We Were The Mulvaneys

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Mike left his room, went to grab a parka from a bed in the back hall."Mike, hey-why won't anyone talk about it? Why's it such a secret?" I asked. Mike stomped his feet into leather boots, taking his car keys out of his pocket and impatient to be gone. At the door he paused, looked at me, considered how to reply, his eyes narrowed and damp like Mom's as if he, not Marianne, had been the one to be hurt. Whatever this obscure and mysterious hurt was.

  He said, "Ask Dad."

  BOYS WILL BE BOYS!

  A morning in March, room 209 of Mt. Ephraim High:

  Madame Lederer's classroom. On Marianne Mulvaney's desk seat in first-year French there was drawn, in red Magic Marker, a curious tubular thing about five inches long labeled LE COCK. One tip of the thing was swollen like a balloon and annotated, in smaller letters, THIS SIDE UP.

  No one knew who'd drawn LE COCK. (Of course, someone knew.) The girls were embarrassed, unsmiling; would not look toward the offensive desk, nor at certain of the boys who were exchanging glances with one another, grinning, wriggling their shoulders, embarrassed, too, but more than that, excited. What a cruel thins to do, for God's sake. That isn't funny, you guys. But who could erase the drawing, at such short notice? And with Madame Lederer already in the room, writing the next day's assignment on the blackboard? And who wanted to get involved, anyway? That's disgusting. U/hat an asshole. But maybe she wouldn't notice. Maybe Madame Lederer wouldn't notice.

  Boys will be boys!

  A second after the bell, when nearly everyone was in the classroom, settling into their seats, Marianne Mulvaney entered, in the new, measured way of hers; not, as in the past, gliding into the room with friends, smiling and calling out hello, but alone, and shyly; uncertainly, like a convalescent on her feet just a little too soon, disoricnted in the world of the healthy and trying not to show it.

  The girl was Marianne Mulvaney of course, and yet-was she?

  Except for Madame Lederer at the blackboard, back turned to the classroom, everyone was watching covertly, avidly. Poor Marianne! So sad. How can yol.1 guys he so nasty. It was noted that Marianne's face was oddly triangular, sallow-skinned and witchy; her downcast eyes were overlarge in their sockets; her directionless smile was strained, lips pulled tight across her teeth. Look: she asked for it. Come on.! Making her way to her desk in the third row, almost dead center of the room, Marianne stumbled over Ike Rodman's size-thirteen sneakered feet in the aisle, rnumrnred what sounded like "Excuse me," and Ike said quickly, his face reddening, "Yeah, sure." Everyone watched as Marianne approached her desk, and lowered her bookbag to the top; slipped into the seat without seeing LE COCK, in that way of hers she'd had since returning to school a few days before, vague-eyed, almost in slow motion, but always with that smile that pathetic smile! like a permanent grimace.

  Sighs of general relief, a few scattered titters. Madame Lederer, a chesty, overdressed woman in her late thirties who imagined herself chic, turned to welcome her first-year class with her customary grandiloquent gestures and sweetly-glamorous big smile. "Bon jour, mademoiselles et monsieurs!"

  Almost too loudly, with mock eagerness, caine the response:

  "Bon-jour, Madame Lederer!"

  At her desk in the third row, center of the room, Marianne Mulvaney fumbled to open her French text, opened a spiral notebook, took out her pen and squinted at the smiling, gesticulating woman at the front of the room. There was nothing more to look at, no more interest in Marianne, the morning's meager drama had fizzled out.

  PHASE

  How apprehensive she'd grown of the telephone ringing. Especially at night if Michael Sr. wasn't home.

  As so often, since February, unaccountably he was not home.

  So often, these weeks. As winter yielded by slow, resistant degrees to spring. The harsh windy snow-pelleted spring of upstate New York, daffodils' bright-yellow shocked faces coated in ice, their stems broken, fallen. So Corinne thought: Nothing progresses in a straight line, it's more-well, imbricated. The way a roofer lays tiles, shingles, overlapping one another, for strength.

