We Were the Mulvaneys (18 page)

They looked up, to see Patrick bareheaded and shivering in the doorway, staring at them. His voice quivered with boyish reproach and alarm. “Dad? Mom? What's wrong? Why're you two out
here
?”

T
hat time in our lower driveway, by the brook. I was straddling my bike staring down into the water. Fast-flowing clear water, shallow, shale beneath, and lots of leaves. Sky the color of lead and the light mostly drained so I couldn't see my face only the dark shape of a head that could be anybody's head. Hypnotizing myself the way kids do. Lonely kids, or kids not realizing they're lonely. The brook was flowing below left to right (east to west, though at a slant) and I stood immobile leaning on the railing (pretty damn rotted: I'd tell Dad it needed to be replaced with new planks, we could do it together) until it began to happen as it always does the water gets slower and slower and you're the one who begins to move—oh boy! we-ird! scary and ticklish in the groin and I leaned farther and farther over the rail staring into the water and I was moving, moving helplessly forward, it seemed I was moving somehow upward, rising into the air, helpless, in that instant aware of my heart beating
ONEtwothree ONEtwothree!
thinking
Every heartbeat is past and gone! Every heartbeat is past and gone!
A chill came over me, I began to shiver. It wasn't warm weather now but might have been late as November, most of the leaves blown from the trees. Only the evergreens and some of the black birches remaining but it's a fact when dry yellow leaves (like on the birches) don't fall from a tree the tree is partly dead. A light gritty film of snow on the ground, darkest in the crevices where you'd expect shadow so it was like a film negative.
Every heartbeat is past and gone! Every heartbeat is past
and gone!
in a trance that was like a trance of fury, raging hurt
Am I going to die?
because I did not believe that Judd Mulvaney could die. (Though on a farm living things are dying, dying, dying all the time, and many have been named, and others are born taking their places not even knowing that they are taking the places of those who have died.) So I knew, I wasn't a dope, but I didn't know—not really. Aged eleven, or maybe twelve. Leaning over the rotted rail gaping at the water hypnotized and scared and suddenly there came Dad and Mike in the mud-colored Ford pickup (Might as well buy our vehicles mud-colored to begin with, saves time, was Dad's logic) barreling up the drive, bouncing and rattling. On the truck's doors were neat curving white letters sweet to see M
ULVANEY
R
OOFING
(716) 689–8329. They'd be passing so close my bike might snag in a fender so I grabbed it and hauled it to the side. Mike had rolled down his window to lean out and pretend to cuff at my head—“Hey Ranger-kid: what's up?” Dad at the wheel grinned and laughed and next second they were past, the pickup in full throttle ascending the drive. And I looked after them, these two people so remarkable to me, my dad who was like nobody else's dad and my big brother who was—well, Mike Mulvaney: “Mule” Mulvaney—and the most terrible thought came to me.

Them, too. All of them. Every heartbeat past and gone.

It stayed with me for a long time, maybe forever. Not just that I would lose the people I loved, but they would lose me—
Judson Andrew Mulvaney
. And they knew nothing of it. (Did they?) And I, just a skinny kid, the runt of the litter at High Point Farm, would have to pretend not to know what I knew.

B
ut Mort Lundt is a friend of mine.

Amid a rush of emotion almost too powerful to be borne, that was the first thought that came to Michael Mulvaney Sr.

Reckless and desperate he drove, that night, giving no warning to the Lundts, into Mt. Ephraim, at high speeds along the icy roads, to the Lundt home (whose fieldstone ranch house, on Elmwood Lane near the Country Club, he'd visited as a guest once or twice)—arrived at about nine-thirty, in a light snowfall, to find a Chautauqua County sheriff's vehicle parked in the driveway. And there was Eddy Harris, one of the deputies, an old friend of Michael's, waiting for him.

Michael bounded out of the Ford pickup without shutting the door behind him, coatless, bareheaded, and Eddy Harris quickly climbed out of the cruiser to meet him. Eddy was embarrassed, hesitant. “Michael, hey—how's it going?”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Corinne called me, she told me you might be headed here. You got a problem, eh?”

Michael saw someone at the Lundts' front door, a tall figure—Mort Lundt. He said, excited, “Not me, it's those bastards in there who've got a problem,” pushing past Eddy who tried to block his path, “—I'm going to have a little talk with them.”

Eddy said, taking hold of Michael's arm, “Just a minute, Michael—” and Michael shrugged him off, furious. “Who the hell's side are you on?”

The door opened, and Mort Lundt called out shakily, “I'm not afraid to speak with him, Officer. We can clear this up right now.”

