We Were the Mulvaneys (59 page)

Marianne caught sight of herself in a shiny surface—a sunburnt face that more resembled a boy's than a young woman's, eyebrows that might have needed plucking if she'd dared to look closely, flyaway hair grown to shoulder length and tied back carelessly in a ponytail. Her hands and forearms, too, were now finely nicked and scratched from animal encounters and stippled with who knows what sort of insect bites. She bit her lip, and laughed. No one would ever say of her, “Exactly like a cheerleader.”

Marianne would not have said
I am in love with Whit West
but rather
If I was in love, it would be with Whit West.

Did Whit sense? Could he guess? Marianne flushed with embarrassment when he teased her, in his merciless way, asking for instance if she'd like to accompany him to Washington to meet with one or another congressman—“He'd sit up and listen to
you
”—or to New York City on one of his whirlwind fund-raising weekends—“Separate suites at the Waldorf, I promise.” (Suites! Waldorf! It was a joke, the Eco-Inn motels Whit managed to find wherever he travelled.) Marianne would laugh nervously, her gaze skidding sidelong, saying, “Well. Not just right now, Whit.” Whit would say, “Why not, Marianne? You've done all the paperwork.” Marianne would say, backing off, “I just don't think, you know, it's a good idea.” Whit would say, laughing to show it was a joke, “Evidently not. Except—why not?” But Marianne would have fled to answer a ringing telephone, or to meet an animal owner bursting through the screen door with a pet in some stage of crisis. Whit never pursued Marianne beyond such jokey exchanges, which were part of the atmosphere of Stump Creek Hill, in any case. Always his tone was light, playful, kindly-meant. He was shrewd enough, seeing whatever it was in Marianne's face, a glimmer of panic, a stab of terror, to back away. He'd been a horseman as a boy and knew a spooked creature when he saw one: advance too quickly, it bolts away.

Marianne, on her part, was always watching for Whit. She was only really relaxed (did the others notice? she hoped not) when Whit was away and not expected back for a while. No chance of him slamming through a door, crying, “All right! Break's over! Back to work!”—as if in his absence they all just lazed around. No chance of running into him in the ballroom-kennel where it was so noisy, someone could come up right behind you and speak your name and you wouldn't hear. And at mealtimes where Whit often ate with the half dozen staff members who lived on the grounds, casual picnicstyle meals around a handsome scroll-footed mahogany dining room table that was an elegant leftover from the manor house's prime days—and there was Whit in a blood-spattered jacket, two days' growth of beard and dirt-edged fingernails, spooning out his specialty black bean–shiitake mushroom–red pepper quiche onto plates and cursing the damned thing, as if, every time it turned out “runny as dishwater” was the first time, a complete surprise and humiliation. The laughter at these tossed-together meals was such that Marianne, shy of her employer, found it difficult not to look at him—how could you avoid it, with Whit clowning shameless as a child, his good moods as dramatic and somehow
coercive
as the bad?

Quickly, Marianne had learned to watch out for Dr. Whittaker West who'd impulsively hired her, hired and fired at Stump Creek Hill as he liked to boast (but whom had he ever fired, however incompetent? Irma couldn't name a name) so she could stay out of his careening way if at all possible. Rhoda, Trudi, Irma, Gus, Steve, Wiggles—they were always assuring Marianne, “Whit doesn't mean it, that's just how he
sounds
.” She knew he didn't mean it, yet what he might mean was couched so slyly in what he didn't, like wheat kernels amid chaff, she was left unnerved. There was an erotic, sexual swagger to the man, in her presence—wasn't there? Or did she imagine it? How much more pleasant to observe Whit unobserved, at a safe distance: the way he walked, the slight stoop of his shoulders and neck, the angle at which he wore one or another of his grimy
STUMP CREEK HILL
—
SUPPORT'EM
! hats; the jerky motion of his hands, arms, legs. The back of his head. Marianne admired even his shadow! Yet she found it disagreeable to look Whit in the face when he spoke to her. She feared him gazing impudently into her soul and finding her out, whoever she was—as Penelope Hagström had done. For Whit too was a poet. Not of language but of gesture. The way he comforted animals so terrified their bodies shook like vibrating motors, his battered big-knuckled hands holding them firm. Murmuring and cajoling and even joking with them. The way he wielded a needle, injecting vaccine or drawing blood—the delicacy, the unerring firmness. The way, gripping an animal's taut jaws from below with his left hand, he could position a capsule on the animal's tongue so that the animal would swallow it effortlessly—the most skittish and panicky of animals. When Muffin began at last to fail, the second time, Whit insisted upon teaching Marianne this technique, for the cat was susceptible to infections and required antibiotics several times a day. At first, Marianne's touch was too hesitant—Muffin shook her off, squirmed out of her grasp panicked and tried to run away. “I'm afraid of hurting him,” Marianne protested. “Oh, don't be silly. It isn't that easy to hurt an animal,” Whit said. He petted Muffin briskly to calm him and expertly gripped his jaws from beneath and pried them open. “See? Your turn, Marianne.” So Marianne, shaky-fingered, tried, and tried, and at last succeeded; and Muffin swallowed his capsule. “Animals are basically wildlife,” Whit said, with an air of approval. “‘Domestic' cats, dogs—just the surface ten percent is domesticated. The rest is nature. Right, Muf?” He rubbed the cat's ears and Muffin blinked up at him.

