We Were the Mulvaneys (43 page)

And wouldn't they all be eager to perform their duties, seeing the roster was so attractive?—presided over by an arc of smiling faces?

At midday meal of the bulletin board's first day, when Marianne came rushing breathlessly into the dining room, she was greeted with applause from all her friends. And there was Abelove at the head of the table, rising to toast her—with a glass of Green Isle Elderberry Wine (nonalcoholic). “To Mari-anne Mul-van-ey. Expediter par excellence.”

Marianne halted just inside the doorway, paralyzed with shyness. Abelove had to come to lead her to the table, to a seat beside his, his big warm hand light on her shoulder as a perching bird.

 

Abelove, Abelove!
That was the man's true name. His first name was something odd and awkward like “Charlesworth”—an old family name, never used by Abelove himself.

Where Abelove's
home
was, his original
home,
no one seemed certain. He never spoke of himself. He was a man of ideas and action and he lived in the present, not the past. One of his favored sayings was, “‘God culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine'”—was it Henry David Thoreau? It might have been Abelove's very voice.
Past
wasn't urgent,
present
was.
Past
can't be changed,
present
is still in the making.

Still. There were rumors. One Marianne had heard when she'd first moved into the Co-op—that Abelove had been married when he'd come to Kilburn as a faculty member, and that he had children somewhere, was maybe still married though long separated from his wife. A rumor he'd had a love affair with a (married) woman in town. A rumor he'd had a “tragic” love affair with a woman potter, now deceased, who'd lived just across the state line in the rolling Pennsylvania hills. A rumor Abelove was the disinherited son of a wealthy New England businessman. A rumor he'd been a Jesuit seminary student in the Sixties, who'd fallen under the spell of the charismatic activist Berrigan brothers. A rumor he'd been arrested more than once at antiwar rallies and had even spent some time in jail—maybe. A rumor—but Marianne laughed and clamped her hands over her ears. No more!

Once at the dining room table brash gap-toothed Beatie, who'd long had a crush on Abelove, dared to ask him point-blank where his home was, and Abelove said, frowning, “‘Home'? Why, right here. Where else would it be?”

Everyone who'd heard, including Marianne, glowed with happiness at this answer, wanting to applaud.

Keeping the Green Isle Co-op financially afloat in the wake of continual crises (the antique plumbing in what had been an old inn was always breaking down, the mausoleum-like cellar leaked as unpredictably as the roof, the chimneys backed up smoke and the furnace needed replacing and there was an invasion of brisk militant black ants—and more) was a full-time job for the Director. Abelove had had, against the grain of his own temperament, to branch out into what he disdainfully called “venture capitalism”—borrowing money from a local bank at a ridiculously high interest rate, investing in bakers' ovens, a huge kitchen range with twelve electric burners, freezers large enough to accommodate horses. Investing in farming equipment, tons of topsoil, seedlings and plants from area nurseries. Buying a new Ford pickup! And there was insurance!—property, vehicles. And what of medical coverage?—oddly, there were frequently accidents at the Co-op, you wouldn't believe the mishaps.

In 1976, Abelove had had to swallow his pride—“Like swallowing a large apple, whole”—and go out into the community of Kilburn in search of donors—“benefactors”—to help the Green Isle Co-op survive. He'd learned, he said, with a chagrined smile, to present his Mount Katahdin vision as if it were a commodity worthy of being supported by strangers. At least, he'd had some luck—there was indeed a small but distinguished roster of Green Isle Benefactors, most of them well-to-do widows or well-to-do elderly couples. Abelove's handsome face and earnest manner, his shimmering-blond hair and forthright gaze must have dazzled them. “‘From each what he or she can give; to each, as he or she requires'”—weren't these Christ's very words, or almost?

What worried him, Abelove confessed, was that he might start to enjoy seeking wealthy benefactors. For it turned out he had a talent for it—“Where talent takes us can sometimes be dangerous!”

