Joyce Carol Oates - We Were The Mulvaneys

by We Were The Mulvaneys(lit)

  And empties his glass of beer in Judge Gerald Kirkland's face.

  REVERSE PRAYER

  Ineed your help,Judd.

  Or possibly he said I need help, Judd.

  The words ran through me like an electric current! No one had ever uttered such words to me in earnest. Until you have heard such uttered to you by someone you love, and are bound to by ties of blood and memory, you can't know how powerful, how thrilling they are.

  Help I need help. Your help,Judd.

  Always when Patrick called home it was to tell us, inform us, of nothing. His life in Ithaca was private, and we weren't to inquire. Almost shyly Mom would ask if Patrick might be coming home to visit sometime soon? or when? and Dad had learned to be as polite and impersonal to Patrick as Patrick was to him. If there was something Patrick wanted us to know, he might mention it just before hanging up, as an afterthought: he'd been awarded a summer research grant, he'd made another 4.0 grade average, he was just recovering from an attack of winter flu. If you asked Patrick a direct question, he'd nimbly sidestep; murmur something you couldn't quite hear, maybe yes, maybe no, maybe undecided.

  I'd about reconciled myself- no brothers.

  Where once I'd had two big brothers, now none.

  Thinking I don't particularly like Pinch, anyway. 77w hell with Pinch.

  Where Morn used to proudly tack up newspaper clippings of good-looking "Mule" Mulvaney the star fullback and his Mt. Ephrairn

  Rams teammates, and, for a while, so long ago it seemed like another lifetime now, where the obituary of Private First Class Dwight David Duncan killed in action, in the sewice of his country had been prominent, on the cork bulletin board in the kitchen, now she tacked up newspaper clippings of Patrick. Mom was a friend of "Tweet" Philco, a Mt. Ephraim woman who composed the regional news section of the Mt. Ephraim Patriot-Ledger, the part of the paper given over to items about local engagements and marriages and births and deaths, retirements, anniversary celebrations and reunions, students' activities and honors, athletes' victories, scholarships, prizes, visits abroad-any news however trivial or ephemeral that was suitable for these much-scrutinized pages which, like such pages in all small-town newspapers, constitute a sort of conmiumty family album. Naturally, Mom passed on to "Tweet" every particle of good news pertaining to her son Patrick who'd gone to Cornell and was so clearly excelling in his difficult and ambitious field of study. You'd have thought, seeing Mom's bulletin board, that Patrick was her 1E-vorite child-maybe her only child. The photo of Patrick that was used repeatedly in the Patriot-Ledger was from his high school yearbook, and this-a stiffly posed, faintly smiling Patrick, hair unnaturally combed back from his forehead-glowered over that corner of the bulletin board.

  It wasn't often that Patrick spoke with me on the phone but when he did he'd usually talk in a light, bantering, slightly distracted way, calling me Ranger or kid, but as if his mind was on something else. Maybe I'd call him P.J. It wasn't up to me to break through to anything deeper. If I wanted to ask about Marianne, had he spoken with her recently, had he seen her, I'd feel shy about bringing up the subject. I'd have to wait for the right moment and maybe the moment wouldn't come.

  This time, though, when Patrick called, and it was late, after 11 P.M. of a weekday, I picked up the phone on the first ring (just happened to be downstairs, in the family rooni switching through TV channels, volume low so Mom upstairs in bed wouldn't hear) and right away he was serious, none of the Pinch-crap. First thing he asked was, `D'you think anyone else is on the line?" and I'm surprised as hell, I say, "What? ft7io?"-because it could only be Mom or Dad, as far as Patrick would know. (He couldn't have known that Dad was in Marsena on business, staying the night.) So right away Patrick backs off a little, saying he just wanted to be sure. And there's this beat or two, just silence; I'm holding the receiver to my ear not hearing a thing. I wonder if he's hung up. "Patrick? Is something wrong?"

  His voice comes low and mean, like he's angry with me. "There's lots of things wrong."

  "You mean-about Dad?"