Marianne thought
They understand each other. But what is it they understand?

And when finally Muffin did die, a few months later, very thin, his eyes tawny-yellow with jaundice, it was in Marianne's arms, as Whit injected him with a medicine that stopped his heart instantaneously. He had weakened, at the end, swiftly, in a matter of days. He'd simply stopped eating. He had not crept away to die in the woods as Marianne feared, had never ventured outdoors much at this new place, shy of the numerous feral cats who lived on the grounds; but dozed for long hours atop Marianne's bed, on her ragged old quilt. At night, he'd slept pressed against Marianne's leg, breathing thinly, twitching from time to time in such a way that Marianne, lying awake, wondered if he would live until morning. Marianne told Whit now, “We're ready. We're prepared for—it.” Whit said gently, “Muffin is, Marianne, but are you?” She did not answer. Yet as Whit sank the thin needle into Muffin's bony shoulder, and the cat cringed, and went rigid, and immediately then limp, lifeless as a rag doll—Marianne held him firmly, and did not break down.
O my God, can this be? Can this really be happening?
She stared in astonishment at the now dead cat in her arms, his eyes open, blank. Yet she did not break down, at least at this time.

Whit was sitting on the edge of Marianne's brass bed, stroking Muffin's fur that was so soft and fine. Marianne could not bear to look at him yet saw a glistening on his cheeks. Whit said, “Muffin wasn't your only friend, Marianne.” Marianne said calmly, “Well, I know that.” Whit said, “He wasn't the only one who loves you, Marianne.” “Well,” said Marianne, now just slightly hesitating, as if at the edge of an abyss, yet calmly enough, “I know that, too.”

W
as that Judd?—that tall, lean-limbed, staring young man?—waiting in the hospital corridor for Marianne, to hug her, and lead her into the intensive care unit, and was that Corinne?—hair gone unevenly gray, a powdery-pebbly gray, a hectic flush in her thin cheeks—rushing at Marianne, embracing her so hard Marianne felt the breath squeezed from her. “Oh, Marianne! Thank God you're here, honey! Dad's just waking up.” The air in this place was chilled as a refrigerator. There was a humming on all sides. Marianne couldn't stop shivering. She and her mother were staring at each other with widened amazed eyes. Corinne whispered, “Don't be surprised, Marianne. Dad has had surgery to remove a cancerous lung, he's been delirious off and on since yesterday. He isn't the way you remember him.” Marianne was dazed with exhaustion. She'd driven from Stump Creek Hill to the Medical Clinic, University of Rochester, three hundred miles nearly nonstop, more than six hours in the rattling Chevy pickup and much of the route along narrow country highways and in Rochester she hadn't known where the Medical Center was so she'd had to stop to ask directions several times, intimidated by so much traffic, intimidated by the size and complexity of the city in which she had never driven before and by the nightmare network of elevated expressways,
on
and
off
ramps,
exit only
lanes, praying aloud in a child's scared voice “Dear God, dear Jesus don't let my father die” and now as in a dream others had somehow entered and even appropriated she was being led forward by her mother, Mom she loved so! Mom she'd missed so! Mom gripping both Marianne's hands in hers, such cold anxious fingers!—and Marianne found herself inside not a room but a cubicle staring at a person in a raised bed amid glittering beeping instruments. Why, he was no one Marianne knew—was he? An ashy-skinned sunken-eyed sunken-cheeked man of some age beyond age. His hair was thin tin-colored strips across the waxy, vein-splattered dome of his scalp, there were clawed-looking creases in his cheeks, his eyes peered out wildly from deep bruised sockets. A transparent tube ran into his left nostril and tubes were attached to his shrunken arms and disappeared beneath the bedclothes covering his flat, yet bulky body. Marianne stared in disbelief even as Corinne murmured eagerly, “Michael? Darling? See who's here! She's come such a long way! It's Marianne.” The man who was Michael Mulvaney Sr., the man who was Dad, Dad so changed, squinted at Marianne, as if a light blinded him. He tried to move his head on the raised pillow but the tube that ran into his nostril seemed to hold him in place. His right eye was badly bloodshot and not in focus. The air hummed with cold, with ventilators, with machines; a computer screen registered nervous zigzaggy blue lines. There was a subtle smell as of rotted oranges which Marianne recognized from the office at Stump Creek Hill and did not wish to identify.