Of his several years as an assistant professor of psychology at Kilburn College, Abelove rarely spoke, and then only with embarrassment. (Birk, who'd been one of his students, had said that Abelove was a wonderful lecturer—“Unforgettable.”) He'd had to quit his position of privilege when it became clear to him that the process of evaluating—“grading”—his fellow human beings was inherently cruel, an intellectual extension of the cruelty of Darwin's “natural selection,” the survival of the fittest, extinction of the weak. Abelove believed passionately in what he called Anti-Darwinism—“Because we are human beings, and endowed with spirit, in place of mere appetite, we can counteract nature. We can help the weak, and thereby help ourselves. All good rebounds. There is no paradox.”

These words rang in Marianne's head, for Abelove spoke them often.
All good rebounds. There is no paradox.
What profound insights! She was sure she understood what Abelove meant, yet when she re peated these statements to Patrick, he'd naturally questioned her immediately—“Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Fixing her with his Pinch-squint. And, faltering, fumbling, she hadn't been able to explain.
All good abounds, there is no paradox.

It
was
true, wasn't it?

 

And was Marianne in love with Abelove, like so many of the others?

Most of the young women of the Green Isle Co-op, and several of the young men?

Sometimes she thought
yes,
sometimes
no.
It was true her heart fluttered—absurdly, literally!—when he smiled at her, shone his eyes at her, pronounced her name—“Marianne.” Sometimes, as if it were a poem he'd just invented, so melodic—“Mari-anne Mul-van-ey.” Except he smiled at just about everyone in the same way, when he was in a brimming-happy mood at least, and pronounced their names in that way. He smiled at Teardrop the mixed-breed spaniel who was always wetting, in nervous sparkling flurries, the downstairs carpets—“Teardrop! Uh-oh! Maybe we should change your name to something other than ‘Tear'?” He smiled at Muffin who mewed at him across a distance of ten or more feet, tail hoisted upright, ears pricking, eyes tawny-wide and alert. What a kindly sight, Abelove pausing in his rushing-about to hunker down to pet Muffin—“Muf-fin. Muf-fin. Handsome boy!” Of course, Muffin adored Abelove. Flopped down shamelessly at Abelove's feet, rolled over to expose his dazzling-white stomach for tickling. Marianne watched, biting her lower lip. It made her—well, anxious—her nerves tightening—watching the shimmering-blond, husky Abelove tickle Muffin, stroke the cat's uplifted chin with strong, deft fingers. And how Muffin purred! There was something frantic in such happiness.

Marianne watched. She laughed at herself—a schoolgirl crush, and she wasn't a schoolgirl any longer. Marianne Mulvaney was a young woman of twenty. And not so young any longer.

S
o, of
home
, and of
family
, Marianne Mulvaney never spoke. If her friends in the Green Isle Co-op speculated about her, and whispered of her behind her back, she wouldn't have known, would she?—she couldn't believe anyone would care much, anyway.
Out of obscurity I came. To obscurity I can return.

Except, this. Late one afternoon in May 1979 as Marianne rushed into the house, returning from a ten-hour stint at the Green Isle outlet in Kilburn (she was “acting manager” there until Abelove could get someone to take over permanently) and frantic to study for her Introduction to English Literature final exam scheduled for the morning after next, a worried-looking Felice-Marie told her that an unknown woman had called and asked for her, not five minutes before. “But she was breathing so strangely, and I guess crying, and sounded angry—I couldn't understand much of what she said.”

Marianne halted in her tracks, tasting cold. “A—woman? Crying? Who?”

“Well, I just don't know,” Felice-Marie said apologetically, frowning at something she'd written on a scrap of paper. “I don't think it was your mother—I've met her, I wouldn't forget
her
—but it was someone that age, sort of. ‘Hahn'—‘Hann Eschl'?—she was crying and she sounded almost angry, seemed to think
I
was
you
though I'd explained I wasn't. I'd guess maybe someone in your family has—” Felice-Marie paused, sucking at her lip, not wanting to say
died
.

