We Were The Mulvaneys

by Joyce Carol Oates

  That wasn't Patrick's way. That wasn't Pinch's way.

  Aloof and furious and deeply unspeakably hurt.

  Nor had he confronted his father, with whom, since February 1976, he'd scarcely spoken. You go your way and Igo mine. His father seemed to him mad: it was pointless to talk to him, still less argue. He'd banished Marianne from the household and from his life so that he could banish her from his thoughts. It was simple as that, and Patrick understood. He understood, but couldn't forgive. To Corinne he said It's cruel, it's ridiculous, I hate him, how can you? and Corinne said angrily, You don't hate your father, Patrick!-you know that. As for Marianne, she's happy and she's adjusted, her faith sustains her just as it sustains me. Don't inte-ere!

  But Pinch would interfere, if only at a distance.

  He wanted to believe her, she insisted she was happy.

  Didn't want to sit staring at her, trying to figure out what was her life now.

  Life after high school: cheerleader, prom princess.

  He didn't want to interrogate her yet had to ask: how had her first semester at Kilburn gone?-and when, another time, she told him with girlish enthusiasm, plucking at her shorn hair, how happy she was at the college, how much she'd been learning in her classes, especially a Course in American history, focussing upon the Abolitionist movement, readings in Thoreau, Emerson, Frederick Doug-lass, Patrick interrupted to ask, "But, Marianne, bow did you do? I mean-your grades?"

  Crude blunt Pinch.

  Mananne had been smiling and now her smile faltered. Her bruised-looking eyelids began to flutter, so like Corinne's. Is there a gene for such related mannerisms, or are they purely learned, conditioned? She said, quietly, so quietly Patrick almost couldn't hear, "I- didn't exactly complete two of the courses. I had to take incompletes."

  "Why?"

  "Well-" Marianne squirmed, pulling at her spiky hair. "Things sort of caine up. Suddenly."

  "What kind of things?"

  "An emergency at the Co-op, just after Thanksgiving. Aviva who was assistant store tnanager got sick-"

  "Store? What store?"

  "Oh Patrick, I must have told you-didn't I? In Kilbum, in town, we have a Green Isle outlet. We sell preserves, fresh produce in the summer, baked goods-my zucchini_walmiut bread is one of the favorites. I-"

  "And you work in this store? How many hours a week?"

  Marianne dipped her head, avoiding Patrick's interrogative gaze. "We don't think in terms of hours-exactiy," she said. She was sitting on Patrick's sofa (not an item from home, part of the dull spare slightly shabby furnishings of the apartment) while Patrick sat facing her, in a rather overbearing position, on his desk chair, his right ankle balanced on his left knee in a posture both relaxed and aggressive.

  Thinking Pinch-style I have a right to ask, who else will ask if I don't?

  "What terms do you think in, then?"

  "The Green Isle Co-op isn't a-formally run organization, like a business. It's more like a-well, a family. People helping each other out. `From each what he or she can give; to each, as he or she requires.

  "Who said that? P. T. Barnum?"

  "Oh Patrick, no." Dutifully Marianne laughed at Patrick's adolescent sarcasm, as a sister must. For an instant they were twelve and thirteen years old, and Pinch was being dourly witty at the supper table. "It's the Co-op motto, it's Abelove's, derived from some nineteenth-century philosopher I think."

  "Karl Marx."

  "Whoever."

  Marianne smiled anxiously, forehead creased. Since Patrick had picked her up at the depot she'd been plucking at her hair, halfconsciously; stroking the nape of her neck as if it were tender, and ached; groping to make sure the flimsy straps of her T-shirt were in place. You would wonder (Patrick would wonder) why a young woman of nineteen would wear such a shirt, and nothing beneath it; why, when it was only just April in upstate New York, and far from summer. And why the pebble-colored slacks with the elastic waist, in so synthetic a abric it had no weave at all, smooth as Formica-slacks that might have been bought in a bargain basement children's department. I am so small and inconsequential, please don't be angry at rue.

  But Patrick was angry. Bristling with anger. He said, " `From each, what he or she can give'-sure. Who's helping you?"

  "But Patrick-"

  "You're clerking in a Store? You're baking bread? What else?"