Michael Mulvaney Sr. bounded up the steps, ignored Mort Lundt's extended hand. How strange for the two men, accustomed to handshakes, warm and even effusive greetings, encountering each other in such very different circumstances, to be sizing each other up now! Michael Mulvaney was an inch or so shorter than Mort Lundt but some thirty pounds heavier and in every way more physical, more intense; adrenaline, thrumming through his veins, gave him a heated energy, a clammy-white radiance to his face. The men were approximately the same age, approaching fifty, but Mort Lundt with his thinning filmy-gray hair and bifocal glasses appeared older, more tentative. He shrank back from Michael as if he feared a blow to the face. Michael cried, “Right! Right now! And where's your son?
He's
the one I've come to see.”

Mort Lundt said, stammering, “Zachary is—isn't here right now.”

“The hell he isn't! We'll see about that.”

For some five or ten minutes the men stood talking disjointedly together, in the Lundts' foyer. The sheriff's deputy remained close by, not involved in the conversation but listening. Mort Lundt, by training an investment banker, by temperament a man given to excessive courtesy, tried to speak rationally, calmly, though his voice cracked; Michael spoke loudly and not always coherently, as if, as it would be said of him afterward, he'd been drinking. Mort acknowledged that yes, he'd heard some disagreeable things about a party after the prom the previous weekend, he'd heard there'd been “underage drinking” and some “pretty wild behavior” and he'd questioned his son, and disciplined him: Zach was grounded for six weeks, denied the use of his car, an 8
P.M.
curfew. Michael interrupted, “Your goddamned son, he hurt my daughter, my little girl, last Saturday night.
Hurt
her!—
abused
her! Do you know about it, Mort? Did the little bastard tell you
that
?”

Mort protested, “Please d–don't call my son such—”

Michael cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted into the interior of the house, “Are you listening, you little bastard? Fucker! Get your ass down here or I'll come get it!”

“Just a minute, Michael—”

“Michael, wait—”

Both Mort and Eddy tried to restrain Michael, and he threw them off, staggering, furious. He said to his friend Eddy, “You! Call yourself a man of the law! You should be arresting this kid for
abuse—assault.
”

Shortly after this exchange, Zachary Lundt appeared on the stairs. He wore bleached jeans, a Grateful Dead sweatshirt. His long, lank hair fell forward into his eyes. If he'd meant to confront Michael Mulvaney defiantly, or even bravely, resolutely, all strength drained from him as Michael bounded to the stairs, grabbed him by the arm and began to shake him. “Bastard! Punk! What did you do to my daughter! I'll kill you—”

Mort Lundt and Eddy Harris intervened. Michael shoved at both men, striking Mort on the side of the face and sending his glasses flying; in the struggle, Zachary Lundt slipped, fell, would have fallen onto Michael except Michael seized him in a bear hug, cracking several ribs, and flung him against a wall where his nose was broken, bloodied.

It had all happened so swiftly! In another part of the house, Mrs. Lundt was frantically dialing the Mt. Ephraim police.

T
hey said,
Tell us.

She said,
Only what I know.

They said,
Tell us!—so that justice can be executed.

She said,
I was drinking. I was to blame. I don't remember. How can I give testimony against him!

 

How many times Marianne Mulvaney was to repeat these words. To her parents, to anyone who questioned her. Including two Mt. Ephraim police officers when, the morning following Michael Mulvaney's “disruptive and disorderly behavior” at the Lundts' house, they came to High Point Farm to question her in her parents' presence.

I was drinking. It's so hard to remember. I can't swear. I can't be certain. I can't bear false witness.

Her many hours in solitude, in St. Ann's Church, had given her a strange stubborn placidity new to Marianne Mulvaney. She'd been reading the Gospels, she'd been praying. Opening her heart to Jesus as she'd never done before—oh, never! He had instructed her in the way of contemplation; of resisting the impulse to rage, to accuse. And, in truth, drunk as she'd been, sick, staggering, confused and frightened as she'd been, she could not clearly remember what had happened between her and Zachary Lundt.

So Marianne told the Mt. Ephraim police officers, her parents looking on, subdued, silent.

(Michael Mulvaney had been arrested, the previous night. Charges of assault were “pending.”)

Yet: what could be proven against Zachary Lundt, with no witness except Marianne?—her words against his? Zachary's friends would rally around him—she knew. She was not bitter but she knew. It was clear to her, logical as a chess game in which you see your opponent's devastating moves to come but are helpless to prevent them. (Patrick had once tried to teach Marianne to play chess, but soon gave up on her—she was too nice, too unaggressive, no competition for wily Pinch.) Quietly, calmly repeating
I was drinking—there's so much I can't account for, can't remember. How can I bring criminal charges against him. I am as much to blame as. Can't bear false witness.

As if this litany were the most basic, the most irreducible of knowable facts. As if it were all that might be granted her by way of understanding. As if, wakened from a cruel enchantment, she'd discovered in her hands a wide, ragged, rotted net, a net with enormous tears and holes, yet her sole solace, her sole hope, was to cast this rotted net out again, again, again and draw it in breathless and trembling to discover what truths it might contain. But they were always the same truths.
I was drinking. I was to blame. I don't remember. How can I give testimony against him!

