We Were The Mulvaneys Part 20

No embarra.s.sment so keen, so cringing-painfril, as that endured by an adolescent in the presence of his parents. Especially a nerved- up self-conscious high-I.Q. eighteen-year-old boy in the presence of his thoroughly rattled forty-five-year-old mom.

Patrick was saying in a bright buoyant strained way that reminded Corinne of herself, "He'll be O.K. You know Dad."

"Oh, that's right. I know that," Corinne said quickly.

"He's just going through a-" Patrick grinned, shoving his gla.s.ses against the bridge of his nose, "-a phase."

They laughed together. Just a little too loudly. The joke being that the Mulvaney parents were forever saying of the Mulvaney children that one or another, or all of them collectively, were going through a phase.

"Well. That's right," Corinne said, wiping at her overheated face, "-that's true for all of us! Amen."

With the yearning eye of, almost, a bereft lover, Corinne gazed after her tall fair son, her mysterious second-born. In his soiled sheepskin jacket, headed quickly outside to his barn ch.o.r.es. Wants to get away from me: can't blame him. Patrick was dutiftul about his ch.o.r.es, uncomplaining as Marianne; far more reliable and efficient than Ivlikey-Junior had been at that age. Corinne's heart swelled with love of Patrick_4ove, and a sense of loss so poignant it left her weak. Was it sinful, G.o.d, to feel such emotion for your own child? Seeing how tall and lanky Patrick had grown, inches taller than she, taller even than his father. Patrick was a beautiftfl boy, no matter that chronically crinkled brow, that habit of squinting, staring, pursing and sucking his lips. But she dared not touch him, of course. It was one of the astonishing discoveries of Corinne'S middle years as a mother to learn that, inside her own family, she could pine for the attention of a boy who was her own son!

Almost the way, as a lonely, homely_gawky high school girl, a fanner's daughter, she'd pined for the attention ofjust such boys- tall, fair, aloofly handsome. Their eyes boring through her with no recognition.

As for Mikey_JUfliOt, her firstborn_She'd had to give him up, in the emotional, intimate sense, years ago. He even winced now if she called him "Mikey-JUIMOr" and not "Mike." Not just that he'd begun to shrug away embarra.s.sed at his mother's touch but-clearly- he'd begun what Corinne understood was a secret s.e.xual life, a s.e.xually intense life, with how many girls Corinne would have grown sick and silly by this time trying to count.

Not that Corinne was a jealous mother. Not in that way. Like certain of her women friends, confessing how obsessed they were with their sOn's probable secret lives.

Patrick, though. Patrick hadn't discovered s.e.x, yet. Corinne wondered if he was attracted to girls, dreamt of girls, at all. Thank G.o.d she could trust him.

But: she'd have liked a little more courage! To sit down with Patrick, just the two of them. And speak, for once, frankly. How are you taking this terrible episode in our life? Has your sister confided in you? What do you know, from other sources, of what happened? What are people saying of us? (But did she really want to know? Her heart beat rapidly at the thought, as if she were in the presence of danger.) Yet she knew it wasn't possible. No longer. Patrick was eighteen, and soon to leave home. She saw sometimes in the very lenses of his gla.s.ses distant landscapes. Rarely now did he, OT the others, linger downstairs in the kitchen with Mom as they used to. That was all gone, suddenly.

It was all gone, wasn't it? Corinne hadn't quite realized. The boisterous half hour or so when all the children, home ftoni school, crowded into the kitchen breathless and excited exchanging the day's news, teasing, joking, laughing, headed for the refrigerator-the dogs barking ecstatically, for it was the high point of their day, too. (Habitually, the dogs waited for the school buses at the foot of the drive. On afternoons when Mikey_Junior had team practice, poor Silky would continue his vigil, alone, as the other dogs trotted with the children up to the house.) Those wonderfiul years when Mikey was still in high school, and Judd still in elementary school. Mikey-Junior, P.J., b.u.t.ton, Ranger. And good old Mom glowing with pleasure even as, mom-style, she scolded: "Hey! You scavengers! Don't you dare ruin your appet.i.tes for supper!" As if growing boys could ruin their ap- pet.i.tes. These boys ravenous with hunger, devouring peanut b.u.t.ter sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies, slices of American cheese, stale b.u.t.termilk biscuits smeared with jam. Mikey who was "Mule" and "Number Four" had the appet.i.te of a young steer, swallowing down a fl-ll quart of milk in a half dozen gulps. Marianne who was forever "watching her weight" joined them drinking diet soda, nibbling damtily at carrot stucks, celery. Al] of them flirting with Mom. Vying for Mom's attention, bragging to Mom. Like the dogs eagerly wagging their tails, like the cats hoisting their tails erect kitten-style. Hey Mom look at me! at me, at me!