  This is a week after Dad tossed his beer into the judge's face. In front of twelve witnesses in the Yankee Doodle Tap Room of the Mt. Ephraim Country Club. And he'd been arrested, and taken to Mt. Ephraim police headquarters, and booked for assault and disorderly conduct and resisting arrest (there'd been quite a struggle when police officers came to pick him up). And District Judge Gerald Kirkland isn't going to drop the charges because he's angry as hell at my father and we don't know if Dad will be going to jail (he could be put away as long as two years); or if he'll get a suspended sentence and a fine; and if it's a fine, how much. The Monday morning after the arrest there was delivered to Michael Mulvaney Sr. at High Point Farm a certified letter containing a formal notification from the Mt. Ephraim Country Club, signed by each of the Club's twenty trustees, revoking his niembership and by extension "all rights and privileges" of said membership as had been enjoyed by the family of Michael Mulvaney Sr.

  The expelled member's annual dues of six hundred dollars, paid in fill for 1978-79, were returned to him in frill, in the same envelope.

  As Mom said bitterly, not once but many times What the hell do we care!

  Now Patrick says these words that shake me up: "I need your help, Judd."

  It isn't just the word help that's such a surprise, coming from my brother. It's my name Judd, my real nanle and not Ranger, or kid; as if, serious for once, he's had to break the fanmily code. As if, in this instant, we're equals.

  I'm cautious, I wonder if I've heard right. "What kind of help, Patrick?"

  He sounds angry, as if I should know. "Executing justice! Taking care of-you know: Lundt. Zachary Lundt. I mean-I'll do it." Patrick speaks carefully but his words seem disconnected, as if he's been drinking. It's the way Dad talks when he's been drinking if he talks to us at all. "I'll be the one. But I need your help. Judd?"

  "Y-Yes?"

  "Dad's still got his guns?"

  "His guns?"

  "Or Mike? That.22 of Mike's? Locked in the cabinet-you know?"

  I'm holding the phone receiver and I'm starting to sweat. Sick with fear and excitement.

  Patrick's saying, "The.22? Could you get it?"

  "Get it-?"

  "For Christ's sake, Judd, you sound like a parrot." Patrick laughs. It's obvious now, and this scares mne as much as what he's been saying, that he has been drinking. "Oh, shit. Never mind."

  "Patrick, wait-"

  "Forget I called! It's the wrong goddamn time. It's-" There's a sound like he's dropped the phone receiver, he's scrambling to pick it up again. "-not the right time, yet. Fuck it."

  Next I know he's hung up. And I'mn sitting there on the sofa staring at a corner of the ceiling. My brain numb and empty of all thought as if I've been hit over the head with a sledgehammer.

  Three days later, Patrick calls again.

  Around suppertime, anyway what used to be suppertime at High Point Farm. But now if it's just Mom and me not knowing for sure when Dad might show up we don't exactly sit down at the table as in the old days because Mom says it makes us nervous, as Mom says it's just as easy to eat standing up or somewhere not the kitchen at all. This is about 6:30 P.M. and the phone rings and Mom answers quick and worried as she does when Dad's out but-it's Patrick!-and I hear her talking with him-talking and laughing-for ten, fifteen minutes! Trying not to eavesdrop, hanging around the kitchen with the dogs and cats nudging their heads against my legs and it's amazing to me how Morn and Patrick seem to be talking, Mom so relaxed telling Patrick about her latest plans for "expanding" High Point Antiques so that she can bring in serious income, now that Dad is negotiating to sell his property in Mt. Ephraim and "relocate" the business in Marsena and of course they'd be selling the farm-"relocating"-maybe Patrick had heard of the Marsena Antique & Flea Market at the fairgrounds there, every weekend in good weather? one of the oldest and largest markets in the Valley? antique dealers and well-to-do customers come from as far away as Rochester, Port
Oriskany, Buffalo? And- I can't believe I'm hearing Mom utter such words selling the farm in a rapid stream of words as if they were of no more significance than the other words and all words sheerly air, gesture. As if selling the farm is but the crude expediency for the acquisition of a leased booth at the Marsena Antique & Flea Market. As if selling the farm is already past tense, a kind of history not to be questioned.

