We Were the Mulvaneys (54 page)

“I'll drink to that.” Laughter radiated upward through the ravaged old dad's fleshy torso, making it quiver. He raised his scummy teacup in shaky fingers. Seeing the tight set of his son's jaws, the Marine disapproval, he said, genially, “Always knew I should've been a Marine. At the age you went in, I had what it takes—hard ass, harder head. But I got married instead, and by the time I was your age I was up to here in it.” Drawing a swift crude forefinger beneath his chin.

Wondering suddenly how old his oldest child was, these days. Dear God, was Mike thirty?—thirty-
two
?

The son grimaced to signal perfunctory mirth, or shock and disgust at his dad's speech. He'd pushed his plate of indistinguishable lumps of food on gummy white rice, two-thirds uneaten, slightly away from him, now nudged it an inch further as if to distance himself from even its memory. Half-pleading, “Dad? Like I started to say before, I was just visiting Mom, and—”

Shrewd old dad had leapt ahead. “Look, son, say you'd been one of those servicemen sent to—where was it—Beirut?—Tehran? To rescue those hostages? Remember? Poor Jimmy Carter issues orders from the White House—some ‘Joint Chiefs of Staff' palookas issue orders from the Pentagon—thousands of miles away in a godforsaken desert a dumb innocent American kid in uniform dies a horrible death in a flaming helicopter—fulfilling his assignment, eh? What his superior officer tells him to do?
You'd
have gone?” Words slurred as if clotted with phlegm but the point was valid, let the blustery kid deny it.

Saying, “Dad, those were
special units
. Of course I'd have gone if I was one of them, and qualified. A guy breaks his ass to get into one of those units, it's an honor. A secret mission like that, against the enemy, it's an
honor
.” Mike spoke quickly, almost in embarrassment at having to explain something so obvious. “About Mom? Maybe you know she's back in Mt. Ephraim, in town? She's got a job with—”

“No, no. Don't avoid the issue, son.” The shrewd old dad was creasing his forehead as if this were a public debate, two political candidates on TV. Speaking loudly so that others in the restaurant glanced around. “Those Iranians had a right to be sore as hell, in my opinion. They'd had a revolution and overthrew a dictator, a crook and a torturer, what's-his-name—the ‘Shah.' And this character skips the country with millions of dollars and winds up in the United States and we protect him, of course—we're the saps! Exactly like in Vietnam we're the saps! All the Iranians want is this ‘Shah' crook returned to them, for a trial and an execution, maybe some torture beforehand he's got coming to him, plus the money he and his glamor-gal wife stole, in exchange for the hostages, right? I'd say they had a valid point, wouldn't you?”

Mike said, trying to remain calm, “Dad, the Iranians are our
enemies
. We don't have diplomatic ties with them. They committed an
enemy action
, an act of
international terrorism
, kidnapping American citizens out of our embassy! You don't give in to terrorist blackmail, Dad.”

“Yes, but look here, son: since the beginning of recorded history the military has been sending young men out to die for some cause or other and you can be sure it's always against ‘enemies.' Sure it's a big deal at the time, sacrificing your life for your country, honors and medals and memorial services and all, but underneath it's just politicians sounding their mouths, right? Can you deny this? Your enemy is your ally a few years later—look at Japan and Germany. Your ally is your enemy—that's Iran! Maybe that's how it has to be, but when a man's got only one life, he's a fool to toss it like dice.” How passionately Michael Mulvaney was speaking, his face heated, eyeballs bulging in their sockets. He who could go for days uttering no more than a few expedient words or epithets. But then spoiling the effect by fumbling for the Gallo bottle, splashing wine into the little cup and drinking.

Mike murmured, disgusted, “Christ, Dad—you're drunk.”

“
That's
an answer? A rebuttal? You call that a rebuttal? Ronald Reagan could do better than that, improvising.”

“Look, don't you want to hear about Mom, for Christ's sake? Your
wife
?”

“That's private, son. That's personal. I don't discuss my personal life with anyone.”

“You know she thinks about you all the time? All these years? Keeps track of you?
Prays
for you?”

