We Were the Mulvaneys (24 page)

It was then, waking Corinne from sleep, the telephone rang close beside the bed.

But she hadn't been asleep—had she?

Fumbling to lift the receiver, the palm of her hand already damp with panicky sweat, she knew, just knew it must be bad news.

 

“Corinne? Hey sorry—did I wake you? It's—”

The voice was familiar, gratingly—Corinne recognized it even as she struggled to comprehend what she was being told.

Haw Hawley. At Wolf's Head Lake. Calling to say that Michael had had an “accident”—“Nothing too serious, but he shouldn't be driving tonight. We thought we'd better let you know, so you wouldn't worry.”

Corinne was already out of bed. “Is he hurt?”

“Hurt?”
—as if the idea hadn't occurred to Haw. “Well—not really. I mean, he's mainly sleeping. We put him in one of the rooms, in bed.”

“I'll come get him,” Corinne said.

“Now? So late?”

“I said, Haw, I'll come get him.”

 

So Corinne drove to Wolf's Head Lake, arrived at 1:25
A.M.
in hastily thrown-on jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers without socks. She had not so much as glanced at herself in a mirror, hadn't had time to splash water onto her face or drag a comb through her hair, rushing off, calling to the children (of course, they'd been awakened—or had they been asleep, at all, waiting too for the telephone to ring?) that things were all right, their dad was all right, at Wolf's Head Lake and she was going to get him.

How strange to be driving alone at night, arriving alone at the darkened lakeside. Buildings made unfamiliar by night, their lights extinguished. The faded red neon
WOLF'S HEAD INN
extinguished. There were only two vehicles in the tavern parking lot, one of them Michael's pickup. Haw was waiting for Corinne on the Inn veranda, beneath a bug-swirling light, a tall, burly, apologetic man who made no effort to shake Corinne's hand, or touch her to comfort her—that wasn't his way. “Michael got in a, kind of a disagreement with a local guy,” Haw said, “—they'd both been drinking and they shoved each other around. But nothing serious.” Corinne entered the near-darkened tavern, diminished and melancholy it seemed without patrons, even the jukebox turned off, but, oh!—that smell. She would know it anywhere. “How badly drunk is he?” Corinne asked. “Sick-drunk? Passed-out drunk?” She was trying to be matter-of-fact. She was trying not to sound furious and reproachful, a raging wife. Wasn't she a farm woman, after all—she'd had plenty of experience with emergencies. Telling herself,
As long as he's alive. He's alive.

A light was burning at the rear of the tavern, beyond the bar and the shabby old-fashioned kitchen, beyond the stinking alcove, and Corinne hurried in that direction, not waiting for Haw, who was short of breath, to lead her. He lumbered close behind her, squinting at her through smudged glasses, smelling of beer himself, male-sweat and beer. Saying, “Michael looks worse than he is. Don't be upset.” But when Corinne saw her husband sprawled atop a bed, his face swollen, his upper lip swollen and bloody, shirt stained and eyes shut, snoring, she began to cry. It took some time to wake him and when she finally did, crouched beside the bed in a posture of abnegation and appeal, stroking his heated face, she had a sense of going in and out of focus in his eyes, a hapless female figure in a cartoon.

The room was minimally, shabbily furnished and smelled of insecticide and stale tobacco smoke. It had an adjoining cubbyhole of a bathroom, however, and Haw was kind enough to provide a rudimentary first-aid kit, so Corinne could tend to Michael—washing his face, putting iodine and Band-Aids on his cuts. He groaned, cursed, thrashed about; he was deeply ashamed, disgusted with himself. Saying, “I don't know what the hell happened, honey. One minute I was O.K. and the next—” His arm lifted, only to fall back limp onto the bed.

Haw said, “You're both welcome to stay the night—of course. Drive back home tomorrow. That way, you won't have to both come again, to get Michael's pickup.” He was hanging about in the hallway, awkward, apologetic, yet trying for an amiable tone.
Old-friends-who've-been-through-worse-than-this-together
tone. Corinne remembered their encounter in the Kmart and felt a physical, visceral dislike of the man.

