We Were the Mulvaneys (33 page)

He wondered what Marianne would make of such words. His sister who seemed never to judge others, nor even herself. How could you live that way? Was it a form of higher consciousness, in imitation of Jesus Christ, or was it a self-deluding, fatal weakness?
Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

No, Patrick thought. Not me.

Plastica moved on to the next set. An old favorite evidently, judging from the howls and foot-stomping of fans. Patrick gave up trying to decipher words, meaning. It was the throbbing beat that mattered. Pounding in his eyeballs, increasing his heart rate like a viral infection. Those mysterious microorganisms that, lacking the capacity to reproduce on their own, must insinuate themselves into the genes of the host-victim. Who could understand Nature? Covered in rivulets of sweat, shock-haired Traumeri and a fellow guitarist were thrusting their bony pelvises at each other in jackhammer motions that reminded Patrick of nothing so much as the headless body of the male praying mantis copulating the body of the female praying mantis after the female has decapitated the male. He shut his eyes. Saw himself safe in the lab, in his stained smock, bringing his good eye to the microscope, frowning. Yet the frantic Plastica beat had got into his blood. Idiotic
beat! beat! beat!
like a nursery tune thumped on a log. He shut his eyes tighter, and thought of Darwin; of evolutionary theory that was so beautiful in its simplicity, yet so perplexing.
All living things are connected by patterns of descent to all other living things.
But there was a realm of not-being, too. The not-living, never-realized species. Hypothetical creatures that might have evolved, given the odds of probability. Possibility. Horned birds, flying reptiles, feathered Homo sapiens? Homo sapiens with eyes set on either side of the head, so that each eye gives a different image, Homo sapiens with the wonderful “echolocation” powers of bats? Patrick smiled, stubborn Pinch, daring to argue with the young assistant professor from Harvard who was Dr. Herring's protégé: What if? Why not? Isn't there genetic possibility? Maybe it was a character flaw, but he couldn't help his curiosity. Since grade school. Not just curiosity, impetuosity. Arlette and some others in the department admired him. (They said.) Others did not. Couldn't seem to resist questioning his elders, squinting and frowning. Always, Patrick Mulvaney had a further query, a doubt. In high school Mr. Farolino would say smiling, “Yes, Patrick?” even before he'd raised his hand to make a query. But the other morning at the end of Dr. Herring's lecture Patrick had dared to inquire, “Isn't ‘existence' a needlessly reductive category, with ‘genetic possibility' so vast? Assuming evolution has no end, no limit? No goal?” And the renowned biologist stared at Patrick for several painful seconds, in silence.

Patrick had thought, panicked
For Christ's sake Pinch you've gone too far this time. You'll sabotage your own future.

Finally, Dr. Herring merely said, with a polite smile, “Your question is purely theoretical, Mr. Mulvaney, I assume.”

 

What was wrong?—Patrick opened his eyes, disoriented. Like waking from a crazed dream—the deafening rock music had ended. Intermission.

He could escape! He'd tried
normal
, and failed miserably.

So Patrick stood, dazed and lurching with others in his row out into the aisle. Many fans had smuggled beer into the hall and were what's called
wasted, zonked-out
. Patrick shouted at his companions, “I'm leaving!—g'night.” In the din, it wasn't clear if they heard. He was trying patiently and then not so patiently to clear a path for himself to a side exit when he saw in the crowd ahead a familiar, troubling face in profile—Zachary Lundt!

Was it possible? Here at Cornell?
Zachary Lundt?

A flame passed over Patrick's brain. The Plastica
beat beat beat
urged him forward. He hadn't seen his sister's rapist since the day of their graduation but he realized he'd been thinking of Zachary Lundt compulsively, even when his mind was rigidly fixed on other things.
Zachary Lundt. The rapist. Never made to pay.
He wondered what frenetic strung-out Traumeri would make of the situation, how would
he
react? Patrick had heard that Zachary had enrolled at the State University at Binghamton despite his mediocre grades and that he'd pledged a fraternity. Of course—just the type. Probably Zachary was visiting fraternity brothers at Cornell. A girlfriend at Cornell. He appeared to be in a noisy group of young people, several clearly drunk. Patrick elbowed his way in Zachary's direction ignoring the curses directed at him. The Plastica beat pulsed murderously in his head. What would he do to Zachary if he caught hold of him? The rapist! The son of a bitch! Hurting Marianne, ruining Marianne's life! Patrick gritted his teeth, must have looked ferocious since people who saw his face made an effort to avoid him. He was imagining his enemy's nose, which his father had allegedly broken, his enemy's eyes which could be pounded with Patrick's fists, blackened, injured. And his mouth, those smiling teeth—Patrick had an ecstatic vision of a jack-o'-lantern spitting blood.