Now, all was changed. Irrevocably?

Of course, Corinne acknowledged that the older boys had long ago begun to resist her hugs, kisses, crooning baby talk. Brushing hair out of their eyes, dabbing spots of dirt from their faces. A boy's resistance to his mom seemed to start at about the age of five-so young! By nine, by eleven, you had to be careful, really careful how you approached him. (The shrewd thing was to wait for a boy to come to you, which, when circ.u.mstances were just right, he would. Grounded by a football injury, right ankle in a cast for weeks, aged sixteen, Mikey had reverted almost to babyhood, at such times when only his Mom was around to tend to him. She'd loved every moment!) By thirteen and beyond, though, they weren't children any longer. Nor even boys, exactly-their voices changing, tiny p.r.i.c.kles of beard beginning to push through. Michael Sr. joked he could smell Michael Jr.'s hormones all over the house, mixed with the rich, ripe smell of sweat socks and sneakers.

Going through a phase.

Aren't we all? Amen!

Corinne thought, inspired: Maybe that was it? They were all go- ing through a phase, the entire Mulvaney family, and they'd come out of it, Soon? Just a phase-the very words made everything suddenly hopeful again.

Not 'ong ago Michael Sr. had been capable of sleeping through gale-force winds; now he slept fitfully, only a few hours at a time. He'd become so addicted to his d.a.m.ned cigarettes, he'd wake every three or four hours to go downstairs to smoke. (Pretending he was only going to use the bathroom. As if Corinne, sharing the same bed with the man, didn't know.) Sometimes, at dawn, Corinne would seek Michael out downstairs, wanting to locate him before the children woke. His snoring-raSPY, wet, rhythmic-would lead her to him, in the fainily room, or the kitchen, or the minimally firnished, badly cluttered room that was his at-home office. There, Michael Mulvaney Sr. slumped on a sofa or in a chair, occasionally even on the floor, head fallen so sharply to one side it looked as if his neck might be broken. A sag-eyed ashen-faced man sprouting gunmetal-gray whiskers, his muscular shoulders, arms, midriff going to fat. There would be a scattering of beer bottles at his feet, possibly a depleted bottle of whiskey-Early Times, his favorite. An ashtray heaped with ashes and b.u.t.ts. What a smell! Corinne would stomp to a window to shove it open, the colder the air, the better. How hurt she felt, and how vindictive!

One of the dogs, usually Troy, who slept in this part of the house, would be close by, having stationed himself near his master through the night. Angular collie-face, moist eyes you wanted to believe intelligent, consoling. Don't worry, it's only a phase!

This, Corinne knew: one of the places Michael was slipping off to in secret (yes, she'd discovered a matchbook in his pants pocket-- she'd gotten that desperate) was the Wolf's Head Inn at Wolf s Head Lake twelve miles away.

Dear G.o.d, no. Not again.

Michael's old friend "Haw" Hawley owned the place, or owned a mortgage on it. The Wolf's Head crowd, Michael's oldest friends in the Chautauqua Valley, predating by years his Mt. Ephrainu connections. Some of the men also belonged to the Chautauqua Sportsmen's Club-Wally Parks, Rick Shires, Cobb Connor. Getting Michael Mulvaney to go on their notorious hunting weekends with them, deer-hunting season in November_December. Not just the shotguns terrified Corinne who hated hunting in any case, but the long nights of drinking, poker-playing, carousing. When Michael returned from one of these expeditions to the foothills beyond Wolf's Head Lake he'd be hungover, a guilty glaze to his eyes. Corinne doubted he'd ever shot any deer, but the men concocted tales to protect and enhance one another in the eyes of the women back home. (In Michael's office at Mulvaney Roofing, there were photographs of Michael and his hunting buddies standing before the strung-up carca.s.ses of deer, shotguns proudly erect. Coriime wouldn't a]low any of these in the house though she did, being practicalminded, agree to prepare venison steaks and stews.)

