Читать книгу We Were the Mulvaneys - Joyce Carol Oates - Страница 11

No one would be able to name what had happened, not even Marianne Mulvaney to whom it had happened. Corinne Mulvaney, the mother, should have detected. Or suspected. She who boasted she was capable of reading her husband’s and children’s faces with the patience, shrewdness and devotion of a Sanskrit scholar pondering ancient texts.

Yet, somehow, she had not. Not initially. She’d been confused (never would she believe: deceived) by her daughter’s behavior. Marianne’s sweetness, innocence. Sincerity.

The call came unexpectedly Sunday midafternoon. Fortunately Corinne was home to answer, in the antique barn, trying to restore to some semblance of its original sporty glamor a hickory armchair of “natural” tree limbs (Delaware Valley, ca. 1890–1900) she’d bought for thirty-five dollars at an estate auction—the chair was so battered, she could have cried. How people misuse beautiful things! was Corinne’s frequent lament. The antique barn was crowded with such things, most of them awaiting restoration, or some measure of simple attention. Corinne felt she’d rescued them but hadn’t a clear sense of what to do with them—it seemed wrong, just to put a price tag on them and sell them again. But she wasn’t a practical businesswoman, she hadn’t any method (so Michael Sr. chided her, relentlessly) and it was easy to let things slide. In the winter months, the barn was terribly cold: she couldn’t expect customers, when she could barely work out here, herself. Her breath steamed thinly from her nostrils, like slow-expelled thoughts. Her fingers stiffened and grew clumsy. The three space heaters Michael had installed for her quivered and hummed with effort, brightly red-coiled, determined to warm space that could not, perhaps, be warmed. On a bright winter day, cold sun glaring through the cobwebbed, uninsulated windows, the interior of the antique barn was like the vast universe stretching on, on and on where you didn’t want to follow, nor even think of; except God was at the center, somehow, a great undying sun—wasn’t He?

These were Corinne’s alone-thoughts. Thoughts she was only susceptible to when alone.

So the phone rang, and there was Marianne at the other end, sounding perfectly—normal. How many years, how many errands run for children, how many trips to town, to school or their friends’ houses, wherever, when you had four children, when you lived seven miles out in the country. Marianne was saying, “Mom? I’m sorry, but could someone come pick me up?” and Corinne, awkwardly cradling the receiver between chin and shoulder, interrupted in the midst of trying to glue a strip of decayed bark to a leg of the chair, failed to hear anything in the child’s voice that might have indicated distress, or worry. Or controlled hysteria.

It’s true: Corinne had more or less forgotten that Marianne’s date for last night’s prom (you would not want to call Austin Weidman Marianne Mulvaney’s “boyfriend”) had been supposed to drive her back home, after a visit at Trisha LaPorte’s—or was it perhaps the boy’s father, Dr. Weidman the dentist?—no, Corinne had forgotten, even whether Austin had his own car. (He did not.) Corinne prided herself on never having been a mother who fussed over her children; it wasn’t just that the Mulvaney children were so famously self-reliant and capable of caring for themselves (Corinne’s women friends who were mothers themselves envied her), Corinne had a hard time fussing over herself. She’d been brought up to consider herself last, and that seemed about right to her. She didn’t so much rush about as fly about, always breathless, not what you’d call perfectly groomed. Her women friends liked her, even loved her—but shook their heads over her. Corinne Mulvaney was an attractive woman, almost pretty—if you troubled to look closely. If you weren’t put off by first impressions. (Those who were invariably asked, with almost an air of hurt, how handsome Michael Mulvaney Sr. could have married that woman?) Corinne was tall, lanky, loose-jointed and freckled, somewhere beyond forty, yet noisily girlish, with a lean horsey face often flushed, carrot-colored hair so frizzed, she laughingly complained, she could hardly draw a curry comb through it. On errands in town she wore her at-home clothes—overalls, rubberized L.L. Bean boots, an oversized parka (her husband’s? one of her sons’?). She was a nervous cheerful woman whose neighing laugh, in the A & P or in the bank, turned people’s heads. Her eerily bright-blue lashless eyes with their tendency to open too wide, to stare, were her most distinguishing feature, an embarrassment to her children. Her fluttery talk in public, her whistling. Her occasional, always so-embarrassing talk of God. (“God-gush,” Patrick called it. But Corinne protested isn’t God all around us, isn’t God in us? Didn’t Jesus Christ come to earth to be our Savior? Plain as the noses on our faces.)