At the exit, Patrick lunged forward shoving others aside to grab Zachary's arm—“Just a minute! Wait!” Then he saw, stunned, that this wasn't Zachary Lundt after all. He muttered, embarrassed, “Oh, sorry. I thought you were—somebody else.”

The young man was about Zachary's height, which was Patrick's height, and had Zachary's longish lank dark hair and narrow foxy face, but he was a stranger. He stared at Patrick, clearly frightened. Even at a Plastica concert, where violent throbbing uncensored emotions are celebrated, you aren't prepared to be accosted by a madman.

Patrick escaped. Running then across the darkened campus. His heart was
beat-beat-beating
. Afterward he would wonder why he wasn't ashamed of himself, why not stricken with remorse. But in fact he felt excited. Elated. That scared twenty-year-old hadn't been Zachary Lundt but that didn't mean Zachary Lundt wasn't somewhere else, this very night.

Patrick had come so close to—what, exactly?

P
ride goeth before a fall.
But it was not a matter of pride.

It was a matter of simple integrity. Dignity. You're a man fifty years old, a father of a daughter and sons, and an American—without dignity, you're nothing. And he'd been led to believe these men were his friends. He'd been led to believe they accepted him, Michael Mulvaney, as one of them. Invited him to be a member of the Mt. Ephraim Country Club. And he'd accepted, one of the happiest days of his life. He'd been inducted into the membership, paid his initiation fee and his dues faithfully, the first of September each year. Michael Mulvaney was one member they could rely upon, and they knew it. And he knew it. And he knew he wasn't mistaken about any of this, wasn't the kind of man to make mistakes in life, building a business out of virtually nothing, without being a shrewd judge of other men's characters. That was a fact.

So one day, one hour, he's had enough. Walking into the bar at the Mt. Ephraim Country Club, shortly after 6
P.M.
, a Friday. Yankee Doodle Tap Room: men only. Removing his dark glasses to adjust his eyes to the dimness. And glancing around to check out who's here, twelve, fifteen men approximately, at the bar and in the booths, all familiar faces, and there's Ben Breuer in one of the red-leather booths, and Charley MacIntyre, the two exchanging a quick startled glance—a look of
warning
,
caution
passing between them—and there's a third man, his back to Michael, Michael doesn't recognize at first then sees it's Gerry Kirkland, the district court judge. Kirkland is about sixty, solidly built, with a square-ruddy face creased from a career of hard smiling. His hair, the color of pewter, is thinning patchily at the crown exactly like Michael Mulvaney's. Michael knows Kirkland from the Club mainly, just well enough to shake the man's hand, exchange friendly greetings and inquiries after their respective families. Michael always asks after Jeannette Kirkland and in turn Kirkland asks after—is it Carol? Coralee?—never can quite remember Corinne Mulvaney's name, and why is that?
Fucker.

That
warning
,
caution
glance swift as a firefly's spark passing between Ben Breuer and Charley MacIntyre. And one of them has murmured to Kirkland, warning him, too. So he doesn't turn to glance over his shoulder, to see who's just come in.