  "Patrick, these people are my friends. You'll have to come visit us-maybe the weekend Mom and Judd drive down? Kilbum is a small place, the town and the college, nothing like Cornell. No one is suspicious of anyone else there. No one would ever cheat, for instance."

  Patrick let this pass. He listened in silence as Marianne spoke of how she'd been approached by some of the Green Isle people on her second day at Kilbum, she'd been wandering in the bookstore sort of lost and confused, to tell the truth she'd been almost crying, the textbooks cost so much, even the used textbooks, and the first thing

  Felice-Marie and Birk said was hey don't wony, there's probably some of these books out at the house, we have a library, you can use ours. She spoke of the "wonderftil old" house that had once been the Ku- bum Inn "going back to stagecoach times." The greenhouses they'd restored to almost perfect condition, the pear orchards, meadows, fertile soil-"Mom would love." She spoke of the Co-op membership- currently twenty-three, of whom eighteen lived in the house. They had a single bank account, they pooled all their finances, if they worked outside the Co-op (as, sometimes, Marianne did, shelving books in the college library) they pooled their earnings. Green Isle was synonymous with "honor system." Green Isle was a "conununal oasis in an American capitalist-consumer desert." (These were Abelove's words, reverently quoted.) In just five years since the Green Isle Co-op had been founded by Abelove, it had acquired an excellent local reputation, and many loyal customers at the store. In fi-ct, Kilbum State was itself a customer: Abelove had negotiated a contract with the food services department.

  Patrick resisted his Pinch-instinct and asked casually, politely about Abelove. And of course Marianne spoke warmly, at length; describing this "wonderful, dedicated" person with a "wonderflxl, kindly sense of humor"; a musician (guitar, banjo); an artist (clay sculpting); an organic gardener (no artificial fertilizers or insecticides); but primarily an intellectual, a theorist with advanced degrees in psychology and anthropology. Abelove had been an assistant professor at Kilbum who'd become disillusioned with the "straightjacket conformity" of the academic world; he'd dropped out to found the Green Isle Co-op, a private vision he'd had as an idealistic teenager camping alone on Mount Katahdin which is somewhere in Maine.

  Patrick interrupted to ask, "How old is this person?"

  "Old? Why, I don't know-in his early thirties maybe."

  "I'd guess he just didn't get tenure at Kilburn State. That's why he `dropped out.' And where are his `advanced degrees' from, do you know?"

  Marianne plucked at her hair, trying to recall. "Somewhere in Boston, I think."

  "Harvard?"

  The question was very lightly, ironically put. Marianne missed the tone amid said, "Yes, I think maybe. One of them, at least. Actually Abelove won't talk about himself. Things are known about him-people talk about him, because they admire him so-but he rarely talks about himself."

  Patrick said stiffly, "The Green Isle isn't some sort of ridiculous cult, is it?-and `Abelove' some sort of megalomanic guru?"

  "Oh, Patrick, no."

  Patrick sucked at his lower lip. Harvard, really! He very much doubted Harvard. He said irritably, "Well, is there a religion involved? Do you all `worship' together?"

  Marianne said, hurt, "You know I have my own religion, Patrick. I've been attending a wonderful little church in Kilburn- actually it's outside of Kilburn a few miles. `The Church of the Apostles.' It's a farm community congregation_Mom would love Reverend Hooker and his wife who's this `free spirit' type, sort of like Mom in fact. We-"

  Patrick interrupted, "Marianne, what happened to your courses last semester? You're in Kilbur
n to study and get a degree, aren't you?-nOt to work for this Co-op as an indentured servant."

  "But-I have to help Out, if there are emergencies," Marianne said pleadingly. "It happened so unexpectedly! Poor Aviva had some sort of-breakdown. She just disappeared from the house-we didn't know where she'd gone-I mean, at first-I volunteered to take over her duties arid of course I had my own-and my dasses-and, well-things got complicated." Marianne paused, snriling at Patrick; she was sitting with her legs drawn up beneath her, in what could not have been a very comfortable position. "I only just did what anyone would do, Patrick, in such circumstances."

  Patrick let this pass. "Are you making up those courses now? This semester?"

