Joyce Carol Oates - We Were The Mulvaneys

by We Were The Mulvaneys(lit)

  It was then that Patrick lost his footing and fell heavily into the bog, averting his face just in time to avoid a mouthftil of mud. Unspeakable hideous filth, black muck. He gagged, he spat. By sheer strength managing to lift himself, pushing out the limb to Zachary who at last managed to close his fingers around it, weakly, then with more strength, the strength of desperation- trying to pull himself to solid ground. Patrick tugged at the limb, at Zachary, the dead weight of Zachary, imagining -irnself sinking too into the bog, as in his nightmare, as he deserved, betraying his own pledge, Patrick cursed steadily, words he wouldn't have known he knew, rolling off his tongue as if he'd been uttering them all his life, until after what seemed like a very long time but must have been less than ten minutes he was able to haul Zachary close enough to seize his hand, his arm, his shoulder and help him to firmer ground.

  "There! You bastard."

  Zachary lay senseless, choking and gagging- bringing up an acidsmelling liquid from his guts. Patrick crawled from him, got shakily to his feet. Where were his glasses? He wiped muck from his face, out of his eyes, eyelashes. He wiped muck from his hands onto grass.

  A loathsome smell covered him like a film. He was shivering in the cold, his teeth chattering. Furious as if a malicious trick had been played on him. "Lundt, you fucker! You don't deserve to live but- here you are." Patrick groped about the ground for his glasses, couldn't find them, then found them, thank God they weren't broken, he lifted them quickly to his flice and fitted the earpieces in place, pushing the glasses against the bridge of his nose.

  Now he could see again. Now he'd be all right.

  "I let you live, fucker. I could have let you die and I let you live-reinember that."

  Zachary lay motionless on the ground, breathing in shuddering gasps. He squinted up at Patrick, with that look of being blind, helpless.

  "D-Don't leave me here, please-"

  Patrick cursed, and tossed Zachary's car keys at him. He located the rifle where he'd dropped it, and the flashlight, and climbed back into the Jeep, jammed the key in the ignition and started the motor. He was boiling over with fury, stinking of muck, and in no mood to humor Zachary Lundt any longer. Let the rapist find his own way back to Mt. Ephraim-hitch a ride in the morning out on Route 58. Let the rapist invent a story to explain what had happened to him, what had so fantastically happened to him, a college boy who'd met with high school buddies for a few beers at Cobb's Corner and next morning was discovered exhausted and dazed and covered in stinking black muck staggering along Route 58 ten miles from his car left parked in a dump off Depot Street, Mt. Ephraim-or let the rapist tell the truth, if such a coward dared tell the truth.

  Quickly before pity weakened him further, Patrick backed the Jeep out of the bog, and escaped. The prospect of actually returning and helping Zachary into the Jeep and bringing him back to Depot Street to his car-no, no! He would not, would not. The experiment hadn't gone as he'd planned but it was over, outside him now. He was feeling good suddenly. He was feeling e1ated- How simple it had been after all, how easy once he'd begun. He'd known what to do and he had done it and it was done now and could not be revoked. I could have let you die and I let you live.

  He and his enemy Zachary Lundt would remember those words all their lives.

  TEARS

  There came Mom's excited voice Dad is ready to see you now, honey.

  Or, no: Morn would surely say Honey we're driving down to fetch you, just stay where you are.

  Muffin would trot excitedly into the room, hearing Marianne's happy voice. She'd snatch him up and kiss him on the nose, whiskers and all. And rush in a fluny about the room she shared with FeliceMarie preparing to leave the Green Isle Co-op (though she loved it here, she'd surely miss it-miss her friends terribly) and return to High Point Farm.

  Marianne was waiting for that call from Mom. She was waiting, and she wasn't impatient.