Michael ignores them and goes to the bar, hoists himself up on a stool. Empty stools on either side. Conversations, laughter. Television above the bar. A roaring in Michael's ears but he hasn't had a drink for hours. The bartender is saying, “Hello, Mr. Mulvaney! The usual?” Michael stares at the man, saying, “What do you mean ‘usual'? I'll have—” naming a brand of beer he rarely drinks. Embarrassed, the bartender murmurs, “Sorry, Mr. Mulvaney,” and ducks away. Michael is sitting alone at the bar squinting up at the television screen without seeming to see it. Tapping his fingers, thick dirt-edged nails on the bar. Edgy, impatient. Feels himself being scrutinized, yet knows if he turns they'll look immediately away. When he'd come in, a few men nodded toward him, smiled vaguely
but not one said hello, not one smiled and called out my name, invited me to sit down
. A glass of foaming beer is brought and Michael lifts it slowly to his mouth. Like a man lost in contemplation of a profound, elusive truth. Not a man whose hand is trembling, who's breaking out in prickly sweat inside his clothes. He turns, can't resist turning. Breuer, MacIntyre, Kirkland.
Think I don't see you? hear you? Fuckers.

The glass in his hand is drained, empty. Beer so bland he hasn't tasted it at all. But signals to the bartender for another. An anxious heat inside his clothes, flushing up into his face. He hadn't had time to shower that morning, wanting to get out of the house before Corinne came downstairs in search of him. Where he'd spent much of the night, in Mike Jr.'s old room, with Troy. Hair stiff as quills, and he hasn't shaved in two days. Whiskers growing in the color of tin filings, old-man's beard. The second foaming beer is brought to him and he sips at it gratefully then abruptly eases his weight from the stool and approaches the three men in the booth so resolutely
not looking
in Michael Mulvaney's direction. Michael Mulvaney in a rumpled camel's-hair coat, Michael Mulvaney swaying on his feet. Face furious, darkened with blood. Tauntingly he says, “H'lo, Ben—how's it going?” and Ben Breuer glances up guiltily, as if he's just now seen Michael. And Michael says, grinning, “Charley?—great to see
you
.” And Charley MacIntyre, startled, smiles weakly at Michael, almost fearfully. “And, Gerry—” Michael lets his hand fall on the judge's right shoulder, a friendly-seeming gesture, but hard, heavy. And Kirkland eases away saying, “Excuse me—!” And Michael stares down at him seeing the undisguised alarm, disapproval, dislike in Kirkland's face, for here's an elder of the Mt. Ephraim Country Club and a prominent citizen of the community in no mood to humor Michael Mulvaney, or any other drunk. And Michael says, “Fucking S.O.B.,
you
—!”

And empties his glass of beer in Judge Gerald Kirkland's face.

I
need your help, Judd.

Or possibly he said
I need help, Judd
.

The words ran through me like an electric current! No one had ever uttered such words to me in earnest. Until you have heard such uttered to you by someone you love, and are bound to by ties of blood and memory, you can't know how powerful, how thrilling they are.

Help I need help. Your help, Judd.

 

Always when Patrick called home it was to tell us, inform us, of nothing. His life in Ithaca was private, and we weren't to inquire. Almost shyly Mom would ask if Patrick might be coming home to visit sometime soon? or when? and Dad had learned to be as polite and impersonal to Patrick as Patrick was to him. If there was something Patrick wanted us to know, he might mention it just before hanging up, as an afterthought: he'd been awarded a summer research grant, he'd made another 4.0 grade average, he was just recovering from an attack of winter flu. If you asked Patrick a direct question, he'd nimbly sidestep; murmur something you couldn't quite hear, maybe yes, maybe no, maybe undecided.

I'd about reconciled myself: no brothers.

Where once I'd had two big brothers, now none.

Thinking
I don't particularly like Pinch, anyway. The hell with Pinch.

Where Mom used to proudly tack up newspaper clippings of good-looking “Mule” Mulvaney the star fullback and his Mt. Ephraim Rams teammates, and, for a while, so long ago it seemed like another lifetime now, where the obituary of Private First Class Dwight David Duncan
killed in action, in the service of his country
had been prominent, on the cork bulletin board in the kitchen, now she tacked up newspaper clippings of Patrick. Mom was a friend of “Tweet” Philco, a Mt. Ephraim woman who composed the regional news section of the
Mt. Ephraim Patriot-Ledger
, the part of the paper given over to items about local engagements and marriages and births and deaths, retirements, anniversary celebrations and reunions, students' activities and honors, athletes' victories, scholarships, prizes, visits abroad—any news however trivial or ephemeral that was suitable for these much-scrutinized pages which, like such pages in all small-town newspapers, constitute a sort of community family album. Naturally, Mom passed on to “Tweet” every particle of good news pertaining to her son Patrick who'd gone to Cornell and was so clearly excelling in his difficult and ambitious field of study. You'd have thought, seeing Mom's bulletin board, that Patrick was her favorite child—maybe her only child. The photo of Patrick that was used repeatedly in the
Patriot-Ledger
was from his high school yearbook, and this—a stiffly posed, faintly smiling Patrick, hair unnaturally combed back from his forehead—glowered over that corner of the bulletin board.

