Joyce Carol Oates - We Were The Mulvaneys

by We Were The Mulvaneys(lit)

  "The f-future?"

  "Your future at the Co-op."

  Frightened, Marianne stared at Abelove as one might stare at a being who held all happiness, and all misery, in his hands. He was pacing restlessly, stroking and tugging at his beard. Wavy pale-blond hair to hi- thickset shoulders, grave forehead furrowed. He wore an almost-white long-sleeved shirt that appeared almost-ironed, fairly clean jeans, a leather belt and leather sandals from which his big, chunky white toes protruded-Abelove's going-to-town attire. He was huffily breathing as if he'd been pacing for some time working up words to say to Marianne. She feared his stern eyes swinging onto her, discovering too much.

  Her guilt shone in her eyes, obviously. Bruised from what Corinne called nuisance_tears-just self-pity, exhausting and doing not a bit of good to another person Her hair that had been combed and shining the previous day was tufts and snarls this morning like thistles sprouting from her head. Her skin was so tight across her face it ached. What did Abelove see? Marianne had thrown on clothes that morning without glancing at them-her usual slacks, a paint-stained T-shirt, gray-frayed sneakers.

  "I need to know I can trust you, Marianne. That's the main thing."

  "Oh, but-"

  "Are you in love with him?"

  "-Him?"

  "Hewie Miner. Are you in love with him?"

  Marianne was so surprised, she couldn't think how to reply. In love? In love? I'm in love with you!

  Seeing Marianne's look of astonishment, her shrinking away like a frightened child, Abelove quickly changed the subject. In a gentler voice saying, "I'd been thinking of inviting you to share more responsibility with me, Marianne. To be-well, not just my personal assistant, like Birk, but someone more trusted. `Associate director'- a new post." Through a roaring in her ears Marianne heard this man she so admired speak of her as if she were important: laying out words in his lecturer's way of deliberation and purpose you could almost see and would never dream of questioning, let alone contradicting. "You would have access to the Co-op's accounts, Marianne-as I do. You would have authority to make out checks, and to cash them. To bargain with our distributors. To negotiate contracts. The contract with the college food services is up for renewal, for instance-we'll want to renegotiate some of the terms. Yes, and you could come with me to visit potential donors-we'd make an excellent team, Mariannet You're intelligent and articulate and- when you make the effort_attractive-ifPCthaps you'd wear a dress, or a skirt? Stockings and shoes and-that black straw hat?" Oh, had Abelove seen her? Had he been watching for her yesterday? Seen her early in the morning, clamping her hat to her head, hurrying to Hewie's car? "And I've been thinking the Co-op should expand now that profits are rising. You seem to have such a way with you for `expediting.' I've heard you on the phone! Our distributors ask about you! And here in the house, of course, everyone-likes you. I'd guess that everyone who has ever known you has-" Abelove paused, his voice nearly failing, "-fallen in love with you. Most of all, they-we-.trust you." Marianne was too taken by surprise, too disoriented, to do anything but stare at Abelove with a faint fixed smnile.

  Abelove hovered near, face ruddy with emotion. He spoke with the passion and purpose with which he spoke at Co-op meetings. "Our local reputation is excellent, Marianne, as you know, and it will continue to be excellent. However, we need more visibility. We need to display ourselves-a Green Isle open house, for instance. We might sponsor an arts and crafts fair and sell our products. And, maybe, hire ourselves out in work teams locally-housepainting, housecleaning, carpentry, lawn maintenance. Only think Marianne, of the rmiarkets we haven't tapped! Most of all, there's catering-weddings, anniversaries, even funeral breakfasts. We're locally famous for the high quality of our food and our congeniality. Mrs. Johanson, one of our most generous donors, mentioned to me the other night at dinner that it would be wonderfiul if the Co-op could provide food for her niece's wedding-three hundred guests. At an estimated price of ninety dollars apiece. With additional charges, we're talking of approximately thirty thousand dollars! I couldn't disappoint her, I told her yes. And now-"

