Joyce Carol Oates - We Were The Mulvaneys

by We Were The Mulvaneys(lit)

  I said, "You have? What?"

  Katya bit her lower lip. Like a child who has blundered into inviting more attention than she'd wished.

  Patrick just laughed. "Go on, Katya, tell him. What?"

  Amnazing how the Pinch-crease had vanished from between Patrick's eyebrows, as if it had never been. My brother was more boyish at the age of thirty-five than he'd been at fifteen.

  "Well-" Katya smiled at me hesitantly, and frowned, and touched one of her delicate earlobes where a tiny gold stud gleamed, "-he has said, you are a good brother. He loves you very much."

  I laughed, embarrassed. "Well."

  Imnpossible to say Patrick hey: I love you.

  Patrick I'm angry as hell at you, I'll neverforgive you for abandoning us hut now you're back, now I've seen you and touched you I guess I love you again, so that's it,

  Patrick laughed, and let his hand fall on my shoulder. Brotherly, affectionate. As if I'd spoken aloud.

  Now he'd come back to us, it was as if that old Patrick, and those old sorrows, had never been.

  I saw how powerfully, it must have been erotically, passionate my brother and the young Russian-born woman were; even as they spoke with others, their eyes drifted back onto each other. Their favored stance was side by side, Patrick's arm around Katya's slender waist and her fingers hooked in companionable intimnacy in the belt of his khaki shorts. Was I jealous, a little? Envious? At supper, Katya sat between Patrick and Marianne and across from me; I kept stealing glances at her, so quiet amid the noisy gathering she might almost have been overlooked. She and Patrick nudged against each other unconsciously, bare arms touching, caressing. Without the Greek sailor cap, Katya looked even younger. She must have been no mnore than twemiry-five or -six. Her black hair was wound in several long thin braids around her head, wisps of hair springing from them like tiny question marks. Around her neck were several thin gold chains. I wondered how lomig she and Patrick had been together, how they'd met. How unexpected, my brother in love.

  Katya saw mne looking at her, and smiled shyly. "Judd? Your former house?-'High Point Farm'? I hope to see it tomorrow, Patrick says we must go. To look."

  "Well, it's changed. It isn't the same now."

  "Not the samne?"

  "The house has been painted white. The front yard has been `landscaped.' Some of the big old oaks are down."

  Patrick overheard, and said, "You've been back, Judd?"

  "Not really." I was embarrassed, speaking with such bitterness. "I've driven by a few times, parked on the road. But miot recently."

  "What about Mom?"

  We looked to the head of the table where Mom was lifting a sleep-dazed Molly Ellen in her arms. The baby's mouth gleamed smilingly with wet and her bare feet paddled like a frog's. Morn's face was suffused with emotion, tenderness. Lanky rawboned Whistle had gone, and who had taken her place?-a silvery-haired woman of sixty-two with a ravaged throat but a surprisingly smooth face for one who'd spent so much time outdoors with no care for outward appearances.

  "No."

  "She hasn't tried to niake friends with the new owners?"

  "Mom has better things to do."

  For a while then Patrick brooded in silence. I guessed he might want to change the subject, as Mike shrank visibly from speaking of the farm, why rake over that old hurt, and had never taken Vicky and his children anywhere near it. Nor had Marianne, of course- oh, the Wests were always too busy! Whit was a dynamo of a man, living in present time.

  I thought I would change the subject, and asked Katya how she and Patrick had met. Katya colored pleasurably, for this was a good memory, and said, in her lightly accented English, what sounded like, "At a hunger strike." I cupped my hand to my ear, not certain I'd heard correctly. "A-what?" Katya laughed at the expression on my face, and said, "Yes, a hunger strike, in Oakland." Patrick said, "It was more than just a hunger strike, it was an active demonstration, too. The Berkeley Peace Coalition was demonstrating to protest Oakland police brutality against ethnic minorities, and some of us were arrested for blocking the street in front of police headquarters and that's how Katya and I met. In the back of a van." Patrick spoke so matter-of-factly, I responded in kind, to show how I took such bizarre information in stride, "Well, was the strike effective?" and Patrick smniled at me, yet with his old Pinch hauteur, a just perceptible curl of the upper lip just so you'd know what the perimeters of his new tolerance were, "About as effective as you'd expect any feeble human action to be in this galaxy that's a river of blind matter rushing at four hundred miles per second toward the Hydra-CentaurUs supercluster of galaxies."

