We Were the Mulvaneys (49 page)

The looks on their faces!

There were those times when the telephone rang, and she could not locate a phone amid the clutter. She rushed, she stumbled—for what if it was Michael Sr., her beloved husband of whom she thought, worried obsessively as the mother of an infant if physically parted from the infant thinks and worries obsessively of the infant even when her mind appears to be fully engaged, if not obsessed, with other matters. Or what if it was news of him? During these mad dashes to the wall phone in the kitchen she hadn't time to fall but with fantastical grace and dexterity wrenched herself upright in midfall and continued running (dogs whimpering, yapping hysterically in her wake, cats scattering wide-eyed and plume-tailed) before the telephone ceased its querulous ringing—though frequently she was greeted with nothing more than a derisive dial tone, in any case. “Yes? Hello? Who is it? This is—” wondering for a blank moment what her name was before hanging up sadly, like a schoolgirl passed over by friends.

This is Corinne Mulvaney, please don't forget me.

In the weeks following the move from High Point Farm, a dozen times a day Mom had to restrain herself from calling the new woman of the house there. Oh, that woman! That—exploiter! Shrewdly seeing how trapped Corinne Mulvaney was, with her inventory of High Point Antiques and so much more furniture and belongings than she could ever fit into a “split-level ranch”—knowing how vulnerable Corinne was and how little time she had to sell her things elsewhere, this woman offered to “help out” as if buying an 1840 cast-iron Gothic Revival settee for $150 or a Colt Willow Ware bed for $200 or the exquisite little German ceramic clock in Marianne's old room for $60 was “helping out”! Oh, how she hated—but no, of course Corinne didn't
hate
. She was a Christian women to her finger-and toe-tips, to the deepest depths of her soul, she'd managed not to
hate
even those vicious enemies of Michael Mulvaney's, his former friends at the Mt. Ephraim Country Club who'd almost succeeded in putting him in prison. She'd managed not to
hate
even the Lundts, Morton and Cynthia Lundt who'd once been her friend who'd not only denied the brutal act their rapist son Zachary had perpetrated upon her daughter but had defended the son and vilified her daughter—even these people Corinne Mulvaney had managed not to
hate
.

These past few months, Corinne seemed to have lost contact with Marianne. She had an address for Marianne in Erie, Pennsylvania—unless, in the confusion of the move, she'd misplaced it. She had no telephone number. She knew of course that Marianne was no longer a student at Kilburn State and no longer a resident of the Green Island Co-op, or whatever it was called. Probably Marianne had transferred to another college? Was there a college in Erie, Pennsylvania? She'd ask Judd to look it up in the local library. Kilburn State was not a highly regarded college even within the New York State system and the Co-op—that character “Abelove” with his moist staring eyes and shimmering Christ-locks simply wasn't trustworthy. So it was just as well that Marianne had left. Corinne wasn't worried, much—hadn't time to worry about her scattered grown-up children any more than a mother cat about her scattered grown-up kittens telling herself
It's nature's way for them to scatter, to leave the nest
as Patrick had once said lecturing his family at mealtimes
it's the strategy by which nature assures that mammals won't interbreed with their siblings and weaken their genes—expulsion from the Garden of Eden, with a purpose
so she wasn't truly worried about Marianne, or Patrick either, both would contact her soon enough, she had no doubt.

Rag-quilt lives
, both of them!—not what you'd have expected.

These days, Corinne almost envied them.

Then there was Mikey-Junior. Of course, you didn't dare call him that now. Marine Private First Class Mike Mulvaney Jr.—no mystery, at least, where
he
was. When people inquired, in the days when people inquired, his parents would say with pride, if uneasiness, considering the situation in Iran, that their eldest son was a Marine with a special training in electronics; they had snapshots to show of him in his dress uniform, remarkable photographs of a handsome clean-shaven young man with a somber smile, an air of conspicuous certainty and pride. Or was it the uniform, dazzling in its beauty? When Mike had first visited home, after his eleven-week boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, he'd had a difficult time adjusting to what he called the civilian world; he'd seemed uncomfortable with his own parents, pained at his father's drinking and smoking and even his posture, and eager to return to the Marines. Corinne had been so hurt! So shocked! And she'd let Mike Jr. know.

