We Were the Mulvaneys. Joyce Carol Oates

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       ST. VALENTINE’S 1976

      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, СКАЧАТЬ