We Were the Mulvaneys (47 page)

Hearing this, realizing he meant to console her, though not knowing nor presuming to know why she might need consolation, and not about to inquire, Marianne got into a fit of laughing so Hewie laughed, too—“What's funny, Marianne? I guess it
is
funny, isn't it?” though he was puzzled, how she laughed; jammed her knuckles against her mouth until suddenly tears leaked out acid-hot on her cheeks.

He would have consoled her then, taking hold of her hands, or wrapping his arms around her—but she turned quickly away, made him know she wanted to be alone.

 

Back in Kilburn, at the conclusion of this long, long day—almost thirteen hours together, nonstop!—Hewie told Marianne he hoped he would see more of her, especially any time she wanted to be driven anywhere, anywhere at all. He told her stammering slightly this had been the happiest day of his life. He told her he didn't want to embarrass her, or scare her, or—anything like that. He scratched the back of his neck vigorously, where his hair grew dark and bristly as a dog's. Face suffused with blood he managed to say matter-of-factly, “Hell, you know I love you, Marianne—it doesn't matter what you do, or did. Or think you did. Or anything you'd ask me to do for you, ever.”

Marianne heard these words, or believed she did. Staring at the ground at Hewie's feet. Oh what, why?—after she'd told him? How she was of no worth—worthless? There was a sickish roaring in her ears as of the wind of High Point Road. Though standing on firm ground in the Co-op driveway, she felt the earth quaver. She was searching her rattled brain for a decent reply, like pawing through a kitchen drawer of mismatched odds and ends, but came up with nothing better than a breathy scared-sounding, “Oh, Hewie—
thanks.
”

T
hat night sleeping in drowning gasps and lunges, clawing her way repeatedly up out of a gouged-out hole in the earth. She'd wanted to cry for help but the words choked in her throat. Sometime during the night Muffin discreetly removed himself from her neck and shoulder to the foot of the bed, to sleep less disturbed, and when she woke to find him missing, the familiar furry warmth gone, in just that instant her heart contracted with a dread of the future profound as her dread of the past.

 

Not wanting to think of Hewie Miner. The terrible misconception he had of her. Sick with guilt that anyone might think she'd deliberately deceived him—oh, and he was so nice!

Amethyst said, twisting her mouth in a droll smile, “You mean Hewie actually
talked to you
? Well!”

 

And next morning there was Abelove requesting Marianne please to come into his office, he'd cancelled an appointment with a business associate in town. Abelove gravely agitated as Marianne hadn't seen him since the day Birk vanished from Earth. Quickly he shut the door behind Marianne, that door never shut, and stroked his beard murmuring, “Oh, Marianne!” in a sighing distracting way that made her uneasy as if she were hearing someone's private thoughts.

Instinctively, without even knowing what she said, Marianne whispered, “I'm—
sorry
.”

She knew from Felice-Marie, Amethyst, Val Allan that Abelove had been asking after her through the previous day. Remarking, hurt, how Marianne and Hewie had “gone off unauthorized together,” secretly it seemed, without informing anyone exactly where; at any rate, without informing
him
. In fact, Marianne had left a note for Abelove taped to his door explaining there was a family emergency, she'd been too hurried and rattled to explain anything further, even where she was going, and when Abelove could expect her back. How many tasks she'd left undone, how many crucial expediting calls, how she must have disappointed this kindly, generous man who'd entrusted her with responsibility approaching his own—Marianne didn't want to think. Stammering, as Abelove gazed at her with swimming-hurt reproachful eyes, as he'd never gazed at her before even in her imagination, “Abelove, I—just had to go to my grandmother's funeral. I couldn't stay away and I didn't have time to explain to you. I guess—I behaved irresponsibly. I'm sorry.”

She felt a sudden tightness around her neck. Like a tethered creature, horse, dog, goat—aware only now of how closely she was leashed.

Abelove said solemnly, “Well. It's
over
, it
happened
, no need to dwell upon it. I'm so sorry to hear that your grandmother died, Marianne—please accept my condolences.” He seemed about to approach her, perhaps to take her hands, and Marianne started away, just perceptibly; so he didn't follow. There came a painful pause as Marianne, examining the toe of her sneaker as it circled, and recircled, a beet-colored stain on Abelove's hemp carpet, dredged her brain for something to say.
Oh, well—Grandmother and I weren't close! She was ashamed of me I guess! In fact I wasn't even allowed at the funeral!
Abelove said, “I'm only concerned, Marianne, what it might indicate of the future.”