Corinne urged Marianne forward. Marianne dared to take her father's hand that groped along the bed rail—such a thin, cold hand!—the bones seemingly hollow!—yet the fingers closed about hers with unexpected strength, urgency. Michael tried to speak, tried very hard but the sound came out garbled, a sound like drowning, terrible to hear. Marianne said, leaning over the bed, anxiously, yet smiling, “Daddy? It's me.” He tugged at her hand as if by sheer strength he hoped to lift himself from the bed and break free of his restraints that seemed to confound him. At last he managed to mutter coherent words, phrases—“Where?—didn't want to—so tired—I want—God help—where is?—so tired so tired—” and abruptly then his strength waned, he sank back and shut his eyes, his breath hoarse. His grip on Marianne's hand loosened; she continued to hold it tight. “Daddy? Oh, Daddy, I'm so sorry,” she said, resolute she would not cry, and for what seemed a long time the three of them waited for Michael to open his eyes again as he lay there in his bed drifting in sleep yet not peaceably, mouth working, eyeballs moving jerkily behind shut lids. He twitched, moaned, seemed to be arguing with someone. He was like one who has sunk beneath the surface of consciousness as beneath the surface of water floating there gathering his desperate strength to reemerge, to save himself. How close the surface was, yet how tough the membrane that trapped him beneath it! A nurse entered the cubicle and told them to wait outside and so they did, and again Corinne gripped Marianne's hands, staring at her almost greedily. It had not been clear to Marianne initially that her mother was so exhausted, even as she spoke in a strangely exhilarated voice, “Marianne, my goodness you're so grown up!—isn't she, Judd?—and your hair, oh dear your hair, oh but how pretty you are, Marianne—I know you're exhausted—I know this is a terrible surprise—Marianne you aren't married are you?—are you married, honey?—no?—I just, I—wondered—I mean, it's been so confused—I'm sorry not to have been a better mother but—I don't know what happened exactly—it was just something that happened, wasn't it?—no one ever decided—
I
never decided—I love you honey, thank you for coming—your Dad does want to speak to you, he told us—didn't he, Judd?—oh what a sad, terrible time for us—we can pray, that's all we can do, but it's a sad time, we have to be prepared the nurses have warned us. They've been so nice, so understanding, haven't they, Judd?” her eyes a pale wan blue washed out with fatigue, strangely lashless, naked in the bright fluorescent overhead light, and even as Judd murmured a reply she continued in her bright tumbling way, “Dad's been awake off and on since the surgery—you know his lung was removed?—a cancerous lung removed—that was nine days ago, imagine!—and he has recognized Judd and me most of the time—he has said some things we can understand and I know he can hear us and understand us, isn't that right, Judd?—but he's been angry, he doesn't know why he's here—he's angry too about someone stealing from him, taking money and snapshots from his room—oh, that terrible room!—Dad was staying at this terrible filthy hotel downtown, he'd collapsed on the street and had been here in the hospital for more than a week before anyone took the trouble to look through his things and call me—his own wife! his nearest of kin! Imagine!” turning to Judd who shrugged, as if embarrassed, and who said to Marianne, “Dad's ‘indigent,' he's an alcoholic, a charity case, frankly I think we're lucky he's had this much care at all,” and Corinne said quickly, “Oh yes, thank God, you're right, Judd is right of course, thank God his things weren't just dumped out on the street and my name and address lost, I'm grateful someone from the hospital did call, I'm grateful the doctors took him in and operated though there doesn't seem—now—anybody for me to talk to, exactly—the surgeon is never available—I never spoke with the surgeon at all—but the nurses
are
nice, so understanding and kind—and Dad isn't really insured any longer,
I'm
under a medical coverage with the county—where I work—but not Dad—oh Marianne, they removed a lung but they said it's too late, the cancer has spread to his brain, his kidneys—‘metasized'—” and Judd said, gently, “‘Metastasized,' Mom.” “‘Metastasized'—of course.” Corinne had begun to cry silently, in that way that Marianne recalled for the first time in years; a mother's crying, stifled, soundless, secret so as not to disturb. If you cried so others could hear you were crying to be heard but a mother's crying was just the opposite, crying not to be heard. Yet, now, Corinne could not hide from her adult children. Judd said matter-of-factly to Marianne, in that way that was Whit's too, much of the time, as if the worst, the bluntest truth might as well be acknowledged, “He's just worn down, worn out. His liver has been affected, his heart—all the years of heavy drinking. Smoking caused the cancer but—it's obvious he'd been killing himself for years. Poor Dad!” Corinne said vehemently, tugging at Marianne's arm, “Oh he was a good man and he loved you, he loved you all, it was just he was led astray. He's only sixty-one years old, Marianne. Imagine! That's not old at all.”