  It's true she was hurt. In secret. Never admitting to Mom, or certainly to Patrick over the phone. She did cry occasionally, even after so many months (how many? better not to count)-more than was healthy. Crying is nothing but a childish indulgence, crying is mostly self-pity--Marianne knew. Mom was never patient with nuisance crying as she called it. If you have hope, and faith, and enough work to keep you busy, you won't cry. So Marianne hid her tears, and believed that no one at the Co-op knew. Weeping in the kitchen amid so much commotion as she chopped onions, dozens of onions-that was a tactic. Marianne Mulvaney was always volunteering to chop onions! Sometimes too she was observed weeping while preparing bread, kneading the tough dough so energetically

  it about wore her out, so crying had some logic; and her salty tears fell into the dough, moistening it, and that was said to be why Man- anne Mulvaney's breads (her specialties were nine-grain, zucchini, yogurt-and-dill) were everyone's favorites.

  Another shrewd tactic for disguising her tears, at least Marianne believed it was a shrewd tactic, was to work out-of-doors as much as possible in cold weather. Preferably when the wind blew! Naturally, her eyes smarted from the cold and tears spilled down her cheeks- couldn't be helped. There she was, observed through a window, fu- riously raking leaves or spreading mulch in beds, in a chill autumn wind; or, more famously, the sole girl in the Co-op to volunteer for the Snow Removal Brigade, eager and energetic on bright snowglaring winter mornings shoveling the front walk and the ridiculously long curved drive with a crew of muscle-armed males. Marianne in her blue-tasseled hand-knit cap and matching blue mittens traded jokes with the boys like a sister, wisecracks and friendly insults. Her face glistened with shiny rivulets of tears even as she laughed her dimpled laugh, wiped her cheeks roughly on her mittens. Who among the Snow Removal Brigade was in love with Marianne Mulvaney, the most mysterious, elusive member of the Green Isle Coop? He, or they, watched her covertly, respectful of her shyness. What a good sport she was, even as she wept; she couldn't keep up with even the slowest of the boys but snow flew unstintingly off her shovel and they all joined to praise her-For an e-hty-nine-pounder, Marianne Mulvaney is tops. It wasn't so funny, however, one January morning when the thermometer outside the kitchen window hovered at zero degrees, and tear-rivulets froze on Marianne's frosty-pale cheeks, and two of the boys insisted she go inside with them at once to thaw her face before frostbite set in. Marianne said scomftilly, "Frostbite? That's never happened before." And, inside the house, "Frostbite? I don't feel a thing." But it was so, her tears she'd believed secret had turned to ice for all to see.

  She had no choice but to allow her friends Felice-Marie, Amethyst, Val Allan to fuss over her, as Birk and Hewie looked on, administering lukewarm water to her cheeks that were porcelainwhite and cold, gently dabbing with soaked cloths, not rubbing (rubbing could lacerate the skin! Hewie warned) but pressing, until after a few minutes blood flowed back throbbing into the capillaries and color returned to her cheeks and Marianne was all right, though wincing with pain. And embarrassment. It made her so angry! She

  :new she wasn't weak and here they were hovering over her treatng her as if she weie-

  She said, "I'm a fanner's daughter from the Chautauqua Valley -nd a teeny little snow and cold weather don't scare me."

  Though afterward, alone, she was transfixed by a sudden terrible rntentioned of course, made too niuch of her. Especially if they wothed aloud about her, and touched her. A wise voice warned If you accept kindness undeserved, even worse Will happen to you.

  How much, Marianne wondered, did Abelove know? What exactly had her mother said to him, in his office, shortly before she'd stormed out of the house, a shamefaced Judd in tow? It was believed, not very seriously of course but entertained as a possibility, that Abelove, Founder and Director of the Green Isle Co-op, knew everything there was to know about each of the members. You could only join if Abelove approved you, after an intense private conversation (not an "interview"), and though Abelove had been tactful and gentle and not at all prying with Marianne, she'd had the sense that-oh, it was silly, she didn't trul
y believe it-his greenish- gray eyes could so penetrate hers, he could read her mind.