Eventually, after a few years, Michael had sickened of the hunting expeditions. He'd never come out and admitted to Corinne that she was right, morally or otherwise, but Corinne guessed he'd become revulsed by the idiotic bloodshed and his friends' behavior.

"Haw" Hawley! Corinne's feelings about him, and his wife Leonie, were complicated. She granted they were fun-rowdy, vulgar, slapdash, lively. Never a dull moment at the Wolf's Head Inn, those long sunmier twilights and nights. Corinne knew how Michael enjoyed that hard-drinking crowd, but she hadn't been able to like them, much. Hadn't ever felt comfortable. Though, as a young wife eager to please her husband, she'd surely tried. Both Haw and Wally Parks had flirted with Corinne when Michael wasn't present, and she'd never known if they were serious or just kidding around. (Or both.) Corimme had chosen to interpret the flirting as kidding around, though she'd never told Michael about it.

Haw was a big-bellied wild-bearded alcoholic who drank along with his customers, Wally was a rail-thin blond-Presley type who managed the Ma.r.s.ena Airport and had cooked up for himself a local reputation for having been a World War II bomber pilot in j.a.pan, an alcoholic, too-oh, why mince words, they were all alcoholics and Michael Mulvaney had been well on his way to alcoholism, the years he'd seen that gang regularly. As a young wife, with young children, Corinne had a recurring nightmare vision of the husband she adored, the father of her children, sunk to his armpits in the black sludgy-muck of Wolf s Head Lake's northern sh.o.r.e, slowly sinking from view.

Dear G.o.d, please no.

I'm not young enough, or strong enough, this time.

It was Corinne's belief, never shared with anyone, that she'd had to struggle for her husband's very soul, those years. A shudder ran through her-how close she'd come to losing Michael to that filthy black muck.

Yet, she had to admit, there'd been a certain shabby glamor about Wolf's Head Lake, and the Inn, in the days they'd all been young, and good-looking. An erotic undercurrent to virtually every exchange between a man and a woman not married to each other. The s.e.xy beat! beat! beat! of the jukebox in the barroom. The Wolf's Head Inn was a country tavern built on a promontory above the lake, a boat-rental concession operating out of its ground floor. (How the Mulvaney children loved those leaky, c.u.mbersome rowboats, clamoring to be taken out Sunday after Sunday! The memory made the corners of Corinne's eyes crinlde--that blinding glare on the lake at sunset. A ghost-pain darted between her shoulder blades. Until Mikey_Jumor was old enough to be trusted with a rowboat and the younger children, it fell to Mom to take the crew out, while Dad drank beer and played cards with his friends on the Inn veranda. You could hear them laughing and hooting like hyenas a hundred yards out on the lake.)

Inside, the Inn was dim-lit on even the Sunniest days. There was a long battered bar that put Corimme in mind, fancifully, of a locomotive. There were flyspecked screened windows overlooking the lake, there were unfinished floorboards littered with cigarette b.u.t.ts and package wrappers by the end of the night. And the smell!-her nostrils pinched at the memory. Sharp, distinctive, unmistakable: beer, tobacco smoke, disinfectant-and-stale-urine at the rear, where His and Hers rest rooms opened off a dank alcove. Yet the Inn had a seedy glamor, your heart quickened when you stepped inside. There was a small dance floor, there was an ever-glowing jukebox. How many nickels Connne had dropped into it, herselfi Every other song you heard was Elvis Presley. Playful-rowdy Elvis ("Hound Dog"), dreamy-maudlin Elvis ("Heartbreak Hotel"), s.e.xy-seductive Elvis ("Love Me Tender"). Corinne had been a dreamy young wife in her twenties, she'd drunk beer, too, till her head swirled and she laughed at the slightest provocation. A quick squeeze of Michael's fingers on her wrist could send a tinge like electricity to her groin-oh, yes!

Wo-/'s Head Inn, Wo-fs Head Lake, NY-discovering the matchbook in Michael's trouser pocket, the crude logo of a wolf s head in silhouette, brought this back to Corinne, with a shiver.