Marianne said, “‘Aunt Ethel.' That's who it was.”

Heart knocking against her ribs like a wide-winged bird desperate to escape confinement, Marianne rushed to the phone in the parlor, and dialed Ethel Hausmann's number, and to her dismay the phone rang, rang.
Oh please answer! Oh don't let it be—
Even in the exigency of such distress Marianne was clear-minded enough to reason that whoever had died, it could not have been Michael Mulvaney Sr.—for Aunt Ethel would not have wept for him.
—Mom. Dear God, don't let it be Mom!
A sickening realization swept over her, how she'd disappointed Corinne: every turn of her life since Valentine's Day of 1976, she'd disappointed her mother, wounded her mother deeply and now—what if it was too late to make amends? She hung up the phone, and with shaking fingers dialed again, this number she'd memorized years ago and would never forget though the several times she'd called Ethel Hausmann since leaving Salamanca, the older woman had been guarded and evasive speaking to her—maybe fearing Marianne was calling to ask for money? (And Marianne couldn't very diplomatically begin a conversation by quickly explaining, “Aunt Ethel, I don't want a thing from you, honestly! I'm just calling to say hello—” as she'd told Patrick who, in any case, hadn't been sympathetic—“Why call that old sourpuss ‘aunt,' anyway? What's she to us?” in that sneering Pinch way, as if he was jealous of his sister calling anyone but
him.
) The phone rang—eight, nine times. Then on the tenth ring it was picked up, and there came Ethel Hausmann's breathless, excited voice—“Hello? What? I'm just leaving the house! It's an emergency, who is this?”

“Aunt Ethel? This is—”

“
Who? What?
‘Aunt Ethel'—? I'm nobody's aunt! I'm just leaving the house! I can't talk now!”

“—this is Marianne. Oh, what has happened?”

“Marianne.” Ethel Hausmann came to a full stop, panting into the phone receiver. “Oh, yes—I called
you.
I'm just leaving the house, driving—by myself—to Ransomville—but maybe I should wait until tomorrow morning? All the family is there, they need me, but I've never made the trip after dark, only by day—I'm driving alone—what if my car breaks down?—the funeral is day after tomorrow, at eleven—” Ethel Hausmann spoke in the fevered high-pitched voice of a spinster lady to whom nothing has happened in a very long time. Marianne thought, dazed:
Ransomville. Not High Point Farm.
She felt weak with relief; then guilty, at her relief. She managed to interrupt Ethel Hausmann to ask who had died, and Ethel said, with grim satisfaction, “Your Grandmother Hausmann.” Marianne murmured, “Oh!—” her eyes welling with tears, for though she and her grandmother had not been close, Ida Hausmann was Corinne's mother, and Corinne would surely be upset. “Yes, my Aunt Ida is dead,” Ethel said. “Seventy-nine years old! A stroke, they said, just this morning! She was chasing some stray cat away with a broom and—gone! Like that! My mother died the same way, so suddenly—I mean, it was slow for a long while—then, at the end, so sudden—twelve years ago next week. Now it's like it's happening again, Marianne, only with her sister. My aunt. And Uncle Will has been dead for
just years.
Your mother was on the phone saying ‘That generation is nearly vanished, Ethel—who will take their places?' We're next, I suppose. Oh, it's a terrible, cruel thing—first you're young, and that takes up such a long time you think it's forever, then suddenly you're not young, and you never get used to it—and, oh dear, there's just the one way out.”

Marianne listened respectfully as Ethel Hausmann rattled on. She interrupted only with difficulty, to ask about the family, and the funeral. What a shock—Grandmother Hausmann was dead! Marianne would never see her again! Yet she hadn't, in fact, seen her grandmother in years, nor even spoken with her on the phone since leaving High Point Farm. She had the idea (well, Patrick had been blunt about telling her) that the old woman had disapproved of her; of what Marianne had “done” with some high school boy or what “had happened to her”—whatever. Something embarrassing, shameful, to which no name need be given.