It wasn't often that Patrick spoke with me on the phone but when he did he'd usually talk in a light, bantering, slightly distracted way, calling me Ranger or kid, but as if his mind was on something else. Maybe I'd call him P.J. It wasn't up to me to break through to anything deeper. If I wanted to ask about Marianne, had he spoken with her recently, had he seen her, I'd feel shy about bringing up the subject. I'd have to wait for the right moment and maybe the moment wouldn't come.

This time, though, when Patrick called, and it was late, after 11
P.M.
of a weekday, I picked up the phone on the first ring (just happened to be downstairs, in the family room switching through TV channels, volume low so Mom upstairs in bed wouldn't hear) and right away he was serious, none of the Pinch-crap. First thing he asked was, ‘D'you think anyone else is on the line?” and I'm surprised as hell, I say, “What?
Who?
”—because it could only be Mom or Dad, as far as Patrick would know. (He couldn't have known that Dad was in Marsena on business, staying the night.) So right away Patrick backs off a little, saying he just wanted to be sure. And there's this beat or two, just silence; I'm holding the receiver to my ear not hearing a thing. I wonder if he's hung up. “Patrick? Is something wrong?”

His voice comes low and mean, like he's angry with me. “There's lots of things wrong.”

“You mean—about Dad?”

This is a week after Dad tossed his beer into the judge's face. In front of twelve witnesses in the Yankee Doodle Tap Room of the Mt. Ephraim Country Club. And he'd been arrested, and taken to Mt. Ephraim police headquarters, and booked for assault and disorderly conduct and resisting arrest (there'd been quite a struggle when police officers came to pick him up). And District Judge Gerald Kirkland isn't going to drop the charges because he's angry as hell at my father and we don't know if Dad will be going to jail (he could be put away as long as two years); or if he'll get a suspended sentence and a fine; and if it's a fine, how much. The Monday morning after the arrest there was delivered to Michael Mulvaney Sr. at High Point Farm a certified letter containing a formal notification from the Mt. Ephraim Country Club, signed by each of the Club's twenty trustees, revoking his membership and by extension “all rights and privileges” of said membership as had been enjoyed by the family of Michael Mulvaney Sr.

The expelled member's annual dues of six hundred dollars, paid in full for 1978–79, were returned to him in full, in the same envelope.

As Mom said bitterly, not once but many times
What the hell do we care!

Now Patrick says these words that shake me up: “I need your help, Judd.”

It isn't just the word
help
that's such a surprise, coming from my brother. It's my name
Judd
, my real name and not
Ranger
, or
kid
; as if, serious for once, he's had to break the family code. As if, in this instant, we're equals.

I'm cautious, I wonder if I've heard right. “What kind of help, Patrick?”

He sounds angry, as if I should know. “Executing justice! Taking care of—you know: Lundt. Zachary Lundt. I mean—I'll do it.” Patrick speaks carefully but his words seem disconnected, as if he's been drinking. It's the way Dad talks when he's been drinking if he talks to us at all. “I'll be the one. But I need your help. Judd?”

“Y-Yes?”

“Dad's still got his guns?”

“His
guns
?”

“Or Mike? That .22 of Mike's? Locked in the cabinet—you know?”

I'm holding the phone receiver and I'm starting to sweat. Sick with fear and excitement.

Patrick's saying, “The .22? Could you get it?”

“Get it—?”

“For Christ's sake, Judd, you sound like a parrot.” Patrick laughs. It's obvious now, and this scares me as much as what he's been saying, that he has been drinking. “Oh, shit. Never mind.”

