We Were The Mulvaneys Part 17

They said, Tell us!-so that justice can be executed.

She said, I was drinking. I was to blame. I don't remember. How can I give testimony against him!

How many times Marianne Mulvaney was to repeat these words. To her parents, to anyone who questioned her. Including two Mt. Ephraimn police officers when, the morning following Michael Mulvam-iey's "disruptive and disorderly behavior" at the Lundts' house, they came to High Point Farm to question her in her parents' presence.

I was drinking. It's so hard to remember. I can't swear. I can't be certain. I can't bear false witness.

Her many hours in solitude, in St. Ann's Church, had given her a strange stubborn placidity new to Marianne Mulvaney. She'd been reading the Gospels, she'd been praying. Opening her heart to Jesus as she'd never done before-oh, never! He had instructed her in the way of contemplation; of resisting the impulse to rage, to accuse. And, in truth, drunk as she'd been, sick, staggering, confused and frightened as she'd been, she could not clearly remember what had happened between her and Zachary Lundt.

So Marianne told the Mt. Ephrairn police officers, her parents looking on, subdued, silent.

(Michael Mulvaney had been arrested, the previous night. Charges of a.s.sault were "pending.")

Yet: what could be proven against Zachary Lundt, with no witness except Marianne?-her words against his? Zachary's friends would rally around him-she knew. She was not bitter but she knew. It was clear to her, logical as a chess game in which you see your opponent's devastating moves to come but are helpless to prevent them. (Patrick had once tried to teach Marianne to play chess, but soon gave up on her-she was too nice, too unaggressive, no comnpet.i.tion for wily Pinch.) Quietly, calmly repeating I was drinking-there's so much I can't aaount for, can't remember. How can I bring criminal charges against him. I am as much to blame as. Can't bear false witness.

As if this litany were the most basic, the most irreducible of knowable facts. As if it were all that might be granted her by way of understanding. As if, wakened from a cruel enchantment, she'd discovered in her hands a wide, ragged, rotted net, a net with enormous tears and holes, yet her sole solace, her sole hope, was to cast this rotted net out again, again, again and draw it in breathless and trembling to discover what truths it might Contain. But they were always the same truths. I was drinking. I was to blame. I don't remember. How can I give testimony against him!

Given to understand, too, that if she declined to bring charges of s.e.xual a.s.sault against Zachary Lundt, Zachary Lundt and his father Morton would not bring charges of a.s.sault against her father.

So it was, and had to be. She'd peered deeply into her soul.

Her soul she'd never truly examined until now. Her soul she'd scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed as, in the hot, hurting water at the LaPortes', she'd scrubbed her offended flesh. And if there was pain in such abrasion, there was satisfaction, too. Even a muted joy. Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Jesus' voice had never been so vivid to her, so specially directed to her. Obsewe all things whatsoever I have commanded thee; and lo, lam with thee always, even unto the end of the world.

She didn't return to school until the first Monday in March. By that time she'd thought, thought long and hard, much of the time in solitude in her room, and healed herself. Of course, she kept up with her school a.s.signments-she was diligent, even obsessive about that. (It was Corinne who called Marianne's teachers, virtually every day.) She did most of her household ch.o.r.es, eager to follow Mom's

* * * WORK SCHEDULE * * * which was the very essence of family life at 1-ligh Point Farm. Schoolwork, ch.o.r.es-as if nothing was wrong. For, after all, now she was recovered, even the nastiest of the bruises fading, nothing was wrong.

Bless them that curse you. Pray for them that despitefufly use you.

The Lundts did not file charges against Michael Mulvaney Sr. Marianne Mulvaney did not file charges against Zachary Lundt. These facts were distant, impersonal as radio voices fading in and out of coherence. The Kingdom of G.o.d is within, Her bare knees on the floorboards of her room, her hands grasped tight, tight together and her eyes shut streaking tears.Jesus!Jesus!Jesus!

It was a secret thing from the first. After what he'd done to her, in- side her, deep and up inside her, using his fingers s.n.a.t.c.hing, digging, clawing You b.i.t.c.h! c.u.n.t! don't tell me you don't want it, c.u.n.t! pushing her down into the seat of the Corvette, the new-smelling leather up-. hoistery, the cold f-ibric, and his furious pale face leaning close, shoving her legs apart, her thighs, the dress ripping, and she too weak too terrified to resist, even to utter No!-and after, brought to the LaPortes', slipping in quietly in stealth and shame and guilt and in the sparklinghot water scrubbing herself sobbing and murmuring to herself and even laughing, giggling-biting her lip to keep from making too much noise, waking Trisha and her parents. A secret, and a revelation.