  "Well-not exactly."

  "What's that mean? No?"

  Marianne said softly, "I'm going to enroll in summer school, in about six weeks. The dean of students has been very understanding."

  "You mean-you're not taking classes now?" "Well-no. I just haven't had time, with so much-" "You've dropped out of school? God, Marianne!" "I haven't dropped out, didn't I just say I'm going to enroll in summer school? Why are you so angry, Patrick? I don't get angry at you."

  "Wait. Those incompletes are on your transcripts now as F's, aren't they? If you didn't make them up."

  Marianne sat wordless, plucking at her hair.

  Patrick sighed heavily, removing his glasses. Rubbed his eyes roughly. But what point in anger, really. Wouldn't interfere ulit/t your sister. If I were you.

  Strange, Patrick thought. He, Patrick Mulvaney, was this young woman's brother: they'd been brother-and-sister through all of their conscious lives: each was more closely related to the other genetically than either was to either of their parents. Yet he believed he scarcely knew Marianne at all. He loved her, but scarcely knew her. Members of a family who've lived together in the heated intensity of family life scarcely know one another. Life is too head-on, too close-up. That was the paradox. That was the bent, perplexing thing. Exactly the opposite of what you'd expect. For of course you never give such relationships a thought, living them. To give a thought-to take thoug/it----is a function of dissociation, distance. You can't exercise memory until you've removed yourself from memory's source.

  An image of a broken cobweb, glistening-sticky across his knuckles came to Patrick. As he'd walked through the tall grass behind the horse's barn. Once you see a web it1 such a way it's too late. It's no longer a web.

  It was late, past ten o'clock. Not late by Patrick's usual schedule but it felt late, the visit with Marianne had drained so much energy from both. Yet, unpredictably, Marianne jumped up from the sofa saying she had a surprise for Patrick she'd almost forgotten-in fact, two surprises.

  She'd brought dessert, lemon tarts, from Kilburn, another of her specialities. Patrick protested he wasn't hungry but found himself eating three of the tarts. Marianne picked sparingly at hers, eating crumbs and licking her fingers. Her sallow complexion glowed as Patrick complimented her-"You never made anything like this at home, did you? Terrific."

  And she had a packet of snapshots of High Point Farm thatJudd had taken to send her, at Easter.

  Mulvaney family snapshots- At such a time.

  Patrick swallowed nervously. He dreaded looking through these with Marianne-but how could he refuse?

  Such family snapshots had always fascinated Patrick. The only ones he ever felt conifoj-tab]e with were those he'd taken himself-there would be a reason, a logic, why he, Patrick, wasn't in a picture. Any snapshot that included him was naturally of intense interest-though usually, being vain, and in his own eyes homely, gawky frowning bespectacled Pinch, he yearned to tear such snapshots into pieces; yet a snapshot that excluded him aroused even more anxiety. Where am I? Didn't Iget born? Has it all happened without me? He wondered if there was a region of the human brain, somewhere in the cerebral cortex, specifically in the visual cortex at the back of the brain, that was triggered to register metaphysical anxiety over such absences.

  How close we've all come, to never having been born. Out of what unfathomable infinity of possibilities, the slender probability of a single egg's fertilization by a single sperm.

  It was something Patrick did not want to contemplate.