Stiffly she said, “Thank you, but I want to take Michael home tonight.”

“But—”

“No! Tonight.”

She was close to clamping her hands over her ears, like one of her children.

“Corinne, come on,” Haw said, scratching at his beard, “—d'you hate it here that much? Hate
me
?”

Corinne stared at Haw, wiping her eyes. A wave of shame came over her: how could she, Corinne Mulvaney, whose sense of herself as one privileged by God had defined her entire adulthood, acknowledge hating any living person, let alone this sad, hopeful, raddle-faced and lonely old friend? One of the few men of Corinne's life who had desired her, as a woman? “Well, all right,” she said, relenting. “You're right, I suppose. But we'll pay you for the room.”

“Corinne, what the hell—”

“I said
we'll pay you.
”

Surprising, how tough she could be, even in her nerved-up exhausted state. She'd almost forgotten how good it felt.

 

Brisk, capable, fueled with purpose as a mom should be, Corinne telephoned home to assure the children that everything was under control. Patrick answered the phone on the first ring. He asked how was Dad and Corinne said Dad was fine and Patrick persisted, what had happened?—and Corinne said that nothing had
happened
. “It's just Dad isn't up to driving right now. But he'll be fine by morning. We'll both be home by midmorning.” Still Patrick asked, reproachfully, “What's
wrong
with Dad? I've got a right to know.” Corinne said sharply, “We'll talk about it tomorrow, Patrick. Good night!”

 

As long as he's alive. Alive.

I give us both over to You, God. Protect us!

They lay together exhausted. Only partly undressed, their shoes off. Not in, but on top of, the dank-smelling bed that was hardly more than a cot, pushed into the corner of the cramped little room. Michael's left eye had swollen almost shut and promised to be luridly blackened. There were cuts in his eyebrows, his upper lip was swollen, the color of an overripe plum. His knuckles, too, were skinned and swollen. A jittery sobriety had overtaken him by 3
A.M.
just as Corinne sank toward sleep. “Jesus, honey, I'm sorry!” Michael murmured. Corinne murmured, “Well.” She was holding him in a way she'd held him frequently, after lovemaking, in the early years of their marriage: her arm slipped beneath his heavy shoulders, his head on her shoulder, his arm slung across her. Seen from above, they would appear to be huddling together like dazed and desperate children. With an air of dogged incredulity that seemed genuine Michael was saying, “—just don't know what happened.” Corinne said, taking the tone she'd taken with Patrick, “It isn't what
happened
, Michael, it's what you've
done
.” The schoolmarmish edge was a way of keeping herself from more tears, or worse than tears. Adrenaline had pumped through her veins for a long time and was beginning now to wane and Corinne knew that, when it did, if she wasn't safely unconscious, she would be washed out, despairing.

God protect us!—we're your children, too.

She wished Michael, willed him, to sleep. To relinquish shame. The tattered remnant of his pride. A man's pride, carried like a burden on his back. But vaguely, wonderingly he continued to speak. Corinne had not inquired what the quarrel with the stranger had been. Haw claimed not to know and Corinne did not think it had had anything to do with
it
—Wolf's Head Lake was a considerable distance from Mt. Ephraim. But she preferred not to know, would never ask. There was the relief of her husband's
living self
. When the telephone had rung waking her from her stuporous sleep she had had the instantaneous terrified conviction that Michael had been killed, or had killed; that he had transgressed beyond his capacity to return. But that was not so. With God's love, it would not be so. She could save him, would save if only God showed the way.

Now, the comfort of his warm, perspiring body heavy against hers. Her arm growing numb from his weight. His damp hair, the hard intransigent bone of his skull. A smell of his body and breath—beer, whiskey, sweat. It was a smell she savored as, a farmer's daughter, she'd learned to savor, young, the smells of the barnyard, the smells that meant home. Well, yes—they were
stinks
, sometimes. Exacerbated by rain and humidity. Yet, still, they were familiar, they meant home. They meant
what is known. What is given to us, to know.