“No, no! No.” Ravaged old dad in his rumpled rayon sports shirt, three-day beard and sweaty gleaming scalp, made a blind, confused gesture as if hoping to lift himself by brute strength from the table, except of course he was in a booth, and fell back down onto the seat, heaving and wheezing. “I'm on furlough from all that,” he said. It came out a strange scared laugh.

“Dad, my God! What's happened to you?”

The spongy grapefruit inside his head. The ache in his breast-bone. The wavering vision he hoped was in fact his eyes and not the actual world beyond his fingertips.

Was the meal ended? The Gallo bottle was just about empty. Which meant the
good mood
would be starting to wind down, soon. The ravaged old dad was anticipating the embarrassment of his Marine son taking pity on him, offering him money he'd be morally obliged to refuse, but he couldn't very well refuse the offer of a drink, could he? But had one been offered?

“Did you want to leave here? Where'd you like to go, son?”

“Leave? Go where?”

“Didn't you say—?”

“Say what?”

Oh, it was too much effort. Just pushing himself up out of the sticky-plastic booth was too much effort. Almost, he could lay his head down, face in his plate of gummy rice, and sleep.

Instead he surprised himself, as so often he did. As with a woman, striking up a conversation with a woman he didn't know, in a bar, or a park, even out on the street, he'd hear his voice unexpectedly fluent, even youthful. “Mikey, d'you remember that white horse you kids had? Long time ago, handsome fella, white horse, white mane, belonged to one of you boys, I think? I was trying to think the other night what was his name?”

Mike shook his head. “
White
horse? I don't think so.”

“Sure! Sure we did. C'mon, name me some names.”

As if this were a profound question and not another clumsy diversionary tactic, Mike frowned and cast his eyes to the flyspecked ceiling that looked as if it were made of cardboard and recited the names of horses long gone from High Point Farm and very likely from this earth. “Well, there was Crackerjack, my pony—then there was Junior Jones, then—” The names drifted past, confused with the rattling of the air-conditioning unit. Mike's dad gave every impression of listening hard, with that intent yet glazed look of a drunk holding onto his
good mood
as a drowning man might cling to the side of an overturned boat, but essentially Mike was going it alone. “—Prince, Red, Molly-O, Clover—you must've sold Judd's horse just before you sold the farm, didn't you? Who bought him?”

The ravaged old dad squinted at his son, bemused. “How in hell would I know who bought him? Ask your mom.”

Time to say good night, good-bye. The meal was ended. A drink up the street was possibly forthcoming, the dad couldn't recall. He said, “Terrific meal, we'll be back,” to the shy Chinese waiter hovering a few yards away, waiting to clear the table. This time, screwing up his face with the effort, the dad did successfully heave himself up out of the booth, lurching sideways—oh God, what a jolt of pain running from the base of his skull to the base of his spine. He was a sick, sick man. Mike was on his feet with military alacrity, holding the old man erect. “Dad? Hey? You all right?”—but the old man was already recovered, muttering to himself, in swaying motion headed for the door. There was a vague sense of an audience, outright stares and a wish (unless imagined?) that the ravaged old dad collapse on the floor but that refused to happen. The son had to stay behind to pay the check; out on the sidewalk in the soupy gray air, wiping his damp face on his shirtsleeves, rubbing his eyes savagely, the dad had time to recover, or almost. But oh God—the
good mood
was rapidly dribbling away like piss down a pant-leg.

Once the kid, what's-his-name, was gone, back to wherever he'd come from, that would be a relief. Too damned exhausting to love them, even to keep them straight.

Mike trotted to catch up with him. Practically towered over him. Gripping both his arms with steely fingers—“I'd better take you back to your place, Dad? Just to make sure you're all right.”

Anxious Dad shaking his head, no thanks, no need. Ashamed of his pigsty room above the smelly restaurant and just possibly some female's things were there and anyway what business was it of the kid's? What business of any of them, if he wanted to crawl away like a gut-wounded deer and die alone in the woods?