“The f–future?”

“Your future at the Co-op.”

Frightened, Marianne stared at Abelove as one might stare at a being who held all happiness, and all misery, in his hands. He was pacing restlessly, stroking and tugging at his beard. Wavy pale-blond hair to his thickset shoulders, grave forehead furrowed. He wore an almost-white long-sleeved shirt that appeared almost-ironed, fairly clean jeans, a leather belt and leather sandals from which his big, chunky white toes protruded—Abelove's going-to-town attire. He was huffily breathing as if he'd been pacing for some time working up words to say to Marianne. She feared his stern eyes swinging onto her, discovering too much.

Her guilt shone in her eyes, obviously. Bruised from what Corinne called
nuisance-tears
—just self-pity, exhausting and doing not a bit of good to another person. Her hair that had been combed and shining the previous day was tufts and snarls this morning like thistles sprouting from her head. Her skin was so tight across her face it ached. What did Abelove
see
? Marianne had thrown on clothes that morning without glancing at them—her usual slacks, a paint-stained T-shirt, gray-frayed sneakers.

“I need to know I can trust you, Marianne. That's the main thing.”

“Oh, but—”

“Are you in love with him?”

“—Him?”'

“Hewie Miner. Are you in love with him?”

Marianne was so surprised, she couldn't think how to reply.
In love? In love? I'm in love with you!

Seeing Marianne's look of astonishment, her shrinking away like a frightened child, Abelove quickly changed the subject. In a gentler voice saying, “I'd been thinking of inviting you to share more responsibility with me, Marianne. To be—well, not just my personal assistant, like Birk, but someone more trusted. ‘Associate director'—a new post.” Through a roaring in her ears Marianne heard this man she so admired speak of her as if she were important: laying out words in his lecturer's way of deliberation and purpose you could almost see and would never dream of questioning, let alone contradicting. “You would have access to the Co-op's accounts, Marianne—as I do. You would have authority to make out checks, and to cash them. To bargain with our distributors. To negotiate contracts. The contract with the college food services is up for renewal, for instance—we'll want to renegotiate some of the terms. Yes, and you could come with me to visit potential donors—we'd make an excellent team, Marianne! You're intelligent and articulate and—when you make the effort—attractive—if perhaps you'd wear a dress, or a skirt? Stockings and shoes and—that black straw hat?”
Oh, had Abelove seen her? Had he been watching for her yesterday? Seen her early in the morning, clamping her hat to her head, hurrying to Hewie's car?
“And I've been thinking the Co-op should expand now that profits are rising. You seem to have such a way with you for ‘expediting.' I've heard you on the phone! Our distributors ask about you! And here in the house, of course, everyone—likes you. I'd guess that everyone who has ever known you has—” Abelove paused, his voice nearly failing, “—fallen in love with you. Most of all, they—we—trust you.”

Marianne was too taken by surprise, too disoriented, to do anything but stare at Abelove with a faint fixed smile.

Abelove hovered near, face ruddy with emotion. He spoke with the passion and purpose with which he spoke at Co-op meetings. “Our local reputation is excellent, Marianne, as you know, and it will continue to be excellent. However, we need more visibility. We need to display ourselves—a Green Isle open house, for instance. We might sponsor an arts and crafts fair and sell our products. And, maybe, hire ourselves out in work teams locally—housepainting, housecleaning, carpentry, lawn maintenance. Only think Marianne, of the markets we haven't tapped! Most of all, there's catering—weddings, anniversaries, even funeral breakfasts. We're locally famous for the high quality of our food and our congeniality. Mrs. Johanson, one of our most generous donors, mentioned to me the other night at dinner that it would be wonderful if the Co-op could provide food for her niece's wedding—three hundred guests. At an estimated price of ninety dollars apiece. With additional charges, we're talking of approximately thirty thousand dollars! I couldn't disappoint her, I told her
yes
. And now—”

Marianne said, stunned, “Three hundred? Oh, dear—”

At Abelove's urging she'd sat; on the edge of the sofa; trying to keep up with Abelove's rapid speech. She had rarely seen him so animated, such luminosity in his eyes. And he kept glancing at her in that anxious sidelong way of—was it Hewie?—that was making her even more uneasy.

