Joyce Carol Oates - We Were The Mulvaneys

by We Were The Mulvaneys(lit)

  Better not to think about it. Concentrate on your work, that's why you're in college after all.

  But how could he not think about it?-there was Arlette, even if avoiding him she did exist.

  Arlette was one of those bright science-minded girls who are both outspoken and shy; rather nervous in company, with a tendency like Patrick to frown more easily than smile. They'd had lengthy exciting conversations together following Dr. Herring's lectures-Arlette had come to Cornell specifically to study with Herring-and they'd gone out together several times and at last they'd touched each other, if awkwardly; they'd even kissed-experimentally, it seemed. Such cool thin tight-pursed lips! Such self-consciousness! Eyes shut tight in a kind of horror! Neither, obviously, was much experienced in such things. High school romances hadn't been their forte. At twenty-three, Arlette might have been a girl in her mid-teens. So it was daring of her to invite Patrick to her apartment on Quarry Street and to prepare a meal for him which he'd eaten hungrily enough, and with gratitude. And afterward when their conversation began to falter-oh, Patrick's face suffused with blood at the memory! How Mike would have laughed at him, too shy to press forward. Too intimidated by the female body.

  Likc an animal who has wandered out of safe territory without quite realizing it, Patrick panicked, and fled.

  "Icy-cold" Arlette had called him afterward.

  She was an intellectual young woman, a graduate of Barnard. If she was to take revenge upon him, a young man who'd apparently spurned her, it must be an intellectual sort of revenge. She'd typed out for him a mysterious aphorism, source unnoted, and slipped it into his lab box. So cold, so icy, that one burns one's fingers on him! Every hand that touches him receives a shock. That is why some think he is burning hot.

  Sure, it was flattering. Making so much of old Pinch who in secret made so little of himself.

  And so, hoping to be normal. As Mike used to say, and Dad in the old days when he was good-natured, always genial, Why not? for the hell of it?

  As he'd told Judd (he was close tb Judd though rarely calling him) it was an experiment. Patrick Mulvaney behaving in a normal way and maybe it would take his mind off other things that were beginning to contort his thoughts in the way that a rod lowered into water appears contorted-you know it isn't, but it seems so.

  So: the initial normal act was standing in line, a surprisingly long line, with other undergraduates, strangers to Patrick, waiting to buy a ticket. Studying the lurid psychedelic posters advertising PLASTICA! that vaguely amused him, revulsed him. Then, handing over twenty dollars for a ticket. To a rock concert! Patrick Mulvaney! Who listened to string quartets, woodwind trios, piano sonatas on the local classical music station, when he listened to music at all. Usually he didn't, it distracted him from his work. His plotting, tireless calculating. What information am I lacking that I must be in possession of to live my l-fe a.c it's meant to be lived?

  It sobered Patrick Mulvaney to consider that all he might be, could possibly he, was already coded in his genes, and had been so since the instant of his conception; a set of hieroglyphics unreadable by him yet in theory readable, as any language, however mysterious, is in theory readable if one has the key.

  The cold drizzly night of the Plastica concert, Patrick was stunned at the size of the crowd pushing into the hail. He'd assumed that, having bought a ticket well in advance of the concert, he would be spared further waiting. How like insects!-like a particular species of beetle that mates in great promiscuous swarmns!-the rock fans were, all in their twenties or younger, happily jostling together, shuffling into the hail, and into the amphitheater, under the supervision of grim-looking security guards. Patrick's instinct was to turn away in disgust, hand his ticket to a stranger or, better yet, tear it into pieces. This isn't for me. I hate my kind. But he'd arranged to come to the concert with a group of others, friendly acquaintances froni his science classes, all unattached young men like himself, they'd eaten together in a noisy pizzeria on College Avenue, and had a few beers, normal for a Saturday night in a college town. Inside the hail, however, Patrick began to taste panic. Just finding their seats amid so many others, in a rear, far-left row, a very long distance from the stage. Taped rock music blasted out of a speaker close by.

  Why am I here, am I this desperate? What am I trying to escape?

  By the time the concert began, thirty-five minutes late, the crowd had grown rowdy, noisy, about to veer out of control like sloshing waves. The headache-buzz at the back of Patrick's skull from the several beers he'd drunk had intensified though he felt, oh Christ how sober. Keenly aware of his misery. He'd never had any experience being seasick but he felt seasick now.