The light in the room was extinguished. There was a window beside the bed, no blind to draw so Corinne was aware of the starlit sky above Wolf's Head Lake; a faint-luminous pearly moon that seemed to be pulsing. Unless it was an artery in her brain that was pulsing. Confused, she mistook it for—what? A streetlamp. Somehow, that was logical. There were lights on poles in Haw Hawley's parking lot turned off for the night and somehow this was one of them except floating. And there was a streetlamp in a famous painting of a jungle, a dream-jungle, a French painting of the previous century Corinne had seen years ago but could not now identify, yet recalling the jungle flat as wallpaper and clearly a dream and the artist had inserted a streetlamp in it because
that is the nature of dreams.

She'd believed that this heavy perspiring man huddled against her was asleep but suddenly he began to speak. A low, aggrieved, jarring voice she could not escape. “—This thing that I did I didn't tell you, nor the lawyer either, fuck him, fuck them all, think I don't know how they talk about me behind my back? take my money and ridicule me?—so I acted on my own, yesterday morning I went to the Chautauqua County district attorney and demanded the S.O.B. talk to me in person, Birch himself, big-deal Democrat,
I
voted for him for Christ's sake, so I demanded he bring criminal charges against the kid who'd assaulted my daughter, she could not testify herself so we would have to bring charges on the strength of her doctor's records, Dr. Oakley's records could be subpoenaed and he could be made to testify—couldn't he? Isn't that the law? Where a felony has been committed against a minor? A medical man, a man who knows exactly what happened to my daughter! He could be made to testify, he would have to tell the truth. And Birch listens, or pretends to listen. Saying then it did not seem to him a ‘winnable' case. Just to take it to a grand jury—not a ‘winnable' case. If the victim refuses to testify. And I say but what if the victim had been
killed
? You would charge the murderer wouldn't you? What kind of criminal justice system is this for Christ's sake? And Birch asks why won't my daughter testify, has she made a statement to the police?—and so on. Questions like that. Fucking lawyer questions! Pretending he's sympathetic. Saying, ‘In such cases the defense will argue “mutual consent.” All but impossible to convince a jury where it's a female's word against a male because the jury must deliberate evidence and can convict only beyond a reasonable doubt. Unless the young woman has been seriously injured and can't testify, and her injuries documented, and maybe a semen swab matched with the young man. It would be a rare case, possibly if the victim was retarded, where she refused to testify or was ruled incapable, and a grand jury would indict. Not “winnable,” Mr. Mulvaney. You'd only be opening your daughter and your family to public humiliation. If the defendant didn't cave in and there's no reason he would in such circumstances, in fact his lawyer would move to dismiss and a judge would probably concur. This is Chautauqua County,' Birch says, ‘we had a hell of a time getting an indictment against a man in Milford—you read about it, maybe—who beat and kicked his pregnant wife a while back—juries don't like to “interfere” in domestic cases. In male-female cases. If sex is involved, especially. Remember that trucker who shot his wife and her boyfriend with a shotgun?—the grand jury did indict, but on second-degree manslaughter—the jury acquitted him—“not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.” Probably you wouldn't know, Mr. Mulvaney, “sexual misdemeanor” and assault and rape cases are reported all the time, including pretty brutal rapes, but these cases rarely get to trial. Even if a grand jury indicted which I don't believe they would it would be impossible to conduct a trial without your daughter and if she did testify it would destroy her'—and I'm listening to this bullshit and can't hold back any longer saying ‘I want the fucker punished! I want justice! I see this kid around town, my daughter has to see him in school, and my son—
he's getting away with it, with the hurt he inflicted on us.
' I was getting excited, I guess. I was yelling at Birch saying ‘We deserve better in this town, my family and me!' And these deputies came in, guards—”