  Where did he go, under the spell of his obsession?-Corinne could ask, of course, and he'd answer. Always, there was a ready answet Dropping by some old friends. Just driving around, clearing my head. With a hint of his old bad-boy jocularity, Hey, who wants to know? Or, winking, Come with me, sweetheart, and you wouldn't have to ask. (As if he'd want her with him! As ifCormne his wife, his children and High Point Fann, weren't part of what he needed to escape from.) But the ready answers were never the right answer, where their eyes niight lock, Corinne's and Michael's, and she'd know he was speaking the truth.

  Welcoming her into his heart.

  Even the pain, the hurt, the rage of his heart-why couldn't he let her in any longer?

  She wanted to cry to him: i'm her mother! I've been violated, too.

  He was letting Mulvaney Roofmg slide, that much Corinne knew.

  What Michael Mulvaney had so tirelessly, so single-mindedly and with such hope built up for the past twenty years, what, apart from his family, he'd lived for ("To be respected as the best goddamned roofer in the Chautauqua Valley") he was letting slip like sand between his fingers.

  Worried calls from his foreman Alex Flood-8 A.M. and a crew was at the work site and where was Mr. Mulvaney; worried calls from his secretary Leah, midmorning and supplies were being delivered, important calls coming in-where was Mr. Mulvaney?

  Bright as a blue jay Corinne heard herself quip (even as her fists were clenched so tightly, her nails dug deep into her palms), "Why ask me?-I've only known the guy twenty-three years."

  Laughing her breathless neighirig laugh, in the face of startled silence.

  During one of these unsettling calls (in fact, at 4:40 P.M. and the call was from a customer with a complaint), Patrick entered the kitchen, and overheard Corinne on the phone. When she hung up, he touched her arm gently. "Hey, Mom. Hey."

  Was she crying? She hadn't even noticed-

  No embarrassment so keen, so cringing-painfril, as that endured by an adolescent in the presence of his parents. Especially a nerved- up self-conscious high-I.Q. eighteen-year-old boy in the presence of his thoroughly rattled forty-five-year-old mom.

  Patrick was saying in a bright buoyant strained way that reminded Corinne of herself, "He'll be O.K. You know Dad."

  "Oh, that's right. I know that," Corinne said quickly.

  "He's just going through a-" Patrick grinned, shoving his glasses against the bridge of his nose, "-a phase."

  They laughed together. Just a little too loudly. The joke being that the Mulvaney parents were forever saying of the Mulvaney children that one or another, or all of them collectively, were going through a phase.

  "Well. That's right," Corinne said, wiping at her overheated face, "-that's true for all of us! Amen."

  With the yearning eye of, almost, a bereft lover, Corinne gazed after her tall fair son, her mysterious second-born. In his soiled sheepskin jacket, headed quickly outside to his barn chores. Wants to get away from me: can't blame him. Patrick was dutiftul about his chores, uncomplaining as Marianne; far more reliable and efficient than Ivlikey-Junior had been at that age. Corinne's heart swelled with love of Patrick_4ove, and a sense of loss so poignant it left her weak. Was it sinful, God, to feel such emotion for your own child? Seeing how tall and lanky Patrick had grown, inches taller than she, taller even than his father. Patrick was a beautiftfl boy, no matter that chronically crinkled brow, that habit of squinting, staring, pursing and sucking his lips. But she dared not touch him, of course. It was one of the astonishing discoveries of Corinne'S middle years as a mother to learn that, inside her own family, she could pine for the attention of a boy who was her own son!

  Almost the way, as a lonely, homely_gawky high school girl, a fanner's daughter, she'd pined for the attention ofjust such boys- tall, fair, aloofly handsome. Their eyes boring through her with no recognition.

  As for Mikey_JUfliOt, her firstborn_She'd had to give him up, in the emotional
, intimate sense, years ago. He even winced now if she called him "Mikey-JUIMOr" and not "Mike." Not just that he'd begun to shrug away embarrassed at his mother's touch but-clearly- he'd begun what Corinne understood was a secret sexual life, a sexually intense life, with how many girls Corinne would have grown sick and silly by this time trying to count.

  Not that Corinne was a jealous mother. Not in that way. Like certain of her women friends, confessing how obsessed they were with their sOn's probable secret lives.

  Patrick, though. Patrick hadn't discovered sex, yet. Corinne wondered if he was attracted to girls, dreamt of girls, at all. Thank God she could trust him.