  Marianne said, stunned, "Three hundred? Oh, dear-" At Abelove's urging she'd sat; on the edge of the sofa; trying to keep up with Abelove's rapid speech. She had rarely seen him so animated, such luminosity in his eyes. And he kept glancing at her in that anxious sidelong way of-was it Hewie?-that was making her even more uneasy. Abruptly, seeing Marianne's reaction, Abelove changed the subject. He began to talk of "ethical directives"-"philosophical first principles." He was no less animated, but more abstract, as if speaking not only to Marianne but through Marianne to a vast audience. "As a Harvard Ph.D. I became a neo-Malthusian but I consider myself a revisionist neo-Malthusian. I see no contradiction between the grim teachings of Maithus and the teachings of Christ. Maithus was himself a clergyman, Church ofEngland, as well as a mathematician; you know his hypothesis-there is an inevitable, deathly relationship between the quantity of food available and the number of mouths to consume it. If left unchecked, Malthus believed, popula tiorl will always increase more rapidly than the means of food production. Plagues, famines, droughts, infanticide, wars-these are the means by which population has historically stabilized. It would seem almost that God is working through `survival of the fittest'!- Nature's cruelty but the outward face of God's mathematical necessity! Basically, Maithus' gloomy hypothesis is correct; like Darwin's; the population of Earth, for instance, is expected to be a crushing six billion by the year 2000, and things have never been more perilous, more fraught with war. But Maithus for all his genius failed to conceive of mankind's cooperation in the face of such threat; oddly, he did not conceive of Christianity's basic principles put into operation, through science. My vision of the Green Isle Co-op is that it is a ml-. crocosm of the world. What works for us, can work for the worldt We are dedicated to the principle of transcending competition and struggle. AU are `fittest.' Only there must be leadership, and dedication; hard work; abrogation of self `From each what he or she can give; to each-'

  "-`as he or she requires.' " But Marianne spoke mechanically, as if not hearing her own words.

  Abelove broke off his speech and came quickly to her, and took her hands in his. Her small chill nail-bitten hands in his big warm hands. How strange it was, how abrupt to be touched like this, held! Marianne was so taken by surprise she didn't resist. In a now tremulous voice Abelove said, "Marianne, from the first I saw of you, I think I knew you were special. I never, never approach young women in the Co-op-that is a principle I've abided by since our founding, for obvious reasons. But I've been aware of you, Marianne-oh, yes! Your face, your eyes-the quietness, peace, purity! Blessed are the pure in spirit, for they shall see God. You are one of these, Marianne? Are you? I feel you've suffered."

  "1-have? I don't think-"

  "The only really good, pure person is one who has suffered with no thought of revenge, or vindication-I lack that strength, though recognize it in others. But I would never ask you how, Marianne. I would never wish to pry into your soul."

  "But-"

  Abelove leaned over Marianne, forehead furrowed, lightly beaded in sweat. His eyes were anxious. His face was mottled, in rosy splotches like something bloody reflected in water. "I think-i love you, Marianne. i_-we-inight live together?_miglit marry?" He was gripping Marianne's hands so tightly, she couldn't pull away; his earnestness held her, his certitude. You could see that, for him, saying a thing was the great effort; he could not anticipate that another might have a response, let alone one that resisted.

  Marianne was saying, almost inaudibly, "Oh, Abelove, I don't- think so."

  Abelove didn't hear. He took hold of her thin shoulders, stooped to kiss her. Abelove's warm dry kindly lips pressed against hers! Marianne pushed away, not hard, more in surprise than resistance, her eyes widened in alarm. Love? What was he saying? "-I have to be honest with you, Marianne," Abelove said quickly, "-I'm not altogether free-morally, I am-but not legally-I've been separated from a woman for years
and, yes, there are children-two, teenagers-but things are worked out fairly, I believe-and there have been other women of course-not many, but a few-never here at the Co-op, I swear-never, till now. Always I've tried to be open, honest I think, as with you, Marianne. Are you shocked? You do feel something for me anyway, don't you? The way you've looked at me sometimes- you do love me, a little?"