“How can you look at your own parents like you don't know us?” Corinne had demanded, and Mike Jr. had shifted his muscular shoulders in embarrassment, and looked her in the eye in a way new to him, a way she guessed he'd been trained to do, at the boot camp, as if he was about ready to salute, and said, “Mom, I guess I don't, in some weird way. It's like things are in code and the key's been lost.”

Now Corinne looked at her son as if
he
were the stranger.

This past year, thank God, Mike was coming around. Worried about the farm and what Corinne had passed on to him of his dad's business problems (she'd spared him any news of the drinking, the second arrest, the trouble with that vindictive Judge Kirkland), Mike had begun to call home more often, and even to send postcards. He'd never been one to write letters, but postcards were just right, and they were from such exotic places as Gibraltar, Cairo, Saudi Arabia. Signed with just a carefully scripted
Mike
, usually. Though once, on the reverse of a card depicting a brilliantly blue Mediterranean Sea, he'd signed
Thinking of you & love, Mike
.

Michael, who'd long behaved as if he hadn't been missing his eldest son, was much moved by these cards. Especially
Thinking of you & love, Mike
. So Mike Jr. was growing up, maturing!—it was a miracle, how the Marines had made a man (yes that sounded goddamned corny, but it seemed to be so) out of a hotheaded, immature kid who hadn't been able to get along with anyone except his drinking buddies. If to be
a man
is to be in control of oneself, and taking pride in the fact.

He
, Michael Mulvaney Sr., the boy's own father, hadn't had the luck, good or bad, of serving in the U.S. armed forces. He might've been drafted into the Korean War—“conflict” was what they called it, in those days—except he'd married young, started having kids young. No telling what Michael Mulvaney might have learned.

What doesn't break you can teach you—right?

In the midst of so much worry about losing the farm, losing the business, Michael asked Corinne to locate the oldest snapshot album, dating back to—well, the beginning. They'd sit in the family room, each sipping beer, Michael grinning and laughing and shaking his head, tears in his eyes, lingering over the earliest pictures of High Point Farm, their young-marrieds pictures, Mikey-Junior at the age of a week in his beaming mom's arms, Mikey-Junior as a husky toddler gaping into the camera, Mikey-Junior at the age of four atop his first pony—what was that pony's name? Michael said, sighing, clamping a warm heavy hand on Corinne's knee, that long-married gesture meaning
We're in this together
, “Corinne, d'you think he'll ever come back? Try to work with me in the business? I wouldn't be so hard on him, now. I pushed too much, I guess. God, we could really be a team, Mike and me. If he'd give his old man a second chance.”

Corinne laid her hand over Michael's. She said, smiling, “Well. Maybe. We can
pray
.”

 

Thinking of such things like they'd happened years ago already and not just a few weeks back. For once life begins to accelerate it goes faster and faster. Probably, Patrick could explain that in scientific terms. Some equation of x, y, z.

She'd discover herself sitting on the steps of a basement stairs she didn't recognize.
Not
High Point Farm—this was different. No light on, and no purpose in her being there. She might have a cold coffee mug in her hands, or a screwdriver or sponge mop or Windex meaning she'd been going somewhere. But now just sitting here in the shadows, a shell-shocked woman of fifty, vague and smiling into the darkness below where ominous shapes of crates, barrels, upended tables and chairs slyly beckoned. Had she wandered into a mausoleum? Was this the Land of the Dead? “Mother,
you
aren't here, too, are you?” This was meant to be jokey, bravado. If Corinne Mulvaney could make only one person, herself, laugh—why, that meant everything was under control.

