We Were the Mulvaneys. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ clock in the front hall was musically striking the hour of six, the 1889 “Reformed Gothic” grandfather clock on the first-floor landing of the stairs was clearing its throat preparing to strike the quarter hour after one. On the parlor mantel were a Chautauqua Valley “steeple” pendulum clock of the 1890s and a Dutch-style painted walnut pendulum clock of the 1850s, one about to strike the hour of nine and the other importantly chiming the hour of eleven-thirty. In the family room was a crudely fashioned 1850s eight-day clock with a tarnished brass eagle at its top, that clanged the hour, half hour, and quarter hour with a jazzy beat; in the dining room, a mantel clock of golden pine with a river scene hand-painted (and now badly faded) on its glass case, of the 1870s, and a delicately carved mahogany Chautauqua Valley grandmother clock of the turn of the century, with ethereal chimes. Scattered through the house were numerous other antique clocks of Corinne’s, each a treasure, a bargain, a particular triumph. If there wasn’t an excess of competing noise from radio, TV, tapes, records, raised voices or barking dogs you could move through the house in a trance of tick-tick-ticking.

      Of course there were a number of clocks, including the most beautiful, that had long ago ceased ticking completely. Their pendulums had not moved for years; their slender black hands, pointing at black numerals, were forever arrested at mysterious fatal moments.

      You would think that Time “stands still.” But you’d be wrong.

      Always, Marianne had loved the clocks at High Point Farm. She’d thought that all households were like theirs. So many clocks ticking their separate times. Striking the hour, the half hour, the quarter hour whenever they wished. Friends who came to visit asked, “How do you know what the real time is?” and Marianne said, laughing, “Oh, the real time is in the kitchen: Dad’s electric clock.” She would lead her friends into the big country kitchen where, above the fireplace, was a moonfaced General Electric clock in the design of a sunburst, with fat black hands and bulgy black numerals and a maddening little hum like something grinding its teeth. The clock had been a gift to Dad on the occasion of his forty-fifth birthday from his poker-playing circle. The men of the circle were local businessmen and merchants and their dominant attitude toward one another was one of good-natured bantering. Since Michael Mulvaney Sr. was notorious for being late for many occasions, including even his poker nights which meant so much to him, there was significance in the gift clock.

      In any case, here was High Point Farm’s “real” time.

      Except, of course, as Mom liked to point out, when the electricity went out.

      Up in Marianne’s room were several more of Mom’s clocks, of which only one “kept time” and that fitfully: a small cream-colored ceramic mantel clock with garlands of tiny painted rosebuds, golden pendulum and delicate hands, a chime like the sweetest of birdcalls. It was turn-of-the-century and a genuine antique, Mom insisted. But its time couldn’t be trusted, of course. So Marianne kept a windup alarm clock with a plastic face, luminous green hands and numerals that glowed in the dark. Five nights a week Marianne set the alarm for 6 A.M. though it had been years since she’d needed an alarm to actually wake her. Even in the pitch-dark of winter.

      She took up the clock suddenly, wanting to bury it under her pillow to smother its snug tick-tick-ticking. But of course she didn’t. For what would that solve?

      And there was her watch, her beautiful watch, a white-gold battery-run Seiko with tiny blue numerals; a gift from Mom and Dad for Marianne’s sixteenth birthday. She’d taken it off immediately when she’d come home. She hadn’t examined it too closely, knowing, or guessing, that the crystal was cracked.

      How many times compulsively she’d run her thumb over the crystal feeling the hairline crack. But she hadn’t actually examined it. And if the minute ticking had ceased, she didn’t want to know.

      She was not a girl accustomed to thinking, calculating, plotting. The concept of plotting an action that might be broken down into discrete, cautious steps, which Patrick would have found challenging, was confusing to Marianne. A kind of static intervened. But this was so: Mt. Ephraim was such a small town, if she took the watch to Birchett’s Jewelers where it had been purchased, Mr. Birchett might mention the fact to her mother or father if he happened to run into them. He would mention it casually, conversationally. And if she ceased wearing it, Dad who was sharp-eyed would notice. There were other watch repairmen in the area, at the Eastgate for instance, but how would she get there? Marianne felt fatigued, thinking of the problem. Maybe it was wisest to continue wearing the watch as if nothing were wrong, for unless she examined it closely nothing was wrong.

      Patrick would guess, unless Patrick had already guessed. He frightened her with his talent for seeing what wasn’t there to be seen. His mind worked like a calculator: a quicksilver adding of digits, an immediate answer. He had not asked her much about the previous night because he knew. In disgust of her he held himself stiff against the knowledge. Not a word about Austin Weidman. Why isn’t your “date” driving you home? Under normal circumstances her brother would have teased her but these were not normal circumstances.

      Cutting his eyes at her, outside when she’d dropped the garment bag in the snow. And she’d murmured quickly, shamefully, it’s fine, I have it, it’s fine. And he’d walked away, not another word.

      

      You know you want to, Marianne—why’d you come with me if you don’t?

       I’m not gonna hurt you for Christ’s sake. Come on!

      Nobody plays games with me.

      And this was a strangeness she’d recall: how when she entered her room which was exactly as she’d left it the day before, yet irrevocably changed, she’d known what a long time she’d been away, and such a distance. As if she’d left, and could not now return. Even as, numbly, she stepped inside, shut the door.

      “Muffin! Hello.”

      Her favorite cat of all, Muffin, fattish, very white with variegated spots, lay dozing in a hollow of a pillow on her bed, stirring now to blink at her, and stare.

      Away so long, and such a distance.

      

      She unzipped the garment bag and removed her toiletry kit, her badly stained satiny cream-colored pumps, wadded articles of underwear and the ripped pale-beige stockings, placed everything except the toiletry kit in the bottom of her wastebasket without examining. (The wastebasket was made of white-painted wicker, lined with a plastic bag for easy disposal; Marianne would be emptying it into the trash can herself in a few days, as usual. No one in the family would have occasion to see what she was throwing out, still less wonder why.)

      She didn’t remove the crumpled satin-and-chiffon dress from the garment bag. Didn’t glance at it, or touch it. Quickly zipped the bag up again and hung it in the farthest corner of her closet, beneath the sharp-tilting eaves. Then rearranged her clothes on hangers, not to hide the garment bag exactly but simply so that it wouldn’t be seen, first thing she opened the closet door.

      Out of sight, out of mind!—one of Corinne’s cheerful sayings. Not a syllable of irony in it, for irony was not Corinne’s nature.

      In the closet, three white cotton cheerleader’s blouses on wire hangers. Long full sleeves, double-button cuffs. If you were a cheerleader at Mt. Ephraim High, generally acknowledged the most coveted of all honors available to girls, you were required to buy your own blouses and maroon wool jumper and to maintain these articles of clothing in spotless condition. The jumper was dry-cleaned of course but Marianne hand-laundered the blouses herself, starched and ironed them lovingly. Inhaling the good, familiar, СКАЧАТЬ