  Katya winced, and bit her lower lip, her gaze plummeting. As if in embarrassment of me, that I should ask Patrick such a question.

  "Oh! Oh, Momnmy!"-it was little Willy, that excitable child. One of Mom's and Sable's cats, a sleek sand-colored tomn named Tiger, had darted brazenly along the table to seize in his jaws Willy's part-eaten hamburger where it lay on a paper plate, and leapt with it to the ground before anyone could prevemit him. Willy, who of all children you'd expect to be used to animals, tugged at his mother and cried, "Oh, Mommy, the bad kitty!" Marianne laughed, and kissed his forehead, and said, "Now, honey, you know better-no kitties are bad. And you weren't going to finish that, anyway."

  So whatever we'd been discussing, almost heatedly, Patrick, Katya, and Judd, was deflected, and dropped.

  Whit was saying, "Darwin leaves too many crucial questions unresolved. Of course I respect his genius, and I understand the magmiltude of his contribution to knowledge, but his isn't a concise, coherent theory like Einstein's that can be tested, confirmed or refuted. It's pure abstraction, ultimately," and Patrick said, with an air of incredulity, "Abstraction? The theory is based upon minute observations!" and Whit said, waving a forefinger, "But the minutiae of a thousand thousand observations fail to add up to a single demonstrable equation," and Patrick, beginning to become impatient, protested, "Science can't be held to a single paradigm. `science' can be many points of perspective," and Whit said, more excitedly, the moon-shaped scar in his forehead squinching with intensity like a third eye, "Hell it can't! It should!" and Patrick said, leaning forward on his elbows, glasses winking in the candlelight, "It wasn't until Darwin that a changing, `evolving' theory of history was seriously conceived, before Darwin all of history was frozen, the species were frozen, this `Mind precedes Being' superstition, God precedes His creation, centuries of Platonic nonsense," and Whit said excitedly, "So they were deluded! So they were wrong about almost everything! So time isn't cyclical so far as we can measure it! That doesn't mean there isn't any guiding intelligence behind the forms of nature, that the extraordinary forms we discover in nature aren't purposeful," and Patrick said, excitedly too, "Look, there's plenty of disorder, too, in nature," and Whit said, laughing, glancing about to see how his listeners were appreciating his performance, "Tell me about it, kid!- I'm `Dr. West,' I'm the poor besieged sucker who knows about disorder," and Patrick said, "Where there's design there is purpose, but how did the purpose arise?-out of accident, millions of advantageous accidents over millions of years," and Whit said, "Oh, hell. I know that's Darwinian sacred script but I happen to subscribe to Fred Hoyle's belief-you know who Hoyle is, the maverick Brit scientist?-'I'd as easily believe that a 747 jet was assembled out of a junk.yard by a passing tornado as that "natural selection" can account for a single specimen in nature,' " and Patrick said, exasperated, running his hands through his shaggy hair that looked now wild, windswept, "Whit, come on. That's just wishful thinking," and Whit grinned, sliding an arni around Patrick's shoulders and giving his hair a shake, as if the two of them were old pals, brothers-in-law who'd been quarrelling in this vein for decades, to the amusement of their fami- lies, neither able to budge the other an inch, "That's the best kind of thinking, Patrick-wishful. You'll learn."

  Fireflies!-childrefl were darting to catch the tiny insects, cupped iii their hands.

  The sun had set behind the dense flaming tr
ee line. In the tall unmowed grass at the edge of the clearing, dozens of fireflies appeared winking like distant galaxmes.

