We Were The Mulvaneys

by Joyce Carol Oates

  "How niuch higher does it get? We're not going there, are we?"-pointing to an eroded cliffside rearing up a few miles ahead. Where clearly no one lived, and no road ascended.

  "There? Oh, no. Wejust follow the road, a little farther."

  "This is where you-lived?"

  Lived. How sensitive Hewie was, for all his awkwardness. How subtle. Yet Marianne, suddenly clumsy, like an overgrown girl with awkward knees, elbows, could only laugh again, a sound in her own ears like breaking glass. "Well, yes. You could say so." Jamming her knuckles against her mouth to keep from crying.

  Going home. To High Point Farm. Was it possible?

  You knew: impossible.

  Oh but just to say hello! To Molly-O, and hug her. Stroke her cool damp nose. Just for afew minutes, I promise, who will know?

  Recalling then how many times in the dreamless sleepless night she'd made this trip. High Point Road to High Point Farm. By phantom vehicle, no Mulvaney vehicle she could identify. Nor any driver she could identify, nor even see as she stared enraptured at the rushing countryside, the landscape of her childhood as imprinted in her soui as that soul's very essence and indeed indistinguishable from it. And often in these waking dreams she held Muffin in her arms. A restive, anxiously alert creature. Muffin she adored, when he'd been a soft heavy cat, and Muffin in more recent worrisome months when he'd begun to lose weight, grown amazingly lanky, longtailed with a prominent spine. It was crucial that Marianne return Muffin safely home to High Point Farm but the danger was of course as with any cat regardless of how tamed docile and loving he might panic at any moment, struggle out of her arms, out of the vehicle and onto the rushing highway, even over the side of the guardrail- But Marianne always woke fully, bathed in sweat, before that happened.

  Weeping half-angry with herself for being unable to bring the dream to a happy conclusion. Oh, how many times!

  Abruptly and it always seemed rudely High Point Road changed from cracked and eroding blacktop to gravel and dirt, and now Hewie drove with increased concentration, diligence. At the Green Isle Co-op he was one of the patient, reliable workers; one of the "older" members; if he'd been casting his darkly shy sidelong glances at Marianne from time to time since early that morning, he ceased doing so now for maneuvering the wind-rattling Dodge, bearing his passenger to her mysterious destination, was work entrusted to him, a sacred duty and a privilege. You wouldn't blow us both off the road, God? Not 1-lewie, oh please! Jamming her knuckles against her mouth though whether to keep from crying or laughing she could not have said. It was ridiculous, to imagine for a split second that God could be so petty and vindictive; the God of all the ages, creator of all life on earth and it may be through the great universe, caring in such a fussy old-maidish way, about Marianne Mulvaney disobeying her parents' gravest wishes on the very day of her grandmother's funeral.

  Now past the Pferming farm, now past the shabby converted schoolhouse where a sprawling family lived, still the Zimmermans?- and as they approached High Point Farm Marianne began to feel faint. Her skeleton straining against her tight close-to-bursting transparent skin. No, you don't dare: how do you dare, you! Not wanted here, a trespasser, thief Before she could comprehend what she was seeing her eye picked out the yellow-and-black realtor's sign FARM FOR SALE proiflinent and jarring beside the gravel drive.

  Yes but you knew, you'd been told, warned. Patrick had told you and Judd had told you not once but numerous times. And Mom in her glimmering blurred way had mentioned it, You know the fann's for sale, Dad's holding out for a decent price, as if it were an issue already acknowledged, discussed. Just another neutral fact of Mulvaney family history.

  In a trance of panic tinged with wonderment Marianne shut her icy fingers into fists and stared, stared greedily. Hewie had braked to a stop (seeing MuLVANfY on the mailbox?- and stared wordless as well. There was a palpable excitement in the air, windblown, sunstruck, the dazzling-budding fragrance of spring. Wild-looking lilacs just past their fullest bloom and in the shallow roadside ditch a profusion of tiger lily stalks not yet in bloom, vividly green-by July the roadsides would be filled with them, bright-orange like savage dabs of paint. There was Connne's proudly lettered, now slightly faded sign HIGH POINT FARM 1849 and yet more faded HIGH POINT ANTIQUES BARGAINS & BEAUTY! The antique sleigh with its slumping scarecrow figure seemed to have skidded farther downhill a few yards. There was the brook, almost hidden behind overgrown vegetation, and there was the little plank bridge. There, at the top of the hill, the house that was part fieldstone and part lavender, floating like a pastel drawing in a child's book.