Given to understand, too, that if she declined to bring charges of sexual assault against Zachary Lundt, Zachary Lundt and his father Morton would not bring charges of assault against her father.

 

So it was, and had to be. She'd peered deeply into her soul.

Her soul she'd never truly examined until now. Her soul she'd scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed as, in the hot, hurting water at the LaPortes', she'd scrubbed her offended flesh. And if there was pain in such abrasion, there was satisfaction, too. Even a muted joy.
Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Jesus' voice had never been so vivid to her, so specially directed to
her
.
Observe all things whatsoever I have commanded thee; and lo, I am with thee always, even unto the end of the world.

She didn't return to school until the first Monday in March. By that time she'd thought, thought long and hard, much of the time in solitude in her room, and healed herself. Of course, she kept up with her school assignments—she was diligent, even obsessive about that. (It was Corinne who called Marianne's teachers, virtually every day.) She did most of her household chores, eager to follow Mom's ***
WORK SCHEDULE
*** which was the very essence of family life at High Point Farm. Schoolwork, chores—as if nothing was wrong. For, after all, now she was recovered, even the nastiest of the bruises fading, nothing
was
wrong.

Bless them that curse you. Pray for them that despitefully use you.

 

The Lundts did not file charges against Michael Mulvaney Sr. Marianne Mulvaney did not file charges against Zachary Lundt. These facts were distant, impersonal as radio voices fading in and out of coherence.
The Kingdom of God is within.
Her bare knees on the floorboards of her room, her hands grasped tight, tight together and her eyes shut streaking tears.
Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!

 

It was a secret thing from the first. After what he'd done to her, inside her, deep and up inside her, using his fingers snatching, digging, clawing
You bitch! cunt! don't tell me you don't want it, cunt!
pushing her down onto the backseat of the Corvette, the new-smelling leather upholstery, the cold fabric, and his furious pale face leaning close, shoving her legs apart, her thighs, the dress ripping, and she too weak too terrified to resist, even to utter
No!
—and after, brought to the LaPortes', slipping in quietly in stealth and shame and guilt and in the sparkling-hot water scrubbing herself sobbing and murmuring to herself and even laughing, giggling—biting her lip to keep from making too much noise, waking Trisha and her parents. A secret, and a revelation.

Blessed be they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

She could not speak of the joy that arose from such hurt, stirring her to excited wakefulness in the night, so she climbed from bed, knelt on the bare, hard floorboards, flung herself against the edge of the bed and prayed, prayed. A cold-glaring full moon suspended in the sky like the unblinking eye of God. And the wind, the wind that never ceased at High Point Farm, above the Valley!—twining into the very ventricles of her heart.

Jesus! I thank You, I am alive. I thank You for this life, this breath.

For Zachary might have strangled her, after all. He might have dragged her limp body out of the car, pounded her head against the icy pavement, hadn't that been a possibility? an unspoken (unless it was a spoken) threat?

She harbored such secrets, such revelations. Dared not speak of them to her father (so upset, distraught, he was making himself sick) but spoke elliptically of them to her mother (who hurried to Marianne as if summoned, so powerful was the connection between them, and the two knelt and prayed together, weeping, sometimes laughing, clutching hands like young sisters, the simplest of prayers
Our Father Who art in Heaven hallowed be Thy name
until their cheeks were streaked with tears, the color returned to their faces). For there was comfort to be taken in such hurt—Jesus knew, on the cross. Public shame and humiliation. Knowing of course how everyone must be speaking of her, pitying her—at the high school, and in town. Through the Chautauqua Valley. Zachary Lundt would have told his buddies, of course, would have boasted—yet even if he had not, news of it, of Marianne Mulvaney and her father's intervention, the arrest, the police, would have spread, irrevocable.

You Mulvaneys. Think you're hot shit don't you.

Few of Marianne's friends had called to ask after her. Though she'd been absent from school for days. No boy had called. Trisha who was her closest friend, since fifth grade, hadn't called. Well, yes—Trisha had called, on Tuesday of the second week Marianne had stayed out of school, and Corinne had answered the phone, but when Marianne called back, hours later, Trisha wasn't in. And Mrs. LaPorte spoke so stiffly to her, so—oddly. As if she scarcely knew who Marianne was. Marianne said quietly, “Please tell Trisha I'm sorry she's involved in any way, in this.” After a startled pause Mrs. LaPorte said, “Involved? My daughter? My daughter isn't involved in anything. I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about.”