  Once to Marianne's extreme embarrassment she succumbed to one of her crying episodes working in the greenhouse- seeding flat- of lettuce (romaine- red leaf) to be planted in early April, after tht thaw. It was work she loved, but some random comrn-ingliflg o smells, fertilizer, crumbly earth, the heat of sunshine magnified b- greenhouse glass on a filth-stiffened gardener's glove exactly liki Mom's reminded her of High Point Farm, arid she hiccuped, an wept, and laughed, and wiped at her eyes protesting she didu' know what on earth was wrong! must he an allergy- but the seizur didn't stop and didn't stop and her face grew smudgy and smeare from dirt where she wiped at it and at last Amethyst who was work ing with her slipped away to fetch Abelove who was overseeing di dumping of rich black topsoil into a bed and immediately Abelo / came rushing into the greenhouse- bristling with authority and ru- bing his hands with that air of someone eager to put things right ar confident he's the man to do it. Marianne was so ashamed, she cri& all the harder. Abelove squatted beside her, teasing, "Uh-oh. P-rn was saying, you've gotten the soil all muddy with tears," indicating ti soil in the flat which was in fi-ct dotted with moisture. "What's wror Marianne?" Abelove always took up more space than his acti physical being required. A few inches away, he'd seem to be touching you. The fine hairs of Marianne's bare arms lifted like filings to a magnet. Abelove irradiated a powem-f-l masculine heat, his somewhat ragged blond goatee and shoulder_1en-h shimmering blond hair giving off light and Marianne was dazed by his nearness, stam-. mening, "Oh, you k-know_just nothing." And Abelove, gazing at her with his greenishgray teasing eyes, said in his kindest voice, as if speaking to a small child, "Hnmijn If nothing can cause such tears, what might something someday do?"

  Which made Marianne weep all the more.

  GREEN ISLE

  She was waiting, and she was patient, but she couldn't deny even in her prayers she was hurt. It just didn't do any good to think about it. Alone in the room she shared with Felice- Mane, when Felice-Marie was away, hurt prickling her like the start of poison ivy and she'd find herself moving blindly, pacing the narrow floor, not knowing where she was or when it was only knowing the hurt whispering aloud "Don't you love rne?-I'd thought you all loved me," working up silly tears, nuisance tears as Mom called them, recalling for the ten-thousandth time the errors she'd made, one-two-three-four-five, after the prom going to that party instead of back to Tnisha's house and accepting that drink from Zachary Lundt she hadn't wanted and after that her head swirling amid giddy and-next thing she knew she and Muffin were being bundled off in Mom's station wagon and driven hundreds of miles to Aunt Ethel's melancholy little bungalow in Salamanca-"Why can't you forgive me? Why can't I come home?" But the sight of her pouty flushed face in a bureau mirror made her laugh.

  She'd hug Muffin who'd been perched atop the bureau all this while, watching her with a look of concern. "Oh, who cares? Right, Muffin? We've got work to do." At least, Marianne did: fifty-or was it sixty-hours a week at the Co-op, in the house or out-of-doors or in the store, which was thriving, in town. And studying and writing papers for her course, the single course she was taking this semester, at the college.

  Well, she'd signed up for the course, anyway. "Introduction to English Literature"-required for all teachers' ed. majors. What with one emergency at the Co-op (there was poor hair-stragglingin-her-face Val Allan desperate because she had baking duties all day, doiens of cherry tarts to prepare on order, and an exam at 8 AM, the next morning, so naturally Marianne volunteered to make the tarts though she herself had a term paper due in forty-eight hours) or another (there was Abelove's perpetually frantic assistant Birk rushing about looking for someone to help him deliver crates of fresh produce to the Pennysaver Food Mart at the Kilburn Shopping Center-something had happened to whoever was scheduled to help him, it was an emergency situation and naturally Marianne volunteered though she'd set aside a precious morning for schoolwork which was weeks behind) it didn't look promising that she'd complete -he course, let alone get a decent grade in it. Her professor had called her in for a conference, he'd expressed concern she'd missed so many lectures, warned her she'd have to get a "high, solid A" on the final just to get a C in the course, and Marianne had stared at the floor, shamefaced and tongue-tied. She wanted to say Oh but this isn't like me really. In high school I never missed any classes. I did all the work and my grades were A's and B's and I was never scolded, never. Instead she murmured a whispery apology and slunk away in disgrace.

  If Patrick knew! Well, Patrick didn't have to know.

  Patrick had such high, impossible standards. It just Wasn't realistic to expect so much of her.