Abruptly, seeing Marianne's reaction, Abelove changed the subject. He began to talk of “ethical directives”—“philosophical first principles.” He was no less animated, but more abstract, as if speaking not only to Marianne but through Marianne to a vast audience. “As a Harvard Ph.D. I became a neo-Malthusian but I consider myself a revisionist neo-Malthusian. I see no contradiction between the grim teachings of Malthus and the teachings of Christ. Malthus was himself a clergyman, Church of England, as well as a mathematician; you know his hypothesis—there is an inevitable, deathly relationship between the quantity of food available and the number of mouths to consume it. If left unchecked, Malthus believed, population will always increase more rapidly than the means of food production. Plagues, famines, droughts, infanticide, wars—these are the means by which population has historically stabilized. It would seem almost that God is working through ‘survival of the fittest'!—Nature's cruelty but the outward face of God's mathematical necessity! Basically, Malthus' gloomy hypothesis is correct; like Darwin's; the population of Earth, for instance, is expected to be a crushing six billion by the year 2000, and things have never been more perilous, more fraught with war. But Malthus for all his genius failed to conceive of mankind's
cooperation
in the face of such threat; oddly, he did not conceive of Christianity's basic principles put into operation, through science. My vision of the Green Isle Co-op is that it is a microcosm of the world. What works for us, can work for the world! We are dedicated to the principle of transcending competition and struggle.
All
are ‘fittest.' Only there must be leadership, and dedication; hard work; abrogation of self. ‘From each what he or she can give; to each—'”

“—‘as he or she requires.'” But Marianne spoke mechanically, as if not hearing her own words.

Abelove broke off his speech and came quickly to her, and took her hands in his. Her small chill nail-bitten hands in his big warm hands. How strange it was, how abrupt to be touched like this, held! Marianne was so taken by surprise she didn't resist. In a now tremulous voice Abelove said, “Marianne, from the first I saw of you, I think I knew you were special. I never, never approach young women in the Co-op—that is a principle I've abided by since our founding, for obvious reasons. But I've been aware of you, Marianne—oh, yes! Your face, your eyes—the quietness, peace, purity!
Blessed are the pure in spirit, for they shall see God.
You are one of these, Marianne? Are you? I feel you've suffered.”

“I—have? I don't think—”

“The only really good, pure person is one who has suffered with no thought of revenge, or vindication—
I
lack that strength, though recognize it in others. But I would never ask you how, Marianne. I would never wish to pry into your soul.”

“But—”

Abelove leaned over Marianne, forehead furrowed, lightly beaded in sweat. His eyes were anxious. His face was mottled, in rosy splotches like something bloody reflected in water. “I think—I love you, Marianne. I—we—might live together?—might marry?” He was gripping Marianne's hands so tightly, she couldn't pull away; his earnestness held her, his certitude. You could see that, for him, saying a thing was the great effort; he could not anticipate that another might have a response, let alone one that resisted.

Marianne was saying, almost inaudibly, “Oh, Abelove, I don't—think so.”

Abelove didn't hear. He took hold of her thin shoulders, stooped to kiss her. Abelove's warm dry kindly lips pressed against hers! Marianne pushed away, not hard, more in surprise than resistance, her eyes widened in alarm. Love? What was he saying? “—I have to be honest with you, Marianne,” Abelove said quickly, “—I'm not altogether free—morally, I am—but not legally—I've been separated from a woman for years and, yes, there are children—two, teenagers—but things are worked out fairly, I believe—and there have been other women of course—not many, but a few—never here at the Co-op, I swear—never, till now. Always I've tried to be open, honest I think, as with you, Marianne. Are you shocked? You do feel something for me anyway, don't you? The way you've looked at me sometimes—you do love me, a little?”

Marianne stammered, “Yes, I—I guess so. I mean—”

“You do? Oh, Marianne—”

Squatting clumsily before her, thick-hammed, Abelove wrapped his strong arms around Marianne and kissed her again, more passionately than before.
Love! love! he loves me!
In astonishment she felt the man's body warm and yearning as any creature ravenous for affection, as she herself, perhaps—Abelove so
alive
, so
solid, compact
—the authority of his manly body against hers. She might have been snapped like a twig, invaded utterly. Abelove might have parted her stiff, dry lips with his, pushed his tongue into her mouth, but Marianne managed to slip from him, quick as a cat. Breathless, apologetic, she said, “Abelove, I—I have to leave, now. Thank you for all you've said but Felice-Marie, Amethyst are waiting for me—in the greenhouse—we have work to do—”