  Marianne stammered, "Yes, I-I guess so. I mean-"

  "You do? Oh, Marianne-"

  Squatting clumsily before her, thick-hanuned, Abelove wrapped his strong arms around Marianne and kissed her again, more passionately than before. Love! love! he loves me! In astonishment she felt the man's body warm and yearning as any creature ravenous for affection, as she herself, perhaps-Abelove so alive, so solid, compact- the authority of his manly body against hers. She might have been snapped like a twig, invaded utterly. Abelove might have parted her stiff, dry lips with his, pushed his tongue into her mouth, but Marianne managed to slip from him, quick as a cat. Breathless, apologetic, she said, "Abelove, 1-I have to leave, now. Thank you for all you've said but Felice-Marie, Amethyst are waiting for me-in the greenhouse-we have work to do-"

  Preposterous: Abelove gazing at Marianne Mulvaney with such open emotion, yearning, why was she reminded of poor Silky?

  She backed away, toward the door. Abelove followed almost humbly.

  "You do love me a little, Marianne? You said?"

  "Oh, yes," Marianne said nervously. "But right now I have to-"

  "You're not in love with Hewie? Are you sure?"

  "Am I-sure?"

  "He didn't take advantage of you yesterday, did he? You were alone together all those hours...

  "Advantage? Hewie?" Marianne was upset, incensed. `Hewie is as good and deceqt a man, Abelove, as you."

  She'd opened the door, desperate to escape before Abelove persuaded her to stay. He was saying, in a lowered voice, so that rio one could overhear, a voice that was an echo of Marianne's own most secret yearning, "Will you come back, Marianne, as soon as you can? We'll go somewhere away from here to talk-we have so much to talk about! Marianne? I love you."

  Headlong in flight, Marianne was already out of earshot. Or almost.

  Out of obscurity I came. To obscurity I can return.

  RAG-QUILT LIFE

  Who could have foreseen? Not Marianne Mulvaney herself. How, on the day following her attempted return to the Chautauqua Valley, the very day of Abelove's declaration of love for her, what Corinne had already shrewdly identified as her rag-quilt life would seriously begin.

  No one at the Green Isle Co-op would have guessed why, nor would Abelove volunteer or offer any explanation. Stricken, humiliated, bewildered as he'd been when Birk had vanished, he'd gone to look for Marianne in the late afternoon-finding only Felice-Marie in their room, baffled as well. Where is Marianne? Abelove asked, trying to keep his voice level, and Felice-Marie shook her head numbly. She didn't know! She hadn't seen Marianne all day!

  It was obvious that Marianne had packed most of her belongings, leaving behind only larger, unwieldy items (overcoat, boots, a scattering of hardcover textbooks); she'd taken her quilt, most of her paperback books, and her few clothes, apparently stuffed in a duffel b-ag. And, of course, she'd taken Muffin.

  Where had they gone, without anyone observing?

  Where had they gone, leaving no explanation or note of farewell?

  "Vanished off the face of Earth"-Abelove's words had a grimly prophetic tone.

  HARD RECKONING

  This is a hard reckoning for a son to make. I'm not sure how to begin.

  How Judd, too, went away-left my mom when she needed me. Thinking I want my own life. I'm not just Mulvaney, I'm Judd.

  How I struck my dad, and was struck by him. Struck down, on my ass on the ground is frankly how you'd put it.

  This was in Marsena, in the new place we came to live. That long wet spring 1980. I was seventeen, just transferred to the Marsena High School for the remainder of my junior year. New kid with no friends, and wanting none. Slouch-shouldered, scowling, a habit of shaking my head like a horse harassed by flies. If I smiled, which wasn't often, it was a quick come-and-gone twitch of the lips. Mom joked, sighing, "Judd, hon, you're becoming-well, some kind of uptight tic."

  Looking at me, the youngest of the Mulvaneys, all that remained of her children at home, as if looking into a mirror.

  When I say this is a hard reckoning I mean it's been like squeezing thick drops of blood from my veins. Just to set down what requires saying in some semblance of chronological order. For every statement of histonc fact like High Point Farm was Jinally sold, February 1980 or The remaining Mulvaneys, Michael, Corinne, Judd, two aging dogs and three newous cats, moved to a "split-level ranch" in a cornfield outside Marcena, New York or However many loan.c my father took out to relocate Mulvaney Roofing in Marsena, he was forced to declare bankruptcy anyway by June strikes my ear like a lie, reverberating like tin. What actually happened was so much more complicated.