  The crowd began to clamor: shouting, catcalling, clapping hands and stamping feet in rhythm. Patrick leaned forward in his seat and made a feeble effort to join in. Normal to be in such a din in such a place on a Friday night in Ithaca if you're twenty years old, not in his room as usual, squinting over a book, taking notes as if to save his life. Normal to cheer with thousands of others as, at last, amid blinding swirling lights and drums shrill as jackhammers, the members of Plastica bounded out on stage. Patrick gritted his teeth staring in amazed disgust at the half dozen scrawny male specimens in ludicrous black-leather costumes, trousers low-slung to show their navels, skintight to show the outline of their testicles. They wore armbands, ear-clamps, nipple-rings. The leader singer Traumeri was alarmingly emaciated, his chest sickly-pale, virtually concave, covered in an oily film. His bony-pouty face was made up pasty-white, his thick lips crimson, druggy-glassy eyes outlined in black mascara; his dyed black hair, braided in long dreadiocks, flew about his head as he threw himself about the stage with the manic abandon of an epileptic in a seizure. Traumeri and others of the group had recently been arrested on drug charges in London, evidently this was part of Plastica's reputation, why such crowds turned out to see them perfon-n. Exhibitionist freaks whom the middle-class frat boys and sorority girls of Cornell would snub if they encountered them in real life.

  What noise!-almost, Patrick could not hear. Drums, deafening guitar chords amplified a thousand times, throbbing hammering primitive repeating notes, bawling voices, sheer force-field of energy.

  He did not see how he could endure, beyond five minutes.

  Patrick glanced nervously seeing on all sides how the audience, most of whom appeared not very different from himself, identifiable to any foreigner as belonging to the same subspecies as he, was wholly entranced by Plastica. Not even the rapt fervent country congregations of the little churches to which Corinne had taken her children had exuded such ecstatic bliss, such unquestioning rapture. Normal, was it? And to hold oneself apart, questioning, critical, Pinch-style--abnormal?

  These thousands of young men and women, Patrick Mulvaney's contemporaries. Like greedy inf-ints at the breast. Patrick wished he might lose himself, if only for a few minutes, in the pandemonium- lose himself in the crowd, the hive. Feel his prickly Pinch-self melt and run like mercury into these other melting selves. And through all pulsed the hammering-throbbing current so like a galvanizing charge arumating matter. Patrick tried to listen to the words Traumeri was spitting out amid convulsive bony-pelvic thrusts, as if words might redeem such blasting noise. Lemme be lemme be lemme be yr sav-yur. Lemme be lemme be lemme be yr Gaw-d. Washed in the blood baby washed in the blood bay-by washed in the blood bay-by of the Lamb. These words were shrieked yet oddly not exclamatory, as if Traumeri, galvanized by the same electric current that pulsed through the audience, were merely stating a fact.

  Patrick couldn't believe he'd heard correctly. A grotesque parody of a Christian hymn? Lemme be yr sav-yur. Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Maybe Traumeri's background wasn't so very different from Patrick Mulvaney's. Unless Patrick had heard incorrectly, amid all the noise? Or was it mockery, self-mockery? Or play, as naughty children play? Knowing no one takes them seriously? Patrick had no idea.

  He wondered what Marianne would make of such word-s His sister who seemed n
ever to judge others, nor even herself How could you live that way? Was it a form of higher consciousness, in imitation ofJesus Christ, or was it a self-deluding, fatal weakness? Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

  No, Patrick thought. Not me.

  Plastica moved on to the next set. An old favorite evidently, judg- ing from the howls and foot-stomping of fans. Patrick gave up trying to decipher words, meaning. It was the throbbing beat that mattered. Pounding in his eyeballs, increasing his heart rate like a viral infection- Those mysterious microorganisms that, lacking the capacity to reproduce on their own, must insinuate themselves into the genes of the host-victim. Who could understand Nature? Covered in rivulets of sweat, shock-haired Traumeri and a fellow guitarist were thrusting their bony pelvises at each other in jackhammer motions that reminded Patrick of nothing so much as the headless body of the male praying mantis copulating the body of the female praying mantis after the female has decapitated the male. He shut his eyes. Saw himself safe in the lab, in his stained smock, bringing his good eye to the microscope, frowning. Yet the frantic Plastica beat had got into his blood. Idiotic beat! beat! beat! like a nursery tune thumped on a log. He shut his eyes tighter, and thought of Darwin; of evolutionary theory that was so beautiful in its simplicity, yet so perplexing. All living things are connected by patterns of descent to all other living things. But there was a realm of not-being, too. The not-living, never-realized species. Hypothetical creatures that might have evolved, given the odds of probability. Possibility. Homed birds, flying reptiles, feathered Homo sapiens? Homo sapiens with eyes set on either side of the head, so that each eye gives a different image, Homo sapiens with the wonderful "echolocation" powers of bats? Patrick sniiled, stubborn Pinch, daring to argue with the young assistant professor from Harvard who was Dr. Herring's prot,g,: What if? Why not? Isn't there genetic possibility? Maybe it was a character flaw, but he couldn't help his curiosity. Since grade school. Not just curiosity, impetuosity. Arlette and somne others in the department admired him. (They said.) Others did not. Couldn't seem to resist questioning his elders, squinting and frowning. Always, Patrick Mulvaney had a further query, a doubt. In high school Mr. Farolino would say smiling, "Yes, Patrick?" even before he'd raised his hand to make a query. But the other morning at the end of Dr. Herring's lecture Patrick had dared to inquire, "Isn't `existence' a needlessly reductive category, with `genetic possibility' so vast? Assuming evolution has no end, no limit? No goal?" And the renowned biologist stared at Patrick for several painful seconds, in silence.

