We Were the Mulvaneys (25 page)

Corinne was holding Michael feeling his heart beating through his body. Madness! He was mad. Yet she held him, the corners of her eyes leaked tears stinging as acid. “Oh Michael, oh my darling, oh no oh no,” she whispered, though he didn't hear, wasn't listening, locked in his grief, a fanatic grief, yet childlike too, saying, “God help me, I don't know what else to do. If I can't protect my own daughter. My own children. My family. If I wasn't a coward I would exact my own justice. I can't live with it. We'll have to sell the farm and move away. We're like lepers. We—” Corinne shut her eyes tight: she saw High Point Farm on the very edge of High Point Road, the steep drop along its most dangerous stretches, thinking
Why we will fall over, fall to the bottom and be lost.
Michael was saying, pushing from her arms now, sitting up, rubbing his face, his swollen eyes, half sobbing, incredulous, “It isn't just my daughter it's all of us. She can't be blamed but it's all of us. I vowed I would love them all equally—I did. I tried. When they were babies, I tried. But the girl—she ran away with my heart. She can't be blamed, but that was how it was. Always I'd be thinking
I would kill for her, my baby girl.
But—”

Corinne said, sitting up beside him, “Michael, no! Don't say such things. It's a sin to say such things.”

“—I'm not strong enough, I'm a coward. How can I live knowing that! God help me, Corinne, I can't bear the sight of the girl any longer.” Michael began to sob helplessly, despairingly, in Corinne's arms. It seemed to her she could not hold him tight enough, enclosed enough; she would have wished to envelop him with her body, as one might a small child, an infant, drawing him somehow inside her, stilling the terrible agitation of his thoughts. Oh, if she could swallow him up! Save him! “I wish to God I never had to lay eyes on her again,” Michael whispered, in horror of what he was saying. “God forgive me! It's so.”

Corinne heard herself whisper in reply, hesitating only a fraction of a second, “I know, darling. I know.” She began to croon, rocking him. His hot heavy pulsing body. His maleness, his very bulk. That weight turned to despair, so heavy. How had she been blind for so long, these weeks?—how had she missed understanding?—here was her first love, her firstborn. The others, the children born of her body, even Marianne, were hardly more than dreams, ripples on the surface of a dark impenetrable water. From this man, from his body, their bodies had sprung. He was her first love. “Darling, I know,” Corinne crooned softly, as if it were a lullaby. Seeing the goose comically entangled in nylon fishing line thrashing its wings, struggling in desperation.
But I will save you: with God's help.

 

So Corinne and Michael Mulvaney clutched at each other desperately in a room at the rear of the shabby Wolf's Head Inn at Wolf's Head Lake, in the early hours of a day in April 1976, until at last, mutually exhausted, they lay back down together in the narrow dank-smelling bed and slept, slept.

W
hat a morning it must have been of swift, inspired arrangements! What bargaining, bartering, pleading and coercing by telephone!

For when Patrick and I returned home from school the following afternoon, we discovered that our sister Marianne was gone.

Just—
gone
.

Mom had driven her, the Buick station wagon packed with as many of her things as it could hold, to Salamanca, New York, a hundred miles south and west of High Point Farm, where she was to live from now on with a Hausmann relative, a cousin of Mom's who, we were assured, was a very very nice, very good-hearted Christian woman who'd never had children of her own.

We must have stood there gaping for Mom added quickly, as if this were a crucial point, that of course Muffin had gone with Marianne—“On her lap all the way, purring.” Fixing us with a beaming neon smile.

O
ne by one, we went away.

It's the story of American farms and small towns in the latter half of the twentieth century: we went away.

First of the Mulvaney children, even before Marianne went to live with a cousin of Mom's in Salamanca, was my older brother Mike: to live in Mt. Ephraim initially, and continue to work at Mulvaney Roofing, until the business encountered “fiscal setbacks” (Dad's term) and relations between father and son became strained, and more than strained, and Mike quit and joined the Marines.

That would be in November 1977. Approximately a year and a half after the events I've recorded. After
it
.

By the time Mike had his final nasty quarrel with Dad and slammed out of Mulvaney Roofing forever, his life had become what you'd call complicated. He wasn't a reliable worker for Dad, sometimes arriving at the work site late, or failing to show up at all. He didn't get along with certain of his co-workers, nor with Alex Flood who was Dad's right-hand man. Nights, he ran with a wild, hard-drinking crowd, some of them guys he'd known in high school who like him hadn't gone to college, or in any case hadn't graduated. There were rumors that some of these guys dealt in drugs, or associated with dealers who operated out of Port Oriskany, Rochester, Buffalo. Half-drunk, late at night, Mike was several times stopped in his Olds Cutlass by Mt. Ephraim police or sheriff's men, and let off with a warning; the cops knew “Mule” Mulvaney who'd been a star of the Mt. Ephraim Rams and they knew Michael Mulvaney Sr. and liked him or anyway felt sorry for him, damned sorry for what had happened to his daughter. To Mike they said, “You don't want to get into any more trouble, son,” and Mike said, wiping his face, in the way he'd had of speaking to his high school coach, “Officer, I sure don't! Thanks for telling me that.” Still, he had two D.W.I. citations by the time he totalled the Olds Cutlass one rainy autumn night out on Route 119, escaping with minor bumps and lacerations himself but causing the girl who was with him serious injuries, a broken collarbone and ribs, a shattered kneecap, facial lacerations so disfiguring she would have to undergo a series of cosmetic operations.