  It was then Mike called out from the next tabic, in a teasing singsong he'd never outgrown, "Hey Mom, remember?.-fireflies," and Mom looked around, smilimig, puzzled, "Fireflies? What about them?" and Patrick said, with juvenile slyness, "Come on, Morn: fireflies. You must remember," and Marianne gave a little cry, clapped her hand to her mouth and laughed and said, "Oh, Mom, of course you remember," and I joined in laughing, it came to me in a rush, "Fireflies, Mom-c'mon, sure you remember," and Mom was staring at us, each in turn, sensing a joke but perplexed, "Why, no, what?" and in a chorus we Mulvaney children cried, "Ransornville! The snowstorm! Grandma Hausmann! `Providence'!" and at last Mom remembered, and must have blushed though by candlelight we couldn't see, "Oh, yes. But that happened in winter, you know-that wasn't summer, like now," and we laughed harder, we'd never heard anything so funny, and Mom began to laugh too, quaking with laughter like pain, pleading in an undertone, for Sable was Out of earshot saying good-bye to relatives of hers who were leaving, "Oh, but please don't tell Sable, she'd tease me mercilessly forever! Please."

  Laughing so hard, tears leaking from my eyes. There's the danger of cracking like aged brittle crockery.

  It was around that time I drifted from the party, needing to escape for a few minutes. I wasn't drunk hut my head was ringing like the cowbell.

  Walking blindly in this place I knew to be my mom's new home but which I didn't exactly recognize like one of those dreams in which a familiar landscape is subtly yet irrevocably altered. Thinking If this is another time, then who am I? I'd gotten to be proud of myself for the personality I'd built, piece by piece like shingling a roof. Precisely overlapping, imbricating to prevent water damage. Not that I'd allow Mom to boast about me in my presence, so young! already editor of a newspaper! nor did I give much thought to my professional accomplishments, such as they were. But I'd built a damned sturdy personality for myself, damned if I was going to dismantle it.

  Beyond the antique barn that was lit from within for the evening's festivities, a floating glowing ark. Beyond the goat pasture where the animals dozed on their feet. Beyond the clearing where there was a narrow brook, a tributary of Alder Creek. I stood for a while inhaling deep calmning breaths filling my lungs with the sobriety of night.

  There was a movernemit, a rustling in the underbrush. Twenty feet away I saw a doe and two fawns at the brook, drinking. Fawns are born in June so these were scarcely a month old, on slender legs, sides streaked with white. What is the purpose, in nature, of a fawn's streaked sides? What is the purpose, in nature, of a deer's tail, flashing white when it's upturned, as the deer flees? What possible design, intelligence? Yet how could any of this be merely accident? I stood absolutely still, scarcely daring to breathe yet fairly quickly the doe became aware ofme, saw or smelled or simply sensed me, and I lifted a hand in slow gentle mute acknowledgmnent of our fellowship and doe and fawns contemplated me gravely before turning, the doe first, the fawns immediately following, and disappearing into the underbrush.

  I heard footsteps behind me, a voice-"Judd?"

  It was Patrick. He caught up with me, we stood for a while together in silence, staring at the brook. I felt a childish stab of satisfaction he'd left Katya behind. Just for now.

  Finally I said, my voice oddly weak, pleading, "I'm just not used to it anymore, I guess. So many people." Patrick made a sound meaning he understood. I said, "It's like happiness is a balloon amid the balloon is somehow my head amid it's being blown up bigger and bigger and I'm scared as hell it's going to burst and I'll be left with nothing but scraps of rubber."

  Patrick said, thoughtfully, "Yes, right. I feel exactly the same way."

  "Being angry, resentful-that's easier, somehow."

  "To a degree."

  I realized I was fearful of Patrick asking me questions that must be asked, yet not now. I would talk to him tomorrow, the next day-all the days to come! I would never let him go again and I would tell him everything imi my heart. I would tell him how Marianne had never known, had never guessed. What had been done for her sake. For the family's sake. I would tell him that so far as I knew, Zachary Lutidt had kept the secret, too; if in fact he'd recognized Patrick in his disguise. I would tell him that neither Mom nor I knew anything of the Lundts now, we'd put all that behind us. I would tell him that Dad had insisted upon cremation, that had been his last coherent request. Overriding Mom's pleas. His hoarse adamant words Cremate my body and scatter my ashes and that's the kindest thing you can dolor me. Amen. How at the emid before lapsing into his final delirium he'd been assured and even dignified in that old bulldog way of Michael Mulvaney Sr. wanting to get a job finished, over and done. That was why there was no cemetery plot anywhere. No gravestone. No memorial.

