We Were The Mulvaneys Part 19

ASK DAD.

No one would be able to name what had happened, or would wish to name it: rape was a word that came not to be spoken at High Point Farm.

What were the words that were spoken? I remember abuse- a.s.sault-taking advantage of-hurt. Those were words I heard, or overheard, though these too were not uttered openly (that is, in the presence of Patrick or me) as one might not speak openly of cancer, of death.

The perpetrator, who was Zachary Lundt the son of Mortonuand Cynthia Lundt, was always referred to as he, him. Unless Dad was speaking, raging. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d. The son of a b.i.t.c.h. The f.u.c.ker. (When Dad had been drinking, I mean. Other times, he wouldn't be talking much at all.)

Eventually, of course, I would come to know what had happened to Marianne, or at least a certain sequence of "facts." At the time, however, as the last-born of the Mulvaney children, I was the last to know anything. And even then, such was our family speech code, I didn't exactly know. One morning, in the stable, I asked Patrick what was going on and Patrick squinted at me through his round wire-rimmed gla.s.ses, not missing a beat as he combed Prince, and murmured, "Who wants to know?" (This was a Mulvaney euphemism for "Mind your own business.") I said, "I want to know, for G.o.d's sake: what's going on, why's everybody tiptoeing around, what's wrong with Marianne?" Patrick moved to Prince's other side as the deep-chested mahogany-brown gelding shook his mane, shook and lifted his tail and released a torrent of steaming-hot p.i.s.s. "I'm one of you," I said, hurt, "-why can't I know?"

Patrick peered at me over Prince's sleek ripply back. He was wearing a green wool cap yanked down over his ears that gave him a squeezed furious look and his cheeks were flushed with cold. He mumbled sullenly, "Marianne's had some trouble I guess but she's O.K. now."

"Some trouble? Marianne?"

This was just so surprising to me, I didn't know how to react.

Patrick shrugged. His face closed like a fist, that was the most I'd get from him.

I knew: Marianne hadn't gone to school lately and, at least when I was home, she seemed to be hidden away in her room, with the door closed. I thought she must be sick, but Mom a.s.sured me, with a bright quick smile, "Oh, no! b.u.t.ton's had flu but she's just about recovered. You know this family-" Mom's fingers were fluttering the air like deranged b.u.t.terflies, "-we get sick fast, and we get well fast. She'll be returnmg to school-oh, tomorrow. Or the day after."

Mom was backing away, I tried to detain her. "Mom? How come Dad's acting so strange, too?"

But Morn was in motion. I'd caught up with her in the back hall as she was zipping up her parka, stamping her feet into whichever pair of boots happened to be handy. Grabbed her car keys, she was late for-whatever. Called over her shoulder at me, with a worried smile, "Dad's had the flu, too. 'Cap'n Mulvaney'-he'll be himself again soon!"

Finally I cornered Mike. After supper one night when it was just Morn, Mike, P.J. and me at the table. Marianne upstairs and Dad away "on business" as Mom explained vaguely. We'd had a strained meal, poor Mom jumping up to answer the phone twice-three times-but it was never the call she expected, if in fact she expected any call. P.J. was brooding over something, staring into his plate as if into one of his fancy concepts-"infinity." Mike shoveled in his food with an angry appet.i.te it seemed. He had a date that night with one of his girlfriends and near the end of the meal he was moving his shoulders twitchy and impatient as if he'd been sitting on the bench waiting to be called into the game and the waiting had gone on too long. As soon as he finished eating he was on his feet mumbling

"Excuse me, Mom! Thanks!"-and Mom looked after him hurt, like she was always looking hurt these days. Mike shaved for the second time that day; then in his room he was banging around looking for something, yanked off one shirt and put on another, combed his oiled hair compulsively staring at himself in his bureau mirror and liking what he saw, but just barely. Silky nudged against Mike's legs gazing up at him with lovelorn doggy-brown eyes, but he ignored him; I wandered into Mike's room uninvited, lounged on the bed and petted Silky, a kid brother hanging out in his big brother's room. I was too shy to ask any question of Mike that might violate the code. For instance, the kid brother is risking something just initiating a conversation with a big brother who clearly has other more significant things on his mind.

"s.h.i.t." Mike spoke softly, but angrily. Yanking off the shirt he'd just put on, pawing through his closet for something else. He'd shaved so roughly there were pinp.r.i.c.ks of blood on his jaws. His eyes had a yellowish cast. How long he'd ignore me, I had to wonder. It was almost fascinating, like one of P.J.'s weird experiments with pond algae.

On the walls of Mike's room and on his bureau and windowsills were photographs, clippings, plaques, all sorts of memorabilia of his four years as a star high school athlete. (The big bra.s.sy shiny trophies were out in the living room, of course. On permanent display.