  These two dozen Polaroids, taken by Judd over the past several weeks, excluded both Marianne and Patrick, of course. And Mike, now in the Marines. Patrick's fingers were damp and shaky as he held them, each in turn, and Marianne, who'd surely looked at them a hundred times already, was breathless, wiping at her eyes. Repeatedly she exclaimed, "Look! Oh, Patrick, look here-" at familiar sights somehow unfamiliar, exotic. There was Troy with his narrow, intelligent head cocked at an odd angle, doggy-brown eyes shining; there were two drowsy cats luxuriantly lying together on one of Mom's quilts-"I didn't know Snowball and E.T. could get along so well, did you?" Marianne observed, as if this were quite a revelation. There was Mom, irrepressible Morn, clowning on the back porch in a shabby old plaid parka of Mike's, gripping a thick five-foot stalactite icicle descending from the roof, grinning at the camera; overexposed in the sunshine of late winter, harsh lines bracketing her mouth. Another of Morn taken in the kitchen, apparently unaware of the camera, poised in chatty conversation with Feathers in his cage, the canary a blur of yellow. And there was Dad glimpsed unaware of the camera too, bareheaded, graying, in his camel's-hair coat, seen through a kitchen window as he was about to climb into the Mulvaneys' new gleaming-silver car. ("New car? I thought Mulvaney Roofing was having financial problems," Patrick protested to Corinne on the phone, when she'd informed him that his father had gotten a great deal on a secondhand 1975 Lincoln Continental, from a car dealer in New Canaan where he'd done some roofing work-"You know your wily old dad, `Make me an offer I can't refuse.' ") There were shots of the dun-colored late- winter landscape taken from Judd's bedroom window, vews of the barns, the weathercock, Mt. Cataract in the distance; shots of mterlors of High Point Farm, an empty-and oddly long-living room, the cluttered staircase seen from the second floor, Little Boots gazing up expectantly as the camera flashed. And, in his stall, Judd's cockeyed little horse Clover, snapped in midchew, hay burgeoning from his rubbery-damp mouth.

  The other horses were gone, only Clover remained. Did Marianne know? Of course, Patrick thought, she must know-Molly-O is gone.

  Molly-O, Prince, Red. Our childhood.

  Neither spoke of the horses.

  One of the snapshots was of Blackie and Mamie the handsome mated goats, in their pen: how quizzical their expressions, as the camera flashed. Another, somewhat blurred, was of several browsing cows by the pasture pond. Another was of Mom glimpsed outside, through a kitchen window, in conversation with-could it be Dad? in khaki-colored jacket?-no, probably a hired man, maybe Zimmerman from down the road.

  Patrick sorted through the snapshots with a mounting sense of alarm. His left eye ached. Something, someone was missing.

  Marianne said, wiping at her eyes, as if he'd spoken aloud, "I wish Judd had had Mom take a picture of him. It just seems so-" she paused, not knowing what she wanted to say, "-strange and sad without him."

  Without us, Patrick thought. Any of us.

  But he said nothing. His left eye was watering seriously. He was wearing his glasses of course, shoved against the bridge of his tender nose. He saw that Marianne was trembling; pale with strain and exhaustion. Why didn't she put the snapshots away? Why had she brought them at all? Did she imagine that he was as obsessed with the Mulvaneys as she?

  Softly Marianne said, "I was disappointed there weren't more of Mom and Dad, too. Judd didn't actually take a real picture of Dad."

  Strange on her bloodless lips: Dad.

  Dad, Dad. Who is your Dad?

  Is a fat her a dad, always? Is Dad a father?

  Is Dad a dad, orjust afather?

  Patrick said abruptly, "What a ridiculous word-'Dad.' Did you ever hear it, actually?" He laughed, a sound as of dry twigs snapping.

  Marianne was replacing the snapshots in the envelope, slo
wly.

  "Patrick, I think Dad will be calling me home sometime soon."

  Patrick wasn't sure he'd heard correctly. He didn't ask Marianne to repeat her words.

  Marianne began to speak, not quite coherently, of the last time Corinne had called, Easter Sunday it had been, in the evening, she'd called at the Co-op and Marianne picked up the phone herself, what a surprise, what a wonderful surprise, to pick up a ringing phone just knowing It can't he for me, it would never be for me, and such knowledge completely matter-of-fact, not at all disturbing-and it was Corinne, it was Morn! With a just-perceptible air of childish pride Marianne said, "We talked for a long time-forty minutes! And before she hung up Mom said, just out of nowhere, `If Dad was home right now, Marianne, I think maybe he'd like to speak with you.' I didn't know what to say, I was so-scared. Mom said, `Marianne, are you listening?' and I said yes and she said, `It might be Easter or it might be just-the time. I shouldn't talk like this maybe, I'm just guessing but it's what I think.' So I asked if I should call them later that night when Dad got home? when should I call? and Mom started crying, I think-I think she was crying-and I was crying-" Marianne laughed, shaking her head. Her deep-socketed eyes glistened with tears. "Oh, Patrick, it was so-wonderful. I couldn't sleep all that night."