  Returning sometimes to the house, to her room, in the afternoon, so tired! her head spinning! especially if it was a day spent clerking in town at the store, where the cash register's ring-ring-ringringing wore her out, having wakened at 5:30 AM, and by 5:30 P.M. exhausted, about to fall sleep on her feet, but it was a normal tiredness she supposed, a healthy tiredness, preventing her thoughts from flying off iii the wrong direction. Despite the commotion in the house at this hour of day, raised voices, footsteps pounding the stairs, telephone ringing and dog barking, Marianne would gather up Muffin and slip beneath her quilt on her bed, curl up luxuriantly to sleep, twenty minutes was all she required, or only ten. Only five! Cradling the soft-furred lanky cat in her arms and pressing her cheek against his side so that his deep resonant purr entered her being, thrummed along her nerves and quieted them- Within seconds she was deeply and dreanilessly asleep.

  Avidly Marianne read Charlotte Bront%. Not just the assigned Jane Eyre which she'd already read in high school, which she loved, and which made her cry, but Viflette as well-what an unexpected heroine, the passionately chaste Lucy Snowe. And a collection of Charlotte Bront%'s letters. Out of which she copied,

  Out of obscurity I canie-to obscurity I can easily icturn.

  Marianne was so happy at the Green Isle Co-op, where every-one liked and respected her, maybe sometimes took advantage of her trusting nature but nonetheless respected her__--sonletime5 she felt guilty about wanting in secret to go home.

  Not that she ever uttered the word home aloud. She gathered that certain of her friends thought it strange that, virtually alone among them, Marianne was the one who never, at holidays and even in the summer, went home. Sometimes only two or three Green Isle members remained in the house during recess, and Marianne was always among them. But they'd learned not to ask. "Oh, Marianne, aren't you going home?"-fOr Christmas, Easter, whatever. Marianne knew, to her embarrassment, that they talked behind her back; the last time the question was asked, by a girl named Beatie, stuffing clothes into a suitcase at the start of Christmas recess, Beatie clamped her hand over her mouth and stared at Marianne in horror, like a child who has uttered a forbidden word aloud. "Oh, sorry-excuse me, Marianne."

  Marianne laughed, though a needle was turning in her heart.

  "I guess I'm not going home right now, I have so much work to do here."

  It was a gracious answer. She hoped Beatie would relay it to any others who were curious about her.

  Most of the Co-op members, male and female, from the youngest who was eighteen to the eldest who was in his thirties, complained of home. It was fashionable among the Kilburn College students gencraIly- Marianne noted, to complain of home, family. Her professors made witty jokes about "domestic American -j-u-s"_Thai1ksg-hig, Christmas gift-giving- family summer vacatioflsin such knowing ways, everyone in class laughed; or almost everyone. Marianne perceived that to be without a family in America is to be deprived not just of that family but of an entire arsenal of allusive material as cohesive as algae covering a pond.

  There was her roommate Felice-Marie, who wore day following day the same shapeless dungarees, Green Isle sweatshirt, and combat boots-the daughter of an Amherst, New York physician, and very well-to-do. Felice-Marie made Marianne swear to secrecy the fact that her mother insisted upon
giving her ridiculous Laura Ashley dresses, cashmere sweater sets-"Nobody in the real world wears sweater sets! In 1979!" There was pretty, sarcastic Amethyst who was majoring in women's physical education despite her mother's certainty she'd never find a husband in such a restricted field-"She worries I'll become a lesbian, can't bring herself to utter the word but that's what she means, we just quarrel all the time and it wears me out!" There was Val Allan whose parents embarrassed her because they were such old parents, having had her in middle age, and they were forever turning up in Kilburn hoping to take her out to dinner, or to buy a new coat-"It's so pathetic, I could cry, Mother and Daddy can't accept I've sloughed off my bourgeois ways forever, I practically have to scream at them and then they don't hear!" There was Birk, the bundle of nerves, funny-frazzled Birk who'd been drifting through Kilburn College for eight or nine years, whose father was a lieutenant colonel in the New York State National Guard and a "neo-Nazi disciplinarian." There was Geib whose mother was a superintendent of schools in Albany-another "neo-Nazi disciplinarian." Jill, Flann, Dwyer, Smith-all had homes, families that provoked curled lips, derisive smirks and eye-rollings, or pitying headshakes and the munnured sigh, "That generation, they still believe in Vietnam for God's sake it's hopeless."