  "A man gets to be the sum of his bad luck"-Dad was in the habit of saying, smiling bemused as he'd open another can of ale or, carefully so his hand wouldn't shake, pour something stronger and darker into a glass.

  Trying to sell High Point Farm when real estate in the Chautauqua Valley was what the realtors called a buyer's market, and mortgage interest rates were high-that was bad luck. And Dad with debts to pay. Taking out loans, loans to repay loans, not always telling Mom what he was doing exactly, and maybe not always knowing hiniself- trying to negotiate a partnership with a roofer-sider in Yewville that finally fell through, and another with a businessman in Marsena that dragged on for weeks and finally fell through, too-bad luck. "It's like somebody, or something, is fixing the dice against me," Dad said, with his shrugging smile meant to indicate he wasn't much surprised, only just a little curious. He'd always been, in the old days, a man of good luck.

  It was like the tragical-farcical Delta rescue mission in Iran, President Jimmy Carter's desperate jinxed attempt to free our hostages from their imprisonment in the center of Tehran under the directive of the Ayatollah Khomeini-in theory, the American military strategy might have worked, but in reality things went wrong. Badly wrong.

  Mom watched TV nonstop when the terrible news broke on April 25, 1980. Our TV in a corner of the new, unfamiliar living room, reception wavering and ghostly. She wept for the eight young American servicemen who'd died in the helicopter cr-ashes-men "chosen from all four branches of the armed services" as the Joint Cbith of Staff so meticulously stated, and she wept for ashen-faced, badly shaken Jimmy Carter who was more and more looking like an ordinary man, a decent good Christian-Caucasian-American man as out of his depth in the riptide of history as a person not knowing how to swim in a deep, rough sea. What was this but American bad luck- smashed and burrnng helicopters, rubble where triumph might have been, an officially "aborted" mission arid a rapid clumsy retreat to Egypt. Naked, exposed in the eyes of the entire world: what shame.

  Mom said, wiping her eyes, "Oh, at least Mike wasn't one of them! Oh, thank you, God, at least for that."

  Just to make the statement High Point Farm was sold-finally! doesn't give any true sense of that disjointed time in our lives that dragged on, and on, and on. There must have been thirty or forty "prospectives" who drove out to gawk at the property, in the company of a real estate agent; even more made appointments and were "no-shows." Some of the people who tramped through our house were locals with no intention to buy. You couldn't screen them out very well, the real estate agent explained to Mom. It's an open market, you've listed your house, in theory anyone can buy.

  Like selling your soul. Once you make the decision, sign the contract, you can't back out.

  Seffing High Point Farm fell to Morn mainly. She was always on the telephone, or in a frenzy of housecleaning; wildly brushing at her hair, slipping on a sweater or jacket to cover her stained shirt. She had to play "Mrs. Mulvaney"-"the lady of the house"-when at last the awaited car or
cars drove haltingly up the driveway. She had to be polite, smiling, hopeful and never, never betray the misery she felt. Never scream into these strangers' faces, "Go home! Go away- This is madness! Leave us alone!"

  No, Corinne Mulvaney was a good sport about her own bad luck. Michael Mulvaney Sr. was busy elsewhere. Not of a temperament to permit strangers to prowl through his property staring and assessing, shaking their heads at "needed repairs." To Dad, the potential buyers of the farm were "bloodsuckers" or "just plain suckers" depending on his mood.

  As for me, Judd-I tried to stay out of everyone's way. If I was doing barn chores when the real estate agent showed up with whoever, I'd hide until they were gone; hardly breathing, my forehead pressed against a bale of hay. Sometimes I'd overhear snatches of conversations not meant for my ears-Oh this is a run-down place isn't it, hut so attractive, but how much would it Cost to, but what a lot of work, oh but why would anyone in his right mind, yes but it's so beautiful out here, yes but it's so far out here, is it true the farm might be sold at auction, for bankruptcy? should we wait, until then?

  A knife blade turned in my heart. I will never, never forgive you, I thought. Not knowing who you was.