We Were the Mulvaneys (51 page)

Every time I overheard Mom say this to whomever, a weird grin would crack over my face.
Back on its feet.
Like a drunk or a stroke victim who'd just crumpled.

On the phone with me, Marianne was cheerful, sunny-sounding. Questions about my new school, new friends I'd made, how did I like Marsena I managed to answer in the same tone, saying what sounded plausible. There was in the background beyond Marianne's voice a muted clatter like dishes being washed, cutlery—I had a quick flash of my twenty-one-year-old sister holding the phone receiver awkwardly between her shoulder and one ear as she stooped over a sink in someone's kitchen. Would she be wearing rubber gloves? Was her hair still so short, shorter than mine? I could see a gloomy high-ceilinged kitchen with glass-knob cupboards neatly lined with oilcloth, I could see a large chipped old gas stove, one of those old-fashioned refrigerators on legs, whirring motor on top like a pillbox hat. Elsewhere, in another part of the house, a chisel-faced gray-haired woman sat in a wheelchair, blanket tucked in tight over her knees, waiting for Marianne to
please hurry, to push her out into the garden before it gets too chill
. The walled garden was soft-rotted old brick, crumbling masonry. Wild ragged English ivy nibbled by aphids. Leggy black-spotted rosebushes. Was that scrawny speckled-white cat picking his way through the lichen, all backbone and tail, Muffin? Was Muffin still living? I was afraid to ask.

In a lowered voice, hurried as if she was running out of time, or in fact someone was calling her, Marianne said, “Muffin's in great shape, Judd. I forgot to tell Mom, so will you? Muffin says hello and he misses you all.”

“Well—hello to Muffin, too. We miss him, too.”

“He loves it here. It's so much more peaceful than the Co-op.”

“It sounds sort of—busy.”

“Have you heard from Patrick?”

“Oh, Patrick—he's in Denver studying geology, or—no, he's in Fargo, North Dakota working in a children's hospital—”

“Is he all right? Is he happy?”

“He sounds very happy. Not like Pinch at all.”

“Can you give him my number? Next time he calls?”

“Do we have your number?”

There was a muffled sound in the background as of creaking, rolling. A door with hinges needing to be oiled—unless it was a voice. “Oh, dear—I guess I have to hang up now, Judd. Love you! Miss you!”

“Marianne, wait—”

“Love to Daddy, too—but don't tell him if he won't want to hear, please? Bye!”

And in an instant it all vanished—dishes being washed in a sink, humming-vibrating refrigerator, Miss Penelope Hagström in her wheelchair, Muffin picking his way through a stranger's walled garden, my sister Marianne with her head at a sharp angle holding a telephone receiver against her shoulder. Not even a dial tone, just a dead line.

 

Naturally Mom didn't tell Dad that Marianne had called, and I surely didn't. Nor did Mom say much about Marianne to me, even to fret aloud about why Marianne wasn't going to college, preparing for a career. Maybe she worried I might take up the conversation again in Dad's hearing. And Dad was in such a mood these days, swinging between lethargy and mania, it was hardly the right time to speak to him of Marianne.

But a few days after Marianne's call, there Mom was with a book she'd driven seventy miles to a Yewville bookstore to buy—
The Selected Poems of Penelope Hagström
. The publisher was a “real” New York publisher and the poems, Mom said, were difficult to understand but very good, she thought. In fact, profound.

“Oh, I'm so proud of Marianne,” Mom said excitedly. “I'm thinking of calling some old friends, in Mt. Ephraim. Finally my daughter has been recognized by someone of
quality
.”

 

Next night was the “incident” between Dad and me.

In fact just for the record, I guess I feel guilty about this, there'd been plenty of “incidents” for a long time I'd tolerated in silence. I mean months, years of my father ordering me around, half the time in a sarcastic voice, as he'd never ordered Mike or Patrick. I felt that hurt as keenly as the hurt of being treated by my father like a dog. Well, worse—Dad had a soft spot for poor almost-blind Foxy. He'd never have been sarcastic to Foxy!