  Patrick had thought, panicked For Christ's sake Pinch you've gone too far this time. You'll sabotage your own future.

  Finally, Dr. Herring merely said, with a polite smile, "Your question is purely theoretical, Mr. Mulvaney, I assume."

  What was wrong?-Patrick opened his eyes, disoriented. Like waking from a crazed dream-the deafening rock music had ended. Intermission.

  He could escape! He'd tried normal, and failed miserably.

  So Patrick stood, dazed and lurching with others in his row out into the aisle. Many fans had smuggled beer into the hall and were what's called wasted, zonked-out. Patrick shouted at his companions, "I'm leaving!-g'night." In the din, it wasn't clear if they heard. He was trying patiently and then not so patiently to clear a path for himself to a side exit when he saw in the crowd ahead a familiar, troubling face in profile-Zachary Lundt!

  Was it possible? Here at Cornell? Zachary Lundt?

  A flame passed over Patrick's brain. The Plastica beat beat beat urged him forward. He hadn't seen his sister's rapist since the day of their graduation but he realized he'd been thinking of Zachary Lundt compulsively, even when his mind was rigidly fixed on other things. Zachary Lundt. The rapist. Never made to pay. He wondered what frenetic strung-out Traumeri would make of the situation, how would he react? Patrick had heard that Zachary had enrolled at the State University at Binghamton despite his mediocre grades and that he'd pledged a fraternity. Of course-just the type. Probably Zachary was visiting fraternity brothers at Cornell. A girlfriend at Cornell. He appeared to be in a noisy group of young people, several clearly drunk. Patrick elbowed his way in Zachary's direction ignoring the curses directed at him. The Plastica beat pulsed murderously in his head. What would he do to Zachary if he caught hold ofhim? The rapist! The son of a bitch! Hurting Marianne, ruining Marianne's life! Patrick gritted his teeth, must have looked ferocious since people who saw his face made an effort to avoid him. He was imagining his enemy's nose, which his father had allegedly broken, his enemy's eyes which could be pounded with Patrick's fists, blackened, injured. And his mouth, those smiling teeth-Patrick had an ecstatic vision ofajack-o'-lantem spitting blood.

  At the exit, Patrick lunged forward shoving others aside to grab Zachary's arm-"Just a minute! Wait!" Then he saw, stunned, that this wasn't Zachary Lundt after all. He muttered, embarrassed, "Oh, sorry. I thought you were-somebody else."

  The young man was about Zachary's height, which was Patrick's height, and had Zachary's longish lank dark hair and narrow foxy Lice, but he was a stranger. He stared at Patrick, clearly frightened. Even at a Plastica concert, where violent throbbing uncensored emotions are celebrated, you aren't prepared to be accosted by a madman.

  Patrick escaped. Rurming then across the darkened campus. His heart was beat-beat-beating. Afterward he would wonder why he wasn't ashamed of himself, why not stricken with remorse. But in fact he felt excited. Elated. That scared twenty-year-old hadn't been Zachary Lundt but that didn't mean Zachary Lundt wasn't somewhere else, this very night.

  Patrick had come so close to-what, exactly?

  DIGNITY

  pride goeth before afall. But it was not a matter of pride.