  But: she'd have liked a little more courage! To sit down with Patrick, just the two of them. And speak, for once, frankly. How are you taking this terrible episode in our life? Has your sister confided in you? What do you know, from other sources, of what happened? What are people saying of us? (But did she really want to know? Her heart beat rapidly at the thought, as if she were in the presence of danger.) Yet she knew it wasn't possible. No longer. Patrick was eighteen, and soon to leave home. She saw sometimes in the very lenses of his glasses distant landscapes. Rarely now did he, OT the others, linger downstairs in the kitchen with Mom as they used to. That was all gone, suddenly.

  It was all gone, wasn't it? Corinne hadn't quite realized. The boisterous half hour or so when all the children, home ftoni school, crowded into the kitchen breathless and excited exchanging the day's news, teasing, joking, laughing, headed for the refrigerator-the dogs barking ecstatically, for it was the high point of their day, too. (Habitually, the dogs waited for the school buses at the foot of the drive. On afternoons when Mikey_Junior had team practice, poor Silky would continue his vigil, alone, as the other dogs trotted with the children up to the house.) Those wonderfiul years when Mikey was still in high school, and Judd still in elementary school. Mikey-Junior, P.J., Button, Ranger. And good old Mom glowing with pleasure even as, mom-style, she scolded: "Hey! You scavengers! Don't you dare ruin your appetites for supper!" As if growing boys could ruin their ap- petites. These boys ravenous with hunger, devouring peanut butter sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies, slices of American cheese, stale buttermilk biscuits smeared with jam. Mikey who was "Mule" and "Number Four" had the appetite of a young steer, swallowing down a fl-ll quart of milk in a half dozen gulps. Marianne who was forever "watching her weight" joined them drinking diet soda, nibbling damtily at carrot stucks, celery. Al] of them flirting with Mom. Vying for Mom's attention, bragging to Mom. Like the dogs eagerly wagging their tails, like the cats hoisting their tails erect kitten-style. Hey Mom look at me! at me, at me!

  Now, all was changed. Irrevocably?

  Of course, Corinne acknowledged that the older boys had long ago begun to resist her hugs, kisses, crooning baby talk. Brushing hair out of their eyes, dabbing spots of dirt from their faces. A boy's resistance to his mom seemed to start at about the age of five-so young! By nine, by eleven, you had to be careful, really careful how you approached him. (The shrewd thing was to wait for a boy to come to you, which, when circumstances were just right, he would. Grounded by a football injury, right ankle in a cast for weeks, aged sixteen, Mikey had reverted almost to babyhood, at such times when only his Mom was around to tend to him. She'd loved every moment!) By thirteen and beyond, though, they weren't children any longer. Nor even boys, exactly-their voices changing, tiny prickles of beard beginning to push through. Michael Sr. joked he could smell Michael Jr.'s hormones all over the house, mixed with the rich, ripe smell of sweat socks and sneakers.

  Going through a phase.

  Aren't we all? Amen!

  Corinne thought, inspired: Maybe that was it? They were all go- ing through a phase, the entire Mulvaney family, and they'd come out of it, Soon? Just a phase-the very words made everything suddenly hopeful again.

  Not `ong ago Michael Sr. had been capable of sleeping through gale-force winds; now he slept fitfully, only a few hours at a time. He'd become so addicted to his damned cigarettes, he'd wake every three or four hours to go downstairs to smoke. (Pretending he was only going to use the bathroom. As if Corinne, sharing the same bed with the man, didn't know.) Sometimes, at dawn, Corinne would seek Michael out downstairs, wanting to locate him before the children woke. His snoring-raSPY, wet, rhythmic-would lead her to him, in the fainily room, or the kitchen, or the minimally firnished, badly cluttered room that was his at-home office. There, Michael Mulvaney Sr. slumped on a sofa or in a chair, occasionally even on the floor, head fallen so sharply to one side it looked as if his neck might be broken. A sag-eyed ashen-faced man sprouting gunmetal-gray whiskers, his muscular shoulders, arms, midriff going to fat. There would be a scattering of beer bottles at his feet, possibly a depleted bottle of whiskey-Early Times, his favorite. An ashtray heaped with ashes and butts. What a smell! Corinne would stomp to a window to shove it open, the colder the air, the better. How hurt she felt, and how vindictive!