Twelve days after the accident, Mike made the break with Dad, left Mt. Ephraim, signed up at Marine recruiting headquarters in Yewville without telling anyone beforehand. We were all amazed—you'd have thought Mike might have hinted to Patrick what was coming, but he hadn't. Mom was heartbroken, deeply hurt. She hadn't understood how estranged Mike and Dad had become, though it had distressed her how infrequently Mike came to the farm to visit, even for his favorite meals. Unless they weren't “favorite meals” any longer and Mom hadn't been informed.

Most of this, I didn't know at the time. I understood that things weren't good between Mike and my parents and I understood that Mike was making a break with his family which included his brothers, too. I believed that Mike had been shamed by what had happened to Marianne because it meant that “Mule Mulvaney” no longer counted for much in certain quarters of Mt. Ephraim. Zachary Lundt and his pals Rodman, Breuer, Glover. Phil Spohr too ran with that crowd. By treating Marianne as they had they were showing their contempt for her big brother, too. Weren't they?

Some cocksucker's gonna pay for it
Mike had promised. But a long time had passed and no one had paid.

There were weeks when I didn't see my older brother except to catch glimpses of him in town, usually in his car—he'd honk, and wave, grinning out at me yelling “Hey there Ranger!” but not slowing down as he passed by. I'd look after him, waving, my smile fading on my face like some pathetic cartoon character fading right out of the frame. One October afternoon leaving school I ran into him on Meridian Street, saw this tall good-looking reddish-haired guy emerging from a 7-Eleven in black T-shirt and chinos and work boots, two Molson six-packs in hand and a cigarette drooping from his mouth and one of his adoring girls waiting in the idling lipstick-red Cutlass coupe that had to be the sweetest, coolest car anybody could want to drive, ever. “Ranger!—how's it going?” Mike called out. He introduced me to the girl as his kid brother and she smiled at me out the car window, a pretty thin-faced blond with frizzy hair and lips made up to look like luscious raspberries. “Is ‘Ranger' your real name?” she asked, and Mike said, “Hell, no: his real name is ‘Dimple.' Smile for us, kid, and show why.” My face burned. I didn't know if I loved it or hated it when Mike teased me in that way of his that was rough, pushy, almost-mean, like Dad. In fact, if you didn't look to see it was Mike at such times, his voice so resembled Dad's, and his manner, you'd swear this
was
Dad.

The girl's name was Marissa King. She was nineteen years old, the daughter of a customer of Mulvaney Roofing, a farmer who owned hundreds of acres in southern Chautauqua County. Mike had met her while working for her father, repairing barn roofs for several weeks that summer; there had been talk, though none of us Mulvaneys knew it, of the two of them getting engaged. But Marissa was the girl in the Olds Cutlass with my brother, the night it was totalled on Route 119.

 

And Marianne of course was gone.

Living a hundred miles away, on the other side of the mountains, with a cousin of Mom's none of us knew; in the town of Salamanca none of us, except Mom, had ever seen. Weeks passed, and months, and though Mom had promised Patrick and me we'd drive down to visit Marianne soon, somehow we never got there. And Dad never spoke of going, in fact he never spoke of Marianne in my hearing, at all.

This cousin of Mom's was named Ethel Hausmann and she was unmarried, a longtime receptionist and bookkeeper for a Salamanca podiatrist. Mom was vague about the woman, apologetic and enthusiastic at once—“Ethel isn't easy to know but she's a deep spiritual good woman I would trust with my life. I
would
.” Since Marianne's
vanishing
Mom had become yet more nervously extravagant in her speech, eyelids and fingers fluttering.

Each Sunday at 8
P.M.
Mom would telephone Ethel Hausmann and speak with her for several minutes, and then with Marianne, in private; after fifteen or twenty minutes she would call Patrick, and then me, to speak with our sister. “Keep the conversation short, please,” Mom would whisper. “This isn't a local call.”

So strange—talking with Marianne on the phone. I could almost believe it was one of our old games. The “telephone game” when I was very small, three or four years old, and Marianne and I would pick up phone receivers and talk and giggle on different floors of the house, playing at being adults. A game we could only play when Dad and Mom weren't around. How distant Marianne sounded now, her voice thin and flattened.
Because the mountains are in the way
I thought. Possibly Marianne had been crying while on the phone with Mom—Mom would resolutely
not
have been crying: eyes bright, perfectly clear and dry—but she'd make an effort to be cheerful while speaking with me. I was reminded of certain of our hymns we'd sing like marching songs chanted through clenched teeth. “Judd! How are you?” Marianne would ask eagerly, and the question confused me: it isn't one sisters and brothers ever ask of each other as kids. It's an adult question, one of the phony ones. Except I guess Marianne meant it. I'd mumble, embarrassed, “I'm O.K., I guess,” shrugging as if she could see me, and Marianne would cry, “Oh, Judd! Gosh I miss you! I can't wait to see you. Mom says—” I wouldn't know how to reply, just stood there gripping the receiver in misery, because Mom had warned Patrick and me not to discuss future plans with Marianne; never to speak of
the future
—“It will just get her hopes up, and that would be cruel.”