Blessed be they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

She could not speak of the -oy that arose from such hurt, stirring her to excited wakefulness in the night, so she climbed from bed, knelt on the bare, hard floorboards, flung herself against the edge of the bed and prayed, prayed. A cold-glaring frill moon suspended in the sky like the unblinking eye of G.o.d. And the wind, the wind that never ceased at High Point Farm, above the Valley--twining into the very ventricles of her heart.

Jesus! I thank You, I am alive. I thank You for this - this breath.

For Zachary might have strangled her, after all. He might have dragged her limp body out of the car, pounded her head against the icy pavement, hadn't that been a possibility? an unspoken (unless it was a spoken) threat?

She harbored such secrets, such revelations. Dared not speak of them to her father (so upset, distraught, he was making himself sick) but spoke elliptically of them to her mother (who hurried to Man anne as if summoned, so powerful was the connection between them, and the two knelt and prayed together, weeping, sometimes laughing, clutching hands like young sisters, the simplest of prayers Our Father --io art in Heaven hallowed be -my nanje until their cheeks were streaked with tears, the color returned to their faces). For there was comfort to be taken in such hurt-Jesus knew, on the cross. Public shame and humiliation. Knowing of course how everyone must be speaking of her, pitying her-at the high school, and in town. Through the Chautauqua Valley- Zachary Lundt would have told his buddies, of course, would have boasted-yet even if he had not, news of it, of Marianne Mulvaney and her father's intervention, the arrest, the police, would have spread, irrevocable.

You Mulvaneys. Think you're hot s.h.i.t don't you.

Few of Marianne's friends had called to ask after her. Though she'd been absent fromn school for days. No boy had called. Trisha who was her closest friend, since fifth grade, hadn't called. Well, yes-Trisha had called, on Tuesday of the second week Marianne had stayed out of school, and Corinne had answered the phone, but when Marianne called back, hours later, Tnisha wasn't in. And Mrs. LaPorte spoke so stifily to her, so-oddly. As if she scarcely knew who Marianne was. Marianne said quietly, "Please tell Trisha I'm sorry she's involved in any way, in this." After a startled pause Mrs. LaPorte said, "Involved? My daughter- My daughter isn't involved in anything. I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about."

So she prayed, and by degrees healed herself. The bruises and abrasions were gone, or almost gone. A second visit to Dr. OaUey and there remained only coin-sized discolorations on the insides of her thighs. Where Zachary had torn at her with his furious fingers, where he'd poked. pushed his b1ood-engorged p.e.n.i.s-again, again, again, again-was healed. At any rate, the bleeding had stopped. She would not know for another several weeks if her regular menstrual pattern would resume but she wasn't thinking of that now.

I was drinking, I was to blame. If I could relive that night but I can't. How can 1 hear false witness against him?

One day Mom removed the soiled, torn prom dress from the hack of Marianne's closet where it was hidden. She hadn't needed to ask Marianne where the dress was. Found it, unerring, without wishing to examine it; wadded it into a ball and stuffed it in a paper bag with other household trash. Mom's eyes gleaming with tears but she wasn't crying nor was Marianne. Not a word uttered.

Bright-glaring snowdrifted winter mornings at High Point Farm! It would be Marianne's last winter here, she seemed to know. Two mornings in succession, the last week of February, the school bus couldn't get through, so Patrick and Judd stayed home. That air of excitcd childish expectation, listening to WYEW-FM radio as they'd done for years, years, years on blizzard mornings, waiting to hear of county school cancellations. Though Mananne was upstairs when the Mt. Ephraim district was announced and P.J. and Ranger cheered in unison.

Not that P.J. much liked to stay home-"quarantined" as he called it-amid so much snow, silence.

Winter silence. His eyes avoiding hers, young face ravaged in shock, pity, distaste.

(How much did Patrick and Judd know? Presumably, their parents had told them something. And Mike, an adult, knew. He'd known from the first, the evening of the day Corinne had taken Marianne to Dr. Oakley.)

Mananne had agreed to see Dr. Oakley another time, at Morn's urging. On the examination table steeled herself against pain shutting her eyes Jesus! Jesus!Jesus! as beads of sweat formed at her hairline but there was no pain. Jesus had helped her banish pain. Afterward dressing herself, articles of clothing slipping from her fingers numbed and without sensation like strangers' fingers weirdly annexed to her hands. She'd overheard a man's voice in the room next door. "-made the right decision, under the circ.u.mstances. An ugly, messy prospect-" but she'd stopped listening.