Of course, Marianne had sent Christmas and birthday cards to Grandmother Hausmann, year after year. But her grandmother had never replied.

Another person I've disappointed. No wonder Mom is so ashamed of me.

Ida Hausmann, Will's wife. Of the old Ransomville farm. That generation of German immigrants, settlers in the Chautauqua Valley in the 1880s. Rarely had Marianne's grandparents driven to High Point Farm to visit Corinne and her family—“Too far to drive, for a meal,” they said. Of course, they wouldn't have considered an overnight visit. They were farm people, after all. You know what disasters can happen on a farm, if you turn your back for five minutes.

So the Mulvaneys had had to drive to Ransomville, for Sunday dinner, once or twice a year. It always seemed more often—“Oh, already?” the children would cry. There was Grandmother Hausmann no one called “Grandma”—Grandmother who was Corinne's mother, but so different from her!—rarely smiled, still more rarely laughed, and then it sounded like thistles being cracked. Her hands smelled like onions and hadn't there been something oniony about her eyes? She complained of arthritis in a reproachful way so you'd know she blamed you for not having arthritis. Silly and sad, Marianne's mother offering up a litany of aches and pains, colds, mishaps to the older woman, to cheer her up. What was Grandmother Hausmann's secret, she seemed so tight and settled inside herself? She, too, believed in Jesus as her savior, but He was an angry Savior, an overseer of Hell.

Driving to Ransomville, approaching the Hausmann farm, Michael Sr. would clown wickedly, wrapping a muffler around his neck—“Brrr! I'll sure be needing this!” Corinne would slap at him, hurt, or pretending to be hurt, as the children dissolved into giggles—Marianne, Mikey-Junior and P.J. in the back of the car, Judd squeezed up front between Dad and Mom. Mom would cry, “Michael Mulvaney, that isn't the least bit funny!” and Dad would wink into the rearview mirror at his adoring audience in the backseat, “It sure isn't, honeybunch. Brrr!”

Once, Dad had actually worn a muffler during the visit, claiming, convincingly, that he had strep throat.

Oh and what a stiff, solemn, smile-and-get-through-it Sunday meal. Going to church services at the Lutheran church a few miles away never seemed to lighten the day for the elder Hausmanns. Marianne recalled grimly chewing gristly pork roast laced with fat, trying to moisten lumpy mashed potatoes with a thick, porous gravy. String beans, boiled to a mush. Winter squash. Of all the delicious pies you could bake, Grandmother Hausmann favored rhubarb.

But afterward, on the long, two-hour drive home, how good to be just themselves again, the Mulvaneys! Giddy with relief and happiness in a vehicle driven by Dad! Dad would lead them singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” with a much-repeated refrain—

 

Buy me some pea-nuts and CRAC-KER JACK!
I don't care if I NEV-ER COME BACK!

Excepting Mom, who frequently had a headache, everyone shrieked with laughter; even Marianne who knew it wasn't very nice to make fun of her grandparents. Dad was merciless, now he was free to work off steam, “Some households you have to leave to appreciate, eh?” and, “The taste of
begrudged food
is unmistakable, isn't it, kids?” Mom slapped at Dad across Judd until finally she too broke down in giggles. “Oh, well,” she said, sighing. “It's just an older generation's way, I think. Not the Mulvaney way, thank God.”

“Amen to that,” Dad said loudly.

As a reward for all they'd endured, Dad would swing over to Mt. Ephraim instead of coming directly home. To the Tastee-Freez, or the Royal Ice Cream Parlor next to the movie theater. A cheer would go up from the back seat. “Yayyyy Dad-dyyyy!”

A nasal voice inquired suspiciously, “Marianne? Are you
there
?”