Marianne heard herself say, scarcely knowing what the words meant, “No, Mom. That's not old at all.”

Later that day they returned to Michael Mulvaney's bedside in the chilled humming cubicle amid the bustle of Intensive Care. And another time Michael fought his way to the surface of consciousness, fixing his good, focussed eye upon Marianne, struggling to speak. Marianne said, “Daddy? I love you. Don't tire yourself, Daddy, just rest. Daddy, I'm so sorry.” But Michael was squeezing her hand, trying with such urgency to speak, out of a garble of noises syllables of words emerged like pebbles in a rushing stream, and Marianne believed she heard her name—“Marianne”—unless it was “Marian”—but a name very like hers, almost identical, and clearly her father was looking at her, staring at her, he had recognized
her
, Marianne—hadn't he?

There came a final, feeble spasm of strength, his fingers clasping hers. Then again the dying man lost the thread of consciousness and sank back on the pillow.

 

In one of the patches of waiting that were like pleats in time, while Corinne remained at their father's bedside in case he should wake, Marianne and Judd, faint with hunger, had a quick meal in the hospital cafeteria; and afterward, grateful for each other's company like old friends who'd somehow forgotten how much they liked each other, went outside to walk for a half hour in the bright windy autumn air. How strangely vivid, how vast the world was—the sky so steeply overhead, just
there
. In a fluorescent chill-humming room, you could easily forget how the world, the sky were—
there
. Marianne said wonderingly, “Daddy did recognize me, I think. He did, Judd, didn't he? I'm not just imagining it?” and Judd said, “Yes, of course he did.” Marianne laughed, embarrassed, biting at a thumbnail. “He called me ‘Marian'—I think. Did you hear it?” Judd said, frowning, “He called you ‘Marianne.' That's what I heard.” Marianne said, “I guess he's forgiven me? I mean—he loves me again, he's not ashamed of me?” and Judd said, “Dad always loved you, Marianne. He wasn't ashamed exactly, it was—well, like Mom said it was just something that happened.” Marianne repeated slowly, “‘Just something that happened.'” Judd said, “It's the way families are, sometimes. A thing goes wrong and no one knows how to fix it and years pass and—no one knows how to fix it.” He spoke quickly, almost combatively. Marianne said, “Dad saw
me
. I'm sure he did.” Judd said, “Marianne, for God's sake he said your name. Mom heard him, and so did I.” When Marianne didn't reply, walking now swiftly with her head lowered, plucking at her long, untidy ponytail blowing in the wind, he added, with brotherly indulgence and impatience, as if this was an old family issue once again resurfacing when it ought to have been settled long ago, “He'd been asking for you, that's why Mom called you. He asked for ‘Marianne'—I heard him, I swear—and he didn't ask for any of the rest of us, his sons, by name. Mom and I kind of worked out what he was trying to say, he wants to see Mike and Patrick, too, but couldn't remember their names exactly, or couldn't pronounce them—we're pretty sure. But your name, Marianne, he knew. Don't you believe me?”

So Marianne decided yes, she would believe him.