  Hewie, the undemonstrative one, whistled through his teeth, ran a big-knuckled hand through his hair. "There? That's your family's house?"

  Marianne couldn't speak at first. Her lips were icy-cold, numb; she was frightened of fainting. Saying, almost inaudibly, "I-guess not. I mean, it is, but I can't go in. I made a mistake."

  Hewie turned to Stare at her. "What? Why?"

  "I-just can't."

  "Can't?" Hewie screwed up his face, not in impatience, nor even in surprise, or doubt; it was more a sort of perplexed sympathy, as if he might have anticipated such a response, all along. "You mean-you can't go in? You don't want us to drive up, and-go inside?"

  "No! No, please."

  There was a silence. Marianne heard Hewie breathing, or was it a sigh? He frowned, scowled-not at Marianne, at whom he'd ceased looking, but possibly at himself. You would expect this young man to reason with his distraught passenger, at least to express some disapproval of her mysterious self-hurtful behavior; it may have been even that Hewie was sifting through his head such a possibility, trying out words, phrases, yearning for the eloquence of, say, Abelove in such a circumstance, Abelove's moral certainty, yet failing; a young man of reserve, shyness and sullenness inextricably interwoven, he was not accustomed to such speech. As Marianne stammered, blushing, "I just remembered-my horse I'd wanted to see, to say hello to? She isn't here any longer. She's been sold. She's gone. Gone for years. I made a mistake. Hewie? I'm so sorry."

  A dazzle of acid-sharp spring sunshine behind Hewie's startled head. Reflecting even on the dull plum-colored hood of the car with a sharpness that hurt the eyes.

  What Wasn't she seeing, so resolutely? Ugly unspeakable yellowon-black Sign FARM FOR SALE FARM FOR SALE FARM FOR SALE.

  Hewie drew breath to speak, his mouth opened-he said nothing. Scratched his head vigorously, looking at her in that way of perplexed sympathy, even anguish; thinking, thinking very hard, giving off heat like a finely vibrating motor. For the first time then it came over Marianne, the fact of his physical being, his presence. Maleness. A man, I've gone off with a man, alone with a man. All these hours alone with Hewie in his car. His car! The revelation rose to a shriek in her head. She heard it in Corinne's astonished accusing voice. But haven't you learned! You, Marianne Mulvaney! How could you be So careless, so reckless! You of all people! It was true, Marianne hardly knew this young man she'd boldly asked to drive her all over the Chautauqua Valley on one wild-goose chase after another: Hewie Miner, the carpenter, one of the older drifting-along students in the

  Green Isle Co-op, still many credits from graduating and then- what would his degree be in? Hewie had taken courses in agricultural science, hotel management, phys ed as it was somewhat contemptuously called, business administration, sociology, vocational arts education. His grades were scraping-along and he'd amassed any number of incompletes. When Marianne had first moved into the Co-op she'd heard a disquieting rumor about Hewie Miner that he'd been suspended from Kilbum State for a semester, or a year, for cheating; only later had she discovered that Hewie himself hadn't cheated, except technically-he'd loaned his earth science lab book to a friend unthinking enough to copy it verbatim (including errors) and they'd both been caught and disciplined. Isn't that just like Hewie! people said, shaking their heads. Marianne was one of the half dozen Co-op girls who frequently left cards and little gifts, anonymously, for people on their
birthdays, especially people whose birthdays might otherwise be overlooked, you could look up birthdays in the Co-op register in Abelove's office and Marianne was always remembering birthdays of fellow members she didn't in fact know very well, like Hewie Miner for whom she'd left, anonymously, in his mailbox, a handmade card HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO A VERY SPECIAL FRIEND and a crocheted necktie (emerald green since Hewie's birthday was near St. Patrick's Day, very attractive, yet she'd never seen Hewie wear it) and somehow he'd known who had left these items and he'd been deeply moved, embarrassed, tongue-tied in Marianne's presence and Marianne had been slow to grasp that just possibly Hewie Miner whom girls looked after in muted longing yet in confidence that their longing wouldn't be returned had perhaps misunderstood her gesture? had interpreted it to mean something more personal than it did? but this thought, like the alarming realization of his physical presence, his maleness, and her being alone with him in his car in this remote place ran swiftly through her brain, and did not take hold. There was too much else to think of Too much else assailing her.