Marianne would inquire after the animals one by one, always beginning with Molly-O. Oh, she missed Molly-O! She dreamt she was riding Molly-O all the time. She dreamt Molly-O was just a filly, a baby, just brought to High Point Farm. And how was Prince?—how was Clover?—how was Red? And how were the dogs—Foxy, Little Boots, Troy, Silky? And the cats—Big Tom, E.T., Snowball, Marmalade? And Feathers? She was always imagining she heard Feathers in the early morning, when she was just waking up. And how were the goats Blackie and Mamie? And the barn cats? And Cap'n Marvel and all that crew? And the cows, and the sheep? Marianne always reported that she and Muffin were fine but missing the family, it was so quiet and somehow so
small
there. We always assured Marianne that everyone was fine at High Point Farm, too. (In fact, Silky had died of a cancerous tumor in his stomach, but none of us wanted to tell Marianne. Mike had left Silky behind when he'd moved to town, said his apartment building didn't allow pets, and poor Silky pined away at the end of the driveway for weeks waiting for Mike to return then abruptly sickened and died and Mom, P.J. and I had a little ceremony burying him in the front yard, not far from the brook, where, as Mom said tearfully, he could wait for Mike forever.)

Last of all, Marianne would draw a deep breath and ask after Dad, as if she hadn't already asked Mom and Patrick, and I'd stand sweating and the words I wanted to shout jammed in my throat and Marianne's voice became plaintive, pleading, “Judd? There isn't anything wrong with Daddy, is there? He never seems to be home when Mom calls.” I stammered I didn't know, I didn't think so, Dad was working hard these days. Marianne would begin to sound desperate, asking, “Does he ever say anything about me, Judd? Does he ever—say my name?” and I would mumble yes sure I guessed so, and she would ask, suddenly pleading, “When can I come home, Judd? Do you know?”—but by this time Mom who'd been hovering close by, nervous as a cat, would take the receiver gently from me and say into the mouthpiece in a playful-Mom voice, “Sor-ry! This is your long-distance operator and
your time has run out.
”

 

Patrick left to enroll at Cornell in early September 1976 and would never live at High Point Farm again except for brief periods. That first Thanksgiving when we were all looking forward to seeing him he shocked us by not coming home—“Too much work,” he explained tersely. Lab courses in biology, organic chemistry, physics. And at Christmas, he was home for only a few days of the long recess—not only did he have too much work to do, he'd been hired as a biology lab assistant. The following summer, he was home only two weeks, returning to Ithaca to work in the lab. (This, Dad didn't like at all. He'd been counting on Patrick to “do his share” on the farm. Already, Dad had had to hire part-time help, and these were not very reliable farmworkers, like the Zimmermans, father and son, who lived down the road in the old renovated schoolhouse.) But Patrick had his own life now, and he certainly had his plans. His talk was all of “amino acids”—“genetics”—“cellular biology.” He had little to say about Cornell University itself, meeting new people, making friends—his manner was stiff, polite, distracted. He endured Mom's effusive talk and as much as he could of her affection; his smile was the old Pinch-smile, a corner of his mouth tucked down, in a look of virtual pain—but it seemed unconscious, it meant nothing. He hadn't any interest in hearing news of his fellow graduates of the Class of '76 nor had he much interest in his own photograph in the
Mt. Ephraim Patriot-Ledger
above his name and the caption, “Area Youth Achieves Dean's List, Cornell.” Mom, of course, had provided the newspaper with the information.

Unlike Marianne, Patrick rarely inquired after the animals. He never seemed to have time to visit with Prince, still less to ride. When Mom muttered glumly about Dad wanting to sell Prince, Red, Molly-O, Patrick frowned but did not protest.

Damn you, don't you care? Why don't you care?
I wanted to shout.

Always I'd be waiting for Patrick to spend some time with me, just me alone. His kid brother who missed him so. His kid brother at High Point Farm pining away like poor Silky, left-behind and lonely. Once I came into his room where he was (damn him: he hadn't been home three hours) studying a chart with the heading “Mendelian Inheritance in Man” and I asked him if he'd spoken with Marianne, or seen her? and he sort of shrugged and looked embarrassed. (Meaning yes, he had?—or no, he hadn't?) “Why does Dad hate Marianne so? Why doesn't he want to see her, or even talk to her?” I asked, and Patrick said, frowning, “Dad doesn't hate
her
. It's just she reminds him of—you know.” Lifting his arm in a way of Dad's that signaled
What the hell? what can you do?
—spreading the fingers, letting the arm fall limp.

I said, “But that isn't Marianne's fault!”

Thinking I could hate Dad, if Patrick gave me a sign.

But Patrick said, soberly, looking at me for the first time since he'd come home, “It isn't Dad's fault, either.”