  When Dad was arrested, booked and arraigned, the PatriotLedger published a picture of him above the headline HIGH POINT FARM REsmDENT ARRESTED FOR " ASSAULT" AT COUNTRY CLUB. The article did not appear in the regional news section of the paper but prominently on the front page. Dad's photo was from the paper's file, I guess, showing him in suit and tie at some awards ceremony, the Chamber of Commerce or the Tuscarora Club, mnaybe ten years ago. He looked good, he looked handsome and happy though not smiling broadly, the camera's flash caught in his eyes in that weird way like light reflecting in an animal's eyes in the dark. This, Mom didn't clip and tack up on the bulletin board.

  I'd sent a copy to Patrick, at Cornell. Figuring he'd like to know.

  So there's Morn chattering about her plans. I'd run away to hide in one of the barns except Mom darts after me, grabs my shirt collar like a mnom on TV. Her face is flushed, eyes bright as neon. "Oh, Ranger! Say hello to P.J.!"

  And Patrick says to me, sort of quick and breezy, "So how's it going, kid?" and I shrug as if he can see me, I'm blinking tears out of my eyes I feel so rotten, "O.K., I guess," and Patrick says, "It's really bad there? like Mom says? they're going to sell the farm? you think so?" and I mumble something maybe yes, maybe no, and Patrick says, "The other night, Judd, what I said-" and there's a pause and I'm waiting for him to say forget it please, that was crazy talk but instead I hear him saying, "-I meant it, I'm going to do it, execute justice. I don't know when but-sometime. And I need you, O.K.?" and I'm trying to get my breath, trying to smile, act normal, since Mom's close by at the sink whistling under her breath, "Sure, Patrick. Any time." And Patrick says in his low anxious voice, "Judd, you're the only person I can trust in the world." And I'm saying, stammering, "Well-that's good." And Patrick says, "I just need to get in focus about it. I'm not ready right now. My mind is-not ready, right now." And I say, that sick feeling in my gut, scared but excited, trembling, "O.K., Patrick. I'm your man."

  After we hang up Morn says, wiping at her eyes, "Wasn't that nice of your brother to call, Judd! So sweet, and thoughtful. He doesn't know I've been willing him to call all week, in my thoughts-sending him little messages sort of daring him not to call. Have you ever tried that, Judd? It's like prayer in reverse And it works."

  THE ACCOMPLICE

  In this way I became, at the age of sixteen, a sophomore in high school, an accomplice to my brother Patrick's premeditated crime. I was what you'd call an accessory before the fact and an accessory after the fact. I was what you'd call a co-conspirator. I became an accomplice not at the time of our initial conversation, nor at the time of the second, when Patrick confided in me that I was the only person in the world he could trust!-but in the interim between the conversations. In a trance of several days, day and night. Thinking Whatever he wants I'll do it. If he wants me to pull the trigger myself I'll do it.

  I believed I'd always known that Zachary Lundt would have to be punished. I'd thought it would happen the way lightning strikes, that someone would do it-my father, or Mike Jr. I hadn't thought that Patrick would do it, or that I would be involved. Me, Judd! But as soon as Patrick confided in me, I understood that Patrick was the only Mulvaney capable of executing justice in the way it required execution. Not as a sudden, impulsive act of violence, like wildfire springing up to consume us all, but as a coolly premeditated act from which the perpetrator would walk away unscathed. For nothing less than perfect would satisf-, Patrick.

  There wasn't an hour in all the hours to come, between my decision in early December 1978 and the "execution" itself in March 1979 that I once thought of not helping Patrick; of backing out, telling him I'd changed my mind, I was scared, or disapproving. I thought It will be dangerous! I thought We could both be hurt! But I never thought No I can't do it, I won't.

  My life away from High Point Farm was the dream and my life at High Point Farm and in my thoughts was the real life.