“Patrick, wait—”

“Forget I called! It's the wrong goddamn time. It's—” There's a sound like he's dropped the phone receiver, he's scrambling to pick it up again. “—not the right time, yet. Fuck it.”

Next I know he's hung up. And I'm sitting there on the sofa staring at a corner of the ceiling. My brain numb and empty of all thought as if I've been hit over the head with a sledgehammer.

 

Three days later, Patrick calls again.

Around suppertime, anyway what used to be suppertime at High Point Farm. But now if it's just Mom and me not knowing for sure when Dad might show up we don't exactly sit down at the table as in the old days because Mom says it makes us nervous, as Mom says it's just as easy to eat standing up or somewhere not the kitchen at all. This is about 6:30
P.M.
and the phone rings and Mom answers quick and worried as she does when Dad's out but—it's Patrick!—and I hear her talking with him—talking
and laughing
—for ten, fifteen minutes! Trying not to eavesdrop, hanging around the kitchen with the dogs and cats nudging their heads against my legs and it's amazing to me how Mom and Patrick seem to be talking, Mom so relaxed telling Patrick about her latest plans for “expanding” High Point Antiques so that she can bring in serious income, now that Dad is negotiating to sell his property in Mt. Ephraim and “relocate” the business in Marsena and of course they'd be selling the farm—“relocating”—maybe Patrick had heard of the Marsena Antique & Flea Market at the fairgrounds there, every weekend in good weather? one of the oldest and largest markets in the Valley? antique dealers and well-to-do customers come from as far away as Rochester, Port Oriskany, Buffalo? And—

I can't believe I'm hearing Mom utter such words
selling the farm
in a rapid stream of words as if they were of no more significance than the other words and all words sheerly air, gesture. As if
selling the farm
is but the crude expediency for the acquisition of a leased booth at the Marsena Antique & Flea Market. As if
selling the farm
is already past tense, a kind of history not to be questioned.

When Dad was arrested, booked and arraigned, the
Patriot-Ledger
published a picture of him above the headline
HIGH POINT FARM RESIDENT ARRESTED FOR
“
0ASSAULT
”1
AT COUNTRY CLUB
. The article did not appear in the regional news section of the paper but prominently on the front page. Dad's photo was from the paper's file, I guess, showing him in suit and tie at some awards ceremony, the Chamber of Commerce or the Tuscarora Club, maybe ten years ago. He looked good, he looked handsome and happy though not smiling broadly, the camera's flash caught in his eyes in that weird way like light reflecting in an animal's eyes in the dark. This, Mom didn't clip and tack up on the bulletin board.

I'd sent a copy to Patrick, at Cornell. Figuring he'd like to know.

So there's Mom chattering about her plans. I'd run away to hide in one of the barns except Mom darts after me, grabs my shirt collar like a mom on TV. Her face is flushed, eyes bright as neon. “Oh, Ranger! Say hello to P.J.!”

And Patrick says to me, sort of quick and breezy, “So how's it going, kid?” and I shrug as if he can see me, I'm blinking tears out of my eyes I feel so rotten, “O.K., I guess,” and Patrick says, “It's really bad there? like Mom says? they're going to sell the farm? you think so?” and I mumble something maybe yes, maybe no, and Patrick says, “The other night, Judd, what I said—” and there's a pause and I'm waiting for him to say
forget it please, that was crazy talk
but instead I hear him saying, “—I meant it, I'm going to do it, execute justice. I don't know when but—sometime. And I need you, O.K.?” and I'm trying to get my breath, trying to smile, act normal, since Mom's close by at the sink whistling under her breath, “Sure, Patrick. Any time.” And Patrick says in his low anxious voice, “Judd, you're the only person I can trust in the world.” And I'm saying, stammering, “Well—that's good.” And Patrick says, “I just need to get in focus about it. I'm not ready right now. My mind is—not ready, right now.” And I say, that sick feeling in my gut, scared but excited, trembling, “O.K., Patrick. I'm your man.”

After we hang up Mom says, wiping at her eyes, “Wasn't that nice of your brother to call, Judd! So sweet, and thoughtful. He doesn't know I've been willing him to call all week, in my thoughts—sending him little messages sort of daring him
not
to call. Have you ever tried that, Judd? It's like prayer in reverse. And it works.”