This was the night of June 11, a damp windy nothing-day, by coincidence exactly a month before my eighteenth birthday, when Mom's rattletrap old station wagon finally broke down and died. She'd been doing errands in Marsena and the motor just gave out, lucky for Mom practically in the front yard of Jimmy Ray Pluckett and his wife Nanci—“The Reverend
and
the Reverend of the New Church of Christ the Healer of Marsena, New York” (the Plucketts were both ordained ministers and had a dual appointment)—and even before the Buick's motor ceased sputtering, Jimmy Ray had trotted out to offer assistance. He was a tall rangy freckle-spotted man of any age between thirty and fifty, in khaki shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt. Not only did Jimmy Ray call a tow truck for Mom immediately, but when the mechanic told Mom the bad news that the motor was “beyond repair,” Jimmy Ray and Nanci drove Mom out to the house, five miles away; and Nanci, a short plumpish woman with vivid eyes, offered to drive Mom wherever she needed to go next day, and the day after next—saying, with a child's frankness, that Mom looked like she'd about come to the end of her tether.

“And I know what a ‘tether' is, around the neck,” Nanci Pluckett said, stroking her neck reflectively, “—I have to confess, I been married before.
Not
to a Christian man.”

To the Plucketts' embarrassment, Mom burst into tears. She wasn't used to being treated so
considerately
, she said, in a long while.

Then clamping her hand over her mouth, blinking appalled at her newfound friends. “Oh, my goodness, what did I say? I don't mean that at all. That's the most ridiculous
self-pity
.”

The Plucketts gave Mom their joint card—identifying them as “The Reverend
and
the Reverend”—and told her to call them, any time. And to drop by the New Church of Christ the Healer which was just up the road from where her station wagon had died.

Dad missed supper that evening, didn't call to explain why, arrived home around 10
P.M.
sullen and heavy-footed and in no mood for surprises. He'd seen, of course, that the Buick was missing from the driveway and naturally he wasn't happy about it. I heard him and Mom discussing the problem, calmly enough at first and then with more urgency as Dad's voice rose in volume with a beat like chopping wood.
Don't listen. Stay out of it. He can't seriously blame her—can he?
I was in “my” room at a back corner of the house, a room approximately the size of the old claw-footed bathtub we'd had at the farm, and I'd pushed my windows up as far as they could go so the exterior night seemed to be
in
. I was sprawled on my bed listening to a radio turned low and leafing through some paperbacks I'd brought home—“borrowed”—from the Miracle Mart where I worked four afternoons a week—a handbook
Backpacking in the Mountains: A Personal Odyssey
, a “pictorial biography” of John F. Kennedy,
Lovejoy's College Guide
. That was the way I read most things—three or four at once. Even Patrick's science magazines and books I'd appropriated, I was too restless and my mind too scattered to focus on just one. Even
The Selected Poems of Penelope Hagström
I'd looked into and agreed with Mom they were hard to understand but impressive and who knows?—maybe even profound.

After a while I couldn't pretend not to be hearing. My drunk bully-Dad cursing my Mom because
he's
a loser,
he's
a failure and a bankrupt and all the world's waiting to know.