  One of the dogs, usually Troy, who slept in this part of the house, would be close by, having stationed himself near his master through the night. Angular collie-face, moist eyes you wanted to believe intelligent, consoling. Don't worry, it's only a phase!

  This, Corinne knew: one of the places Michael was slipping off to in secret (yes, she'd discovered a matchbook in his pants pocket-- she'd gotten that desperate) was the Wolf's Head Inn at Wolf s Head Lake twelve miles away.

  Dear God, no. Not again.

  Michael's old friend "Haw" Hawley owned the place, or owned a mortgage on it. The Wolf's Head crowd, Michael's oldest friends in the Chautauqua Valley, predating by years his Mt. Ephrainu connections. Some of the men also belonged to the Chautauqua Sportsmen's Club-Wally Parks, Rick Shires, Cobb Connor. Getting Michael Mulvaney to go on their notorious hunting weekends with them, deer-hunting season in November_December. Not just the shotguns terrified Corinne who hated hunting in any case, but the long nights of drinking, poker-playing, carousing. When Michael returned from one of these expeditions to the foothills beyond Wolf's Head Lake he'd be hungover, a guilty glaze to his eyes. Corinne doubted he'd ever shot any deer, but the men concocted tales to protect and enhance one another in the eyes of the women back home. (In Michael's office at Mulvaney Roofing, there were photographs of Michael and his hunting buddies standing before the strung-up carcasses of deer, shotguns proudly erect. Coriime wouldn't a]low any of these in the house though she did, being practicalminded, agree to prepare venison steaks and stews.)

  Eventually, after a few years, Michael had sickened of the hunting expeditions. He'd never come out and admitted to Corinne that she was right, morally or otherwise, but Corinne guessed he'd become revulsed by the idiotic bloodshed and his friends' behavior.

  "Haw" Hawley! Corinne's feelings about him, and his wife Leonie, were complicated. She granted they were fun-rowdy, vulgar, slapdash, lively. Never a dull moment at the Wolf's Head Inn, those long sunmier twilights and nights. Corinne knew how Michael enjoyed that hard-drinking crowd, but she hadn't been able to like them, much. Hadn't ever felt comfortable. Though, as a young wife eager to please her husband, she'd surely tried. Both Haw and Wally Parks had flirted with Corinne when Michael wasn't present, and she'd never known if they were serious or just kidding around. (Or both.) Corimme had chosen to interpret the flirting as kidding around, though she'd never told Michael about it.

  Haw was a big-bellied wild-bearded alcoholic who drank along with his customers, Wally was a rail-thin blond-Presley type who managed the Marsena Airport and had cooked up for himself a local reputation for having been a World War II bomber pilot in Japan, an alcoholic, too-oh, why mince words, they were all alcoholics and Michael Mulvaney had been well on his way to alcoholism, the years he'd seen that gang regularly. As a young wife, with young children, Corinne had a recurring nightmare vision of the husband she adored, the father of her children, sunk to his armpits in the black sludgy-muck of Wolf s Head Lake's northern shore, slowly sinking from view.

  Dear God, p
lease no.

  I'm not young enough, or strong enough, this time.

  It was Corinne's belief, never shared with anyone, that she'd had to struggle for her husband's very soul, those years. A shudder ran through her-how close she'd come to losing Michael to that filthy black muck.

  Yet, she had to admit, there'd been a certain shabby glamor about Wolf's Head Lake, and the Inn, in the days they'd all been young, and good-looking. An erotic undercurrent to virtually every exchange between a man and a woman not married to each other. The sexy beat! beat! beat! of the jukebox in the barroom. The Wolf's Head Inn was a country tavern built on a promontory above the lake, a boat-rental concession operating out of its ground floor. (How the Mulvaney children loved those leaky, cumbersome rowboats, clamoring to be taken out Sunday after Sunday! The memory made the corners of Corinne's eyes crinlde--that blinding glare on the lake at sunset. A ghost-pain darted between her shoulder blades. Until Mikey_Jumor was old enough to be trusted with a rowboat and the younger children, it fell to Mom to take the crew out, while Dad drank beer and played cards with his friends on the Inn veranda. You could hear them laughing and hooting like hyenas a hundred yards out on the lake.)