"MULE" MIJLVANEY MOST IMPROVED ATHLETE 1971, MT. EPHRAIM CHAMBER OF COMMERCE SPORTS NIGHT. MULE MULVANEY OUTSTANDING SENIOR ATHLETE MT. EPHRAIM HIGH 1972. And more.) As a small kid I'd been in awe of my big brother Mule in his football gear, snug-fitting pants, maroon number four jersey bulked up with padded shoulders. That shiny helmet that makes players look like astronauts. We younger kids knew the players didn't have those bodies really, so padded-up, yet we reacted as if they did-so strong-looking, so confident. That was why seeing one of the players suddenly fallen and writhing with pain on the football field, like the time Mike was struck down with a broken ankle, was such a sobering sight, a ten-i-ying sight I'd remember vividly all my life. There were cries, screams. The referee's frantic whistle. Dad already pushing his way through the crowd, descending the bleachers, and Mom on her feet crying, "Oh Mikey! Oh no!"

Mike Mulvaney was ranked one of the two or three best football players who'd ever graduated from Mt. Ephraim High, but it was generally acknowledged that his playing was erratic, reckless. He'd suddenly lose control and judgment and that's when he would get hurt. Luckily his injuries were mostly minor. What was said about him, in print and word-of-mouth, was what a "great sport" he was. Never played dirty like some of the others, never complained bitterly after a losing game. In interviews, Mike graciously attributed his sportsmanship to "ideals fostered by my dad and mom." He gave credit to Coach Hansen. He gave credit to his teachers, his minister. You'd have thought he was one of the "good, Christian" boys but the real Mike was rowdy and irreverent. When the Mt. Ephrairn Rams lost a game, which was rare, it was Mike who cheered the other guys up, and Mike who dared tease Coach himself, a bull-like local character with a notable tendency to turn sullen and morose if things didn't go quite as he wished. "Hey, Coach: lighten it!" Mike once yelled, in my hearing, "-here today gone tomorrow, what the h.e.l.l?" As if this were a happy insight. And Coach and others standing around looked at Mike and laughed.

His senior year of high school Mike had offers of football scholarships from Michigan, Minnesota, Notre Dame, Colgate as well as each of the New York State universities, couldn't make up his mind for weeks then settled on SUNY Buffalo but didn't return after the first semester claiming college wasn't for him, and that included college football. Maybe the coach there didn't appreciate him? Maybe the university was too large? Maybe his grades, in business administration, weren't good? Whatever, Mike returned home and started work immediately at Mulvaney Roofing with Dad. Dad had wanted Mike to get a college degree but, frankly, he admitted he couldn't see how a diploma would make the slightest difference if you knew what you were doing in your trade and if you did it better than anyone else.

That was his formula for success. The formula that had worked for Michael Mulvaney Sr.

Finally Mike glanced at me, not glowering exactly but not smiling either. I took this as an invitation to speak. I said, "Is something going on with Marianne?" Mike was roughly zipping up a blue velour sweater, a gift from his girlfriend Trudj, and said, hotly, "Yes, something's wrong. Something's pretty f.u.c.king G.o.dd.a.m.ned wrong." He turned back to his mirror, peering critically at himself. "Some son of a b.i.t.c.h hurt her, some guy at the school." This was such a surprise to me, so astonishing, I stanmiered, "Huh? Who?" and Mike said bitterly, "Some guy. In P.J. 's cla.s.s. Some c.o.c.ksucker's gonna pay for it." "But-what did he do?" I asked. Mike was running his comb another time through his curly-kinky russet-brown hair; then he slipped the comb into his back jeans pocket, like a secret weapon. He said dismissively, "Ask them. They don't want me to talk about it. To anyone." "But who was it, Mike? What happened?"-I was excited, scared. I was old enough to know of certain ways in which a girl could be hurt by a guy (I knew what rape was, more or less) but it was difficult for me to comprehend that my sister Marianne, my sister everyone liked so much, especially guys at the high school, could have been hurt in such a way.

Mike left his room, went to grab a parka from a bed in the back hall."Mike, hey-why won't anyone talk about it? Why's it such a secret?" I asked. Mike stomped his feet into leather boots, taking his car keys out of his pocket and impatient to be gone. At the door he paused, looked at me, considered how to reply, his eyes narrowed and damp like Mom's as if he, not Marianne, had been the one to be hurt. Whatever this obscure and mysterious hurt was.

He said, "Ask Dad."

BOYS WILL BE BOYS!.

A morning in March, room 209 of Mt. Ephraim High:

Madame Lederer's cla.s.sroom. On Marianne Mulvaney's desk seat in first-year French there was drawn, in red Magic Marker, a curious tubular thing about five inches long labeled LE c.o.c.k. One tip of the thing was swollen like a balloon and annotated, in smaller letters, THIS SIDE UP.