So I run out there so scared I'm shaking and it's just then that Dad must've pushed or punched Mom, there's her cry of pain, “Oh!—Michael—” and she's scrambling to escape, out the side door beneath the carport and Dad is grabbing at her, ripping a sleeve of her shirt, tugging at her hair—“God damn you
listen
to me, just for once
you listen to me
!” but Mom gets away, and Dad's right behind her, and huddled beneath the breakfast nook Foxy and Little Boots are barking in terror, I'm running into the kitchen and outside where my parents are struggling together, panting, Mom crying, I'm pulling at Dad's arm, you don't touch a man like Michael Mulvaney but I'm pulling at his fatty-muscled arm, “Don't hurt Mom! You're drunk! Leave her alone!” and Dad bares his teeth at me, a vein standing out on his forehead, a red-flushed sweaty face like a mask, one of those Polynesian devil-masks I'd seen in a book, and with one arm as if he's slinging a box of shingles onto a truck he swings me around, slams me against the side of the house, as Mom begs, “No. No. No.
No.
Michael,
no
.” There's a roaring in my ears but I'm flailing out at Dad—striking with my fists that haven't the force to counter the force coming at me—the sheer weight of my father, two hundred pounds so compact, bull-necked—I'm as tall as Dad now but fifty pounds lighter and he's practically laughing at me, contemptuous, loathing—“Who do you think you are! You punk! You're nothing! You and your brothers! Letting your father down! Insulting your father! Every one of you—ungrateful bastards!” His hard fist on the side of my head, my head's ringing, suddenly I'm sliding down the wall of the house, sitting on the cold cement floor of the carport, amazed touching my face that's slippery with blood. And Mom is bending over me, crying, “Oh Judd, oh honey, are you hurt?” and Dad backs off, disgusted, “You make me sick, both of you. Y'hear? You make me sick. Get a man in a trap, rat in a trap, his head in a vise, tangled in fucking barbed wire—”

His voice trails off muttering. He doesn't touch Mom again, luckily because I can't stop him if he does. He might kick, kick, kick me and I don't have strength enough even to crawl away. Instead he fumbles for his car keys in his pants pocket, drops them, gropes for them on the cement with a grunted obscenity, throws himself into the Lincoln and backs out skidding and seesawing to the highway with the twin manic German shepherds next door barking furiously in his wake and behind Mom and me in the kitchen our dogs are whimpering, that doggy-plaintive-helpless terror you know will smell exactly like dog pee when you get close enough.

F
ollowing that night, I moved out. I would live by myself in Marsena, I said. Yes I'd take Little Boots with me, I'd care for him in his old age. Yes I was strong enough, I could do it.

Never again under the same roof with Michael Mulvaney Sr. In fact it seemed to me that Michael Mulvaney Sr. had died, and another man had taken his place, not even resembling him that much, and maybe that's a good thing.

I had my job at Miracle Mart, and later on I'd get a better-paying job at the Milk Jug, and still later (though I could not have guessed such good luck, beforehand) a part-time job with the
Marsena Weekly Packet
whose editor was a brother of the English teacher at the high school I came to be friends with, my senior year—actual writing, reporting, my byline
Judd Mulvaney
there in print, and even being paid for it.

Beyond that, I'd graduate with honors from Marsena High School and go away to college, and be gone.

On my own
at the age of not-even-eighteen.

Mom cried, cried. It wasn't as easy parting the way I'm making it sound. Because nothing between human beings isn't uncomplicated and there's no way to speak of human beings without simplifying and misrepresenting them. Mom cried but she helped me pack my things. Begged me to kneel with her and pray together to ask of God whether this was the right thing and quietly I said no.

“We're past prayer,” I said. “We passed prayer a long time ago.”

I thought she would protest but instead she sat heavily on the edge of the bed, and tried to smile at me. In a hoarse voice she said, “Yes, maybe it's better. Until he's himself again. You know one day he'll be himself again, you know that don't you?”

I stared at the toes of my sneakers. What did I know?—I was an arrogant scared kid.

“Your father loves you, honey. He loves you all, you know that don't you?”

“I don't know what I know.”

They say the youngest kid of a family doesn't remember himself very clearly because he has learned to rely on the memories of others, who are older and thus possess authority. Where his memory conflicts with theirs, it's discarded as of little worth. What he believes to be his memory is more accurately described as a rag-bin of others' memories, their overlapping testimonies of things that happened before he was born, mixed in with things that happened after his birth, including him. So it wasn't a smart-ass remark,
I don't know what I know
. It was just the truth.