So she prayed, and by degrees healed herself. The bruises and abrasions were gone, or almost gone. A second visit to Dr. Oakley and there remained only coin-sized discolorations on the insides of her thighs. Where Zachary had torn at her with his furious fingers, where he'd poked, pushed his blood-engorged penis—again, again, again, again—was healed. At any rate, the bleeding had stopped. She would not know for another several weeks if her regular menstrual pattern would resume but she wasn't thinking of that now.

I was drinking, I was to blame. If I could relive that night but I can't. How can I bear false witness against him?

One day Mom removed the soiled, torn prom dress from the back of Marianne's closet where it was hidden. She hadn't needed to ask Marianne where the dress was. Found it, unerring, without wishing to examine it; wadded it into a ball and stuffed it in a paper bag with other household trash. Mom's eyes gleaming with tears but she wasn't crying nor was Marianne. Not a word uttered.

Bright-glaring snowdrifted winter mornings at High Point Farm! It would be Marianne's last winter here, she seemed to know. Two mornings in succession, the last week of February, the school bus couldn't get through, so Patrick and Judd stayed home. That air of excited childish expectation, listening to WYEW-FM radio as they'd done for years, years, years on blizzard mornings, waiting to hear of county school cancellations. Though Marianne was upstairs when the Mt. Ephraim district was announced and P.J. and Ranger cheered in unison.

Not that P.J. much liked to stay home—“quarantined” as he called it—amid so much snow, silence.

Winter silence. His eyes avoiding hers, young face ravaged in shock, pity, distaste.

(How much did Patrick and Judd know? Presumably, their parents had told them something. And Mike, an adult, knew. He'd known from the first, the evening of the day Corinne had taken Marianne to Dr. Oakley.)

Marianne had agreed to see Dr. Oakley another time, at Mom's urging. On the examination table steeled herself against pain shutting her eyes
Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!
as beads of sweat formed at her hairline but there was no pain. Jesus had helped her banish pain. Afterward dressing herself, articles of clothing slipping from her fingers numbed and without sensation like strangers' fingers weirdly annexed to her hands. She'd overheard a man's voice in the room next door. “—made the right decision, under the circumstances. An ugly, messy prospect—” but she'd stopped listening.

 

There was Michael Mulvaney Sr.: Dad. Tried not to think about Dad.

After that first night when he'd gripped her hand, so hard. And cried. The shock of seeing Dad cry! She was terrified, her heart was breaking. So she vowed not to think of it afterward, with Jesus' help. For there was nothing to be done. She could not testify against Zachary Lundt for she could not recall, with any degree of accuracy, the sequence of events of the early hours of Sunday February 14 nor even herself during that time. It was like a movie where something has gone wrong with the film, images continue to flutter past, but dim, confused, out of focus. Nor could she accompany her father as he wished (where? to the Chautauqua County district attorney's office, in Chautauqua Falls?)—simply, she refused.

Could not, could not. God forgive her, she could not.

And so it became a household of silence. As if in the aftermath of a violent detonation. No wonder Mom played the radio so loudly in the kitchen, her brothers turned the TV up, even the dogs barked at the slightest provocation—a flock of noisy crows in the pear orchard, a helicopter with propellors
chop! chop! chopping!
the air on a mysterious early-evening flight through the Valley.

There was the discovery she'd never actually
looked at
, never
seen
, Michael John Mulvaney, Sr., until this time. For always he'd been Dad. Or Captain, or Curly. (Though not “Curly” for years—one of the names he'd outgrown.) Seeing him now,
Dad
, yet
Michael John Mulvaney, Sr.
, when she could not look at him directly, at all. For his eyes shifted uneasily in his sockets when she appeared. If she entered a room in which he stood or sat, he would shortly leave. Forehead creased, eyes shifting so he need not see her.

He'd aged a decade in ten days. Heavy-footed on the stairs, turn a corner and there he was—
who
? A bearish man, shoulders slumped, rubbing a fist into an eye and panting like a winded horse trying to catch its breath. His face like uncooked, flaccid dough.

Daddy I'm so sorry.

Daddy what can I say.

Can't remember, can't testify. Daddy I'm so ashamed.

She did not wish to hear but sometimes (by chance, in the bathroom adjacent to their bedroom) she heard. And there was Dad's voice lifting in anger, incredulity and Mom's voice quieter, pleading. The quarrel subsided, you would think it had been extinguished, but like a smouldering swamp fire it had simply gone underground and would soon erupt again, another night. The quarrel was as much a matter of silence, withheld speech, as it was speech itself. And suddenly Michael Sr. who was Dad, her Dad, stalked from the room not giving a damn who heard, Marianne, Patrick, or Judd, down the shuddering stairs and out the back door, a dog or two scrambling across the kitchen floor in his furious wake, toenails clicking on the linoleum. A few seconds later came the sound of the Ford pickup revving into life, the battery turning over, catching, tires spinning in the packed snow, catching too, and Dad would be halfway down the drive before switching on the headlights.