“Y-Yes, Aunt Ethel.” Marianne was crying in that breathless hiccuppy way she hated.

“The funeral is Thursday at eleven, as I've said. At their church.” A pause. An intake of breath. “But your mother doesn't want you to attend, I'm afraid.”

“Excuse me? What?”

Primly Ethel Hausmann said, like one obliged against her wishes to deliver the worst news, “Corinne does not want you to come to her mother's funeral, please don't ask me why. She doesn't know I'm calling you, even. But I thought I should. I do feel some moral obligation. After all, Ida Hausmann was your grandmother.” There came a sound of a nose being blown, a moist peevish sound.

Marianne was stunned. She couldn't think of a single thing to say except a faint, “Oh.”

“Yes, I thought you would want to know. Your Grandmother Hausmann is
dead.
” There came another weighty pause, an intake of breath. Then, more curiously, “Do you even have another grandmother, Marianne? A Mulvaney grandmother?”

The words
Mulvaney grandmother
had a strange, surreal sound in Aunt Ethel's mouth. Like the improbable name of one of Patrick's microorganisms.

Marianne stammered, confused, “I—don't know.”

“Don't know if you have a grandmother! Your father's own mother! Really, Marianne. There's a sorry tale there, I don't doubt.” Ethel Hausmann spoke both reproachfully and with satisfaction. “I have to hang up now, Marianne. Don't tell your mother I called? She might object to me interfering in her precious family.”

“Y-Yes?”

“Well, I'm not! I just think it's a decent Christian thing to do.”

“Thank you, Aunt Ethel, I—”

“I'm not really your ‘aunt,' you know, Marianne. To be technical, we're just cousins twice removed.”

Ethel Hausmann hung up. Marianne stifled a sob that turned into laughter sudden and lunatic as a sneeze.

 

She would go to the funeral! She would be welcome!

Marianne hurried from the parlor, tears dimming her eyes, not quite seeing where she was headed so that she nearly collided with a young man squatting just outside the door. It was Hewie, one of the Co-op members, repairing a collapsed step with hammer and nails. Had he been eavesdropping on Marianne's conversations? He squinted up at her as she was about to fly past, remarking, “Marianne—if you need a ride anywhere, like to a funeral or anything, I can drive you. I've got a car.”

Marianne's face stung with tears. She hadn't time to consider Hewie's offer. Or the way he looked at her. She laughed and said, halfway up the stairs, “Oh, yes—thanks!”

 

So it happened that Marianne slipped away, at 6:00
A.M.
of an overcast May morning, to be driven to Ransomville, to Ida Hausmann's funeral to which she was not invited, riding with Hewie the Co-op carpenter in his big old battered-plum boat of a 1969 Dodge. Did she imagine it?—a vague impression of someone peering at them out of a downstairs window of the house.

Yes of course Marianne was going to miss her final exam, Marianne was going to fail the course, she hadn't given the exam a second thought. Farewell to Introduction to English Literature! She thought,
Out of obscurity I came.
Wasn't that solace enough? It was!

So by 11
A.M.,
at about the midpoint of what would have been the exam, she found herself three hundred miles away in rural Ransomville, west of Mt. Ephraim in the Chautauqua Valley. Thank God, Hewie wasn't a talker! Nor a questioner! He was a taciturn young man with brooding dark eyes and a chronic downturned mouth, usually unshaven, like the elusive Birk a Green Isle member who'd been taking courses at Kilburn State for years, nowhere near graduating. There were things whispered of Hewie that Marianne hadn't heard, nor cared to hear. She didn't believe in gossip. She'd warned Hewie at the start of their trip, “I might be—oh, I don't know—behaving kind of—strangely. It's my grandmother dying and this funeral and—you know. I hope—you won't judge me harshly?” Hewie stared at Marianne as if he hadn't heard correctly. He muttered, almost inaudibly, with a scowl, “Hell, I wouldn't judge you at all, Marianne.” He seemed annoyed at the suggestion.