At least, Corinne didn’t embarrass her daughter Marianne. Sweet good-natured Marianne who was Button, who was Chickadee, who was—everybody’s darling. Never judged her mother, or anyone, with that harsh adolescent scorn that so wounds the parents who adore them.

Marianne’s voice was low, liquidy-sweet and apologetic. She was calling from Trisha LaPorte’s house, where she’d spent the night. The St. Valentine’s prom at Mt. Ephraim High had been the previous night, and Marianne Mulvaney had been the only junior elected to the King and Queen’s “court”; it was an honor, but Marianne had taken it in stride. She’d stayed over in town as she usually did for such occasions—dances, parties, football or basketball games; she had numerous girlfriends, and was welcome anywhere. Less frequently, Marianne’s friends came out to High Point Farm to spend a night or a weekend. Corinne basked in her daughter’s popularity as in the warmth of sunshine reflected in a mirror. She’d been a gawky farm-girl lucky to have one or two friends in high school, self-conscious and homely; it was a continual amazement to her, her daughter had turned out as she had.

Michael Sr. objected: you were damned good-looking, and you know it. And you got better-looking as you got older. How’d I fall in love with you, for God’s sake?

Well, that was a wonder. That was a puzzle Corinne never quite solved. Thought of it every day for the past twenty-three years.

Marianne was apologizing—that was a habit Corinne should try to break in her: apologizing more than was necessary—for being a nuisance. “Trisha’s father says he’ll be happy to drive me home, but you know how icy the roads are, and it’s so far—I really don’t want to trouble him.” Corinne said, “Button, honey, I’ll send one of your brothers.” “Is it O.K.? I mean—” “No problem,” Corinne said, in a country drawl, “—no problem.” (This phrase had become part of Mulvaney family code, picked up from some TV program by one of the boys and now everyone said it.) Corinne asked Marianne to say hello and give her warm regards to Lillian LaPorte, Trisha’s mother: a friendly acquaintance of Corinne’s from years ago, both women longtime P.T.A. members, active in the League of Women Voters, the Mt. Ephraim General Hospital Women’s Auxiliary. She was about to hang up when it occurred to her to ask, belatedly, “Oh, how was the prom, sweetie? Did you have a good time with—what’s-his-name? And how was the dress—honey?”

Marianne had already hung up.

Later, Corinne would recall in bewilderment this conversation, so matter-of-fact and—well, familiar. So normal.

Of course, Marianne had not lied. Concealing a truth, however ugly a truth, is not the same as lying. Marianne was incapable of deliberate deception. If now and then there’d been the slightest trace of what you might call subterfuge in her it was a sign she was protecting someone: usually, of course, as they were all growing up, her older brothers. Mikey-Junior who’d been quite a handful in his teens (“First ‘Mule’ was our bundle of joy,” Corinne used to joke, sighing, “now he’s our boy-oh-boy!”), Patrick, poor sweet-shy short-tempered Pinch, who’d had a tendency since kindergarten to blurt out things he didn’t mean, truly didn’t mean, not just to his family, which was bad enough, but to his classmates—even to his teachers! Even, one memorably embarrassing time, when he’d been no more than ten, a cutting, shrewd remark (“How do you know, did God tell you?”) put to a Sunday school teacher at the Kilburn Evangelical Church. (Corinne was a passionate “nondenominational Protestant” as she called herself, with a weakness for remote country churches; she dragged the children in her wake, and they seemed happy enough. Michael Sr. was never involved in these infatuations, of course: he described himself as a “permanently lapsed Catholic,” which was religion enough to suit him.)

Of the children, Marianne had always been the most natural Christian. In her flamboyant way that embarrassed her children, Corinne was fond of saying, “Jesus Christ came to dwell in my heart when I was a young girl, but He’s been dwelling in Button’s heart, I swear, since birth.”

At this, Marianne would blush and flutter her fingers in an unconscious imitation of her mother. She sighed, “Oh, Mom! The things you say.”

