We Were the Mulvaneys. Joyce Carol Oates

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      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.”

       RINGING THE COWBELL

      There was Patrick, shrewd-suspicious Pinch, falling for one of Mom’s tricks!

      Ringing the cowbell on the back veranda, the gourd-shaped coppery “antique”—as Mom called it—to summon him back to the house and inveigle him into volunteering—“volunteering”—to drive into town to fetch Marianne home.

      Like a fool, Patrick had come running. The sound of the cowbell at High Point Farm was understood to be code for Who’s in the mood for an outing? a nice surprise? Years ago when the family had been younger, Dad or Mom frequently rang the cowbell on summer evenings to announce an impromptu trip for all within earshot—to the Dairy Queen on Route 119, to Wolf’s Head Lake for a swim and picnic supper. When the drive-in on Route 119 had still been operating, the clanging cowbell might even mean a movie—a double feature. In any case, it was supposed to signal an outing! a nice surprise! Not an errand.

      Patrick should have known better. Eighteen years old, no longer a kid dependent upon his parents’ whims and moods, he, not one of his parents, was likely to be the one driving somewhere on a Sunday afternoon. In mid-February, it wouldn’t be to any Dairy Queen or to Wolf’s Head Lake. But the sound of the cowbell in the distance, as he was walking along the frozen creek, one of the dogs, Silky, trotting and sniffing at his side, had quickened his pulse with the promise of childhood adventure.

      Of the family, Patrick was the one to wander off by himself. He was content to be alone. At least, with only an animal companion or two. He’d done his barn chores for the day, cleaning out the horses’ stalls, grooming, feeding, watering—seven pails of water a day per horse, minimum! Then he’d gone hiking along Alder Creek for miles up into the hills above High Point Farm. He might have been entranced by the snow-swept windswept distances but in fact his mind was tormented with ideas. Ideas buzzing and blazing like miniature comets. In one of his science magazines he’d read an essay, “Why Are the Laws of Nature Mathematical?” that had upset him. How could the laws of nature be mathematical?—only mathematical? He’d read, too, about certain recent evolutionary discoveries and new theories of the origin of Homo sapiens in northern Africa—what had these to do with mathematics? He said aloud, aggrieved, “I don’t get it.”

      Innocently СКАЧАТЬ