  It was a matter of simple integrity. Dignity. You're a man fifty years old, a father of a daughter and Sons, and an American-without dignity, you're nothing. And he'd been led to believe these men were his friends. He'd been led to believe they accepted him, Michael Mulvaney, as one of them. Invited him to be a member of the Mt. Ephraim Country Club. And he'd accepted, one of the happiest days of his life. He'd been inducted into the membership, paid his initiation fee and his dues faithfully, the first of September each year. Michael Mulvaney was one member they could rely upon, and they knew it. And he knew it. And he knew he wasn't mistaken about any of this, wasn't the kind of man to make mistakes in life, building a business out of virtually nothing, without being a shrewd judge of other men's characters. That was a fact.

  So one day, one hour, he's had enough. Walking into the bar at the Mt. Ephraim Country Club, shortly after 6 P.M., a Friday. Yankee Doodle Tap Room: men only. Removing his dark glasses to adjust his eyes to the dimness. And glancing around to check out who's here, twelve, fifteen men approximately, at the bar and in the booths, all familiar faces, and there's Ben Breuer in one of the redleather booths, and Chancy Maclntyre, the two exchanging a quick startled glance-a look of warninR, caution passing between them- and there's a third man, his back to Michael, Michael doesn't recognize at first then sees it's Gerry Kirkland, the district court judge.

  Kirkland is about sixty, solidly built, with a square-ruddy face creased from a career of hard smiling. His hair, the color of pewter, is thinning patchily at the crown exactly like Michael Mulvaney's. Michael knows Kirkland from the Club mainly, just well enough to shake the man's hand, exchange friendly greetings and inquiries after their respective families. Michael always asks after Jeannette Kirkland and in turn Kirkland asks after-is it Carol? Coralee?-never can quite remember Corinne Mulvaney's name, and why is that? Pucker.

  That warning, caution glance swift as a firefly's spark passing between Ben Breuer and Charley Maclntyre. And one of them has murmured to Kirkland, warning him, too. So he doesn't turn to glance over his shoulder, to see who's just come in.

  Michael ignores them and goes to the bar, hoists himself up on a stool. Empty stools on either side. Conversations, laughter. Television above t
he bar. A roaring in Michael's ears but he hasn't had a drink for hours. The bartender is saying, "Hello, Mr. Mulvaney! The usual?" Michael stares at the man, saying, "What do you mean `usual'? I'll have-" naming a brand of beer he rarely drinks. Embarrassed, the bartender murmurs, "Sorry, Mr. Mulvaney," and ducks away. Michael is sitting alone at the bar squinting up at the television screen without seeming to see it. Tapping his fingers, thick dirt-edged nails on the bar. Edgy, impatient. Feels himself being scrutinized, yet knows if he turns they'll look immediately away. When he'd come in, a few men nodded toward him, smiled vaguely but not one said hello, not one smiled and called out my name, invited me to sit down. A glass of foaming beer is brought and Michael lifts it slowly to his mouth. Like a man lost in contemplation of a profound, elusive truth. Not a man whose hand is trembling, who's breaking out in prickly sweat inside his clothes. He turns, can't resist turning. Breuer, Maclntyre, Kirkland. Think I don't see you? hear you? Puckers.

  The glass in his hand is drained, empty. Beer so bland he hasn't tasted it at all. But signals to the bartender for another. An anxious heat inside his clothes, flushing up into his face. He hadn't had time to shower that morning, wanting to get out of the house before Corinne came downstairs in search of him. Where he'd spent much of the night, in Mike Jr.'s old room, with Troy. Hair stiff as quills, and he hasn't shaved in two days. Whiskers growing in the color of tin filings. old-man's beard. The second foanung beer is brought to him and he sips at it gratefully then abruptly eases his weight from the stool and approaches the three men in the booth so resolutely not looking in Michael Mulvaney's direction. Michael Mulvaney in a rumpled camel's-hair coat, Michael Mulvaney swaying on his feet. Face furious, darkened with blood. Tauntingly he says, "H'lo, Ben-how's it going?" and Ben Breuer glances up guiltily, as if he's just now seen Michael. And Michael says, grinning, "Charley?- great to see you." And Charley Maclntyre, startled, smiles weakly at Michael, almost fearfully. "And, Geny-" Michael lets his hand fall on the judge's right shoulder, a friendly-seeming gesture, but hard, heavy. And Kirkland eases away saying, "Excuse me-!" And Michael stares down at him seeing the undisguised alarm, disapproval, dislike in Kirkland's face, for here's an elder of the Mt. Ephraim Country Club and a prominent citizen of the community in no mood to humor Michael Mulvaney, or any other drunk. And Michael says, "Fuckirig S.O.B., you-!"