  She was saying, trying to explain, with her broken girl's laugh, plucking at her hair, "-Molly-O was my horse's name. I loved her so, she was so beautiful, her eyes, she was chestnut-red, a coat I loved to groom, she had a funny white patch on her nose and four white socks and a way oi talking to me, like asking questions?-you know how horses are?-but, well-she's gone. I don't know where. My morn didn't want to tell me, she was afraid I might have gone to find her-I'm not what you'd call trustworthy." Now the truth was out, now Hewie knew, Marianne spoke rapidly, in a tumble of words. "I'm not what you'd call stable, or reliable. Nothing like you. I make mistakes, errors ofjudgment. I'm immature, and careless, I disappoint people. My family especially. My Dad, and my Morn. I've hurt them and there's not much I can do to make it right, not now. But there's no point in telling you and involving you, I'm sorry! I guess we should just drive back? To Kilburn? Is that all right, Hewie? We can stop somewhere and eat the lunch I packed but not on High Point Road, we'll have to stop on some other road, please is that all right? Hewie?" Pleading and apologetic and half-sickened at her own vanity in speaking in such a way, to Hewie Miner who was a young man of integrity. I, I, las if anyone could be interested, in the slightest, in Marianne Mulvaney!

  Quietly Hewie said, with a sidelong glance at her, a downturned little smile, shifting gears, preparing to turn around in the weedygravel driveway and continue on to wherever he was directed, "Hey, sure, Marianne. Didn't I say I'd drive you anywhere you wanted to go?"

  They stopped at a roadside store somewhere south of Mt. Ephraim for three cans of soda (one for Marianne, two for Hewie) and on an unpaved road ate the lunch Marianne had prepared early that morning. Full-to-bursting tuna-salad sandwiches on nine-grain bread chewy as cake, carrot sticks, pickles, two Florida navel oranges, Mananne's special oatmeal cookies. Marianne was able to eat, somne. Of course, Hewie was famished: devoured two and a half of the sandwiches, and all of the cookies. In the bright dazzling air, at the edge of a field of feathery-green sprouting shoots of sweet corn, Mt. Cataract in the distance, everything tasted fine. Marianne had removed her straw h-t of mourning and kicked off her cardboardstiff ballerina flats to wriggle her toes in the grass. Not thinking How could you! if you'd been caught! like a trespasser, a thief! Not recalling the nail driven into her heart at the sight of that ugly sign FARM FOR SALE. She was snriling, listening attentively to Hewie Miner who'd become suddenly talkative in that way of a shy boy let loose. He was saying, "My folks, they lived in so many places all over the country, I never could get homesick. My dad was a U.S. Army cook------he'd got so he hated food-it was whiskey he preferred-he was always getting transferred up and down the coast, or across the continent, from Florida to New Jersey, North Carolina to Texas, state of Washington to Michigan, turn around and we'd be in Florida again, same base, but everybody different. My morn took off, too-I mean, on her own-when she got fed up. She'd take my little brother and inc when we were young, we'd go by bus. Trouble was, there wasn't any place we could go to, or if there was, like with some cousin of Mom's she'd been close to, as a girl, or thought she was, by the time we got there-as far away as Boulder, Colorado, once-" This was so long and impassioned a speech, Hewie got lost in it. He was staring at Marianne with his vivid dark eyes in a way that made her uneasy, it was so familiar somehow-the way Corinne had sometimes stared at Michael Sr. when he wasn't looking, or the way poor Silky had stared up at Mike Jr. with his doggy yearning eyes as Mike Jr. ignored him completely. "What I mean to say, Marianne, is-there are different kinds of homesickness, you know? To fit different kinds of faniilies."

  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!-Hcwie 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, Hewi c-thanks"

  THE PROPOSAL

  That 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 niisconcepdon 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-sony."

  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, Mariarme 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 tnan who'd entrusted her with responsibility approaching his own-Marianne didn't want to think. StamTnmering, 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'mn 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 recircied, 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 Iguess! 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."