and back. Probably just a cheap mass-reproduced item, somewhere between real art and kitsch, but Mom would never denigrate anything she'd brought home. Patrick used his magnifying glass to discover the date 1879, numerals fine as hairs, in the grassy foreground.

  To him, "The Huntsman" was real art.

  Or, maybe, something more.

  It was after Marianne's Visit to Ithaca, in April 1978, Patrick began to think of the woodcut. He was sure he hadn't thought of it in a long time.

  In that way you recall, suddenly, sha-ly, in daylight, a trace of a dream of the previous night-bUt even as you recall it, it be-ns to fade.

  Patrick didn't even know where "The Huntsman" was, he was sure-stored away somewhere at home. In a closet, in the attic. Or had he taken it out to Mom's antique shop, and given it back to her? He didn't think so. But he wasn't sure.

  Romantic-cornY Of course it was kitsch. Noble figures silhouetted against the sky. The young German-blond huntsmafl, the handsome black ram. A young male as hunter, warrior, killer. No wonder the woodcut thrilled, even if you rejected hunting as an atavistic practice, a remnant of primitive behavior, cruel, contemptible. in contemporary terms impractical. Even if you dreaded the trigger being pulled, wanted the ram to wake from his trance and bound suddenly away, to safety.

  Patrick sat at his desk and gazed out the window into a space he could not name that filled with a luminous tawny--goldefl light. On Cook Street were new_budding trees, fragrant and haiy with pollen. He was here, in Ithaca, in his new life; also, so strangely, he was there-the place he could not name.

  Am I coded, too, to hunt? Kill? Is that my inheritance, male Horno sapiens?

  He laughed aloud_"Bullshit." He was twenty years old, not eleven. No longer living at High Point Farm and would never live there again.

  PLASTICA

  W hy?-he'd hoped to be more normal.

  What passed for normal in his generation. In America, in the late l970s.

  It was an experiment, of a kind. An immersion in normal.

  When Patrick called me to tell me what he was planning, in that way of his you couldn't judge Is he serious? is he kidding? at first I couldn't believe it- Wondered if it was some weird Pinch-joke. Not that Pinch bothered to joke with me much anymore, hardly took time to call home at all. Now he was a junior at Cornell and I was a sixteen-year-old high school sophomore in Mt. Ephraim. (This was in October 1978. We-Dad, Mom, and I-had seen almost nothing of Patrick over the summer. We hadn't yet moved from High Point Farm, nor were even planning any such desperate move, that I knew. Sure I was scared, selling the house nught come next. All but four acres of the farm had been sold or long-leased and most of the cows sold and only my horse Clover remained of the horses we'd loved and still Mulvaney Roofing's profits were in decline. But what my parents were planning, worriedly in secret, I didn't know.)

  So Patrick called to say, "Guess what, Ranger: I'm going to a rock concert next Friday. First time ever." And I laughed, "Come on, P.J.! You're kidding"

  "No. I'm dead serious."

  Asked if I'd ever heard of a band called "Plastica" and I told him sure eveiybody's heard of Plastica-"But you aren't going to like the sound." I shook my head imagining my snobbish brother screwing up his face as the Plastica sound washed over him, cringing in his seat until he couldn't stand it any longer and had to escape, hands over his ears. I laughed saying, "Well-good luck." Patrick didn't like me laughing, I guess, he got angry saying, "It's an experiment, I'm serious-the hell with you." And hangs up. Like that!

  Now think: If he hadn't gone to that rock concert, !f he hadn't seen who he thought he saw. All that followed from that night, my brother's desperate criminal behavior, and my complicity, would never have occurred.

  I believe this.

  But on October 25, 1978, Patrick Mulvaney went to hear the rock group Plastica perform on the Cornell campus, to a clamorous sellout crowd of six thousand. Many of the fans were drunk, or high, or both, and Patrick, too, was mildly drunk, beer-belching and grimly determined to have a good time.

  For that was, of all things, normal: the wish of a young healthy male to have a good time amid a seething, writhing, ecstatic hive of specimens like himself.

  In the adaptation of species to environment it is normal that survives, passes on DNA to the next generation.

  Normal thrives. Normal enters heaven.

  Certain obsessive thoughts and dreams, these past several months were beginning to frighten Patrick, and even distract him from his work. Maybe that was it: needing to be normal.

  Not just guilt about Marianne. Though he felt guilt, plenty of guilt, about Marianne.

  A few weeks ago, a girl Patrick had liked, and admired, had informed him he was "icy-cold." At first he'd been actually flattered. Somewhat hurt but flattered, his maleness flattered. But later, of course when he thought about it, and he thought a good deal about it, not so flattered. That's just Patrick's way.

  Back home he'd rather enjoyed his reputation: the Mulvaney who wasn'
t somehow a Muh'aney, exactly. But now, he wasn't always so sure.

  The young woman's name was Arlette and she was three years older than Patrick, a Ph.D. graduate student in biology whom he re- spected as much as anyone he knew and surely (he inwardly protested) had not wished to insult. Had not wished to hurt or disappoint. Seeing now to his chagrin, in the biology building, in the library, often on the street, her quickly averted gaze, her stiffened profile. Don't speak to me. Please don't call out my name. Had Arlette begun to lovc him, and he'd misunderstood? Or had he not wanted to understand? Away from her he would begin to feel attracted to her, too-or maybe to the idea of her. No, Patrick believed he wanted her. If only there could be ease, laughter between them and not such self-consciousness! Touching her, Patrick was sufluised with feelings of tenderness, anxiety-thinking always of Marianne, Marianne's violated injured body. He didn't want to hurt any girl, did he?-nevcr. But how did you touch, how did you make love, without the possibility of-hurt?