There was Michael Mulvaney Sr.: Dad. Tried not to think about Dad.

After that first night when he'd gripped her hand, so hard. And cried. The shock of seeing Dad cry! She was temfied, her heart was breaking. So she vowed not to think of it afterward, with Jesus' help. For there was nothing to be done. She could not testify against Zachary Lundt for she could not recall, with any degree of accuracy, the sequence of events of the early hours of Sunday February 14 nor even herself during that time. It was like a movie where something has gone wrong with the film, images continue to flutter past, but dim, confused, out of focus. Nor could she accompany her father as he wished (where? to the Chautauqua County district attorney's office, in Chautauqua Falls?)-sirnply, she refused.

Could not, could not. G.o.d forgive her, she could not.

And so it became a household of silence. As if in the afterniath of a violent detonation. No wonder Mom played the radio so loudly in the kitchen, her brothers turned the TV up, even the dogs barked at the slightest provocation-a flock of noisy crows in the pear orchard, a helicopter with propellors chop! chop! chopping! the air on a mysterious early-evening flight through the Valley.

There was the discovery she'd never actually looked at, never seen, Michael John Mulvaney, Sr., until this time. For always he'd been Dad. Or Captain, or Curly. (Though not "Curly" for years- one of the names he'd outgrown.) Seeing him now, Dad, yet Michael John Mulvaney, Sr., when she could not look at him directly, at all. For his eyes shifted uneasily in his sockets when she appeared. If she entered a room in which he stood or sat, he would shortly leave. Forehead creased, eyes shifting so he need not see her.

He'd aged a decade in ten days. Heavy-footed on the stairs, turn a corner and there he was-who? A bearish man, shoulders slumped, rubbing a fist into an eye and panting like a winded horse trying to catch its breath. His face like uncooked, flaccid dough.

Daddy I'm so sorry.

Daddy what can I say.

Can't remember, can't testify. Daddy I'm so ashamed.

She did not wish to hear but sometimes (by chance, in the bathroom adjacent to their bedroom) she heard. And there was Dad's voice lifting in anger, incredulity and Mom's voice quieter, pleading. The quarrel subsided, you would think it had been extinguished, but like a smouldering swamp fire it had simply gone underground and would soon erupt again, another night. The quarrel was as much a matter of silence, withheld speech, as it was speech itself And suddenly Michael Sr. who was Dad, her Dad, stalked from the room not giving a d.a.m.n who heard, Marianne, Patrick, or Judd, down the shuddering Stairs and out the back door, a dog or two scrambling across the kitchen floor in his furious wake, toenails clicking on the linoleum. A few seconds later came the sound of the Ford pickup revving into life, the engine turning over, catching, tires spinning in the packed snow, catching too, and Dad would be halF-vay down the drive before switching on. the headlights.

Those red taillights: Marianne would watch from her bedroom window. If she'd risen from bed, to stand and see. Smaller and smaller the lights like rapidly receding red suns (dwarf stars, Patrick called them) in her vision blurred with moisture until they disappeared.

Strange: how when a light is extinguished, it's immediately as if it has never been. Darkness fills in again, complete.

Those days when the phone rang a number of times in succession (for Dad-he took the calls in his study, door shut) and other, more frequent days when Dad was in town and the telephone never rang. Or if it did Morn might call out, in her cheery general-bulletin yodel, for anyone to hear who was interested: "Wrong-nurn-ber!"

There were few calls, these days, for Corinne Mulvaney, as for her daughter. What had happened, so swiftly, to their popularity? She could count her friends on the thumbs of both hands, Momjoked.

Though Mom didn't joke much, these days.

Rarely whistled, even to call the household brood to be fed.

Sometimes in an open-eyed frowning trance she'd pa.s.s by Foxy, or Little Boots, or Troy, or tremulous Silky gazing up at her with widened hopeful doggy eyes and tails beginning to thump in happy antic.i.p.ation, sometimes she'd collide with one of the cats, in particular Big Torn whose aggressive habit it was to block her way in the kitchen in order to shunt her in the direction of the bowls in the cats' corner. Just didn't seem to see these creatures, not at eye level. "Oh, you! Hungry so soon? Didn't I just feed you?" Automatically pouring dry kibble into a bowl taking no heed of the Cat or dog staring up at her in mute animal perplexity.

Yes and Feathers might burst explosively into song, aroused by the whistling teakettle, or wild birds t.i.ttering at the feeder outside the window, but he'd sing alone. His marvelous trilling rising-andfalling soprano, but he'd sing alone