At least Mike Jr. wasn't in his Marine officer's uniform, looking like he was arresting a citizen. Enough assholes gaping at them in the street as it was.

So they argued for a while. Past nine o'clock and the sky was still riddled with light like pale capillaries in dark-bruised flesh. The dad who was in fact Michael Mulvaney, his own independent person and not just the father of some pack of kids, was mumbling he had a friend to meet up the street, had to leave, but thanks for the meal, son—“We'll have to get together more often.” This made Mike laugh as if it were meant to be witty, a TV gag line. He'd taken out his wallet, was offering the ravaged old dad some bills, and the dad was protesting, “No! No thanks, son,” almost convincingly, “—you're an old married man now, soon there'll be babies and you'll need all the money you can get.” Breaking off then to cough, as if coughing were a signal of sincerity, but there was a cigarette in his fingers and he'd inhaled wrong and the coughing veered out of control.
This is how you'll die
the bulletin came
puking up your lung-tissue
. But Mike was insisting that his dad accept the money, the kid's big-boned handsome face dark with blood and eyes glistening with misery. Maybe they'd decided all this beforehand? Life was trickier than TV, it seemed so often to be veering in the wrong direction, yet sometimes it veered in the right direction as if by accident. Certainly it was the case, the ravaged old dad couldn't deny it, he needed to purchase some new, decent clothes, also shoes, have his hair professionally cut and not hacked with a scissors by a shaky-handed woman friend, yes and check into a clinic—promise? “Well, maybe—” he assented, seeing the logic of it, from the son's perspective at least. Giving in then and the son in the tall muscled Marine-body slipped cash into his shyly opened hand.

“But only if it's a loan, Mike. That's understood?”

A black rushing-laughing sensation then like the wind in the chimneys at High Point Farm. As if you could be sucked up inside a chimney, blown up into the wild-windy sky and lost.

So in the end Mike did walk his ravaged old rubbery-legged dad up the filth-encrusted stairs to the furnished room above the Golden Pavilion Chinese Restaurant and Takeout. The pigsty room you wouldn't want to examine too closely. Poor Mike biting his lower lip, nostrils pinching. He pulled off his dad's laceless shoes, a few items of dirt-stiffened clothing, laid him onto the stained rumpled sheets where at once he began to snore, snort, wheeze, his head lolling like the head of a broken-necked goose. Waking a long time later to discover only six twenty-dollar bills stuffed in his pants pocket—a hundred twenty where he'd had a wild hope of five hundred at least. So the ravaged old man had humbled himself in the eyes of his eldest son and in his own eyes for so little, after all.

 

The white horse. So much more alive, vivid, than Michael Mulvaney who was but smoke.

Breathless daring to climb atop the white horse's bare muscled back, grip its mane in his fists, its sides with his knees. Suddenly they were moving, lurching—behind what appeared to be the pear orchard, now into the lane. Yes, clearly it was the lane. The white horse snorted, shook its head, bucking, prancing, kicking—trying to throw Michael Mulvaney off? Or merely testing him, as a horse will test any new, uncertain rider? The children were riding beside him on their horses, saddled horses, beneath the tall trees. So beautiful on their mounts, smiling and grave, there was Mikey-Junior no more than thirteen years old, there was Patrick about the same age, there was Marianne, and at the rear, his face blurred, the youngest, Judd—why, Michael hadn't seen his children riding their horses in years. His perfect children! He'd been born into the world to be the father of those children, suddenly it was clear! And at the fence Corinne grinning and waving, holding a camera, dear Corinne in that straw hat that looked as if a goat had been chomping on it, he'd swear he'd stolen it from her and replaced it with an identical hat, brand new. He was not a horseman like his children, yet there he was, on this amazing white horse—galloping after them in the lane. Pounding thudding hooves! The horse snorting, bucking! He saw that his children were outdistancing him, galloping toward the mountains. His heart was enormous in his chest, hurting him. He was gripping the horse's smoky white mane, gripping its heaving sides with his knees. He would not let go. He would never let go. He would not be thrown off. He was in full pursuit.