Of course, the lake was beautifril. All of the rural Chautauqua Valley was beautiftil. Back in the Fifties there had been relatively few cabins, cottages, cheap motels at the lake (development was to come, with a vengeance, in the Seventies) and you could walk without dis- traction along the sh.o.r.e, through the pine woods, gazing across the placid surf-ce of the lake to the dense woodland on the opposite sh.o.r.e a mile away, lifting into the fir-covered Chautauqua foothills and the slate-blue hazy mountains beyond. Of course, the children loved it. Of course, it was their favorite, favorite place. And Michael's.

Yet Wolf's Head Lake had seemed to Corinne a place of surprises and danger. She was a young mother, she exaggerated-rnavbe. Much of its sh.o.r.e was rocky and unsuited for swimming; even at the periphery of the main beach, where a lifeguard was on duty, you sometimes stepped into repulsive soft muck like quicksand. A quick storm could blow up, turning the water into harsh choppy waves; if you were in a rowboat halfway across the lake, and if the wind was corning at you, the return could be desperate, and exhausting. Or, on hot, muggy days, the lake glittered sickly-slick, like molten plastic. There were ugly stinging flies, clouds of droning gnats and mosquitoes. Even (thank G.o.d, Connne had never actually seen one!-she'd never have stepped into the lake again) water snakes, in the wilder inlets. And wasn't the sunshine harsher at Wolf's Head Lake than at home? All the Mul- vaneys had suffered sunburn at one time or another, even Michael Sr. who tanned darkly. Once, b.u.t.ton was five or six, playing on the beach and wading in shallow water one afternoon for hours, and the sky had been pebbled with cloud and yet, by the end of the day, she was whimpering in pain-her slender shoulders and back flaring lobsterpink, burning to the touch. And there were so many loud, rough, combative children at the beach, running and splashing in the water, tossing sand, rnouthy boys whose every third word was a profanity. And the girls!-young teenagers in flimsy bathing suits flaunting their remarkable little bodies, plastic sungla.s.ses and bright makeup worn even in the water, precocious hussies eyeing Corinne's own Mikey-Junior when he'd been no more than twelve! Just as their mothers and older sisters frauldy eyed Michael Sr. who was so good-looking.

That way, infuriating to Corinne, signaling Hey: look at me, here lam!

At Wolf's Head Lake, Corinne had been made to realize a truth that seemed to have eluded her until then-it's one thing to marry a man, and another thing to keep him.

That time, late one Sunday evening, the children ready to go home for hours, even Mikey-Junior drowsy, falling asleep in the back of the station wagon, and Corinne, exasperated, went back into the Inn another time to get Michael, only to discover him with scrawny platinum_bleached-blond Leonie Hawley giggling like idiots on the dance floor, all but neckirig!-as Corinne would accuse Michael afterward. Michael and Leonie pretended absolute innocence, of course. But Corinne knew, of course she knew. Her husband and that flirty brazen woman, an obvious attraction between them, everyone else knew including Haw Hawley, how shameful! There was Leonie with her wide-innocent eyes, there was Michael guilty- defiant, his face darkening with blood. Driving back to High Point Farm the elder Mulvancys had quarreled while the children slept, or pretended to sleep, in the back of the station wagon. Michael, his voice slurred with drink, became increasingly defensive, angry- "Your imagination is working overtime, sweetheart! And I don't like to be spied on." Corinne said, "d.a.m.n you, Michael Mulvaney, do you think I'm a complete fool?"-pausrng to draw breath, not knowing if she was about to burst into tears, or laughter, "Or an incomplete fool?" Harsh horsey-sounding laughter erupted from her throat, but Michael, grim behind the wheel, didn't join in.

Following that, Corinne rarely went back to Wolf's Head Lake with the children. Or, if she did, it was just for the day-swimming, boating. For a while Michael went on his own, hanging out at the Inn, then gradually he stopped going, too.

These were the early years of Mulvaney Roofing's prosperity. The Mulvaneys made new friends in Mt. Ephraim, a new cla.s.s of friends. Everyone liked Michael Sr., and most people came to like Corinne, once they adjusted to her quirky mannerisms, her odd admixture of shyness and brashness. Michael was one of those persons who, entering a gathering, make people smile in antic.i.p.ation4ike switching on a light, Cormne observed, in a dim-lit room. Men gravitated to him to pump his hand, women's fingers fluttered to their hair and their mouths shaped quick smiles. An up-and-coming Mt. Ephraim businessman who worked, sornetimnes, a twelve_hour day, rushed home to rapidly shower, shave, get dressed in suit, white shirt and tie, and rush out again to attend a meeting of the Mt. Ephraim Chamber of Commerce, the Mt. Ephraim United Way, or, with Corinne, the P.T.A.