  Like, even now, so many years later, I'm at my place of work- in this space that's designated mine--and I'll glance up, I've maybe forgotten the time if I've been working late, past dark-and I think about going home-home: to High Point Fann

  At Mt. Ephraim High, Judd Mulvaney was a quiet, skinny kid with a siy sense of humor. Already, as a sophomore, a co-editor of the school newspaper and features editor of the yearbook. Possibly good enough for the junior varsity basketball team but he didn't try out-told the coach he had too many chores to do at home, which was true. His grades were high in some subjects (English, history) and about average in others (math, science). A habit of drifting off at lunchtime, not eating in the cafeteria and maybe not eating at all. A habit of frowning in class, running his fingers over hisjaws that were broken out in dull reddened bumps. Brown hair, mud-brown eyes. I guess I wasn't bad-looking for my age but I shrank from being seen. I turned down invitations to parties in town figuring my classmates, especially the girls, weren't serious-why bother with me? At the same time I was goddamned vain, my heart pounded in rage I wasn't more special, as I deserved. Judson Andrew Mulvaney.

  In the foyer of the high school, in the big glass trophy case that's like a church altar, there was the photograph, still, of "Mule" Mulvaney and his padded-jersey teammates, Tri-County Football Champions 1972. Every one of my teachers remembered Patrick, for sure, and wore inc out asking after him. ("Most brilliant kid I ever taught," Mr. Farolino was forever saying, with a droll shake of his head. "He could be a real pain in the rear, though!")

  If my teachers remembered Marianne, they didn't ask after her.

  Nor did they ask after Dad and Morn as they'd once done. After Dad's arrest, and the hearing, and the two-year "probation," and a fine of fifteen hundred dollars, and all the stuff in the local papers- not a word. After Mom resigned her P.T.A. office and stopped coming to meetings-not a word.

  So I'd want to scream at them. Damn you all! 1)on't you pity us.

  We're the Muivaneys.

  It was true, High Point Farm would have to be sold.

  Except: at what price? Who would buy? To pay off Dad's debts and keep Mulvaney Roofing afloat, my parents had been selling the property piecemeal, only four acres remained. The house, which Mom spoke of as a "historic monument," and the outbuildings, most of which needed repair.

  On a farm, everything needs repair continuously. Buildings, machines, orchards, fences. You can calculate the health of a fanri by its fences. When things start to go bad, fences are the first to show it.

  The days were long gone, when Mom would organize a "scout team" of us kids, to tramp the fields checking out the fences, repairing what we could. What we couldn't, Dad would repair. And what Dad couldn't, he'd have done by someone who could.

  Now, even the front split-rail fence bordering High Point Farm was falling down in sections. It hadn't been white in years. More the color of damp moldering newsprint, overgrown in a tangle of briars and vines.

  The house that was so beautiful in our eyes Wasn't beautiful really. The shutters had begun to sag, the slate roofs needed repair. The pale lavender color Mom loved so wasn't practical for our climate and faded after two or three years. It must have been at least five years since the house had been painted so Mom fretted: how could we hope to sell the house for a decent price if it looked bad on the outside? On the other hand, why spend money and time repairing a house you won't be living in much longer? Could we really afford fifteen to twenty gallons of expensive oil-base paint, the kind required for old, dry wood? And the labor? (Long gone too were the days when Dad would recruit his crew of Mulvaney housepainters, Mike, Patrick, me, and Dad our foreman, and devote six weeks in the summer to radical home i
mprovement.) The orchards needed pruning, the ponds needed dredging. Every one of the farm machines had something wrong with it. The local men Dad hired to help out were unreliable if not dishonest, pilfering hand tools, buckets of grain and seed, even liens' eggs Out of the coop. (Morn swore she'd caught old Zimmerman with broken eggs in his overall pockets, yolks seeping through the denim. Mom said, You can't trust these men, don't leave me alone with these men, they're drinkers, they're wife-beaters, I'm terrified of them. Which wasn't like Corinne Mulvaney who'd never been afraid of anyone in the past, laughed at the notion of locking any door, at any time.