Or, stranger yet, she'd find herself shivering outside in some backyard she didn't know. In a chill mist or even light-falling snow. Was it getting to be spring, or just starting winter? A raw suburban-looking place, nearly without trees, oh how could people stand to live without trees?—you're so exposed to the sky. There was a country highway out front, diesel trucks thundering by. There was a neighboring house, split-level ranch with carport and glary-white aluminum siding, just the other side of the scrawny hedge. Foxy and Little Boots, hackles raised, barking their fool heads off at two psycho German shepherds beyond the hedge. Corinne was trying without success to get the damned tractor started, wanting to plow up some soil for a vegetable garden, flower beds. It was April, unless it was still March, but she was eager to begin. That yearning to feel the crumbly earth, dirt between her fingers. The hell with the tractor, probably it was out of gas. Michael wasn't tending to such things these days. She could use a shovel, a spade, a hoe. Oh, anything! Just to get the hard soil broken and tilled. You can set out lettuce just after St. Patrick's Day, in theory at least.

I'd come home from school and find Mom in such places. Crazy places like the backyard where, in a lightly falling snow, or a cold drizzle, there she was trying to spade the hard-packed earth. Mom in a soiled parka, slacks. I'd park my bike in the carport (it was a mile-and-a-half ride from school, even in the rough March wind those rides were usually my happiest times of day) and trot out back not so much hearing Mom talking to herself as seeing her, moving lips, short steamy puffs of breath. There came Judd's cheerful voice calling out, “Hey, Mom! What's up?” Mom would turn startled to stare at me as if for a moment she didn't recognize me, either. “Oh, Judd. Are you home from school, so soon? What on earth time
is
it?”—searching for her watch that wasn't on her wrist.

 

Take care of Mom. Be sure Mom doesn't crack up.

There was this voice instructing me, Judd Mulvaney's cheerful loud voice in my ears. I was open-eyed, I could see the way Dad was sliding, the way our lives were skidding. Like a runaway semi on a steep hill where the warning sign is
truckers use lower gear
but it's too late for any warning. And the brakes are worn-out and not going to hold.

So I'd put away Mom's gardening tools in the shed, and get her to come back inside the house. If she'd been sitting in a trance on the basement stairs I'd tease her saying let's put some light on the subject!—switching on the light. And get her back upstairs, into the kitchen.

Now we could play TV Mom and teenaged son just home from school. He'd even bicycled home from school, he's such a good, clean-living simple country kid.

“Well, now!” Mom would say, rubbing her chapped hands, a pale neon-blue light coming up in her eyes, “—you must be famished, I bet. How about a snack—” opening the refrigerator door for me to rummage inside, maybe some milk, maybe orange juice, wedge of gelatinous cherry pie, “—but don't ruin your appetite for supper, please!”

Under Mom's watchful smiling eyes I'd squeeze into the breakfast “nook” with its Formica-top worn colorless from the elbows of the previous tenants of the house. I'd devour my delicious after-school snack for it's true I was famished.

 

The split-level ranch with the glary-white aluminum siding was not
home
and would never be
home
. I seemed to know that, as the rattled dogs and cats knew it, restlessly prowling and sniffing as if seeking their lost niches, trying to settle down for a nap but never quite comfortable. Little Boots was so nervous he'd gotten into the habit of snapping at me if I wriggled the loose skin at the nape of his neck as I'd always done. Foxy barked, barked, barked at invisible and inaudible dangers as fiercely as he barked at the thunderous diesels on the highway. We didn't have a canary now, poor Feathers had lived to a ripe old age of seven and then expired. Mom wanted to buy another canary or possibly even a parrot (someone to talk to, she said jokingly) but not right now—“We'd better wait till we get settled.”

One sad day Marmalade disappeared. Mom called desperately for him, I bicycled for miles calling for him, “Marmalade! Oh kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty-KIT-TY!” but the wily old orange fellow was gone.