A new adventure, and the Mulvaneys thrived.

So it happened, Michael saw his Wolf s Head Lake friends less less frequently- He'd already given up hunting, though he kept hi: guns and his membership in the Sportsmen's Club. Where once he' seen Haw, Wally, Rick, Cobb and the rest every week or so, now saw them every six weeks, every three months, every six months- there just wasn't time. If the Mulvaneys gave a big party, their July cookout for instance, Michael would invite the Wolf s Head Lake crowd-maybe. (Corinne wisely didn't say a word. Her strategy was to let Michael see how his old friends simply didn't fit in with the new.) Once, Michael told Corinne how he'd run into Rick Shires at a farm supply store and Rick had seemed almost shy of saying h.e.l.lo to him, as if he'd feared Michael might snub him-"I felt so d.a.m.ned guilty, should've suggested we go somewhere for a drink, but-" Corinne said consolingly, "Rick must know you're busy, honey. I'm sure he understood." Another time, only a few years ago, Corimie hadn't relayed to Michael how she'd run into Haw at the Kmart on Route 119, shocked to see how ravaged and gray-balding he'd become, wearing bifocals, his drinker's face a cobwebby map of broken capillaries, yet pushy with Connne, on the edge of nasty. Corinne asked how was Leonie? and Haw said sarcastically why ask him, they'd been divorced for five years and never saw each other. (Maybe Corinne had heard this, she couldn't recall! So embarra.s.sing.) After a few awkward minutes Corinne backed ofl- with the vague murmur that she'd tell Michael they met, maybe they could get together sometime that summer, and Haw virtually snorted in derision, made a gesture with his arm that was meant to indicate Mt. Ephraim and said, "That's where the money comes from, eh?" Winking, and smirking, as, wounded as if Haw had spat in her Ijice, Corinne limped away.

Thinking in triumph, At least I have saved him from you. From turning into you.

Or had she only postponed Wolf's Head Lake in their lives?- that nightmare vision of Michael Mulvaney sinking to his armpits, to his chin, sinking helplessly in that soft filthy black muck.

How obsessed poor Michael had become, with it.

In the winter and spring of 1976, how heavily it weighed upon all their lives.

Though with the therapist Jill James, and, to a lesser degree, with her minister and his wife, and one or two women friends (yes, they'd begun to drift back-hesitantly), Corinne could discuss what had happened to Marianne, or what had probably happened, she could not, would not, utter the word rape; would have denied everuttering it in Dr. Oakley's office. What had happened to their daughter was a.s.sualt, molestation, occasionally s.e.xual a.s.sault. To Mi- chad, who had a difficult time speaking of the incident at all, and whose resistance to speaking of it seemed to be increasing with the pa.s.sage of time, it could only be referred to as it.

The way, Corinne understood, you don't speak of death to grieving people. If you wanted to speak to them at all, you had to discover other words.

What frightened Corinne was the change in Michael. Where once he'd been completely reliable, now he was unreliable. Oh, he might be telling the truth about where he'd been, working late- then again, he might not. (It was turning Corinne into the kind of wife who checks on her husband continuously_discreet telephone calls to his office, questions innocently posed, pockets searched. How could this be happening to high-minded Corinne Mulvaney!) Michael's moody silences, his nocturnal prowling, drinking, compulsive smoking. His mysterious telephone calls. His short temper with his sons. (Never Marianne. He was stiffly smiling, cordial and distant with her.) And his new habit of secrecy, that alarmed her the most.

What was he planning?

After that terrify'ing night he'd rushed to the Lundts' house and was arrested, might have been charged with a.s.sault, fined or sent to prison-that episode so like a nightmare Corinne could barely force herself to recall it-she hadn't been able to shake off the convictiOn that something worse was to happen. She tried not to let her imagination run wild, didn't want to make herself ill with worry. (Of course, there were days when Corinne was ifi with worry. But she meant to keep going just the same.) Yet it was impossible, in weak moments, not to envision an alternate scenario: if Eddy Harris hadn't been at the Lundts' to stop Michael in his rampage, he might have done more than only crack Zachary Lundt's ribs and b.l.o.o.d.y his face against a wall. He might have done as much to Mort Lundt, too.