  All this I would tell my brother. In time.

  Patrick said, as if he'd been hearing my thoughts, "After I left that day, Easter Sunday, remember?-it all just drained out of me. Like poison draining out of my blood. Like I'd been sick, infected, and hadn't known it until the poison was gone. I don't regret any of it, though. I think revenge must be good. The Greeks knew-how blood calls out for blood. I think it mnust be inborn, in our genes, the instinct for `justice.' The need to restore balance. I could have torn his throat out with my teeth, almost. But, well He shrugged. His voice trailed off. 1 saw a shimmering movement of white in the woods, a patch of movement, and wondered if the doe had returned, or would return. But we were alone.

  Patrick laughed. "Bet you didn't think I'd mnake it for the family reunion, right?"

  I protested, "Oh, no, Patrick-I had a premonition, actually, you would."

  On the way back, Patrick took me to his and Katya's campsite in a grove of trees above a turn in the New Canaan Road, about fifty yards from Morn's and Sable's house. His motorcycle was parked on the hillside just below. He'd taken out of his pocket what appeared to be a Swiss army knife and switched on the pencil-thin flashlight attachment to illuminate the Honda, which was a two-seater, a 1988 model and fairly battered. "Ever ridden one of these?" he asked, and when I said no, he said, "Tomorrow, then. You are staying over tonight, aren't you?" I said I wasn't sure and he said, "Oh, come on. Mom's counting on it, all her kids under one roof" I pointed out that he wouldn't be umider the same roof with the rest of us and he said, in his old, contrary way, "At breakfast I will. Count on it."

  With big-brotherly zeal then, as if all adult complexities of emotion might as well be shrugged off, for the moment at least, Patrick lifted the mosquito-net flap of the tent, and led me inside. Both of us had to bend, and then to squat, the tent was no more than five feet at its pitch. Patrick spoke proudly of the tent which was made of "breathable" nylon with a collapsible fiberglass pole. He'd bought it at an Army-Navy store in Berkelcy-"A real bargain." There was a damp-grassy fragrance here mixed with something delicate and sweet I wanted to think was Katya's cologne or even her hair. I saw Katya's hair unbraided, unwound and brushed shining around her face. Patrick was saying, again as if in response to my unuttered thoughts, that he'd introduced Katya to camping out, backpacking shortly after they met. He loved her very much, he said, she was the first woman he'd ever been able to love and that only at the age of thirty-two and he'd been frightened it would never happen but somehow it had, it does, in time.

  There was a moment of silence between us. I understood that I wasn't expected to say anything, not a word. As if we'd been like this, at such ease with each other, for all of the fourteen years we'd lost.

  Patrick showed me by flashlight a first aid kit small enough to fit in ajacket pocket. Waterproof candles, a waterproof lantern. Everything so wonderfully small, compact. 1-Ic and Katya shared a single sleeping bag, nylon, with flannel lining you could unzip and remove, as of course they had, for surnmer And look, Patrick said, pleasure in his voice, at this pocket-sized weather radio that provided up-to-theminute bulletins twenty-four hours a day from the Nat
ional Weather Service. As if a demonstration were necessary Patrick switched on the radio and at once a man's voice intoned through pulses of static, "-prevailing winds Out of the north-northeast from Saskatchewan, twenty to twenty-five miles an hour, at the airport in Billings, Montana temperature sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit and baronieter steady at-" and there was Patrick smiling happily, squatting in his nylon tent showing his kid brother a pocket-sized weather radio that was in fact a miracle, of technology, what relief in having access to detailed weather facts twenty-four hours a day 365 days a year, you have only to switch on a tiny button to hear so solemn and incantatory a recitation of simple unassailable facts beyond all human subjectivity, will, yearning. I laughed, poking Patrick in the arm, had to laugh at that expression in his face he'd had when we were boys, when we were the Mulvaneys.

  The End