Corinne drew herself up to her full height. Mother of the household, keeper of High Point Farm. “Yes! The things I say are truth.”

Corinne Mulvaney’s terrible vanity: her pride in such truth.

She marveled at it: how even as a child of two or three, Marianne simply could not lie. It distinguished her from her brothers—oh, yes! But from other children, too, who, telling fibs, instinctively imitate their elders, feigning “innocence,” “ignorance.” But never Marianne.

And she was so pretty! So radiant. No other word: radiant. The kitchen bulletin board, Corinne’s province, was festooned with snapshots of Marianne: receiving a red ribbon for her juicy plum-sized strawberries a few years ago at the state fair in Albany, and, last year, two blue ribbons—again for strawberries, and for a sewing project; being inducted as an officer in the Chautauqua Christian Youth Conference; at the National 4-H Conference in Chicago where she’d won an award, in 1972. Most of the snapshots of Marianne were of her cheerleading, in her Mt. Ephraim cheerleader’s jumper, maroon wool with a white cotton long-sleeved blouse. The previous night Michael had taken a half dozen Polaroids of Marianne in her new dress, which she’d sewed herself from a Butterick pattern—satin and chiffon, strawberries-and-cream, with a pleated bodice and a scalloped hem that fell to her slender ankles. But these lay on a windowsill, not yet selected and tacked up on the bulletin board.

She, Corinne, had never learned to sew. Not really. Her mother had been impatient trying to teach her—she’d mistaken Corinne’s eagerness for carelessness. Or was eagerness a kind of carelessness? All Corinne was good for with a needle was mending, which she quite enjoyed. You weren’t expected to be perfect mending torn jeans or socks worn thin at the heel.

How beautiful Marianne was! Alone with no one to observe, Corinne could stare and stare at these pictures of her daughter. At seventeen Marianne was still very young, and young-looking; with a fair, easily marred skin, no freckles like her mom; deep-set and intelligent pebbly-blue eyes; dark curly hair that snapped and shone when briskly brushed—which Corinne was still allowed to do, now and then. It was Corinne’s secret belief that her daughter was a far finer person than she was herself, a riddle put to her by God. I must become the mother deserving of such a daughter—is that it?

Of course, Corinne loved her sons, too. As much—well, almost as much as she loved Marianne. Loving boys was just more of a challenge, somehow. Like keeping an even course in a canoe on a wild rushing river. Boys didn’t let you rest!

A long time ago when they were young married lovers with only the one baby, Mikey-Junior they’d adored, Corinne and Michael made a pact. If they had more babies—which they dearly wanted—they must vow never to favor one over the others; never to love one of their children the most, or another the least. Michael said, reasonably, “We’ve got more than enough love for all of them, whoever they are. Right?”

Corinne hugged and kissed him in silence, of course he was right.

What a feverish, devoted, you might say obsessed young mother she’d been! Her blue eyes shone like neon. Her heart beat steady and determined. She knew she could love inexhaustibly because she was herself nourished by God’s inexhaustible love.

But Michael had more to say. In fact, Michael was argumentative, impassioned as Corinne rarely saw him. He’d come from a large Irish Catholic family of six boys and three girls in Pittsburgh; his father, a steelworker and a heavy drinker, had bullied his mother into submission young and slyly cultivated a game of pitting Michael and his brothers against one another. All the while Michael was growing up he’d had to compete with his brothers for their father’s approval—his “love.” At the age of eighteen he’d had enough. He quarreled with the old man, told him off, left home. So his father retaliated by cutting Michael out of his life permanently: he never spoke to him again, not even on the phone; nor did he allow anyone else in the family to see Michael, speak with him, answer any of his letters.

“Of all of them, only two of my brothers kept in contact with me,” Michael said bitterly. “My mother, my sisters—even my sister Marian I was always so close with—acted as if I’d died.”

“Oh, Michael.” He shrugged, screwed up his face in an expression of brave boyish indifference, but Corinne saw the deep indelible hurt. “You must miss them …” Her voice trailing off weakly, for it was so weak a remark.

Of course she’d understood that relations were cool between Michael and his family—not one Mulvaney had come to their wedding! But she’d never heard the full story. She’d never heard so sad a story.

Michael said quietly, “No more, and no less, than the old bastard misses me.”