“It's just that he loses control sometimes. As soon as he gets the business established again, and gets back to work, you know how he loves to work, he'll be fine. The drinking is only temporary—it's like medicine for him, like he has a terrible headache and needs to anesthetize himself, you can sympathize with that, Judd, can't you? We might be the same way in his place. He's a good, decent man who only wants to provide for his family. He's told me how sorry he is, and he'd tell you except—well, you know how he is, how men are. He loves you no matter what he says or does, you know that don't you? He's been under so much pressure it's like his head, his skull, is being squeezed. Once, a long time ago, I read a story about an Italian worker who has a terrible, tragic accident on a construction site, a load of wet concrete overturns on him—‘Christ in Concrete' was the title, I think—oh, I never forgot that story!—it was so real, so terrifying how the poor man was trapped—in hardening concrete that squeezed him to death, broke his bones and his skull and there was nothing anyone could do—” Mom spoke more and more rapidly, more breathlessly until I wanted to take hold of her hands and quiet her.

Thinking
Christ is anybody and nobody
.

Thinking
Love wears out, maybe
.
Maybe that's a good thing.

I guess I started crying, too. But I wasn't going to change my mind.

I made Mom promise she'd call me, or come to where I was staying next time Dad got drunk or crazy, or if he threatened her. Don't wait for him to hit you, I said. She promised she would do this. She believed there would not be a next time because he'd been so sorry when he came back, and so scared of what he'd done, but yes she promised. And finally I did kneel with Mom, one last time, and we prayed together each of us in silence in the cramped little room at the rear of the “split-level ranch” on Post Road which was our last shared home even if it was never a home. Both Foxy and Little Boots crowded eagerly against us, nudged their damp anxious noses against us begging
Us, too! Us, too! Don't forget us, too!

 

But Mom never called me. On June 21, first day of summer, Dad filed papers in the district civil court in Yewville applying for the privilege of bankruptcy. He'd had to hire a new lawyer—couldn't avoid it. Immediately the Mulvaneys' assets were “frozen”—the new house put on the market for resale—what humiliation my parents had to endure I would not learn until years later.

Their marriage, too, began to unravel—in ways I would not know, and did not wish to know.

For suddenly I was
on my own
! I'd thought I would be lonely, but in my new life I had no time for loneliness.

Living in a single furnished room (with lavatory, shower) on the top, third floor of a big old clapboard apartment house in the noman's-land south side of Marsena. Near the railroad yard, about a mile from the high school. The building had once been a hotel, the Marsena Inn, a long time ago. Mostly it was welfare families who lived there, in the larger apartments on the ground floor. The siding was weatherworn brown the color of bleached winter grass, transparent strips of duct tape from the previous winter still flapped at some of the windows. A sagging veranda across the width of the building, the roof and posts overgrown with vivid orange bug-ridden trumpet vine. The building's custodian and his wife and children lived on the ground floor—the wife had set out geraniums in pots on the veranda, and a scattering of battered old wicker furniture, a carpet. There were clotheslines everywhere and except on rainy days laundry hanging up to dry. One of the elderly tenants tended a coop of scruffy chickens in the backyard. These chickens were all Rhode Island Reds but diseased-looking, like old feather-dusters, bald on their heads and backs. There were two reigning, squawky roosters for about two dozen hens and both looked the worst for wear, with inflamed combs, scaly legs. On wet days, and it was a wet summer, a terrible stink wafted upward from the muddy floor of their coop at which they pecked, pecked, pecked chicken-fashion through the daylight hours—but I didn't mind, I was a farm boy used to such smells.

And quickly I would come to be friends with the old man who owned the chickens. He'd come to like me, too. And Little Boots he'd keep company with when I was away. He called me “Juddyboy”—sometimes “Sonny” if he didn't exactly remember my name.