No one knew who'd drawn LE c.o.c.k. (Of course, someone knew.) The girls were embarra.s.sed, unsmiling; would not look toward the offensive desk, nor at certain of the boys who were exchanging glances with one another, grinning, wriggling their shoulders, embarra.s.sed, too, but more than that, excited. What a cruel thins to do, for G.o.d's sake. That isn't funny, you guys. But who could erase the drawing, at such short notice? And with Madame Lederer already in the room, writing the next day's a.s.signment on the blackboard? And who wanted to get involved, anyway? That's disgusting. U/hat an a.s.shole. But maybe she wouldn't notice. Maybe Madame Lederer wouldn't notice.

Boys will be boys!

A second after the bell, when nearly everyone was in the cla.s.sroom, settling into their seats, Marianne Mulvaney entered, in the new, measured way of hers; not, as in the past, gliding into the room with friends, smiling and calling out h.e.l.lo, but alone, and shyly; uncertainly, like a convalescent on her feet just a little too soon, disoricnted in the world of the healthy and trying not to show it.

The girl was Marianne Mulvaney of course, and yet-was she?

Except for Madame Lederer at the blackboard, back turned to the cla.s.sroom, everyone was watching covertly, avidly. Poor Marianne! So sad. How can yol.1 guys he so nasty. It was noted that Marianne's face was oddly triangular, sallow-skinned and witchy; her downcast eyes were overlarge in their sockets; her directionless smile was strained, lips pulled tight across her teeth. Look: she asked for it. Come on.! Making her way to her desk in the third row, almost dead center of the room, Marianne stumbled over Ike Rodman's size-thirteen sneakered feet in the aisle, rnumrnred what sounded like "Excuse me," and Ike said quickly, his face reddening, "Yeah, sure." Everyone watched as Marianne approached her desk, and lowered her bookbag to the top; slipped into the seat without seeing LE c.o.c.k, in that way of hers she'd had since returning to school a few days before, vague-eyed, almost in slow motion, but always with that smile that pathetic smile! like a permanent grimace.

Sighs of general relief, a few scattered t.i.tters. Madame Lederer, a chesty, overdressed woman in her late thirties who imagined herself chic, turned to welcome her first-year cla.s.s with her customary grandiloquent gestures and sweetly-glamorous big smile. "Bon jour, mademoiselles et monsieurs!"

Almost too loudly, with mock eagerness, caine the response:

"Bon-jour, Madame Lederer!"

At her desk in the third row, center of the room, Marianne Mulvaney fumbled to open her French text, opened a spiral notebook, took out her pen and squinted at the smiling, gesticulating woman at the front of the room. There was nothing more to look at, no more interest in Marianne, the morning's meager drama had fizzled out.

PHASE.

How apprehensive she'd grown of the telephone ringing. Especially at night if Michael Sr. wasn't home.

As so often, since February, unaccountably he was not home.

So often, these weeks. As winter yielded by slow, resistant degrees to spring. The harsh windy snow-pelleted spring of upstate New York, daffodils' bright-yellow shocked faces coated in ice, their stems broken, fallen. So Corinne thought: Nothing progresses in a straight line, it's more-well, imbricated. The way a roofer lays tiles, shingles, overlapping one another, for strength.

Where did he go, under the spell of his obsession?-Corinne could ask, of course, and he'd answer. Always, there was a ready answet Dropping by some old friends. Just driving around, clearing my head. With a hint of his old bad-boy jocularity, Hey, who wants to know? Or, winking, Come with me, sweetheart, and you wouldn't have to ask. (As if he'd want her with him! As ifCormne his wife, his children and High Point Fann, weren't part of what he needed to escape from.) But the ready answers were never the right answer, where their eyes niight lock, Corinne's and Michael's, and she'd know he was speaking the truth.

Welcoming her into his heart.

Even the pain, the hurt, the rage of his heart-why couldn't he let her in any longer?

She wanted to cry to him: i'm her mother! I've been violated, too.

He was letting Mulvaney Roofmg slide, that much Corinne knew.

What Michael Mulvaney had so tirelessly, so single-mindedly and with such hope built up for the past twenty years, what, apart from his family, he'd lived for ("To be respected as the best G.o.dd.a.m.ned roofer in the Chautauqua Valley") he was letting slip like sand between his fingers.

Worried calls from his foreman Alex Flood-8 A.M. and a crew was at the work site and where was Mr. Mulvaney; worried calls from his secretary Leah, midmorning and supplies were being delivered, important calls coming in-where was Mr. Mulvaney?

Bright as a blue jay Corinne heard herself quip (even as her fists were clenched so tightly, her nails dug deep into her palms), "Why ask me?-I've only known the guy twenty-three years."

Laughing her breathless neighirig laugh, in the face of startled silence.

During one of these unsettling calls (in fact, at 4:40 P.M. and the call was from a customer with a complaint), Patrick entered the kitchen, and overheard Corinne on the phone. When she hung up, he touched her arm gently. "Hey, Mom. Hey."

Was she crying? She hadn't even noticed-